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: AP
Oct 2, 2008
Heading into the final weekend of the 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry was feeling good about his chances of winning the White House.
The Democratic nominee thought he had bested President Bush in their three prime-time debates. He also felt he'd convinced Americans his military and foreign affairs experience left him better equipped to end the Iraqi war.
Then Osama bin Laden weighed in with the most recent "October surprise" to land with a thud on a pr
Source: Times (of London)
Oct 2, 2008
After more than 200 years of association with Grosvenor Square, the US will establish a new high security base in Nine Elms, Wandsworth, in the south of the city.
Known more for Battersea Power Station and its rescue home for cats and dogs, the primarily industrial area will see the construction of a state-of-the-art secure compound.
Ambassador Robert Tuttle said security fears had played a major role in the decision to move but also the current embassy had reached its
Source: WaPo
Oct 2, 2008
GEORGETOWN, S.C. | The old plantation where Michelle Obama's great-great-grandfather lived is tucked behind the tire stores and veterinary clinics of U.S. Highway 521. But its history and grounds have been meticulously preserved, down to the dikes that once controlled the flow of water into its expansive rice fields.
Not much is known about Jim Robinson, however, including how or when he came to Friendfield, as the property is still called. But records show he was born around 1850 a
Source: China Daily
Oct 2, 2008
The country's top leaders observed its 59th National Day by paying respects in Beijing yesterday to those who had sacrificed themselves to the founding of New China.
Led by President Hu Jintao, the leaders presented flowers before the Monument to the People's Heroes at Tian'anmen Square, with 18 soldiers lifting the flower baskets to the base of the monument.
"The wreath-laying ceremony is a great way to honor the Chinese people's indomitable spirit of struggle and
Source: Deutsche Welle
Oct 2, 2008
Former high school teacher Gerald Frederick Toben, 64, was refused bail in London's Westminster Magistrate's court and will appear again on Friday for an extradition hearing, Australia's ABC Radio reported.
Toben was arrested under a European Union arrest warrant because he is wanted by the District Court in Mannheim, Germany, on charges of publishing material on the internet of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature.
Denying the Holocaust is an offense in Germany wi
Source: Deutsche Welle
Oct 2, 2008
The bombing of Dresden -- eastern Germany's cultural center -- has been a sore point in German relations with the countries of the Allied forces, coming with such vengeance so late in World War II.
The city was devastated, and there were enormous casualties among civilians and refugees. Historians have argued about just how many people were killed in the firebombing on the night of Feb. 13-14, 1945, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 135,000.
Now, a special commissio
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 2, 2008
The University of Gloucestershire confirmed it is trying to trace the people in a video which shows a group of students being paraded around with carrier bags on their heads.
A student in a Nazi officer uniform walks up and down the line while some members of the group, who appear to be drunk, are physically sick
The footage, which has no sound, was obtained by the BBC. The subjects were seemingly unaware that they were being filmed.
It is believed the f
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 2, 2008
He may have been dead for over two centuries but that did not stop Germany's tenacious TV licence-collecting agency from sending two reminders to one of the nation's favourite poets and playwrights telling him he had failed to pay his fee.
Friedrich Schiller received a notice from the agency GEZ at an address in the town of Weigsdorf-Köblitz in the eastern state of Saxony, telling him if he did not pay the monthly €17.03 (£14) for using his radio and television sets, legal proceedin
Source: History Today
Oct 2, 2008
A public inquiry has began (September 30th) into proposals for the construction of houses on one of the largest US Air Force bases in Europe during the Cold War. The North Oxford Consortium plans to develop 1,075 houses on the RAF Upper Heyford Site in Oxfordshire. The airbase housed reconnaissance and fighter aircraft including the F-111 fighter plane or ‘Aardvark’. It has a runway almost two miles long and was redeveloped in the 1950s to handle the heavy B52 bombers used by the US air force at
Source: http://www.ascribe.org/
Oct 1, 2008
Nearly 20,000 Catholics from around the world have sent paper and electronic postcards to Vatican organizers of the Synod on the Word and to their Bishop delegates, asking them to restore women leaders such as Mary of Magdala and Phoebe to lectionary texts from which they have been deleted. The Synod begins October 5 in Rome, and will be in session until October 27.
