WHAT YOU NEED NOW - CONTENT UPDATED THROUGH THE DAY
Nov. 11, 2005
THUMBS XLVIII: Whatever Happened to Truth in Advertising? No ‘Digital
Munich’ for Internet – Keep the U.N.’s Hands off Our Open, Accessible
Internet; ‘Paper Clips’ Should be Shown in Every Classroom in the World
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
Hinton, WV (HNN) –This is the forty-eighth installment of a column
expressing approval or disapproval of recent news events, commentaries, etc.
Thumbs Up for approval; Thumbs Down for disapproval. This is your column
as much as mine; I welcome contributions, which will be credited in the
item. The contributions can come from within the HNN family or from our
readers – I welcome them all. Contact me at davidkinchen@hotmail.com.
THUMBS DOWN – To so-called #1 internet retailer, A-1 Wireless for
advertising the new Samsung MM-A800 High end, High tech camera phone on its
front page for $149.99 after rebates, then when clicking SELECT, the total
comes to $299.99. When HNN contacted the company, one salesman said that the
company would have to honor the ad as long as a copy of it could be provided
with a date and time stamp. However, after faxing the ad to verification and
providing details of the error, they have now corrected their front page to
say $299.99, but they will not speak to HNN about the error, nor honor the
advertised price which stayed up for more than 48 hours after they were
notified. (from Tony Rutherford).
THUMBS UP – To U.S. Rep. Norm Coleman, R-MN, for calling the U.N.’s attempt
to take over the Internet a “Digital Munich.” For those of you who are
history impaired – probably the majority, considering the abysmal state of
history teaching these days – in the fall of 1938, England and France
surrendered the freedom of Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s Germany. Since those
days, Munich has stood for surrender – as well as the 1972 massacre of
Israeli athletes by Arab terrorists at the Munich Olympics.
Coleman made his position clear in a Nov. 7, 2005 Op-Ed piece in the Wall
Street Journal. He wants the U.S. to make it perfectly clear that we’re not
going to surrender our Internet – developed and perfected in the U.S., as
everyone knows – to non-democratic countries like China, Saudi Arabia and
Cuba. These three exemplars of democracy want the Internet, including the
Fairfax County, VA-based non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) placed under U.N.-dominated auspices. I commented on
this shameful attempt at destroying the Internet in a previous Thumbs
column, where I slammed the upcoming Tunis conference that would take up the
issue. To its shame, the European Union, a bastion of anti-Americanism, has
endorsed this miserable plan. Google for Coleman’s complete column; it’s
worth reading. Here are the first three paragraphs:
“It sounds like a Tom Clancy plot. An anonymous group of international
technocrats holds secretive meetings in Geneva. Their cover story: devising
a blueprint to help the developing world more fully participate in the
digital revolution. Their real mission: strategizing to take over management
of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and
politicize the World Wide Web. Does it sound too bizarre to be true?
Regrettably, much of what emanates these days from the U.N. does.
“The Internet faces a grave threat. We must defend it. We need to preserve
this unprecedented communications and informational medium, which fosters
freedom and enterprise. We can not allow the U.N. to control the Internet.
“The threat is posed by the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information
Society taking place later this month in Tunisia. At the WSIS preparatory
meeting weeks ago, it became apparent that the agenda had been transformed.
Instead of discussing how to place $100 laptops in the hands of the world's
children, the delegates schemed to transfer Internet control into the hands
of intrigue-plagued bureaucracies.”
God bless you, Norm Coleman!
THUMBS UP – HBO, the Johnson Group, Miramax and the teachers and
administrators – and students -- of Whitwell Middle School in Whitwell, TN
for the outstanding HBO documentary “Paper Clips,” currently playing on the
cable network.
I’ve just finished watching “Paper Clips” on HBO, an 82-minute documentary
about a Holocaust memorial in the Appalachian town of Whitwell, Tenn., 24
miles northwest of Chattanooga. It's a former mining town and I'm guessing
most of the people commute to jobs in the Chattanooga area or work in town,
just like a lot of people in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland,
Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The 2004 multiple award-winning film, directed by Elliot Berlin and Joe Fab
and written by Joe Fab, tells the story of Whitwell Middle School principal
Linda Hooper and assistant principal David Smith and their students and the
people of Whitwell who built a Holocaust memorial around a German cattle car
– one that was like the ones that took Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses
and homosexuals to the death camps in Germany, Austria and Poland. Hooper
and Smith and everyone in the film play themselves; this is a real
documentary.
It was aired on Nov. 9, 2005 a significant date in the dark and dismal
pageant of European history; the massive anti-Jewish pogrom called
“Krystalnacht” (night of the broken glass) took place on Nov. 9-10, 1938 and
resulted in hundreds of dead Jews in Germany and Austria, along with the
destruction of hundreds of synagogues and thousands of businesses. It was a
clear signal that the Germans were going to attempt to wipe out an entire
people – but the world did nothing.
“Paper Clips” began in 1998 as a lesson about intolerance and ended up
featuring Holocaust survivors visiting the small town – as well as a moving
segment involving U.S. Army veteran George Jacobs, an American Jew who as a
20-year-old soldier in 1945 was part of a unit that liberated Mauthausen
Concentration Camp near Linz, Austria, not far from Hitler’s birthplace,
Braunau am Inn. Actor Tom Bosley, a Jew, is another on-screen personality,
applauding the efforts of the kids of Whitwell Middle School -- and sending
his personal paper clip. Clips came from Tom Hanks, Presidents Clinton and
Bush the elder, Henry Winkler, whose parents left Germany in 1939, escaping
the Holocaust, and many, many others.
While studying the Holocaust, the students came up with the idea of
collecting paper clips from around the world -- with each clip representing
a victim of the atrocities committed by the Germans, Austrians and their
allies in World War II. Paper clips, invented in Norway in 1899, were a
symbol of resistance in that country to the occupying Germans. The Whitwell
students chose paper clips for that reason, as well as to get a grasp of the
enormity of the Holocaust.
This moving film shows how the kids – virtually all of whom are white
Protestants – learned about the Holocaust and put their learning into
action. They ended up with 28 million paper clips, on display in a
1917-vintage cattle car they obtained through the efforts of a German
couple, both journalists, who've lived in the U.S. for 24 years and reported
on this nation for publications in their country.
Their cattle car on a siding next to their school – dedicated Nov. 9, 2001
-- is the most moving Holocaust memorial I’ve ever seen.
The film will be repeated on HBO or HBO 2. Check your listings and watch
“Paper Clips.” You’ll finish the viewing with tears in your eyes, as I did.
