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: LAT
March 16, 2008
Sen. John McCain is well-known for scorching denunciations of Democrats, who he says would raise the "white flag of surrender" by cutting off funds for U.S. troops in Iraq.
But 15 years ago, it was McCain himself who startled colleagues by proposing to cut off money for a struggling and embattled U.S. force in another perilous place: Somalia.
On the campaign trail today, McCain is seen as an unyielding hawk. But before his first presidential run in 2000, he de
Source: WaPo
March 16, 2008
There is no dispute, as a dramatic campaign ad from Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign suggests, that presidents get plenty of phone calls at 3 a.m.
A sleeping Ronald Reagan was alerted early in the morning to what turned out to be the accidental shoot-down of an Iranian passenger plane. George H.W. Bush was informed after he went to bed of an apparent coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Bill Clinton received word in the middle of the night that negotiations had broken down
Source: WaPo
March 15, 2008
G. Wayne Clough, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been named the 12th secretary of the Smithsonian.
Clough, 66, president of Georgia Tech since 1994, was introduced at a news conference in the Smithsonian castle building this morning. Roger Sant, chairman for the Smithsonian board of regents, said Clough was selected because he brought "a unique combination of academic achievement, talent, leadership skill, and experience in public service, science, managem
Source: Adam Clymer in an NYT op ed
March 15, 2008
THIRTY years ago tomorrow, the conservative movement lost a major battle on the way to winning a larger war. On March 16, 1978, the Senate approved — 68 to 32, with just a single vote to spare — the first of two treaties that transferred the Panama Canal to Panama. Conservatives lamented the result, saying it threatened national security and might put the canal in Communist hands.
But losing the canal led to important victories for conservatives. The transfer of the canal to Panama
Source: WaPo
March 15, 2008
Grim-faced and sorrowful, former soldiers and Marines sat before an audience of several hundred yesterday in Silver Spring and shared their recollections of their service in Iraq.
The stories spilled out, sometimes haltingly, sometimes in a rush: soldiers firing indiscriminately on Iraqi vehicles, an apartment building filled with Iraqi families devastated by an American gunship. Some descriptions were agonized, some vague; others offered specific dates and locations. All were recor
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
March 15, 2008
MEMRI reports that on a recent appearance on Al Aqsa TV the Saudi "scholar" Dr. Walid Al-Rashudi announced that the death toll of the Holocaust was 50-60 people. Rashudi is the head of the Department of Islamic Studies at King Saud University. You can view a clip of Rashudi sharing his wisdom with viewers
Source: Newsweek
March 17, 2008
Margaret Thatcher was the kind of woman who made men's toes curl. Her savage intelligence, command of policy and what François Mitterrand called "the mouth of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula" both terrified and intrigued them. And she loved it. The woman who was prime minister of Britain from 1979 to 1990 declared she owed nothing to "women's lib" and surrounded herself with men—appointing only one woman to her cabinet.
Today she is remembered as a resolu
Source: Newsweek
March 17, 2008
In a five-part original video series, we follow a group of Japanese-Americans returning to the bleak internment center where they were forcibly relocated with their families during World War II. And we learn how the U.S. government secretly used the internees to build the infrastructure for an American Indian reservation.
Source: New Yorker
March 17, 2008
This week in the magazine, Alec Wilkinson writes about a rare album of photographs from the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, in southern Poland. The album, which was delivered to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007, belonged to Karl Hoecker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz from May, 1944, to January, 1945. Wilkinson writes:
“If the album consisted only of photographs of people who hadn’t been seen at Auschwitz, and of areas of Auschwitz that hadn’t been por
Source: William Underwood in Japan Times
March 4, 2008
Historical issues involving Japan and South Korea have entered a new phase with the inauguration in Seoul last week of a conservative president and the return to South Korea last January of the remains of 101 Koreans who died while forcibly serving in the Japanese military during World War II.
President Lee Myung Bak has said he "does not want to tell Japan to apologize or engage in self-reflection," calling instead for future-oriented ties and a "mature relationship&
Source: Guardian
March 14, 2008
Archaeologists in Peru have discovered the ruins of an ancient temple, road and irrigation systems at a fortress overlooking the Inca capital of Cuzco.
