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: Wa Po
Sep 21, 2006
Henrietta "Etty" Allen said Wednesday that she concealed her upbringing as a Jew in North Africa from her children, including Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), until a conversation across the dining room table in late August.
She said Allen asked her directly about his Jewish heritage when he was in Los Angeles for a fundraiser. "We sat across the table and he said, 'Mom, there's a rumor that Pop-pop and Mom-mom were Jewish and so were you,' " she recalled, a day after
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2006
Muslims angry about Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks on Islam are not the only ones talking about an apology.
“What should he apologize for?” asked Daniele Corbetta, 43, a psychologist in Rome. “There is freedom of speech, and what he said is objectively true.”
There was, without doubt, a low-grade seething where Mr. Corbetta stood, with thousands of pilgrims and tourists — probably few of them Muslims — in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday, as the pope again addressed a speec
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2006
Thirty years after a Chilean-organized hit squad assassinated former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American colleague on the streets of Washington, investigators here are drawing closer to implicating this country’s former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in the killings.
But they say their efforts are being hindered by a parallel investigation in the United States that has been stalled since President Bush took office and that is withholding potentially important documen
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2006
If the fossil Lucy, the most famous woman from out of the deep human past, had a child, it might have looked a lot like the bundle of skull and bones uncovered by scientists digging in the badlands of Ethiopia.
The paleontologists who are announcing the discovery in the journal Nature today said the 3.3-million-year-old fossils were of the earliest well-preserved child ever found in the human lineage. It was estimated to be about 3 years old at death, probably female and a member of
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2006
After securing the Liberal Democratic Party’s presidency on Wednesday, Shinzo Abe will become Japan’s first prime minister born after World War II, with a clear eye toward re-examining the postwar era....
"By entrusting our national security to another country and putting a priority on economic development, we were indeed able to make great material gains,” Mr. Abe wrote of the postwar era in his campaign book, “Toward a Beautiful Country.” “But what we lost spiritually — that
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2006
Over the objections of the administration and Jewish groups that boycotted the event, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the man who has become the defiant face of Iran, squared off with the nation’s foreign policy establishment, parrying questions for an hour and three-quarters with two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations, then ending the evening by asking whether they were simply shills for the Bush administration.
Never raising his voice and thanking each questioner with a tone that
Source: David W. Jacobs in the newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
Sep 21, 2006
An uproar is raging in posh Greenwich about the display of a large mural depicting the exploits of Israel Putnam in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution. A triptych, 9 feet by 20 feet, the mural includes a scene in which Old Put, musket in hand, stares down a snarling wolf. Elsewhere, captured by Indians, he is stripped to the waist and tied to a stake with flames leaping around him. The mural was painted in 1935 by a local artist, James Daugherty, as part of a WPA program for artist
Source: David W. Jacobs in the newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
Sep 21, 2006
When Fraunces Tavern launched an exhibit, "Fighting for Freedom, Black Patriots and Loyalists," they were excited to receive an offer of a portrait of a black American sailor. The offer came from a retired urologist, Dr. Alexander McBurney, who had bought the painting in 1975 when bicentennial enthusiasm was running high. The sailor is standing in front of an American ship, wearing a blue officers' coat and a shirt open to his waist. McBurney decided to get the painting cleaned up for
Source: Guardian
Sep 20, 2006
A satirical cartoon about Hitler, where he sits on the toilet complaining about Churchill, is causing controversy in Germany.
Illustrator Walter Moers is famous for his comic books depicting the dictator as a frustrated little man who throws fits every time the Jews are mentioned. But with the release of the short film "Der Bonker", Germans seem to feel he has gone too far.
Despite thousands of Moers fans making the clip one of this week's top internet downloads, ma
Source: Press Release -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Sep 20, 2006
Four hundred and fifty cartoonists and comic book creators from around the world have signed a petition urging a Polish museum to return eight portraits to the elderly California artist who painted them in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. The petition is the latest development in an ongoing international conflict over the paintings.
Mrs. Dina Babbitt, 83, now of Fenton, CA, was deported to Auschwitz as a teenager in 1943, but her life was spared after the war criminal Dr. Josef Men
Source: Press Release-- Yale University
Sep 20, 2006
New Haven, Conn. — Yale has just established the first university-based institute in North America dedicated to the study of antisemitism.
