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
Aug 15, 2005
An architect of the U.S. war in Vietnam more than 30 years ago said Sunday that he has "a very uneasy feeling" that some of the same factors that damaged support for the conflict there are re-emerging in the 2-year-old war in Iraq."For me, the tragedy of Vietnam was the divisions that occurred in the United States that made it, in the end, impossible to achieve an outcome that was compatible with the sacrifices that had been made," former Secretary
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Aug 15, 2005
Sunday was the 60th anniversary of a glorious day in world history - - the announcement that Japan would surrender, bringing the end of World War. Today is the 60th anniversary of a terrible day in San Francisco's history -- a victory riot that left 11 dead, 1,000 injured and the city's reputation besmirched. "It was the deadliest riot in the city's history,'' said Kevin Mullen, a retired deputy chief of police who has written extensively about crime in San Francisco.
Source: BBC
Aug 15, 2005
Japan's actions still cast a shadow over the region
As Japan marks the 60th anniversary of its surrender in World War II, its handling of the past still rankles in some parts of Asia. Unlike the reconciliation in Europe of former foes like Britain and Germany, relations between Japan and her Asian neighbours, particularly China, remain very strained.
Japan's imperial army, which annexed Korea as a colony in 1910, later seized control of large parts of C
Source: Washington Times
Aug 15, 2005
A home movie of Marilyn Monroe swinging a golf club, another of Michael Jordan playing basketball in junior high and an operetta score by march king John Philip Sousa are among the historical oddities found by college students this summer combing through old copyright records at the Library of Congress. Besides the 1954 movie of Monroe at a driving range and video of a 13-year-old Jordan shooting hoops, the curiosities include a pair of photos of the 1901 race between a
Source: Wa Po
Aug 15, 2005
Some clutch their stomachs or weep when they step into one of the galleries at a Baltimore museum of African American history. The so-called lynching room is a stomach-turning display of newspaper photos and body parts and cruel scenes captured in wax. On a recent afternoon, a young man fainted upon hearing the story of a black couple who were hanged and mutilated by an angry mob, the woman's fetus torn from her and crushed.Yet despite the horrors they face at the National G
Source: CBS News
Aug 15, 2005
It's known as the famous photograph that captured a smooch between two strangers celebrating the end of WWII.
The photo was taken by Life Magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstadt.
Carl Muscarello, an ex-NYC cop, has long claimed he was the sailor in the picture. Now, according to CBS News, technology tests seem to support his claim.
A team of volunteers from the Naval War College, in Newport, contacted the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laborat
Source: CBS
Aug 15, 2005
Lawmakers and interest groups are gearing up for a fight this fall over Social Security, each side hoping to use the retirement and disability program's 70th birthday to build momentum. President Bush and House Republicans have yet to build a groundswell for shifting a portion of Social Security payroll taxes to individual accounts for younger workers. Whatever returns these investment accounts earn would supplement future benefits.
Mr. Bush's proposal for addr
Source: Newsweek
Aug 15, 2005
James Bowell, signalman third class, was standing on the bridge of his ship when the kamikazes came. "The sky was full of airplanes," he recalls, flown by pilots bent on killing as many Americans as possible at the sacrifice of their own lives. It was April 6, 1945, and Bowell's ship, the minesweeper Defense, was part of a picket line protecting the American invasion fleet off Okinawa. A kamikaze plane came right at the Defense, but at the last instant it tilted its wings and flew righ
Source: Newsweek
Aug 15, 2005
The tune is peppy: bouncing on a sing-song cadence, it almost bleeds Brylcreem. But what's with the lyrics? "She's a redheaded atom-bomb baby/A fortified block-busting gal..." And that jazzy, '50s love song—did the singer really ooze "Want to hug and kiss you and give you a squeeze/You make me radioactive all in my knees"?That's how you listen to "Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From the Golden Age of Homeland Security"—in stunned, can-you
Source: Sunday Telegraph
Aug 14, 2005
The British government-backed UK Film Council has been attacked for investing pounds 150,000 of lottery funds in a Bollywood film that savages British rule in India.Historians say The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey, which is the most expensive film ever made in India, is littered with historical inaccuracies.
