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: ABC News
Dec 16, 2007
In the weeks after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, the charred, partly gutted Iraqi National Library and Archive became a symbol of the chaos and lawlessness that swept through the capital.
During a three-day rampage, looters pillaged and burned the building, stealing hundreds of rare, centuries-old Islamic documents and texts. Fire, smoke and water damaged much of what remained.
Mounir Bouchenaki, the deputy director-general of the U.N. cultural b
Source: BBC
Dec 16, 2007
Part of the aircraft wreckage from the plane which carried Rudolph Hess to Britain is to be sold at auction.
The fighter bomber crashed in Scotland in May 1941 and Hess, Hitler's deputy, was captured and jailed.
Source: Sunday Mail
Dec 16, 2007
IN the dying days of the Second World War, the Nazis fought a desperate battle to develop the atomic bomb before the Allies.
More than 60 years later, a scientist has revealed how he hid the secret of creating the catastrophic weapon from Adolf Hitler.
Erwin Klinge had been hired by the dictator to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. But the German-born pastor - who has lived in Scotland for 20 years - and his team buried the plans to stop the Nazis aquiring
Source: Earth Times
Dec 16, 2007
Charles Jeffrey Gray, a former British pilot, who carried out World War II bombing raids over Germany has joined a campaign to rescue Berlin's most famous wartime ruin - the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, near the Kurfuerstendamm. The church, which was built at the end of the 19th century, was destroyed during a British air attack in November 1943. Only its gaping, ruined tower remained and was later restored as a dark reminder of the war.
Now, the tower is in a dire state of decay
Source: NYT Editorial
Dec 16, 2007
Fort Griswold in Groton, site of one of the saddest battles of the Revolutionary War and the only major battle in Connecticut, will soon get some long-overdue financing. Last week, Gov. M. Jodi Rell directed the State Bond Commission to release $500,000 for much-needed repairs, including a repointing of the fort’s obelisk, which rises 135 feet to honor the 88 men who died at the Battle of Groton Heights a few weeks before the war ended.
The obelisk, which resembles the Washington Mo
Source: NYT
Dec 16, 2007
HERE’S another way Republican voters tend to be different from Democratic voters: They like — no, love — their presidential candidates. Not always, of course. But from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush to Dwight Eisenhower, Republicans voters have displayed a zeal for their candidates that Democrats could only envy.
Which is what makes this Republican presidential contest so striking. It is hard to think of another campaign when Republicans have seemed less excited about their choices
Source: BBC
Dec 15, 2007
The origins of a pint of Guinness appear to be much humbler than the man who gave the world "the black stuff" wanted us to think.
Recent testing by Trinity College Dublin of Guinness family DNA has shown that Arthur Guinness's claims of being a descendant of the Magennis chieftains of Iveagh, County Down, were nothing more than aspirational.
Despite this, when he married in 1761, he is even said to have had a silver cup engraved with the Magennis crest, which
Source: Earth Times
Dec 15, 2007
A German museum has announced plans for 16 screenings of the ultimate Nazi hate movie, Jud Suess, as part of an exhibition picking apart how Nazi propaganda worked. The 1940 costume melodrama was used to stoke up hatred of Jews in 21 nations. It was a favourite of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who had funded it.
"The film is an overwhelming success. The audience was seething," he gloated in his diary in 1940. "This is the first really anti- Semitic film."
Source: BBC
Dec 15, 2007
Through the steamed-up windows of a black cab, beaded with heavy raindrops, a white-haired old lady peers out on to London.
Impatiently, she wipes the glass with her sleeve and shakes her head, perplexed.
"I don't recognise anything," she mutters and sits back on her seat, indignant at having been deceived by the slipperiness of memory.
Tereska Torres is a French writer who worked with General de Gaulle's Free French forces in London during World
Source: WaPo
Dec 15, 2007
More than 200 years after they were written, huge portions of the papers of America's founding fathers are still decades away from being published, prompting a distinguished group of scholars and federal officials to pressure Congress to speed the process along.
