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: AP
January 8, 2008
New Jersey became the first Northern state to apologize for slavery, as legislators approved a resolution Monday expressing "profound regret" for the state's role in the practice.
The Assembly and the Senate 29-2 both voted overwhelmingly to approve the resolution, which expresses the Legislature's opinion without requiring action by the governor.
"This resolution does nothing more than say New Jersey is sorry about its shameful past," said Assemblym
Source: AP
January 8, 2008
The war crimes trial of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, resumed Monday as prosecutors opened their case, with testimony from an expert on “blood diamonds” and video of a miner from Sierra Leone whose hands had been hacked off.
Mr. Taylor, 59, the first former African head of state to appear before an international tribunal, has pleaded not guilty to the 11 charges against him, which include murder, rape, enslavement and conscripting child soldiers.
He
Source: Newsweek
January 5, 2008
Nearly 200 years ago Venezuelan patriot Simón Bolívar declared his country a free and sovereign state, and went on to liberate four other South American nations from Spanish colonial rule, envisioning a confederation of Andean republics that would stretch from the isthmus of Panama to the high plateau country of Bolivia. His dream inspired another, decades later, when a young Hugo Chávez, then an Army officer in his late 20s, gathered with some of his military colleagues in the Venezuelan city o
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
January 7, 2008
Today the Supreme Court heard Baze v. Rees, a case arguing that the drug cocktail used in lethal injections constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
So what does that have to do with this blog?
Turns out that the "cocktail" was invented by one Fred Leuchter who, posing as an engineer, wrote the bogus report on the non-existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and Maidanek.
This guy has an electric chair in his basement -- I assume it's non-operative
Source: IraqCrisis newsletter
January 7, 2008
Baghdad, founded in the 8th century as the capital of the Abbasid
caliphate, soon became a vibrant city crowded by people from different
races, colors, and creeds. Soon after its founding, it became a major
center of not only commercial activities but also scholarship, culture,
and civilization. The city produced countless scholars in many areas of
knowledge, thinkers of all sorts, poets, artists, and diverse models of
piety through many of its educational and pious institutions,
booksell
Source: http://publicaffairs.cua.edu
January 11, 2007
The record had a thick, deep scratch around its aluminum circumference, but that wasn’t the first thing Patrick Cullom noticed. It had been sent to CUA’s archives from Nugent Hall back in the `90s, packed in a sagging cardboard box that didn’t look much different from other boxes that found their way to the archives from the back of some closet or basement storeroom. The box contained antiquated record albums just like the one Cullom held in his hand, discs that needed to be sorted and filed, or
Source: Deutsche Welle
January 8, 2008
Historians have typically characterized Palestinians collectively as Hitler-supporters during the Nazi regime. But a German researcher has said that they were more concerned with relations with another European country.Any historical conversation in Germany over Palestine and National Socialism usually turns to one name: Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al Husseini. The Muslim leader was an anti-Semite, a passionate follower of the Nazis and moved to Germany in 1941 to collaborate with
Source: Toronto Star
January 7, 2008
An unusual new course about genocide to be offered in Toronto high schools this fall has sparked anger among Turkish-Canadians for including the Turkish killing of Armenians in 1915.The Grade 11 history course, believed the only one of its kind at a high school in Ontario and possibly Canada, is designed to teach teenagers what happens when a government sets out to destroy people of a particular nationality, race or religion, through three examples: the Holocaust which exter
Source: Times of India
January 7, 2008
The historic village of Malana, which traces its origins to 326 BC when Alexander's Macedonian army invaded the northwestern outposts of India and produces the world's finest hashish (Malana cream), was gutted in a raging inferno that began late on Saturday night.
Firefighters had to break down houses in the village to make a fire line that managed to save about 40% of the houses in the 10,000-foot high Himalayan habitat, but the lower half of the village was completely burned. Th
Source: Discover Magazine
January 4, 2008
The effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 are only too well known: It knocked the hell out of Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, leveling buildings, scattering palm trees, and wiping out entire villages. It killed more than 160,000 people in Aceh alone and displaced millions more. Similar scenes of destruction were repeated along the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, and as far west as Africa. The magnitude of the disaster shocked the world.
