it's gonna cost you $20, unless you sneak in, but tomorrow (monday) you can see the son of Alexander "Zus" Bielski, a Jewish partisan who fought in the forests of Poland during world war two. the recent movie Defiance was based on this story.
The Bielski's story hit the big screen with the release of Edward Zwick's film "Defiance" in 2008. Since then, Bielski has crisscrossed the globe, sharing his father's story and his own experience growing up with a hero.
On Monday, Bielski will stop in the East Bay for a 7:30 p.m. lecture sponsored by the Chabad of the Tri-Valley at the Pleasanton Masonic Center.
in other news, Super Bowl tv channel CBS is refusing to air this commercial:
CBS Standards and Practices has reviewed your proposed Super Bowl ad and concluded that the creative is not within the Network's Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday
really? american football has got to be one of the most homoerotic sports out there, and they wont air this silly commercial? but they are allowing some crummy pro life ad.
and anyone who watches football knows the NFL loves to give air time to the military and "support our troops" kinda crap.
watching the raiders has been painful enough these last few years without all this right-wing nationalistic crap being shown during the commercials.
finally, a documentary film is being made about "the third wave." it was 1967, in a bay area high school when
Simulation was in vogue for introducing abstract ideas. One of the abstractions was fascism in World War II, and Jones decided to simulate it by turning his world history classroom into a one-day fascist state. It was a morning class of 25 or 26 sophomores, and Jones introduced discipline by having them practice marching into class in an orderly fashion and sitting at their desks with perfect posture and smiles.
Jones figured that was the end of it, but when he came in the second morning, they were all sitting with perfect posture again. They liked this game, and that is where the trouble began.
By the end of day two, participating students had developed a secret hallway salute, which caused enough campus curiosity that by day three there were 200 students or more, including kids who had heard about it at rival high schools Palo Alto and Gunn, jamming his classroom to be part of the Third Wave.
"Now it was not just a simulation," says Jones. "The Third Wave was becoming something bigger, and I was a victim of my own excitement. I loved the power of it and the adulation."
On the fourth day, Jones raised the stakes by telling his students that the Third Wave was part of a national movement. They were "the vanguard, the soldiers of the future" and they would hold a rally on day five to meet their national leader in a televised speech.
By then the Third Wave soldiers were in white shirts, and they crammed into a small auditorium. Jones turned the TV on to meet their new leader and it was nothing but white static. After a few confusing moments, a slide projector came on with images of Adolf Hitler indoctrinating his youth.
"I said, 'This is where we are going. We're no better and no worse than the Germans we've been studying,' " Jones says. "This is our future unless we understand the need for freedom."
Students were shocked
It was a hard lesson and a bit much for high schoolers. "Some are crying. Some are bursting out of the room," says Jones. "It had gone way too far. I was lucky I could bring it to an end."
That wasn't the only end he brought it to. Two years later, he was let go. Nobody said it was specifically because of the Third Wave experiment, but nobody said it wasn't, either.
It's another example of what i was talking about in my last post.
otherwise good or normal people can turn into monsters when put into certain positions, usually those of power.
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