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: CNN
August 4, 2008
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is calling for Russia to regain its influential position in former Cold War ally Cuba, Russian news reports said Monday.
The statement comes amid persistent speculation about whether Russia is seeking a military presence in a country just 90 miles (150 kilometers) from the United States in response to U.S. plans to place missile-defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic.
"We should restore our position in Cuba and other countri
Source: CNN
August 4, 2008
An intended recipient of one of the anthrax-laced letters sent in 2001's anthrax scare said Monday he was "very skeptical" of the government's investigation. Former Sen. Tom Daschle, who was Senate majority leader at the time, said he is suspicious of the case against researcher Bruce Ivins because of the government "bungling" of Steven Hatfill's case.
Hatfill, who was named by the Justice Department as a "person of interest" in 2002, was never charged
Source: Fox News
August 4, 2008
Usama bin Laden's former driver offered the terrorist leader aid and protection that helped make the Sept. 11 attacks possible, prosecutors said Monday in closing arguments at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.
Prosecutor John Murphy said evidence in Salim Hamdan's two-week trial showed the Yemeni detainee played a "vital role" in the conspiracy behind the 2001 attacks...
Source: Belleville News-Democrat
August 4, 2008
As unbelievable as it seems, there are a handful -- perhaps more -- of widows of Confederate vets still alive and kicking nearly 150 years after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
One case is fully documented: Maudie Celia Hopkins, now 93 and -- as of last week -- living in a nursing home in Lexa, Ark., according to Martha Boltz, public relations chairman of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.
Maudie was just a teen when she wed Wil
Source: International Herald Tribune
August 4, 2008
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin launched his first flying machine from Lake Constance here in 1900.
Thus began a chapter of aviation history that would propel Friedrichshafen onto the world stage, make it a prominent target for Allied bombs during World War II and ultimately bequeath to the city a sizable foundation financed by the successor companies to Zeppelin's original enterprise.
According to the city, the foundation generates from $60 million to $80 million a year f
Source: Washington Post
August 3, 2008
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is calling on "eggheads" to help the military unravel questions about the recruitment of terrorists, the resurgence of the Taliban and messages delivered in militant Muslim religious schools.
Many eggheads are wary.
The Pentagon's $50 million Minerva Research Initiative, named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and warriors, will fund social science research deemed crucial to national security. Initial proposals were due July
Source: AFP
August 3, 2008
With a tight grip on his flashlight, Tommy Cassoe looks like a Danish Indiana Jones as he crawls out of a bunker buried under the sand, one of 7,000 the Nazis built along Denmark's western shores to fend off an allied invasion.
"Mission accomplished. The bunker is empty," Cassoe exclaims, showing off his bounty on the Krylen beach to a crowd of onlookers: rusty cans, a plastic vial containing medicine in case of a mustard gas attack, and electrical cables.
Th
Source: Boston Globe
August 3, 2008
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama opposes offering reparations to the descendants of slaves, putting him at odds with some black groups and leaders.
The man with a serious chance to become the nation's first black president contends that government should instead combat the legacy of slavery by improving schools, healthcare, and the economy for all.
"I have said in the past, and I'll repeat again, that the best reparations we can provide are good schoo
Source: Boston Globe
August 3, 2008
Juanita Patience Moss was shocked to learn that her great-grandfather would not be included among the 200,000 black soldiers honored at the African American Civil War Memorial.
The memorial, at 10th and U streets in Northwest Washington, would name only the soldiers and seamen who served with the US Colored Troops.
So, 10 years ago, when Moss attended a discussion hosted by the African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation, she asked several historians whether
Source: Salon
August 3, 2008
PRENDEN, Germany -- Nearly 19 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the huge and elaborate bunker where communist East Germany's leadership would have sought shelter from a nuclear strike has opened to the public.
