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
February 16, 2006
It is a quarter century since the Khmer Rouge was driven from power after causing the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979 through execution, starvation or overwork. "Until today, most people don't realize they have psychological problems," Dr. Ka Sunbunaut said in an interview. "They don't understand about trauma. Mostly, they believe it is all related to karma."Now, though, people here are increasingly turning to drugs like Prozac
Source: Haaretz
February 15, 2006
Soil tests in Germany have revealed no evidence whatever that Adolf Hitler tested a nuclear weapon just two months before losing the Second World War, government scientists said Wednesday.A Berlin historian, Rainer Karlsch, published a book last year on Nazi nuclear research and offered circumstantial evidence that the Germans may have tested a bomb on March 3, 1945 at the Ohrdruf army training camp in central Germany.
The site, near Gotha, is currently used by
Source: History Today
February 10, 2006
Around 85% of US Civil War soldiers suffered from ill health after the conflict, a University of California study has discovered. The researchers examined 15,000 records in the Archives of General Psychiatry and found heart, stomach and mental health problems affected the lives of combatants after the 1861-1865 war. Poor health was likely to affect soldiers under 17 in 93% of cases compared with those aged over 31 years. Prisoners-of-war and those in high-risk regiments also
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 16, 2006
For years, Cahokia Mounds' administrators longed to snatch up more property near the ruins of the prehistoric city but lacked the money to do it, fearing all the while that artifacts on the coveted private land could be forever lost to development.
Their concerns eased a bit Thursday, when the state finally released funds -- $837,800 -- earmarked years ago for expanding the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, now spanning 2,200 acres of the 4,000 that comprised the once-thriving cit
Source: Boston Globe
February 16, 2006
--Monuments honoring Civil War soldiers from Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts were damaged late Wednesday or early Thursday morning, Gettysburg National Military Park officials said.The head of a sculpture was stolen on Devil's Den, a rocky part of the battlefield, and a sword was taken from a second memorial. A third marker's sculpture landed on a decorative iron fence, which also was damaged.
"It's terribly sad, and the monuments were put th
Source: Daily Pennsylvanian
February 15, 2006
Archaeology professor Brian Rose wants to make sure ancient artifacts stay in their rightful homes -- even if those homes are in war zones.Rose, who has worked on excavation sites around the world, is trying to ensure that military personnel on duty treat valuable artifacts with respect.
He was struck by the problem after hearing of famous museums and archeological sites in Iraq and Afghanistan being looted by locals in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussei
Source: BBC News
February 16, 2006
Lazio footballer Paolo di Canio - punished in the past for giving a Nazi-style salute - has met Italians who survived the Nazi death camps.
"I've listened to the stories but I still have my ideas," the former West Ham and Charlton forward said later. The meeting was set up by Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, who previously brought AS Roma players face-to-face with Holocaust survivors at Rome city hall.
Fans have paraded swastikas and ot
Source: Washington Post
February 16, 2006
Thousands of Armenian Americans are protesting the Public Broadcasting Service's planned panel-discussion program about Turkey's role in the deaths of Armenians during and after World War I. The 25-minute program has generated an outcry because the panel will include two scholars who deny that 1.5 million Armenian civilians were killed in eastern Turkey from 1915 to 1920.The program is scheduled to air April 17, a week before the annual Armenian Remembrance Day commemoration
Source: The Daily Telegraph
February 16, 2006
DAVID Irving, the British revisionist historian, revealed last night that he would plead guilty to charges of Holocaust denial when he appears in a Vienna court next week. Mr Irving, 67, who has been held in an Austrian prison since last November, said he did not consider himself to be a Holocaust denier but had no choice but plead "guilty as charged''."Under the law I've got no alternative,'' he told the television channel More4 News.
