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: Press Release of the Wyman Institute
October 23, 2005
As scholars prepare to mark the 100th anniversary of the antisemitic 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a U.S. magazine has published a Protocols-style "dual loyalty" slur against Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr., one of the most prominent Jews in early twentieth-century American politics.
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a glossy magazine published by two former U.S. government officials, has printed an article in its November 2005 issue blaming Morgenthau and
Source: NYT
October 22, 2005
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an unusual evocation on Friday of her own past to make a point about the contemporary world, visited the segregated school that she attended and the university where Gov. George Wallace barred the door to blacks, declaring that Alabama had progressed by "light years" since those days.
It was a dramatic setting for her message, repeated for months in Muslim countries and elsewhere, often in the face of considerable skepticism: it is p
Source: NYT
October 23, 2005
The blue-and-white 707 flew seven American presidents more than one million miles over nearly three decades of tumult in the United States and the world. Jimmy Carter took it to Germany to greet the hostages from Iran the day after his administration ended, Richard M. Nixon flew it back home to California after resigning the presidency, and Ronald Reagan took it to Berlin when he told Mikhail S. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."
So on Friday morning, in a fog-shrouded ce
Source: NYT
October 23, 2005
When Harriet E. Miers, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, was moving toward the presidency of the State Bar of Texas in 1992, she enthusiastically supported an effort by the group to guarantee positions on its board of directors to female and minority lawyers, her two immediate predecessors said on Saturday.
The two former presidents said Ms. Miers had recognized the value in making sure the group's leadership reflected the state's diversity.
Ms. Miers's position
Source: WP
October 22, 2005
Bush administration envoy Karen Hughes visited Indonesia on Friday as part of her campaign to repair U.S. standing with the world's Muslims and defended the invasion of Iraq by telling skeptical students that deposed president Saddam Hussein had gassed hundreds of thousands of his own people.
State Department officials later acknowledged that Hughes, tapped by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to set the record straight on U.S. policies in the Muslim world, had
Source: NYT
October 23, 2005
Forty-two years after the church bombing that killed four little girls and inflamed the civil rights movement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped honor them Saturday by recalling one of the victims as a friend with whom she played with dolls and sang in musicals.
On the second day of a trip to highlight the civil rights era as an example for countries struggling to achieve democracy, Ms. Rice and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain visited the 16th Street Baptist Church,
Source: Korea Times
October 23, 2005
Asian nations pledged on Sunday to work together to address an ongoing history dispute as Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi's repeat visits to a national shrine that honors Japan's war casualties and a number of war criminals has ratcheted up tension in the region.
At the end of the inaugural assembly of the Parliamentarians' Alliance for Peace in Asia (PAPA), over 60 lawmakers from 11 countries adopted a joint declaration of peace and a charter that calls for joint studies into th
Source: Telegraph (London)
October 23, 2005
School inspectors want history to be made compulsory for pupils up to the age of 16, and beyond, to help to foster the country's sense of national identity. They made the call as they voiced their increasing concerns about the poor teaching of history in primary and secondary schools. A damning report, published last week by the Office for Standards in Education, found that history lessons in English schools are leaving children ignorant of key facts.Fears that t
Source: Agence France-Presse
October 21, 2005
Britain celebrated the 200th anniversary of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's victory in the Battle of Trafalgar with thousands of events marking the historic fight. Queen Elizabeth II was to lead the tribute, lighting a beacon at sunset beside Nelson's preserved flagship HMS Victory in Portsmouth, on the southern English coast, upon which the British war hero died during the battle. A total of 1,000 beacons were to be set ablaze across Britain to mark the day the British navy battered a combined Fr
Source: Bob Weber in the Gazette (Montreal)
October 20, 2005
It's almost an article of faith for some Inuit that their people were driven off the land and into towns in the 1950s by a systematic government and RCMP plan to kill the sled dogs they depended on.
But according to an interim RCMP inquiry report into the charges, released late Tuesday, it just isn't so.
