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: Daily Mail (UK)
June 19, 2009
Adolf Hitler's obsessive hatred for Jews was sparked by his experiences after World War One, according to a new book.
Respected historian Ralf-George Reuth argues the dictator blamed them for both the Russian revolution and the collapse of the German economy.
The claim is a stark contrast to previous theories that Hitler's anti-Semitism was spawned on the back streets of Vienna when he was a down-and-out in the lead up to 1914.
Historians have even specula
Source: Guardian (UK)
June 19, 2009
At the age of 113 Henry Allingham, the oldest surviving veteran of the first world war, has officially been proclaimed the oldest man alive by Guinness World Records, after the death today of Tomoji Tanabe in Japan.
His friend Denis Goodwin, a founder of the First World War Veterans Association, who has escorted Allingham to innumerable parades, memorial services and presentations, said: "It's staggering. He will take it in his stride, like he does everything else. He withdraws
Source: Independent (UK)
June 19, 2009
Graffiti in support of fascist extremists Combat 18 has been daubed on republican monuments in a cemetery in west Belfast.
Vandals painted slogans in support of the hardline group in the republican plot at Milltown cemetery on Wednesday night.
Two monuments were yesterday afternoon still emblazoned with ‘C18’.
Sinn Fein Assembly member Paul Maskey said: “Overnight, racist and sectarian slogans, along with Combat 18 graffiti, were daubed on the republican plot
Source: Times (UK)
June 18, 2009
One small old building in Kashgar, at least, may escape destruction. It is the former home of the British consul, a diplomat who lived for 28 years in this remote, pivotal outpost, playing a leading role in the Great Game.
Sir George Macartney’s home is now hidden behind a soulless concrete bock of a hotel, the Qini Bagh – or Chinese garden, in the local Uighur tongue.
The name is no coincidence. It stands on the spot where Lady Macartney, brought to Kashgar as a 21-y
Source: Times (UK)
June 19, 2009
It is no surprise that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, put the “evil British Government” at the top of his list of Western powers that he accuses of fomenting the biggest street demonstrations in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Britain has been a convenient scapegoat and whipping boy for Iranian leaders when things go wrong at home. According to an old Persian proverb, if you trip over a pebble, you can be sure it was put there by an Englishman.
Source: CNN
June 18, 2009
The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the wrongs of slavery.
The nonbinding resolution sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is similar to a House resolution adopted last year that acknowledged the wrongs of slavery but offered no reparations. The House will have to vote on the issue again because the composition of th
Source: NYT
June 18, 2009
Together, Gwendolyn and Kendall Myers set out to give the second half of their lives new meaning. At first, disillusioned with the pace of change in Washington, the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time was a State Department contract employee, and the housewife turned political activist moved to South Dakota, where they embraced a counterculture lifestyle, even growing marijuana in the basement. They marched for legalized abortion, promoted solar energy, and repaired relation
Source: National Security Archive
June 18, 2009
A report issued by the Air Force Audit Agency that was released to the National Security Archive this week identifies significant mismanagement in the Air Force Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program. The findings demonstrate a pattern of noncompliance with statutory timeframes to respond to records requests from the public and misrepresentations about the state of the Air Force FOIA program. In particular, the Air Force audit agency found that the Air Force:
* Did not properly t
Source: WaPo
June 18, 2009
President Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, said Wednesday that the Sudanese government is no longer engaging in a "coordinated" campaign of mass murder in Darfur, marking a shift in the U.S. characterization of the violence there as an "ongoing genocide."
"What we see is the remnants of genocide," Gration told reporters at a briefing in Washington. "The level of violence that we're seeing right now is p
Source: LAT
June 12, 2009
Infuriated by pressure from Washington, Israel's
prime minister summoned the American ambassador.
"You have no moral right to preach to us," he lectured the envoy."What kind
of talk is this, 'punishing Israel'? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we
a banana republic?"
That scolding was 28 years ago, but it echoes as a cautionary tale.
