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: Wa Po
Oct 1, 2005
An exhibit marking the anniversary of an Istanbul pogrom is breaking taboos. The exhibit opened 50 years to the day after the mayhem it chronicled in the cobblestone street right outside the gallery.Captured on black-and-white glossies was a modern-day pogrom, a massive, state-sponsored assault on a foreign community that awoke on the morning of Sept. 6, 1955, still feeling safe in Istanbul. By sunset a day later, a mob of perhaps 100,000 Turks had attacked forei
Source: LA Times
Sep 30, 2005
The long-lost city of Ithaca, home of the legendary hero Odysseus in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," is on the island of Cephalonia off the western shore of Greece, three British researchers said Thursday.The long-lost city of Ithaca, home of the legendary hero Odysseus in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," is on the island of Cephalonia off the western shore of Greece, three British researchers said Thursday.
The original contours of
Source: Financial Times (London, England)
Sep 30, 2005
It has been 40 years since the September 30 1965 coup that led to Suharto's 32-year rule, and Indonesia these days does a commendable job of asserting its place as the world's third largest democracy.
For victims of Indonesia's bloody crackdown on alleged communists and their sympathisers, however, justice has been slow. Historians and leading Indonesians say this is just one of the legacies of history.Under the Suharto regime, Toga Tambunan spent 13 years detai
Source: Wa Po
Sep 30, 2005
John Glover Roberts Jr. was sworn in yesterday as the 17th chief justice of the United States, enabling President Bush to put his stamp on the Supreme Court for decades to come, even as he prepares to name a second nominee to the nine-member court.
The White House swearing-in ceremony took place three hours after the Senate voted 78 to 22 to confirm Roberts. All 55 Republicans, half the 44 Democrats and independent Sen. James M. Jeffords (Vt.) voted yes.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Sep 30, 2005
Yektan Turkyilmaz, the Duke doctoral student in cultural anthropology, who was arrested in Armenia, says the government didn't know what to make of him: a Turkish-born scholar studying in the United States who believes that Armenians were indeed slaughtered by Turks in 1915. In an interview he remarked:"The interrogators’ questioning in the initial few days of my arrest was entirely devoted to my research, my political views and connections with Turkish intelligence and st
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Sep 30, 2005
On 24 September 2004, Judge Kollar-Kotelly of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling on a claim made by historians and archivists in the case “American Historical Association, et al v. National Archives and Records Administration.” The case focuses on a claim for access to 74 pages (9 documents) of presidential-related “confidential” (P-5 exemption) materials dating back to the administration of Ronald Reagan that President
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Sep 30, 2005
According to Republican strategists the White House is targeting for removal an eight-term powerful senator, the 87 year-old Robert C. Byrd (D-WV). Byrd has earned the administration’s wrath for his fiery speeches on the Senate floor reviling Bush on his budget, and his domestic and international policies; for some time Byrd’s was nearly the lone voice speaking in opposition to the war in Iraq. This last week Byrd put to rest rumors that he may not seek re-election when he announced that he is r
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Sep 30, 2005
Proposals by the Chair of the House Resources Committee has National Park Service (NPS) oversight and history watchdog groups up in arms. In a 260-page draft of a budget reconciliation bill (a tool that is used by Congress to meet budget goals), committee chair Richard Pombo (R-CA) has advanced several controversial provisions aimed to help address the current governmental fiscal crisis.Among his ideas that purportedly are designed to save the government $2.4 billion is a pr
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 30, 2005
The man set to continue Simon Wiesenthal’s work is Efraim Zuroff, a 56-year-old New Yorker of Jewish descent who now runs the Wiesenthal centre in Jerusalem. With Zuroff at the helm, the Wiesenthal centre will never be out of the headlines. He already believes he is on the verge of a breakthrough, closing in on a Nazi who eluded his predecessor. Before his illness and death, Wiesenthal was working on the case of Aribert Heim, the most wanted Nazi on the run. The
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 30, 2005
MILLIONS of Algerians confronted the legacy of their bloody civil war yesterday in a referendum on whether to pardon those responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. The authorities in Algiers were last night confident that the Government’s Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation would pass comfortably, enabling the country to heal the wounds of its bitter decade-long conflict. President Bouteflika, who has spent weeks travelling across Algeria campaigning for the “y
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 30, 2005
THE operation of the Freedom of Information Act is in severe difficulties because of a mounting backlog of appeals against Government secrecy. The Information Commissioner’s Office, which handles complaints from people whose open government requests are refused, is struggling to cope with more than 1,200 unresolved cases. More than half of those appeals have yet to be allocated to a caseworker. The Times is aware of cases that have been with the commissioner for
Source: Independent (UK)
Sep 30, 2005
For centuries, scholars the world over have argued over the whereabouts of the lost kingdom, ruled over by one of the Greek heroes of the Trojan war.After a two-year odyssey of his own, an amateur British historian claims to have located the mythical land of Ithaca - the island homeland of Homer's legendary Greek hero Odysseus. Now thanks to 21st-century computer technology, space photography and the obsession of a management consultant from Surrey, the riddle may have been solved.
