This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 1, 2009
The dignity of ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War in Poland is being marred by furious spats between Russia and Eastern European states over their respective wartime roles.
As world leaders gather in the Polish city of Gdansk today to commemorate the first shots of the conflict, Poles are fuming over what they perceive as an insulting Russian propaganda campaign targeting their nation.
In the days leading up to anniversary,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 1, 2009
Polish leaders have marked the 70th anniversary of the Second World War in a dawn ceremony on the Baltic peninsula where the conflict began.
Later in the day, European and American officials are due to meet in Gdansk for other ceremonies to pay tribute to the tens of millions who lost their lives in the conflict.
At the Westerplatte peninsula, the site of Nazi Germany's opening assault on Poland, Polish political and religious leaders recalled the sacrifices their cou
Source: Foxnews
August 31, 2009
White House Press Secretary Roberts Gibbs broadly dismisses former Vice President Dick Cheney's comments on "FOX News Sunday" as typical and unfounded.
Gibbs did not call out Cheney on specific misstatements, but suggested the former vice president's criticism about a newly formed unit responsible for interrogating high-value detainees was off base. After Cheney ridiculed the unit, Gibbs said it would have participants from several law enforcement agencies and dismissed
Source: Times Online (UK)
September 1, 2009
They are elderly now, many of them stooped and white of hair, but as they queued patiently outside St Paul’s Cathedral today, luggage labels attached dutifully to the lapels of their coats, for a moment the years fell away and they were not their old selves any more, but a generation of children about to be evacuated from London as the world stood on the brink of war.
Perhaps an outsider would not have noticed. But the broadcaster Michael Aspel, who was among those gathered for the
Source: Foxnews
September 1, 2009
The health of the Lockerbie bomber, who has terminal prostate cancer, has swiftly deteriorated since his release from a Scottish prison less than two weeks ago, a senior Libyan official said Tuesday.
The head of the Libyan State Information Agency, Majid al-Dursi, said Abdel Baset al-Megrahi is in the hospital and described him as "very sick."
There was no way to independently verify his health, and it was not clear how long he has to live. Scottish officials
Source: The Times (UK)
September 1, 2009
Libya is set to flaunt the Lockerbie bomber’s release at the climax of today’s celebrations marking Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's 40 years in power.
The Times of London gained access last night to the dress rehearsal of a spectacular two-hour show which extols Colonel Qaddafi for reviving his country and restoring Arab pride. As the finale approaches, the screen at the back of the giant stage in Tripoli’s Green Square shows Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi stepping off the plane which brought
Source: CNN
September 1, 2009
Tom Ridge, the first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, denied Tuesday that he attacked former colleagues Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft in his controversial new book.
Ridge called them "people whose opinions I respect immensely" on CNN's "American Morning."
He made headlines recently by saying he fought their proposal to raise the U.S. terror threat level in the run-up to the 2004 presidential elections.
Source: CNN
September 1, 2009
As the Tea Party Express rolls out of Las Vegas, there is at least one person who may be glad to see it go: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
"There's been kind of an underground gathering of opponents of Harry Reid," said Mark Williams, one of the organizers of the cross country conservative caravan that is making its way towards Washington.
Williams says that dislike of the Nevada Democrat is one of the key factors that is driving people to come out to the
Source: Baltimore Sun
August 29, 2009
Edward Kennedy was buried Saturday, but his impact will surely linger in the words contained in his memoir, "True Compass." The book, which will be released Sept. 14, already has become Amazon's best-selling biography. "Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy" by Peter S. Canellos was also in the Top 10 in that category.
Jonathan Karp, editor-in-chief of Twelve, which is publishing the book, said in an open letter that "Kennedy has been keeping a persona
Source: BBC
September 1, 2009
Terminally ill Libyan Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was freed on 20 August.
The Holyrood documents are expected to include details of a meeting in Greenock Prison between Megrahi and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Westminster sources indicated on Monday the UK government would publish all correspondence with Scottish ministers.
