History News Network

Departments

This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

How old is the Grand Canyon? Park Service won't say, deferring to creationists

Source: http://www.peer.org (12-28-06)

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:48 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Moderate? Conservative? With Gerald Ford, Take Your Pick

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

LYNDON JOHNSON in 1973. Richard Nixon in 1994. Ronald Reagan in 2004.

The last three former presidents to die dominated the world stage. They bent history to their will, for better or worse, and became the subjects of a crowded shelf of biographies. For the writers of memorials and obituaries, they were easy.

Not so Gerald R. Ford, who served only 29 months, never won a national election, and was constricted by an overwhelmingly hostile Congress. He is remembered mainly for the pardon of his predecessor, an act that ultimately doomed his bid for re-election.

Yet the public ritual surrounding the death of a former president demands a period of public rumination, and partisans across the political spectrum have been finding substance to admire in Mr. Ford.

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Memories of the Kazakh Gulag forgotten

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

KARAGANDA, Kazakhstan — Maria Sadina hunched over fading pictures of her parents, ethnic Germans who were deported in 1941 from the Volga region in Russia to one of Karaganda’s many gulag camps.

Ms. Sadina’s father was imprisoned for praising the quality of a German-made tractor, and for a decade he worked as a slave laborer in the nearby coal mines. Her mother was sent to the Karaganda gulag simply for her German heritage.

They had married and reared their daughter, Ms. Sadina, in a two-room brick house so low to the ground that visitors must bend over to avoid hitting the ceiling. Ms. Sadina, now a grandmother, continues to live in the same house, the walls now appearing to crumble, tending the same garden her parents once harvested to survive.

She pointed to the neighbors’ homes through her kitchen window. “These people are all children of the gulag,” she said. “Nobody talks about it anymore. Nobody even wants to look at their pictures anymore.”

The gulags once spread over the Kazakhstan steppe like a thick wreath. Eleven sprawling camps with names like Alzhir, a Russian acronym for the Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Motherland, housed hundreds of thousands of prisoners and their families. The camps, built shortly after the creation of the Soviet Union, were partly emptied to provide soldiers and workers during World War II and were eventually closed, although not dismantled, after Stalin died in 1953.

In Kazakhstan today, a large percentage of people have parents or grandparents whose life trajectories were savagely rewired by deportation and imprisonment in the camps. But memories of the gulags are dying, fading like Ms. Sadina’s photos.

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hussein’s Case Won’t Bolster International Human Rights Law, Experts Fear

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

Saddam Hussein is one of the few modern leaders to have been tried and executed for his crimes and other abuses of power. Most dictators of the past century have died of natural causes at home or in comfortable exile — or at the hands of assassins.

But with trials of former leaders becoming more common in the past decade, there are other distinguishing features in the Hussein case: he was the first former leader to be tried by a domestic court for crimes against humanity — a crime enshrined in international law — and put to death for it.

His dawn hanging on Saturday further stands out because the new international legal institutions, like the International Criminal Court and the temporary tribunals that are trying war crimes cases in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, do not impose the death penalty.

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Watch Night Services Link Past and Future for Blacks

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

NASHVILLE, Dec. 30 — In the anxious countdown to New Year’s Eve, clubs inventory their stockpiles of liquor and champagne, party hosts check and recheck invitation lists, and frantic revelers cast about for the most promising party destinations.

But in many black churches across the country, midnight on Dec. 31 marks the culmination of a far different observance. In a tradition with roots in the Civil War and a nod to the days of slavery, many black Americans spend New Year’s Eve in church sanctuaries, awaiting the arrival of the new year with prayer and song.

“Bring in the new year on your knees — that’s what my mama used to say,” said the Rev. Kenneth W. Forte, the pastor of First Baptist Church Hopewell, which is on the eastern outskirts of Nashville.

Although it is not clear when Watch Night became a tradition within black communities, some historians and theologians say the services were started in connection with President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Homes Sell, and History Goes Private

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — The old mahogany furniture is shrouded in white dust covers, and the espaliered gardens overlooking the James River have gone to seed. Colonial Williamsburg is selling Carter’s Grove, an imposing 18th-century Georgian mansion and one of the most renowned plantations in Virginia.

