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: National Security Archive
Aug 23, 2005
Today, in anticipation of the planned resumption of the Six-Power talks between the two Koreas the National Security Archive is posting on its website a collection of recently declassified documents that shed new light on the ups and downs of U.S. efforts to deal with the security threat posed by North Korea's nuclear program. Compiled by Dr. Robert A. Wampler, director of the Archive's Korea Project, these documents, dating from the first Bush and Clinton administrations, u
Source: NYT
Aug 23, 2005
An active-duty Navy captain has become the second military officer to come forward publicly to say that a secret intelligence program tagged the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a possible terrorist more than a year before the attacks.The officer, Scott J. Phillpott, said in a statement on Monday that he could not discuss details of the military program, which was called Able Danger, but confirmed that its analysts had identified the Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed A
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Aug 23, 2005
Another stage in the University of Colorado’s long process of reviewing Ward Churchill is done — and his lawyer is claiming that it was a victory for the controversial professor. David Lane, Churchill’s lawyer, told Colorado reporters that the report was a “victory for Professor Churchill” in that there were not conclusive findings of wrongdoing. Lane told the reporters that the panel could not determine whether seven allegations were valid and asked that another panel review them — and the pane
Source: Russian News and Information Agency
Aug 23, 2005
Most Japanese historians insist that Tokyo did not know that Stalin had promised Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta conference that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan, until the end of the war, and that consequently Japan had hoped until the very last moment that Moscow would act as an intermediary and set up peace negotiations with the United States. However, there are certain indications that Japanese intelligence did in fact know about the agreements reached in Yalta.
Source: UPI
Aug 23, 2005
Chinese and Korean translations of Japanese history textbooks will be posted online Wednesday in an effort to dispel charges that they distort wartime history. In a press release Tuesday the ministry said parts of eight textbooks that deal with Japan's modern history would be translated and posted on the company's Web site (www.je-kaleidoscope.jp) with a link to the site on the ministry's Web site.
Source: cnn
Aug 23, 2005
Retired bookstore owner Helen Schlie can see a higher purpose in selling her 1830 first-edition Book of Mormon one page at a time.Schlie said she believes it will be more of a "missionary tool" since the framed pages -- priced at $2,500 to $4,500 apiece -- can be handed down from generation to generation.
"This way, it will touch hundreds of lives and span generations of time," said Schlie, who is Mormon. "The book has now started a whol
Source: NYT
Aug 23, 2005
ERBIL, Iraq - If a neighborhood is defined as a place where human beings move in and never leave, then the world's oldest could be here at the Citadel, an ancient and teeming city within a city girded by stone walls. Resting on a layer cake of civilizations that have come and gone for an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 years, the Citadel looms over the apartment blocks of this otherwise rather gray metropolis in Iraqi Kurdistan. The settlement rivals Jericho and a handful of other famous towns for the
Source: Juan Cole's Blog
Aug 22, 2005
"I think "US out now" as a simple mantra neglects to consider the full range of possible disasters that could ensue. For one thing, there would be an Iraq civil war. Iraq wasn't having a civil war in 2002. And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean, unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebanon in 1975-76, e.g. People often allege that the US military isn
Source: Wa Po
Aug 22, 2005
A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.
Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq. Hagel scoffed at the idea that U.S. troops could be in Iraq four years from now at level
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 22, 2005
GW slept here. Like nearly all national parks across the country, the Longfellow National Historic Site suffers from chronic underfunding. According to the National Parks Conservation Association's new assessment, despite the best efforts of dedicated park staff, the house, grounds, and extensive museum collection are in ''fair" condition. An annual shortfall of $400,000 prevents the Park Service from filling key maintenance and curatorial positions, affecting the condition of the park and
Source: USA Todday
Aug 22, 2005
NC hopes that history will draw tourists — from die-hard Civil War buffs to the merely curious — to points around the state, each identified by a roadside maker. It's part of the Civil War Trails program, a mission in three states — Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland — to mark 700 historic points from the Civil War. "The Civil War is perennially fascinating to people," said Jeffrey Crow, deputy secretary of the state Office of Archives and History. "If you slap Civil War on any
Source: NYT
Aug 22, 2005
Dead for half a century, Mike Disfarmer, the eccentric portrait photographer from Heber Springs, Ark., has drawn modest yet respectful attention in recent decades. From the 1920's to the 50's, he photographed a steady stream of townspeople in his Main Street studio in an American Gothic style of portraiture that was singularly his own. Now, a trove of recently discovered vintage prints is generating renewed interest in his work. In a hush-hush entrepreneurial ra
Source: Guardian
Aug 22, 2005
When the crime writer Patricia Cornwell claimed to have discovered the identity of Jack the Ripper, she staked her reputation on it and said she was "100% sure" she had unmasked the killer. But nearly three years on, Cornwell has gone back to the archives to gather more fingerprint evidence to bolster her case and try to silence her critics.Cornwell is convinced that the painter Walter Sickert was the Ripper, but art and crime historians have said her t
Source: Financial Times (London)
Aug 22, 2005
When Alan Greenspan attended his first Washington Nationals baseball game at the start of this month, he received a hero's welcome. Security guards urged the Federal Reserve chairman to sit in an air-conditioned executive suite but Mr Greenspan, a true baseball fan, chose a seat in the stands in the heat of the Washington summer. The 79-year-old central banker, who for 18 years has presided over the setting of US interest rates, was cheered as he arrived. People nearby asked him to autograph the
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Aug 22, 2005
Some images from the Japanese surrender to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 60 years ago Sept. 2, are burned into the world's photo album. Taken from above or from the side, the pictures show MacArthur or a Japanese representative signing papers at a desk on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri. Today, a fresh perspective on the historic event has emerged, courtesy of a cache of pictures found by a metro Atlanta man in a dusty attic in San Diego. All but one of the pictures, taken by an unknown Navy p
Source: Siskiyou Daily News
Aug 22, 2005
President Bush compared the fight against terrorism to both world wars and other great conflicts of the 20th century as he tried to reassure an increasingly skeptical public on Monday to support U.S. military involvement in Iraq. As he did in last year's election campaign and more recently as war opposition has risen, Bush reminded his listeners of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 _ reciting the date five times in a 30-minute speech.Besides his references to Sept. 11
Source: Toledo Journal
Aug 22, 2005
The scenes are graphic. The charred body of a Black man is juxtaposed with a burning chicken. A shackled Black leg is shown next to the leg of a chained elephant. A woman is branded next to a panel of a chicken getting branded. The message is unmistakable: animals are suffering the same fate as African-American slaves. That’s the point of a controversial campaign by the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The online exhibit has been placed on hold amid a flurry of protests.
Source: Wa Po
Aug 22, 2005
Amid tears and their grandchildren's shouts of glee, 58 Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II received diplomas Sunday, finally earning recognition from the communities they were forced to leave more than half a century ago. The honorees, wearing colorful leis and sashes, walked down the aisle of Los Angeles Trade Technical College's auditorium. Some needed canes, a few were in wheelchairs, and more than a few had tears in their eyes.
Source: New Yorker
Aug 22, 2005
Bruce Lawrence, a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, has agreed at the request of Verso Books, to edit and write an introduction to “Messages to the World,” a compendium of bin Laden's communiqués from 1994 to 2004. (This is the first time that the major texts will be available in English in their entirety.) In November, Verso—an independentpress known for publishing leftist writers such as Slavoj Zizek and Alexander Cockburn—will issue twenty thousand copies of the book, in paperb
Source: Newsweek
Aug 22, 2005
Ah, the glory that was Rome. The temples. The togas. The toilets. Rome in 52 B.C. usually means emperors and palaces and dudes with bad haircuts, and you'll see plenty of those when HBO debuts its new drama "Rome" on Aug. 28. "Rome" is a show that will make every history teacher proud. It cost $100 million, and you can see every denariuson the screen—even the coins themselves, which were minted in the basement of the actual Vatican. The entire Forum has been reconstructed (at
