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Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?

by Yuki Tanaka

The original Godzilla film was produced in 1954 and released in November that year, only nine years after the end of the Pacific War. The same production team produced a sequence of 22 Godzilla films between 1954 and 1995, and six more films were created in the years 1995 to 2004 by a different production team. The original Godzilla film, Godzilla, and its first sequel, Godzilla Raids Again produced in 1955, were the result of close cooperation between Producer Tanaka To

John Roberts, Historian

by Rebecca Bernstein

Judge John G. Roberts, the nominee picked by President Bush for the Supreme Court to take the place of retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, has earned many honors in life, starting with several awards for papers concerned with history, which he earned while an undergraduate at Harvard University in the early 1970s. Judge Roberts graduated from Harvard in 1976 and then continued on to Harvard Law School. However, law was not always the career path he intended to take. “Jo

Did the FBI Try to Blackmail Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas

by Marc Stein

A controversial FBI file that reportedly contains allegations of homosexual conduct by Abe Fortas, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in the 1960s, is missing, according to the FBI. Never proven, the allegations may have been made as a way for the FBI to threaten Fortas with exposure, encourage his resignation, or prevent his appointment as Chief Justice. Fortas has been in the news recently because of inaccurate Republican claims about the

Why the Right to Privacy May Be Taken Away by a New Supreme Court

by Ellen Chesler

The resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the still possible retirement of ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist may threaten long-established judicial protections of personal privacy and undermine the foundations on which women’s reproductive freedoms rest. Forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled decisively that married women have the right to use contraceptives. That historic case, Griswold v. Connecticut, led to dramatic changes in Americ

Venona Ten Years Later: Lessons for Today

by Steven T. Usdin

Ten years ago, on July 11, 1995, the U.S. intelligence community held an extraordinary press conference at CIA headquarters to break the seal on one of the most closely held secrets of the Cold War. The world learned that, starting in 1946, American cryptologists had cracked Soviet codes and read portions of thousands of messages Soviet intelligence operatives sent each other during World War II. Most of the cables decrypted in a program that came to be known as Venona, one of numerous codenames

Why Nobodies Are the Real Terrorist Threat

by James Ottavio Castagnera

As I write this, the British news media are reporting that at least three of the four suicide bombers, who killed more than 50 Londoners and wounded scores more, were born in Britain and lived in the English Midlands. They are described as “British nationals of Pakistani origin” by Fox News. One was only 19, another was aged 30 with an 8-month-old baby at home. The third, aged 22, loved cricket, according to an uncle, who added that his nephew had gone to Pakistan earlier this ye

America's Unfinished Revolution

by Gary B. Nash

"Who shall write the history of the American Revolution? Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it?" Thus wrote John Adams in 1815 to Thomas Jefferson."Nobody," Jefferson replied from Monticello,"except merely its external facts. ... The life and soul of history

New Documents Show How the Story of the Bomb Was Suppressed

by Mark Selden

Sixty years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of the first reportage of the deadly impact of radiation – before the term had come into popular use – has reemerged from behind the veil of US censorship, thanks to the uncovering of the dispatches of Chicago Daily News reporter George Weller. Weller evaded military censors to reach Nagasaki by rowboat and train, and documented the destruction and the fate of GI prisoner

Why History Will Judge Us Harshly for Our Violation's of Iraq's Patrimony

by Chalmers Johnson

In the months before he ordered the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and his senior officials spoke of preserving Iraq's"patrimony" for the Iraqi people. At a time when talking about Iraqi oil was taboo, what he meant by patrimony was exactly that -- Iraqi oil. In their"joint statement on Iraq's future" of April 8, 2003, George Bush and Tony Blair declared,"We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq's natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for thei

The Story the Media Are Missing in the Middle East

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

“It is not police and intelligence community which defeat terrorism; it’s communities that beat terrorism,” remarked London’s police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair. But the Muslim community, argues David Gardner, is in the midst of “a war of ideas.” “If it’s a Muslim problem,” retorts Tom Friedman, “it needs a Muslim solution.” Indeed, he concludes, “the double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the cov

