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: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jul 18, 2006
The 1968 Orangeburg Massacre of civil-rights demonstrators at a South Carolina college, a tragedy in its day as momentous as were the Kent State shootings two years later, has faded into obscurity. But not for the governor of South Carolina at the time, Robert E. McNair.
In a new biography, Mr. McNair, now 83, takes full responsibility for decisions that led to the shooting deaths of three black students and the wounding of 27 at South Carolina State College, in Orangeburg, S.C., on
Source: The Washington Post
Jul 18, 2006
The once-secret shelter built to house members of Congress in the event of a nuclear attack reopens to tourists after a two-year renovation, but the $15 million monument to the Cold War still has some secrets.
About 70 percent of the 113,000-square-foot bunker, deep under the posh Greenbrier resort, will become a secure repository for data and documents. "It's being converted from people storage to data storage," said Linda Walls, manager of the Greenbrier's bunker tours.
Source: USA Today
Jul 18, 2006
Meet Kathleen McGowan, novelist and self-proclaimed descendant of a union between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. McGowan, who says she is from the "sacred bloodline" Brown made famous in his mega-selling novel, says she's ready to cope with people who think she's crazy or a heretic.
But among believers are her powerful literary agent and the editors at New York publisher Simon & Schuster, who are throwing their weight behind her autobiographical religious thriller The Expec
Source: The South China Morning Post
Jul 18, 2006
A compulsory undergraduate course on ethnic relations started yesterday amid charges it is racist and will drive the races apart instead of bringing them together. Critics said this was because the course textbook blames minority Chinese and Indians for race riots.
It also glosses over their contribution to nation building and treats the ruling National Front as Malaysia's saviour. Opposition leaders are demanding the government withdraw the university course textbook, which was wri
Source: AP
Jul 17, 2006
-- A brief history of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict:
Because Israel and Lebanon have never signed a peace accord, the countries remain officially in a state of war that has existed since 1948 when Lebanon joined other Arab nations against the newly formed Jewish state.
The two countries have been bound by an armistice signed in 1949, which regulates the presence of military forces in southern Lebanon.
With a large Christian minority in an overwhelmingly Mus
Source: Reuters
Jul 17, 2006
Chile's Supreme Court on Monday reopened the first human rights case brought against 90-year-old former dictator Augusto Pinochet, four years after it was thrown out because of his dementia.
Pinochet led a 17-year dictatorship in Chile after a 1973 coup and more than 3,000 people died in political violence and tens of thousands were detained and tortured during the regime.
The so-called Caravan of Death case involved a tour of Chile by army officers after the 1973 coup
Source: NYT
Jul 17, 2006
Thousands gathered in Reading, Pa., to relive an era. [Click on the Source link above to watch video.]
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Jul 16, 2006
Patterson , Stanislaus County -- As nearby hillsides were covered with orange flames and thick black smoke, two archaeologists stared with wonder -- not up at the raging forest fire but down at three prehistoric stone grinding tools they had just discovered on the ground.
"Look at these artifacts -- they are as well preserved as anything you could ever find," archaeologist Richard Jenkins said as he examined a mortar stone with a perfectly rounded indentation. "This w
Source: LAT
Jul 16, 2006
Sutter's gold brought Henry Hamilton to California in 1849, and the black
gold of printer's ink lured him to Los Angeles.
Pro-slavery and hot-tempered, he became an outspoken critic of President
Lincoln. He was a Southern sympathizer whose weapon of choice was the city's
first newspaper, the Los Angeles Star.
Armed with his printing press and a vision of a pure white society, Hamilton
aimed to divide California into two states, one slave and one free.
During the Civil W
Source: Wa Po
Jul 16, 2006
First, it was a slave port. Later, it was a thriving center of black life. Today, it's a virtually all-white enclave. Why?
