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.eux.tv
Sep 6, 2007
Archaeologists digging at the place where an amazing Bronze Age disc was found in Germany have turned up a body and remains of a Stone Age building, adding to the riddle around one of the world's biggest archaeological sensations of the past decade.
Andreas Northe, giving the results of this summer's dig on the remote hill in eastern Germany, said, "We found a child's grave, a cache of stone tools and some remains from a long-house."
The dig was done at a sp
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Sep 6, 2007
The National Coalition for History (NCH) has learned that just prior to the Congressional adjournment last month, an anonymous hold was placed by a Republican senator on, the “Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 (H.R. 1255).” Supporters had sought to have the bill considered under the Senate’s unanimous consent rule that allows non-controversial bills to be brought up on an expedited basis.
A previous hold on the bill by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) was lifted after concerns he
Source: Houston Chronicle
Sep 6, 2007
Already tired of the 2008 presidential campaign? Remind yourself why it matters over the next 12 weeks.
Presidential Libraries: History Uncovered begins at 7 tonight on C-SPAN, offering what presidential historian Richard Norton Smith predicts will be "a kind of history that people don't get out of their textbooks."
There will be a bit of spontaneity — the series broadcasts live from one presidential library each week, starting with the Herbert Hoover Presiden
Source: NYT
Sep 6, 2007
An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld a death sentence against one of Saddam Hussein’s main henchmen, known as Chemical Ali, for a genocidal campaign that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s.
The head of the nine-member Iraqi High Tribunal, Arif Abd al-Razaq, said the decision paved the way for the henchman, Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Mr. Hussein, to be executed within 30 days in accordance with Iraqi law.
Source: Sidney Blumenthal in Salon
Sep 6, 2007
On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.
Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Es
Source: The Age
Sep 5, 2007
THEY were lost for 90 years, killed in the slush of the Passchendaele battles of 1917, and forgotten. Now DNA technology has identified the remains of two Australian World War One diggers unearthed last year in the Belgian hamlet of Westhoek, east of Ypres. Sergeant George Calder, of northern Victoria, and Private John Hunter, of Queensland, will be overlooked no more.
Belgium's National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology has matched the remains with DNA taken from living
Source: AP
Sep 5, 2007
The earth shakes briefly in Berlin's Mittelheide city park, and a cloud of rain-soaked dirt rises in the woods. Police have just detonated a football-size antitank grenade from World War II.
More than 60 years after the war's end, removing unexploded bombs, grenades and artillery shells remains a full-time task for police and private companies across Germany.
It's an occurrence so common that police explosives experts Thomas Mehlhorn and Joerg Neumann can joke about the
Source: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com
Sep 5, 2007
Sippenhaft is an old Nazi policy under which family members of criminals were held equally responsible and punished. Now a Swiss political party is using a racist and xenophobic poster to revive the practice.
The poster shows three white sheep booting out a black sheep, with a caption that translates to "for more security." It's part of an effort to drum up support for a deportation policy in which entire immigrant families would be kicked out of Switzerland if their child
Source: http://www.wsls.com
Sep 5, 2007
Among the Civil War treasures in Appomattox could be more relics of the Confederate Army. The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond wants to divide it's collection into three museums. Appomattox is at the top of the list as one of the proposed sites.
"Appomattox for example would have the uniform Robert E. Lee surrendered in, all of the flags that were surrendered at Appomattox," said Appomattox Director of Tourism Beckie Nix.
Nix said it just makes sense for
Source: NYT
Sep 5, 2007
Finding a strange hair in a plate of spaghetti: bad. Finding a strand of George Washington’s hair in a pack of baseball cards: good.
Among cards picturing third basemen and center fielders, the Topps Company, the maker of baseball trading cards and Bazooka bubble gum, inserted three George Washington “relic” cards, each with a strand of hair from the first president. Topps obtained the strands from the world’s pre-eminent historical hair collector (yes, there is such a thing), John
Source: National Security Archive
Sep 5, 2007
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week held that the disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act of two Presidential Daily Briefs written for President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s could “reveal protected intelligence sources and methods.” The Court rejected, however, the Central Intelligence Agency’s “attempt to create a per se status exemption for PDBs.”
