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: Reuters
September 28, 2007
The U.S. government apparently derived no clear benefit by recruiting ex-Nazis as Cold War spies, but potentially huge gaps remain in the public record of U.S. ties to World War Two war criminals, according to a report issued on Friday.
The report to Congress, by an interagency group that examined the United States' use of German and Japanese war criminals during and after the war, also said the CIA had no set policy for hiring former war criminals to spy on postwar foes including t
Source: AP
September 30, 2007
Down a dirt driveway, in one of the whitest states in the nation, is a museum dedicated to the experiences of black servicemen and women during World War II.
The Museum of Black World War II History is run by Bruce Bird, a white, retired factory worker who sold his home and used the proceeds to convert a two-room 19th century schoolhouse to house it. The museum, which opened in June 2006, offers display cases filled with World War II weapons, models of tanks and aircraft and other m
Source: http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk
September 29, 2007
Adolf Hitler was plotting to make Northampton his northernmost outpost in an invasion of Britain, according to secret war documents unearthed by Oxford University academics.
The Nazi leader hatched a plan to land his forces on the south coast in 1940.
They were then expected to take all the major towns and cities in their path, as far north as Northampton.
Once they had conquered the town, Hitler expected the rest of the demoralised nation would crumble and quick
Source: AP
September 30, 2007
Leaders of India's Jewish community expressed outrage Sunday over a new line of bedspreads called "The Nazi Collection" from a Mumbai-based home furnishing company that used swastikas in its promotional material.
The furnishing dealer said the name stands for "New Arrival Zone for India" and was not meant to be anti-Semitic.
But Jewish groups said they would file a lawsuit against the company.
"This is an enormous insult to Jews and
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
October 1, 2007
Last week the National Archives announced the release of the final
report to Congress on implementation of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure
Act, which is said to be the largest single-subject declassification
program ever performed by the U.S. government. Millions of pages of
records from World War II and the early Cold War years relating to Nazi
war crimes have been released as a result.
But the lessons learned from declassifying the"extraordinary
collection" of documents may prove e
Source: AP
October 1, 2007
When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph.
But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West. Instead, the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one sc
Source: AFP
September 30, 2007
European Neanderthals, modern man's ill-fated cousins who died out mysteriously some 28,000 years ago, migrated much further east than previously thought, according to a study released Sunday.
Remains from the slope-browed hominid have previously been found over an area stretching from Spain to Uzbekistan, but the new study extends the eastern boundary of their wanderings another 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) deep into southern Siberia, just above the western tip of what is today C
Source: National Security Archive
October 1, 2007
Today the National Security Archive publishes a collection of documents concerning U.S. policy with regard to acknowledging the "fact of" U.S. satellite reconnaissance operations--particularly satellite photoreconnaissance. It was 29 years ago today that President Jimmy Carter, in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center, acknowledged that the U.S. was operating photoreconnaissance satellites.
As the documents illustrate, the perceived need to persuade segments of the public t
Source: NYT
October 1, 2007
One hundred years ago today, the first guest checked into the Plaza Hotel, signing the register with a flourish. He was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, the heir to a famous fortune.
His arrival was orchestrated by the Plaza’s first manager, who wanted the new hotel to open with a splashy, attention-getting stunt.
The Plaza will celebrate its anniversary tonight with another stunt, a party in its front yard — Grand Army Plaza, on Fifth Avenue at Central Park South — as this st
Source: Der Spiegel
October 1, 2007
Germany's federal police is admitting that most of its founding members had blood on their hands as active members of Hitler's brutal security apparatus. It's the first time one of Germany's security services is examining its own history. But there may be more to come.Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) President Jörg Ziercke has launched a series of conferences to shed light on the history of the BKA. At one such conference last month at the BKA's headquarters in Wiesbaden, he said the
Source: Reuters
October 1, 2007
Hundreds of demonstrators fearing a state coverup of the murder of a Turkish-Armenian editor demonstrated outside an Istanbul courthouse on Monday proclaiming: "We are all witnesses. We demand justice."Dink had angered Turkish nationalists with his comments on the massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War One. More than 100,000 people turned out at his funeral to show solidarity and protest against violent nationalism. Lawyers were expected to quest
Source: NYT
September 30, 2007
Senator John McCain said in an interview posted on the Internet on Saturday that the Constitution established the United States as a Christian nation and that his faith is probably of better spiritual guidance than that of a Muslim candidate for president.
“I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, that’s a decision the American people would have to make, but personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid groundin
Source: BBC
September 29, 2007
More than 100,000 people in Japan have rallied against changes to school books detailing Japanese military involvement in mass suicides during World War II.
The protest, in Okinawa, was against moves to modify and tone down passages that say the army ordered Okinawans to kill themselves rather than surrender.
Okinawa's governor told crowds they could not ignore army involvement.
Some conservatives in Japan have in recent years questioned accounts of the country's
Source: BBC
September 29, 2007
Reconstruction work will begin next month on a revered shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra blown up in the current conflict, UN cultural body Unesco says.
The al-Askari shrine, one of Iraq's most sacred Shia sites, was partly destroyed in two attacks over two years by suspected Sunni militants.
Thousands have died in sectarian violence triggered by the first attack.
Source: LAT
September 23, 2007
BAHIA ... With its varied and exotic attractions, Brazil has long been a travel mecca, drawing more than 700,000 U.S. citizens annually. But the big attraction for many black Americans is Brazil's flourishing African heritage, most evident here in Bahia state, where vast slave plantations once serviced Europe's craving for sugar and tobacco.
"The different African traditions have certainly been better preserved here," said Paulette Bradley, a marketing manager who was visi
Source: AP
September 29, 2007
For months, 11 folders of old papers rescued from his parents' closet sat in Thomas Willcox's sport utility vehicle. Then he realized some were signed by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and might be valuable.
They were: The three letters written by Lee during the Civil War sold at auction Saturday for $61,000.
That was far off the record $630,000 a Lee item sold for in 2002. But it was an improvement from last year, when two letters from the general who surrendered in 18
Source: NYT
September 30, 2007
The students and teachers [at Idaho's New St. Andrews College] call what they are doing “classical Christian education.” They believe it’s much more than memorizing Latin declensions and Aristotle’s principles of rhetoric, though they do plenty of that. Doug Wilson, 54, the pastor who spearheaded New St. Andrews’ founding, puts the college’s purpose simply: “We are trying to save civilization.” He’s not alone in his mission. The C.C.E. movement began in the early 1980s among Protestant evangelic
Source: NYT
September 30, 2007
THE president of the university faced a no-win situation. A controversial speaker had been invited to campus, alumni were in an uproar, members of the faculty were outraged, even local business leaders protested.
The university president responded with a fierce declaration of principle: “It is my view that as long as our students can be orderly about it they should have freedom to discuss any problem that presents itself and in which they are interested.”
The writer was
Source: NYT
September 30, 2007
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in a forcefully rendered new autobiography, says he was pilloried during his 1991 confirmation hearings because liberal advocacy groups who feared he would vote to overturn abortion rights were willing to stoop to “the age-old blunt instrument of accusing a black man of sexual misconduct.”
They did so by, he writes, by using untrue sexual harassment claims by Anita F. Hill, a law professor and former subordinate, whom he described as a mediocre
Source: Press Release--Northern Arizona University
September 24, 2007
What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home.
A team of international researchers, including two Northern Arizona University geologists, reports evidence that a comet or low-density object barreling toward Earth exploded in the upper atmosphere