It was a shocking discovery . Flipping through files at the local library a few months ago for a school project, my 16-year-old son chanced upon the deeds of the house in which we live. He already knew it was one of the oldest in Georgetown; now he learned that in 1807, it was owned by a Thomas Turner and valued at $3,500. But it was the valuation of this other
Source: Meet the Press
Jul 16, 2006
Newt Gingrich:
... I mean, this is absolutely a question of the survival of Israel, but it’s also a question of what is really a world war. Look what you’ve been covering: North Korea firing missiles. We say there’ll be consequences, there are none. The North Koreans fire seven missiles on our Fourth of July; bombs going off in Mumbai, India; a war in Afghanistan with sanctuaries in Pakistan. As I said a minute ago, the, the Iran/Syria/Hamas/Hezbollah alliance. A war in Iraq funded
Source: Japan Times
Jul 15, 2006
V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls, is putting the "comfort women's" crusade for reparations in its spotlight for 2006. As part of the activities, in the summer of 2006 the Global Campaign will include celebrity benefit performances of "The Vagina Monologues" in Seoul and Tokyo, with the voices of comfort women in a monologue written by playwright and V-Day founder Eve Ensler. The organization's goal is to draw international attention and suppo
Source: Boston Globe
Jul 15, 2006
A group of researchers will travel from Connecticut to North Carolina this week to map the wreck of the USS Monitor, the famed Civil War gunboat that sank in a storm during the Civil War.
The mapping project, parts of which will be broadcast live at the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium, starts Monday in the waters off Cape Hatteras, N.C.
It is expected to yield some of the most comprehensive information to date on the wreck, which is upside down on the ocean floor
Source: NYT
Jul 15, 2006
The Supreme Court’s decision last month striking down the administration’s plans to try detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was widely hailed as a sweeping triumph for judicial supremacy, individual liberty and international law. In its most striking holding, the court said that a provision of the Geneva Conventions concerning the humane treatment of prisoners applied to all aspects of the conflict with Al Qaeda.
But the decision included an escape clause. “Nothing prevents the
Source: NYT
Jul 15, 2006
A museum portraying day-to-day life in Communist East Germany is to open in Berlin today. The privately financed Museum for Culture in the German Democratic Republic shows many authentic objects and their function, documenting a way of life that disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. For example, visitors can sit in a Trabant car, look at a standard living room and experience secret-police surveillance.
Source: NYT
Jul 15, 2006
A Mississippi judge refused today to let Edgar Ray Killen out of prison while he appealed his conviction in the killing of three civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.
Mr. Killen’s manslaughter conviction in June 2005 was hailed as a long-awaited victory for the civil rights movement and a redemption for the small town of Philadelphia, Miss., outside of which the killings occurred. Mr. Killen was sentenced to 60 years in prison for organizing the death of James Earl Chan
Source: Prospect Magazine
Jul 15, 2006
Communism was a humour-producing machine. Its economic theories and system of repression created inherently funny situations. There were jokes under fascism and the Nazis too, but those systems did not create an absurd, laugh-a-minute reality like communism.
Communist jokes were a way to criticise and outmanoeuvre the system, but they were also something more than this. They comprised a secret language between citizens—membership of a club to which the government was not invited (or
Source: History Today
Jul 14, 2006
Carlo Broschi, the famed castrato and favourite of Handel, has been exhumed by historians and scientists studying the anatomical effects of castration. Castrated men have held a quasi mythical status throughout history from the eunuch priests of the Greek Magna Mater cult to the celebrated opera singers of 18th century Europe.
Outside of conventional society they have inspired reactions as extreme as disgust and veneration; the Catholic Church banned the proceedure on pain of excom
Source: BreakingNews.ie
Jul 14, 2006
A mortar bomb from the Second World War was found today in the archaeological ruins of Pompeii, Italy, police officials said.
The bomb was discovered in the rubble of the Surgeon’s House, the archaeological site next to the Roman Basilica, the ANSA news agency said.
Police from Pompeii secured the area as tourists looked on until the bomb squad from Naples arrived.
Police said the public was never in any danger.
Source: LAT
Jul 14, 2006
HADLEY TOWNSHIP, Ill. — Sandra McWorter knelt on the soil and gingerly swept through the dirt with a tiny brush to find hints of her heritage.
The clues hidden beneath the wild grasses and rolling hills could give McWorter insight into what life was like for her pioneer ancestors in the Land of Lincoln. "Free Frank" McWorter bought his freedom from slavery and came here in 1831 to build New Philadelphia — the first town in the U.S. legally settled, platted and surveyed by
