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: Center for American Progress
Jan 9, 2007
The 110th Congress has an important responsibility to shape the country’s national security policy in order to make Americans safer and advance U.S. national security interests more effectively.
In sharp contrast to the 109th Congress, this new Congress will do more to exercise its powers and responsibility as a co-equal branch of government in shaping the future direction of the country’s Iraq policy. Such a policy will be successful only if it enjoys the informed consent of the American
Source: NYT
Jan 9, 2007
Before the great pyramids, ancient Egyptian kings left less grandiose monuments to themselves: fortresslike sanctuaries enclosed by mud-brick walls. Inside these mortuary complexes, people presumably gathered to worship and perpetuate the memory of their departed ruler.
The crumbling, almost vanished remains of such structures, archaeologists say, attest to the political hierarchy and religion of the newly unified Egyptian state, beginning more than 5,000 years ago. As symbols of th
Source: Guardian
Jan 9, 2007
The newly established international criminal court risks being "fatally damaged" by demands that it cancel its first ever war crimes indictment because it is an obstacle to ending Uganda's 20-year civil war.
The dispute over a slew of charges against the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, who is accused of mass murder, rape, mutilations and abducting children to become soldiers, has opened a rift between African governments, which believe trials should be
Source: NYT
Jan 9, 2007
As remnants of a vanished culture and a lure to tourists, the mysterious giant statues that stand as mute sentinels along the rocky coast here are the greatest treasure of this remote place.
For local people, though, they also present a problem: what should be done about the hundreds of other stone icons scattered around the island, many of them damaged or still embedded in the ground?
Commercial and political interests, as well as some archaeologists, would like nothi
Source: NYT
Jan 9, 2007
The Roman Catholic Church in Poland was in turmoil on Monday as a second prelate stepped down because of his Communist-era secret police ties, after Sunday’s resignation of this city’s archbishop over similar allegations.
Questions spread about just how broad and deep a stain secret-police collaboration has left on a church long regarded as a beacon of faith and freedom during the Communist era. Many people also have asked how or why the Vatican could have invited the storm by appoi
Source: Atlantic Monthly
Jan 9, 2007
As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and the Democrats prepare to take over Congress, it is clear that this administration’s credibility is under heavy scrutiny. A year ago, Stephen Colbert coined a term, “truthiness” to describe Bush’s proclivity for telling the American people what feels like the truth, rather than verified facts. Now, with his article, “Truth in the White House,” Carl Cannon puts Bush’s complex tango with the truth into historical context, taking a look back at
Source: FrontpageMag.com
Jan 9, 2007
The government of Pakistan has banned my book The Truth About Muhammad, confiscating all copies and translations. Why? Because it contains “objectionable material” about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Said Shahid Ahmed, counselor of community affairs at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington: “The book is very, very damaging — let me tell you.”
Objectionable material? Damaging? I confess it: they’re right. There is plenty of objectionable material in this book. Here’s a small sampling:
Source: CNN
Jan 8, 2007
Some historians credit Republican President Warren G. Harding with running the first campaign that made liberal use of celebrity endorsement.When Harding ran in 1920, film was still just a fledgling industry. Harding was backed by conservative silent film stars like Lillian Russell, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Al Jolson, evidently as part of a well-orchestrated campaign by ad agency Lord & Thomas.
Evidently, W.C. Fields, curmudgeonly comedian on the
Source: http://www.aftenposten (Norway)
Jan 8, 2007
The Viking treasures were found at Frøyland in Rogaland County. Local newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad reported Monday that items recovered from the graves indicate they belonged to wealthy Vikings of the time.
In one of the graves, belonging to a woman, archaeologists found jewellery, many pearls, glass beads, scissors, a knife and other household utensils.
"The size, quality and design of the jewellery is highly unusual," said archaeologist Olle Hemdorff. "
Source: AP
Jan 8, 2007
LAS VEGAS -- The way Allen Moss sees it, vast stretches of the West and all of their wealth belong to the Indians.
