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: NYT
Dec 8, 2005
Israeli officials braced for the worst when they heard that Steven Spielberg was tackling Middle East violence in "Munich," his forthcoming thriller about the massacre at the 1972 Olympics and the retaliatory assassinations of Palestinian terrorists.
But Israel's first official response to the movie, which is set to open in the United States on Dec. 23, came with a shrug: It's not so great for Israel, but so what?It's a Hollywood movie,&quo
Source: AP
Dec 8, 2005
Cold, damp barrack walls, weathered from years of neglect, stand as a reminder of the detainment center that housed thousands of Chinese during the early 1900s on this mountainous island in the middle of San Francisco Bay.
Beneath layers of chipping gray paint, however, is a nearly forgotten piece of the human story - one of longing, disappointment, fear and rage, etched as poems into the decaying wood panels by immigrants held for weeks or months during enforcement of Chinese exclu
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 8, 2005
A choice by a self-proclaimed student supporter of some Nazi ideas to wear a “Blood & Honour” armband both on and off the Bellarmine University campus this semester has led to fierce debate over freedom of expression at the Roman Catholic institution in Louisville. Administrators have created a committee to study what to do, while professors and students cope with what some are calling blatant intimidation left unchecked — and that others see as free expression.
Source: NYT
Dec 8, 2005
Three weeks after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority started digging a subway tunnel under Battery Park, the project hit a wall. A really old wall. Possibly the oldest wall still standing in Manhattan.
It was a 45-foot-long section of a stone wall that archaeologists believe is a remnant of the original battery that protected the Colonial settlement at the southern tip of the island. Depending on which archaeologist you ask, it was built in the 1760's or as long ago as the la
Source: NYT
Dec 8, 2005
Vice Adm. Frederick L. Ashworth, a Navy weapons specialist who was the crewman in control of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II's climactic strike, died Saturday at a hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 93 and lived in Santa Fe, N.M. On the morning of Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the B-29 Superfortress named the Bockscar dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing and wounding tens of t
Source: Reuters
Dec 8, 2005
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday expressed doubt that the Holocaust occurred and suggested Israel be moved to Europe.
His comments, reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency from a news conference he gave in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca, follow his call in October for Israel to be "wiped off the map", which sparked widespread international condemnation."Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed m
Source: Chicago Tribune
Dec 8, 2005
At first, librarian Erik Kraft thought the bulky books on top of a University of Illinois study table were only out of place.
But after opening the dusty, bound volumes Tuesday night, he realized they were the missing editions of a rare sports newspaper credited with first reporting the 1919 White Sox gambling scandal. With his find, Kraft became a library hero and the Case of the Missing Collyer's Eye was solved--sort of. It remains unclear how the large volume
Source: Boston Globe
Dec 8, 2005
Iran's hard-liner president, who has called for Israel's destruction, said Thursday that the Jewish state should be moved to Europe if the West wants to make up for the Holocaust.Israeli officials condemned the remarks as "outrageous and even racist."
Speaking to reporters at an Islamic summit in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implied that European countries backed the founding of Israel in the Middle East in 1948 out of guilt ov
Source: Email sent to HNN
Dec 8, 2005
Foreign graduate assistants, including many studying history, have signed a petition to NYU President John Sexton to protest the university's decision to cut off stipends to students participating in the nearly month-long strike. They say their visas will be in jeopardy if they lose their teaching jobs.PETITION
John Sexton
President
New York University
This is in reply to your letter of November 28, 2005, stipulating the deadline of De
Source: Reuters
Dec 7, 2005
Japan should reflect on the pain it caused China and South Korea in the past, but history should not be made into an obstacle to future ties, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said on Wednesday.
"I think it's necessary to view seriously the pain that we have inflicted on the people of South Korea and China in the past and Japan must also always have a feeling of reflection and consideration as a neighbour," Aso said in a speech.He urged Ch
Source: CNN
Dec 7, 2005
About 2,000 sailors, veterans, community leaders and guests bowed their heads Wednesday in remembrance of the attack on Pearl Harbor that hurled the U.S. into World War II 64 years ago.
