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: Baltimore Sun
Dec 21, 2005
Sylvia Cyrus-Albritton isn't going to hold it against actor Morgan Freeman for slamming the need for Black History Month.
She isn't mad that the Oscar winner said on CBS' 60 Minutes that it's "ridiculous" to relegate one month to black history and that the practice should be abolished.
But as director of the group founded by the father of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, Cyrus-Albritton says she has an important message for Freeman: "We're not ther
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 21, 2005
Several studies this year — some disputed — have suggested a political tilt (toward Democrats) among professors. Now a new study is being released saying that social science professors are overwhelmingly Democratic, that Democratic professors in those disciplines are more homogeneous in their thinking than are Republicans, and that Republican scholars are more likely than Democrats in the field to end up working outside of academe.The study will appear in the jou
Source: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Dec 21, 2005
The year-end report, Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2005, published by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, found that in many Arab and Muslim countries, Holocaust-denial continued to enjoy official sponsorship in 2005. The regimes in Egypt, Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria promoted Holocaust-denial or defended Holocaust-deniers. The continued promotion of Holocaust-denial by Egyptian government-controlled publications was particularly alarmin
Source: WaPo
Dec 21, 2005
For a quarter-century, Denis Donaldson moved among the elite of Northern Ireland's republican movement.
A small man with glasses and thinning hair, he looked more like a bureaucrat than a guerrilla fighter. But his revolutionary credentials were impeccable, starting with a 1971 conviction for plotting to blow up British government buildings and a four-year stint in the infamous Maze prison. A photo from that time shows him with his arm draped over the shoulder of cellmate Bobby Sand
Source: Reuters
Dec 21, 2005
Sweden launched a probe on Wednesday to understand how eugenics, a theory on improving the human race used by Nazi Germany to justify the Holocaust, became broadly accepted in the Nordic state in the early 20th century.
Sweden is now known for its strong social welfare system and outspoken advocacy for human rights, but in the past it has experimented with social engineering. This led to abuses such as the forcible sterilization of around 60,000 women in 1936-76.
Source: AP
Dec 21, 2005
Few people ever knew, but the murky medieval alleyways of this Atlantic port city once provided cover for a persecuted minority that risked being burnt at the stake.
In the 16th century, an unremarkable thick-walled granite house that still stands in a row of narrow, small-roomed buildings along a cobbled street held a dangerous secret. At the back of the house, steep steps lead down to a warren of alleys ideal for conspiratorial comings and goings that helped keep an outlawed relig
Source: Baltic Times (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)
Dec 21, 2005
Local politicians have pilloried a new documentary film, “Baltic Nazism,” covering the Nazi period in the Baltic states. They have gone so far as to appeal to the Russian Embassy and the local prosecutor in an effort to stop the film’s premiere in January, just days after the documentary was shown to local journalists.
The documentary has drawn criticism because it reportedly juxtaposes video material from World War II with recent minority-related demonstrations in the country.
Source: Australian
Dec 21, 2005
A FILM about two cowboys who ride horses, drive pick-up trucks and fall in love with each other has delighted Hollywood and sent a shiver of horror through America's religious heartland.
But real-life gay cowboys and Wild West historians say that the plot of Brokeback Mountain -- an Oscar favourite after topping the Golden Globes nominations -- is nothing new. And in a claim that is likely to outrage many rural conservatives, they say that homosexuality wa
Source: scotsman.com
Dec 20, 2005
THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior. According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human
Source: TruthOut
Dec 20, 2005
This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President's failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of Congress and more than 500,000 Americans in July of this year asking him whether the assertions set forth in the Downing Street Minutes were accurate. Mr. Conyers asked staff, by year end 2005, to review the available information concerning possible
Source: Times Online (UK)
Dec 20, 2005
RECENTLY unearthed remains of the Temple of Jupiter, the oldest stone building in Rome, are to be opened to the public this week in a move that the Mayor says will bring Ancient Rome alive.
