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: Knight Ridder Newspapers
August 5, 2005
Sixty years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, a film documenting the aftermath is reminding Americans about the horrors of nuclear war.
Footage from a U.S. government-produced film, which was labeled top secret and kept out of public view for decades, is included in "Original Child Bomb," a documentary that aired on many cable stations Saturday, the 60th anniversary of the day that Hiroshima became the first city to suffer atomic attack.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 9, 2005
A REPORT LAST SPRING arguing that conservative faculty members are less likely to advance in academe has drawn a withering attack in a new paper written by four scholars at the University of Pittsburgh. The authors of the original report, however, take issue with the response. The original report, published in The Forum, a journal of applied research in contemporary politics, was based on a 1999 survey of 1,643 faculty members at 183 colleges in the United States. It found t
Source: NYT
August 9, 2005
Like a live hand grenade brought home from a distant battlefield, the 34-year-old antiwar documentary "Winter Soldier" has been handled for decades as if it could explode at any moment.
Now, the 95-minute film - which has circulated like 16-millimeter samizdat on college campuses for decades but has never been accessible to a wide audience - is about to get its first significant theatrical release in the United States, beginning on Friday at the Film Society of Lincoln Cen
Source: Pr4ess Release from The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
August 8, 2005
A leading Holocaust Studies institute is urging entertainers Harry Belafonte, Woody Allen, and Dick Gregory to retract their recent statements comparing the Bush administration, Israelis, and black conservatives to Nazis.A leading Holocaust Studies institute is urging entertainers Harry Belafonte, Woody Allen, and Dick Gregory to retract their recent statements comparing the Bush administration, Israelis, and black conservatives to Nazis.
Source: NYT
August 9, 2005
As Washington shuts down for August, President Bush’s report card from the public for the first half-year of his second term is not a good one compared with how the public graded Presidents Reagan and Clinton at a similar point in time. Only President Nixon, who had by then begun to tumble into the abyss of Watergate, had a lower presidential approval rating. Unlike Nixon’s precipitous decline over one mega-problem, Mr. Bush’s fall in public esteem reflects discontent in a number of areas: Ameri
Source: Financial Times (London, England)
August 9, 2005
Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's prime minister, has lost the vote on his grand scheme to privatise the country's post office with its vast savings pool and will go to the polls. For now, the village-pump communitarian face of Japanese conservatism has won out over anti-bureaucratic, privatising radicalism. The global finance industry will have to wait a little longer to get its hands on that Dollars 3,000bn (Pounds 1,700bn) of Japanese savings.
But the snap election next month is likely
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
August 7, 2005
Less than a year after the United States exploded two atomic bombs in Japan, the federal government established agencies to oversee the future of this powerful but short-lived monopoly.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who directed the bomb's development, chaired one body, the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. Serving with him were other scientists, making the GAC the most influential and respected panel on atomic energy.
By the end of Apri
Source: LAT
August 7, 2005
There was a distinct air of nostalgia in the room last week when organizers launched a group dedicated to promoting bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. Partly that was because the two Washington veterans headlining the effort -- former Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) -- were last seen together playing key roles in the congressional investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal in 1988.
But the mood owed more to the e
Source: Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo)
August 7, 2005
With the help of Japanese historian Shigeaki Mori, a British airman recently was added to Nagasaki's list of atomic-bomb victims, after his death in the bombing on Aug. 9, 1945, while being held as a prisoner of war, was confirmed. A portrait of Royal Air Force Cpl. Ronald Shaw was offered to the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims by his family, who recently learned of Shaw's fate through information provided by Mori, 68, in Hiroshima.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
August 8, 2005
It began as a bid by history buffs in northern Maine to shed new light on a grisly bit of local lore -- the 1873 hanging of a Canadian fugitive by an American mob, the only known lynching in the history of New England.But the proposed Jim Cullen Look-Alike Contest, to be held at last week's heritage fair in the border-region town of Presque Isle, was scrapped amid charges the event would glorify an infamous New Brunswick brute alleged to have killed two law
Source: BBC
August 9, 2005
Recently uncovered documents relating to a failed attempt to create a wealthy Scottish empire in the jungle are being sent to Panama for an exhibition. The 300-year-old documents are thought to be the only original, surviving letters sent from Darien. The 17th century scheme - known as the Darien Venture - cost 2,000 lives, lost about half of the country's wealth and is said to have changed the course of Scotland's political history.
