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: AP
Dec 7, 2006
HONOLULU -- Sixty-five years ago, Takeshi Maeda and John Rauschkolb tried to kill each other at Pearl Harbor. This week, now both 85, they met face-to-face for the first time -- and shook hands.
The Japanese veteran gripped Rauschkolb's arm with his left hand and briefly hesitated, as if he was searching for the right words. Then he said, "I'm sorry."
On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy navigator Maeda guided his Kate bomber to Pearl Harbor and fired a t
Source: Times Online (UK)
Dec 7, 2006
The gas chambers of Auschwitz are to be rescued from decay under a modernisation plan that has sparked controversy over how to preserve the infamous death camp. “We have to preserve rather than reconstruct,” Piotr Cywinski, the new head of the Auschwitz museum, said. “We must take this step if we want to be able to see these gas chambers in 20 years’ time.”
It is a macabre dilemma. Should one give new life to a Nazi camp that has become synonymous with evil? Or should one let the c
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 7, 2006
A priceless collection of Afghan gold, thought to have been destroyed by the Taliban, resurfaced in Paris yesterday after mysteriously disappearing almost 20 years ago.
A hundred items from the so-called Hoard of Bactrian Gold – a trove of stunning artefacts from the first century AD – are now on public display in the Guimet museum near the Eiffel tower. The delicate masterpieces include granite or turquoise encrusted necklaces, goblets, cupids, dolphins, dragons, and a thumb-sized
Source: Guardian
Dec 7, 2006
The Owens Valley is unique in south-eastern California. A place of unsurpassed beauty nestling between the eastern Sierra Nevada and Inyo mountain ranges, there are no strip malls, no cities to speak of, none of the agriculture that dominates so much of the state.
Instead there is sage brush and dry, dusty earth. But this is no pristine wilderness. A hundred years ago, the Owens Valley had thriving agricultural communities that grew crops and raised livestock.
Then cam
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 7, 2006
Why are we asking this question now?
Tate galleries have launched a campaign to buy The Blue Rigi, a late-period watercolour by the great British artist JMW Turner. The work was sold at auction in June to an anonymous bidder who paid £5.8m - three times the expected price. The new owner was required under British laws to apply for an export licence to remove the work from UK.
The body responsible for considering the application, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of
Source: IraqCrisis newsletter
Dec 7, 2006
Drawing from a variety of specialists, this cutting-edge new journal studies Iraqi society and the forces that have brought it to its current juncture.
€ In a political culture that punishes deviation and rewards convention, the study of Iraq has increasingly become the pursuit of professional ideologues, mercenary scholars working in the service of government. These hired hands, de facto spokesmen for government policy, form the coterie of experts whom the mass media draw upon, com
Source: NYT
Dec 7, 2006
Donny George, who directed the National Museum in Baghdad and became a vocal advocate for
protecting Iraqi antiquities before leaving his post recently and fleeing to Syria, has been hired
as a visiting professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, the university announced. Mr.
George became the international face of the plight of ancient artifacts in Iraq, many of which
have been stolen or destroyed since the war began in 2003, but left his job in August after
telling colleagues
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Dec 7, 2006
After months of determined efforts to keep going amid Iraq's deepening violence and chaos, the National Library and Archive, the country's largest depository of books and documents, has closed.
Saad Bashir Eskander, the library's director-general, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday that he had reluctantly decided to shutter the institution on November 21 after several staff members were killed and the building had increasingly come under fire.
The i
Source: Reuters
Dec 7, 2006
QUEDLINBURG, Germany (Reuters) - The Christmas market in this medieval
German town could be off a page in a children's picture book.
The sugary smell of"Gluehwein" (mulled wine) wafts over wooden stalls
selling toys and gingerbread while children sway to seasonal songs.
Christmas lights illuminate the half-timbered houses around the square.
Last Saturday evening, three burly policemen stood under those fairy
lights clutching truncheons.
Their job: to stop neo-Nazi violence.
Source: Reuters
Dec 7, 2006
Escaped convict"Terrible" Tommy O'Connor can rest a
little easier.
