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: WSJ
Nov 29, 2005
Rapid development and demand from the antiques trade are destroying the last vestiges of ancient wood temples and homes in Shanxi province-buildings that, until now, survived because of their isolation. The former mansions in this northern region of China, a once-prosperous hub along the ancient trading route known as the Silk Road, lie in decay. What the older residents still value -- the terra-cotta roof tiles, latticed doors and courtyards -- are of little interest to their children, who want
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 29, 2005
Many colleges in recent years have eliminated majors or departments in relatively obscure fields, citing the need to focus on areas with growing student interest. Few, however, have taken the step Post University plans: eliminating majors in English and history and upper-level courses in liberal arts generally.Post, in Waterbury, Conn., was founded as a private university in 1890, and has always had a strong vocational orientation. The university has seen some ra
Source: NYT
Nov 29, 2005
As a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Samuel A. Alito Jr., the Supreme Court nominee, played an active role in advancing the administration's efforts to expand law enforcement powers and limit restrictions on prosecutors, documents released Monday by the Justice Department show.The 470 pages of documents, which consist mainly of memorandums Mr. Alito wrote as a deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel in 1986 and 1987, generally address
Source: WP
Nov 29, 2005
Years before he wrote "On the Waterfront," before that film brought him an Oscar, and before he earned the ire of many colleagues by testifying during the Hollywood communist witch hunt, writer Budd Schulberg had the distinct honor of arresting Leni Riefenstahl.
He was in Germany, assembling a film to be used at the Nuremberg trials as evidence against the Nazis. Riefenstahl, the legendary director and propagandist for Hitler, knew where the skeletons were. So Schulberg, d
Source: WRKO Boston
Nov 29, 2005
France’s parliament voted Tuesday to uphold a law that puts an upbeat spin on the country’s painful colonial past, ignoring complaints from historians and the former French territory of Algeria.
The law, passed quietly this year, requires school textbooks to address France’s "positive role" in its former colonies.
France’s lower house, in a 183-94 vote, rejected an effort by the opposition Socialists to kill the law. Passage would have been unusual, since the
Source: NYT
Nov 29, 2005
A prominent German archaeologist and aid worker who had lived and worked in Iraq for years has been kidnapped, the German government confirmed today as images of her surrounded by masked, armed men were broadcast on international television.
The kidnappers threatened to kill the archaeologist, Susanne Osthoff, unless Berlin stopped cooperating with the Iraqi government, according to a videotape delivered to the German state broadcaster ARD. A still image from the tape showed two blindfolded
Source: Los Angeles Times
Nov 29, 2005
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voters have chosen an eclectic new class broad enough to encompass jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and the punk-pioneering Sex Pistols, but they once again snubbed rap.Other members of the induction class announced Monday were Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blondie.
For a second consecutive year, hip-hop's prime candidate, Grandmaster Flash, failed to gather the necessary support from the 700 rock historians overseeing nominee selection.
Source: AP
Nov 29, 2005
Poland is risking further strains in relations with Russia by throwing open Cold War-era archives that include a 1979 Soviet retaliation plan that envisaged nuclear strikes on western European cities in the event of a war with NATO.
The map foresaw the nuclear annihilation of Poland and was dotted with red mushroom clouds over the German cities of Munich, Cologne, Stuttgart and the site of NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
It was revealed Friday by Polish Defense
Source: USA Today
Nov 29, 2005
Claudette Colvin has been all but lost to history in this quintessential Southern city where the modern civil rights movement began 50 years ago.
She was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white passenger — nine months before Rosa Parks' same act of quiet defiance launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December 1955.From here, the civil rights movement swept across the South, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. becoming its primary voice. Park
Source: NYT
Nov 29, 2005
Amherst, MA: Whoa, those of you who think that Potter in children's books means only Harry. There is another Potter in the field, by the name of Beatrix (1866-1943), and that Harry character has a long way to go before topping her more than 100 years of success. Her "Tale of Peter Rabbit," first published in 1902, is still picking up new readers.
Although her cutesies - like Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter - may not have gone to wizard school, they bring as much mischi
Source: AP
Nov 29, 2005
With the death of Rosa Parks, the 50th anniversary of her arrest and the historic bus boycott it sparked will focus on the protest's lesser-known foot soldiers.
