In Gino Segre’s family, physics seems to be in the genes.

Dr. Segre is physics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His uncle, Emilio Segre, was a winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the antiproton. An older brother is a physicist, and an additional “six or seven” cousins do physics, too.

But Dr. Segre, 68, has a second profession: he writes popular books about the history of science. His most recent book, “Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics,” about a 1932 conference at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics, has just been published, drawing praise from reviewers.

Q. Why write a book about one scientific meeting?

A. Because this was no ordinary meeting. For much of the 1930s, Niels Bohr invited young physicists to Copenhagen for an annual gathering where they could talk, joke and trade theories.

The 1932 conference took place at a moment of profound transitions. This was the “miracle year of physics,” when a rapid succession of discoveries brought an end to the uncovering of quantum mechanics and the beginning of nuclear physics. Within the year, the Nazis would take power in Germany. Many of the conferees were Jewish. They’d soon be refugees....

[Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist.]

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Gregory Davis, the author of Religion of Peace? Islam's War Against the World. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. He is the managing director of Quixotic Media and producer of the feature documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know -- which has just been released on DVD.

FP: Gregory Davis, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Davis: Thank you for having me.

FP: So tell us a bit about this documentary.

Davis: The documentary originally came out in 2006 but is now in wider release on DVD. There have been several documentaries done on the subject of terrorism, but none so far that examine the sources of Islamic violence within Islam itself. For the most part, there has been a great effort to keep violence done in the name of Islam and Islam itself separate. In contrast, our movie examines the doctrines and history of Islam with the aim of discovering the roots of Islamic violence and intolerance. We focus on the canonical Islamic texts -- the Koran, hadiths ("reports" of Muhammad's life), and the Sira (or Life of the Prophet Muhammad) -- and how Islam has operated through history. We then move on to the role Islam is currently playing in conflicts around the globe -- from Nigeria, to Sudan, Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir, Thailand, etc. -- as well as international terrorism, and what the future is likely to hold.

FP: Why do you think there is so much that the West actually doesn’t know about Islam? Why the impulse to deceive oneself?

Davis: I think that there are several reasons. The first is a natural if unwarrantable reluctance to face the very uncomfortable reality that there is an entire civilization seeking our subjugation under nothing less than a totalitarian system of government, i.e., Islamic (Sharia) law.

When faced with National Socialism and Communism, the West demonstrated a similar unwillingness to face up to very grim realities. The continued emphasis on a "new world order" in which violence and warfare will be swept into the dustbin of history makes it that much more difficult for people to realize that, far from a coming era of perpetual peace and happiness, we are facing a future of conflict and civilizational struggle.

The second reason I believe is the persistence of the multicultural myth that all peoples, religions, and civilizations are morally equivalent. Despite its manifest absurdity, this idea nonetheless continues to taint just about every public discussion on Islam and throttles any kind of objective analysis of the origins of Islamic violence.

Thanks to multiculturalism, every theory except the obvious one -- that Islamic violence has roots in Islam -- is advanced: that the jihadists are acting out of "frustration" due to "poverty," "disenfranchisement," etc. Such theories are belied by such jihadists as the 7/7 bombers in London, who were native Britons, and the more recent British doctors, who seemed to have plenty to live for in Western society.

And then there is of course someone like Osama bin Laden, a multimillionaire many times over, a father, poet, and animal-lover, who nonetheless is willing to throw it all away in order to follow in the footsteps of Muhammad. The unhappy truth is that the jihadists are, to a great extent, acting from genuine, deeply-held religious conviction.

Invariably, the jihadists are serious, pious Muslims, many of whom recently rediscovered the tenets of their faith. It is an uncomfortable fact for a tolerant society such as ours to acknowledge that sincere religious belief can pose an imminent danger to a society's physical safety. We would be better off discarding "religion" as a term and instead focus on the very real distinctions between religions and their implications.

FP: So what hope exists that there can be a modernization and democratization within the Islamic world? How can this even begin to happen when the extremists appear to be in command in most of its quarters?