Teams of experts have been laboring since Harry Truman was president in the late 1940s to compile and annotate the letters, correspondence and documents of George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and
Source: Edwin Black at The Cutting Edge
Dec 14, 2007
A leading Holocaust survivors group has publicly called for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to radically alter its plans to sequester the long-secret Holocaust records of the International Tracing Service now held at Bad Arolsen, saying the Museum’s controversial plans will “create intolerable bottlenecks and sufferings” for survivors desperate to discover the fate of loved ones and the facts of their own enslavement. The Museum’s plan is to block off-site physical or electronic diss
Source: Press Release
Dec 14, 2007
QUEBEC | On behalf of Canada's Environment Minister John Baird, Mr. Luc Harvey, Member of Parliament for Louis-Hebert, today announced the discovery of Fort Sainte-Therese, one of five forts erected by the Carignan-Salieres regiment between 1665 and 1666.
"Thanks to the exceptional collaboration of the Municipality of Carignan, the region's historical societies, heritage organizations and local researchers, Fort Sainte-Therese has finally been located on the grounds of the Cana
Source: http://tvnz.co.nz
Dec 14, 2007
A new development on the outskirts of Canterbury has unearthed hundreds of Maori artefacts dating back 500-600 years.
The Pegasus Town development 25 kilometres from Christchurch is now being recognised as a significant cultural and historical site in New Zealand.
Initially the site where the discovery was made was to be a golf course, but those plans have changed now to preserve the history that has been found there.
Source: BBC
Dec 14, 2007
The Assyrian Hall at the Iraqi National Museum is breathtaking.
Stone panels from the royal palace at Khorsabad run along the walls.
The carvings on the friezes depict daily life in the Assyrian royal court, which at its height about 3,000 years ago controlled a region stretching across much of the modern Middle East.
In one panel a distinctly regal king looks at his subjects as a courtier fans him. Another panel shows priests carrying out religious rituals
Source: National Coalition for History blog
Dec 14, 2007
The National Archives and Records Administration announced this week that the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) system has passed a significant milestone, with the successful completion of government testing of the first delivery of software from the developer, Lockheed Martin Corporation. When completed, the ERA will provide the means for preserving virtually any kind of electronic record, free from dependence on any specific hardware or software.
Source: New Zealand Herald
Dec 14, 2007
The Ingilby family's greatest claim to fame is to have held on to Ripley Castle, in Yorkshire, for 698 years - 26 generations - in spite of having been on the wrong side of just about every conflict in English history.
"We were foolish enough to be Catholics under Elizabeth I." says the present baronet, Sir Thomas Ingilby, with a smile that suggests he's actually rather proud of his pig-headed ancestors.
"We were strong supporters of the king in the Civil
Source: National Security Archive
Dec 14, 2007
The National Security Archive yesterday rebutted the government's argument for dismissal of the Archive's lawsuit in federal district court seeking to recover 5 million or more Executive Office of the President e-mails that are missing from the period 2003 to 2005.
"It is remarkable that the government wants to stop the public from trying to protect records that belong to the people of the United States, particularly records that tell the story of this country’s policies,"
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 14, 2007
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-Right leader, has gone on trial for allegedly describing the Nazi occupation of France as "not especially inhumane" - the latest act in a humiliating coda to his controversial career.
The leader of the Front National party is due to face charges of conspiring to justify war crimes and to deny Nazi crimes against humanity, both violations of France's Holocaust denial legislation. He faces a maximum one-year prison term, a £32,000 fine and a
Source: BBC
Dec 14, 2007
Five war medals belonging to a Scottish sailor have sold for a record price at auction.
George MacKenzie Samson from Carnoustie in Angus was awarded the decorations, including a Victoria Cross, for his bravery during World War One.
In 1915, during the Gallipoli landings, he helped rescue wounded men despite coming under heavy fire.
The medals were expected to fetch £180,000 at most but were bought by a private collector for £247,000.
Source: NYT
Dec 14, 2007
Mike Huckabee insists he spoke out of ignorance, not malice against the faith of a Republican rival, Mitt Romney, when he asked, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”
Although there may have been a kernel of truth in his question, Mr. Huckabee’s confessed ignorance about Mormonism is widely shared.
Americans are notoriously uninformed about faiths other than their own, and they are particularly perplexed about Mormon beliefs. Mormons make up 2 p
