This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert “An Inconvenient Truth.”

After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists’ findings.

“Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,” said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.”

Hardison’s e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night.

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The Power Of Nightmares pushes a theory of rule by fear, and posits that the war on terror is an overblown hoopla. It compares and contrasts the historical development and rise to power of the Islamic Fundamentalists, and the Neo Cons. Download and watch it now.

[UPDATE - Argh, archive.org lost the mpeg. Never fear though, here’s a mirror]
[UPDATE 2 - Damn, I killed the mirror’s bandwidth. Google video has it, and you can also download it via bittorrent. (I downloaded the above torrents and found part 3 to be corrupt, which is why I started looking at archive.org in the first place. Grr!)]

Century Of The Self, by the same director (Adam Curtis), looks at the history of psychoanalysis in this century. Covering everything from Freud and Bernays through EST, the documentary takes many interesting tangents, including detailing the birth of PR. Equally essential viewing. Download and watch it now

[UPDATE - also, archive.org seem to have messed up the main page that I linked to above. Here are links to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4. Are archive.org unbelievably incompetent? Or what’s going on here? Nice of them to host the vids, but still, why would the pages change??]

In this climate of rising social tensions, Hirsi Ali landed a job at the Labor Party’s think tank, the Wiardi Beckman Institute. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks she was invited to discuss Islam and gender on television. Asked to comment on Fortuyn’s descriptions of Islam, she said, “By some criteria, Islam could be considered a backward religion.” The reaction that followed shocked everyone, except possibly Hirsi Ali herself. There were written death threats, and when she walked in the street, groups of Muslim boys called her a whore and shouted that they wanted to kill her. She had to leave the country briefly. Pim Fortuyn’s shocking assassination in May 2002, Holland’s first political murder in 300 years, hardened Hirsi Ali’s determination to press forward. That fall she wrote an article calling upon Muslim women to abandon the “outdated religious opinions” that prevented them from claiming their rights under Dutch law. A circle of older Dutch writers and politicians began to gather around her. Some, like the University of Utrecht philosopher Herman Phillipse, warned that Holland’s Muslim community was rapidly becoming indigestible. Others, such as the writer Paul Scheffer, favored using the government to promote integration. The politician Geert Wilders was perhaps the most inflammatory. “Why are we afraid to tell Muslims to adapt to us, simply because our values and norms represent a higher level of civilization - better, more pleasant and more humane. No more integration, but assimilation!” Wilders wrote.

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Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters. “I don’t look at it as censorship,” says State Representative Gerald Allen. “I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children.”

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” has lesbian characters. Allen originally wanted to ban even some Shakespeare. After criticism, he narrowed his bill to exempt the classics, although he still can’t define what a classic is.

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Please can we secede? Pretty please?