A new architect-designed space, covered in glass, will also feature the bronze equestrian statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius with his arm outstretched — the most celebrated statue in the Ancient world — and a gigantic head of the Emperor Constantine. Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome, said
Source: NYT
Dec 20, 2005
The Rabula Gospels, the first dated Christian manuscript, has been shown at an academic conference in Florence to have been repainted. Pigment tests and scientific analyses of the illustrated manuscript have revealed that the illustrations of A.D. 586 were repainted after it entered the Medicis' Laurentian Library in the 16th century, where it remains today. The oversized book, originally produced in a Syrian monastery, includes the first dated pictorial representation of th
Source: NYT
Dec 20, 2005
Since the 4,300-year-old tomb was discovered outside Cairo in 1964, Egyptologists have known the names of the two men buried there -Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep- and their occupation, manicurists to the king. But why were they embracing?
Over the years, the tomb's wall art has been subjected to learned analysis, inspiring considerable speculation. One interpretation is that the two men are brothers, probably identical twins, and this may be the earliest known depiction of twins. Anot
Source: NYT
Dec 20, 2005
The morning after the ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was elected president in June, he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of the father of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an act that appears to have foreshadowed exactly how the president-elect planned to lead his country.
"The path of the imam is the absolute path of the Islamic republic," Mr. Ahmadinejad said then. "He was the founder of the revolution. He is the reference of
Source: Peoples Daily (China)
Dec 20, 2005
The construction of the Roman Limes was quite possibly influenced by the concept of the Great Wall in China, though the two great buildings of the world are far away from each other, said archaeologists and historians.
Although there is no evidence that the two constructions had any direct connections, indirect influence from the Great Wall on the Roman Limes is certain, said Visy Zsolt, a professor with the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Pecs in
Source: Reuters
Dec 20, 2005
A group including Chinese and South Koreans sued a Japanese regional government on Tuesday over a new school textbook they say whitewashes Japan's militaristic past, the Kyodo news agency reported.
Japan approved a new edition of 'The New History Textbook' in April, drawing protests from China and South Korea. The Education Ministry first approved the book, written by nationalist scholars for junior high schools, in 2001 in the face of strong protests from Japan
Source: Japan Focus
Dec 20, 2005
The Nanjing Massacre remains a touchstone of China-Japan conflict nearly seven decades after the event. Now Chinese plans to honor John Rabe, a Germany citizen in Nanjing, for his efforts to protect Chinese citizens from slaughter have inflamed tensions with Japan over war and rare memory. The Chinese plan offers a rare example in the annals of warfare in general, and China in particular, of recognizing in a public and prominent way the achievements of a foreign national in a world that is domin
Source: Independent (London)
Dec 20, 2005
For many years, authors, naval historians and tour guides have believed that Lord Nelson went into battle at Trafalgar accompanied by a fearless pet cat called Tiddles. An appearance on breakfast television earlier this month has led to the shock discovery that Nelson's cat was, in fact, a hoax perpetrated 15 years ago by a National Trust employee called Guy Evans. Stephen Fry uncovered the scam after mentioning Tiddles during a BBC interview to plug the DVD of his qui
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Dec 20, 2005
MOVE over Charles Darwin and Elizabeth Fry. A leading historian wants to see a black face on a banknote to demonstrate the changing social and ethnic composition of Britain.
Mary Seacole, the nurse who served in the Crimea, Olaudah Equino, an 18th century anti-slavery writer, or Dadabhai Naoroji, the first South Asian MP who sat for Finsbury in the 1890s, have all been suggested as candidates. Linda Colley, the author of several books on British identity,
Source: Boston Globe
Dec 20, 2005
On the morning of April 9, 1952, American flags flew above 88 steel mills across the country, signaling a change in management. The president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, had seized control of the mills, claiming that the intransigence of the private owners would lead to a strike that would cripple US efforts to win the Korean War.''The president has the power to keep the country from going to hell," Truman told his staff, according to David McCull
