30 December 2007 @ 3:35PM >> Assuming the last few details get worked out in time, sometime in January, Indoctrinate U will be offered as a web download. At some point after that, DVD sales will begin as well.

Prices have not yet been set for either the download or the DVD. More details will follow when they become available.

In the meantime, happy New Year!

29 December 2007 @ 1:13PM >> How did this Photoshopped picture make it from a satirical website run by some friends of mine to the Iranian Press TV website? For the hilarious story, visit The People’s Cube.

18 December 2007 @ 9:55AM >> A student who was dissatisfied with one of his professors has been found guilty of hazing, among other things, simply for e-mailing fellow classmates about his intention to withdraw from the class. The “verdict” was a summary decision by a lone administrator and was issued without a hearing. When the student recognized that his due process rights were violated, he appealed the decision. His appeal was denied, by the very same administrator who found him guilty in the first place.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports:

As we report in our press release today, St. Louis Community College at Meramec (STLCC) has placed a student on disciplinary probation and found him guilty of hazing and several other offenses simply for e-mailing other students about his plans to withdraw from his Organic Chemistry I course. He invited others to do likewise and later invited his classmates to join him in taking Organic Chemistry II at another college.

The student, Jun Xiao, holds a Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has postdoctoral training from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University. He enrolled at STLCC to satisfy the prerequisites for medical school. Dissatisfied with one of his professors, he started looking for other options. When he found some, he invited his classmates to join him. On October 23, 2007, two days later, Xiao received e-mails and phone calls requiring him to meet immediately with Acting Vice President of Student Affairs Daniel R. Herbst. One letter, from Herbst’s assistant, cryptically stated, “Your academic career rests on your meeting with him.” Another, from Herbst himself, stated, “Please note, that until you have a meeting with me, that you are prohibited from sending any emails to students in any of your courses. Violation of this directive, can and will result in your immediate suspension from St. Louis Community College.”

On October 24, Herbst gave him a letter informing him that he had been placed on “Disciplinary Probation” for the 2007-2008 academic year and that he was prohibited from contacting other STLCC students by e-mail. The letter also stated that Herbst—without any hearing—had already found Xiao guilty of hazing, disorderly conduct, breach of the peace, and failure to comply with the directions of a college official. But when Xiao later asked for a written clarification of the complaints and charges against him, Herbst refused to provide any such information. Xiao’s first appeal of Herbst’s decision was denied by Herbst himself.

Xiao then appealed again, this time to STLCC’s Student Appellate Hearing Committee. That committee, which is required to hold a hearing “within 15 calendar days from the date of notification to the student,” has refused even to set a hearing date, instead informing him that the “15-day clock has not begun to tick because you have not yet received official notification,” and that he could “expect” to receive such notification in January 2008. In the meantime, Xiao remains on disciplinary probation and may not contact other students by e-mail.

[...]

As Samantha [Harris] said in our press release, “Punishing a student for e-mailing his classmates about the possibility of enrolling in a different course is a shamefully transparent attempt to suppress criticism of the college.” She added, “STLCC must either rescind the punishment it arbitrarily meted out to Xiao or, at the very least, provide him with reasonable notice and a fair hearing so that he may defend himself against what appear to be wildly inappropriate charges.”

16 December 2007 @ 5:05PM >> One of my favorite writers is in trouble for speaking his mind—and speaking the truth—in Canada:

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone.”

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean’s reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt” for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean’s advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada’s liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech.”

Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press.

Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the “crime” of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about.

It doesn’t matter whether Steyn and Maclean’s win the case. The mere fact that they are forced to go to court to defend their free speech rights is punishment enough, and it will encourage others in Canada to keep quiet.

Not everyone who runs afoul of the Speech Police will have the time, resources or resolve to fight for what is an obviously basic right in any truly free society. So this action will immediately silence an unknowable number of people whose opinions run the risk of offending Members of an Anointed Group.

Whatever the outcome, Canadians shouldn’t fear that they might lose their right to think freely. They should mourn, because that right is long gone.

16 December 2007 @ 10:36AM >> If Muslims like Hassan Askari and Mansoor Ijaz got more attention from the media—and more support from their fellow believers around the world—we would have much less reason to worry about the future of humanity.

13 December 2007 @ 12:05AM >> An “honor” killing among our neighbors to the north:

A 16-year-old girl died in hospital late Monday night, hours after police in Mississauga received a call from a man saying he had killed his daughter.

Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been charged with murder in connection with the death of his daughter, Aqsa Parvez. He will appear Tuesday in a Brampton court.

The victim’s 26-year-old brother, Waqas Parvez, has been charged with obstructing police.

