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: Tablet Magazine
Aug 19, 2013
For one of his first translation projects after his retirement, Barry Goldstein, a former computer programmer, found an empty table at his local Starbucks in Boston and settled in to work on the “Treebeard” chapter from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But Goldstein soon realized that he needed something more sizable to occupy his time: 95,022 words later, he had translated the entire text of The Hobbit, the prequel to the Ring series, into Yiddish.Only a little more than 130 copies of Goldstein’s translation have sold since it was released in December. But as Goldstein tells it, he always knew Der Hobit wouldn’t be a best-seller, and the sales were still double his original two-figure estimate.
Source: Der Spiegel
Aug 19, 2013
The German government has denied British media reports that it tried to influence the tone of Britain's planned ceremonies to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. A spokesman has confirmed Germany sent an envoy to London to discuss the plans, though.The German Foreign Ministry on Monday denied allegations that it was attempting to influence Britain's plans to commemorate the 2014 centenary of the outbreak of World War I.A spokesman for the ministry confirmed reports that it had sent an envoy to London in early August to discuss the centenary ceremonies. But he added: "There was no intervention of any kind in how our friends and partners intend to shape their commemoration of World War I."The Daily Telegraph reported on Sunday that the visit by Andreas Meitzner, a German diplomat tasked with coordinating European commemoration plans for the centenary, was prompted by German concerns that the ceremonies might have an excessively "declamatory tone," placing more emphasis on victory rather than reconciliation....
Source: AP
Aug 19, 2013
CAIRO — As violent clashes roiled Egypt, looters made away with a prized 3,500-year-old limestone statue, ancient beaded jewelry and more than 1,000 other artifacts in the biggest theft to hit an Egyptian museum in living memory.The scale of the looting of the Malawi Museum in the southern Nile River city of Minya laid bare the security vacuum that has taken hold in cities outside Cairo, where police have all but disappeared from the streets. It also exposed how bruised and battered the violence has left Egypt.For days after vandals ransacked the building Wednesday, there were no police or soldiers in sight as groups of teenage boys burned mummies and broke limestone sculptures too heavy for the thieves to carry away. The security situation remained precarious Monday as gunmen atop nearby buildings fired on a police station near the museum....
Source: AP
Aug 18, 2013
WASHINGTON — The oil painting of a black Russian man lay quietly for years in a back corner of an antique shop in a dingy walking mall in Moscow.Andy Leddy, a white American working on a U.S. government contract for a refugee program in 1992, a year after the Communist Party lost power, pulled the canvas out and unrolled it.“Why would there be a portrait of a black man in Russia?” Leddy recalls thinking. “They treated people of color horribly here. But look at it. It’s heroic and romantic. It is odd to see a black subject in a heroic pose.”The clerks told him the unsigned painting depicted a man named Patterson who had starred in a classic Russian movie, but that was all they could tell him....
Source: The Local
Aug 18, 2013
Five Picasso murals that survived Anders Behring Breivik's bombing of an Oslo government block in 2011 are now at the heart of a divisive debate in Norway on the buildings' fate.The murals drawn by the Spanish master in the late 1950s and 1960s -- "The Beach", "The Seagull", "Satyr and Faun" and two versions of "The Fishermen" -- risk being removed from the location for which they were conceived if the damaged buildings are torn down.The government is currently mulling whether to demolish the structures or repair them.Picasso's artwork adorns the concrete interiors and exteriors of two of the government buildings erected in central Oslo in the post-war period....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
Aug 18, 2013
Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. will comply if the South Korean Supreme Court upholds a ruling ordering it to pay 400 million won (about ¥35 million) to compensate four Koreans who were for forced to work for its predecessors during the war, company sources said Sunday.The Seoul High Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on July 10, marking in the first judgment by a South Korean court ordering a Japanese firm to pay in a case involving postwar reparations.After appealing the ruling, however, NSSMC has apparently changed its mind.“We, as a global company, can’t help but accept (the ruling),” one of the sources said, hinting that failure to comply might lead to seizure of the company’s assets in South Korea....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
Aug 18, 2013
