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: Independent (London)
Jan 1, 2006
A side of Winston Churchill's character rarely glimpsed " that of the vengeful, rather than magnanimous, war leader " has emerged in hitherto secret government documents. They reveal that he wanted to take the unprecedented step of sending Adolf Hitler to the electric chair, had he been captured, and was also content to see Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi starve to death during a hunger strike in 1943.
The Prime Minister, talking in a War Cabinet meeting in July
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jan 1, 2006
Presidential historian George Edwards of Texas A&M University, now temporarily at Oxford University in England, says Bush has suffered the same fifth-year fate as other presidents, misinterpreting the meaning of re-election and failing to recognize the downside of a second term: becoming a lame duck.
"Look at what happened to George W. Bush," Edwards said. "The first time he doesn't get a plurality. Then he gets 50.8 percent. He seemed to be very relieved.
Source: Wa Po
Jan 1, 2006
IMBER, England, Dec. 31 -- For the first 17 years of his life, before this tiny village died for England, Ken Mitchell spent every Sunday in St. Giles Church. Now 79, Mitchell looked up at the moss-covered steeple, secured behind a 10-foot British army fence and barbed wire, and struggled to remember life in the village that he and 150 other residents were forced to leave in December 1943.
"It's so confusing," Mitchell said as he rambled through the village, among the mudd
Source: Sunday Telegraph (UK)
Jan 1, 2006
IRELAND's president during World War II offered condolences to Nazi Germany's representative in Dublin over the death of Adolf Hitler, newly declassified government records show.Until now, historians had believed that Ireland's prime minister at the time, Eamon de Valera, was the only government leader to convey official condolences to Eduard Hempel, director of the German diplomatic corps in Ireland. De Valera's gesture -- unique among leaders of neutral nations
Source: NYT
Dec 31, 2005
Martin Luther King III, and his sister Bernice King are vowing to fight the sale of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta to the National Park Service. The two are in disagreement with their brother Dexter King and their sister Yolanda King, who voted in favor of pursuing the sale this month. Outside the center, Martin and Bernice King said their priority was preserving their father's legacy and their mother's dream. Their mother, Coretta Scott King, is recov
Source: Gazette (Montreal)
Dec 31, 2005
It's not surprising that outsiders and, indeed, many Quebecers, believe that Quebec City is solidly French. As Louisa Blair points out in the second volume of her aptly titled The Anglos: The Hidden Face of Quebec City, the English-speaking population began to lose its visibility long, long ago. "The interest of historians in anglophone Quebecers was deflected at Confederation, and by the 1940s had almost vanished completely."
Blair, whose own family has deep roots in Queb
Source: Daily Ireland
Dec 31, 2005
State papers released yesterday under the 30-year rule revealed that there was escalating tension between the Irish and British governments during 1975. Then on ceasefire, IRA negotiations with the British were viewed with concern by the Irish coalition government of the day led by Liam Cosgrave. The organisation’s ceasefire endured for most of 1975. Government ministers were suspicious about what the British Government was discussing and with whom. The papers revealed that suspicions increased
Source: Romanesko
Dec 30, 2005
That's what National Security Archive founder and former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong tells Bob Garfield.From the transcript:
BOB GARFIELD: How much does the history of the Times' relationship with the government affect its behavior and the Bush Administration's in this particular case?
SCOTT ARMSTRONG: Historically they have had the willingness to suppress information. The Bay of Pigs was something that they soft-pedaled, lowered their story
Source: Wa Po
Dec 30, 2005
Invading Canada won't be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn't have a plan.
The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:First,
Source: NYT
Dec 30, 2005
Turkish prosecutors decided Thursday not to file charges against the country's best-known novelist for allegedly denigrating Turkey's armed forces, said lawyers who had sought to bring him to trial. But the writer still faces trial on existing charges that he insulted "Turkishness" by talking about violence against Kurds and genocide against Armenians.
