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: NYT
November 8, 2009
The historical legacy of 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the cold war thawed, is as political as the upheavals of that decisive year....
In general, said James M. Goldgeier of George Washington University, a historian of the period, “the big question out there for 20 years is who gets the credit.”
For many in the United States, he said, most of the credit now goes to President Ronald Reagan and his aggressive military spending and antagonism toward Communism. That v
Source: NYT
November 6, 2009
BERLIN — During his childhood, Lutz Braun could see the Berlin Wall from his home in Blankenfelde, a village south of the city that was part of communist East Germany.
The wall snaked along, cutting through fields, yards and gardens. But Mr. Braun’s family did not talk about the wall. “As children, we did not see borders,” said Mr. Braun, 56. “They played no role.”
When Mr. Braun was conscripted into the East German People’s Army in the mid-1970s, he had no choice but t
Source: WSJ
November 9, 2009
When President Barack Obama meets Japan's new prime minister in Tokyo on Friday, he will face a government that appears uncertain about how to resolve the major issue complicating ties between the two allies.
Members of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's administration have sent mixed signals in recent weeks over the Japanese government's stance on a plan to realign U.S. forces on the remote southern island of Okinawa. Mr. Hatoyama campaigned in part on reviewing the plan, which is unp
Source: The National Security Archives
November 8, 2009
Just before the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, even the hardline Czechoslovak Communist leaders called for the opening of the German border, according to documents from high-level archives in Berlin, Bonn and Prague published for the first time in English and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Compiled and edited by Czech historian Vilem Precan and translated by Todd Hammond, the documents show that waves of East German r
Source: BBC
November 9, 2009
The future of records dating back more than 700 years has been secured - with the help of the taxman.
Estate ledgers, royal edicts and personal correspondence are to stay at Bangor University after a deal with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
The deal agreed with executors of the Penrhyn Castle estate will see the archives accepted for the British people in lieu of inheritance tax.
They reveal the history and politics of the families of the castl
Source: BBC
November 9, 2009
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has posted on Facebook a picture of himself at the Berlin Wall, saying he had chipped away at it with a pickaxe.
The image shows Mr Sarkozy, then a 34-year-old French MP, standing before a graffiti-covered section of the wall.
His caption dates the image to 9 November 1989, but French observers say it was probably taken the next day. In the caption, the French president says he arrived in West Berlin wit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 9, 2009
Mr de Paolis came across the paintings after deciding to add a bathroom in the apartment, which partly extends into an abandoned medieval tower that was thought to have been part of a military fort in Civitavecchia, a port west of Rome.
Bit by bit, De Paolis uncovered copies of the frescoes in Raphael's Room of Heliodorus at the Vatican museums, thought to have been painted by a contemporary student of the Renaissance master, Ugo da Scarpi, best known for his wood carvings.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 8, 2009
Canada's war dead were commemorated at a Remembrance Sunday service attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.
The royal couple joined a congregation in Victoria, British Colombia, to mark the sombre occasion on the same day the Queen led the nation in honouring Britain's fallen servicemen and women.
Canadians who have died fighting in the First and Second World Wars and in the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were remembered.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 9, 2009
Sir Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate, has been accused of ripping off work by a military historian for a Remembrance Sunday poem.
Ben Shephard said Motion's poem An Equal Voice had used 17 passages from his book A War of Nerves, which documented the effects of shell shock on soldiers.
Motion, who said his poem "stitched together" accounts from "a variety of sources", dismissed Shephard's claim of plagiarism by saying he was working in a long
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 9, 2009
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has joined former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish leader Lech Walesa to recreate the historic walk across the Berlin Wall on the 20th anniversary of its collapse.
Crowds thronged the areas where the 96-mile wall encircled West Berlin in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Chancellor Merkel, Mr Gorbachev and Mr Walesa walked across the site of the Bornholmer Strasse where the first crowds were filmed crossing freely fr
Source: AP
November 8, 2009
The family of the alleged Fort Hood shooter held his mother's funeral at the same Virginia mosque that two Sept. 11 hijackers attended in 2001, at a time when a radical imam preached there.
