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: Times (UK)
November 5, 2007
Noël Coward was recruited as a British undercover agent as early as 1938 and was deeply critical of fellow actors who “scuttled off” to Hollywood instead of fighting for their country, according to unpublished letters.
Many of the letters date from the war years – a period only touched on in Coward’s autobiography – and reveal details about his spying activities.
The screenwriter for classic films such as In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter – and whose screen performa
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
November 4, 2007
Pat Sasso couldn't believe his eyes.
He opened the mysterious package that had been delivered to his Glendora home and came face to face with his life as a young soldier 62 years ago.
There was the Nazi flag that Sasso hauled down after he and other American troops took over Cologne, Germany, in 1945. He and his buddies signed their names to it.
There was the swastika armband he took as a souvenir of Adolf Hitler's collapsing Third Reich - and the letter fr
Source: Amy Goodman at the website of Democracy Now
November 5, 2007
We now turn to a real-life survivor of torture of the Algerian war. Henri Alleg is a French journalist who was arrested by French paratroopers in Algeria in ’57. Alleg was sympathetic to Algerian independence. He was interrogated for a month. He was questioned. He was waterboarded repeatedly. Alleg described his ordeal in an essay called "The Question," which was published in 1958 with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. The book was subsequently banned in France and legalized only after th
Source: NYT
November 4, 2007
TO hear the presidential candidates tell it, this has been a great year for “personal evolution.” Less self-interested parties have considered it the season of the “flip-flop.”
The flip-flop is not a new ingredient in presidential politics. But it is especially pronounced this year, with every major candidate getting into the act in some way....
Their success often depends on the public mood, the moment in history and whether the charges feed into existing doubts about
Source: USA Today
November 2, 2007
Each day near Petersburg, Ky., 1,500 to 4,000 visitors, including busloads from Christian schools and churches, stand in line for as long as an hour to wander 60,000 square feet of animatronic exhibits presenting the Bible's creation story as fact.
It's been six months since the Creation Museum opened to crowds and protests, and the controversial attraction has proven more popular than even organizers had predicted.
Halfway into its first year, it is on the verge of sur
Source: BBC
November 5, 2007
Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have uncovered what they believe is the largest Neolithic settlement ever discovered in Northern Europe. Remains of an estimated 300 houses are thought to survive under earthworks 3km (2 miles) from the famous stone rings, and 10 have been excavated so far.
But there could have been double that total according to the archaeologist leading the work.
"What is really exciting is realising just how big the village for the Stonehen
Source: LiveScience
November 3, 2007
Who knew the Weasley family trademark—a shock of bright red hair—was tens of thousands of years old?
Fictional wizards and J.K. Rowling aside, researchers Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, Spain and Holger Rompler of the University of Leipzig in Germany announced last week that Neanderthals, who died out 35,000 years ago, had the same distribution of hair and skin color as modern human European populations. By inference, that means that about 1 percent of Neandertha
Source: http://www.novinite.com
November 6, 2007
Archaeologists have made a sensational finding on Saturday, dated back to the first Bulgarian Empire (years 681-1018) in the ancient Bulgarian capital of Pliska.
The team of archaeologists found state seals, which belonged to the rulers Simeon and Petar.
Source: AP
November 4, 2007
Historians are trying to save a lower Manhattan building that is "a rare surviving relic" of New York's 19th-century world trade center but is due to be demolished to make way for a new hotel.
The Greek Revival warehouse is in a neighborhood that was part of "the process that made New York into America's great city," says historian Paul E. Johnson.
The red-brick warehouse on Pearl Street, near the South Street Seaport Historic District, was erected i
Source: http://www.cais-soas.com
November 5, 2007
Archaeologists have discovered the world's most ancient inscription in the Iranian city of Jiroft, near the Halil Roud historical site.
"The inscription, discovered in a palace, was carved on a baked mud-brick whose lower left corner has only remained,” explained Professor Yousof Majid-Zadeh, head of the Jiroft excavation team.
