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: Montreal Gazette
September 21, 2005
We think of the library as a quasi-sacred institution - a shrine to the works of great thinkers, philosophers, writers and historians. As such, it offers comforting proof that knowledge and wisdom transcend politics and ideology. Or do they? In his latest documentary, Save and Burn, Montreal filmmaker Julian Samuel offers a sobering reflection on the baser forces that have threatened libraries over the years.An impressive group of experts - including Robin Adams, a librarian
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
September 21, 2005
This week at the Hilton Pittsburgh about 800 public historians are expected to gather for the American Association for State and Local History's annual conference. Unlike academic historians, public historians work with and for the public, mostly in museums, libraries and archives, historical societies and in the media.Does America have too many house museums? How about historical markers -- are we littering the landscape with too many of those?
How and why shou
Source: NYT
September 21, 2005
New Orleans: Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, toured several historic neighborhoods here on Monday, accompanied by a host of local housing preservationists, in an effort to remind officials that in the rush to clean up New Orleans, all should be mindful of its architectural legacy. Standing in front of the Preservation Resource Center in a warehouse district near downtown, Mr. Moe said he saw hope for the city's history despite the destruction, although he
Source: NYT
September 21, 2005
he Belleview Biltmore Hotel still exudes some of the grandeur of a time when tycoons like its builder, the railroad magnate Henry Plant, spared little expense to entertain visitors. There is a ballroom with a stained-glass ceiling, a hidden stairway for children and their nannies, and hallways wide enough for hoop skirts.
But the romance of the hotel has faded, replaced by an acrimonious fight over whether it should be saved.
Source: BBC
September 21, 2005
A US writers' group is suing internet search engine Google, claiming that its plan to digitise major library book collections infringes author copyright.The Authors Guild has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The lawsuit seeks class action status, seeks damages and demands an injunction against further infringements.
The suit names as co-plaintiffs The Authors Guild and writers Herbert Mitgang, Betty Mi
Source: Radio Praha
September 21, 2005
The Czech Republic is a country with a fascinating industrial heritage all too often overshadowed by the Renaissance or the Baroque. Anyone who has ever travelled through Prague's formerly working-class districts of Karlin and Holesovice, for example, or has cycled in the north or east of the country, will have taken note of beautiful but crumbling 19th century factories, forgotten textile plants and old mills, falling apart girder by girder, brick by brick.There have been s
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
September 21, 2005
There will be no rush to judgment on the approximately 100,000 buildings in New Orleans damaged by Hurricane Katrina, and there will be no demolitions without public review. "The vast majority of those structures can be saved," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who toured the city this week. "I'm confident we can avoid the wholesale demolition some of us were worried about." Moe's comments came at the
Source: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
September 20, 2005
A book about America's failure to rescue Jews from the Holocaust helped convince then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to order the U.S. airlift of 900 Ethiopian Jewish refugees to Israel in 1985, a U.S. ambassador has revealed.John R. Miller, a former Congressman(R-WA), who is now the U.S. ambassador for combating human trafficking, revealed the episode for the first time in public, in a statement presented to more than 200 participants in a September 18 conference at
Source: NYT
September 20, 2005
Mexican prosecutors filed long-awaited charges on Monday against former President Luis Echeverria for a 1968 student massacre by soldiers and police that was the bloodiest moment of a brutal crackdown on dissidents.In the latest test of President Vicente Fox's pledge to punish those responsible for past repression, a special prosecutor presented genocide and kidnapping charges against Echeverria and seven others for the October 2, 1968, blood bath at a student rally in
Source: Wa Po
September 20, 2005
The Washington-based Center on Education Policy reported this year that because of No Child Left Behind 27 percent of school systems say they are spending less time on social studies, and nearly 25 percent say they are spending less time on science, art and music. Several elementary school programs have shown good results by inserting science, social studies, art and music into reading lessons, rather than removing them from the curriculum. The Core Knowledge program, based in Charlottesville, h
Source: Guardian
September 20, 2005
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, writes in an op ed in the Guardian that Britain needs to remember all of the victims of genocide, not just Jewish victims. The Muslim Council of Britain, along with other faith-based organisations, received a consultation paper from the Home Office in 1999, proposing the establishment of a National Holocaust Memorial Day.
