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: Guardian (UK)
November 18, 2005
David Irving, the controversial British historian, has been arrested in Austria on suspicion of giving speeches in which he allegedly denied the existence of the gas chambers in the Nazi death camps.
The state prosecutor's office in Vienna yesterday confirmed that Mr Irving, 67, who lost a libel case against Penguin Books and an American historian five years ago and was financially ruined as a result, was in investigative custody pending inquiries as to whether he would be tried on
Source: Independent (UK)
November 18, 2005
Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a 1,200-year-old massacre in Guatemala that could provide clues to one of the enduring mysteries of central American history - the precipitous collapse of the once glorious Maya civilisation.The team spent the summer excavating ruins of the ancient city of Cancuen in central Guatemala and dug up at least 45 skeletons belonging to members of the Mayan royal court who appear to have been ritually slaughtered by an as-yet unknown horde
Source: Jewish News Weekly
November 17, 2005
When Diana Wang won the right to change her religious affiliation from Catholic to Jewish on her 1947 entry papers to Argentina, it represented another step forward by the current government to right past wrongs.
And it was an emotionally charged moment for Wang, president of Generation of the Shoah, a group in Argentina. “It has been nice to celebrate the New Year as my real self,” she said. The government announced it would make the revision for Wang; that wou
Source: Japan Focus
November 10, 2005
The granddaughter of Japan’s wartime leader Tojo Hideki has become one of his staunchest public defenders since emerging from obscurity a decade ago.
Ms. Tojo clearly idolizes her grandfather, who was executed as Japan’s top war criminal in 1948: she often comes to interviews with foreign journalists carrying a box of mementos that include nail clippings, a lock of hair, and the butt of the last cigarette the general smoked while awaiting the hangman’s noose in Sugamo Prison.
Source: Myrna Blyth in National Review
November 15, 2005
Our test is about American history and American symbols and how our government works. Questions range from "What are the colors of the flag?" to asking for a quick definition of the Constitution.
The British test is very different. It is based on a government-issued 125-page booklet called "Life in the U.K," and it costs the applicant $60 to take the test. There are 24 multiple-choice questions and the applicant must get three quarters of them correct. If he fail
Source: Romanesko
November 17, 2005
Former Californian reporter Nada Behziz frequently plagiarized and, in some cases, invented sources and then attributed plagiarized quotes to them, according to the Californian's investigation. "Work from major newspapers such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times shows up [in Behziz's plagiarized stories]," writes Gretchen Wenner. "So do stories from far-flung titles including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Detroit Free Press, along with closer-to-home publications such
Source: Yahoo News
November 17, 2005
Even after Richard Nixon's secret war in Cambodia became known, the president persisted in deception. "Publicly, we say one thing," he told aides. "Actually, we do another."
Newly declassified documents from the Nixon years shed light on the Vietnam War, the struggle with the Soviet Union for global influence and a president who tried not to let public and congressional opinion get in his way.They also show an administration determ
Source: BBC News
November 16, 2005
One of Wales' oldest wells, thought to be a pagan site rededicated by early Christians, is to be restored.
Ffynnon Rhedyw in Llanllyfni, near Caernarfon, is believed to be older than nearby St Rhedyw's church, which dates from 600AD. "This site is an interesting example of a class of little-understood monuments which are numerous across Wales, but which are often overlooked," said David Thompson, the trust's head of heritage management.
Source: KCBS News
November 17, 2005
Researchers at San Jose State have confirmed that a chunk of bone donated to the University's Center for Beethoven Studies is in fact a part of the remains of the master.
The Center spent six years conducting forensic tests on the bone fragment, on loan from a Danville business man whose great granduncle was a doctor in Vienna. Researchers authenticated the bone, obtained when Ludwig van Beethoven's body was exhumed in 1863, by comparing it to a strand of the co
Source: PanArmenian.net
November 17, 2005
The British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through its Ambassador to Turkey Sir Peter Westmacott, refused to consider the request made by the Turkish Parliament last April to reconsider the "Blue Book", a 1916 parliamentary report, formally titled, "Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16," that documents the systematic, deliberate and politically motivated nature of the Armenian Genocide.In a letter, Sir Westmacott officially explained that th
Source: Telegraph (London)
November 17, 2005
Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, has dismissed criticism of the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the build up to the Iraq war as "dishonest and reprehensible".