The bunker — known by the military code name 17/5001 — was built between 1978 and 1983 under a pine forest some 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Berlin,
"At the time it was built, it was the most elaborate Warsaw Pact protective structure outside the
Source: NYT
August 2, 2008
When American troops stormed this island more than half a century ago, it was a hive of Communist trenches and pillboxes. Now it is a park where children play and retirees stroll along a tree-shaded esplanade.
From a hilltop across a narrow channel, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, memorialized in bronze, appears to gaze down at the beaches of Inchon where his troops splashed ashore in September 1950, changing the course of the Korean War and making him a hero here.
In the port
Source: Christian Science Monitor
August 3, 2008
Chip Witte doesn't consider himself a Rebel. He doesn't hang Dixie battle flags in his living room, nor does he wear one on the back of his leather jacket.
Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-10 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents. "I think it's great that they're allowed to fly it," says Mr. Witte.
Source: BBC
August 3, 2008
Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died at 89, Russian media say.
The author of One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and the Gulag Archipelago, who returned to Russia in 1994, reportedly died of a stroke.
The Nobel laureate had suffered from high blood pressure in recent years.
After returning to Russia, Solzhenitsyn wrote several polemics on Russian history and ident
Source: National Post
August 2, 2008
The Mary Rose, pride of Henry VIII's fleet, may have sunk because of poor communication between its English officers and foreign crew members, researchers said yesterday. Examination of skulls, which were found near the 16th-century wreck, has revealed the ship was mainly crewed by foreign sailors, either mercenaries or Spanish prisoners of war. Historians have always believed the warship, pictured, sank when it performed a sharp turn during a battle with the French in July,
Source: The Age
August 2, 2008
As the new Battle for Australia Day approaches, heated debate has broken out about whether it merely perpetuates a myth about Japan's wartime invasion intentions.
ONE lesson learned from history is that history so often teaches the wrong lesson. Wars can be fought or lost on a faulty premise, a misreading of events, or thinking one step will logically follow another - just as surely as it did before. Drawing on the wisdom of the past presumes the record can be settled.
Source: Liverpool Echo
August 2, 2008
WORKMEN today told how they accidentally unearthed one of the UK’s biggest World War II bunkers.
The Mellwood Construction team workers discovered the disused ventilation shaft near Leighton Road in Tranmere.
It descends 80ft into a network of cavernous brick tunnels.
The Home Office gave Birkenhead the green light to build the most expensive deep tunnel air raid shelter in the country in the 1940s.
They wanted to protect the irreplaceable Camm
Source: LAT
August 2, 2008
As her chances of becoming vice president recede, some of Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters are pushing for the Democratic Party's new platform to state that the primary elections "exposed pervasive gender bias in the media" and to call on party leaders to take "immediate and public steps" to condemn future perceived instances of bias.
The push for the plank in the party's statement of principles reflects a lingering unhappiness over Clinton's treatment during
Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
August 2, 2008
You can practically see the sarcasm dripping off the wording in this bill US Rep. Louis Gohmert of Tyler filed last week proposing a new location for Guantanamo Bay.
In light of the US Supreme Court's recent ruling that Gitmo detainees are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s habeas corpus protections, Gohmert wants to move the controversial jail to the Supreme Court grounds, "confined by adequate fencing."
"There can be no better way for the United State
Source: AP
August 2, 2008
PHILADELPHIA - Officials at a small Civil War museum made an intriguing discovery while sifting through storage: A document long treated as a photo reproduction of the terms of Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender appears, upon closer inspection, to contain actual signatures and date to 1865.
Museum officials believe they have one of the three original documents signed by representatives of the Union and Confederacy in Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 10, 1865, a day after Lee's surr
Source: Peer.org
August 1, 2008
Washington, DC — A plan to build an expanded visitor center and theater at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana violates both environmental and historic preservation laws, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The suit contends that the National Park Service (NPS) proposed construction will detract from the very historical setting it seeks to present to the public.
Plaintiffs include t