Deep Throat and the FBI's History of Hiding Its Own Leaks

by Athan Theoharis

The recent revelations—first, that former FBI Acting Associate Director W Mark Felt was Bob Woodward’s Deep Throat and then, that Felt had successfully orchestrated the FBI’s investigation into the source of this leak--has dominated news coverage. Yet, rather than understand this event as the actions of a crafty and sophisticated bureaucrat, we would do well to locate it in the broader context of the FBI’s history. For Felt’s role in containing an FBI investigati

What the Public Will Stomach

by Lawrence F. Kaplan

For two years critics of the war in Iraq have wondered how long the public would stand by President Bush in the face of continuing insurgent attacks and increasing American casualties. Recently, polls have shown public support is waning. In the latest NYT/CBS News poll only 42 percent approved of his presidency and 60 percent said that the war in Iraq is"going badly." Two weeks ago the president

Germany's Second Doubts About Its Turkish Immigrants

by Aaron Erlich

At the beginning of his class, Herr Michna makes it clear that it was a big mistake on Germany’s part to bring so many guestworkers (Gastarbeiter) from Turkey, and the question now is how to best fix the mistake. Michna begins by showing his students pictures of radical Islam from the front pages of several popular German magazines and newspapers. He mentions September 11th and the recent death of Theo Van Gogh. The problem of immigrants as Herr Michna frames it is existential

Has Alan Dershowitz Got Chutzpah or What!

by Jon Wiener

Response by Alan DershowitzWhat do you do when somebody wants to publish a book that says you're completely wrong? If you're Alan Dershowitz, the prominent Harvard law professor, and the book is Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, you write the governor of California and suggest that he intervene with the publisher--because the publisher is the University of California Press, which conce

Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman: Interviewed on C-SPAN

by Bonnie Goodman

Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman said on C-Span's "Q&A" that they welcomed the recent press coverage concerning the liberal accusation that as Republicans they are pushing forth a conservative ideological agenda through their involvement with the New-York Historical Society, and specifically, last fall's Alexander Hamilton exhibit. "Frankly, I didn't mind any of the publicity, because the New-York Historical Society has been sort of a back number" was Gilder's comment."Yo

Live 8 ... A Flash in the Pan?

by James Ottavio Castagnera

How many of you watched the “Live 8” concerts on TV last Saturday? I watched for awhile. Yes, I said “watched.” Even though I’m a half-hour bus and subway ride to the Franklin Parkway in downtown Philly, I watched from the comfort of my family room in suburban Havertown. Showing up seemed to me to be a waste of time, if ending African poverty was the purpose. If Live 8’s meaning was just the music, I saw more by staying home. Thirty-five years ago

So We Can't Find Middle Echelon Officers to Staff the Iraqi Army? That's Bad

by William Marina

No sooner had President George W. Bush finished his prime time speech last week, than the television talking heads and the press, that Big Media , which the government relies upon to help define their Imperial Reality for us, were hard at it, interpreting every possible nuance or inflection of his address. Did he say anything new? Hardly. But what he omitted spoke volumes!The real test of the effectiveness, of his speech, however, will come, not from the Media, or those millions of pa

North Korea, Iran and the United States in the Dangerous Game of Nations

by William R. Polk

The Guardian of June 9, 2005 reported the disappearance from the International Atomic Energy Agency of a set or sets of detailed engineering plans for making nuclear materials and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). While there never have been any significant scientific secrets on the nuclear bomb, there has been somewhat restricted engineering information that would enable others to speed up, make more cheaply and avoid obvious tell-tale aspects of acquisition. No

9-11: How Far Can the President Legally Go?

by John Dean

Untold thousands of Americans have been killed by unidentified terrorists on American soil. A veiled enemy has declared war on our nation and our way of life. Understandably, the American people look to one person for answers and action: The President of the United States. What can he do? What should he do?These are not hypothetical questions. This is real life. How they are answered will affect every American.The Object Of Terrorism Is Fear

Why Ronald Reagan Picked Sandra Day O'Connor--And Why George W. Bush Might Want to Follow His Example

by Gil Troy

It is not surprising that Sandra Day O’Connor emerged as the crucial swing vote in the modern Supreme Court, or that her retirement presents President George W. Bush with a most unwelcome headache. Justice O’Connor’s appointment in 1