But he added: &q
Source: Press Release--Regnery
February 15, 2006
Regnery Publishing has put out the following press release, which claims that "A coalition of professors, students, and organizations has launched a smear campaign to discredit David Horowitz’s newly-released book, The Professors."PRESS RELEASE
Using the misnomer, “Free Exchange on Campus,” the group blatantly distorts the content of The Professors and unscrupulously impugns the Academic Freedom Campaign launched by Horowitz through his organizat
Source: Wa Po
February 12, 2006
The hallways and exhibition galleries of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center are brightened by glass and limestone walls. The towering doors and enormous round table in the conference room are made of the finest blanched wood. There are rows of plush, immaculate seats in the three theaters.
What's missing from the $75 million complex are visitors. Much of the time, it is virtually empty.With Pope John Paul's endorsement, the center's founders opene
Source: Wa Po
February 14, 2006
All depictions of Muhammad -- or so we hear daily -- are now and have always been forbidden in Islam. Art's history disputes this. True, that strict taboo today is honored now by almost all Muslims, but old paintings of the prophet -- finely brushed expensive ones, made carefully and piously by Muslims and for them -- are well known to most curators of Islamic art.There are numerous examples in public institutions in Istanbul, Vienna, Edinburgh, London, Dublin, L
Source: AP
February 14, 2006
People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says. In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended."
"Scalia does have a philosophy, it's called originalism," he said. "That'
Source: Joel Achenbach blog at the Wa Po
February 15, 2006
A Washington Post researcher dug up this notice that ran on page 3 of the July 18, 1804 edition of the Gettysburg Centinel: "By a gentleman from Philadelphia we learn, that last week a duel took place at New York, between Colonel Aaron Burr, Vice President of the U. States, and General Alexander Hamilton, in which the latter was mortally wounded, and expired in a short time after he was taken from the field. The cause of the duel, or who was the challenger, we did not learn."
Source: BBC News
February 15, 2006
Records dating back 500 years are being studied in what is believed to be the first comprehensive research of suicide in Scotland throughout the ages. Professor Rab Houston, a historian at the University of St Andrews, is sifting through asylum, medical and legal records as part of his study.
Previous definitions of suicide range from "at the instigation of the devil" to findings of mentally instability.
Some people who committed suicide
Source: BBC
February 15, 2006
A US journalist whose broadcasts from London helped rally American public opinion to Britain's side during World War II, has been commemorated.A blue plaque has been unveiled at Edward R Murrow's old home, Weymouth House in Hallam Street, central London.
Murrow, who reported from London at the height of the Blitz, would begin with his "This is London" call sign.
He famously took on Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, with his television progr
Source: Christian Science Monitor
February 15, 2006
The heat over China's media censorship was turned up Tuesday after a baker's dozen of senior Chinese officials warned that preventing freedom of expression would "sow the seeds of disaster for political and social transition." The government's decision to shut down "Freezing Point," an investigative section of the China Youth Daily, came in response to an article written by professor Yuan Weishi, Al Jazeera reports. In the piece, Mr. Yuan questioned the official Chinese line
Source: Radio Free Europe
February 15, 2006
Russia today marked the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech," in which he denounced the crimes committed under dictator Josef Stalin and the cult of personality surrounding the deceased Soviet leader. Today was an occasion for Russians to reexamine the impact of this legendary speech on their country's history.Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -- held 14-25 February 1956 -- entered history as the
Source: Live Science
February 14, 2006
Many art historians and anthropologists believe Paleolithic cave wall art was done by accomplished shaman-artists, but mixed in with the finer paintings are graffiti-like scenes of sex and hunting.An analysis of thousands of paintings from the late Pleistocene epoch suggests the graffiti artists back then were likely the same as today—teenage males.
Most cave art from 10,000 to 35,000 years ago was done by hand, quite literally. Artists would chew up a bit of re
February 14, 2006
Persian speaking websites have published a letter from Haaroon Yashayayi, the president of Tehran’s Jewish Association, to the Iranian President. Following is an English translation provided by Hossein Alizadeh, Program staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Iran Initiative. Dear Mr. President,
Our apologies for interrupting your busy schedule and your around-the-clock efforts to solve the people’s problems, but we felt compelled to discuss a series of conc
