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: All Headline News
Nov 11, 2009
Ottawa, Ontario (AHN) - Ottawa will issue this week a new guide to citizenship. The new guide, to be used by 250,000 immigrants yearly who subsequently acquire Canadian citizenship, will give more emphasis on Canada's military history. It would veer away from the old study guide which portrays the nation merely as a peacekeeper, said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
An expert panel helped craft the new guide. Among the members of the panel are former Canadian Gover
Source: Science Insider
Nov 11, 2009
A Florida circuit court has ruled in favor of a Stanford University professor who is trying to keep his unpublished book manuscript out of the hands of tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, which had subpoenaed it as evidence for an upcoming suit.
Historian Robert Proctor plans to testify as an expert witness against tobacco companies in a number of cases brought by smokers in Florida. He is also working on an 800-page book, The Golden Holocaust, which describes, Proctor claims, the shaky
Source: CNN
Nov 11, 2009
(CNN) -- Some reviewers have called "Saving Private Ryan," Steven Spielberg's World War II film about D-Day and the search for a soldier, one of the greatest war movies.
Military historian Antony Beevor begs to differ.
Not only is it not the greatest war movie, it's not even the best cinematic depiction of D-Day, says Beevor, author of the newly published "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy" (Viking).
He admires the famed Omaha Beach opening
Source: American Historical Association
Nov 10, 2009
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer Taskforce of the AHA was created by AHA Council at the January 2009 annual meeting. The Taskforce is composed of five members (with the vice president and a member of the Professional Division and AHA serving as co-chairs), one additional AHA member appointed by the Professional Division (PD), and two appointed by the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender History (CLGBTH), an affiliate society of the AHA. The Taskforce has a th
Source: Daily Times
Nov 10, 2009
KARACHI: Prominent historian Dr Mubarak Ali believes the fall of the Berlin Wall is an event that changed the whole political scenario in the Indian subcontinent since it resulted in strengthening the rightist forces in Pakistan and consequently, the rise in religious extremism in the country.
“For the people of the West, it was a matter of happiness, but the fall of the Berlin Wall had some dire consequences for the secular forces in Pakistan,” said Dr Ali, while delivering a lectu
Source: Eric Golub at Frontpage Magazine
Nov 10, 2009
Responses by Gershon Shafir and Zachary Lockman below.
[Eric Golub is the publisher of the Tygrrrr Express blog. He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.]
Last week, the Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) co-sponsored a seminar with the ungainly title, “Invasion Is a Structure, Not an Event: Settler Colonialism Past and Present.” It was billed as a “two-day event organiz
Source: Kennebec Journal
Nov 9, 2009
SKOWHEGAN -- Two-thousand, five-hundred U.S. service men from the state of Maine were killed during World War II.
Thirty-three of them were from the town of Skowhegan, an extraordinary number, given Skowhegan's population of 5,000 at the time, says local historian and retired high school history teacher David Harville.
Two of the soldiers, he said, were killed before war even was declared.
"Thirty-three boys killed from this little town," Harville
Source: EuroActiv
Nov 9, 2009
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's promise that no one’s life will be worse than it was before Germany’s reunification was not met, György Fehéri, a literary historian, told EurActiv Hungary in an interview.
As commemorations get underway to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, EurActiv explores the significance of the event in a series of interviews.
György Fehéri, a fellow of the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, is a Hungarian citizen who was living
Source: National Post
Nov 9, 2009
Joseph Levitt, a Montrealer by birth, was a product of both Montreal’s famous Baron Byng High school, where many Quebec Jews (including Mordecai Richler) cut their teeth, and Harbord Collegiate in Toronto, where his family moved in the mid-1930s. He was a bright, intuitive young man who was offered a scholarship by the University of Toronto when he enrolled in its social science program.
But when war broke out while he was a student, Joe, an avowed communist, decided his education w
Source: Brisbane Times
Nov 9, 2009
Marjorie Tipping was a scholar in the arts and history. She caused a row in the bicentenary year by finding a letter in Sydney's Mitchell Library suggesting that Melbourne pioneer John Batman had been a convict and not a migrant from Sydney to Hobart as Melburnians had always believed.
