Filmmaker Michael Moore, has just published a new book.

It’s called “Here Comes Trouble” and (with his permission) the UK Guardian last week published an excerpt.

The Guardian extract focused on the period after Moore’s famous 2003 Oscar acceptance speech when he condemned the Iraq War and President George W Bush. According to Mr. Moore, this speech was thought of as “career suicide” and more alarmingly made him “the most hated man in America”.

Death threats followed and Mr. Moore decided to hire bodyguards – “nine ex-Navy Seals surrounding me, round-the-clock,” he writes in the book.

Then when he made the documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11″ – which was acutely critical of the Iraq invasion and the Bush administration – the bodyguards were really needed because the hate poured in.

As Mr. Moore relates in “Here Comes Trouble,” the hate was “generated toward me by the Republican pundits. It had the sad and tragic side-effect of unhinging the already slightly unglued. And so my life went from receiving scribbly little hate notes to full out attempted physical assaults – and worse.”

Mr. Moore outlines three attacks in particular to illustrate the level of violence he was enduring.

However, his accounts raise questions about these incidents and reasonable doubts if they happened as outlined.

Having doubts, I emailed his spokesperson a few detailed and pointed questions asking for times, dates, locations and police and medical reports that would normally be generated by such incidents.

In response, I received a somewhat defensive email from the Gavin de Becker the owner of Gavin de Becker & Associates, the security company Mr. Moore hired to protect him during this time.

“Security agents from my firm were present at all events and I can confirm the book’s account entirely. Each event occurred just as Mr. Moore described it,” said Mr. de Becker.

Notably missing from Mr. de Becker’s email were any of the details which I requested. These details would make it easier to independently verify Mr. Moore’s accounts of the alleged assaults.

One of the most serious and most public attacks was in Tennessee.

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Josh Fox has responded to valid journalistic questions about his documentary Gasland by stifling the freedom of the press.

I travelled to Chicago for a Q&A where Fox admitted hiding facts from his documentary that contradicted his scaremongering about drilling for natural gas.

And Fox’s response when we posted the video on YouTube – he got his lawyers to have YouTube pull it down.

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That’s right – he has tried to use lawyers to silence journalist from asking difficult questions and putting his answers to those questions on the Internet.

Fox’s excuse is a breach of copyright. In a video that is 3:10 minutes long we used 26 seconds of Gasland only to show how Fox was being unethical and misleading. It is a classic case of “fair use” of someones work for the purpose of criticism and is totally legally allowed if not encouraged under fair use law.

But Fox does not want any criticism. He does not want any freedom of speech.

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Hollywood, particularly at awards ceremonies, prides itself as being courageous, ahead of the pack and willing to discuss and say the unpopular long before the rest of the world has caught up.

This is of course nonsense but it has proven a persistent and popular narrative. Hollywood does not like to admit it but the film industry is often woefully late coming to social and political change.

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It was only after gays became one of the world’s most protected and revered minorities that Hollywood felt it was ok to give them a movie all to themselves. And so Brokeback Mountain came to pass. And everyone in the industry congratulated themselves on how courageous they were tackling a subject that almost every family in America has had to deal with for decades when their sibling, child, uncle, aunt, mother or father came out of the closet.

The truth is that Hollywood generally makes movies that repeat received wisdom that has since been disproven by the facts.

Take communism. Please. (more…)

**Programming details after the jump.

Disney is famously apolitical. In fact, it probably prides itself as an anti-political organization. For years its calling card has been producing family oriented fare that would be welcome in any American household.  Indeed it famously declined to distribute Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which Moore managed to turn into a David v. Goliath story about censorship and corporate greed. This allowed the millionaire filmmaker to find another large corporation to distribute the documentary… whilst getting huge publicity railing against large corporations.  Disney managed to survive this potential blow to their non-political reputation and saved their brand.

But tomorrow, it appears, Disney will be suspending those principles and will engage in political programming. To mark Earth Day the channel is carrying a raft of programs which push the Green/Environmental agenda.

Why would the company that stood up to Michael Moore be willing to make such a bait and switch?  My best guess is that these shows will not appear to be political programming.  But this is a fallacy.  One of the great victories for environmentalists in recent memory is that they have been able to portray environmentalism as apolitical.  And this will be on full display tomorrow on Disney Channel. (more…)

And does the self-proclaimed defender of the working and middle classes actually know anything about them and how they live?

My questions were prompted after a “letter from Michael Moore” popped into my inbox.  It was promoting the DVD launch of his documentary Capitalism – A Love Story.

Mr. Moore acknowledges that some may not have watched it in the movie theater because they were working too hard but then blames poor ticket sales on the behaviour of the very workers he pretends to defend in his documentaries.

He seems to detest working people and how he thinks they behave in the movie theater.

But for those of you who didn’t get to the theater, what’s your excuse? Didn’t want to sit through 20 minutes of TV ads up on the screen before the movie started? Don’t like sitting next to people who have 6 important cell calls to make during the film? Feet get stuck to the floor after two hours of people spilling their 164 oz. sodas, thus preventing you from getting up when the film’s over?

So in Mooreland the workers of the world are boorish, inconsiderate slobs who eat and drink to excess and mess up their theaters.

It is clear Michael Moore despises his audience, but perhaps even more tellingly, he does not even seem to know how they live or even what the inside of a movie theater looks like these days. (more…)

Our documentary Not Evil Just Wrong is on tour in Alaska. The film asks if Global Warming science is really settled but perhaps more importantly focuses on the damage that proposed “solutions” will have on the poorest people on the planet.

Not Evil Just Wrong examines the true cost of expensive energy for those who already live in poverty or fixed incomes.

One of the highlights of the Alaska tour was a visit to Colony High School in Wasilla where we screened an excerpt of the documentary and took questions from students.

Sarah Palin, Wasilla’s most famous resident, did not attend but a large number of children were there and seemed interested and asked interesting questions.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has been shown many times, in many classes at the school and the students seemed to appreciate an alternative. (more…)

It really is a great time to be an independent journalist/filmmaker.

With the mainstream media devoting to trying to turn policy differences into racism it leaves the task of asking hard questions to people in power open to the rest of us

Inspired by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles who have shone an uncomfortable light on Acorn by asking obvious questions and by simply letting people answer I decided to cover the New York premiere of  “The Age of Stupid” – a documentary that claims the human race will be extinct by 2055 because of Climate Change.

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Much of the “Age Of Stupid” is spent attacking those in the developing world who want our lives and lifestyles. The documentary is particularly critical of those in countries such as India who want to fly more for business or pleasure.

The documentary is quite clear that flying in aeroplanes is disastrous for the planet. “Apart from setting fire to a forest flying is the single worst thing an individual can do to cause climate change,” we are told. (more…)

The first episode of “Law & Order” UK has just ended on British television. Spreading the franchise across the pond does have difficulties because of the differing legal systems but it still stays close to the setting and pacing of the US original.

Unfortunately, they have not escaped the predictability of the US show when it comes to the identity of the killer. The moment we saw the dead black child and later met his white businesswoman landlord it was fairly clear where the “mystery” was headed. (more…)

Everywhere they go Irish children endure politics disguised as education or entertainment.

The Irish Times is, like the New York Times, the country’s most influential newspaper. 

They recently teamed up with Irish government’s overseas aid department and produced an educational supplement for every Irish classroom. 

In the supplement Irish children are informed that “more natural disasters are happening now than in the past because the world’s climate is changing”. They are then invited to “hear about what happened to Vathyia when extreme weather affected where she lived.” (their emphasis)

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