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: CNN
Oct 25, 2005
A body believed to be that of a World War II airman, found frozen in the Sierra Nevada, arrived Monday in Hawaii for identification, officials said.
The body in an Army uniform was discovered earlier this month mostly encased in a glacier in Kings Canyon National Park.
Source: Ananova
Oct 25, 2005
Brothels along Hamburg's famous Reeperbahn had to be evacuated when construction workers dug up a 277 pound WWII bomb.
Hundreds of prostitutes and their clients were forced to leave the area which was cordoned off by German police after a digger driver unearthed the explosive during construction work. One disappointed client reportedly asked police: "Can you not just wait a couple of minutes?"
Source: AP
Oct 25, 2005
Risking a possible clash with the Senate, President Bush insisted Monday he will not turn over documents detailing the private advice that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has given him while serving in the White House.
With Miers' nomination facing continued opposition from conservatives, Bush sidestepped a question of whether the White House was working on a contingency plan for her withdrawal. At the same time, he was emphatic about not turning over papers relating to the &quo
Source: NYT
Oct 24, 2005
Rosa Parks, a black seamstress whose refusal to relinquish her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., almost 50 years ago grew into a mythic event that helped touch off the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, died yesterday in Detroit. She was 92 years old.
Her death was confirmed by Dennis W. Archer, the former mayor of Detroit.
For her act of defiance, Mrs. Parks was arrested, convicted of violating the segregation laws and fined $10. In r
Source: Irish Times
Oct 24, 2005
EU relations with Poland may be heading for difficulty after the conservative, EU-critical mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski, came from behind to be elected president last night.
His campaign turned dirty last week as he cranked up anti-German rhetoric in an attempt to win votes of older Poles with memories of the second World War. Mr Kaczynski published a report claiming that the Nazis caused damage worth at least EUR 45 billion during the occupation and destruction of the Polish capital.
Source: The Houston Chronicle
Oct 24, 2005
Four decades ago, after the waters of Hurricane Betsy poured in and killed 81 people, residents rebuilt the [9th] ward's shotgun houses and "doubles," with their distinctive front porches painted pink, purple or tropical blue.
This time, federal officials, academics and others question the wisdom of trying to rebuild once more. They say the ward and other low-lying areas should be returned to their original state as marshland, to act as hurricane buffers protecting a small
Source: NYT
Oct 24, 2005
You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (
Source: NYT
Oct 24, 2005
The latest face-off between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Oct. 8 earthquake centers on the question of how to deliver aid across the heavily fortified Line of Control that divides Kashmir.
That line is the central source of their dispute of more than a half-century - as well as virtually the epicenter of the quake. Since it struck, the two sides have fired off proposals and counterproposals on how to best assist survivors on each side. Relief has been offered and rejec
Source: NYT
Oct 24, 2005
On Oct. 22, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon nominated to the Supreme Court a corporate lawyer and former bar association president with no judicial experience. On Dec. 6, his choice, Lewis F. Powell Jr., was confirmed with fanfare by a vote of 89 to 1.
Harriet E. Miers, President Bush's nominee to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, brings a similar résumé, along with five years in the White House and one year as its counsel. But in just three weeks, her nomination has provoked a
Source: Montgomery Advertiser
Oct 24, 2005
Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and president emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center, hosted the dedication Sunday of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery.
Small plaques bore the faces, names and stories of those killed for those changes, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Emmett Till and Medgar Evers. A 56-seat theater screened "Faces in the Water," a documentary about the civil rights martyrs of the 1950s and 1960
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Oct 24, 2005
Historians are drawing some intriguing connections between the contemporary debate over human embryonic stem cell research and California's unsavory, and mostly forgotten, eugenics movement of the last century.
