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: NPR
February 28, 2008
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is creating a commission to exhume the body of Simon Bolivar — the 19th century independence hero of South America. Chavez hopes of prove the liberator didn't die of TB in 1830 as historians believe.
Source: AP
February 25, 2008
The Siege and Battle of Corinth Commission and Shiloh National Military Park are working on an agreement for the National Park Service to begin managing 800 acres of Civil War battlefield property even before a formal transfer is completed.
Officials want park rangers to begin maintenance at the properties right away.
The property transferred was provided for by Congress in December in the appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Source: CNN
February 27, 2008
Williamsburg | Still a work in progress, Great Hopes Plantation's eerie, breeze-swept quiet is starting to speak softly but pointedly about the slavery that built the foundations of parts of colonial America.
In its fifth year, one of Great Hopes' most telling features is this working, living plantation's proximity to the most opulent icon of Colonial Williamsburg, the Governor's Palace.
Trees and a large berm help hide from view the Duke of Gloucester Street's well-to
Source: Chicago Tribune
February 28, 2008
For more than a century, the bodies of some 300 black soldiers who died in the Civil War have lain in unmarked graves on the bank of Skull Creek harbor in South Carolina. But for Howard Wright, 57, the great-great grandson of a former slave who fought in the war, Talbird Cemetery is part of his family's heritage and, he said, an integral part of American history that should not be forgotten.So he has set out on a mission to get the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to prov
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
February 28, 2008
An author who claimed that after the Nazis took her parents away she at age 7 wandered across Europe, crossed rivers, was befriended by wolves [wolves?? yup wolves], and managed to survive has apparently admitted she made the whole thing up. The European press is full of
Source: http://www.theartnewspaper.com
February 26, 2008
The Art Newspaper can reveal that the British Army is to develop a Cultural Heritage Initiative to assist with archaeological sites and museums in southern Iraq. This will be launched with the Iraqi state board of antiquities and heritage, along with the British Museum.
Basra-based Major Tom Holloway told us that the plan is to help at “iconic cultural locations”, and to leave a positive “legacy” after the withdrawal of British forces. The proposal is at an early stage, and is expec
Source: Michael Crowley in the New Republic
March 12, 2008
During Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, after all, [David] Duke said Jackson's election "would be the greatest tragedy ever to befall this country." Warning that "the white majority in this country are losing their rights," Duke announced his own counter-candidacy, one whose main purpose seemed to be hounding Jackson.
Yet, far from railing at Obama's rise, Duke seems almost nonchalant about it. Self-described white nationalists like himself, he explain
Source: Inside Higher Ed
February 28, 2008
This week, Princeton University lifted restrictions it had placed on public access to Michelle Obama’s senior thesis. The limits on access to her scholarship on “Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community” had fueled a small firestorm. (“What’s Princeton Concealing for Michelle” read one headline Monday in The Conservative Voice.)
Similarly, Hillary Clinton’s Wellesley College senior thesis “has been speculated about, spun, analyzed, debated, criticized and defended,” as MSNB
Source: The Horse's Mouth (blog)
February 28, 2008
[Fox News radio host John Batchelor has reported that] Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground who has been unrepentant about the bombs set by the group, [was Obama's mentor.] The germ of the story -- that Obama has some sort of relationship with him -- is true. But look at how creatively Batchelor embellishes the whole tale...
You see, in Fox's telling, now Ayers is Obama's "mentor" and he and fellow Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn were "pri
Source: NYT
February 28, 2008
The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically sin
Source: Press Release--http://www.savingantiquities.org
February 27, 2008
Dr. Donny George and SAFE / Saving Antiquities for Everyone invite you to participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
In the five years since this terrible event, nearly half of the missing works have been recovered. Yet thousands of Iraq Museum artifacts remain at large. Meanwhile, museums around the world are increasingly confronted by security challenges, and rampant looting at archaeological si
Source: Press Release--Justice for Jews from Arab Countries
February 27, 2008
Today, Congress moved one step closer to recognizing the 'forgotten refugees.'
In a unanimous bi-partisan decision, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved H.Res 185, a Resolution recognizing the plight and flight of over 850,000 from Arab countries. The Resolution now moves to the full House of Representatives for a vote.
The Resolution was introduced in the House by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) along with Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY)
Source: Reuters
February 27, 2008
There was more than the obvious reason to feel blue for people offered in human sacrifice rituals by the ancient Maya to their rain god -- they were painted blue before being heaved into a watery sinkhole.
And it wasn't just any blue. It was Maya blue -- a vivid, somewhat turquoise-colored pigment used for about a millennium by Mesoamerican peoples to decorate pottery, figurines and murals that has long mystified scientists.
But now anthropologists from Wheaton College
Source: LiveScience
February 26, 2008
It was long thought that the ancient stone pyramid temples of the Maya were built by their royalty.
Now it turns out any number of different factions among the Maya - nobles, priests and maybe even commoners - may have built temples, scientists now suggest.
The fact that different groups had the will and the power to build temples suggests "the Maya could choose which temples to worship in and support; they had a voice in who succeeded politically," said resea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 27, 2008
Turkey is working on a revolutionary new interpretation of the Prophet Mohammed’s reputed sayings, known as the Hadith.
The project is aimed at allowing millions of Muslims to re-evaluate their religious obligations in the light of modern ways of living.
The sayings of the Hadith hold the key for Muslims worldwide to interpret the Koran. Sharia or Islamic law is also rooted in the Hadith.
Source: Reuters
February 14, 2008
Over 100 Bulgarian ministers, who came to power since the fall of communism, had served as agents of the former secret police, a historical commission said on Wednesday.
Bulgaria, a European Union newcomer, has been among the last former Soviet bloc countries to deal with its painful communist past and in late 2006 approved a law to unmask members of its Cold War spy agency, Darzhavna Sigurnost.
Former agents will not have to quit their posts and will not be banned from
Source: NYT
February 27, 2008
Prof. Jeremy D. Popkin returned to his office at the University of Kentucky on Feb. 19 after teaching a lesson about Vichy France in his course on the Holocaust. During its 30 years on the curriculum, the class has grown perpetually popular, with 60 applicants vying for half as many seats. The university has even created a Judaic Studies program.
Yet, when Professor Popkin opened his e-mail that day, he was informed that his class did not exist. “This week, the University of Kentuck
Source: Noel Malcolm in the Guardian
February 26, 2008
[Noel Malcolm is a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of Kosovo: A Short History]
"Kosovo is Serbia", "Ask any historian" read the unlikely placards, waved by angry Serb demonstrators in Brussels on Sunday. This is rather flattering for historians: we don't often get asked to adjudicate. It does not, however, follow that any historian would agree, not least because historians do not use this sort of eternal present tense.
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
February 26, 2008
The LDS Church announced Monday it has created a new publishing arm to produce early Mormon documents.
It will be known as The Church Historian's Press and its first project will be the Joseph Smith papers, a documentary series eventually made up of 25 to 30 volumes. The first two volumes are due out this year, said Marlin Jensen, official historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Source: Boston Globe
February 24, 2008
Ralph Nader announced he would run for the presidency Sunday as a third-party candidate. Nader is no stranger to presidential politics -- he ran in 1996 and 2000 for the Green Party, and in 2004 as an independent.
A longtime consumer activist, Nader says he runs to offer voters a third choice in a system he sees as dominated by corporate interests. Although he usually doesn't fare well at the polls, Nader has greatly impacted races in the past -- many Democrats still blame him for
