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: http://thinkprogress.org
November 27, 2006
The New York Daily News reports, “President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign — an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.”
Bush is attempting to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush fund-raisers hope to get approximately $250 million from what they call “megadonations” of $10 million to $20 million each. Among the candidates for “megadonations,
Source: Media Matters
November 27, 2006
On the November 25 broadcast of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, former Clinton special counsel Lanny Davis claimed that "Democrats have been intolerant" and repeated the false claim that former Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey Sr. was "refused the microphone at the [1992] Democratic National Convention because he was pro-life." As Media Matters for America has noted, several opponents of abortion rights were given speaking slots at the 1992 convention.
Davis
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
November 27, 2006
A letter written by the author Lewis Carroll in 1890 has been restored to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library after a librarian noticed a description of the document on the Internet auction site eBay, The Hartford Courant reported. The eBay seller, a Utah-based collector who had purchased the letter from another seller without knowing it had been stolen, returned it to Yale after discovering its shady provenance. The campus police are investigating how and when the letter
Source: Inside Higher Ed
November 27, 2006
Dartmouth College’s president and athletics director issued pre-Thanksgiving apologies for a series of incidents that have angered American Indian students and professors.
Following a meeting with Native American leaders, Dartmouth President James Wright sent a letter to the campus expressing concern about “racist and insensitive” behavior that Indian students have experienced. “I apologize on behalf of the college,” he wrote.
Wright acknowledged that much of the behavi
Source: Inside Higher Ed
November 27, 2006
Brown University’s October report elucidating the institution’s early ties to slavery has stepped up the pressure on other colleges to delve deeply into their own pasts and fully acknowledge their institutional links to slavery, Nazi Germany and other disgraced ideas.
Colleges are accustomed to taking more contemporary moral stances, whether by divesting from Sudan or ” kicking Coke” to protest alleged labor and environmental practices. But a new model for social responsibility — ba
Source: WaPo
November 27, 2006
For two women, so much comes down to this: a fragment of bone and the lick of a love letter.
Military scientists recently compared the bone recovered in a North Vietnamese jungle where an Air Force pilot's plane went down 40 years ago to saliva on letters he had sent his wife. It was a DNA match, they announced. At last, they said, the remains of Col. Charles J. Scharf had been found.
What they couldn't have known, however, was how differently that announcement would af
Source: AP
November 27, 2006
France's Socialists formally launched Segolene Royal's candidacy yesterday to compete in a fierce presidential race with high stakes for her and her party: Royal wants to be France's first female president and the Socialists are desperate to win back power after 12 years under Jacques Chirac.
"Together we are opening a beautiful page in the history of France. A new hope has risen in France, like a gathering wave that can only grow," Royal told a crowd of 1,500 at a Paris
Source: Independent (UK)
November 27, 2006
Some 562 men, women and children made up the human cargo of the slave ship Feroz. Crammed beneath grate-covered hatchways between the decks, left to stew amid the stench of faeces and rotting bodies, each bore the mark of their owner, branded on their skin with a red-hot iron.
After boarding the ship bound for Brazil, Reverend Robert Walsh wrote: "The space was so low that they sat between each other's legs and [were] stowed so close there was no possibility of their lying dow
Source: Independent (UK)
November 27, 2006
Winston Churchill was a closet science fiction fan who borrowed the lines for one of his most famous speeches from HG Wells, says new research.
Dr Richard Toye, a history lecturer at Cambridge University, has discovered that the phrase "the gathering storm" - used by Churchill to describe the rise of Nazi Germany - had been written by Wells decades earlier in The War of the Worlds, which depicts an attack on Britain by Martians. Dr Toye also identified similarities betwee
Source: NYT
November 27, 2006
BAD NEUENAHR-AHRWEILER, Germany: At the end of a serpentine road here, flanked by pinot noir vineyards, an unmarked door is cut into a hillside. Behind it lies one of the most secret places in the former West Germany: a vast subterranean bunker to shelter the government in the event of a nuclear war.
