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: The Christian Science Monitor
November 25, 2009
Leiden, The Netherlands - The first Pilgrims of the first American Thanksgiving in 1621 were unusually devout – even by Puritan standards. They crossed the ocean on a conviction that "the Lord has more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word," as pastor John Robinson said before they sailed from the Netherlands.
Yet the Pilgrim band that braved the Mayflower and shared deer and turkey with native Americans were also some of the most cosmopolitan and toleran
Source: National Geographic
November 25, 2009
Recent reports have held up a remote Brazilian town—filled with blonde, blue-eyed twins—as evidence of Mengele's postwar attempts to add to the ranks of an Aryan "master race."
But research announced today says Cândido Godói's "Nazi twins" are nothing more than a myth.
The outback town of about 7,000 has a twin rate nearly 1,000 percent higher than the global average.
The twins' fair features are no mystery—Cândido Godói (map) is largel
Source: Times (UK)
November 26, 2009
Baroness Ashton of Upholland’s past came back to haunt her yesterday when the European Union’s new foreign affairs chief was forced to deny taking funds from the Soviet Union during her days as treasurer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Lady Ashton, a surprise choice for her post, was challenged to deny that she had contact with Russian sources while she was in charge of its accounts at the height of the Cold War.
The Times has learnt that concerns about her
Source: Times (UK)
November 26, 2009
A former MI6 chief attacked the Government last night for failing to provide enough money for the war in Afghanistan.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who was head of the Secret Intelligence Service until 2004, also said the Government had had not made the case for the campaign and had failed to explain why thousands of British troops are fighting there.
He is the first former chief of the security and intelligence agencies to speak out about the mission in Afghanistan which has
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
The model for the "Mapuche nation" he foresees in the central southern region of Chile is based on the autonomous rule enjoyed by Basques and Catalans in Spain.
But the hurdles he faces are numerous, including governmental opposition that extends to imprisoning him and other militants, and a division among the Mapuche Indian communities about strategy.
"Recovering our land will cost us sweat, blood and tears," Llaitul said.
The 41-yea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
On Monday the 89-year-old Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk faces charges in Munich that he helped murder 27,900 people in Sobibor, a Nazi death camp, between March and September 1943.
Although Demjanjuk lived in Germany for a short period after the war, he is effectively stateless as he never obtained German nationality and his US citizenship was stripped from him when he was found to have lied on immigration forms.
This makes the trial especially rare in Germany, which has t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
"Red Square is especially beautiful on this holiday morning!" he says. "On such days every Soviet citizen, whether in Moscow or far from the capital, in any corner of our country, has Red Square in his heart and mind."
This was 1974, but the clip from Soviet television can be found on a new Russian website that seeks to bring Communist nostalgia into the internet age with content ranging from anti-Western propaganda to comedy shows and Soviet sports victories.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 25, 2009
John Mulholland was paid the then princely sum of $3,000 for tips on slipping a pill into the drink of the unsuspecting, tying shoelaces to give uncover signals and on the "surreptitious removal of objects by women".
Fortunately for posterity and today's budding spies, the agency's paper shredders were not as thorough in their work. Though it was believed every copy of his report had been destroyed in 1973, one survived and has been turned into a book, The Official CIA Man
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
Sir Christopher Meyer told the Iraq Inquiry that the two men spent an afternoon meeting in private at the former president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, which appeared to lead to a shift in the then Prime Minister’s stance on Iraq.
Sir Christopher said: “I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there.
“The two men were alone in the ranch so I’m not entirely clear to this day what degree of conve
Source: NPR
November 25, 2009
When a president's rendezvous with destiny puts him in a position to save his nation's economy from ruin, he probably can be forgiven for thinking it's all right to use his power to move the Thanksgiving Day holiday.
Rescheduling Thanksgiving Day is exactly what President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to do in 1939.
As NPR's Michelle Norris discussed on All Things Considered with Melanie Kirkpatrick who wrote a piece for Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, in 1939 FDR caused
Source: Lee P Ruddin
November 25, 2009
The world’s foremost expert on Political Islam, Gilles Kepel, gave a lecture on jihad on Tuesday evening.
