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.com
Sep 28, 2011
(CNN) -- A Jewish human rights organization on Monday called for Thailand's Christian leaders to condemn a parade at the Sacred Heart School in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in which participating students wearing Nazi uniforms performed "Sieg Heil" salutes.The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, denounced the event, saying it was "glorifying Nazis."Photographs of the parade show participants carrying a Swastika flag, performing Nazi salutes and wearing SS uniforms, while others dressed as Adolf Hitler complete with toothbrush moustache.Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the images made it clear that the event could not have taken place without the knowledge and cooperation of the school administration....
Source: Jeff Biggers at the Huffington Post
Sep 28, 2011
Based in Tucson, Arizona and Illinois, Jeff Biggers is the David Brower Award/American Book Award-winning author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, The United States of Appalachia, and In the Sierra Madre. His website is: www.jeffbiggers.com As a state administrative judge deliberates on the fate of Tucson Unified School District's Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies Program (MAS), Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal compared the nationally acclaimed program to the Hitler Nazi Jugend paramilitary organization at a Pima County Republican luncheon last week.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 28, 2011
The dynasty behind the BMW luxury car marker has admitted, after decades of silence, using slave labour, taking over Jewish firms and doing business with the highest echelons of the Nazi party during World War Two.Gabriele Quandt, whose grandfather Guenther employed an estimated 50,000 forced labourers in his arms factories, producing ammunition, rifles, artillery and U-boat batteries, said it was 'wrong' for the family to ignore this chapter of its history.He spoke out after an in-depth study by Bonn-based historian Joachim Scholtyseck, commissioned by the family, that concluded Guenther Quandt and his son Herbert were responsible for numerous Nazi injustices.It found Guenther acquired companies through the Nazi programme of 'Aryanisation' of Jewish-owned firms.Herbert Quandt was 'part of the system', son Stefan Quandt said after the conclusion of the three-year study - forced on the family by public outrage over a German TV documentary - compiled using company files from the 12-year period of the Third Reich.
Source: WaPo
Sep 27, 2011
MOSCOW — In its heyday, the members of the Young Communist League of the Soviet Union liked to think of themselves as shock troops on the front lines of agriculture and construction. They were building a better USSR, and making themselves better communists in the process.But by the fall of 1991 the Communist Party had been kicked from power and it was clear there wasn’t going to be a better USSR. On Sept. 27, the leaders of the 73-year-old organization, known as the Komsomol, met in a hotel here in Moscow and agreed it was time to put it to rest. There were no tears — there was too much property at stake.The Komsomol, whose members ranged in age from 14 to 28, had been straying from the straight-and-narrow path of Marxist fervor for quite a while by that time. It was an organization for strivers, and for people who didn’t want to look like they didn’t belong. It was a career ladder for apparatchiks, who had used it during the years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika to create a surprisingly lucrative empire....
Source: Reuters
Sep 27, 2011
FLORENCE (Reuters Life!) - Global luxury brand Gucci opened its first museum in a Florentine palazzo this week, 90 years after its founder started a family leather goods business inspired by English aristocrats.Stars of the fashion world came out to celebrate the museum's opening at a lavish ceremony on Monday in Florence's treasured Piazza della Signoria, home to the 14th-century Palazzo della Mercanzia that houses Gucci's new exhibit."United we're stronger," said Ferruccio Ferragamo, chairman of the Tuscan star shoemaker which bears his name, at the party to launch the Gucci museum, which spans three floors.Inside the sumptuous confines of the palazzo, Gucci's famed "bamboo" handbags owned by fashion idols Jackie Onassis and Sofia Loren are on permanent display for the first time and the basement houses the Gucci archive, an immense collection of ready-to-wear, accessories and photographs....
Source: NYT
Sep 27, 2011
They came from fraying binders, from forgotten boxes in storage units, from cobwebbed closets. They had been in Mississippi and South Carolina and Georgia, and included a wallet-size photograph of a familiar preacher with a dream. Their destination was a drab office space in the back of a library in Queens.Now, a half-century removed from the moments they capture, these artifacts have come to represent the growing, perhaps surprising reputation of Queens College as something of a nexus of civil rights history.Starting more than two years ago, when a small group of Queens College alumni and faculty members with civil rights backgrounds began contributing items from their personal collections, and cresting in February, when the family of the civil rights activist James Forman donated his remaining collection to the school, the archives have attracted an international audience....
