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: Agence France Presse (Summary by HNN intern Normand Forgues-Roy)
November 23, 2005
Two Americans have been indicted by a Paris county court for stealing important papers from Paris’s Archives nationals, among which was one of the last copies of the Fontainebleau Treaty (1815).
The two men--John William Rooney and his friend, Marshall Lawrence Pierce--are suspected of stealing many documents between 1974 and 1988. The loss of the papers became known when the archives curator discovered they were put on sale at Sotheby’s. A quick search revealed the theft along wit
Source: NYT
November 24, 2005
For all the saber-rattling before their grueling six-hour meeting on Tuesday, Italy's culture ministry and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have mapped out a potential solution to Italy's claims on antiquities in the museum's collection, officials said Wednesday. In essence, Italy would officially own the works, which it asserts were looted within its borders, but the Met would get to keep them - or receive objects of equal value as long-term loans.Officials said the com
Source: BlackAmericaWeb.com
November 22, 2005
It started as a laudable idea: build a park and raise a sculpture in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. at the site where he first told an audience, "I have a dream."
Only city leaders and two sculptors have been unable to satisfy the community's collective memory of what the civil rights leader looked like, even though King was among the most famous people of the 20th century."How you perceive a person, especially a person such as Dr. Ki
Source: Palm Beach Post
November 24, 2005
Sure, Massachusetts has its pilgrims, its Mayflower, its turkey and corn.
But when it comes to Thanksgiving, Florida historians have been saying the same thing for years: It happened first in the Sunshine State — with salt pork, sea biscuits and garbanzo beans.
In the 1560s, French and Spanish settlers arrived separately on Florida's northern coast, and each celebrated with prayer and a thanksgiving feast. The Spanish gathering at St. Augustine even featured guests from
Source: Is That Legal? (blog)
November 25, 2005
Announcing the publication of"Judgments Judged and Wrongs Remembered: Examining the Japanese American Civil Liberties Cases on Their Sixtieth Anniversary," a symposium issue of the interdisciplinary journal Law & Contemporary Problems. The Foreword by Eric Muller, which briefly introduces each of the twelve articles, is here.
Each of the articles i
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
November 23, 2005
Cut through the blend of fact and myth with which the Pilgrim heritage is based, and one finds paradox and controversy. That includes how much Pilgrims and other Puritans may have influenced the shape of democracy in America through their emphasis on independent, self-governing congregations beholden to no king or bishop."We talk about the principal of Congregational church government here as something that's so foundational to the way that Americans think about i
Source: National Security Archive
November 3, 2005
The Bush administration's interest in preemptive military options, whether conventional or nuclear, and limited use of nuclear weapons (e.g., bunker busting) is remarkably similar to military plans and options considered by earlier presidential administrations. Declassified documents from the Nixon administration show that U.S. nuclear war plans included preemptive options for striking Soviet and Chinese nuclear forces. They also show President Nixon and Henry Kissinger reacting to the massive n
Source: NYT
November 23, 2005
CARY, N.C. (AP) -- The joke around here is that this town's name is really an acronym for ''Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.'' As far as Vernon Yates is concerned, they haven't been contained well enough.
Nearly surrounded by pricey subdivisions, the cinderblock Yates Grocery and Farm Supply sells neither anymore. As if things weren't bad enough, style maven Martha Stewart has chosen this Raleigh suburb to build a signature neighborhood of houses designed after her homes in M
Source: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
November 23, 2005
Teen People magazine, which is owned by Time Inc., is still running a sanitized story about a neo-Nazi teenage singing duo on its web site, despite reports that it has canceled a planned feature story about them that downplayed their racist views.
The duo, known as "Prussian Blue," are 13 year-old twin sisters Lynx and Lamb Gaede, who wear Hitler t-shirts, deny the Holocaust, and frequently perform at neo-Nazi events. According to media reports, Teen People was planning t
Source: NY Daily News
November 23, 2005
Teen People nixed a story about Hitler-loving teenybopper twins Prussian Blue - amid outrage that the glossy had promised to avoid the words "hate," "supremacist" and "Nazi" in its piece on the racist singing sisters.