Source: Guardian
Sep 30, 2005
A book published in Italy today is set to reignite a smouldering controversy over how close the Nazis came to manufacturing a nuclear device in the closing stages of the second world war. The 88 year-old author, Luigi Romersa, is the last known witness to what he and some historians believe was the experimental detonation of a rudimentary weapon on an island in the Baltic in 1944.Hitler's nuclear programme has become a subject of intense dispute in recent months, particularl
Source: HNN
Sep 29, 2005
The history-making storm, Katrina, may have an impact on history graduate students who rely on subsidized federal loans. A Republican Party subcommitee's proposed plan to finance the relief costs of the storm-wrecked Gulf region includes a provision eliminating all federally subsidized loans to graduate students across the nation according to a copy of the proposal released by the Democratic political action committee
Source: CBS News
Sep 29, 2005
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, most have naturally focused on the human cost — the many lives, homes and jobs lost to the storm. But CBS News reports that Katrina also destroyed a lot of historical treasures, especially along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In the mountains of debris piling up in Mississippi are some of this state's greatest treasures — literally consigned to the ash heap of history.
All along the Gulf Coast, mansion after glorious m
Source: NYT
Sep 29, 2005
After a summer of furious and steadily rising criticism, Gov. George E. Pataki evicted the proposed International Freedom Center museum yesterday from its place next to the World Trade Center memorial site. With that, the museum declared itself to be out of business. "The I.F.C. cannot be located on the memorial quadrant," Mr. Pataki said in a statement. That quadrant, at the southwest corner of the trade center site, contains the footprints of the twin towers.
Source: Newhouse News Service
Sep 29, 2005
There is a deja vu quality to the nation's post-Katrina interest in race and poverty. It brings to mind the call-to-conscience of the Kerner Commission, named by President Johnson in the wake of the urban riots of the 1960s, and its warning of an America "moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." But of course, America is not black and white anymore, thanks to another legacy of that era -- the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act, which Johnson signed into law Oc
Source: The Australian
Sep 29, 2005
Controversial historian and publisher Keith Windschuttle has dismissed as a myth claims of an Aboriginal massacre at a Victorian site called Convincing Ground. Mr Windschuttle, whose criticisms of the "black armband" view of Australia's past sparked the "history wars" in 2002, describes the Aboriginal heritage claim on Convincing Ground as doubtful. The Convincing Ground dispute began on January 17 when local Koori Culture heritage officer Denise Lovett stopped earthworks at
Source: WSJ
Sep 29, 2005
The Austrian embassy to the U.S. points out that we erred in our editorial last week on Simon Wiesenthal in describing Kurt Waldheim as a "one-time SS officer" ("Nazi Hunter," September 21). The weight of the evidence indicates that Mr. Waldheim, who also served as U.N. Secretary General and as president of Austria, did not serve in the SS. We regret the error.Our modest editorial point, we hasten to add, was that Wiesenthal had not accused Mr. Waldheim o
Source: Inside Higher Education
Sep 29, 2005
The National Collegiate Athletic Association on Wednesday upheld its decision last month to include the University of North Dakota on a list of institutions that face restrictions on participation in NCAA championships because they use nicknames deemed “hostile and abusive” to Native Americans.Since the NCAA announced the policy August 5, it has granted appeals filed by three other institutions — Central Michigan and Florida State Universities and the University of Utah — th