The sources say the communications indicate there was no discussion of compassionate release of prisoners and support the UK gov
Source: The Washington Post
August 30, 2009
The Washington Post digs up a master's thesis written by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell (R) in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family.
McDonnell also said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." And he described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.
"The 93-
Source: NYT
August 31, 2009
ISTANBUL — Turkey and Armenia, whose century of hostilities constitutes one of the world’s most enduring and acrimonious international rivalries, have agreed to establish diplomatic relations, the two countries announced Monday.
In a breakthrough that came after a year of tiny steps across a still-sealed border and furtive bilateral talks in Switzerland, the foreign ministries of the two countries said that they would begin talks aimed at producing a formal agreement.
T
Source: NYT
August 31, 2009
MOSCOW — Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, published a lengthy article Monday characterizing the Nazi-Soviet pact to divide Poland at the outset of World War II in 1939 as immoral, but he stressed that it was just one of a series of such deals that countries struck with the Nazis at that time.
Mr. Putin called the nonaggression pact, which included secret amendments defining spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, “analogous” to the agreement by Britain and France a year e
Source: telegraph.co.uk
August 31, 2009
'We walked out into a wasteland, grey and desolate. The buildings had deteriorated, windows had been smashed. Trees and weeds had grown over everything: it was a ghost town." It reads like a passage from a post-apocalyptic novel, such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road; in fact, it's how Tim Mousseau describes his first visit to Chernobyl.
In 1999, this Professor of Biological Sciences from the University of South Carolina travelled to the site of the world's most horrific nuclear a
Source: Yahoo News
August 30, 2009
BOSTON – Sen. Edward Kennedy's family fortune not only fueled his brothers' presidential campaigns and his eight terms in the U.S. Senate, it also helped drive the family's liberal legacy and forge Kennedy's lifelong crusade for universal health care...
... The main source of Kennedy's wealth was his father and family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy who amassed a fortune in banking, real estate, liquor, films and Wall Street holdings that eventually grew to an estimated $500 million by
Source: Haaretz.com
August 29, 2009
"The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns," Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa told Haaretz Thursday.
Commenting on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement in Germany Thursday that the lesson of the Holocaust is that Israel should always defend itself, Tutu noted that "in South Africa, they tried to get security from the barrel of a gun. They never got it. They got securit
Source: ynetnews.com
August 30, 2009
Hamas condemned the United Nations on Sunday, saying it planned to teach Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip about the Holocaust – but the UN agency which runs schools in the enclave would not confirm any change.
Branding the Nazi genocide of the Jews "a lie invented by the Zionists", the Islamist movement which runs the Gaza Strip wrote in an open letter to a senior UN official that he should withdraw plans for a new history book in UN schools.
A spokesman
Source: The Wall Street Journal
August 31, 2009
AUBURN, Calif. -- This town in the Sierra Nevada foothills accepted the gift of a 28-acre plot from the estate of Nobel laureate William B. Shockley in March. The mostly forested land was to become a community park named after the famous physicist -- co-inventor of the transistor -- and his late wife.
Then the local newspaper pointed out that Mr. Shockley, who died in 1989, was a proponent of eugenics, a widely discredited movement most prominent in the 1920s and '30s that held that
Source: Time
August 31, 2009
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge does not want to "second-guess" the motivations of his former colleagues in the Bush Administration. But with a new memoir, The Test of Our Times, about to hit bookstores, he is ready to talk about all the second thoughts he has been having.
For instance, he thinks waterboarding "was and is torture," and he wishes the Bush Administration had not permitted it. He thinks President George W. Bush should have gone to Cong
Source: The Wall Street Journal
August 31, 2009
TOKYO -- Japanese voters overwhelmingly rejected the party that has largely ruled their nation for most of the past half a century, choosing instead an untested rival to grapple with an enfeebled economy and an aging society.
The historic change in government could usher in a new era for Japanese politics that replaces the staid consensus that guided Japan in its postwar boom years with a more fractious, competitive environment. The upstart Democratic Party of Japan and the establis