"The preliminary findings of the review team is that there is no evidence of an organized mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs by RCMP members in Nunavik and Nunavut
Source: Press Release
October 19, 2005
Free Press Publisher/Editor Bob Fitrakis and Senior Editor/Columnist Harvey Wasserman have been cited by "Project Censored" for their coverage of the theft of the 2004 election as writers of one of the Most Censored stories of the year.
The pair have published numerous stories in the past year which claim that the Republicans stole the election of 2004. Wasserman is the author of"Harvey Wasserman's History Of The United States."
Sonoma State University’s Proj
Source: NYT
October 21, 2005
It has become fashionable to look at Hitler and Stalin as the twin monsters of 20th-century history. Entire volumes (like Alan Bullock's "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives" and Richard Overy's "The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia") have examined these two tyrants through the lens of the compare-and-contrast school of history writing, and much ink has been spilled debating which of them was worse - never mind that such debates seem beside the point, indeed offensi
Source: AHA Perspectives (Oct. 2005)
October 21, 2005
Elite history departments tend to draw their faculty from elite PhD programs, economist Stephen Wu reports in the July–August 2005 issue of Academe (the magazine published by the American Association of University Professors). That is hardly news to anyone in the profession, but Wu's analysis provides some context by comparing history to five other disciplines. Wu collected degree information for just over 5,000 full-time faculty in six disciplines (chemistry, economics, Eng
Source: USA Today
October 21, 2005
France, grappling for decades with its colonial past, has passed a law to put an upbeat spin on a painful era, making it mandatory to enshrine in textbooks the country's "positive role" in its far-flung colonies.
But the law is stirring anger among historians and passions in places like Algeria, which gained independence in a brutal conflict. Critics accuse France of trying to gild an inglorious colonial past with an "official history." At is
Source: NYT
October 21, 2005
The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which was established by Steven Spielberg and has interviewed some 52,000 survivors of the Holocaust to preserve their recollections, is moving to the University of Southern California, with plans to foster similar projects in other cases of genocide and injustice.
One benefit of the move, Mr. Spielberg said, was that the foundation, which will become part of U.S.C., would be "taken more seriously" by potential donors
Source: AP
October 21, 2005
Fear of opening the door to expanded gambling has doomed a proposed legislative study of granting state recognition to native American tribes in Arakansas. At a meeting yesterday, members of the House and Senate committees on state agencies and governmental affairs decided not to take up the matter.
A state Department of Finance and Administration official pricked the interest of lawmakers yesterday. He cautioned that state recognition of Indian tribes and groups could hasten federa
Source: AP
October 21, 2005
Next month, the National Park Service will launch a two-year study of sites around the nation where work was done on the Manhattan Project -- the top-secret effort to help produce the first atomic bomb. The government wants to determine if the bomb sites should be included in the park system, and that is sparking controversy.
Supporters say the parks would document an incredible technological achievement made under severe secrecy and time pressures.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 20, 2005
Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, is to face a High Court action brought by the authors of the 1982 non-fiction book The Holy Blood, and the Holy Grail, who allege that his blockbuster was based on their decade of research.
Speaking ahead of a preliminary hearing of the case next week, Richard Leigh, 62, one of the writers, said: "I don't begrudge Brown his success. I have no particular grievance against him, except for the fact that he wrote a pretty bad novel."
Source: ABC
October 20, 2005
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's fifth visit to the Yasukuni shrine this week on a drizzly morning set off angry protests in Asia. China canceled a visit by the Japanese foreign minister, no small thing. Yasukuni holds the remains of 14 Class A war criminals hanged after World War II, and is regarded as symbol of Japan's perceived failure to atone for its killing sprees in and brutal occupation of Asia 60 years ago.
Yet a prime reason why that wish may not come true is found on th
Source: NYT
October 20, 2005
A block of four United States airmail stamps with the airplane in the center famously - and erroneously - printed upside down was auctioned yesterday evening in New York for $2,970,000, a world record for a stamp item.
The 1918 stamp, known to collectors as the Jenny because of the Curtiss JN-4 biplane depicted in the design, was the first American issue for air postage. Its value was set at 24 cents.
But of roughly two million printed, 100 bore the topsy-turvy center p