Speaking at the London School of Economics (LSE), Kepel trailed the history and geography of the political-religious phenomenon.
Beginning and ending with Afghanistan, the former visiting professor at Columbia University explained how Political Islam plugged into the world system.
Kepel is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs (
Source: CNSNews
November 25, 2009
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told CNSNews.com that President Barack Obama was giving 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “his wish” by giving him a trial in federal civilian court instead of trying him before a military tribunal.
McCain was asked on Nov. 19 whether the administration might have to produce Mohammed’s CIA interrogators if the terrorist’s defense lawyers call them as witnesses.
McCain said the answer was not clear because Obama had opened the civilian jus
Source: CNSNews
November 25, 2009
Paris (AP) - The Great Debate gets under way Wednesday, led off with a grand question: "For you, what does it mean to be French?"
This is neither a pompous academic exercise in France's elite schools nor a TV game show. It is the French government's effort to clarify -- with citizen participation -- the nation's values, increasingly fraught with tensions as customs brought in by immigrants, for instance, rub up against traditional French values.
France's immig
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
November 25, 2009
The scholarly book getting the most buzz at the American Anthropological Association's annual conference next week is likely to be a doctoral dissertation published 15 years after its author's death. Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia is by S. Ann Dunham, the mother of President Obama, a connection noted on the book's front cover. The publisher, Duke University Press, will unveil the book on December 3 at the conference, to be followed by a special session devoted to Dunha
Source: Azzaman
November 25, 2009
The U.S. embassy in Baghdad has given 515 archaeological items to the Iraq Museum, Antiquities Department chief said.
Qais Rasheed said the treasures date to “various ancient periods” of Iraq’s history.
“The FBI and the American embassy in Baghdad passed the treasures to the Iraq Museum,” he said.
“The collection includes pottery pieces, cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, precious stones and statues from different Mesopotamian epochs,” he added.
Source: Rochdale
November 24, 2009
ROCHDALE has become the first town in the UK to honour the victims of a barbaric Soviet famine that claimed the lives of millions.
A memorial stone has been unveiled to mark the Holodomor genocide — an enforced starvation over 18 months between 1932 to 1933 which claimed the lives of at least seven million Ukrainians under Joseph Stalin’s regime.
The memorial stone was unveiled during a ceremony at the memorial gardens opposite Rochdale Town Hall on Friday.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 25, 2009
Around 300 feet of the wall in a remote part of Inner Mongolia has been irreparably damaged by Mongolian gold prospectors.
"We discovered what had happened a couple of months ago, while doing a national survey on the condition of the Great Wall," said Wang Dafang, the head of the regional cultural relics department.
"The place where it happened is remote and uninhabited. We might never have found out if the government had not commissioned the inspection s
Source: WSJ
November 25, 2009
LONDON -- Iran and Libya, not Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, were Britain's main security concerns before the invasion of Iraq, Foreign Office officials testified Wednesday at an inquiry probing Britain's role in the war.
William Ehrman, the Foreign Office's director of international security from 2000 to 2002, said "in terms of nuclear and missiles, I think Iran, North Korea and Libya were probably of greater concern than Iraq." The inquiry, billed as the most sweeping
Source: The Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
November 24, 2009
WARWICK — The discovery of Native American artifacts dating back thousands of years –– plus the likelihood that there are many more beneath the streets of neighborhoods off Tidewater Drive –– have stalled an effort to bring sewers to the coastal area.
Archaeologists retained by the Warwick Sewer Authority have been unearthing a variety of artifacts in test trenches for more than three years and recently issued a report stating that the Mill Cove area was probably home to generations
Source: The News (UK)
November 23, 2009
Imprisoned in a foreign country, hundreds of miles away from home, German soldiers would whittle away at wood making unique toys to pass the time.
Now these toys, which were made at East Cams prison camp in Portchester Road, Portchester, during the Second World War, have gone on display at a museum in Fareham.
The toys were made at the prison by prisoners of war, and they are now part of the Hampshire Hidden Treasures display at Westbury Manor Museum.
Some of the