Nationalist lawyers had petitioned prosecutors to file new criminal charges against the novelist, Orhan Pamuk, over a rep
Source: USA Today
Dec 30, 2005
Loyalty and continuity have marked the Bush White House since early on. After two wars, devastating strikes by terrorists and hurricanes, a bruising re-election and countless legislative battles, President Bush's team is continuing the trend — defying history and shakeup rumors to remain almost entirely intact five years in."They've been there long enough to qualify for the Medicare prescription drug benefit," quipped Paul Light, a professor of organizational studi
Source: Washington Times
Dec 30, 2005
A Russian historian claims the Kremlin archive holds documents proving Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was poisoned.
Nikolay Dobryukha, described as a historian and publicist, said documents of medical examinations of Stalin disprove the official cause of death as a cerebral hemorrhage caused by hypertension and arteriosclerosis, Pravda reported on its Web site. Stalin died March 5, 1953, at age 73 after a dinner with several other Soviet officials, including Interi
Source: BBC News
Dec 30, 2005
In November 2003 the British government decided to pay £10,000 ($17,000) to each of its soldiers who were interned in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps during World War II.
Among those who were eligible were the Gurkhas of Nepal, who fought for Britain. But the team sent to Kathmandu to discover which Gurkhas were eligible faced an almost insuperable task of identifying who had served in the war. But now that has changed. The sad tale of the Gurkhas wa
Source: scotsman.com
Dec 30, 2005
SECRET documents detailing the government's emergency response to a nuclear attack have revealed officials had no plans for a mass civilian evacuation - but a strategy was in place for saving treasured works of art.
According to the 30-year-old files - described by historians as the "most secret" to be released by the National Archive at Kew to date - Russia had so many nuclear warheads trained on Britain that around 12 million citizens would have been wiped out.
Source: NYT
Dec 29, 2005
An immigration judge on Wednesday ordered John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard, deported to his native Ukraine, but the 30-year legal battle still may not be over. Mr. Demjanjuk, 85, has been fighting to stay in this country since the 1970's.
The United States first tried to deport him in 1977. Mistakenly suspected of being a guard known as Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka concentration camp, he was
Source: Boston Globe
Dec 29, 2005
The head of policy studies at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth wants the university to suspend a student who made up a story about being grilled by federal antiterrorism agents over a library book and to reprimand faculty members who spread the tale.
Following the student's admission Friday that it was a hoax, Clyde Barrow, chairman of the policy studies department, said UMass should punish the student and faculty members, in particular two history professors who repeate
Source: CNN
Dec 29, 2005
DURHAM, North Carolina (AP) -- The family ties of nearly 1,000 slaves from a once-sprawling plantation are being pieced together with the help of their owners' records and their descendants.
Jennifer Farley, director of the Stagville state historic site, a plantation that once spanned about 47.5 square miles across parts of North Carolina's Durham, Orange, Wake and Granville counties, restarted the project two years ago, The News & Observer newspaper reported Thursday.
Source: Catholic Online
Dec 29, 2005
A Catholic saint and martyr has been nominated as one of the nastiest villains in British history by a BBC publication, while in early November an influential Jesuit magazine praised him as a defender of church rights against the state.
St. Thomas Becket, a 12th-century archbishop of Canterbury, was among 10 "worst Britons" of the last millennium, selected by a group of British historians in the BBC compilation. The saint, whose feast is celebrated Dec. 29, was chosen by J
Source: OregonLive
Dec 29, 2005
Washington's lieutenant governor has been thinking lately about a lynching of a 14-year-old boy 120 years ago in Canada that nearly sparked a cross-border race war.
In 1884, a vigilante mob of more than 100 men from Washington Territory rode into Canada, abducted an Indian boy of the Sto:lo tribe and hanged him from a tree. The boy, Louie Sam, had been accused of killing a shopkeeper in Nooksack, in what is now Whatcom County.Now, more than a century later, Wash
Source: AP
Dec 29, 2005
Damp seeps through rotting beams and mildew-blackened walls. Roofs sag, balconies crack and shutters dangle from corroded hinges.
Bit by bit, Zanzibar's fabled Stone Town is crumbling. Every year, a few more buildings collapse, leaving yawning gaps in the narrow, winding alleys lined with Arab palaces, Persian baths, British colonial offices, Indian shops and one-time slave chambers.
Relentless sun, rain, wind and neglect have taken a toll on one of the world's cultural