Davis: Hope that a "reformation" of Islam will somehow eliminate its fundamental hostility to the non-Muslim world is wishful thinking. The only even modestly successful attempts to "reform" Islam have taken the form of de-Islamization. This was the policy of Attaturk, who in Turkey replaced the cult of Muhammad with the cult of himself.

Throughout Islamic history, the only alternative to the rule of Islamic law is military dictatorship. It is between these two extremes that modern Turkey continues to oscillate.

Democratizing Islam is really a contradiction in terms: one might as well try democratizing National Socialism or Communism. Islam is what it is: a repressive, expansionary, militaristic religious and political system with a mandate from Allah to conquer the globe. Putting it that way almost sounds silly to the Western ear, but this does not deny the truth of it.

The fundamental problem is that the Muslim extremists are not really "extreme" at all -- rather they are the orthodox faithful. By Western logic, Muhammad himself -- who engaged in political assassination, wars of aggression, and massacre --- would qualify as an "extremist." Violence and intolerance are mainstream in Islam, not distortions of its orthodox traditions as they would be in a religion such as Christianity.

FP: But we have many Muslim moderates and reformers who are our allies. We don’t want to alienate them. They are our allies in this struggle. Surely many Muslims are our allies against extremism. What should our strategy be?

Davis: The primary task for Western leaders today is to mobilize their societies to confront the Islamic threat -- it is not to manipulate the Muslim world to develop a fictive "moderate" Islam. The danger of encouraging "moderate" Muslims is that it gives a false signal to Westerners that there can be a long-term modus vivendi between Islam and the West. We must understand that, while there are peaceful Muslims, there is no peaceful Islam. The distinction is capital. Muslims who have rejected Islam's violent injunctions, consciously or unconsciously, have thrown out one of the essential elements of their faith. An analogy would be with the Mensheviks, who rejected the necessity of the violent revolution that their Communist ideology required. The Mensheviks were thus forever trying to square a circle: they remained Communists while rejecting one of Communism's primary tenets. It was inevitable that their illogic would ultimately give way to the more logically rigorous -- and bloody -- Bolsheviks. The same with Islam. Throughout Islamic history, there have been those who rejected Allah's call to violence, but they have never managed to become politically efficacious precisely because their position so obviously contravened Islam's unmistakable teaching on jihad.

Pretending that there is a peaceful Islam will only foster further muddled thinking and disastrous policy. Fearing that we will alienate peace-loving (unorthodox) Muslims by properly identifying Islam as violent is a recipe for disaster. As Osama bin Laden has put it, people will naturally favor a strong horse over a weak one. Islam today is showing itself as the strong horse, confident in its purpose and determinedly pursuing it, while the West cannot even bring itself to speak plainly about the enemy. However well-intended, the Western statesmen who insist on "reaching out" to "moderate" Muslims are objects of contemptuous fun to the jihadists, who move from strength to strength while Western governments spin themselves dizzy to avoid the plain reality that Islam is at war with the world.

Publicly affirming Islam as the imperialistic political program that it is, rather than alienating peaceful Muslims, will draw to our side many on the fence and signal to the jihadists that we are through with the political correctitude that is our chief impediment to decisive action. As infidels, we are not going to have much effect on the long-term course of Islam one way or the other; we should concentrate on mobilizing our own civilization, which necessitates a frank discussion of what Islam is -- not what we wish it to be.

We should encourage genuinely peace-loving Muslims to take a hard, unflinching look at their religion and to draw the necessary conclusion: as have prominent apostates such as Ibn Warraq, Walid Shoebat, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They have had the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the violent nature of Islam and to reject it by renouncing Islam in its totality. That sort of courage is a tall order -- apostasy is a capital offence in Islam -- and we in the West should do everything to encourage and protect such acts of conscience. But the half-measure of encouraging peaceful Muslims to take up a "moderate" form of Islam is not only an act of intellectual dishonesty, it is a sure way to foster future acts of jihad. Many of the Islamic terrorists of recent years have been formerly "moderate" Muslims who reawakened to an orthodox interpretation of their faith. The European "youths" responsible for the intermittent riots in France and elsewhere are largely the offspring of "moderate" Muslim immigrants who fled the repression of their native Islamic lands. Trying to foster a "moderate" form of Islam is like trying to foster a "moderate" form of Communism or National Socialism.