“The only ancient inscriptions known to experts before the Jiroft discovery were cuneiform and hieroglyph,” said Majid Zadeh, adding that,”
Source: Daily Mail
November 3, 2007
The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.
Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civili
Source: Earth Times
November 3, 2007
Former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is back in fashion in Russia as the Kremlin condones history textbooks that honour the Soviet leader (1878-1953) as renovator of the country. "Children, learn to value Stalin," the Gazeta newspaper recently summed up the message by the textbook's authors. Stalin, the synonym for state-ordered terror and torture, still has his followers, especially among the communists.
However, even non-communists seem to long for someone like Stalin, p
Source: Canada.com
November 3, 2007
Tens of thousands of people who assumed they were Canadians have had their citizenship thrown into question by a court ruling on the status of Second World War brides and their children.
Yesterday, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the decision of a lower court that in 2006 ordered Ottawa to grant immediate citizenship to the British son of a Canadian war veteran.
This latest judgment says brides of veterans, and their children born overseas - who had been granted
Source: China View
November 2, 2007
A park to commemorate the Chinese soldiers and members of the U.S. "Flying Tigers" air squadron who fought in the Second World War is to be set up in southwest China's Yunnan Province.
The wooded park will cover 167 hectares and boast a peace gate, a friendship monument, a memorial wall and memorials to wartime figures.
The park would be near an abandoned military airport that hosted American planes during WWII, about 20 kilometers from downtown Kunmin
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 5, 2007
BAGHDAD: There is neither a cross nor a sign on the heavy metal gate to indicate that this is the official residence of one of the country's most prominent Christians, the first in Iraq in modern times to be elevated to cardinal by the Roman Catholic Church.
The simple structure, in a dilapidated neighborhood of this capital, opposite empty former ministry buildings, is the home of Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, whom the pope named on Oct. 17 to the College of Cardinals along with 22
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 4, 2007
DAKAR, Senegal: In 1890, King Leopold II of Belgium wrote to one of his colonial officials and asked him to set up orphanages in the vast African territory he ruled as his personal fief, the Congo.
The only problem with his plan was that there were no orphans. The concept scarcely existed in Congo or much of the rest of Africa. This is a continent where thousands of ethnic groups and cultures across a vast and diverse landscape nevertheless share basic traditions that dictate that a
Source: NYT
November 5, 2007
Deep in the bowels of the York Dungeon, visitors were being treated to a dramatic rendition of the horrific torture and bloodcurdling screams of Guy Fawkes, the city’s most famous deceased resident. Up at the cash register, Kate Stapylton, the duty manager, was talking about the health and safety regulations governing the attraction.
No wet floors. No obstructions in the passageways. Many well-lighted emergency exits. But even with her respect for such policies — “You don’t want any
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
November 5, 2007
Andrew Mellon’s mansion in Pittsburgh was thought to have one of the first residential indoor pools — a space featuring the same kind of intricate, interlocking Gustavino tile work that one sees all over New York. In 1941, when the Mellons gave the mansion to the Pennsylvania College for Women (known today as Chatham University), the small pool continued to be used by students.
It closed in 2004, when the university built a new athletic facility. Over the years, the room had lost it
Source: 60 Minutes
November 4, 2007
Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? No, he did not. We've known that for some time now. So where did the intelligence come from that he was building up his arsenal? Fantastically, the most compelling part came from one obscure Iraqi defector who came in and out of history like a comet. His code name, ironically, was "Curve Ball" and his information became the pillar of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war. Who is Curve Ball and how did he foo
Source: Media Matters (Liberal media watchdog group)
November 5, 2007
A November 3 Newsweek article headlined "The Hillary Paper Chase: 3,022,030 to go" reported that "National Archives documents obtained by NEWSWEEK and interviews with Archives officials indicate that the vast majority of the Clintons' health-care task-force records are still under lock and key in Little Rock -- and might stay that way for some time." But the article did not report that approximately 10,000 pages of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) documents are already li