ARCHAEOLOGISTS are planning a major dig to uncover one of the lost Kingdoms of the ancient Picts, the tribe of legendary warriors whose empire stretched from Fife to the Moray Firth before they mysteriously vanished from history.Until recently historians had believed that Fortriu - one of the most powerful Kingdoms of the “painted people” - had been based in Perthshire.But recent research has now placed the Pictish stronghold much further north to the Moray Firth area.And it was revealed today that a team of archaeologists from Aberdeen University are to embark on a series of excavations on the Tarbat peninsula in Ross-shire where archaeologists have already uncovered evidence of the only Pictish monastic settlement found in Scotland to date....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
Aug 18, 2013
IF IT weren’t for the history, Branxton Hill in north Northumberland would be an ordinary patch of farmland essentially indistinguishable from a thousand other northern English fields. But there is history – and tragedy – aplenty here. As the clouds part, the land is washed with sunshine, the barley whispers in the breeze and you remember that the fate of a nation was once decided on these quiet and ordinary fields. For this is Flodden.Five hundred years ago this place was a charnel house; on these fields were piled high the bodies of the Scottish dead. All very gallant; all very dead. Ten thousand of them, it is reckoned, though it is hard to be precise about these matters half a millennium later. At any rate, Scottish corpses outnumbered their English counterparts two to one. Among them King James IV himself, his natural son, the bishop of St Andrews, and no fewer than 13 earls. All of them lying cold in the clay.For centuries Flodden was the yin to Bannockburn’s yang. To recall one was to implicitly recall the other. They balanced one another perfectly; one a triumph the other a disaster. But no more, I think. The 700th anniversary of Bannockburn next year will be loudly celebrated; the 500th anniversary of Flodden next month will be recalled with barely a whisper....
Source: Toronto Globe and Mail
Aug 16, 2013
A new totem pole the height of a three-storey building now looms over the southern Haida Gwaii, carved with symbols to note the remote land is protected from ocean floor to mountaintop.Hundreds gathered in the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve to watch the nearly 3,000-kilogram pole raised using six ropes and sheer manpower, the first such raising in over a century. Spectators were dwarfed by the colourful and intricate pole, which took more than a year to carve and paint and represents Gwaii Haanas’ modern and ancient history....
Source: Talking Points Memo
Aug 16, 2013
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The CIA is acknowledging the existence of Area 51 in newly declassified documents.George Washington University’s National Security Archive obtained a CIA history of the U-2 spy plane program through a public records request and released it Thursday.National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson reviewed the history in 2002, but all mentions of Area 51 had been redacted....
Source: ArtDaily
Aug 15, 2013
MEXICO CITY.- The face of a Pre-Hispanic skeleton, recovered in Michohacán 35 years ago by archeologist Roman Piña Chan, is to be reconstructed by specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and support from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), as part of the preservation and conservation job of an individual’s skeleton remains who belonged to Occidental Cultures, over 700 years ago, and was apparently a member of the elite. Restorer Luisa Mainou, a member of the National Cultural Heritage Preservation Coordination (CNCPC) from the INAH, explained that the skeleton was found in a cornfield within the township of Ario de Rayon and then moved to the Regional Museum of Michohacan. The specialist, who leads the Organic Material Conservation and Restoration Workshop of the CNPC, clarified that as part of such treatment, a layer of glue that covered each of the skeletal remains, had to be removed....
Source: Smithsonian.com
Aug 15, 2013
The J. Paul Getty Trust has an incredible collection of artwork including art from Monet, van Gogh, Rembrandt, da Vinci and more. Now, nearly 5,000 pieces of art from that collection have been opened up to the public for free use. You can browse the collection here....
Source: The Art Newspaper
Aug 15, 2013
The Henrician and Cromwellian iconoclasms destroyed most British medieval religious art, making any survivals very precious. The theft last month of two panels from the rood screen in the church of Holy Trinity, Torbryan, Devon, is, therefore, a major tragedy for the art world.The stolen panels show St Victor of Marseilles and St Margaret of Antioch. The thieves also damaged a neighbouring panel of a female saint.The oak rood, otherwise intact, was constructed and painted between 1460 and 1470, and the artistry is of a very high quality. The church is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), a national charity that aims to protect historic churches at risk....