Until Adolf Hitler thoroughly discredited any notion of creating a "master race," some prominent figures in California were enamored with the idea. A key backer of the pseudoscience was Charles W. Goethe, a wealthy conservationist and benefactor of what would become
Source: Independent (London)
Oct 24, 2005
Punch and Judy are depicted as brutal sadists; the words scrawled on an army lorry by a schoolboy warn the British Prime Minister: "Chamberlain we're coming." Such stirring images are just two of a collection of more than 500 drawings and paintings of Nazi school children's art on show in Munich's Art Pavilion.After lying unseen in the archives of the city's schools for more than 60 years, the pictures have been put on public show.
The exhibition is the first in post-war G
Source: BBC
Oct 24, 2005
Two lion skulls unearthed at the Tower of London have been dated to Medieval times, shedding light on the lost institution of the "Royal Menagerie". It also shows the relationship between England's early monarchs and the "king of beasts" was not just a symbolic one. The lions may have been among the first to turn up in Northern Europe since the big cats went extinct in the region at the end of the last Ice Age. The menagerie was a popular tourist attracti
Source: US News & World Report
Oct 24, 2005
US News features a long article about Nelson's victory over the French and the Spanish at Trafalgar.
"As always, leading by personal example, the one-armed commander, looking weathered and worn beyond his 47 years, stood with his fellow officers on the quarterdeck of the 102-gun Victory as he strained with his one remaining eye to sight Villeneuve's flagship. The British admiral had split his fleet into two divisions, and the 12 battleships and accompanying frigates in Nelson'
Source: WP
Oct 23, 2005
For more than six decades, glorious military parades and throngs of solemn Soviet citizens passed by the Red Square mausoleum where Vladimir Lenin's mummified corpse lies under glass. Then history passed him by. Now, nearing the 15th anniversary of the death of the Soviet Union, a debate is brewing about whether it's time to bury the body of the man who tried to bury capitalism.The debate isn't new. What's different this time are the intriguing hints that President Vladimir
Source: NYT
Oct 23, 2005
At the heart of the nation's first museum devoted to the history of Arab-Americans is a mosaic-decorated courtyard surrounding a small fountain, evoking the traditional courtyard of Arab lands. A symbol of hospitality, it is also, typically, a feature of one's home, and this museum is, in its way, a declaration that Arab-Americans really are at home, not just in Dearborn (where some 30 percent of the 100,000 residents identify themselves as Arab-Americans) but in the United States itself.
Source: Niicholas Kristof in the NYT Book Review of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
Oct 23, 2005
If Chairman Mao had been truly prescient, he would have located a little girl in Sichuan Province named Jung Chang and "mie jiuzu"- killed her and wiped out all her relatives to the ninth degree.
But instead that girl grew up, moved to Britain and has now written a biography of Mao that will help destroy his reputation forever. Based on a decade of meticulous interviews and archival research, this magnificent biography methodically demolishes every pillar of Mao's claim t
Source: NYT
Oct 23, 2005
PUBLIC health experts warn that the world might be close to a repeat of the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed millions. But could it instead be close to a reprise of the 1976 pandemic that never happened?
That is the year President Gerald R. Ford announced a crash program to "inoculate every man, woman and child in the United States" against swine flu. But the virus never became a killer, and vaccinations were halted two months after they began after reports that 500 peo
Source: Palestinian Media Watch
Oct 23, 2005
The Diaspora (Al-Shatat), a Syrian-produced TV series depicting how Jews, as ideology and religious conviction, are trying to subjugate the entire world, is now being broadcast for the third time in recent years on Arabic language Satellite TV. It was first broadcast in 2003 on Al-Manar (Hizbollah TV), in 2004 is was aired on Iranian TV, and now it is being broadcast during the Ramadan on Jordanian TV Al-Mamnou [See below about Al-Mamnou].
The series presents itself as an authentic histor
Source: Press Release of the Wyman Institute
Oct 23, 2005
As scholars prepare to mark the 100th anniversary of the antisemitic 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a U.S. magazine has published a Protocols-style "dual loyalty" slur against Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr., one of the most prominent Jews in early twentieth-century American politics.
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a glossy magazine published by two former U.S. government officials, has printed an article in its November 2005 issue blaming Morgenthau and