Whether the Fort Hood shooter associated with the hijackers is something the FBI will probably look into, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Sunday it's important
Source: CNSNews.com
November 5, 2009
Washington (AP) - Making good on a campaign promise to hold a yearly summit with American Indians, President Barack Obama told tribal leaders Thursday gathered in Washington that he is determined to reverse the federal government's history of marginalizing Indian nations.
"You will not be forgotten as long as I'm in this White House," Obama said during opening remarks at the all-day conference of tribal leaders and government officials.
Obama said the meeting
Source: The National Security Archive
November 7, 2009
The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago generated major anxiety in capitals from Warsaw to Washington, to the point of outright opposition to the possibility of German unification, according to documents from Soviet, American and European secret files posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive.
Solidarity hero Lech Walesa told West German chancellor Helmut Kohl on the very day the Wall would fall that "events in the GDR [East Germany] are developing too quickly&q
Source: New Jersey Real-Time News
November 6, 2009
Images of downtown Newark, the Statue of Liberty, the state Capitol in Trenton and the new Giants and Jets football stadium in the Meadowlands sports complex will grace the holiday tree in the Blue Room of the White House this Christmas thanks to the efforts of students at the Chancellor Avenue School in Newark.
The seventh and eighth grade students are creating 10 holiday ornaments for the tree depicting various "noteworthy and inspirational buildings or sites with historical
Source: Time
November 8, 2009
The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church traditionally couch even the harshest disagreements in decorous, ecclesiastical language. But it didn't take a decoder ring to figure out what Rome-based Archbishop Raymond Burke meant in a late-September address when he charged Boston Cardinal Seán O'Malley with being under the influence of Satan, "the father of lies."
Burke's broadside at O'Malley was inspired by the Cardinal's decision to permit and preside over a funeral Mass fo
Source: NYT
November 7, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Gen. Casimir Pulaski finally became an American citizen, 230 years after he died fighting in the Revolutionary War.
President Obama signed a joint resolution of the House and the Senate on Friday that made Pulaski, a Polish nobleman, an honorary citizen.
Pulaski’s contribution to the American colonies’ effort to leave the British Empire began with a flourish. He wrote a letter to Gen. George Washington with the declaration: “I came here, where freedom
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 8, 2009
In a bid to remind the world of the prominent role that Scots played in laying the foundations of colonial India, the Scottish government has launched a campaign to renovate some of the sub-continent's finest imperial buildings before they decay beyond repair.
The conventional view of Indian colonial life as a quintessentially English experience - all G&Ts, tea and cricket - has long overlooked the fact that Scots were heavily represented in HMG's vast imperial civil service, an
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 7, 2009
The staples were removed from a list of rationed foods that most Cubans depend on, permitting them to buy as much of the products as they want – at 20 times more than they used to.
The move comes amid efforts by Raul Castro's government to scale back Cuba's subsidy-rich, cash-poor economy. Lunches which cost so little they were almost free lunches were eliminated from some state-cafeterias in September. In October, the Communist Party's Granma newspaper published a full-page editori
Source: WSJ
November 7, 2009
For decades a hilly region in central Germany divided by the Iron Curtain was at risk of becoming the ground zero of a nuclear World War III. During the Cold War, troopers of the U.S. 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment -- known as the Blackhorse regiment -- patrolled this border from Observation Post Alpha near the West German town of Fulda.
They were there to protect the so-called Fulda Gap -- a key weakness in the West's defense. It was the most difficult area for the North Atlantic Tr
Source: WSJ
November 4, 2009
GRAFENAU, Germany -- It has been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell. But deep in the forest here, a red deer called Ahornia still refuses to cross the old Iron Curtain.
Ahornia inhabits the thickly wooded mountains along what once was the fortified border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia. At the height of the Cold War, a high electric fence, barbed wire and machine-gun-carrying guards cut off Eastern Europe from the Western world. The barriers severed the herds of deer on th