In a lawsuit brought by Professor Larry Berman, a professor of Political Science at U.C. Davis and the author of P
Source: National Security Archive
Sep 5, 2007
The National Security Archive today sued the White House seeking the recovery and preservation of more than 5 million White House e-mail messages that were apparently deleted from White House computers between March 2003 and October 2005. [The complaint and related documents are posted at www.nsarchive.org.]
The lawsuit filed this morning in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia names as defendants the Executive Office of the Preside
Source: NYT
Sep 5, 2007
Two pictures on Aug. 14 with an obituary about the news photographer Joe O’Donnell carried erroneous credits, and the obituary also included one of the incorrect credits. The photograph of a saluting John F. Kennedy Jr. during the funeral for his father in 1963 was taken by Stan Stearns for United Press International, not by Mr. O’Donnell. The photographer who took the second picture, showing Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during a wartime meeting in Tehran in 1943, is not known, although Mr. O
Source: chinaview.cn
Sep 5, 2007
Beijing will restrict the number of daily visits to cultural relics during the Olympic Games next year so as to ensure a sound visiting order and protect cultural relics, according to the Beijing Cultural Heritage Administration.
"All cultural relics of the capital are to undergo a thorough "facelift" in the coming few months before next August, and any renovation, except for emergency repair, will suspend during the Games," said Kong fanzhi, director of the
Source: http://www.chad.co.uk
Sep 5, 2007
THE owner of historic King John's Palace in Kings Clipstone is hoping to raise the profile of the site to save the ruins, which are in urgent need of work to stabilise the crumbling walls.
Last month, the site was added to the English Heritage's Buildings at Risk Register, which highlights important sites that are in 'grave danger of irretrievable decay'.
Only fragments remain of the Grade II scheduled ancient monument and owner Mickey Bradley — with the backing of loca
Source: AP
Sep 5, 2007
Archaeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found.
The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov this summer include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University told The Associated Press.
He said it offers unique evidence that an advanced hon
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 5, 2007
For more than 60 years the 10,000 Germans who fled their country to join the British Army and fight against the Nazi regime have remained silent.
But yesterday those veterans who have survived spoke for the first time about taking up arms against their fellow countrymen.
At the first reunion since the Second World War of those who chose to battle Adolf Hitler, 200 German and Austrian veterans met at the Imperial War Museum.
While initially only allowed to d
Source: Washington Times
Sep 5, 2007
An ancient inscription memorializing Jer- usalem's salvation from Assyrian invaders 2,700 years ago is to be returned to the Holy Land from Turkey for study and public display.
Israel has been trying for about 20 years to recover the artifact, which marks one of the most important turning points in Hebrew history.
Assyrian forces under King Sennacherib controlled most of the Middle East in the early eighth century B.C. and were about to march on Jerusalem, where a defia
Source: http://www.newsvine.com
Sep 4, 2007
They aren't certain, but underwater archaeologists say they may have discovered a boulder with a prehistoric carving in Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay.
The granite rock has markings that resemble a mastodon — an elephant-like creature that once inhabited parts of North America — with what could be a spear in its side, say divers who have seen it.
They came across the boulder at a depth of about 40 feet while searching for shipwrecks in June, said Mark Holley, a scie
Source: ThinkSpain.com
Sep 4, 2007
A Roman boat in near-immaculate condition has been dredged up from the bay of Cartagena. Archaeologists say the find dates back to the first century B.C.
The team from Cartagena’s natoinal archaeological museum and underwater investigation centre (MNAM-CNIAS) reveals that this exciting discovery comes just after two boats and a number of anchors thought to be more than a hundred years old were found on the seabed.
The team worked in conjunction with the Aurora SP Trust,