Colin Campbell, Williamsburg’s chairman and president, said he had tried to interest other preservation groups in the property, with no luck. And so the 400-acre riverfront residence, closed because of declining attendance and shifting priorities, will be available for private purchase at a price local agents estimate could be well over $20 million. “Perhaps in January,” Mr. Campbell said. “We don’t want to linger.”

Although it will be protected by easements to prohibit subdivision, there will be no requirement that Carter’s Grove be open to the public.

The sale by Williamsburg, the country’s biggest and most prestigious living history museum, has riveted preservationists’ attention on the plight of hundreds of other house museums across the country that have either closed or are struggling to stay open in the face of dwindling interest, diminished staff and lack of endowment dollars.

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

For Kerouac, Off the Road and Deep Into the Bottle, a Rest Stop on the Long Island Shore

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

NORTHPORT, N.Y. — The King of the Beats was already a literary celebrity when he moved with his mother, Gabrielle, to this Long Island harbor town in 1958, but the locals remember him mainly as a broke barfly who padded about barefoot or in bedroom slippers.

“He never had any money, so he’d get your ear till you bought him a drink, always Schenley’s whiskey,” Bob Reid, a 69-year-old clammer, recalled of Jack Kerouac’s six years here, much of them spent in Murphy’s, a salty bar overlooking the public dock where the fishermen, lobstermen and clammers would come in still wearing their smelly hip waders.

“He dressed like a bum, wore an old ratty overcoat and always needed a shave,” Mr. Reid added. “We knew he was a writer but we didn’t know he was famous. He never talked about books, maybe because we weren’t exactly a book crowd.”

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Betty Ford: Back in View, a First Lady With Her Own Legacy

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

It has been a while since America drew its face close to Betty Ford. But what the nation saw this week here in Southern California — an impossibly tiny face, lips pinched in grief and eyes blinking in the harsh midday sun — served as a poignant reminder of the woman whose reign as first lady, while brief and wholly unexpected, was among the most remarkable in modern history.

Former President Gerald R. Ford’s death on Tuesday at the age of 93 thrust Mrs. Ford back into a public spotlight that she had largely avoided in recent years....

She was a product and a symbol of the cultural and political times — doing the Bump along the corridors of the White House, donning a mood ring, chatting on her CB radio with the handle First Mama — a housewife who argued passionately for equal rights for women, a mother of four who mused about drugs, abortion and premarital sex aloud and without regret.

Her candor about her battle with breast cancer, which led to unprecedented awareness among American women about detecting the disease, and her later commitment to alcohol and substance abuse treatment, stemming from her own abuse history, set the stage for widespread acknowledgment and advocacy that is commonplace today.

Given her impact on these crucial health issues and her influence over the modern East Wing, Mrs. Ford’s effect on American culture may be far wider and more lasting than that of her husband, who served a mere 896 days, much of it spent trying to restore the dignity of the office of the president.

“I think that’s true,” said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a presidential family historian and expert on first ladies. “The impact of her influence on the general public extended beyond her tenure in the White House. It was a situation of somebody coming along in history who, in simply being themselves, ends up crystallizing something that the nation at large is feeling.”

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford, in Final Journey, Returns to ‘Real Home’ for a Solemn Memorial

Source: NYT (12-31-06)

After a slow journey past the touchstones of his political life, Gerald R. Ford was brought to a place of honor Saturday under the Capitol dome, where a crowd of dignitaries gathered to commemorate the man whose presidency encompassed one of the most tumultuous periods of American history.

Many of Mr. Ford’s most prominent protégés came to mourn him, remembering the era of political unity, however brief, he oversaw after the Watergate scandal. Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Mr. Ford’s chief of staff and was an honorary pallbearer, said, “Few have ever risen so high with so little guile or calculation.”

Representative J. Dennis Hastert, the departing House speaker, recalled that “in the summer of 1974, America didn’t need a philosopher-king or a warrior-prince, an aloof aristocrat or a populist firebrand.”

“We needed a healer; we needed a rock,” Mr. Hastert said. “We needed honesty, candor and courage. We needed Gerald Ford.”

Betty Ford, 88, the former first lady, stood silently during prayers for her husband of 58 years, her eyes downcast. Mrs. Ford appeared frail but poised, and at the ceremony’s end moved forward and bowed her head, her hands lightly touching her husband’s coffin.