Later research showed Batman had left Sydney for Tasmania suddenly, but not without explanation, rather than being transported. The letter Tipping found referring to him as an ''assigned servant'' (co
Source: Missourian
Nov 9, 2009
COLUMBIA— Imagine a religious group on an interstate trek in the mid-1800s. What if you could read the travelers' journals? Undoubtedly, they would have more than your average story to tell.
Harvard University history professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will uncover the personal stories of Mormon diarists as they traveled from Nauvoo, Ill., to Council Bluffs, Iowa, when she speaks at 7 p.m. Monday at MU.
"I believe I used about a dozen diaries, by men and women both,
Source: Times Online
Nov 9, 2009
BBC Scotland has been castigated by one of the nation’s distinguished academic historians over its showpiece documentary series about the country’s past, which he characterised as “a mediocre B-movie”.
According to Professor Tom Devine the scripts of A History of Scotland are “lame, boring and flaccid” and its “hapless, long-haired presenter”, Neil Oliver, suffers from “a sad lack of personal authority or presence”.
The series, Professor Devine claimed, is fatally imbal
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Nov 8, 2009
A Stanford University professor who has sought to expose ties between historians and the tobacco industry is being accused in court of having broken the law in challenging the employment of four graduate students at the University of Florida as researchers assisting tobacco companies in litigation.
In motions filed in two Florida state courts last month, tobacco-company lawyers allege that Robert N. Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, engaged in illegal witne
Source: Herald Scotland
Nov 8, 2009
Pandaw River Cruises, a small Edinburgh firm, has succeeded in navigating the Ganges between Varanasi and Calcutta in India, the first passenger service to do so since the 1920s.
Creating tourism opportunities on another great Asian river comes on top of Pandaw’s pioneering of the Mekong in Cambodia and Vietnam, the Irrawaddy in Burma and Borneo’s Rajang...
... The steamers were built on the Clyde, then dismantled and shipped to Mandalay to be re-assembled. The Irrawadd
Source: Kansis City Star
Nov 7, 2009
Of all 20th-century presidents, four led soldiers in close-combat situations.
They were Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George H.W. Bush and Harry Truman.
For the millions of Americans in uniform during World War II, Truman’s service under fire became a matter of national significance as of April 1945. That’s when Truman, the new president after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, was charged with making the century’s most profound military decision.
Ulti
Source: Mail Online
Nov 7, 2009
Sir Andrew Motion has been accused of shamelessly 'ripping off' a military historian's book for his Remembrance Sunday poem.
The poem, An Equal Voice, was published as a tribute to war veterans and described as a 'found' poem rather than an original work.
The former poet laureate said he had 'stitched together' the words of several generations of shellshocked soldiers from the First World War to the present day.
'It's a poem by them, orchestrated by me,' he
Source: TMC News
Nov 7, 2009
The Pelham Historical Society has earned special recognition for having the most modernized and informational historical Web site in the state.
At a ceremony held recently at the New London, N.H., Historical Society complex, the Hayes-Genoter History and Genealogy Library, founded by Pelham historian William Hayes, and Web site designer Karen Genoter, received "The 2009 Research and Documentation Award" from The Association of Historical Societies of New Hampshire, Inc.
Source: The Star
Nov 7, 2009
OTTAWA–Sean Maloney has been to Afghanistan eight times, experienced two attacks by improvised explosive device and survived at least five attempts on his life.
"I've been shot at, rocketed, mortared, all of it. My view always was that I needed to understand these things so I could do the job properly," he says.
Maloney is not a soldier, but he is on a mission. When he ventures outside the relative safety of Kandahar Airfield, there is a Canadian flag on one a
Source: The Other Russia
Nov 7, 2009
A criminal case against a historian who researched repressed German settlers in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia is now being transferred to the investigative committee of the general prosecutor’s office, according to a statement by authorities.
The case against Professor Mikhail Suprun and Police Colonel Aleksandr Dudarev had elicited a strong public outcry, prompting the investigation. According to the general prosecutor’s office (SKP), Suprun received a grant in 2007 from the Ger
Source: WSJ
Nov 7, 2009
[Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.]
'Fantastyczne!"
That's the word Adam Michnik, the man who played one of the starring roles in bringing the Cold War to an end, exclaims in Polish as he thinks back over the two decades since the Berlin Wall fell that Nov. 9 evening. He repeats it in rapid fire, each time flawlessly, with no hint of his trademark stutter.
"Fantastic! Fantastic! Poland has not had such 20 years in its last