The lead archaeologist, Oscar Rodriguez, said the temple, on the periphery of the Sacsayhuaman fortress, included 11 rooms thought to have held mummies and idols.
Rodriguez's team of archaeologists believe the structures predate the Inca empire, but were significantly developed and expanded by the civilisation.
Source: http://www.thanhniennews.com
March 5, 2008
An Australian veteran has givien VND1 million to a young girl from Dong Nai province who was badly injured when a wartime artillery shell exploded, killing her parents last week.
John Papadopoulos, who is on holiday in Vietnam, has promised to visit 13-year-old Truong Thi Nga again and do anything else she requested.
Papadopoulos read about her in Thanh Nien Daily last week and came to the newspaper’s office in Ho Chi Minh City to find the address of the hospital where Nga is
Source: http://www.wienerzeitung.at
March 11, 2008
A telephone poll of 509 Austrians by the Social Science Studies Society (SWS) reveals that 60 per cent of Austrians oppose continued investigation of the country's Nazi past whereas 36 per cent support continued study of it.
The percentage opposing it hasn't changed since 2000, but that supporting it has increased by four percentage points since then.
People with low educational levels are more opposed to it than those with higher levels.
Source: Der Spiegel
March 12, 2008
German "Desert Fox" Erwin Rommel and the British Eighth Army left behind hundreds of thousands of mines and unexploded shells in their North African battles of World War II. The explosive relics are hampering Egypt's access to untapped oil and gas reserves in the desert.
Source: Liverpool Daily Post
March 11, 2008
DESPITE the predictions of howling gales and stormy weather hitting the Mersey yesterday, one of the most unusual removal jobs successfully got under way.
The fate of the historic submarine U534 had hung in the balance after the closure of the Historic Warships collection, until Merseytravel bought it up.
The organisation wants to use it as the basis for a novel visitor attraction at Woodside ferry terminal in Birkenhead, to complement the Spaceport in Seacombe and the Beatle
Source: Deutsche Welle
March 12, 2008
On March 12, 1938, Hitler's native Austria was annexed by Germany. Austrian newsstands this year are selling papers published during the time of Nazi rule. The project shows how local and foreign press saw the era.
A grainy image of a procession of uniformed Nazis marching somberly through the center of Austria's capital covers the front page of the daily Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt above the headline "The 'Day of the Legion' in Vienna."
"Everywhere heart-felt
Source: http://iccoventry
March 12, 2008
BOMB disposal experts have blown up the World War Two bomb which caused huge chaos in Coventry city centre yesterday.
Builders working at the Belgrade Plaza building site discovered the unexploded bomb at noon yesterday (Wednesday).
Bomb disposal experts were initially called in to deal with the bomb. But, due to the bomb's complexity and the extreme danger facing them, they called in further help from Cambridgeshire.
Source: Independent (UK)
March 14, 2008
A British mining company is at the centre of a row over uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, the great American landmark which is one of the world's most celebrated preserved areas.
US environmentalists have launched a legal challenge to permission given to the British firm Vane Minerals to drill for uranium in the Kaibab National Forest in Arizona, which borders the canyon on both north and south sides.
Last December the US Forest Service gave Vane, which is based in
Source: http://www.catholic.org
March 12, 2008
St. Patrick Church in Pittsburgh’s Strip District has just received the perfect gift in time for its 200th anniversary year.
The historic church — the first established in the city of Pittsburgh — has received a treasure trove of material on its most famous pastor, Father James Cox, the noted “radio priest” of the 1920s and ’30s who advocated for the poor and unemployed.
Four huge boxes filled with newspaper articles, photos and other memorabilia on the famous labor p
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 14, 2008
Hillary Clinton, accused last week by a Nobel Peace Prize winner of exaggerating her claims of having "helped" bring peace to Northern Ireland, has raised the stakes by stating she was "instrumental" in doing so.
The former First Lady laughed and dismissed criticisms she had inflated her foreign policy experience in Northern Ireland and Bosnia as "nitpicking" on Thursday.
When asked by National Public Radio whether she had been in the "