The movie, which features Bollywood star Aamir Khan and the British actor Toby Stephens, is damning about the rule of the British East India company
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Aug 14, 2005
Ninety years ago, some of Marietta's leading citizens gathered to hang a man at what is now Roswell Road and Frey's Gin Court. In 1915, Leo Frank, a Jewish superintendent of an Atlanta pencil factory, was murdered on a farm belonging to former Cobb County sheriff William Frey. Today, the spot is part of a busy strip in the shadow of I-75, crammed with fast food restaurants --- and not far from the Big Chicken.The lynching of Frank, one of the saddest chapters in Mariet
Source: NYT
Aug 14, 2005
FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very diff
Source: NYT
Aug 14, 2005
In July 1944, American warships were bobbing on the Pacific horizon when a squad of Japanese soldiers swept through this old Spanish fishing port. Jogging down sandy alleys and bursting into stucco homes, they rounded up 30 villagers, all known for their ties to the United States.With the 60th anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender on Monday, elderly Guam residents hope American politicians will go beyond solemn speeches and act to compensate them for abuses the
Source: NYT
Aug 14, 2005
When Jeanine F. Pirro, the Republican district attorney from Westchester County, announced her decision this week to try to topple Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic senator from New York, her battle cry was this: Do not let Mrs. Clinton fool you, she really wants to be president.Ms. Pirro was raising an issue that has come up frequently in New York - a state that has produced more than its share of presidential candidates - and one Mrs. Clinton has faced before. B
Source: Japan Focus
Aug 13, 2005
"The Japanese media operate in an environment where free speech is guaranteed by the law and the Constitution, and where there is no overt government censorship." But Tessa Morris-Suzuki charges that "The NHK Affair ... has exposed the extent to which formal media freedoms are being hollowed out by a combination of corrosive forces." (The NHK Affair involves charges that the broadcast giant caved in to pressure from the government to make changes in a documentary about the &q
Source: LAT
Aug 13, 2005
They are former soldiers whose tales of derring-do during World War II are the stuff of legend. But these members of the China-Burma-India Veterans Association, once young and vigorous, seemingly fueled by feelings of immortality, are old men now; many have died over the years. American membership in the veterans group initially totaled about 83,000 in 140 units (known as Bashas, the military acronym for bamboo-and-straw-hut, assembled) throughout the nation. Today, membersh
Source: Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo)
Aug 13, 2005
The Tokyo metropolitan government is considering rescinding official designations for about 90 percent of its 230 historical sites due to a lack of "historical substance," according to officials. The decision came as a shock, as many of the spots are notable tourist sights and attract many visitors. Tokyo's cultural assets protection measures were first enforced in 1918, allowing the designation of historical assets. In 1955, the metropolitan government intro
Source: Australian
Aug 13, 2005
AN Australian commander's fatally flawed decision to lay a minefield in Vietnam in 1967 cost the lives of at least 60 of his own men and maimed hundreds of others, new research has revealed.Five sappers died in May 1967 planting 21,048 American-made M16 "jumping jack" mines, which were intended as a barrier to prevent the Viet Cong infiltrating villages in Phuoc Tuy province, close to the Australian military base at Nui Dat in southern Vietnam.
Source: Wa Po
Aug 13, 2005
Next month, after decades during which the Douglass house has been white, the National Park Service will return Cedar Hill to Douglass's preferred color, with coffee, cream and blue detailing.
Some area residents are dismayed at the change. But the painting project is emblematic of the all-out push by Park Service officials to restore Cedar Hill as closely as possible to its original look. Curators want the museum, when it reopens by the end of next year, to precisely reflect the Do
Source: NBC Nightly News
Aug 12, 2005
The photograph of a sailor kissing a surprised nurse in Times Square remains, 60 years later, an iconic image of the day World War II ended. But who are they? Sunday is VJ Day, the 60th anniversary of the U.S. victory over Japan that ended World War II. And while it’s nearly impossible to think of that day without also thinking of the famous Life Magazine photo of that celebratory kiss in New York’s Time Square, it is possible — for just a few people — to know exactly
