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: http://www.philly.com
Dec 28, 2008
Aleksander Szekal was besieged by Soviets and Nazis. At 103, he looks back
- and ahead.
Tortured by Stalin's henchmen and attacked by Hitler's forces, Aleksander
Szekal almost became one of World War II's millions of victims.
But he survived the Soviet Gulag and a famous battle against the Nazis,
and was honored on his 103d birthday this month as the oldest living
veteran of a celebrated Polish unit that helped defeat Hitler's army in
Italy.
Military attaches brought greeting
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 28, 2008
As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, his supporters are
busy putting a positive spin on his eight years in office. Tim Shipman
reports from Washington on how history will judge a 'consequential'
presidency.
On Wednesday Mundtadhar al-Zaidi will go on trial in Iraq, charged with
throwing his shoe at George W Bush. In Istanbul, entrepreneur Ramazan
Baydan has had 300,000 orders for the same shoe. He is renaming it the
“Bye Bye Bush.” In Washington, the President of the
Source: CNN
Dec 28, 2008
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite President Bush's low
approval ratings, people will soon"start to thank this president for what
he's done."
"So we can sit here and talk about the long record, but what I would say
to you is that this president has faced tougher circumstances than perhaps
at any time since the end of World War II, and he has delivered policies
that are going to stand the test of time," Rice said in an interview that
aired on CBS'"Sunday Morning."
Source: Reuters
Dec 28, 2008
MOSCOW -- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was voted Russia's third most popular historical figure in a nationwide poll that ended on Sunday, despite the famine and purges that marked his rule.
The "Name of Russia" contest run by Rossiya state television channel over more than six months closed on Sunday night with a final vote via the Internet and mobile phones. It drew more than 50 million votes in a nation of 143 million.
Millions of Soviet citizens perished fr
Source: NYT
Dec 27, 2008
If Nelson Mandela was South Africa’s George Washington, Thabo Mbeki was his John Adams — a short, touchy, fiercely intelligent infighter doomed to labor in the shadow of the great man.
Jacob Zuma, who is expected soon to be the third democratically elected president of Africa’s most influential country, is no Thomas Jefferson — though he, like Jefferson, may ultimately play an important (if unwitting) role in the birth of a real two-party system in a nascent democracy.
Source: BBC
Dec 27, 2008
About 500,000 people whose families had to flee Spain during the civil war
and the subsequent Franco era now have the right to apply for Spanish
citizenship.
Spain's new Law of Historical Memory, enacted a year ago, applies to
people whose mother or father was Spanish, and the grandchildren of those
who fled.
They can start submitting applications for Spanish citizenship on Monday.
Most of those who qualify live in Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Chile,
Venezuela, Mexico and
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 27, 2008
In 1909, the year Woolworths opened its first UK store, these were the
other major events.
* Unemployment stood at 698,000, 7.7 per cent of the working population
* A manual worker earned 23 shillings a week, with a dozen eggs costing a
shilling, a pound of butter 1s2d and a pint of beer two shillings. A pair
of ladies’ shoes cost 7s11d, a man’s suit 6s11d and a girl’s school frock
2s8d.
* 168 men and boys were killed in a pit disaster in West Stanley, County
Durham
Source: AP
Dec 27, 2008
NEW YORK –- The publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir has canceled the book, adding the name Herman Rosenblat to an increasingly long line of literary fakers and bringing down with a crash his story — embraced by Oprah Winfrey, among others — of meeting his future wife at a Nazi concentration camp.
Rosenblat's "Angel at the Fence" had been scheduled to come out in February, but Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), withdrew the memoir Saturday following alle
Source: NYT
Dec 27, 2008
IN bull markets, it’s wise to guard against thinking that “this time is different ” — that stocks will keep rising forever. Sooner or later, the laws of economics reassert themselves. And it’s wise to remember that major market declines follow some common patterns, too.
Right now, it’s tempting to think that this bear market is so unusual that history’s lessons are of little use, and that the types of investments that are weakest now will keep dropping indefinitely. No two market en
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Dec 27, 2008
It’s a showdown between the two most influential presidents of the 20th Century. Franklin D. Roosevelt versus Ronald W. Reagan.