Spearheaded by the Cleveland based FutureChurch, the two year project also asks synod leaders to invite women b
Source: http://www.lifesitenews.com
Oct 1, 2008
Representative John LaBruzzo (R - Metairie) recently proposed fixing the welfare problem in New Orleans by offering poor women $1000 to be sterilized, a suggestion that New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes has condemned as "blatantly anti-life" and eugenic in nature.
Louisiana Rep. LaBruzzo proposed the plan last week, which may also include vasectomies for poor men as well as a tax incentive for richer, better-educated citizens to have more children. LaBruzzo aims to ste
Source: http://www.civilwarinteractive.com (date uncertain)
Oct 1, 2008
A plan to build an expanded visitor center and theater at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana violates both environmental and historic preservation laws, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The suit contends that the National Park Service (NPS) proposed construction will detract from the very historical setting it seeks to present to the public.
Plaintiffs include two former Ch
Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2008
One third-term mayor contemplated suicide. Another battled cancer while juggling two jobs. A third mayor, after 12 years of service, was nearly drummed out of town by unruly municipal workers. Of the 108 mayors of New York City since 1665, only four have served 12 years — and all four faced significant blows to their reputations, morale and even health toward the end of their administrations, according to historians who have studied the four men.
The past might be useful for Mayor M
Source: http://www.kyivpost.com
Oct 1, 2008
Russian history now glosses over persecution and hails Soviet-era triumphs
The foreign ministries of Russia and Ukraine are not the only soldiers in the ongoing war of words over the countries’ shared Soviet history.
The battle over the past is also being waged in the classrooms of both countries. The stakes are high, as the victor may be able to win over the hearts and minds of future generations.
The Stalin-ordered Great Famine of 1932-1933, which claimed milli
Source: Discovery Channel News
Oct 1, 2008
A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that is engraved with what they believe could be the world's first known reference to Christ.
If the word "Christ" refers to the Biblical Jesus Christ, as is speculated, then the discovery may provide evidence that Christianity and paganism at times intertwined in the ancie
Source: International Herald Tribune
Oct 1, 2008
The Russian Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of full rehabilitation for the last czar, Nicholas II, and his family, officially recognizing the executed royals as victims of Soviet repression 90 years after their deaths.
The ruling brings Russia closer than ever to public reconciliation with the execution, one of the most significant events in a bloody revolutionary period that led to more than 70 years of Soviet rule.
Nicholas II and the monarchy were reviled i
Source: International Herald Tribune
Oct 1, 2008
It is one of Europe's most bizarre - and stubborn - international disputes, and certainly the only one that invokes an argument about Asian tribes stretching back to Alexander the Great.
Greece insists that its northern neighbor, which calls itself the Republic of Macedonia, change its name. Ever since the tiny former Yugoslav republic became independent in 1991, the Greeks have argued that the name implies territorial ambitions on Greece, whose northernmost province is Macedonia, a
Source: FoxNews.com
Oct 1, 2008
A CENTURIES-old tradition of wearing a white horse-hair wig in court ended for many British judges on Wednesday when a simpler new dress code came into force.
While judges in criminal cases will still wear them, those in civil and family hearings will appear bare-headed in court, wearing a new-style plain black robe, the government said.
After a long debate that divided the legal profession, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, head of the judiciary in England and Wa
Source: SpyTalk
Oct 1, 2008
The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory:
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Oct 1, 2008
"A steady stream of intelligence failures in the 1990s occurred in every facet of CIA activity, from intelligence collection to analysis to counterintelligence to covert action," writes John Diamond in a new book on "The CIA and the Culture of Failure."
This is of course well-trodden ground, and the author himself reported many of the underlying episodes for the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and USA Today.
But Diamond probes beneath the familiar
