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: Gazette (Montreal)
December 23, 2005
British Columbia's Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campagnolo has quietly launched a mission to heal an old cross-border scar between the U.S. and Canada: The 1884 lynching by an American mob of a young Sto:lo boy named Louie Sam.
"This is not the best time in relations between Canada and the United States," said Campagnolo in an interview. "This is a positive thing.
"We can't change the past, but we can do something about it."
Source: NYT
December 23, 2005
Irving Berlin's New York was a world of Broadway babies, teeming matinees, entrances at the Imperial, exits at the St. James, joyful noise at the New Amsterdam and civic veneration for his great mentor, the showman George M. Cohan.
And it still is. It's not just that the 1954 movie "White Christmas," highlighting Berlin's definitive musical statement on the splendor of the holidays, is playing - as it must, on Christmas Day - on television. And
Source: Christian Science Monitor
December 22, 2005
While some see him as an enchanting symbol of Dutch culture, Sinterklaas - from whom Americans derived Santa Claus - is not welcomed by everyone. His black-faced assistant, known as Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, has in recent years come under fire for having racial undertones.
"I understand it's in their tradition to celebrate the event but I have to admit I am deeply offended," says Patrick Chapell, an African-American musician living here in Utrecht.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
12-22--05
The Department of Homeland Security adamantly denied Wednesday that its officials had interrogated a senior at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth because he tried to borrow from acampus library an unabridged version of The Little Red Book. The alleged incident has prompted a controversy, but Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for the department, said, “We investigate violations of the law, not individuals’ reading habits.” She said that department officials have “serious questions about the
Source: scotsman.com
December 20, 2005
THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.
Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior. According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human
Source: Reuters
December 21, 2005
Emperor Akihito has called on Japan to "accurately understand" its history at the end of a year marked by criticism abroad that the country fails to atone for its militarist past.
In an interview marking his 72nd birthday on Friday, the emperor said "there were rarely peaceful times" in the 20 years to 1945 when Japan surrendered to the allies to end World War II."I believe it is extremely important for the Japanese people to strive to a
Source: Reuters
December 21, 2005
English children are taught too much about Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in school history lessons, the country's education watchdog said on Thursday.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said the teaching of the subject for teenage pupils was dominated by 20th Century dictatorships and other topics such as England's Tudor monarchs like Henry VIII who ruled during the 16th century."There has been a gradual narrowing and 'Hitlerisation' of post-14 his
Source: The Age (AU)
December 22, 2005
HUNDREDS of human footprints — the oldest in Australia and the largest collection of its kind in the world — have been found in the Mungo National Park in south-western NSW.
They were left by children, adolescents and adults between 19,000 and 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last ice age, as they ran and walked across a moist clay area near the Willandra Lakes.The prints were laid down in wet clay containing calcium carbonate, which hardened l
Source: Washington Times
December 22, 2005
Previous administrations, as well as the court that oversees national security cases, agreed with President Bush's position that a president legally may authorize searches without warrants in pursuit of foreign intelligence. "The Department of Justice believes -- and the case law supports -- that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the president may, as he has done, delegate this authority to the attorney g
Source: AP
December 22, 2005
There's already a debate over whether to say "Happy holidays" or "Merry Christmas." The next step of the controversy could be whether textbooks designate ancient years as B-C or B-C-E.
State senator Tom Reynolds has introduced a bill that would prevent the state's school boards from adopting textbooks unless the books use the B-C designation.B-C stands for "before Christ." Increasingly authors and historians are using the religiousl
Source: Reuters
December 22, 2005
The head of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in parliament, echoed Iran's president on Thursday in describing the World War Two Holocaust of European Jews as a myth.
"Western democracy has attacked everyone who does not share the vision of the sons of Zion as far as the myth of the Holocaust is concerned," Mohamed Mahdi Akef said in a statement.Last week the deputy leader of the Brotherhood, Mohamed Habib, asked about Ahmadinejad's
Source: LAT
December 21, 2005
Steven Spielberg calls his latest movie, "Munich," a prayer for peace.
But the filmmaker's tale of the Israeli hit team avenging the 1972 massacre of 11 of its Olympic athletes is already dividing viewers. One of the year's most anticipated movies and a potential Oscar contender, "Munich" has triggered debate among audiences -- including Oscar voters -- who have been the first to see it.Some are finding fault with how the film tries to
Source: Baltimore Sun
December 21, 2005
Sylvia Cyrus-Albritton isn't going to hold it against actor Morgan Freeman for slamming the need for Black History Month.
She isn't mad that the Oscar winner said on CBS' 60 Minutes that it's "ridiculous" to relegate one month to black history and that the practice should be abolished.
But as director of the group founded by the father of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, Cyrus-Albritton says she has an important message for Freeman: "We're not ther
Source: Inside Higher Ed
December 21, 2005
Several studies this year — some disputed — have suggested a political tilt (toward Democrats) among professors. Now a new study is being released saying that social science professors are overwhelmingly Democratic, that Democratic professors in those disciplines are more homogeneous in their thinking than are Republicans, and that Republican scholars are more likely than Democrats in the field to end up working outside of academe.The study will appear in the jou
Source: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
December 21, 2005
The year-end report, Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2005, published by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, found that in many Arab and Muslim countries, Holocaust-denial continued to enjoy official sponsorship in 2005. The regimes in Egypt, Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria promoted Holocaust-denial or defended Holocaust-deniers. The continued promotion of Holocaust-denial by Egyptian government-controlled publications was particularly alarmin
Source: TruthOut
December 20, 2005
This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President's failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of Congress and more than 500,000 Americans in July of this year asking him whether the assertions set forth in the Downing Street Minutes were accurate. Mr. Conyers asked staff, by year end 2005, to review the available information concerning possible
Source: Christian Science Monitor
December 2, 2005
For more than a century, the only violent overthrow of a local government in US history has been hidden in mystique.
Now, a new report challenges the view that held sway for many years - that a provocative statement about white women and black men by a mixed race (then known as mulatto) newspaper editor caused the 1898 riot in a South gripped by fears of miscegenation.As a horse-drawn machine-gun regiment fired into crowds and frightened
Source: WaPo
December 21, 2005
For a quarter-century, Denis Donaldson moved among the elite of Northern Ireland's republican movement.
A small man with glasses and thinning hair, he looked more like a bureaucrat than a guerrilla fighter. But his revolutionary credentials were impeccable, starting with a 1971 conviction for plotting to blow up British government buildings and a four-year stint in the infamous Maze prison. A photo from that time shows him with his arm draped over the shoulder of cellmate Bobby Sand
Source: Reuters
December 21, 2005
Sweden launched a probe on Wednesday to understand how eugenics, a theory on improving the human race used by Nazi Germany to justify the Holocaust, became broadly accepted in the Nordic state in the early 20th century.
Sweden is now known for its strong social welfare system and outspoken advocacy for human rights, but in the past it has experimented with social engineering. This led to abuses such as the forcible sterilization of around 60,000 women in 1936-76.
Source: WaPo
December 17, 2005
As a great maritime and colonial power in centuries past, France relished its role in taking its culture to the far corners of the globe -- French schools, language, trade, modern medicine and various other trappings of its civilization.
But people in those places were not always happy with what accompanied the French largess, including war, slavery, torture and the eradication of their cultures.
Those competing views of history have set off an emotional debate in Franc
