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: Spiegel Online
November 18, 2008
John Demjanjuk has been living in the United States for more than 50 years. Now a German court is considering prosecuting him for his alleged crimes as a Nazi prison guard. It would be a coup for Nazi hunters, but legal details stand in the way of a trial.
In his first appearance before the global public, Ivan "John" Demjanjuk chose to be provocative. After arriving in Tel Aviv on a flight from New York, he tried to kneel down and kiss the ground of the Holy Land, but his
Source: History Today
November 18, 2008
The first part of the State Papers Online project has now been completed and 200 volumes of the papers are available online. The aim of the project is to create an online database of the State Papers Domestic and Foreign, the Registers of the Privy Council and the State Papers in the British Library from 1509 to 1714, making them accessible to academics and the general public and providing a new resource for the study of early modern Britain and Europe.
Source: TheDailyBeast.com
November 20, 2008
President Bush may be planning preemptive war-related pardons for his administration before his term ends, but that, apparently, won't save his vice president. Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on separate charges stemming from alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers, CNN reports. A grand jury in Willacy County, Texas, indicted the two men; a lawyer for another lawmaker indicted, Democratic state Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., called the county's d
Source: NYT Editorial
November 19, 2008
On Dec. 15, the United States will endure a quadrennial ritual born in the economics and politics of slavery and the quill-pen era. Members of the Electoral College are scheduled to meet in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to formally choose the next president.
There is no real doubt about how the electors will vote, but it is disturbing that they have any role at all in making this vital choice in the 21st century. The Electoral College is more than just an antiqu
Source: Times (UK)
November 20, 2008
Children play alongside one of 21 memorial plaques unveiled in the Polish capital yesterday, their laughter a stark contrast to the horrors experienced by half a million Jews imprisoned by the Nazis in the infamous ghetto during the Second World War.
Polish officials marked out the wartime boundaries of the area before a group of Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish community made their way through the rain to reflect on the past at some of the plaques.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 20, 2008
The remains of a billionaire whose family fortune was built on Nazi slave labour have been stolen from an Austrian graveyard.
Industrialist Friedrich Karl Flick, who lived in fear of being kidnapped, was 79 when he died in 2006.
An oak coffin containing the remains was taken from his family's mausoleum at a cemetery at Velden am Woertherse in what police believe may be an attempt to extort money from his widow.
The graverobbers struck last weekend but th
Source: Sky News
November 20, 2008
Scientists from the US and Russia have pieced together 80% of the species' genome, using DNA samples of hair preserved from two mammoths mummified from the ice age.
They hope the ground-breaking development will be a step closer in bringing back the vast beasts from extinction, by inserting their genes into a modern-day elephant.
Professor Stephan Schuster, a leading member of the research team from Pennsylvania State University, said the find would allow scientists to
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 20, 2008
Dimitri Stein submitted his thesis on electrical engineering in 1943 but university authorities refused him an oral examination because he had Jewish ancestry.
His professor arranged a hiding place for him and he survived World War II by emigrating to the United States where he worked as an academic and engineer before going into business.
Stein said he asked if he could take the examination in the 1950s but received a rude rejection from the university. When he asked a
Source: BBC
November 20, 2008
The scripts from the long-running BBC radio series will be published by the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Cooke's literary executor Colin Webb is a former student of the university.
Letter From America was broadcast every week from March 1946 until Cooke's retirement in March 2004. He died just a few weeks after his final programme.
In his Letters, Cooke chronicled every aspect of American life including the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and
Source: Telegraph (UK) published list of 30 top conspiracies
November 19, 2008
1. September 11, 2001 - Thanks to the power of the web and live broadcasts on television, the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11 - when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington - have surpassed those of Roswell and JFK in traction. Despite repeated claims by al-Qaeda that it planned, organised and orchestrated the attacks, several official and unofficial investigations into the collapse of the Twin Towers which concluded that structura
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 19, 2008
Hitler really did have only one ball, according to claims by a German army medic who saved the Führer's life during the First World War.