FP: What are your thoughts in terms of the Left’s behaviour in the terror war? And how about how the Left recoils from allowing an honest examination of Islam, when for years it has made vicious attacks on Judea-Christian values?

Davis: The defining characteristic of the dogmatic Left is that they will align themselves with any movement that has as its aim the destruction of Western civilization. The Left proved themselves a significant fifth column during the Cold War, less from open advocacy of Communism than from rearguard activity that eroded Western cultural and institutional integrity. The Left are instinctively sympathetic to Islam primarily because they can use it today as a battering ram against the West much as they once used Communism. Recall the Left's silence following 9/11: their dilemma at that time was to reformulate their arguments so as to come up with a way of taking the side of the jihadists without seeming totally insane or provoking a devastating public reaction. It took them a little while, but they finally managed it with variations of "we asked for it" interwoven with sanctimonious condemnation of "all religious extremism." The cult of multiculturalism continues to forestall any serious examination of just what Islam is, what it has done, and what it means to do -- the essential questions that we ask in Islam: What the West Needs to Know. In the DVD, we go directly to the Islamic sources in order to understand Islam from its own point of view -- a violation of the first commandment of political correctitude, thou shalt not ask questions. We do ask questions, the simple but necessary ones that have been so absent from the public discourse on Islam.

Significantly -- and sadly -- it has not only been the Left who have been guilty of intellectual laziness on this issue. Many of the Right have similarly declined to give Islam a hard look. The phrase "war on terror" is an example of this tendency to avoid serious examination of the origins of Islamic violence. A "war on terror" is a war with the primary object of not hurting anyone's feelings; it is a half-hearted war against an unreal enemy. While the Left fail to see Islamic imperialism as a threat to the freedoms they ostensibly cherish, the bias of much of the right is to see "religion" as a natural conservative force in the world and therefore resurgent Islam as a natural ally. Such conservatives are fighting the last war: they correctly diagnose the secular Left, but they fail to realize that Islam is a far older, more determined, and ascendant enemy. They are committing the same error as many Leftists by refusing to draw the necessary distinctions between cultures. The hope of a "new world order" in which conflict of all sorts will happily melt into the past has blinded many to the irreducible hostility of Islam toward the non-Muslim world. The exploding Muslim population worldwide combined with the demographic collapse of Europe mean that the balance of forces are changing very rapidly.

The choices confronting us are not between a maintenance of the old nation-state system, with its uncertainty and occasional violence, and a new era of global peace and prosperity, but between the survival of our civilization and global Islamic hegemony.

Safeguarding our survival and containing Islam, as opposed to building a brave new global regime in which traditional identities are submerged into one, must be the order of the day.

FP: What do readers need to do if they would like to get a hold of this dvd?

Davis: The DVD is available at a number of online retailers. They can visit our website, www.WhatTheWestNeedsToKnow.com, or go directly to Amazon.com.

FP: Gregory Davis, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
Davis: Jamie, it is always a pleasure.

... With regard to the care of antiquities, how do you compare the Saddam era with the way things are today? Saddam wanted projects to bolster his image, to show that he was a patron of history and antiquities, as were the ancient leaders of Iraq. Now, with the interference of new people who are illiterate about cultural heritage, everything is much more problematic.