That door finally swung open this week — nine years after this cold war relic had been consigned to history — as the German government broke ground on a project to turn the bunker into
Source: NYT
November 27, 2006
An ambitious international project to decipher 1,000-year-old moldy pages is yielding new clues about ancient Greece as seen through the eyes of Hyperides, an important Athenian orator and politician from the fourth century B.C. What is slowly coming to light, scholars say, represents the most significant discovery of Hyperides text since 1891, illuminating some fascinating, time-shrouded insights into Athenian law and social history.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 25, 2006
Stonehenge was the Lourdes of its day, to which diseased and injured ancient Britons flocked seeking cures for their ailments, according to a new theory.
For most of the 20th century archaeologists have debated what motivated primitive humans to go to the immense effort of transporting giant stones 240 miles from south Wales to erect Britain's most significant prehistoric monument.
Druids gather at Stonehenge for sunrise on the summer solstice. A new book suggests th
Source: NYT
November 25, 2006
The Great Wall of China was up there, above the treetops, hidden from view as our small group followed our guide, Yan Xinqiang, up a narrow, rutted trail toward a remote section of the wall known as Jiankou. At 61, Yan is old enough to be a grandfather but he practically skipped with excitement as we approached this relatively remote section - part of what is known as the Wild Wall.
We had driven almost three hours north of Beijing, parked in a small farming village and walked uphil
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 25, 2006
The Queen's refusal to grieve publicly for Diana, Princess of Wales led to her being lampooned, vilified and even sparked calls for her abdication. Her Majesty's attitude, however, may have been more in keeping with public opinion than previously thought, writes Chris Hastings.
Confidential BBC documents show that nearly half the population (44 per cent) felt alienated by the blanket media coverage of the Princess's death and funeral, which they thought was excessive and over-emotio
Source: BBC
November 25, 2006
Chile's former military ruler Augusto Pinochet has said he takes political responsibility for everything that happened during his 18 years in power.
In the statement read by Gen Pinochet's wife on his 91st birthday, he defended his bloody 1973 coup, saying he had acted in Chile's best interests.
More than 3,000 people were killed or "disappeared" while Gen Pinochet was in power from 1973 to 1990.
He is facing indictments in two cases of human rights abu
Source: WaPo
November 27, 2006
It took Bill Clinton months to get his feet planted again after the 1994 defeat. But he did recover and went on to win reelection two years later. So too did Ronald Reagan bounce back from the 1986 midterm elections, which cost his party the Senate. As President Bush struggles to recover from a similar thrashing, his advisers are studying the Clinton and Reagan models for lessons to revive his presidency.Historical comparisons are always fraught with peril, since each presid
Source: http://www.sanluisobispo.com
November 22, 2006
As San Luis Obispo officials work with developers on plans to dig up and preserve the historical Chinatown district to make way for new building, there is a living, breathing artifact from that era who loves telling its story.
Howard "Toby" Louis — at age 98 the last living child of Chinatown pioneer Ah Louis — remembers working as a youngster in the Ah Louis Store. It still stands at Chorro and Palm streets as a landmark reminder of the time.
Howard Louis rem
Source: CBC (Canada)
November 22, 2006
An archeological dig in the central Yukon has unearthed the original Fort Selkirk built in 1848 by Hudson Bay trader and explorer Robert Campbell.
Remains of the fort were found on the Pelly River last summer by a group led by University of Alberta PhD archeology student Victoria Castillo.
Campbell and his workers built the small fort and lived within its walls until 1851, when they decided to move the buildings across the Yukon River to the current site of Fort Selkirk
Source: Reuters
November 25, 2006
Senior Hutu commanders backed by France shot down the plane carrying Rwanda's president in 1994, killing him and touching off a genocide, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told Reuters on Saturday.
Kagame also said in an exclusive interview that France harboured former government officials who masterminded the slaughter of 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus during the 100 days of bloodshed which followed Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's death in the plane cras
Source: WaPo
November 26, 2006
Sometimes they'd arrive quiet as spies in those segregated towns and grab a place at a rooming house. It wouldn't take long to find out which neighborhood it might be wise to avoid come nightfall.
But then the story would ignite and they'd be right in the center of the mayhem. Full of adrenaline and with a deadline to beat.
Emmett Till raised from swampy Mississippi waters.
Freedom buses afire on the scuffed dirt of Alabama.
Those black childre
