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: Mother Jones
Nov.-Dec. 2005
Mother Jones has published a long analysis by Mark Hertsgaard of the 2004 presidential election. Hertsgaard, a well-known liberal investigative reporter, concludes that the 2004 election was not stolen from John Kerry. His article debunks the work of Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, and Steve Rosenfeld, authors of Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? and Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unle
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 27, 2005
Urban sprawl, we've learned in Atlanta, is one of the great evils of modern life. But a new book argues that sprawl is neither evil nor even modern.
"Sprawl: A Compact History" says that cities have sprawled for thousands of years: Indeed, outside the walls of ancient Rome was a place the Romans called suburbium, literally "below the walls" --- a place for businesses that couldn't operate within the city and for people who couldn't afford to live there.
Source: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies,
November 27, 2005
In response to a protest by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Teen People magazine, which is owned by Time Inc., has removed from its web site an article that whitewashed a neo-Nazi teenage singing duo."It was irresponsible for Teen People to post an article describing these neo-Nazis as 'white separatists' without ever acknowledging that they are racists, admirers of Hitler, and Holocaust-deniers," said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wy
Source: NYT
November 27, 2005
Most of the recent parallels to our withdrawing from Iraq do not seem to offer much encouragement for a confounded superpower that wants to save face as it cuts its losses and returns home. Among them are the wrenching French pullout from Algeria, the ill-fated French and American adventures in Vietnam, the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan and the disastrous American interventions in Beirut and Somalia.
Still, there are a few stories of inconclusive wars that left the United States
Source: Boston Globe
November 26, 2005
On Saturday, relatives and survivors lit 33,000 candles in Kiev as Ukrainians marked the anniversary of the Great Famine in 1932-1933 that the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin provoked as part of his campaign to force Ukrainian peasants to give up their land and join collective farms. During the height of the famine, which was enforced by methodical confiscation of all food by the Soviet secret police, cannibalism was widespread. The Soviet-era forced famine killed up to 10 million Ukrainians.
Source: Library of Congress
November 27, 2005
The color photographs of the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection include scenes of rural and small-town life, migrant labor, and the effects of the Great Depression. A significant number of the color photographs concern the mobilization effort for World War II and portray aircraft manufacturing, military training, and the nation's railroads. The 1,600 color photographs produced by the FSA and OWI photographers are less well known and far less extensive than the 164,
Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer
November 25, 2005
On George Hageman's iPod: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, the Foo Fighters, the Rolling Stones and a backup of all his schoolwork.
On more than 2,000 other iPods: George's Military History Podcast. And those are just the subscribers through iTunes.
His Web site has recorded more than 15,000 downloads since he debuted his weekly show on Labor Day weekend: "Bringing you the strangest anecdotes, most
Source: Lawrence Journal-World
November 25, 2005
The 1918 flu obtained its Spanish nickname because Spain was the first European nation to highly publicize the outbreak in that country. Other European nations also had outbreaks, but because of the war, newspapers were giving little, if any, publicity to bad news.
Most historical accounts, however, say the flu originated in Kansas, at Fort Riley’s Camp Funston. The first reports of soldiers getting sick occurred in March. Historians also think American soldiers sent to Europe were
Source: Newsday
November 25, 2005
The cemetery, in the eastern district of Weissensee, has deteriorated so badly that it would take about $48 million to restore many of the 115,000 graves and elaborate tombs, most of which predate World War II, said Albert Meyer, chairman of the Berlin Jewish community.
"This is the last chance. Nature is reclaiming the site; much of it looks like a jungle. If we don't do anything now, we won't be able to save it," said Meyer, adding that many tombs already were almost bey
Source: Guardian
November 25, 2005
On Christmas Day 64 years ago around 150 of Croatia's Jews in the town of Pozega were rounded up, penned here, robbed of their valuables, and put on cattle wagons bound for the concentration camps of fascist Croatia's Ustasha state. They all perished, along with hundreds of other local Jews and Serbs. By 1942 the town's entire Jewish community, the oldest in the central and eastern part of Croatia called Slavonia, were wiped out.