... What is the status of the museum today? Is it threatened? About three or four months before I left, we had a mass kidnapping take place in the street outside the museum. A dozen official cars painted in camouflage drove up, full of personnel who were completely armed, equipped, and wearing uniforms. They took 50 people off the street. Shortly after, the interior minister announced that they had nothing to do with the kidnapping. I immediately called my senior staff and asked one simple question: What can we do if these people come to the museum, accuse us of hiding something in our storerooms, and demand to go in? Can we stop them? We agreed there was no stopping them, so we started immediately securing the museum. We put antiquities in the registration rooms and labs into boxes, took them down into the storeroom, and started welding the iron doors. For a day and a half, we welded all the doors leading to the storerooms and to the museum area. And the last thing we did was to build a wall half a meter thick with bricks and concrete at the entrance. The museum was completely sealed. Now, unfortunately, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities wants to reopen the museum just to show the outside world Baghdad is OK and everything is fine. The museum director e-mailed me that she’s under pressure to reopen. Of course it would be ridiculous to do this. [Since this interview, the tourism minister has been forced to resign, along with several other Shiite ministers. The museum remains closed.]

How bad is the looting in southern Iraq? Last year, al-Sadr’s followers attacked and burned the museum of Nasiriyah and its library. They said to the guards—and I know this is true because I spoke with them—“tell [local inspector] Abdul Amir Hamadan we will do to your antiquities exactly what the Taliban did!” In Najaf, al-Sadr’s party was heard to tell worshippers that looting artifacts is ethical so long as the money goes for guns or building mosques. And we have started to have problems in an area in Basra called Zobeir—the original Basra—which was founded by the caliph Omar in A.D. 638. Our inspector says people are building houses on the site, in practice destroying the first Islamic city that was built outside the Arab peninsula. Historically, Omar is considered the enemy of all Shiites. So is it being destroyed intentionally or just neglected? I don’t know. But I’m worried this is exactly what happened to the Samarra mosque and shrine [destroyed in a sectarian bombing in 2006]. This kind of conflict might also lead to huge destruction of Islamic monuments and archaeology. We have an armed force of 1,400 men to patrol the provinces, and we managed to get some cars from the State Department and about 45 cars from Unesco. We concentrated on Nasiriyah because the looting was so bad there and because there are over 700 archaeological sites in the area. Inspector Abdul Amir [Hamadan] and his team did a very good job, patrolling, arresting looters, and sending looted antiquities to the museum. But rich people on the city council with ties to the Islamic parties are agitating for easy access to antiquities. ...

BOB GARFIELD: Weller's accounts languished in storage until this year. But the New York Times had its own reporter on the atomic beat. William L. Laurence wasn't ever on the ground in Japan. Instead, the Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer was a proto embed, flying above Japan when the bomb called Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. It was extraordinary access. And Laurence had also observed the atomic bomb's manufacture and testing. His ten-part series profiling the bomb, would win him and the Times a Pulitzer Prize in 1946. But until the bombs fell, Laurence protected another piece of intelligence. He had been on the payroll of the U.S. War Department. David Goodman wrote about Laurence in Exception to the Rulers, a book he co-authored with his sister Amy. David, welcome to the show.

DAVID GOODMAN: Thanks for having me, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Who was William L. Laurence?

DAVID GOODMAN: Laurence was an immigrant from Eastern Europe. He was a science reporter for the Times. He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1937. And he became a staunch advocate of the atomic bomb long before the atomic bomb was ever dropped. Throughout the 1930's he was advocating for research into the use of atomic power, such that he earned a nickname, "Atomic Bill."

BOB GARFIELD: So when the War Department was looking explicitly for a working newspaperman to help mold public opinion about the bomb, natural choice.

DAVID GOODMAN: Indeed. General Leslie Groves, who was the military director of the Manhattan Project, scientists who researched and created the bomb, his own words were that he was looking for a "suitable newspaperman" to tell the story of the bomb to the public, to put the language of this arcane science in laypeople's terms. So in March 1945 there was an extraordinary secret meeting held at the offices of the New York Times, in which General Groves came to meet with William Laurence and asked that he become a special consultant to the War Department.

BOB GARFIELD: David, there is one brief passage in a piece by Laurence as he flew in the plane that was about to drop the bomb on Nagasaki, that is an astonishing window into his frame of mind. Can you read that for me, please?