Four F-15s flown by the Hawaii Air National Guard roared above the bay, including one jet that veered off from the group to symbolize the 2,390 people killed. The USS Chaffee passed by the sunken USS Arizona, where more than 900 sailors remain entombed.
The crowd, which included about 20
Source: Sun-Sentinel (FL)
Dec 7, 2005
Remember Pearl Harbor? WWII vets worry that it is just a history lesson
These days, few cast their minds back to Pearl Harbor, and some people under 30 are hard pressed to recite what happened on that "Day of Infamy" exactly 64 years ago.
"I have no idea whatsoever," said Kristina Krakehl, 23, of Boca Raton.It's not really that significant," Brinsley Elliott, 20, of Fort Lauderdale, said after being told why Dec.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
Dec 7, 2005
Telling the story of Pearl Harbor can be a challenging task when the classroom has both American and Japanese students.
"It's good they're not judging each other on something their grandparents did years ago, but we do want them to know what happened," said Mary K. O'Donnell, a high school social studies teacher in the Hempfield Area School District (Pittburgh). The district has dozens of Japanese students whose parents work at nearby companies, including the Sony Corp. p
Source: NYT
Dec 7, 2005
Almost everyone has seen the famous study in black and white, one of those rare photographs that entered the collective memory as a snapshot not of a moment but of an era and maybe something more. It's now on almost any bus in New York City and many of its suburbs, an invitation not just to remember but to reflect.
At the front of a bus, previously reserved for white riders, is Rosa Parks, face turned to the window to her left, seemingly lost in thought as she rides through Montgome
Source: NYT
Dec 7, 2005
ANGEL ISLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - It was known, simply, as "the wooden building." For 30 years, from 1910 to 1940, the barren walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station gave mute testimony to the experiences of roughly 175,000 Chinese immigrants who were detained and exhaustively interrogated on this island in San Francisco Bay, the West Coast's insidious version of Ellis Island.
On Thursday, this little-spoken-about place, the physical embodiment of the Chinese Exclusion
Source: Chicago Tribune
Dec 7, 2005
About five years ago, William Walsh welcomed into his office a man who had a strange mystery to unravel. The man opened a metal box, laid out a swath of green felt and placed a few bone fragments on the fabric.
They were pieces of a skull that had surrounded one of the greatest musical minds of all time, Ludwig van Beethoven's. At least, that's what the visitor said.
On Tuesday morning, Walsh stood at a lectern at Argonne National Laboratory, near Darien, and verified w
Source: Netscape News
Dec 7, 2005
The US Navy man in charge of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Nagasaki at the end of World War II has died of organ failure at the age of 93, a family spokesman announced.
Retired vice admiral Frederick Ashworth, who served as weaponeer aboard a B-29 bomber dubbed "Bockscar" and responsible for the technical performance of the 4.5-ton bomb known as "Fat Man," passed away in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday afternoon, following a series of unsuccessful
Source: BAJR Website
Dec 7, 2005
Cultural organizations have issued the following statement:
"We, the undersigned cultural organizations, are deeply concerned about the safety of Susanne Osthoff and her escort, and we appeal for Susanne’s swift release so that she may be reunited with her family. An archaeologist and humanitarian aid worker, Susanne has worked tirelessly for many years to aid the Iraqi people and to preserve the cultural treasures of Iraq for all Iraqis. She is truly a friend to all the people
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2005
Mel Gibson, whose "The Passion of the Christ" was assailed by critics as an anti-Semitic passion play - and whose father has been on record as a Holocaust denier - has a new project under way: a nonfiction miniseries about the Holocaust.
Mr. Gibson's television production company is developing a four-hour miniseries for ABC based on the self-published memoir of Flory A. Van Beek, a Dutch Jew whose gentile neighbors hid her from the Nazis but who lost several relatives in c
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2005
Conservation advocates say there are millions of items in American public collections that may be lost unless they receive urgent preservation attention. In a study to be released on Tuesday in New York, Heritage Preservation, a Washington-based conservation group, reports that many such collections are threatened by poor environmental controls, improper storage, inadequate staffing and financing and poor planning for emergencies like floods.
The report includes data from more than