And despite being turned back in lawsuit after lawsuit for decades, the Western Shoshone leader says he won't rest until the U.S. government honors a 19th-century treaty that, according to the tribe, entitles it to reclaim ancestral lands extending from California through Nevada and Utah to Idaho.
The lands include much of the Las Vegas area. The Shoshone
Source: AP
Jan 8, 2007
It's the California earthquake hardly anyone has heard of -- strong enough to rip 225 miles of the San Andreas Fault and make rivers run backward, but leaving nothing like the cultural scar inflicted by the San Francisco Quake of 1906.
Tuesday marks the 150th anniversary of the magnitude-7.9 Fort Tejon quake, which was blamed for just two deaths in what was then sparsely populated California.
No museum exhibits or musical tributes will mark the 1857 event, sometimes
Source: The Real News Project
Jan 8, 2007
Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.
Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'
But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maint
Source: BBC
Jan 8, 2007
The trial of a former Rwandan official accused of being a main perpetrator of the genocide is due to begin at the UN war crimes tribunal in Tanzania.
Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho, former prefect of the Rwandan capital, Kigali, faces charges of genocide and complicity in genocide.
Some 800,000 people, most of them Tutsis, were killed by Hutu extremists during the massacres in 1994.
Source: Times Online (UK)
Jan 8, 2007
For sale: the world’s smallest country, complete with its own passports, currency, stamps and national football team. Uninterrupted sea views and complete privacy assured. Oh, and more wind than you will ever want. Offers in the region of eight-digit sums considered.
After 40 years, the owners of the Principality of Sealand have put it on the market. They hope that investors will be lured by the island’s setting and its status as a tax haven.
But it is not exactly a d
Source: WaPo
Jan 8, 2007
BUENOS AIRES As they organize separate 25th anniversary ceremonies to remember their war over the Falkland Islands, Argentine and British officials have found that remembering is the easy part.
Resolving, however, is a much trickier proposition.
The windblown archipelago is once again claiming headlines here, climbing back near the top of Argentina's international agenda a quarter-century after its military surrendered the territory to Britain.
Last week Ar
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 8, 2007
Unesco is threatening to place the Tower of London on its list of endangered World Heritage Sites because of the number of skyscrapers being planned for the surrounding area.
The fortress, which William the Conqueror started building in 1078 to dominate London, would be the only building in the developed world on the endangered list.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has got until the end of the month to demonstrate to the UN agency's World Heritage Committee
Source: NYT
Jan 8, 2007
WARSAW, Jan. 7 — The newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, abruptly resigned on Sunday at a Mass meant to celebrate his new position after having admitted two days earlier that he had worked with the Polish Communist-era secret police.
There is no direct evidence that Bishop Wielgus spied on any of his fellow clergy members. But the revelation and the resignation have shaken one of Europe’s largest concentrations of Catholics and refocused scrutiny on collaboratio
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jan 8, 2007
Sometimes it’s not just what you are against, but how you are against it. On Saturday, every member who spoke at the business meeting of the American Historical Association expressed opposition to the war in Iraq and support for free speech.
But there was fairly intense debate on how to express those ideals. In the end, the association’s members at its business meeting backed a resolution calling on members to “do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.” Supp
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Jan 7, 2007
During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese intelligence units sometimes
succeeded in penetrating Allied communications systems, and they could
monitor Allied message traffic from within. But sometimes they did
more than that.
On several occasions"the communists were able, by communicating on
Allied radio nets, to call in Allied artillery or air strikes on
American units."
That is just one passing observation (at p. 392) in an exhaustive
history of American signals intelligence (
Source: NPR (audio)
Jan 7, 2007
In the Middle East, a recent series of diplomatic moves has raised faint hopes for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. But one maverick Palestinian believes the key to Middle East peace lies in greater Arab understanding of the Nazi Holocaust. He's set up what is believed to be the only museum in the Arab world on the Nazi slaughter of European Jews. But as NPR's Eric Westervelt reports, the display has attracted the ire of both Arabs and Jews.
ERIC WESTERVELT: The Arab Inst