DAVID GOODMAN: What Laurence wrote was that he felt no, quote, "pity or compassion for the poor devils" who were about to die. And he went further because his compassion was reserved for the bomb itself. When the bomb detonated, quote, "Awe-struck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes."

BOB GARFIELD: Now the story goes beyond Laurence reporting, with an obvious conflict of interest, about the dropping of the bomb. It gets far more sordid because when the news of radiation disease began to leak out, the War Department went into full defensive mode and used Laurence to publish, in effect, disinformation. Tell me about that.

DAVID GOODMAN: General Groves handpicked a group of journalists to accompany him not to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but to the bomb site out in New Mexico where the first bomb was detonated. And it was there that William Laurence wrote what General Groves had wanted him to write. Laurence, quoting General Groves, writes, "The Japanese claim that people died from radiation. If this is true, the number was very small." Laurence continues in his own editorializing in the story. He writes, "The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda, aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms. Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described symptoms that did not ring true." ...

The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN is seriously concerned for the health of teacher and writer Dolma Kyab (also known as Lobsang Kelsang Gyatso), whose health is said to have deteriorated in detention. International PEN believes Dolma Kyab, who is serving a ten-year sentence for his writings, is held in violation of his rights to freedom of expression as guaranteed under Article 19 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory, and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release. PEN is also seeking assurances that he is receiving all necessary medical care.

According to information received in July 2007, Dolma Kyab (pen-name Lobsang Kelsang Gyatso) was transferred to Seilong (Xining) prison, about 400 kilometres from Lhasa, on 19 July 2007 where he is serving the remaining of his ten-year prison-sentence for his critical writings. Seilong prison is a labour camp where prisoners undergo “re-education through labour”. A former detainee reports to have met Dolma Kyab there a few days before he was released. He also stated that Dolma Kyab seemed to be in very poor health and that he appeared to be suffering from some medical condition.

Dolma Kyab is imprisoned for writing a comprehensive study about Tibet. The manuscript, written in Chinese, is entitled Sao dong de Ximalayashan and is reportedly a compilation of 57 chapters covering various topics including democracy, the sovereignty of Tibet, Tibet under communism, colonialism, and religion. Dolma Kyab is also said to have started another manuscript on the geographical aspects of Tibet, which was comparatively short yet touched on sensitive topics about the location and number of Chinese military camps in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).

Dolma Kyab was reportedly arrested on 9 March 2005 in Lhasa, where he was teaching History at a Middle School. He was held pending trial at the Public Security Bureau Detention Centre, on charges of “endangering state security”, and sentenced on 16 September 2005 by Lhasa Intermediate People’s Court to ten years in prison. The sentence was upheld on appeal on 30 November 2005. In March 2006 he was transferred to Chushul Prison on the outskirts of Lhasa. While in the Public Security Bureau Detention Centre, Dolma Kyab contracted tuberculosis for which he received medical treatment before his transfer to Chushul Prison.

The Tibetan Centre of PEN provides the following background for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), http://www.tchrd.org/ <http://www.tchrd.org/>; :

“Dolma Kyab was born in 1976 in Ari Village, Qilian County,Tsochang Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. He attended the local Primary School in 1984 and later joined the County Middle School. After completing his schooling in 1995, he joined a Teachers Training Centre and served as a teacher in a Middle School in Qilian County. He later went to a University in Beijing to continue his studies. In 2003, he came to India to learn English and Hindi languages and returned to Tibet in May 2004. Upon return, he served as a History teacher in a Middle School in Lhasa until arrest.”


RECOMMENDED ACTIONS:

Please send appeals to the Chinese authorities:

**Expressing concern for detained teacher and writer Dolma Kyab’s health following reports that it has considerably worsened in recent weeks, and seeking assurances that he is receiving all necessary medical care;

**Protesting the ten-year prison sentence handed down to Dolma Kyab, and calling for his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory.


GOVERNMENT ADDRESSES:

His Excellency Hu Jintao
**President of the People’s Republic of China
**State Council
**Beijing 100032
**P.R.China.