Students at nearby Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga said the teen had recently clashed with her family after ceasing to wear a hijab and adopting a more Western style of dress.

According to police, the chain of events began yesterday morning with a phone call from a home near Hurontario Street and Eglinton Avenue.

“At 7:55 a.m., we received a 911 call from a man claiming that he had just killed his daughter,” Constable J.P. Valade of Peel Police said.

12 December 2007 @ 8:32AM >> Celebrities are frequently mocked for making political statements that yield applause on Hollywood back lots, but that sound tone-deaf to the rest of America. So it’s refreshing to hear a little common sense from a source I didn’t expect:

During a discussion of Republican Presidential candidates on ABC’s “The View,” which the comedian co-hosts, [Whoopi] Goldberg said, “I’d like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That’s what I want. I don’t want to get taxed just because I died.” The studio audience started applauding, but she wasn’t done. “I just don’t think it’s right,” she continued. “If I give something to my kid, I already paid the tax. Why should I have to pay it again because I died?” (Watch the video here.)

[...]

When another co-host, Joy Behar, responded to Ms. Goldberg’s remarks by asserting, “Only people with a lot of money say that,” Ms. Goldberg shot back, “No, I don’t think so. . . . It doesn’t matter if you have or don’t have money. Once you paid your taxes, it should be a done deal. You shouldn’t have to pay twice.”

Death should not be a taxable event.

11 December 2007 @ 6:56PM >> The headline above can be parsed in two different ways. A court in Iraq will soon try to determine which is more accurate.

Jim Hanson of Pajamas Media reports:

AP photographer Bilal Hussein was on the radar screen of US forces prior to his being detained in a chance encounter April 12, 2006. He was a stringer working in Fallujah who filed numerous reports and photos that seemed to need a high degree of cooperation from the terrorists. He has been in custody for 19 months and will soon face trial by the Iraqi government on charges related to his activities with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. Evidence against him is expected to be given to the Iraqi government this week.

Hussein was in his house with Hamid Hamad Motib, a known al-Qaeda leader, last year when Marines wanted to use the house as an observation point. They determined Motib’s identity and status as a wanted terrorist and took both him and Hussein into custody. They also recovered a number of items that led them to believe that Hussein was involved in insurgent activities. The US will now provide the evidence it has to the Iraqi government.

[...]

Bilal Hussein had free reign [sic] to be anywhere and was often taking pictures in the company of insurgents and terrorists. He and the other stringers who made up AP’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo team managed to capture assassinations as they happened. They were on site at bombings within seconds to capture the carnage almost as it happened.

This access and the number of false reports of civilian deaths led the information operations staff to take note. They began monitoring Hussein more closely for two reasons: one they were tasked with countering or debunking false claims of civilian casualties and atrocities, second because Hussein’s very tight relations with the insurgents could be used against the Marines themselves.

The photo to the right was taken by Balil Hussein. It appears to show Italian hostage Salvatore Santoro shortly before he was executed. The Associated Press tries to defend Hussein by copping to a different journalistic no-no: that the photo was staged after Santoro’s execution.

Either way, Hussein had remarkable access to terrorists, and he routinely supplied photographs to AP that were useful propaganda for insurgents. By AP’s own admission, he dutifully waited while insurgents staged an execution scene, proving that he was an active participant in generating their propaganda.

So even if you give the Associated Press the benefit of the doubt, the best you can say is that their own evidence shows that Hussein was a willing tool of the insurgents.

Was he more than that?

Iraqi authorities will be seeking a verdict on that question soon enough.

11 December 2007 @ 5:49PM >> Perhaps due to the relative speeds of e-mail and snail mail, I wasn’t aware of this until reading James Taranto’s column today (scroll down), but apparently Indiana University has dropped their demand that On The Fence Films hand over what remains in our depleted coffers. In other words, it looks like they’ve backed off their threatened legal action.

Thanks to Indiana University for resolving the matter so quickly after it became public. We acted in good faith, and we appreciate that it was reciprocated.

Update: A statement has been posted on the Indoctrinate U website, which reads in part:

Being employed by a school with an endowment of over $1 billion might give him a different financial perspective, because Mr. MacIntyre refers to the amount of money the school was demanding ($1,500) with a dismissive “That’s it.”

For an independent production company like ours, that small amount of money is the difference between making the final payment to our sound engineers and producing promotional DVDs. Being bankrupted by a bogus demand didn’t seem inconsequential to us.

Nevertheless, we are of the philosophy that all’s well that ends well. And in the end, we’re happy with Indiana University’s final decision.

