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: BBC
Nov 25, 2005
Austrian authorities have refused bail for British historian David Irving, who is facing Holocaust denial charges.Mr Irving's lawyer has said the historian now no longer denies that gas chambers existed in Nazi death camps.
Mr Irving can appeal against the charges under Austrian law. No trial date has been set yet. He could face up to 10 years in jail if found guilty.
A court in Vienna ruled on Friday that Mr Irving must stay in custody as there was
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 25, 2005
British historian David Irving now acknowledges that Nazi gas chambers existed but admits that some of his past statements could be interpreted as denying people were gassed, his lawyer said Thursday on the eve of a court hearing.
Prosecutors this week charged Irving, 67, under an Austrian law that makes denying the Holocaust a crime. The charges stem from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he allegedly denied the existence of the chambers. He faces up to 10 years in p
Source: NYT
Nov 25, 2005
How he seemed to hate New York. A "terrible town," Henry James called it in "The American Scene." It was 1904 and James had been away from New York, the city of his birth, for 20 years. "A vast crude democracy of trade," he wrote, a "heaped industrial battlefield."
James's biographer, Leon Edel, explained his vituperativeness toward New York - so out of character for this master of evasion and indirection - as a reflection of James's dismay a
Source: NYT
Nov 25, 2005
In his informative but often vexing new book, Jerome Karabel, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, looks at the admissions process at the so-called Big Three and how the criteria governing that process have changed over the last century in response to changes in society at large.
Mr. Karabel writes that until the 1920's, Harvard, Yale and Princeton, "like the most prestigious universities of other nations," admitted students "almost ent
Source: Is That Legal? (blog)
Nov 25, 2005
Announcing the publication of"Judgments Judged and Wrongs Remembered: Examining the Japanese American Civil Liberties Cases on Their Sixtieth Anniversary," a symposium issue of the interdisciplinary journal Law & Contemporary Problems. The Foreword by Eric Muller, which briefly introduces each of the twelve articles, is here.
Each of the articles i
Source: USA Today
Nov 24, 2005
When a president falls below 40% approval in public opinion polls — as President Bush has done twice in the past two months — it's usually a sign of serious political danger.
Since 1950, five of the eight other presidents who fell below 40% — Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — lost their bids for re-election or opted not to run again. A sixth, Richard Nixon, was overwhelmed by the Watergate scandal and resigned.
Only two, Rona
Source: Yahoo News
Nov 24, 2005
ALCATRAZ ISLAND, United States (AFP) - A tribal chant rose from a thousands-strong prayer circle on San Francisco's Alcatraz Island, as Native Americans held a sunrise "Unthanksgiving Day" ceremony.
"What we call it, is Unthanksgiving," Bear Lincoln of the Wailikie Tribe told AFP as he waved burning sage to purify the area and ward off evil spirits.
Traditional Thanksgiving feasting in the United States is a tribute to the meal the original European
Source: NYT
Nov 24, 2005
For all the saber-rattling before their grueling six-hour meeting on Tuesday, Italy's culture ministry and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have mapped out a potential solution to Italy's claims on antiquities in the museum's collection, officials said Wednesday. In essence, Italy would officially own the works, which it asserts were looted within its borders, but the Met would get to keep them - or receive objects of equal value as long-term loans.Officials said the com
Source: Palm Beach Post
Nov 24, 2005
Sure, Massachusetts has its pilgrims, its Mayflower, its turkey and corn.
But when it comes to Thanksgiving, Florida historians have been saying the same thing for years: It happened first in the Sunshine State — with salt pork, sea biscuits and garbanzo beans.
In the 1560s, French and Spanish settlers arrived separately on Florida's northern coast, and each celebrated with prayer and a thanksgiving feast. The Spanish gathering at St. Augustine even featured guests from
Source: New Republic
Nov 23, 2005
In the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore put forth an expansive vision of America taking leadership in an interdependent world."The world's coming together," he declared in an October debate."They're looking to us." George W. Bush, by contrast, espoused a narrow nationalism except on trade and immigration."We should not send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide in nations outside our strategic interest," he asserted in January 2000.
