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Winter Soldiers to Testify Against War

Thirty-seven years ago, in the midst of a bitter-cold Michigan winter, 109 Vietnam veterans gathered at a Howard Johnson Motel auditorium in Detroit to tell their stories. For three days, they told of ransacking undefended villages, attacking civilians, mutilating bodies, torturing Viet Cong suspects, burning houses, destroying Vietnamese property and livestock and killing innocent children. At the conference, entitled Winter Soldier, the veterans accepted responsibility and mourned for their ac

Faked Holocaust Memoir: The Saga Continues

In the morning's Boston Globe David Mehegan has a follow-up story to the"Hiding with Wolves" Holocaust hoax. What jumped out at me in the article was the glee with which the lawyer for the co-author, who joined in the suit against the publisher, reported that he was about to sell the publisher's house.Le

Germany Opens Massive Cold War Bunker as Museum

Hidden beneath the vine-covered hills of the Ahr Valley, the enormous nuclear bunker was one of West Germany's best kept secrets during the Cold War. Now, part of the bunker is open to the public. It's a 20-minute walk from the sleepy tourist town of Ahrweiler up a serpentine path to the entrance to the new Government Bunker Documentation Center. The 9-meter (30-foot) high concrete wall marking the museum's entrance seems completely out of place among the vineyards and woods of the

Should PA American Revolution Center have its own site and hotel?

With millions of county tax dollars at stake, Montgomery County officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the direction the American Revolution Center is taking. "All we are hearing is malarkey," said Montgomery County Commissioners Chairman Jim Matthews. "People like straight talk, and I sense we really did not have straight talk from the beginning." Matthews said he found it "troubling" that the museum plan has evolved from a structur

NPR's Cochran didn't realize "dark continent" would offend

Jean Cochran's NPR report about President Bush going to Africa to visit the "dark continent" brought in angry e-mails and photo calls. "I almost drove off the side of the road to start a protest!!!" wrote one listener. Cochran's reaction: "I had no idea the term would be found offensive. I will concede antiquated but I was unaware it was 'racist and irredeemable,' as one person put it." She apologized, which brought in more complaints about political correctness.

Ancient Lebanese city chokes under rubbish dump

SIDON, Lebanon (AFP) - "Sidon's mountain" bears no resemblance to the green mountains of Lebanon. It is rather an immense landfill that dumps its trash into the Mediterranean, polluting the coast of the ancient Phoenician port city. The dump is just a few metres (yards) away from the tourist sites of the southern city of Sidon -- its crusader sea castle, ancient vaulted souk and Phoenician temple. The 30-year-old "mountain of filth" has steadily grow

Homo neanderthalensis in London?

Archaeologists from Durham University will be returning to a London borough site where a 19th century historian once found flint tools and animal bones. This time, however, the latest sonic drilling equipment will be used to take samples from the earth, for the ongoing Ancient Human Occupation of Britain II project (AHOB). Initial drillings were carried out at Holmscroft Open Space in September 2007 by the archaeologists, who are looking at human occupation of the count

Family Disputes Claims of JFK 'Love Child'

The family of a Texas-born investment banker who has told reporters he may be the love child of President John F. Kennedy says his claims "are unequivocally false and have been fabricated." Jack Worthington II told newspapers in Canada, Vanity Fair magazine and ABC News that his mother advised him four years ago that his father was the former president. His mother, Evelyn Worthington, a former Texas school teacher who lives in Houston, "has never met John

Nixon in Canada--Smiles. In US--Glowers.