The MCB has always denounced the monstrous cruelty and inhumanity th
Source: BBC
September 18, 2005
There has been angry reaction within India's governing Congress party to claims the KGB infiltrated Indira Gandhi's government in the 1970s. A former KBG official says in a new book that the Soviet intelligence agency had an extensive network of contacts in the government.
Congress party spokesmen say the allegations in the book are baseless and not worth commenting on.
Mrs Gandhi led three Congress governments before being assassinated.
Source: Times Online (UK)
September 20, 2005
A HUGE cache of KGB records smuggled out of Moscow after the fall of communism reveal that in the 1970s India was one of the countries most successfully penetrated by Soviet intelligence. A number of senior KGB officers have testified that, under Indira Gandhi, India was one of their priority targets. “We had scores of sources through the Indian Government — in intelligence, counter-intelligence, the defence and foreign ministries and the police,” said Oleg Kalugin, once the youngest general in
Source: Salon
September 13, 2005
New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward was a historic black neighborhood, home to Fats Domino, abandoned by government, and the "murder capital of the murder capital." Now that it has been destroyed by Katrina, will its loyal inhabitants be able to return?
Source: Inside Higher Ed
September 20, 2005
When Kanye West blasted President Bush’s treatment of poor black people in New Orleans after Katrina hit, the rapper unintentionally set off a hurricane of words in Florida.The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper, ran a cartoon last week that criticized West’s statements by showing him holding a large playing card marked “The Race Card,” and having Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, exclaim with scorn at West: “Nigga Please!” Since the cartoon ran, th
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 20, 2005
Sergio Aguayo revels in exploring contradictions. He is a former gang member fighting for human rights. A left-wing academic who writes books with gringos. A scathing critic of Mexican politics who has run for office -- twice. When Mr. Aguayo labels his life as "schizophrenic," he is referring to more than his maneuvers outside the conservative halls of the elite College of Mexico, where he has held the post of research professor in international relations since 1977. He sees his life
Source: Archaeological Institute of America
September 20, 2005
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) announces a new educational program first implemented earlier this year at the Marine Corps base at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina. In the first four months some 2,000 troops en route to Iraq and Afghanistan have benefited from presentations on the archaeology, history and cultural heritage of the region by experts in the field. The AIA plans to expand the program to other military bases in the near future. “The troops curr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 17, 2005
A criminal investigation into forgeries smuggled into the National Archives began last night, two months after The Daily Telegraph revealed that historical documents relating to Nazi Germany had been tampered with.
In an unprecedented inquiry, Scotland Yard detectives will gather evidence for a prosecution of the forger behind at least 17 documents drawn to the attention of the archives by this newspaper since last July.The first batch of counterfeit papers unco
Source: NY Daily News
September 18, 2005
WITH RESTORATION PLANS rolling for the Grand Concourse, a Bronx museum is taking a detour down the boulevard's memory lane. On Wednesday, the Bronx Museum of the Arts will begin a series of walking tours, workshops and talks about the street's striking architecture and storied past, along with updates on its future."It is gorgeous," said Lloyd Ultan, the Bronx borough historian. "The elegance still comes through. All it needs is a little spruceup."
Source: NYT
September 18, 2005
The recent outburst of popular religiosity in the United States is a most dramatic and unforeseen development in American life. As Europe grows more secular, America grows more devout.
In the midst of this religious commotion, the name of the most influential American theologian of the 20th century rarely appears - Reinhold Niebuhr. It may be that most "people of faith" belong to the religious right, and Niebuhr was on secular issues a determined liberal. But left evangeli