The police chief in what was then a small town of 7,
Source: USA Today
November 24, 2005
When a president falls below 40% approval in public opinion polls — as President Bush has done twice in the past two months — it's usually a sign of serious political danger.
Since 1950, five of the eight other presidents who fell below 40% — Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — lost their bids for re-election or opted not to run again. A sixth, Richard Nixon, was overwhelmed by the Watergate scandal and resigned.
Only two, Rona
Source: Yahoo News
November 24, 2005
ALCATRAZ ISLAND, United States (AFP) - A tribal chant rose from a thousands-strong prayer circle on San Francisco's Alcatraz Island, as Native Americans held a sunrise "Unthanksgiving Day" ceremony.
"What we call it, is Unthanksgiving," Bear Lincoln of the Wailikie Tribe told AFP as he waved burning sage to purify the area and ward off evil spirits.
Traditional Thanksgiving feasting in the United States is a tribute to the meal the original European
Source: New Republic
November 23, 2005
In the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore put forth an expansive vision of America taking leadership in an interdependent world."The world's coming together," he declared in an October debate."They're looking to us." George W. Bush, by contrast, espoused a narrow nationalism except on trade and immigration."We should not send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide in nations outside our strategic interest," he asserted in January 2000.
Five years later, Bush is advocating an ex
Source: BBC
November 25, 2005
Poland's new defence minister has announced he is declassifying the country's Warsaw Pact files. Radoslaw Sikorski said the files, which had remained secret until now, will be open to historians at the state-run Institute of National Remembrance.
The institute investigates war crimes in the Communist era. The archive reveals details about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981.
Source: AP
November 25, 2005
Dwight D. Eisenhower had been dead for more than a decade before scholars began calling him one of the greatest presidents in American history. Now planners have chosen one of Washington's most prominent sites for a grand memorial to the humble man from Abilene, Kan.The plaza-style memorial across the street from the National Mall would honor Eisenhower's legacy of public service, joining the collection of nearby monuments to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Delan
Source: BBC
November 25, 2005
Austrian authorities have refused bail for British historian David Irving, who is facing Holocaust denial charges.Mr Irving's lawyer has said the historian now no longer denies that gas chambers existed in Nazi death camps.
Mr Irving can appeal against the charges under Austrian law. No trial date has been set yet. He could face up to 10 years in jail if found guilty.
A court in Vienna ruled on Friday that Mr Irving must stay in custody as there was
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 25, 2005
British historian David Irving now acknowledges that Nazi gas chambers existed but admits that some of his past statements could be interpreted as denying people were gassed, his lawyer said Thursday on the eve of a court hearing.
Prosecutors this week charged Irving, 67, under an Austrian law that makes denying the Holocaust a crime. The charges stem from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he allegedly denied the existence of the chambers. He faces up to 10 years in p
Source: NYT
November 25, 2005
How he seemed to hate New York. A "terrible town," Henry James called it in "The American Scene." It was 1904 and James had been away from New York, the city of his birth, for 20 years. "A vast crude democracy of trade," he wrote, a "heaped industrial battlefield."
James's biographer, Leon Edel, explained his vituperativeness toward New York - so out of character for this master of evasion and indirection - as a reflection of James's dismay a
Source: NYT
November 25, 2005
In his informative but often vexing new book, Jerome Karabel, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, looks at the admissions process at the so-called Big Three and how the criteria governing that process have changed over the last century in response to changes in society at large.
Mr. Karabel writes that until the 1920's, Harvard, Yale and Princeton, "like the most prestigious universities of other nations," admitted students "almost ent
Source: NYT
January 25, 2005
Widely considered a military hawk, President Richard M. Nixon fretted privately over the notion of any no-holds-barred nuclear war, newly released documents from his time at the White House reveal.
The recently declassified papers, from the first days of the Nixon presidency in 1969 until the end of 1974, show that Nixon wanted an alternative to the option of full-scale nuclear war - a plan for a gentler war, one that could ultimately vanquish the Soviet Union while avoiding the wor