Historic sign for WTC is being donated

On one street corner in Lower Manhattan, the World Trade Center is still spoken of in the present tense, confusing some passers-by, enlightening many others. “Now, every weekday, 50,000 people come to work in 12 million square feet of office, hotel and commercial space in the seven buildings in this city within a city,” says the seven-foot-high Heritage Trails New York sign at Church and Cortlandt Streets, opposite ground zero. “As many as 10,000 visitors in a single da

Bill Would Remove Doubt on Presidential Eligibility

Senator John McCain said Thursday that he had no concerns about his meeting the constitutional qualifications for the presidency because of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone. A Democratic colleague said she wanted to remove even a trace of doubt. The Democrat, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, introduced legislation that would declare that any child born abroad to citizens serving in the United States military would meet the constitutional requirement that anyone serving as pr

The most powerful campaign media bias isn't for a person

It's for a decade -- the 1960s, says William Powers [in the National Journal]. "If the race turns out to be Obama versus McCain, the obsession will only grow. Where Obama represents the RFK/MLK side of '60s culture, McCain, the former Vietnam POW, will become the embodiment of the anti-communist, warrior strain."

WH aide lifted passages for op-ed in Fort Wayne newspaper

Nancy Nall read White House employee Tim Goeglein's essay on education in Thursday's Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, then ran some of his passages through Google. She found that the Fort Wayne native borrowed from Jeffrey Hart's Dartmouth Review essay, "What is a College Education?" Nall writes: "My, my, my. Tim Goeglein, director of the White House office of public liaison, is a plagiarist. Not an accidental or delicate one, either."

Declassified Studies from Cheney Pentagon Show Push for U.S. Military Predominance

The United States should use its power to "prevent the reemergence of a new rival" either on former Soviet territory or elsewhere, declared a controversial February 18, 1992 draft of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) prepared by then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney's Pentagon and leaked to The New York Times in March 1992. Published in declassified form for the first time on the National Security Archive Web site, this draft, along with related working papers, shows how defense o

Guiding your way through Texas's deeply confusing primary process

Up until about 30 years ago, Texas was a strong Democratic state, and presidential caucuses--the preferred system prior to 1976--were little more than local turf wars between the liberal and the conservative wings of the party establishment. According to Dr. Patrick Cox, Associate Director for Congressional and Political History at the University of Texas, prior to the 1970s, the Texas Democrats used the "unit rule," meaning that all delegates--often under the guidance of the governor-

Britain's last 'witch' may be pardoned

Campaigners will submit a petition to the Scottish Parliament today calling for the last woman convicted under the Witchcraft Act to be pardoned. Helen Duncan spent nine months in Holloway prison after being convicted at a trial in 1944. Her conviction followed a seance at which the spirit of a dead sailor was said to have disclosed the loss of the battleship HMS Barham with most of her crew. The sinking had been kept secret by the authorities to maintain

Realtors raise concerns about proposed 'historic artifacts' bill (NH)

When Jeff Marple began construction of the "Eastwood" development off Lang Rd., he was mandated by the state to hire a pair of archeologists to dig a series of holes across the property and sift the soil in search of Native American remains or artifacts. The process stalled Marple’s construction for two months, cost him $5,000 and the University of New Hampshire archeologists didn’t find a single artifact. "They did find two round stones next to each other, and that c

Fiber-optic map details Vicksburg siege

Beginning today, visitors to the Vicksburg National Military Park will have a more complete picture of how the 1863 campaign of Vicksburg unfolded, thanks to a new fiber-optic map unveiled in the Visitor Center Wednesday. "The only audio/visual presentation we've had up until this point has been the 18-minute video we show, and there are no maps included in it whatsoever," said park historian Terry Winschel. "That's the biggest complaint we've received over the years.

Christianity popular in ancient China?

A latest research on a tombstone dating back to ninth century has shed light on the probability of Christianity having been popular among the Chinese during the Tang Dynasty. The incomplete damaged eight-surface tombstone with scriptures of the Jingjiao or Nestorian Church and pictures of crosses were unearthed in Luoyang City in central Henan province in 2006, Luo Zhao, a religious teacher from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said. "To be exact, the Christian

How Obama piled up that record in the Illinois state senate

[I]n 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor's office as well as both legislative chambers. The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James "Pate" Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American kno