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Monterey to cut four redwood trees to save historic church

Source: AP (12-30-06)

A historic church in the seaside city of Steinbeck can cut down four redwood trees that are damaging the structure, city officials said.

The roots from the 100-foot trees have grown into the foundation and crumbling sandstone walls of San Carlos Cathedral. Church officials also said the trees threatened an adjacent property, which contains pottery remnants and other artifacts dating back centuries to Monterey's early days.

"I will be granting their request to remove all the trees," City Manager Fred Meurer said.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China opposed to rewriting Japan's history

Source: UPI (12-28-06)

An academic and diplomatic review of historic relations between China and Japan will not dilute Japan's record of massacres, China Radio International reports.

The remark was made Thursday in Beijing by Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, who discussed the conclusion of the first joint historical review between the two countries aimed at narrowing differences.

Qin was asked if the so-called Tokyo Tribunal, or the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, had been discussed, he did not elaborate, but said China's stand was firm on the tribunal's findings.

"History and the international community have given their verdict. There is a mass of iron-clad evidence, and it cannot be overturned," Qin said.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 7:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Death, Exile Come With Being a Dictator

Source: AP (12-29-06)

Some ended up in prison, others were butchered at the hands of their own people. A lucky few lived out their days in comfortable exile or in positions of privilege in the lands they ruled. India's independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi said dictators "can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall."

That hasn't always proven true. Russia's Josef Stalin, North Korea's Kim Il-Sung, China's Mao Zedong, Spain's Francisco Franco, Albania's Enver Hoxha and Syria's Hafez Assad all died in power. Augusto Pinochet of Chile arranged a comfortable retirement before handing over power. The global record of bringing tyrants to justice has been mixed.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic stood before an international tribunal to answer for his regime, but he died before a verdict could be rendered.

Liberia's Charles Taylor has been indicted for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone and awaits trial.

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega is serving a 40-year term in a federal prison in Miami for racketeering, drug trafficking and money-laundering after U.S. troops entered his country and arrested him in 1989.

But history's master tyrant, Adolf Hitler, escaped retribution by committing suicide in Berlin before Soviet troops could capture him in 1945. ...

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 7:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Missing Argentine 'Dirty War' Trial Witness Found

Source: AP (12-30-06)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- A key witness in a human rights trial stemming from Argentina's military dictatorship was found beaten Friday, two days after he went missing.

Luis Gerez, who has accused a former police chief of torturing him during the 1966-73 dictatorship, was found by a police patrol in a street of Garin, a town just north of Buenos Aires, said Leon Arslanian, the Buenos Aires security minister.

A friend who spoke to Gerez at a hospital, Alberto Fernandez de Rosa, said Gerez had been abducted by three men who had blindfolded, beat and burned him with cigarettes.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 7:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Disputes over history seen as biggest hindrance to Japan-China ties

Source: Deutsche Presse (12-30-06)

Disputes over history are the biggest contributing factor to friction between Japan and China, coming in ahead of economic rivalry and China's rise as an Asian power in a poll released Saturday.

More than 900 people in seven Asian countries were queried for The Straits Times-Asia News Network (ANN) poll on the state of relations between the two countries.

Disagreements over history were identified by 54 per cent of those polled as the major sticking point. Economic rivalry was picked by 18 per cent and China's rise as a regional power by 16 per cent.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 7:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Concerns raised about history in UK schools

Source: UKTV (12-29-06)

An Ofsted report suggesting that many pupils find history teaching too hard has caused consternation among historians.
Historians have expressed fears that history in schools is being "dumbed down" following calls for courses in schools to focus on world events.

A report from schools inspectorate Ofsted discovered that large numbers of pupils would rather concentrate on current events than British history and teachers have called for courses to include more film and television material to appeal to less academic students.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 7:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turn family gatherings into history lessons

Source: CNN (12-20-06)

Searching for the perfect present for your children, one that won't get shoved in a closet or cost a fortune? Hoping to engage your children in activities other than video games and television over their winter break? Look no further than those piles of shoe boxes bursting with old photographs. This holiday season give kids the gift that they will treasure for a lifetime -- a family history.

"Family history is about stories, not necessarily who married whom and all the way back," says Maureen Taylor, noted genealogist and author of a guide to family history for kids, "Through the Eyes of Your Ancestors."

