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: Wilson Quarterly
May 1, 2006
Politicians in the image-conscious Nationalist government that ruled China from 1911 to 1949 were infuriated by The Good Earth’s depiction of starving peasants, concubines, and banditry. When MGM began filming the movie version in China in 1934, government officials were determined to prevent the portrayal of anything they considered embarrassing. [Later, communists objected because she was a well-known anti-communist.]
As China has grown stronger and more confident during the past
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
July 6, 2006
Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado at Boulder professor who once said some terrorist victims of the September 11 attacks were like Nazi bureaucrats, filed an appeal today to reverse an effort to fire him by the university’s interim chancellor. According to the Associated Press, Mr. Churchill asked for a review of the process that led the chancellor to announce last week that he would seek to dismiss the controversial professor (The Chronicle. June 27). The chancellor was acting on the re
Source: http://mesa.arizona.edu
July 5, 2006
The Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors jointly released the following statement, titled “Iraq: Higher Education and Academic Freedom in Danger,” on July 5.The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) express continuing concern about the dangers facing academic life in Iraq today.
Virtually every Iraqi institution of higher education is at risk.
Source: NYT
July 5, 2006
The day Glenda Taylor placed the white hood and white robe of the Ku Klux Klan in the window of her Harlem shop was one to remember.
At the foot of the Klan gown was an 1868 issue of Harper's Weekly depicting a dead black man, with the caption "One Vote Less." Passers-by of all races stopped, stunned, in front of her memorabilia shop, Aunt Meriam's, on West 125th Street, Ms. Taylor said.
One black woman dispatched her 10-year-old daughter into the shop to conf
Source: International Herald Tribune
July 6, 2006
One hundred years ago this month, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish army officer who had spent five years on Devil's Island for high treason and another seven years trying to clear his name, was absolved by France's Supreme Court. A few days later, he was reinstated into the army, promoted to lieutenant colonel and given the Légion d'honneur. The Dreyfus Affair, which deeply divided France and sparked a vicious wave of anti-Semitism, was finally over. Or was it?In prac
Source: The Australian
July 5, 2006
Kim Beazley has dismissed the push by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop to reinstate the teaching of traditional Australian history in schools as an "elite preoccupation".The Opposition Leader insisted that the plan, revealed in The Australian yesterday, was part of a trend by the Government "to talk about anything other than those things which matter most".
"Fundamentally, what we need now from our education ministers is a
Source: starbeacon.com
July 4, 2006
An Abolitionist flag associated with Ashtabula County is flying in Cyberspace this July 4th holiday.
The flag, which was purchased from an estate auction in Cherry Valley Township 10 years ago, is part of an online exhibition posted by The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York, at http://gilderlehrman.org. The exhibition, "Freedom: A History of US," opened online June 30.The flag, a variation on t
Source: NYT
July 3, 2006
FOURTH of July weekend is justly renowned for its celebrations of beaches, barbecues, baseball and, of course, fireworks. But if you're yearning for a slightly more soul-stirring way to celebrate our nation's independence, perhaps you should make a trip to the national Revolutionary War museum.
Unfortunately, you'll need patience. Though the idea was first proposed more than a century ago, a national Revolutionary War museum still does not exist. Thank the federal government for th
Source: The Australian
July 4, 2006
Students will again be taught traditional Australian history in classrooms across the nation under a plan from federal Education Minister Julie Bishop.Ms Bishop will press the states and territories to follow the lead of NSW under former premier Bob Carr and reinstate Australian history so every student "knows why Captain James Cook sailed along the east coast".
If they refuse, The Australian understands the Government will consider making the t
Source: http://www.columbusdispatch.com/
July 4, 2006
Various theories have been proposed to explain how social complexity developed and why it developed in some areas and not others, but archaeologists and historians have not formulated any one satisfying explanation.
Nick Brooks, a climate-change researcher at the University of East Anglia in England, offers his idea in the latest issue of Quaternary International. "The emergence of complex societies coincided with or followed a period of increased aridity," which began 8,
Source: Art Newspaper
June 22, 2006
LONDON. The proposed Washington, DC tour of the Nimrud gold from the Baghdad Museum in Iraq, has been cancelled due to a lack of support from the US State Department.
In April we reported that the international tour of Iraqi treasures would begin next February at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The hope was that it would then travel to ten international venues, raising around $10m for the Baghdad museum.
Last month
Source: AP
July 4, 2006
Seems like anyone who can run for president in 2008 is considering it.
And who can blame them?
For the first time since 1928, there is no president running for re-election or vice president seeking his party’s nomination.
Source: National Security Archive
July 4, 2006
Forty years ago, President Johnson signed the landmark Freedom of Information Act while vacationing at his Texas ranch. But documents from the LBJ Library show that the normally gregarious President, who loved handing out pens at bill signings, refused even to hold a formal ceremony for the FOIA, personally removed strong openness language from the press statement, and only agreed to approve the bill after the Justice Department suggested the tactic that has become President Bush’s favorite – a
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
July 4, 2006
Civil War battlefields, magnets for tourists and the media, are a new target of the Ku Klux Klan.
The white supremacist organization will demonstrate Sept. 2 at Gettysburg National Military Park, site of the Civil War's bloodiest battle.
It will be the second event of its type in three months. About 30 Klansmen and members of like-minded groups rallied June 10 at Antietam National Battlefield near Sharpsburg, Md.
Gordon Young, a Sharpsburg resident and i
Source: AP
July 1, 2006
Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia — Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He — or she — did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die.
Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth — the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today.
That means everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recentl
Source: AP
July 2, 2006
Weeds with stone-splitting roots. Relentless traffic belching pollution. Tourists trampling across the once palatial residences of emperors. Earthquakes and terrorism waiting to happen.
From the imposing stone bulk of the Colosseum to the romantic ruins of imperial luxury atop the Palatine Hill, the Eternal City's monuments, once pillaged by foreign conquerors, today face an array of perils old and new.
Rome's fragile ruins have the urgent attention of teams of monumen
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
July 2, 2006
Slavery left its scars — physical and psychological — on generations of Americans. Now, Georgia archaeologists are discovering that it left indelible marks in the landscape as well.
In scattered excavations, from the Sea Islands to downtown Columbus, new glimpses of African-American culture before the Civil War are emerging. They are fragmented but tangible hints of a lifestyle that, until now, has been only thinly documented.
"Not a lot is known about what it was
Source: AP
July 1, 2006
PERU, N.Y. Jul 1, 2006 (AP)— More than 229 years ago, Gen. Benedict Arnold led his crew of sailors on Lake Champlain against a far superior British fleet near here and lost. But their dogged fight in October 1776 delayed British movement south for a year, when they would be defeated in the Battle of Saratoga.
Historians today consider the Battle of Valcour Island a "victory in defeat" that gave Colonial forces a chance to win at Saratoga and eventually the Revolutionary Wa
Source: NY Post
July 2, 2006
Conservative scribe Ann Coulter cribbed liberally in her latest book, "Godless," according to a plagiarism expert.
John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.
He also says he discovered verbat
Source: Nation
July 1, 2006
Since the enactment of the Patriot Act in 2001, the American Library Association (ALA) has been at the forefront of the fight to defend freedom of inquiry and thought from provisions of the act that allow the Justice Department to subpoena the records of libraries and bookstores. The librarians succeeded in getting the House to adopt language protecting library records in 2005--only to have it stripped from the bill to which it was attached by an Administration-friendly House-Senate conference c