Many historians believe it a
Source: Armenia Liberty
August 9, 2005
A Turkish scholar who researched Ottoman history in Armenia’s state archives went on trial in Yerevan on Tuesday nearly two months after his controversial arrest on smuggling charges which caused an uproar in U.S. and Turkish academic circles. Yektan Turkyilmaz, a 33-year-old doctoral student at the U.S. Duke University, is facing between four and eight years in prison for trying take old books out of Armenia without a mandatory government permission.
The openin
Source: The Korea Times
August 9, 2005
The South Korean government will establish a foundation to deal with history issues in the Northeast Asian region in affiliation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade this year, ministry officials said on Monday. Tentatively dubbed the ``Northeast Asia History Foundation,’’ the organization will conduct research on historical disputes in the region and develop related policies for the government, according to the officials.
Source: Independent
August 8, 2005
As historical whodunits go, it is one of the most compelling of them all. Alexander the Great, overlord of an empire stretching from Greece to India, was suddenly and inexplicably cut off in his prime at just 32.Over the centuries, suspicion has fallen on any number of potential poisoners, from Alexander's own wife and illegitimate half-brother to his generals and even the royal cup-bearer. But now a British historian believes he has finally solved the mystery: the kil
Source: CNN
August 9, 2005
When the Enola Gay took off en route to Hiroshima, Japan, 60 years ago, Col. Paul Tibbets sat at the controls carrying a few cigars and his favorite pipe.
He also brought a small cardboard box holding a dozen cyanide pills, in case his crew had to bail out over enemy territory.
Hours later, the crew released 8,900-pound "Little Boy," the first atomic weapon used in war, and the stripped-down B-29 lurched upward from losing so much weight in an instant.
August 9, 2005
Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddhas are due to be recreated by multicoloured laser images projected onto the cliffs where they once stood.
The 1,600-year-old statues, which stood on the Silk Road in the Bamiyan Valley, were destroyed by the Taleban in 2001.
Artist Hiro Yamagata will use solar and wind power to project a series of images onto four miles of clay cliffs.
Afghan government officials, who approached the Japanese artist in 2003, are awaiting ap
August 9, 2005
For William Lloyd Garrison's descendants, a family reunion is a chance to discover how they have dealt with their abolitionist forefather's legacy.
The gathering coincided with the opening of exhibits at the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Afro-American History here about Garrison and the black abolitionists who helped him advance the antislavery issue.
For Garrison's descendants, it is a chance to meet relatives, to learn about their famous forefather and to di
August 9, 2005
Just how true to history Tombstone, Ariz., should remain is the subject of a modern-day shootout over its designation as a national historic landmark.
"The town too tough to die," as Tombstone bills itself, is at risk of losing its designation as a national historic landmark because some say it has been a little too kitschy in embellishing its heritage.
"It's becoming like a Hollywood set instead of an authentic historic Western town," said Sally Al
August 9, 2005
Anniversaries always bring forth memories, some of them dark and conflicting, and this 60th year since the end of World War II demonstrates that there is no agreed-upon narrative of the 20th century's epic conflagration. We have seen China's violent demonstrations against Japan's teaching of its war history. Even though Japan has apologized many times for its war crimes, it cannot resist whitewashing its World War II past. Japan's historical view of those tortured times may never fit with China'
August 9, 2005
Peter Briner, president of Switzerland's Senate foreign affairs committee, said the committee had decided that the death or deportation of Armenians between 1915 and 1919 would not be the subject of a plenary session.
Peter Briner said the Swiss committee agreed with the Swiss government that it was not parliament's job to decide on the whether the killings constituted genocide. They have been recognised as such by the parliaments of several countries, including the United States,