Given the experiences we had with other college administrators, the folks at Indiana have been among the better ones to deal with.

Indeed that’s true. Thanks to Mr. MacIntyre (and everyone else involved at Indiana University) for helping bring this matter to a speedy and amicable resolution.

10 December 2007 @ 8:41AM >> In the Washington Post, a Villanova professor discusses the intellectual decay within academia:

At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are “the third group,” far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was “the right half of the left,” while at Harvard he found himself “on the right half of the right.”

I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I’ve been on the “far right” as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.

All these views — commonplace in American society and among the political class — are practically verboten in much of academia. At many of the colleges I’ve taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-center view portrayed in a positive light.

A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused “a sensation” at his university. “It was as if I had become a child molester,” he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because “you don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”

[...]

Unfortunately, subtle biases in how conservative students and professors are treated in the classroom and in the job market have very unsubtle effects on the ideological makeup of the professoriate. The resulting lack of intellectual diversity harms academia by limiting the questions academics ask, the phenomena we study, and ultimately the conclusions we reach.

There are numerous examples of this ideological isolation from society. As political scientist Steven Teles showed in his book “Whose Welfare?,” the public had determined by the 1970s that welfare wasn’t working — yet many sociology professors even now deny that ’70s-style welfare programs were bad for their recipients. Similarly, despite New York City’s 15-year-long decline in crime, most criminologists still struggle to attribute the increased safety to demographic shifts or even random statistical variations (which apparently skipped other cities) rather than more effective policing.

[...]

All this is bad for society because academics’ ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right.

[...]

Ultimately, universities will have to clean their own houses. Professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate. And since debate requires disagreement, higher education needs to encourage intellectual diversity in its hiring and promotion decisions with something like the fervor it shows for ethnic and racial diversity. It’s the only way universities will earn back society’s respect and reclaim their role at the center of public life.

9 December 2007 @ 11:48PM >> An imam in Great Britain is attempting to impose Sharia law—through the execution of his own daughter:

The daughter of a British imam is living under police protection after receiving death threats from her father for converting to Christianity.

The 31-year-old, whose father is the leader of a mosque in Lancashire, has moved house an astonishing 45 times after relatives pledged to hunt her down and kill her.

The British-born university graduate, who uses the pseudonym Hannah for her own safety, said she renounced the Muslim faith to escape being forced into an arranged marriage when she was 16.

She has been in hiding for more than a decade but called in police only a few months ago after receiving a text message from her brother.

In it, he said he would not be held responsible for his actions if she failed to return to Islam.

[...]

Hannah was born in Lancashire to Pakistani parents who raised her and her siblings as strict Sunni Muslims.

She prayed and read the Koran, wore traditional Muslim clothes and was sent to a madrassa, a religious Muslim school.

She ran away from home at 16 after overhearing her father organising her arranged marriage.

[...]

But when she opted to get baptised, while studying at Manchester University, her family were incensed and the death threats began.

Her father arrived at her home with 40 men and threatened to kill her for betraying Islam.

“I saw my uncle and around 40 men storming up the street clutching axes, hammers, knives and bits of wood,” she said.

“My dad was shouting through the letter box, “I’m going to kill you”, while the others smashed on the window and beat the door.

“They were shouting, ‘We’re going to kill you’ and ‘Traitor’.

And if that weren’t troubling enough, a significant share of young British Muslims apparently believe that this is entirely appropriate:

A study this year found that 36 per cent of British Muslims between 16 and 24 believe those who convert to another religion should be punished by death.

7 December 2007 @ 12:29AM >> As promised, the Indoctrinate U website came back online last week, and we’ve now posted a statement explaining why the site was taken down in the first place.

James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” covers the story.

Sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks a lot for all the supportive e-mails. It’s good to be back!

6 December 2007 @ 8:36AM >> Did you know that the radical left-wing group ACORN has its own taxpayer-financed public high school in New York City? I didn’t, until it was reported today that some parents are unhappy with the principal.

Going unasked in all the coverage, of course, is why the City of New York would hand the reins of a public school over to a political organization?

People need to start demanding answers.

4 December 2007 @ 9:10PM >> There’s a little scandal brewing within Wikipedia.

The free online encyclopedia editable by anyone prides itself on being a meritocracy. The site successfully harnessed the wisdom of crowds to build what’s probably the largest, most quickly-constructed body of knowledge ever assembled in human history. Not bad for something that didn’t even exist when the decade began.

For much of its content, the Wikipedia model seems to work pretty well. Easily-verifiable facts like names, places and dates tend to be rendered accurately. And when they’re not, they’re easy to fix. With millions of eyeballs scanning everything, errors can be caught quickly.