What the wo
Source: Reuters
January 7, 2008
A plan to exhume the remains of Italy's favorite saint to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death has sparked a protest by followers who threaten to go to court to make sure he rests in peace.
The exhumation would give millions of Italians another chance to pay tribute to Padre Pio, a 20th century mystic monk said to have suffered from stigmata -- bleeding wounds in the hands and feet similar to those of Christ.
Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio announced at the wee
Source: Reuters
January 7, 2008
Thousands of people have been following the fate of a British soldier fighting in the trenches of World War One on a Web site publishing his letters home exactly 90 years after they were written.
Like William Henry Bonser ("Harry") Lamin's real family almost a century ago, the modern reader visiting www.wwar1.blogspot.com does not know when the next letter is coming, or whether the one they are reading is in fact his last.
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
January 7, 2007
During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese intelligence units sometimes
succeeded in penetrating Allied communications systems, and they could
monitor Allied message traffic from within. But sometimes they did
more than that.
On several occasions"the communists were able, by communicating on
Allied radio nets, to call in Allied artillery or air strikes on
American units."
That is just one passing observation (at p. 392) in an exhaustive
history of American signals intelligence (
Source: AFP
January 6, 2008
One of the world's most famous cruise ships -- the Queen Elizabeth 2 -- set sail Sunday on its final global voyage before being turned into a floating hotel, British media reported.
The vessel left with a fireworks send-off from the southern English port city of Southampton for her last winter trip, the domestic Press Association news agency said.
Her sister ship, the recently-named Queen Victoria, set off on her first world cruise at the same time. Both ships will trav
Source: http://www.northjersey.com/news
December 31, 2007
Floods. A junkyard. Electric transformers. A pizza joint. Garden apartments.
Is this any way to treat history?
Of course not. But this is life -- and land -- at New Bridge Landing Park in River Edge.
When will someone fix this?
That question has lingered for decades over the sliver of land along the Hackensack River that was home to a narrow bridge that saved George Washington's army in 1776 -- and perhaps the Revolution itself.
To
Source: BBC
January 7, 2008
The Welsh widow of a soldier, who rescued a woman and baby from Stalin's Russia, has been contacted by the child her husband helped nearly 65 years ago.
In 1945, Private Frank Jones escaped from a German prisoner of war camp and spent three weeks walking to Russia.
He met Sophia Guseinova and her baby Yashar and also helped them to safety.
After his death in 1992, his widow Chris from Denbighshire, discovered the pair had survived the escape and has been in
Source: cnews
January 6, 2008
A recent U.S. court ruling is giving a serious boost to the efforts of those trying recapture lost Jewish-owned heirlooms that were forcibly sold during the Nazi era in Germany.
A U.S. District Court judge ordered a German baroness to hand over the painting as it rightfully belongs to the estate of a Jewish-Canadian art dealer who was forced to auction it off before he fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s.
Judge Mary Lisi ruled the painting in question rightfully belongs
Source: Beacon News
January 6, 2008
William Olin, who resides at Aurora Rehabilitation and Living Center, says he served in World War I. If so, he could be one of less than a dozen World War I veterans alive in the entire world. He says he lost all his records and a fire in St. Louis destroyed the enlistment records of hundreds of men. ...
News stories are supposed to answer your questions, give you the facts. Not this one. I'm going to introduce doubt and conflicting stories.
That's because Olin is an ol
Source: The Age
January 7, 2008
A MILLION fallen German soldiers are being reburied more than 60 years after the fall of the Third Reich. And, more controversially, the skeletal remains of thousands of Waffen SS Nazis recruited from other European countries are also being reburied.
The operation is taking place across Eastern Europe, where more than 15 million civilians were killed by the German war machine. Resentment against the reburial program is running high in many countries.
So far 520,000 skel
Source: Guardian
January 6, 2008
It starts like any other young woman's diary - with a description of hobbies, a first boyfriend, schoolmates and trips to the country - but it ends like few others. The final words are 'the horror, the horror, the horror'.
This week The Journal of Helene Berr will arrive in French bookshops. The harrowing story of a young Jewish girl in occupied Paris, will be, according to the newspaper Liberation, 'the publishing sensation of 2008'. Two years ago, an account by another French Jewi