"Families today are pretty disconnected," says Taylor. "It is important for kids to have that sense of connectedness to everyone else, at a point where many kids and teenagers are feeling quite alienated. It is important for kids to know where they fit in."

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 7:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A City of Memorials Finds Itself Filling Up (Washington, DC)

Source: NYT (12-30-06)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 — This supremely political city has a keen sense of history and its uses. So, not surprisingly, it also has a thing for memorials: marble, granite and otherwise. Six presidents and seven wars have monumental tributes in or near downtown Washington.

But presidents are not the only people so honored. Ground was broken for the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the Mall six weeks ago, and Congress has approved a monument to Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox” of the Carolinas during the Revolutionary War. Most recently, it approved one to millions of victims of the 1932-33 Ukrainian Holodomor, or famine.

Wait. The Ukrainian famine? A monument to be built on federal land by the Ukrainian government? Whose history is this?

That question, raised in the 1990s about another foreign memorial, has since ricocheted around the National Park Service and the National Capital Planning Commission, the agencies most responsible for monitoring the conception, creation and placement of new museums and commemorative works in the federal city.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 6:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saddam Hussein Had Oppressed Iraq for More Than 30 Years (NYT Obit)

Source: NYT (12-30-06)

The hanging death of Saddam Hussein tonight ended the life of one of the most brutal tyrants in recent history and negated the fiction that he himself maintained even as the gallows loomed— that he remained president of Iraq despite being toppled by the American military and that his power and his palaces would be restored to him in time.

The despot, known universally as Saddam, had oppressed Iraq for more than 30 years, unleashing devastating regional wars and reducing his once promising, oil-rich nation to a claustrophobic police state.

For decades, it had seemed that his unflinching hold on Iraq would endure, particularly after he held on to power through disastrous military adventures against first Iran and then Kuwait, where an American-led coalition routed his unexpectedly timid military in 1991.

His own conviction that he was destined by God to rule Iraq forever was such that he refused to accept that he would be overthrown in April 2003, even as American tanks penetrated the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in a war that has become a bitterly contentious, bloody occupation.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Iraqis Consider Fate of Hussein's Body

Source: NYT (12-30-06)

After the hanging, the body remains.

While the verdict and death sentence for Saddam Hussein were swift and unambiguous, it was much less clear on Saturday what would be done with his body.

Privately, both American and Iraqi officials say that the subject has been raised at the highest levels, but no decisions have been made. There is wide disagreement on the subject of his body, according to interviews with several top Western and Iraqi officials, nearly all of whom insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The most discussed options include sending his body out of the country to his family in Jordan, where two of his daughters live; burying him in a secret location never to be made public; burying him in a secret location but, after a period of time, having him disinterred and sent to his family or tribe; or sending him immediately to his hometown of Tikrit to be buried with members of his tribe....

rom Mussolini to Ceausescu, the vanquishers of the once powerful rulers have sought to ensure that memorials to them do not inspire the kind of passions they did in life.

Tojo, Japan’s leader during World War II, was unceremoniously cremated after going to the gallows. The location of the ashes was kept secret for nearly three decades, until the urn with his remains was secretly placed in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where it remains today. The former Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was buried secretly in a nondescript public graveyard. Although the grave markers bore fake names, the site was public knowledge within a year. He was killed by firing squad on Christmas Day in 1989.

Hitler’s bones, the source of endless morbid fascination, were buried in secret, dug up, moved across East Germany, buried again and dug up once more only to be cremated. A piece of his skull is kept in Russia.

Mussolini’s body traveled far after he was shot by a firing squad and then hanged upside down in a public square. Slivers of his brain were taken by American doctors to see if he had been driven mad by syphilis, while the rest of him was buried in an unmarked grave outside Milan. The site was soon discovered and a young neofascist dug up the remains, stuffed them in a steamer trunk and hid them in the mountains. Eventually, Mussolini was recovered and reburied in the Adriatic Sea town of Predappio, his home town.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 6:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

After 30 Years, Supreme Court History Project Turns a Final Page

Source: NYT (12-30-06)

Call it “The Supreme Court: The Missing Years.” A small team of legal historians is wrapping up the work of reconstructing the Supreme Court’s first decade, a period largely lost to history due to poor official records, misleading contemporaneous accounts and the fire that burned the Capitol, where the Supreme Court was located, in the War of 1812.