While Parks was remembered for helping start the modern civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man on Dec. 1, 1955, it took some 40,000 blacks in Montgomery to back her with their own defiance.Led by the Montgomery Improvement Association and its president, the Rev.
Source: History Today
Nov 28, 2005
The History Today Film Award for 2005 was awarded to Laurence Rees for his series Auschwitz: the Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’. The judges commented that they were “united in awe-struck admiration for the high production values, the extensive research, the nuanced complexity, the choice of witnesses which included unrepentant Nazis as well as Holocaust survivors, all of which carefully, soberly and compellingly charted the evolution of the devastating policy to exterminate the Jews of Europe. A
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.
Nov 28, 2005
The evolution of the U.S. signals intelligence capability from Pearl Harbor to the establishment of the National Security Agency in 1952 is the subject of a newly declassified NSA history volume.
The internal history traces "the struggle between centralized and decentralized control of SIGINT, interservice and interagency rivalries, budget problems, tactical versus national strategic requirements, the difficulties of mechanization of processes, and the rise of a strong bureaucr
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.
Nov 28, 2005
Government agencies are making increased use of exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act to withhold information that would have been released in the past, according to a new study.
The study by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government compared FOIA responses and denials in 2000 and 2004. It found that unclassified information was increasingly being withheld from FOIA requesters using exemptions for intra- or interagency memoranda, internal personnel rules and practic
Source: Guardian
Nov 28, 2005
As Nigeria holds its first ever carnival, should Christians and Muslims condemn the event as pagan and barbaric? The carnival organisers say the four-day event will unite the country and bring in foreign exchange.
The colour, elegance and cultural diversity of Nigeria will be on show with masquerades, a durbar ensemble of horses and traditional circus performances. But Nigeria's religious leaders claim carnival is not African, arguing that it will p
Source: NYT
Nov 28, 2005
Until recently, few in Newark, Ohio, thought it strange that golfers whacked little white balls across ground once hallowed to an ancient community.The Hopewell Indians used sharp sticks and clamshells here 2,000 years ago to sculpture seven million cubic feet of dirt into a sprawling lunar observatory and the spiritual center of their far-flung empire.
Today it is an easy Par 3 flanked by sand traps shaped like kidney beans.
But now there is an ea
Source: NYT
Nov 28, 2005
The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum in Poland has bought 81 musical scores once played by the camp's prisoner orchestra, Agence France-Press reported. The scores, which belonged to an anonymous Polish collector, include works by Verdi, Josef Rixner, Carl Robrecht, Heinrich Strecker and Franz von Suppé. Many are handwritten and bear the seal of the camp, a museum spokesman said. The scores are signed by prisoners who were in the orchestra, using their inmate numbers.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Nov 28, 2005
An expensive campaign to boost Germans' low self-confidence has backfired after it emerged that its slogan was first coined by the Nazis. The €30 million ($48 million) Du Bist Deutschland (You Are Germany) project was meant to inspire Germans to stop moaning and do something for their country.But now a historian from Ludwigshafen has provoked an uproar with his discovery that the same Du Bist Deutschland cry was used at Nazi rallies in the 1930s. Stefan Morz found photograph
Source: Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
Nov 28, 2005
If proof were needed that Aussies like a drink, then the discovery of a pub cellar built just 13 years after European settlement should be enough.
The remains of what is believed to be one of the oldest pubs in the country were found by construction workers at a development site in Parramatta.Just a metre below the surface, workers unearthed the cellar belonging to the Wheatsheaf Hotel -- which stood on the corner of Marsden and Macquarie Sts from 1801 to 1808.
Source: LAT
Nov 27, 2005
Thousands of members of at least five Indian tribes in southern Louisiana were affected by the hurricanes. They include various bands of the Biloxi-Chitimacha, as well as Muskogees.
"There's been a total devastation of homes, communities, jobs and lifestyle," said Brenda Dardar Robichaux, principal chief of the United Houma Nation.Tribal leaders said it is important that their members remain near ancestral land and worried that many might eventua