Procurator General Mr. Jia Chunwang
**Supreme People’s Procuratorate
**Beiheyan Street 147
**100726 Beijing
**P.R.China

Please note that fax numbers are no longer available for the Chinese authorities, so you may wish to ask the diplomatic representative for China in your country to forward your appeals.

Centres may find that the Chinese representative in their own countries are more likely to respond to appeals, so please copy to your Chinese embassy or write in place of the above address.

For further information please contact Cathy McCann at International PEN Writers in Prison Committee, Brownlow House, 50/51 High Holborn, London WC1V 6ER, Tel.+ 44 (0) 20 7405 0338, Fax: +44 (0) 20 7405 0339, email: cathy.mccann@internationalpen.org.uk.

Early on, before the campaigning begins in earnest, presidential candidates lunch with journalists in order to get acquainted. During one of these lunches, Mitt Romney was talking about the global economy and was asked why he thought some nations grew rich and others didn’t.

He said there are at least two schools of thought on this question, one associated with Jared Diamond of U.C.L.A., which emphasizes natural resources, and another associated with the Harvard historian David Landes, which emphasizes culture. Over the next several minutes, he weaved the two theories together, siding a bit more with Landes.

The answer demonstrated an ability to handle contradictory information streams. From it, you could see how Romney had managed to graduate with honors from Harvard Law School, while graduating in the top 5 percent of his class at Harvard Business School. You could see how he managed to start Bain Capital and turn it into a $4 billion firm, doubling the return on investment every single year, on average. You could see how he turned around the Salt Lake City Olympics and passed bipartisan health care reform in Massachusetts....

Israeli writer and Barnard College graduate Paula Stern has begun a petition against the permanent appointment of a Muslim anthropologist, who asserts that the Israeli Biblical kingdoms are "pure political fabrication."

In an open letter to Columbia University and its Barnard College affiliate, Stern charged that anthropology Prof. Nadia Abu El Haj is unqualified for tenure at the institutions. Her book Facts on the Ground alleges that archaeologists have "created the fact of an ancient Israelite/Jewish nation" and that the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication."

Stern argued that El Haj's evidence is not professional and ignores evidence pointing to the existence of the Biblical kingdoms and that many statements are made without sources.

AN area of woodland in Penn is to be named after one of the village's most famous and enigmatic residents.

Sir Oliver Millar, an acclaimed art historian and former surveyor of the Queen's pictures, left the three quarters of an acre site off Elm Road to the residents' society to look after.

Sir Oliver was a well known face in and around the village and had lived in nearby Penn for 49 years - first in Yonder Lodge in Elm Road and later in Rays Lane.

He died after suffering a heart attack in May aged 84 and since then the executors of his estate have been sorting out his land. They approached the society three weeks ago and asked them if they would be prepared to take on part of it.

Whenever NBC News needs someone to put the current presidential campaign into historic context they usually go to liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and in recent days, on two different NBC News outlets, Goodwin has delivered with her unique historic and liberal perspective on Hillary Clinton.

On this morning's "Today" show, NBC's Andrea Mitchell went to Goodwin for a critical take on Hillary, but even when asked to find a negative about the Senator from New York, Goodwin couldn't help but fill her critique with superlatives as she determined Hillary may need to soften her "articulate" and overly "prepared," image by intentionally making a mistake. The following analysis was aired on the August 7, "Today" show:

Andrea Mitchell: "So far, Clinton has scored points in debates by showing she is knowledgeable. Now experts say she may also have to prove she's likable."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian: "It means she may have to take a risk of making a mistake. She may have to take a risk of not being so articulate and so prepared, to show spontaneity, to show humor."

As any student of recent history knows, Hillary is more than capable of making un-calculated mistakes. Perhaps Goodwin believed her disastrous attempt to socialize health care and her infamous "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies" remark were all part of an ingenious strategy to humanize the "so prepared" Hillary.