The task figured to be a challenge, but no one realized just how daunting it would be when the Supreme Court Historical Society conceived the Documentary History Project and hired Maeva Marcus, a young historian with a newly minted Ph.D., to run it.

That was 30 years ago. Ms. Marcus’s two children, who used the Supreme Court building as their weekend playground when the project was housed there in its early years, grew up to become, not surprisingly, lawyers. One, Jonathan Marcus, argues before the Supreme Court as a lawyer in the solicitor general’s office. The other, Stephanie Marcus, handles appeals in the Justice Department’s civil division.

Now Maeva Marcus and the project’s three associate editors are getting ready to close their office in the basement of the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building on Capitol Hill. The eighth and final volume of the “Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800,” has gone to press. Columbia University Press, which began publishing the project’s work in 1985, will bring out the last volume in February.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 5:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Recent Flexing of Presidential Powers Had Personal Roots in Ford White House

Source: NYT (12-30-06)

This year’s annual gathering of Gerald R. Ford administration alumni took place in June at the National Archives, where graying former officials socialized near a display of the Constitution.

Mingling with the retirees were two men still very much in power: Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, each of whom had served under Mr. Ford as White House chief of staff.

The setting had an apt symbolism. Since taking office as part of the Bush administration in 2001, both Vice President Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, who stepped down as defense secretary this month, have consciously sought to restore what they see as the constitutional powers of the presidency, which they believe were severely eroded under President Richard M. Nixon and President Ford. Some of their colleagues from three decades ago — evidently including Mr. Ford — have wondered if they have gone too far....

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Richard Ben-Veniste says Nixon pardon was right, but should have been delayed

Source: Richard Ben-Veniste in the WaPo (12-29-06)

[The writer, former chief of the Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office, is a partner in the Washington office of Mayer, Brown, Rowe and Maw.]

Upon taking office as president, Gerald Ford gave reason to believe that any decision regarding a pardon for his predecessor would be made carefully and deliberately. Nineteen days after taking the oath of office, he responded to a press inquiry about a possible Nixon pardon, saying that until any legal process was undertaken it would be "unwise and untimely for me to make any commitment," adding that "until the matter reaches me, I am not going to make any comment during the process of whatever charges are made."

Yet, only 11 days later, Ford reversed course. Citing reasons of national reconciliation, the difficulty Nixon would have in obtaining a fair trial by jury, and the suffering that Nixon and his family had already endured, Ford announced that he had pardoned Richard Nixon for all crimes he committed or "may have committed" while president. The same day, Nixon issued a statement admitting only to "mistakes" and "misjudgments," saying that he "was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate."

The pardon decision was met with strident criticism by much of the media. The Post equated Ford's pardon to another chapter in the coverup; the New York Times called it "profoundly unwise, divisive and unjust" and "a body blow to [Ford's] credibility." With the benefit of more than 30 years of perspective, the public's view of Ford's decision has softened considerably.

While I do not believe Ford was wrong to pardon Nixon, the timing of the pardon was premature and may have cost Ford the margin of victory in the 1976 election. Had Ford kept to his original plan and allowed time for formal charges to be lodged against Nixon, spelling out the specifics of his culpability, it would have been up to Nixon to either accept the pardon or fight the charges in court. But pardoning Nixon without requiring at least an acknowledgment of responsibility for serious misconduct and for lying to the public left the door open for the spate of revisionist books and articles that followed the resignation.

Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, December 29, 2006

NBC reports Ford was alienated from the modern Republican Party

Source: HNN summary of NBC report. Story: "Ford shared his feelings about Republican party" (12-29-06)

NBC Nightly News reported this evening that Gerald Ford made disparaging remarks about Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in interviews with Michael Beschloss in the mid-1990s. The network played tapes from the interviews. Ford said he was disappointed Reagan had declined to campaign for him in 1976 in several key states, saying this cost him the election. Ford said he knew for a fact that both Barbara and George H.W. Bush supported abortion rights and was sad to see he wasn't braver in resisting the rightwing pressure to adopt an anti-abortion position. Click on the SOURCE link above to watch the video.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 10:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK counts the treasures, from Trident subs to Newton's apple tree

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-28-06)

The Treasury will next month publish a register of every national asset — ranging from Trident nuclear submarines to an offshoot of "Newton's Apple Tree" — in an attempt to identify assets that can be sold to fund government spending.