A Web-based teaser for the February story originally called the hatemongering duo "aspiring musicians" and compared them to wide-eyed sensations Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.The only hint that 13-ye
Source: WSJ
November 23, 2005
Ten years ago, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, the leaders who had waged a brutal four-year war in Bosnia -- at the center of a volatile region that had launched two world wars -- finally agreed to peace. They took this momentous step only after intense international military and diplomatic pressure led by the United States. At the time, almost everyone predicted that the Dayton Peace Agreement would fail.To enforce the agreement, I sent 20,000 U
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
November 23, 2005
Social scientists and the news media often display a faulty understanding of the process of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa, three scholars said on Tuesday during a panel discussion at the annual meeting here of the Middle East Studies Association.
The scholars had varying levels of optimism about the near-term prospects for democracy in the region. But all agreed that political scientists and popular writers tend to lean too heavily on religious and cultural ex
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
November 23, 2005
The History Channel values entertainment over intellect, writes Kevin Mattson, a professor of contemporary history at Ohio University at Athens in the curent issue of Dissent.
Started in 1995 as part of the A&E Television network, the History Channel has become a cable-television staple. Mr. Mattson describes the channel as "the leading institution that popularizes history in the United States."But to make history popular, Mr. Mattson says, the His
Source: AKI
November 23, 2005
Some 44 archaeological artefacts stolen following the US invasion of Iraq, have been returned to the local authorities in the southern city of Nassiriya.
The Iraqi newspaper al-Zaman reports that the artefacts, which date back to the era of the Sumerian civilisation around 4,000 years ago, were stolen by civilians, who returned them on Tuesday after hearing appeals from the Iraqi authorities and fatwas (religious edicts) issued by Shiite Imams calling on people to protect the count
Source: MLB.com
November 23, 2005
A 12-member committee of historians and baseball researchers will consider 39 players and executives from black baseball for induction next year to Cooperstown, officials of the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced Monday.
The 39 candidates were the finalists that a five-member screening committee presented to Hall of Fame officials last July after reviewing a five-year study into the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro League baseball."Holding the election is
Source: Toqueville Connection
November 22, 2005
EU lawmakers refused Tuesday to grant immunity from prosecution to a French far right-wing deputy for remarks about the Nazi gas chambers, in a case threatening to embarrass the EU assembly.
After four times delaying a vote on Bruno Gollnisch, number two in France's extreme right National Front, the parliament's legal affairs committee voted overwhelmingly not to give him protection as a member of the European parliament (MEP) from court proceedings.Gollnisch wa
Source: Christian Science Monitor
November 22, 2005
Miyako Masuda is a 23-year veteran of public schools here. Like many Japanese history teachers of her generation, she dislikes new textbooks that frame Japan as the victim in World War II. It bothers her that books claiming America caused the war are now adopted by an entire city ward. In fact, Masuda disapproves of the whole nationalist direction of Tokyo public schools.
Yet until last year, Masuda, who calls herself "pretty ordinary," rarely went out of her way to disagr
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 21, 2005
On April 15, 2003, in the Iraqi city of Basra, an enraged British journalist whose name has been lost to history stormed up to a US marine colonel and his men and denounced them as "macho assholes". The colonel had been looking for weapons and cash left behind by the ousted Iraqi regime, but this reporter believed fiercely that he should be more concerned that "the finest museum in the world has just been looted".
When thousands of antiquities were looted from Ba
Source: WP
November 20, 2005
The bright sun sparkles on the cold waters of the fjord, forcing the gray-haired man to squint slightly. "This is where I come to think," Odd Bjorn Fure says without breaking his gaze.
From a balcony on the central tower of the fortresslike Villa Grande, he stares out over the treetops toward a cargo ship heading slowly out to sea. "And I'm sure Quisling came here to think, too," he adds.
Vidkun Quisling was the head of Norway's collaborationis
Source: NYT
November 22, 2005
Alfred Anderson was the last surviving soldier to have been present when the guns fell silent along the Western Front in the spontaneous
"Christmas Truce" of World War I.Born June 25, 1896, he was an 18-year-old soldier in the Black Watch regiment when British and German troops cautiously emerged from the trenches that Christmas Day in 1914. The enemies swapped cigarettes and tunic buttons, sang carols and even played soccer amid the mud, barbed wire