In fact, judging from Goodwin's comments from her appearance on Tim Russert's CNBC show, back on July 28th, Goodwin seems to have developed an image of Hillary as an innocent victim who has been forced to overcome the mistakes of others:

When Russert asked Goodwin to rate the '08 candidates' ability to overcome adversity, Goodwin noted Hillary's great accomplishment of having "withstood" such public trials as Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky.

Goodwin: "Looking back. I think for Hillary Clinton, to a certain extent, having withstood the extraordinary damage to her reputation with both Whitewater and the humiliation with the Monica Lewinsky affair, and being willing to slog it out again on the public campaign trail, shows that she's come through something."...

We were flattered and gratified by Benny Morris's appreciation of our book Foxbats over Dimona: the Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War, and hope indeed that--in his words--we have come closer to an approximation of the historical truth ("Provocations," July 23).

Since the book went to press, some new evidence has emerged that further confirms our thesis from several angles, including additional testimonies to Soviet preparations in May 1967 for a paratroop drop, as well as a naval landing, in Israel. The most dramatic of these, however, was a statement by the chief spokesman of the Russian Air Force, posted on the website of the Russian Defense Ministry, asserting that in 1967, a Soviet pilot flew "unique" reconnaissance missions over Israel in a MiG-25 "Foxbat."

This is about as close to an official document as one can hope for under the prevailing circumstances. As in several cases that we cite in the book, this startling disclosure of a hitherto secret operation apparently was included inadvertently in a statement that was published in a completely different context: the anniversary of the test pilots' school from which the pilot graduated. It illustrates the point we emphasized, that full and direct documentation of the Soviet plan in 1967 is still being suppressed--to the extent that it ever existed and was not destroyed. We do not share Morris's expectation that such material will soon, or ever, be systematically released from former Soviet archives, nor his willingness to await such release in order to set the record straight.

Indeed, our experience even with U.S. and Israeli archival sources for the period encountered only somewhat less selective declassification. Criticism of our findings merely on the grounds that no basis for them has yet been exposed in Soviet archives is, therefore, not merely fallacious. It is also disturbingly dangerous, because it implicitly admits the Orwellian nightmare whereby the absence, prostitution, or suppression of archival evidence can and should be allowed to excise entire chapters from history. The alternative, to which we have tried to contribute, is to cross-check and piece together, cautiously and painstakingly, the myriad and often random references now available from other sources, in order to assemble a picture that evolves gradually toward the actual facts as they occurred. Our approach is discussed at greater length in the first chapter of Foxbats.

Blackpast.org, led by University of Washington Professor and former AHA Council member Quintard Taylor, contains an abundance of resources on African American history. This site features an online encyclopedia containing 800 plus entries, transcripts of speeches from 1789 to 2004, collections of links and info on hundreds of other resources, and so much more.

Peruse the Digital Archives and find links, separated by state, to sites like the Library of Congress exhibition "Voices of Civil Rights;" the Booker T. Washington papers from University of Illinois Press; and Indiana University’s Archives of African American Music & Culture. Visit the Timeline section of the site for breakdowns of African American history for each century. And check out the Perspectives on African American History for personal accounts and articles on events like the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the rise of hip hop in Eastern Europe, and a lynching in Obion County, Tennessee.

With so much quality information in one place, this site just might be justified in calling itself "the ‘Google’ of African American history."

Palmerston North can lay claim to one the world's finest war historians with news Massey University associate Professor Glyn Harper has been invited to speak at an international conference in Belgium later this year.

Titled Such Anger, Such Danger: Passchendaele 1917, the prestigious November gathering, featuring the world's foremost World War I authorities, involves three days of lectures and battlefield tours.

"It's an absolute honour to be chosen to go," Dr Harper said.
"To represent not only New Zealand but Australia as well at the conference is really big, and really quite exciting. There will be a couple of hundred people there and I'll be speaking on the Anzacs at Passchendaele.

"It's quite good because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has paid for my flights, so that's another detail I don't need to worry about."

He plans to spend three weeks in Belgium, some of it to be spent on archive research for a future topic, Monte Cassino.