The National Asset Register is expected to show that the nation's assets, which include offices, land and equipment, total more than £300 billion. City estimates suggest that the true valuation could be as high as £1,000 billion if land values are taken into account.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Britain's 300th birthday to be 'ignored'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-29-06)

The 300th birthday of Great Britain is to pass next year without any major celebrations.

January 16 sees the tricentenary of the Act of Union which merged the parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707.

Historians consider it one of the most important events in the nation's history, laying the foundations for imperial expansion a century later.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Call for national museum of Scottish emigrants

Source: BBC (12-29-06)

The achievements of Scottish emigrants should be celebrated in a national museum, according to the SNP [Scottish Nationalist Party].

The party has called for a new museum to be created in Edinburgh to record the accomplishments of Scots such as philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

SNP Lothians MSP Kenny MacAskill said there were up to 80 million people across the world who claimed to be of Scottish descent.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Files show early Falklands warning in '75

Source: Guardian (12-29-06)

Defence chiefs warned seven years before the Falklands War that the islands would be almost impossible to defend in the event of an Argentine invasion, according to official papers made public.

Files released to the National Archives in Kew, west London, under the 30-year rule show that in 1975 Defence Secretary Roy Mason urged Prime Minister Harold Wilson to seek a "political solution" to the long-running dispute over the islands.

A Ministry of Defence briefing note from February 1975 warned that the problems of providing a force sufficient to defend the islands in the face of an invasion were "formidable".

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Apocalypse then: How Harold Wilson feared civil war in Troubles

Source: scotsman.com (12-29-06)

HAROLD Wilson warned that an independence struggle by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland would unleash an "apocalyptic" bloodbath, plunging the UK into civil war.

The Labour prime minister made the dramatic prediction in previously secret documents released under the 30-year rule.

But other Whitehall files showed that, despite Mr Wilson's fears, the British government considered creating an independent Northern Ireland anyway.

In 1976, both the Irish and British governments feared loyalists would attempt to make a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI), sparking a bloodbath.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Downing Street opens Number 10's doors to online visitors

Source: AP (12-28-06)

Britain launched a virtual tour of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Downing Street office, giving web surfers a glimpse into the lives of the people who work behind the country's most famous front door.

The tour includes images of the Cabinet table, the Grand Staircase adorned with portraits of every prime minister, and the entrance hall, and can be accessed on the prime minister's website -- www.pm.gov.uk <http://www.pm.gov.uk>; .

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Four men in London court over Rwandan genocide

Source: Reuters (12-29-06)

LONDON - Four men will appear in a central London court on Friday on extradition warrants from Rwanda where they are wanted on charges of taking part in the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 minority Tutsis were slaughtered.

Police said the men, all in their 40s and 50s, were arrested at their homes in coordinated raids in various parts of the country and were being held in a central London police station.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Second "dirty war" witness missing in Argentina

Source: Reuters (12-28-06)

BUENOS AIRES - Police searched on Thursday for a man who has disappeared months after testifying he was tortured by a policeman during Argentina's military dictatorship, the second "Dirty War" witness to go missing.

Government officials said President Nestor Kirchner had postponed a planned trip to coordinate police efforts to locate Luis Gerez, a 51-year-old construction worker who vanished on Wednesday, according to family members.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Argentine 'death squad' man held

Source: BBC (12-29-06)

A former police officer who is alleged to have been a leader of a far-right death squad in Argentina during the 1970s has been arrested in Spain.

Rodolfo Almiron was detained near Valencia on a warrant to face murder charges in Argentina.

He is a suspected member of Triple A, the anti-communist alliance that operated under the governments of Juan Peron and then his widow Isabel.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK settles WWII debts to allies

Source: BBC (12-29-06)

Britain will settle its World War II debts to the US and Canada when it pays two final instalments before the close of 2006, the Treasury has said.

The payments of $83.25m (£42.5m) to the US and US$22.7m (£11.6m) to Canada are the last of 50 instalments since 1950.

The amount paid back is nearly double that loaned in 1945 and 1946.

"This week we finally honour in full our commitments to the US and Canada for the support they gave us 60 years ago," said Treasury Minister Ed Balls. ...

