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: The National Security Archive
Aug 20, 2009
As Mexicans debate last week’s Supreme Court ruling vacating the conviction of 20 men for the Acteal massacre, newly declassified documents from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency describe the Army’s role in backing paramilitary groups in Chiapas at the time of the killings. The secret cables confirm reporting about military support for indigenous armed groups carrying out attacks on pro-Zapatista communities in the region and add important new details. They also revive a question that has lin
Source: AFP
Aug 20, 2009
Former US homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.
Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.
"After that episode, I knew I had to follow throug
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2009
It’s the Internet video of the moment. It happened at a town hall meeting in Dartmouth, Mass., Tuesday evening. The famously colicky Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, lays into a questioner who is waving a picture of President Obama altered to look like Hitler and asks Mr. Frank why he was supporting a “Nazi” health policy.
“On what planet do you spend most of your time?” Mr. Frank responds.
He did not stop there. Roll, please:
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2009
North Korea said Wednesday that it would send a delegation to the funeral of the former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, according to a lawmaker quoted by the Yonhap news agency in Seoul. Such an official visit would signal a drastic change in policy regarding diplomatic exchanges.
Park Jie-won, an opposition member of Parliament who was once an aide to Mr. Kim, said Wednesday that he received the news of the visit in a letter faxed from the North Korean government agency in cha
Source: The Washington Times
Aug 20, 2009
The Pakistani government has lifted a ban on political activities in its tribal areas along the Afghan border, including a ban on membership in political parties that dates to colonial times.
President Asif Ali Zardari announced the changes last week in hope that tribesmen would begin a political opposition to Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers, who hold sway in mosques.
Previously, about 4 million residents of seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) could not b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 20, 2009
French anti-war campaigners have desecrated a statue of Winston Churchill in central Paris on the anniversary of the city's liberation from Nazi rule.
The night time attack saw the bronze hands of the £250,000 statue daubed in red paint.
The initials RH were also daubed on the statue, perhaps a reference to Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, who flew to Britain at the height of the Second World War to allegedly try and make peace.
Instead, Churchill had h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 20, 2009
Skulls and bones of Japanese who died during the Second World War are being kept at the University of California Berkeley in violation of the Geneva Conventions, according to a report.
The university's anthropology department is under pressure to return the remains of the Japanese soldiers and civilians, which were reportedly taken by a US navy doctor from the island of Saipan in 1945, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. The bones are now being stored in an underg
Source: Foxnews
Aug 20, 2009
Vice president jokes about former administration during a fundraising dinner when he responded to a suggestion that President Bush leaned heavily on Vice President Cheney for guidance.
Joe Biden knows who wears the pants in the White House — and apparently it isn't him.
Biden, known for his often embarrassing off-the-cuff remarks, was at the $1,000-a-plate event to rally support for Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson — who didn't hold back with his own quips at Biden's expen
Source: CNN
Aug 20, 2009
Victims' family members and advocates are grieving anew as the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland -- which killed 270 people -- was released Thursday from a British prison.
Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, 57, sick with advanced prostate cancer, was released on compassionate grounds and sent home to Libya to die, Scottish authorities said. Megrahi, who prosecutors said was a Libyan intelligence agent, was convicted in 2001 of placin
Source: BBC
Aug 20, 2009
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, was jailed in 2001 for the atrocity which claimed 270 lives in 1988.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill revealed that the Libyan, who has terminal prostate cancer, would be allowed to return to his homeland.
The US government said it"deeply regretted" the Scottish Government's decision to release Megrahi.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Aug 20, 2009
Scotland is likely to release the terminally ill Libyan agent convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, people familiar with the matter say, despite the protests of victims' families and the public opposition of the U.S. government.
The convicted bomber, Abdel Baset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, will be released on compassionate grounds, one of the people said...
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Aug 20, 2009
There's a new battle under way for control of the Alamo -- and just like the Texas legend, neither side shows any sign of surrender.
For more than a century, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas -- nearly 7,000 women who trace their pedigrees back to the origins of the Texas Republic -- have had total control of the Alamo, the state's most revered historic site. They maintain what's left of the old mission, manage its historic exhibits and run the gift shop. They don't charge admi
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Aug 19, 2009
The British Parliament will raise questions about the exhumation of 300 World War I soldiers buried in a mass grave in France for more than 90 years.
The all-party parliamentary war graves and battlefield heritage group, chaired by Lord Roper, is expected to reconvene in October and address the mounting controversy about the way the men's remains have been excavated as well as the tender process won by the private company, Oxford Archeology.
The anxiety has been fuelled
Source: Public Policy Polling blog
Aug 19, 2009
After we conducted polls over the last couple of weeks finding significant numbers of 'birthers' in North Carolina and Virginia, we decided to take the question national but also drum down more specifically on where exactly the people who think Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States do think he's from.
The answer is that 62% of Americans think Obama was born here, while 24% think he was not and 14% are unsure.
10% of the country thinks that he was born in Indones
Source: NECN.com (New England Cable News)
Aug 19, 2009
It's a funny thing about Boston: A city rich with nearly 400 years of history doesn't have a museum of Boston history.
But developer Frank Keefe and a high-powered team of civic leaders hope to change that. They're working to get rights from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to build a Boston Museum on a vacant parcel between the Rose Kennedy Greenway and Haymarket outdoor fruit and vegetable market. It's officially called Parcel 9 on plans for post-Big-Dig redevelopment of Bosto
Source: NYT
Aug 19, 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which di
Source: NYT
Aug 19, 2009
When former President Corazon C. Aquino died this month, Filipinos filled the streets in mourning and in celebration of the golden moment in 1986 when she led them in a peaceful uprising that some called a revolution.
The nation’s dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos, had fled as masses of people faced down his tanks, and democracy was restored after 20 years of repressive rule. Mrs. Aquino, the opposition leader who became president, ushered in wide-ranging political reforms.
Source: ABC
Aug 19, 2009
Almost all Chicagoans have heard of the Fort Dearborn Massacre. But very few of us have ever heard of Ensign George Ronan.
Ronan was a hero of that battle in the War of 1812, and now, a Chicago historian wants recognition for that forgotten man.
In this age of political correctness, the Fort Dearborn Massacre is now referred to as the Battle of Fort Dearborn. And at 18th and Prairie along the lakefront, a new historical marker tells the story of how 91 people - soldie
Source: Yahoo News
Aug 19, 2009
A prehistoric runway for flying pterosaurs has been discovered for the first time.
Scientists uncovered the first known landing tracks of one of these extinct flying reptiles at a site dubbed "Pterosaur Beach," in the fine-grained limestone deposits of an ancient lagoon in southwestern France dating back some 140 million years ago to the Late Jurassic.
The footprints suggest the pterosaur - a "pterodactyloid" with a wingspan roughly three feet wide (
Source: Deutsche Welle
Aug 19, 2009
Though not widely known, it was never really a secret that the Nazis
ran brothels in many concentration camps. But never has there been as
comprehensive an account of the fact as in a new book by a German
researcher.
"Das KZ Bordell" (The Concentration Camp Brothel) has been hailed as
the first comprehensive account of a little-known chapter of Nazi
oppression during World War Two.
Robert Sommer’s 460-page book is the result of four years of
painstaking resear