Source: Al Jazeera
Aug 15, 2013
Bangkok, Thailand - After a deluge of incidents, Thailand is currently in discussions to re-work its national curriculum to include Holocaust education.Thailand has recently witnessed a shop in a mall in Bangkok selling Nazi clothes and accessories, parading students in Chiang Mai performing the "Sieg Heil" Nazi salutes wearing SS uniforms, the discovery of a fried chicken restaurant called "Hitler" and a mural apparently lionising Hitler displayed on the campus of one of Thailand's oldest and most respected schools, Chulalongkorn University (CU).Thailand's association with Nazi imagery is not new. Chetana Nagavajara, a professor of German literature at Silapakorn University, said the Hitler mural at CU "could have happened at any institution".Decades ago, a "Nazi bar" was set up in a popular Bangkok entertainment district, with waiters dressed up as SS officers and saluting customers. Former Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj lashed out at the practice in Siam Rath, a tabloid newspaper, and the bar was shut down soon after....
Source: USA Today
Aug 15, 2013
Russell Simmons is apologizing after coming under fire for a video that appeared on his new All Def Digital YouTube channel.The "Harriet Tubman Sex Tape" depicts an actress portraying the famous abolitionist having sex with her "Massa" in order to allow her to run the Underground Railroad. The video has since been taken down. Simmons issued an apology on Globalgrind.com in which he says he was contacted by his "buddies" at the NAACP asking for removal of the video....
Source: ArtDaily
Aug 15, 2013
BEIJING (AFP).- As a teenager radicalised by China's Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongbing denounced his mother to the authorities. Two months later a firing squad shot her dead.Now after more than 40 years of mounting guilt, Zhang has ruffled the silence that cloaks China's decade of turmoil with a public confession.Such rare apologies have been welcomed as a potential gateway to the collective soul-searching that could bring healing -- but is blocked by a ruling Communist Party whose critics say is unwilling to confront its own responsibility."Back then everyone was swept up and you couldn't escape even if you wanted to. Any kindness or beauty in me was thoroughly, irretrievably 'formatted'," Zhang told the Beijing News last week."I hope that from my self-reflection other people can understand what the situation was like at that time."...
Source: The Oregonian
Aug 14, 2013
MANZANITA -- Somewhere off the coast of Manzanita rest the bones of a galleon from the Philippines, wrecked on the rocks around 1700 as it left Manila laden with goods destined for Mexico.That's the legend told here for centuries, but the saga isn't just empty words. For as long as the tale's circulated, Native Americans, settlers and even modern-day beachcombers have found the beeswax and porcelain to prove it.Now, a volunteer group of students, archaeologists and historians calling themselves the Beeswax Wreck Research Project is hoping to get one step closer to finding the ship when they set out to sea later this month with equipment that may zero in on the galleon's location....
Source: NYT
Aug 14, 2013
BRUSSELS — Paintings worth tens of millions of dollars that were stolen last October from an art museum in the Netherlands have not been burned, and a Romanian gang behind the theft wants to cut an unspecified deal with the authorities so the artwork can be returned, lawyers for the defendants said on Tuesday as they went on trial in Romania.“Our clients want to tell where the paintings are, but they want to make a deal,” one of the lawyers, Radu Catalin Dancu, told reporters in Bucharest after a judge ordered the trial adjourned until next month. “We cannot say anything more than that.”
Source: Asahi Shimbum
Aug 14, 2013
AURORA, Illinois--At the age of 92, Kenneth Udstad felt a sense of guilt for his actions of nearly 70 years ago.Now, the U.S. veteran of World War II wants to return the items he took from dead Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilian homes on the Northern Mariana Islands of Saipan and Tinian.Udstad served in the 4th Marine Division and was in charge of supplying ammunition and fuel for tanks. In the summer of 1944, he landed on Saipan for heavy fighting against the Imperial Japanese Army and Japanese civilians rounded up for the battle....
Source: Asahi Shimbum
Aug 14, 2013
Maps of Japanese cities that were devastated by Allied air raids during World War II are currently on display at the National Archives of Japan in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.Covering 131 municipalities stretching from northern Hokkaido to southern Kagoshima Prefecture, most of the maps are being shown to the public for the first time.The maps were completed in December 1945 to provide information to military personnel, as well as civilian workers for the military, on their way home from overseas battlefields. Records show the maps were displayed in ships bringing back demobilized soldiers to Japan, according to officials....