Five years later, Bush is advocating an ex
Source: Agence France Presse (Summary by HNN intern Normand Forgues-Roy)
Nov 23, 2005
Two Americans have been indicted by a Paris county court for stealing important papers from Paris’s Archives nationals, among which was one of the last copies of the Fontainebleau Treaty (1815).
The two men--John William Rooney and his friend, Marshall Lawrence Pierce--are suspected of stealing many documents between 1974 and 1988. The loss of the papers became known when the archives curator discovered they were put on sale at Sotheby’s. A quick search revealed the theft along wit
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Nov 23, 2005
Cut through the blend of fact and myth with which the Pilgrim heritage is based, and one finds paradox and controversy. That includes how much Pilgrims and other Puritans may have influenced the shape of democracy in America through their emphasis on independent, self-governing congregations beholden to no king or bishop."We talk about the principal of Congregational church government here as something that's so foundational to the way that Americans think about i
Source: NYT
Nov 23, 2005
CARY, N.C. (AP) -- The joke around here is that this town's name is really an acronym for ''Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.'' As far as Vernon Yates is concerned, they haven't been contained well enough.
Nearly surrounded by pricey subdivisions, the cinderblock Yates Grocery and Farm Supply sells neither anymore. As if things weren't bad enough, style maven Martha Stewart has chosen this Raleigh suburb to build a signature neighborhood of houses designed after her homes in M
Source: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Nov 23, 2005
Teen People magazine, which is owned by Time Inc., is still running a sanitized story about a neo-Nazi teenage singing duo on its web site, despite reports that it has canceled a planned feature story about them that downplayed their racist views.
The duo, known as "Prussian Blue," are 13 year-old twin sisters Lynx and Lamb Gaede, who wear Hitler t-shirts, deny the Holocaust, and frequently perform at neo-Nazi events. According to media reports, Teen People was planning t
Source: NY Daily News
Nov 23, 2005
Teen People nixed a story about Hitler-loving teenybopper twins Prussian Blue - amid outrage that the glossy had promised to avoid the words "hate," "supremacist" and "Nazi" in its piece on the racist singing sisters.
A Web-based teaser for the February story originally called the hatemongering duo "aspiring musicians" and compared them to wide-eyed sensations Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.The only hint that 13-ye
Source: WSJ
Nov 23, 2005
Ten years ago, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, the leaders who had waged a brutal four-year war in Bosnia -- at the center of a volatile region that had launched two world wars -- finally agreed to peace. They took this momentous step only after intense international military and diplomatic pressure led by the United States. At the time, almost everyone predicted that the Dayton Peace Agreement would fail.To enforce the agreement, I sent 20,000 U
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Nov 23, 2005
Social scientists and the news media often display a faulty understanding of the process of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa, three scholars said on Tuesday during a panel discussion at the annual meeting here of the Middle East Studies Association.
The scholars had varying levels of optimism about the near-term prospects for democracy in the region. But all agreed that political scientists and popular writers tend to lean too heavily on religious and cultural ex
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Nov 23, 2005
The History Channel values entertainment over intellect, writes Kevin Mattson, a professor of contemporary history at Ohio University at Athens in the curent issue of Dissent.
Started in 1995 as part of the A&E Television network, the History Channel has become a cable-television staple. Mr. Mattson describes the channel as "the leading institution that popularizes history in the United States."But to make history popular, Mr. Mattson says, the His
Source: AKI
Nov 23, 2005
Some 44 archaeological artefacts stolen following the US invasion of Iraq, have been returned to the local authorities in the southern city of Nassiriya.
The Iraqi newspaper al-Zaman reports that the artefacts, which date back to the era of the Sumerian civilisation around 4,000 years ago, were stolen by civilians, who returned them on Tuesday after hearing appeals from the Iraqi authorities and fatwas (religious edicts) issued by Shiite Imams calling on people to protect the count
Source: MLB.com
Nov 23, 2005
A 12-member committee of historians and baseball researchers will consider 39 players and executives from black baseball for induction next year to Cooperstown, officials of the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced Monday.
The 39 candidates were the finalists that a five-member screening committee presented to Hall of Fame officials last July after reviewing a five-year study into the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro League baseball."Holding the election is