The warped wooden gallows used more than a century ago to hang convicts in
Chicago, beginning with those condemned for the May 4, 1886, Haymarket
Square riot, has been bought at auction by Ripley's Believe It or Not
museums for $68,000, Mastro Auctions said on Thursday.
Between 1887 and 1927, 86 men were hanged from the gallows built to
execute those convicted of inciting the violence at the labor rally in
which
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2006
With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy.This will be their last visit to this watery grave to share stories, exchange smiles, find peace and salute their fallen friends. This, they say, will be their final farewell.
'This will be one to remember,' said Mal Middlesworth, president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Associ
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com
Dec 6, 2006
The proprietors of the site www.cafepress.com seem to think that the sale of t-shirts with Holocaust inscriptions is amusing.
The most popular t-shirt offered on the online shopping site is a shirt with the inscription "My grandparents went to Auschwitz and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" printed on the front.
Also printed on the shirt is the gruesome inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei", which was the inscription
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2006
The empty niches that once held Bamiyan’s colossal Buddhas now gape in the rock face — a silent cry at the terrible destruction wrought on this fabled valley and its 1,500-year-old treasures, once the largest standing Buddha statues in the world.
It was in March 2001, when the Taliban and their sponsors in Al Qaeda were at the zenith of their power in Afghanistan, that militiamen, acting on an edict to take down the “gods of the infidels,” laid explosives at the base and the shoulde
Source: AP
Dec 6, 2006
Lawmakers on Wednesday adopted a much-delayed law to open the archives of Bulgaria's former communist secret service, but also voted to keep a small portion of the files secret for "national security reasons."
The new law, adopted more than 17 years after the collapse of the communist regime, requires the publication of all files identifying public figures -- politicians, senior public officials, magistrates, clergymen and journalists -- as former communist secret agents.
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2006
“Is that just a bust?” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked. “Or is that a figment of his imagination?”
Mr. Bloomberg was regarding a ghostly head floating at the edge of a 154-year-old portrait of Hamilton Fish by Thomas Hicks that hangs outside the mayoral bullpen at City Hall. Though the head is transparent enough to be an apparition, it probably is just a bust.
The point is, you can’t tell.
Details, color and life in the painting have been hidden by pollut
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2006
Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is always a major event in the hometown of World War II Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Chester Nimitz. [Fredericksburg is 70 miles NNW of San Antonio.]
Thursday, the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is no different.
Veterans will lead a solemn tribute at the National Museum of the Pacific War, where a middle school choir will sing the National Anthem, a Pearl Harbor survivor will address the crowd and a 21-gun salute
Source: USA Today
Dec 6, 2006
Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.
The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said this week.
"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and
Source: http://www.wna-news.com
Dec 6, 2006
Iraqi national- WNA / Office of Dhi-Qar / report / Since the beginning of the war on Iraq and the
archeological sites in Iraq are subjected to theft, voices rise and demand an end to cross-border
smuggling operations.
The Administrator of archeological Inspectorate of Dhi-Qar Abdul Amir Al-Hamadani believes that
thieves threaten the Elimination of the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq, where the
stronghold of civilizations in the world.
But today, the cradle of humanity is in d
Source: IraqCrisis newsletter
Dec 6, 2006
Friends and Colleagues,
Numerous individuals have expressed concern over the status of the Iraq National Library and Archive since I reported on its closing a week ago Monday. I have conveyed some of these messages directly to Dr. Saad Eskander, Director-General of the library. He has stated that he and his staff deeply appreciate the moral support provided under such extremely difficult conditions.
Dr. Eskander was contemplating the issue of whether to reopen this pa
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Dec 6, 2006
A professor of public administration at Gazi University, in the Turkish capital of Ankara, has been suspended for his comments at a conference last month about the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Associated Press reported that the professor, Atilla Yayla, was suspended last week after he referred to Atatürk, who died in 1938, as “that man,” criticized the display of portraits of the leader in government offices, and said Atatürk’s dictatorial rule had led to “regression rath