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone - but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," he said.Democrats have exploited rising anti-war feeling in the US in recent weeks and accused the adm
Source: NYT
November 17, 2005
Archaeologists and forensic experts in Guatemala have made a grisly discovery among the ruins of an ancient Maya city, Cancuén.
In explorations during the summer, they found as many as 50 skeletons in a sacred pool and other places, victims of murder and dismemberment in a war that destroyed the city and, it seems, served as a beginning of the collapse of the classic period of the Maya civilization. The precipitous decline of the Maya is one of the enduring mysteries of American arc
Source: NYT
November 17, 2005
Some appeals judges who ruled on civil rights cases with Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. have accused him over the years of minimizing America's history of racial discrimination, weakening the courts in dealing with bias claims and placing barriers in the path of employees' civil rights suits.
But his record on civil rights is not one-sided. A look at scores of his decisions on race and other civil rights issues shows that he often takes a highly technical approach to volatile issues. His
Source: NYT
November 17, 2005
Three years ago, directors of some of the world's top museums, meeting in Munich, commiserated over a major annoyance: the growing demands from countries like Greece and Italy that they return ancient artifacts.
What emerged from the meeting was a defiant statement defending their collecting practices. Signed by the directors of 18 museums - from the Louvre to the Hermitage in Russia to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles - the document argued
Source: NYT
November 16, 2005
A federal appeals court decided Tuesday that it was unreasonable to require a historical accounting of money the government has been managing for American Indians, saying the bookkeeping would "take 200 years."
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the government and the Indians in their effort to block a lower court order for a detailed tally of money owed the Indians going back to 1887. The a
Source: NYT
November 16, 2005
White House advisers convene secret sessions on the political dangers of revelations that American troops committed atrocities in the war zone, and whether the president can delicately intervene in the investigation. In the face of an increasingly unpopular war, they wonder at the impact on support at home. The best way out of the war, they agree, is propping up a new government that can attract feuding elements across a fractured foreign land.
With an obvious resonance to current e
Source: NYT
November 16, 2005
A U.S. official disbelieved Israel's assurances during the Cold War that it would avoid acquiring nuclear weapons and feared the United States' main ally in the region would spark a Middle East nuclear arms race, documents from that time show.
A 1969 memo reported intelligence findings that ''Israel is rapidly developing a capability to produce and deploy nuclear weapons,'' despite promises it would not introduce nuclear arms to the region.
The memo by Joseph J. Sisco,
Source: Boston Globe
November 14, 2005
A song about people picking cotton was pulled from a middle school concert in suburban Detroit after a black parent complained that it glorifies slavery.
Superintendent Tresa Zumsteg decided Monday to remove the song "Pick a Bale of Cotton" from the program, said Gwen Ahearn, spokeswoman for the Berkley School District.
Ahearn said that when the song was picked for Wednesday's folk songs concert at Anderson Middle School, there was no intent to offend anyone.
Source: AP
November 16, 2005
A man who published a study that he said proved the Nazis did not gas Jews at Auschwitz was deported from the United States to his native Germany to serve a prison term for Holocaust denial.
Germar Rudolf, also known as Germar Scheerer, had his emergency petition to block the deportation rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday. He was put on a flight in Chicago on Monday night and arrived in Germany on Tuesday. Rudolf, a chemistry graduate of Bonn Univer
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
November 10, 2005
The National Park Service has become so scared of what counterproductive thing Congress might do to it next that it has become downright timid. That syndrome might rob Pennsylvania of the museum it needs to complete the narrative of our nation's history. Since 1999, Valley Forge National Historical Park had been working in a public-private partnership to develop the nation's first education center devoted to the American Revolution. Because of unrealistic demands from Congress, that partnership