The Nazi leader lost a testicle during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the doctor claimed.
The medical condition, for which there has never been conclusive proof, was mocked in the Second World War ditty which begins: "Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall."
The disclosure is made in a do
Source: LiveScience
November 19, 2008
Our ape-like ancestors might have walked like today's gibbons, whose super bendy feet give them a floppy strut.
The modern human foot first evolved in our ancestors around 1.8 million years ago, said Evie Vereecke of the University of Liverpool in England. But studies suggest that even before our advanced feet emerged, our mostly tree-climbing ancestors were walking upright for short stints.
Vereecke wanted to find out how they would have done that without specialized w
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 19, 2008
On Aug. 2, 1949, with the Communists about to seize power in Beijing, the United States recalled its ambassador to China, John Leighton Stuart, a respected missionary, educator and diplomat.
Mao Zedong, the insurgent Communist leader who would take power two months later, quickly denounced Stuart as a symbol of failed American imperialism. Stuart's departure effectively ended diplomatic ties between the United States and China for a quarter century.
Stuart died in Washi
Source: CNN
November 19, 2008
As the economy continues to look grim, the word "bankruptcy" is on the tips of more and more tongues. While being unable to pay one's creditors is never a good situation for a company or an individual, it may not be the financial kiss of death that you might think. (Just ask Donald Trump, whose casinos have gone bankrupt twice.)
A number of successful people have found themselves overextended and ended up filing for bankruptcy, only to successfully stick it out and f
Source: CNN
November 18, 2008
A man who was detained during Chile's "dirty war" in 1973 and declared dead in 1995 showed up in his old hometown very much alive last week, a human rights group in Santiago has announced.
German Rene Cofre Martinez had been living in Argentina for the past 35 years before he returned to his home in La Cisterna in Chile, said La Agrupacion de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (The Group of Relatives of Those who Disappeared While Being Detained).
The group
Source: Spiegel Online
November 19, 2008
On Tuesday Germany and Italy's foreign ministers announced a joint historical commission that will investigate Germany's treatment of Italian prisoners during World War II.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Italian counterpart, Franco Frattini said that historians from both countries would meet next year to discuss the countries' "collective history."
The two men visited La Risiera di San Sabba, the site of the only Nazi concentration cam
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 19, 2008
Authorities in the capital had approached the Jewish community to see if it wanted to host exhibitions at the woodland property on the outskirts of the city.
Its members inspected the site at Bogensee during the summer. After that, there had been no further contact with city officials, said Maya Zehden, a spokeswoman for the Jewish community.
"For this reason the Jewish community is no longer interested in the idea, whatever form it might take," she said.
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 19, 2008
Rose Kabuye is wanted for questioning in connection with a 1994 assassination. German federal police said she left on a flight from Frankfurt to Paris in the early afternoon.
Since arresting her on Nov. 9 when she arrived by plane, Germany had been waiting for French police to pick her up. She was wanted under a European arrest warrant issued by the French.
Last week, Kabuye agreed to fast-track extradition and German judges approved her being handed over to France. A f
Source: Washington Post
November 19, 2008
Saluting the National Museum of American History as "one of the country's great civic institutions," President Bush this morning helped rededicate the revamped museum and the new home for the Star-Spangled Banner.
"This building is home to many of our national treasures. It is a reminder of our country's proud heritage," Bush said, standing before the museum's shimmering architectural representation of a waving flag. The centerpiece of American History's renovati
Source: Reuters
November 19, 2008
BEIT SAHOUR, West Bank -- An Israeli archaeologist said on Wednesday he had unearthed what he believed were the 2,000-year-old remains of two tombs which had held a wife and daughter-in-law of the biblical King Herod.
Other findings announced by Ehud Netzer of Jerusalem's Hebrew University provided new evidence of the lavish lifestyle of the Roman-era monarch also known as the "King of the Jews."..
Netzer, an authority on Herodian excavations, showed reporters