Forty-five percent (45%) of U.S. voters say FDR, the Democratic father of the big government New Deal who led the country to victory in World War II, was the better president of the two.
But 40% say Reagan, the Republican champion of small-government conservatism and the winner of the Cold War, was a better president. Fifteen percent (15%) aren
Source: NYT
Dec 27, 2008
The National Archives has put into effect an emergency plan to handle electronic records from the Bush White House amid growing doubts about whether its new $144 million computer system can cope with the vast quantities of digital data it will receive when President Bush leaves office on Jan. 20.
The technical challenge was an inevitable result of the explosion in cybercommunications, which will make the electronic record of the Bush years about 50 times as large as that left by th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 27, 2008
Thousands of heritage sites are in disrepair and decay after the
Government cut the budget for maintaining them, it has emerged.
Among the 37,000 sites of national importance that have been identified as
being at risk are Hadrian's Wall, Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire, the
ancestral home of Lord Byron, and Queen Victoria's final resting place at
Frogmore House, near Windsor Castle.
In the last year, just 57 threatened buildings were repaired and restored
to a state where th
Source: BBC
Dec 27, 2008
The former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin may have killed millions of his own people but this weekend he could be chosen by Russians as their greatest-ever countryman.
Inspired by the British competition 100 Greatest Britons, one of Russia's biggest television stations Rossiya has been conducting a nationwide poll for much of this year.
From an original list of 500 candidates now there are just 12 names left from which viewers can select their all-time hero.
Source: BBC
Dec 27, 2008
Pakistan has marked a year since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto with a two-minute silence, while thousands of mourners visited her mausoleum.
President Asif Ali Zardari, her widower, used the occasion to call for peace and democracy in Pakistan and the resolution of problems through talks.
Analysts say the call was also aimed at India, which blames the recent attack on Mumbai on Pakistani militants.
Mrs Bhutto died in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 27, 2008
It must have been an appalling moment when a Viking realised he had paid two cows for a fake designer sword; a clash of blade on blade in battle would have led to his sword, still sharp enough to slice through bone, shattering like glass.
"You really didn't want to have that happen," said Dr Alan Williams, an archaeometallurgist and consultant to the Wallace Collection, the London museum which has one of the best assemblies of ancient weapons in the world. He and Tony Fry,
Source: Karl Rove in the WSJ
Dec 26, 2008
With only five days left, my lead is insurmountable. The competition can't catch up. And for the third year in a row, I'll triumph. In second place will be the president of the United States. Our contest is not about sports or politics. It's about books.
It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 26, 2008
Ban Ki-moon said he is hopeful that a United Nations inquiry into Benazir
Bhutto's assassination will be launched soon.
In a statement released on the eve of the anniversary of Bhutto's murder,
the UN Secretary General sought to assure the people and government of
Pakistan of"his commitment to contribute to their search for truth and
justice".
He said that he"is hopeful that ... the Commission [of inquiry] could be
established in the near future," a UN statement said.
H
Source: New Republic
Dec 26, 2008
We've just published a new article updating Gabriel Sherman's original reporting on the Holocaust memoir Angel at the Fence. Publisher Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, continues to defend the memoir, but auther Herman Rosenblat's sister-in-law and a fellow Holocaust survivor, both speaking publicly for the first time, say that Herman's story is fabricated. Sidney Finkel, a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor who was liberated with Herman, tells TNR that he ate with Herman and Roma Rosenbla
Source: Deutsche Welle
Dec 26, 2008
The German government has announced that in honor of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, next November it will release the results of an architecture competition to design a memorial commemorating German unification.
Speaking with AP news agency, Minister of Culture Bernd Neumann said that construction on the memorial will start in 2010 and should be complete by 2012. Berlin has set aside 15 million euros ($21 million) for the project.
The architects
Source: CNN
Dec 26, 2008
A new national poll suggests that three out of four Americans feel
President Bush's departure from office is coming not a moment too soon.
Seventy-five percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp.
survey released Friday said they're glad Bush is going; 23 percent
indicated they'll miss him."Earlier this year, Bush scored some of the lowest presidential approval
ratings we've seen in half a century, so it's understandable that the
public is eager for a new president