Under the lend-lease programme, which began in March 1941, the then neutral US could provide countries fighting Adolf Hitler with war material.

The US joined the war soon after - in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbour - and the programme ended in 1945.

Equipment left over in Britain at the end of hostilities and still needed had to be paid for.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford insisted on an honest museum, even if history was sometimes unflattering

Source: Newhouse News Service (12-28-06)

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- With clean architectural lines and a broad glass front facing the Grand River, the building is a fitting reflection of the man -- open and without pretense.

On a breezy, sun-splashed day in September 1981, the former president stood before 40,000 people on a grassy slope in downtown Grand Rapids and spoke from his heart. Stretched out before him was a crowd that included celebrities, prime ministers and presidents.

"The high point of my life, next to meeting Betty ... is always ahead," Gerald Ford said that morning. "And today it is here, in my hometown and among my friends."

And with that, the doors of the Gerald R. Ford Museum swung open.

On hand were then-President Reagan, leaders of Mexico, Canada and Japan and national and state political leaders. But this edifice was built for the public more than the VIPs. This place meant enough to the Fords that he and Betty decided to be buried in a plot just north of the museum.

"This museum had great meaning for President Ford. It always has," said Richard Norton Smith, former executive director of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation and former director of the Ford Museum.

More than that, Smith said, Ford never tried to steer museum exhibits away from controversy or moments in his presidency that could have been embarrassing. He wanted it to reflect history -- warts and all....

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 6:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ireland Knew of Threats to Kennedy in 1963 Trip

Source: NYT (12-29-06)

Irish authorities were aware of three separate death threats against President John F. Kennedy when he visited Ireland in 1963, five months before his assassination in Dallas, according to government papers released in Dublin on Friday.

Two threats came in anonymous telephone messages to the police saying President Kennedy would be killed during the three-day visit, and a third was received by the news desk at a major newspaper group, Ireland’s Department of Justice said in declassified documents.

While the police assumed the threats were hoaxes, the police took extra security precautions, deploying nearly half the country’s police force on Mr. Kennedy’s route from the Dublin airport. The president’s visit was seen in Ireland as historic, in part because of Mr. Kennedy’s own Irish Catholic roots and the fact that he was the first Irish Catholic American to be elected president of the United States. The Irish police sensed that the world was looking on to see how the visit was handled, the documents indicated.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 5:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford Arranged His Funeral to Reflect Himself and Drew in a Former Adversary

Source: NYT (12-29-06)

As he helped in recent years arrange the details of his own funeral, Gerald R. Ford reached out to an old adversary: Jimmy Carter, who defeated him for the presidency in 1976.

Mr. Ford asked whether his successor might consider speaking at his funeral and offered, lightheartedly, to do the same for Mr. Carter, depending on who died first.

The invitation was decades in the making, associates of Mr. Ford’s said. And, they said, it was typical for Mr. Ford, who came to his own funeral-planning sessions adamant that his coffin not be carried to the Capitol in an elaborate horse-drawn caisson but a motorcade instead.

During services for Mr. Ford, the 38th president, over the next few days, the simplicity he sought will be on display in Washington and, later, in Michigan, where he will be interred. His coffin is expected to be carried into the Capitol through the House of Representatives, where he served for 25 years, rather than up the sweeping front staircase. A band will play a somber version of the University of Michigan fight song, a Ford favorite from his undergraduate alma mater, and a song he preferred to “Hail to the Chief” while he was president....

The two ex-presidents developed a friendship soon after Mr. Carter left office, starting with a long-haul flight together from Cairo after the funeral of the Egyptian president, Anwar el-Sadat, in 1981. They found a mutual interest in the presidential library system, and agreed to work on projects at each other’s institutions. They compared notes on public policy and their families, and over time, their wives became friends.

And they shared a mutual rival: Ronald Reagan.

Theirs, Mr. Cannon said, was “an open and complementary friendship, no question about it.”

“I think part of the reason for the bond was, both of them had been defeated by Reagan, and they shared a disregard for Reagan,” Mr. Cannon said, alluding to Republican primaries in 1976 as well as the 1980 presidential election. But the friendship went even deeper, he said: “It was sincere, no question about that. Both of them had been there, and both of them had a continuing interest in what other presidents did.”...

