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
October 9, 2006
The Arendt centennial is now being celebrated with conferences and lectures in locations ranging from Germany to South Korea, from Kosovo to Australia (information: hannaharendt.org/conferences/conferences.html), and one theme keeps recurring. When Arendt analyzed totalitarianism, introduced the idea of the “banality of evil,” emphasized distinctions between private and public life and tried to articulate a new philosophy that would reconsider the nature of thinking and judging after both had be
Source: Independent (UK)
October 8, 2006
A British spy and close friend of Winston Churchill was deeply implicated in the Zinoviev Letter, the most notorious political forgery in British history. The publication of a letter purporting to be from Soviet officials four days before the 1924 general election helped to sweep Ramsay MacDonald's government from power. But the correspondence mobilising "sympathetic forces" in Labour was later found to be a fake.
Now a new official history, based on a
Source: Boston Globe
October 8, 2006
Some books are warped. The ink on notes is fading, and many pages are torn.
This is the state of a large portion of Ernest Hemingway's papers and books left at his home in Cuba, Finca Vigia . For about 46 years, this grand collection of Hemingway-scribed documents, books, letters, and manuscripts has sat quietly at his former retreat, weathering hurricanes, humidity, and time.
Now, a rare collaboration between American nonprofit groups and the Cuban government may prese
Source: NYT
October 8, 2006
FOR much of the nuclear age, nations that sought the ultimate weapon kept their intentions and test sites veiled in secrecy, hidden from public view and foreign governments. The first detonations by the United States and the Soviet Union were top secrets and India’s test in 1998 caught American intelligence agencies by surprise.
No more, or so it seems. North Korea all but yelled “look at me” in announcing that it plans to conduct its first nuclear test, which experts say might come
Source: NYT
October 8, 2006
President Bush, who chose to tear down the status quo in Iraq and unleash violent instability in the name of liberty, has not hesitated to draw a straight line from Budapest to Baghdad.
He has compared the Iraqi government’s pursuit of democracy to that of the patriots of 1956 and told Hungarians: “We’ve learned from your example, and we resolve that when people stand up for their freedom, America will stand with them.”
That has a ring to it and the stamp of post-cold-w
Source: NYT
October 8, 2006
Rosa Parks — civil rights symbol in life, marketing phenomenon in death — has become the centerpiece of the kind of posthumous peddling usually associated with athletes and Hollywood stars. While licensing experts estimate the current value of selling Mrs. Parks’s image at only six figures a year, they say that over time millions of dollars will be made by those who control her likeness. Mrs. Parks’s courage and standing have also made her one of the few recent African-American political figures
Source: NYT
October 8, 2006
VALLE DE LOS CAÍDOS, Spain — Lingering support for the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, often hard to detect in Spain, rises readily to the surface here at his grave, which is encased in a huge austere monument 30 miles north of Madrid.
His normally reticent defenders speak less guardedly about their admiration for him, while the passionate hold spirited political rallies on each anniversary of his death.
But Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has propose
Source: NYT
October 8, 2006
A crucial witness in the trial of a notorious human rights abuser has been missing for nearly three weeks, and authorities and rights groups here say they fear he may have been abducted and killed in a new campaign to intimidate prosecutors, judges and witnesses in cases that have not yet gone to court.
The disappearance of Jorge Julio López, 77, a retired construction worker and former political prisoner, has awakened a host of old fears among Argentines. Some worry that it is a si
Source: Reuters
October 8, 2006
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has added his voice to a
growing chorus of Turkish protests over French plans to make it a crime to
deny that Armenians suffered"genocide" at the hands of Ottoman Turks in
World War One.
The French parliament is due to discuss the bill, proposed by the
Socialist opposition, on October 12.
Turkey strongly denies charges that some 1.5 million Armenians perished at
the hands of Ottoman Turks in a systematic genocide, saying large numbers
of both Chri
Source: NYT
October 8, 2006
Thirty years ago, long before liquids and gels were restricted on airliners, a tube of Colgate toothpaste may have brought a plane down from the sky.
Cubana Airlines Flight 455 crashed off the coast of Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976, killing all 73 people aboard. Plastic explosives stuffed into a toothpaste tube ignited the plane, according to recently declassified police records.
