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: San Francisco Chronicle
Dec 17, 2006
The resemblance, you have been told, is uncanny. Yet, even still, when the man himself finally steps out of the shadows, it causes a momentary hesitation, a faltering of your step. And indeed it is true -- even the photos don't accurately portray it.
Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is a compact, solidly built man. His neatly trimmed mustache is white, but at age 70, his gray hair is still thick. He has a fine, broad forehead, a strong nose, large ears and dark, watchful eyes. He speaks slowly
Source: AFP at Yahoo News
Dec 17, 2006
Egypt announced the discovery of a carving dating back to the 12th century BC which could hold the key to valuable information on Karnak temple, the largest ancient religious site in the world.
The large quartzite stone, carved with 17 lines of hieroglyphics, highlights the achievements of high priest Bak En Khonso and his contributions to the grand hall at Karnak.
Source: ABC
Dec 17, 2006
Sept. 11 victims' family members and others signed a 53.5-ton steel beam Sunday that is to form part of the base of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site.
The steel beam, which is to be put in place at ground zero this week, was on display in Battery Park City a few blocks from the trade center site Sunday.
Karen Miller signed in memory of her brother, firefighter John Santore.
"I want people to remember everyone who was lost and to remembe
Source: NYT
Dec 17, 2006
The Japanese government’s posters show the map of a blood-red North Korea blotting out the eyes of a Japanese teenager. They hint darkly that this country’s youth are at risk and urge Japanese to open their eyes to the threat from North Korea.
The posters were on prominent display at a rally this week to call attention to Japanese abducted by North Korea three decades ago and who, Japan says, are still held there.
The people who usually show up at such events — family m
Source: UPI
Dec 17, 2006
Articles written by former Chicago Daily News reporter George Weller, suppressed after World War II, are set to be revealed in a new book.
"First Into Nagasaki" is scheduled to be released Dec. 26, and will feature the articles Weller wrote after sneaking into the Japanese city of Nagasaki four weeks after the United States dropped an atomic bomb, the Chicago Sun-Times said.
The articles, being published by Weller's son Anthony, were censored by the U.S. m
Source: CBS News
Dec 17, 2006
For the first time, secrets of the Nazi Holocaust that have been hidden away for more than 60 years are finally being made available to the public. We’re not talking about a missing filing cabinet - we’re talking about thousands of filing cabinets, holding 50 million pages. It's Hitler’s secret archive.
The Nazis were famous for record keeping but what 60 Minutes found ran from the bizarre to the horrifying. This Holocaust history was discovered by the Allies in dozens of concentra
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Dec 17, 2006
Pesti Gizella's life took a turn for the better when a guard came to her Budapest prison cell and told her she was about to be executed.
As a student leader in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Pesti expected her days might be numbered after she was captured during the Soviet crackdown. She had been made to lie on a cot beneath a brightly burning light and keep her hands still and plainly visible. She wasn't so much afraid of dying as she was of the insects that would crawl onto the
Source: Iraqi News Agency/WNA
Dec 17, 2006
A source from the Ministry of Culture said, that the ministry has set up a committee to re-open the Iraqi museum and to provide the necessary supplies, security and to rearrange again.
The Iraqi Museum has been subjected to looting after the fall of the previous regime, where the number of artifacts stolen from the museum was more than eight thousand assorted pieces.
The source pointed out that the Iraqi museum will be re-opening early next year through the provision of
Source: Times Online (UK)
Dec 17, 2006
A fierce legal tussle has broken out between Cherie Booth, QC, and MI6 over top-secret files that relate to “The Griffin”, an Austrian who provided Britain with vital intelligence on the Nazi atom bomb programme during the Second World War.
The Prime Minister’s wife, who is representing the family of the secret agent, Paul Rosbaud, has lodged a claim demanding that MI6, then usually known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), release all its information on the case “so that the
Source: Times Online (UK)
Dec 17, 2006
A BRITISH rabbi who angered fellow Jews by speaking at a “Holocaust denial” conference in Iran now says millions did die in gas chambers but may have deserved it.
Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading member of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live.
Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with
Source: LAT
Dec 17, 2006
BERLIN — In a wacky corner of cyberspace, rubber duckies with Adolf Hitler faces sing in the bathwater. Their voices in unison, they bob to reggae music as bombs fall on Berlin, while the Fuehrer himself, a manic cartoon trapped in a bunker, sings: "Surrender? No, it's not my cup of tea."
The voice belongs to Thomas Pigor, a cabaret singer with a mischievous sense of timing. He and irreverent comic-book writer Walter Moers collaborated on the short video "Adolf — The
Source: AP
Dec 17, 2006
A bomber pilot from World War II says he was shot down while being escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, an account that supports a recent report by two historians that the famed black fighter group, contrary to legend, did lose at least a few bombers to fire from enemy aircraft.
Warren Ludlum, who lives in Old Tappan, N.J., said that his B-24 bomber was shot down by enemy planes over Linz, Austria, in July 1944, while he was being escorted by P-51 fighters piloted by the Tuskegee Airmen.
Source: NYT Book Review
Dec 17, 2006
Theorists, novelists and partisans of all stripes have written on war. The Book Review asked a range of writers to recommend titles they find particularly illuminating.
Source: Baltimore Sun
Dec 17, 2006
CHEVY CHASE, Md. At the height of the flu pandemic in 1918, William H. Sardo Jr. remembers the pine caskets stacked in the living room of his family's house, a funeral home in Washington, D.C.
The city had slowed to a near halt. Schools were closed. Church services were banned. The federal government limited its hours of operation. People were dying -- some who took ill in the morning were dead by night.
"That's how quickly it happened," said Sardo, 94, who
Source: NPR (audio)
Dec 17, 2006
President Bush has resisted comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, but this week, he started citing body counts as evidence of U.S. effectiveness in Baghdad and elsewhere. That raised a comparison with a PR tactic generally discredited after Vietnam.
Source: AFP at Yahoo News
Dec 16, 2006
Researchers examining what were thought to be Joan of Arc's remains are fast coming to the conclusion that they are no such thing, a forensic scientist leading the investigation said.
"The chances that we are dealing with the remains of the French heroine are diminishing," Philippe Charlier said after completing six months of research.
"The results do not allow us to give an answer with certainty. But my historical prejudices on relics that turn out to be
Source: AP
Dec 16, 2006
DALLAS -- An art collector has paid about $2.3 million for a $1,000 bill printed in 1890, according to the auction house that brokered the transaction between two anonymous private collectors.
"This $1,000 bill is one of only two known of its type; the other surviving example is in the museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco," Greg Rohan, president of Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, said Friday.
Rohan said that type of bank note is known
Source: AP
Dec 16, 2006
Latin America is finally owning up to its "dirty wars" -- the nightmarish campaigns of state-sponsored violence in which hundreds of thousands died or "disappeared." But the death of Chile's Gen. Augusto Pinochet shows the continent's leftist leaders of today must act fast to expose the truth while the masterminds of this savagery are still alive.
Momentum is growing behind new human rights investigations in Chile and other countries where dictators ruled with i
Source: AP
Dec 16, 2006
ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- They see themselves as patriots who shed blood for their freedom in a rebellion that foreshadowed the demise of the Soviet Union.
But the Kazakhs who took to the streets in mass protests in December 1986 were dismissed as drunkards and hooligans by the Communist authorities who crushed their uprising. Now, 20 years later, these middle-aged former rebels feel their sacrifice and struggle have never been recognized.
Instead, this weekend's annivers
Source: WaPo
Dec 16, 2006
For years, he was known only as the faithful servant. Through the long campaigns of the Revolutionary War, he toiled alongside his famous master. In a painting that has hung in the U.S. Capitol since 1899, he is the figure by the fire, roasting sweet potatoes.
Now Oscar Marion is anonymous no longer. He has had his name restored.
In a ceremony yesterday at the Capitol, Marion was recognized as the "African American Patriot" he always was. A proclamation signed