Source: NYT
Sep 27, 2011
When Julian Bond, the former Georgia lawmaker and civil rights activist, turned to teaching two decades ago, he often quizzed his college students to gauge their awareness of the civil rights movement. He did not want to underestimate their grasp of the topic or talk down to them, he said.“My fears were misplaced,” Mr. Bond said. No student had heard of George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, he said. One student guessed that Mr. Wallace might have been a CBS newsman.That ignorance by American students of the basic history of the civil rights movement has not changed — in fact, it has worsened, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, on whose board Mr. Bond sits. The report says that states’ academic standards for public schools are one major cause of the problem.“Across the country, state educational standards virtually ignore our civil rights history,” concludes the report, which is to be released on Wednesday....
Source: WaPo
Sep 27, 2011
The 5.8-magnitude earthquake that shook the East Coast and damaged the Washington Monument enough for it to be closed indefinitely may have done more damage than the National Park Service had previously revealed. Armed with tiny hammers to test the monument’s soundness and to search for further damage, a team of engineers will be rappelling the 555-foot-tall structure over the next five days.
NBC Video here
Source: CBS
Sep 27, 2011
The SS Gairsoppa, a British cargo ship sunk during World War II by a Nazi U-Boat, sits 3 miles below the ocean's surface with $220 million worth of silver stored aboard.
Source: BBC
Sep 27, 2011
A blue and white porcelain jar about to be thrown in a skip has been sold for £1,700 after being identified as from the Ming dynasty.The jar, which had considerable damage, had been used as a stick stand by the front door of a country house in Herefordshire.Jeremy Lamond, fine art director at Halls auctioneers in Shrewsbury, said it was about to be thrown in a skip.But he identified it as being from the early 17th Century....
Source: CNN
Sep 27, 2011
The case of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbesset al Megrahi is "closed," Libya's transitional justice minister told reporters.Jamal Ben Noor, a senior official with Libya's Justice and Human Rights Ministry, said Tuesday the government has not received any official request from Scottish authorities regarding the case. But he said Libya will cooperate if such a request is received from the Scottish or British government to reveal documents or provide access to individuals.Late last month, CNN's Nic Robertson found al Megrahi under the care of his family in his palatial Tripoli villa. He was bedridden, comatose, and surviving on oxygen and an intravenous drip....
Source: BBC News
Sep 27, 2011
A high-ranking Nazi officer who helped develop a mobile gas chamber became a spy for West Germany after World War II, archives have revealed.Former SS officer Walther Rauff worked for West German intelligence service, the BND, between 1958 and 1962....[The] BND traced him and recruited him as spy, ostensibly to go to Cuba to spy on leader Fidel Castro.He was denied entry but still earned more than DM70,000 ($18,000, £11,500) during his time with the service.Publicly he became a wanted man when his wartime role was brought to light but - even after his arrest by Chilean police in 1962 - he was being supported by the BND....
Source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Press Release
Sep 27, 2011
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a gift of $17.2 million from the estate of Eric F. Ross of Palm Beach, FL, and West Orange, NJ. It is the largest single gift to the institution. Eric and his late wife, Lore, both of whom were refugees from Nazi Germany, donated more than $12 million to the institution during their lifetimes. In total, they have contributed more than $30 million to the Museum.This gift will support the Museum’s endowment fund, which will provide vital permanent resources to secure the Museum’s future and global impact, ensuring that the timeless lessons of the Holocaust remain a transformative force in the 21st century. Over the next eight years, the Museum aims to raise an additional $200 million for its endowment fund. “Having experienced firsthand Nazi antisemitism and hatred, Eric and Lore Ross became determined and generous investors in Holocaust education,” says Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield. “Their loss and suffering inspired remarkable generosity.”
Source: SF Chronicle
Sep 26, 2011
Greece is at the center of the sovereign debt crisis that is worrying many investors and increasing the volatility of stock markets across the world. This is not a new phenomenon for that country, which has defaulted on its external debt many times since achieving independence at the beginning of the 19th century. Here are some facts that all investors should know about the history of Greek sovereign debt defaults.Ancient DefaultThe first recorded default in Greek history occurred in the fourth century B.C., when 13 Greek city states borrowed funds from the Temple of Delos. Most of the borrowers never made good on the loans and the temple took an 80% loss on its principal.