The new center, the Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, will be directed by Charles Small and based at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), 77 Prospect St.
“As an institute that has a long-standing commitment to the scholarly exploration of inter-group conflict, ISPS takes special pri
Source: Press Release--National Security Archive
Sep 20, 2006
Washington, DC, September 20, 2006 - On the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, the National Security Archive today called on the U.S. government to release all documents relating to the role of General Augusto Pinochet in the car bombing that brought terrorism to the capital city of the United States on September 21, 1976.Hundreds of documents implicating Pinochet in author
Source: AP
Sep 20, 2006
Scientists have discovered a remarkably complete skeleton of a 3-year-old female from the ape-man species represented by "Lucy."
The discovery should fuel a contentious debate about whether this species, which walked upright, also climbed and moved through trees easily like an ape.
The remains are 3.3 million years old, making them the oldest known skeleton of such a youthful human ancestor.
"It's pretty unbelievable" to find such a comp
Source: Sentinel
Sep 20, 2006
Depending on the availability of financial resources and the approval of the National Park Service, as many as 15 archeologists may converge upon Roanoke Island next month, in hopes of finally finding the exact sites of the Sir Walter Raleigh colonies.
Excavations will be led by Eric Klingelhofer, of Macon, Ga., and Nick Lucetti, of Jamestown, Va., co-vice presidents of the First Colony Foundation.
Phil Evans, Foundation president, of Durham, said the objectives are to
Source: The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
Sep 20, 2006
LONG before the incessant trill of mobile phones and the modern addiction to 24-hour e-mail, Britain's entire telecommunications network was contained in a single, four-page directory of only 248 names, and not a single number. Yet the country's slimmest telephone book, first issued on Jan 15 1880 and available on the internet with its descendents today, not only offers a direct line through history to "Alexander Bell & Co'' but now represents a breakthrough for family historians.
Source: The Washington Post
Sep 20, 2006
What do the struggles of 15th-century Venice have to do with America's troubles in Iraq? A lot, in the view of a group of old-guard Washington conservatives who sponsored a conference last week to discuss the lessons for today of La Serenissima, as the "serene republic" of Venice was known.
The sponsors of the conference, about whom more later, began with a question: How did the Venetians maintain their far-flung Mediterranean empire and also prosper as a free republic for
Source: Bruce Craig in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Sep 20, 2006
Each year we look forward to reporting on the historians and humanists who have been honored with one of the coveted MacArthur Awards a $500,000 prize that each fellow receives courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This year, however, we are sorry to report that of the twenty-five named fellows (of which twelve are academics), not one is an historian.
Each year, the MacArthur Foundation awards an unrestricted fellowship to talented individuals who have sho
Source: BBC
Sep 19, 2006
Mikhail Gorbachev's battle to push through far-reaching reforms in the Soviet Union is revealed in notes from key Communist Party meetings.
The book "Inside the Communist Party Central Committee Politburo" includes heated discussions about the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It covers the period from 1985, when Mr Gorbachev launched the perestroika reforms, to the USSR's fall in 1991.
The notes were made by Gorbachev aides on their own initiat
Source: UNESCO
Sep 19, 2006
Experts* sent to Lebanon by UNESCO to assess the state of the country's cultural heritage sites have called for urgent measures to clean up the oil spill from the World Heritage edifices along the Byblos shore line. However, they found that major components of Lebanon's cultural heritage had been spared by the recent conflict. The experts' findings were presented at a press conference at UNESCO this morning by the Organization's Assistant Director-General for Culture, Françoise Rivière, and Moun
Source: ABC Scince Online (Australia)
Sep 19, 2006
Australia is to be part of a major three-nation archaeological survey of the Gallipoli battlefield, researchers say.
Associate Professor Chris Mackie from the University of Melbourne says the survey will combine conventional mapping with electromagnetic surveying to produce the most comprehensive historical and archaeological study ever conducted there.
"Most of the attention in the post-war period has been on the cemeteries," he says about studies of Turkey's