Implicated in the attack, but never convicted, was Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile who has
Source: Stone Pages
September 18, 2006
A method of imaging rock carvings in 3D using everyday electronic equipment could help document decaying carvings before they disappear forever, researchers say. Archaeologists are struggling to document many rock carvings before they are eroded by pollution or weather. Bulky laser scanners can capture detail in 3D down to 0.2 millimetres. However, such instruments are too costly and cumbersome for general use.
A system being trialled by archaeologist Kalle Sognnes and colleagu
Source: Stone Pages
September 24, 2006
Luck is only sometimes on the side of Bulgaria's archaeologists, as they race gangsters to unearth the treasure of the ancient Thracians. It was with Daniela Agre last month when she came across a Black Sea hotel owner flattening a 2,000-year-old burial mound and found a horde of gold and silver jewellery that she thinks belonged to a Thracian priestess. Another archaeologist was served in a remote rural shop by a woman wearing a string of 5,000-year-old gold beads, found by her husband in sunfl
Source: Stone Pages
September 29, 2006
Archaeologists have discovered 30 burial jars belonging to the 2,500-year-old Sa Huynh civilization in central Vietnam. The graves together with many artifacts were unearthed at the Con Dai archaeological site in Thua Thua-Hue province’s Huong Tra district.
Of the jars, 25 contained ritual offerings like small trays, agate balls, and earrings, all of them still intact. They will be displayed at the Museum of Vietnamese History and the province’s museum. The archaeologists said
Source: Stone Pages
September 30, 2006
A team of Syrian and French archaeologists has discovered a Neolithic temple in northern Syria that could be the oldest in the Middle East. The discovery of the temple, dating to the Neolithic Age, was made by a joint Syrian-French archaeological team at Jaadet al-Maghara on the Euphrates river some 450 kilometers (270 miles) north of Damascus.
Objects made of stone and bone instruments were found in the large temple, whose walls bore geometric designs and a drawing of a bull'
Source: Daily Yomiuri
October 7, 2006
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe clarified his position on Japan's wartime past ahead of summit talks with the presidents of China and South Korea, stating Thursday that his administration has no intention of distancing itself from previous government apologies.
During a House of Representatives Budget Committee session, Abe said he accepts a statement given in 1995 by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in which he apologized and expressed remorse for Japanese aggression and the sufferi
Source: Press Release -- Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
October 6, 2006
Mrs. Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States and Honorary Chair of the Preserve America initiative, presented Gerry R. Kohler of Parkersburg, West Virginia, the 2006 “Preserve America History Teacher of the Year” Award during a ceremony held at Lincoln Hall in The Union League Club yesterday.
The “Preserve America History Teacher of the Year” Award, a project of the Preserve America White House initiative, is administered and funded by The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American Hi
Source: Witchita Eagle
October 6, 2006
The Confederate battle flag still stirs passions - reverence in some, fear and loathing in others. And it continues to intrude into politics, notably in U.S. Sen. George Allen's re-election campaign. Allen, R-Va., has been dogged by tales of how he wore a Confederate flag pin and hung the flag in his home and elsewhere in his earlier days. When Allen tried to distance himself last month from those Confederate sympathies, he was assailed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.Wh
Source: NYT Editor's Note in CORRECTIONS
October 6, 2006
An article on Sept. 21 about criticism of President Bush at the United Nations by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran reported that Mr. Chavez praised a book by Noam Chomsky, the linguist and social critic. It reported that later, at a news conference, Mr. Chavez said that he regretted not having met Mr. Chomsky before he died. The article noted that in fact, Mr. Chomsky is alive. The assertion that Mr. Chavez had made this misstatement was repeated in a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 6, 2006
A Turkish author went on trial yesterday for the crime of having accused Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, of having dressed as a woman to escape an assassination attempt.
Ipek Calislar faces four and a half years in prison if found guilty of insulting Ataturk's reputation.
In her best-selling biography of Ataturk's wife, Latife Ussaki, she wrote that the then Turkish president once put on a chador to disguise himself as a woman to flee the presidenti
Source: Times Online (UK)
October 6, 2006
A WOMAN has been appointed as Scotland’s Lord Advocate, the country’s top law officer, for the first time in the post’s 500-year history.
Elish Angiolini, 46, the former Solicitor-General, is also the first person from the Procurator Fiscal service to hold the title.