Source: Reuters
Sep 26, 2011
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) -A new documentary about Mayan civilization will provide evidence of extraterrestrial contact with the ancient culture, according to a Mexican government official and the film's producer....In a release to TheWrap, Luis Augusto Garcia Rosado, the minister of tourism for the Mexican state of Campeche, said new evidence has emerged "of contact between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some time."He also spoke, in a phone conversation, of "landing pads in the jungle that are 3,000 years old."...[N]ot only has Rosado changed his tune [from previous interviews], but the Guatemalan government has joined the project, as well, giving access to artifacts and newly discovered prophecies...
Source: PC Magazine
Sep 26, 2011
The Dead Sea Scrolls have made their way online some 2,000 years after they were written through a partnership between Google and Israel’s national museum.The important documents are available in searchable, high-resolution images, accompanied by informative videos, background information, and historical data. So far five of the scrolls have been digitized, including the biblical Book of Isaiah, the Temple Scroll, and three others.Managing Director of Google’s R&D Center in Israel, Professor Yossi Matias said they plan to add additional Dead Sea Scroll documents to the site in the future. The AP says nearly all the scrolls will be online by 2016.While smaller selections of the scrolls are owned by private collections and organizations, the Israel Museum owns the most complete scrolls. These documents are housed in a secured building in Jerusalem called the Shrine of the Book, which requires three keys to enter.
Source: BBC
Sep 25, 2011
The previously unpublished first novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will finally be available to buy from Monday.Entitled The Narrative of John Smith, the novel - written between 1883 and 1884 - comprises the reflections of a man confined to his room by gout.Conan Doyle sent it to a publisher but it was lost in the post. The book was then reconstructed from memory.The British Library is now releasing the novel, alongside an audiobook read by actor Robert Lindsay.The four notebooks that comprise the manuscript form part of an exhibition that runs at the Library until 5 January....
Source: NYT
Sep 25, 2011
In 1941, a Nazi torpedo tore a hole in a British merchant ship carrying a fortune in silver to England from India. The ship was part of a convoy headed for Liverpool, but it went down about 300 miles southwest of Ireland, disappearing in icy waters nearly three miles deep, deeper than the resting place of the Titanic.Now, divers say they have found the wreck intact and they estimate its cargo at up to 240 tons of silver — a trove worth more than $200 million. They plan to recover it this spring.The recovery, if successful, would be history’s deepest and largest retrieval of a precious cargo lost at sea and highlight the growing power of ocean technology, according to Odyssey Marine Exploration, the company that found the ship. It is working under contract to the British government and says it verified the ship’s identity this month.“We were fortunate to find the shipwreck sitting upright, with the holds open and easily accessible,” said Greg Stemm, chief executive of Odyssey, which is based in Tampa, Fla. “This should enable to us to unload cargo through the hatches, as would happen with a ship alongside a cargo terminal.”
Source: Fox News
Sep 24, 2011
LONG BEACH, Washington – It was a long time coming, but the descendants of explorer William Clark have tried to make amends for a 205-year-old theft.A descendant of the explorer in the Corps of Discovery expedition that opened a land route to the American West presented the Chinook Indian Nation with a replica of a canoe that the corps stole in 1806.
Source: The Boston Globe
Sep 24, 2011
The Museum of Fine Arts ended a more than two-decade-old dispute with Turkey Thursday by returning the top half of its “Weary Herakles’’ statue to Turkish officials. The 1,800-year-old Roman sculpture has been at the MFA since 1982. But after years of negotiations, the MFA acknowledged in July that the statue, which experts believe was probably looted from an excavation in Turkey, should be sent back to that country.Turkish officials met with MFA leaders for less than an hour on Thursday to sign an agreement transferring ownership of the sculpture to the Turkish government. The agreement stated that the MFA acquired the work in good faith and without knowing about any of the questionable circumstances surrounding its path from Turkey to Boston.The MFA’s top half of “Weary Herakles’’ will be reunited with its bottom half in a museum in Antalya, Turkey. MFA officials had pressed to have the sculpture of the muscular hero reassembled in Boston and shown whole at the MFA first, but they were rebuffed by Turkish officials.In July, the MFA first publicly confirmed the ongoing negotiations and acknowledged that the piece should be reunited with its lower half and returned to Turkey.