Today, President Obama is pushing a reluctant Israeli government to halt the
growth of Jewish settlements and embrace the goal of a Palesti
Source: History Today
June 18, 2009
‘Refugee Voices’ will be launched this evening during a reception at the Wiener Library as part of Refugee Week 2009. ‘Refugee Voices’ is an audio-visual Holocaust testimony archive featuring a collection of 150 filmed interviews with Holocaust survivors and refugees, who escaped and survived Nazi-occupied Europe and rebuilt their lives in Britain. The interviews, in English, focus on the personal life stories of Holocaust survivors in Britain after the Second World War. The collection includes
Source: Editorsweblog.org
June 18, 2009
From today, web users will be able to access more than two million pages of 19th and 20th century history by browsing a selection of 49 British and regional newspaper titles, courtesy of the British Library.
Included in the collection are archives from the Graphic, an illustrated weekly publication which ran from 1869 to 1932. Writing on October 13 1888 after the Jack the Ripper murders, one journalist said: "To the general public it is some comfort to reflect that the late atr
Source: Baltimore Sun
June 17, 2009
Parts of Charles County's Zekiah Swamp are every bit as inhospitable as the name suggests, choked with tick-infested woods and boot-sucking wetlands.
But as archaeologists are discovering to their delight, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries Zekiah was a growth center for the young Maryland colony.
The site of a 1674 courthouse was found last summer. Excavations this month have uncovered what might be traces of the "summer house" that Gov. Charles Calver
Source: Science Daily
June 17, 2009
A University of Colorado at Boulder team has uncovered an ancient and previously unknown Maya agricultural system -- a large manioc field intensively cultivated as a staple crop that was buried and exquisitely preserved under a blanket of ash by a volcanic eruption in present-day El Salvador 1,400 years ago.
Evidence shows the manioc field -- at least one-third the size of a football field -- was harvested just days before the eruption of the Loma Caldera volcano near San Salvador i
Source: http://www.andina.com.pe
June 17, 2009
Archaeologists at the National Institute of Culture (INC) have found a pre-Inca tomb in the Salapunku archaeological site, located inside the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park in Cusco, southeastern Peru.
Resident archaeologist Francisco Huaycaya Quispe said that these remains would belong to a woman from the Quillke culture, an indigenous which flourished before the Inca Empire.
According to the archaeologist, this hypothesis is based on the pottery and ruminant and pou
Source: Irish Times
June 17, 2009
THE MOUNTAINS of Mourne may be fabled in song but now they have a new focus as scientists believe they were the source for most of Ireland’s prehistoric gold.
Ireland has a very high level of prehistoric gold objects especially from the early Bronze Age (2400-1800BC) when large quantities of it was used by skilled craftsmen.
They turned out beautiful objects such as the gold collars or lunula similar to the one which turned up recently following a robbery in Co Roscommo
Source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
June 16, 2009
An archaeological excavation in Jerusalem has revealed an ancient aqueduct that brought water to the Sultan's Pool and to the Temple Mount, supplying clean water to the city's residents and visiting pilgrims.
The Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered the main aqueduct that conveyed water to the Sultan's Pool during an excavation prior to the construction of the Montefiore Museum in Mishkenot Sha'ananim by the Jerusalem Foundation. The ancient aqueduct supplied pilgrims and resident
Source: New York Times
June 17, 2009
The sun was barely up when federal agents began surrounding a dozen homes scattered across rural southern Utah, the final stroke of a two-year undercover investigation into the theft and trafficking of ancient Indian artifacts around the Four Corners area.
At most places, six or seven armed officers moved in, rousting the occupants and securing the homes so that government archaeologists and photographers could enter and begin cataloguing evidence. At one house, an FBI SWAT team was
Source: The Tennessean
June 18, 2009
Lewis' modern-day relatives have spent years seeking permission from a reluctant federal government to remove his body from its Tennessee grave, examine it and answer the question once and for all.
Now they're pushing even harder — hiring a publicist, launching a Web site and opening new lines of dialogue with the National Park Service, the agency that would permit the exhumation.
Some historians have criticized the effort, and how much evidence is in Lewis' grave is a
Source: U.S News and World Report
June 18, 2009
The president has said he wants to reach out to all of his predecessors.
Americans are fascinated by their ex-presidents. The public has been through so many experiences with them that even when they leave office, the "exes" remain celebrities and, more important, compelling reminders of the recent high and low points in our history.
There are four of them alive now—Carter, Bush, Clinton, and George H. W. Bush. There are two Democrats and two Republicans, each