But when the topic is a subject of debate or controversy, the natural human tendency to want to convince others of one’s rightness can lead to some nasty behavior. And when that happens in Wikiland, not only is the quality of the product degraded, so is the trust people place in the collaborative editing process.

A spat between contributors that recently became public demonstrated this weakness in the Wikipedia model, The Register reports (in a somewhat sensationalist tone):

Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia’s core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site’s top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.

Many suspected that such a list was in use, as the Wikipedia “ruling clique” grew increasingly concerned with banning editors for the most petty of reasons. But now that the list’s existence is confirmed, the rank and file are on the verge of revolt.

Revealed after an uber-admin called “Durova” used it in an attempt to enforce the quixotic ban of a longtime contributor, this secret mailing list seems to undermine the site’s famously egalitarian ethos. At the very least, the list allows the ruling clique to push its agenda without scrutiny from the community at large. But clearly, it has also been used to silence the voice of at least one person who was merely trying to improve the encyclopedia’s content.

“I’ve never seen the Wikipedia community as angry as they are with this one,” says Charles Ainsworth, a Japan-based editor who’s contributed more feature articles to the site than all but six other writers. “I think there was more hidden anger and frustration with the ‘ruling clique’ than I thought and Durova’s heavy-handed action and arrogant refusal to take sufficient accountability for it has released all of it into the open.”

Kelly Martin, a former member of Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, leaves no doubt that this sort of surreptitious communication has gone on for ages. “This particular list is new, but the strategy is old,” Martin told us via phone, from outside Chicago. “It’s certainly not consistent with the public principles of the site. But in reality, it’s standard practice.”

[...]

If you take Wikipedia as seriously as it takes itself, this is a huge problem. The site is ostensibly devoted to democratic consensus and the free exchange of ideas. But whether or not you believe in the holy law of Web 2.0, Wikipedia is tearing at the seams. Many of its core contributors are extremely unhappy about Durova’s ill-advised ban and the exposure of the secret mailing list, and some feel that the site’s well-being is seriously threatened.

In a post to Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales says that this whole incident was blown out of proportion. “I advise the world to relax a notch or two. A bad block was made for 75 minutes,” he says. “It was reversed and an apology given. There are things to be studied here about what went wrong and what could be done in the future, but wow, could we please do so with a lot less drama? A 75 minute block, even if made badly, is hardly worth all this drama. Let’s please love each other, love the project, and remember what we are here for.”

But he’s not admitting how deep this controversy goes. Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation came down hard on the editor who leaked Durova’s email. After it was posted to the public forum, the email was promptly “oversighted” - i.e. permanently removed. Then this rogue editor posted it to his personal talk page, and a Wikimedia Foundation member not only oversighted the email again, but temporarily banned the editor.

Then Jimbo swooped in with a personal rebuke. “You have caused too much harm to justify us putting up with this kind of behavior much longer,” he told the editor.

If there’s a flaw in the Wikipedia model, it isn’t that the site relies on the wisdom of crowds too much, it’s that the site’s highest-volume contributors and editors—the people who effectively run the place—could succumb to the gravitational pull of groupthink.

The problem is that it’s difficult to engineer a way to allow for group-driven creation of content while dispersing certain responsibilities and decision-making tasks among the masses. It’s impossible to create a system that’s completely open to everyone without getting overrun by malicious vandals, so it’s hard to see how the site could avoid issuing bans or using some other form of group-imposed censorship.

But, to whatever extent is possible, Wikipedia would be wise to avoid greater centralization of power. Otherwise, it could lead to problems that could cause Wikipedia’s well-earned goodwill is going to melt away just as quickly as it was built.

3 December 2007 @ 10:19AM >> BBC reporter Andrew Mynott exhibits the suicidal political correctness so common in the West. In describing the angry mobs that recently called for the execution of a teacher who committed the heinous crime of being present as her young students named a teddy bear Mohammed, Mynott characterizes the death mobs as “good natured.”

Yes, they were “good natured” as they marched for the execution of this teacher. (I’d hate to think of what a bad natured Jihadist mob would look like.)

Of course, according to the rules of Multicultural Hierarchy, using a negative term is a no-no when describing members of an Approved Group. So this reporter from the BBC is forced to tie himself into a logical pretzel to avoid violating the tenets of the Church of Multiculturalism.

I wonder how he would have described the mob if it had been his wife they wanted to kill.

1 December 2007 @ 2:54PM >> I just found the perfect stocking stuffer!

There are a few items listed under “customers also bought,” however, that might not make such great gifts.