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 5:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

For Ford, Pardon Decision Was Always Clear-Cut

Source: NYT (12-29-06)

President Gerald R. Ford was never one for second-guessing, but for many years after leaving office in 1977, he carried in his wallet a scrap of a 1915 Supreme Court ruling. A pardon, the excerpt said, “carries an imputation of guilt,” and acceptance of a pardon is “a confession of it.”

Mr. Ford’s decision to pardon Richard M. Nixon for any crimes he might have been charged with because of Watergate is seen by many historians as the central event of his 896-day presidency. It also appears to have left him with an uncharacteristic need for self-justification, though friends say he never wavered in his insistence that the pardon was a wise and necessary act and that it had not resulted from any secret deal with his disgraced predecessor.

“I must have talked to him 20 times about the pardon, and there was never a shred of doubt that he’d done the right thing,” said James Cannon, a Ford domestic policy adviser and author of a 1994 book about his presidency. During one of their discussions, Mr. Ford pulled out the 1915 clipping, from Burdick v. United States. “It was a comfort to him,” Mr. Cannon said. “It was legal justification that he was right.”...

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 5:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Similar Personnel, Different Approaches: Bush and Ford

Source: WaPo (12-28-06)

Gerald R. Ford's administration passed from the scene relatively quickly in the 1970s, but, like much of the decade's popular culture, it left an imprint that would be felt for years to come. In fact, when George W. Bush arrived at the Oval Office 24 years later, it felt at first as if he were shooting a remake of the Ford White House.

Ford's White House chief of staff, Dick Cheney, was now vice president. Ford's defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was again the master of the Pentagon. Young aides who had learned the Washington game under the 38th president -- such as Paul H. O'Neill, John W. Snow and Stephen J. Hadley -- were to head the Treasury Department or National Security Council for the 43rd chief executive.

There were other familiar faces as well. James A. Baker III, who as Ford's campaign manager saved his nomination from an insurgent Ronald Reagan in 1976, had come to the rescue when Bush's election headed into recount overtime. And Alan Greenspan, a Ford economic adviser, was the incumbent Federal Reserve chairman who would help Bush sell his signature $1.35 trillion tax-cut program, a far cry from the $10 billion in tax cuts promised by Greenspan's onetime mentor, Ford.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 3:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford Always Managed to Be a Good Sport

Source: WaPo (12-28-06)

Without question, Gerald R. Ford was one of the most athletic presidents in history.

Ford, who died Tuesday night at age 93, loved to take part in sports from his days as a youth in Grand Rapids, Mich., until he occupied the White House and during the many years afterward. He is best known for playing center at the University of Michigan, where he was on the Wolverines' national championship football teams of 1932 and 1933 and was the team's most valuable player in 1934.

Even after he became president in 1974, Ford still found the time to follow sports avidly -- and to participate.

"I've always loved sports," he told a Washington Post reporter in 1976. "When I was a boy, I knew every batting average in the big leagues. I still look at the standings and I feel a day is wasted if I don't read the sports pages."

As president, Ford engaged in an array of sports: swimming, golf, tennis, skiing. As a younger man especially, he loved sailing.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford's Former Home Languishes on Market

Source: WaPo (12-28-06)

The modest two-story colonial in Alexandria has all the trappings of an ordinary home: the pink bathroom, the Magic Chef oven, a couple of fireplaces. But 514 Crown View Dr. also boasts some signs, both subtle and overt, that indicate its unusual status in U.S. history.

Neighbors talk of the steel rods placed underneath the driveway to support the limos. A previous tenant speaks about the countless telephone lines installed in the basement and attic used by the Secret Service.

But a gold-lettered National Park Service sign affixed to the right of the front door says it all:

PRESIDENT GERALD R. FORD, JR. RESIDENCE.

The death of the nation's 38th president has focused public attention on his time in the White House. But some spotlight has also fallen on a little-known, decidedly humdrum neighborhood (about 15 minutes south of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.), where Ford lived for nearly 20 years as a Michigan congressman, vice president and -- for 10 whole days before moving into the White House -- as president.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 3:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Post-presidential years of Jerry Ford

Source: WaPo (12-29-06)

Gerald R. Ford thought globally as a president, but in a salubrious 30-year retirement spent on ski slopes and putting greens, he acted locally, serving on charities, donning sneakers for the first Desert AIDS Walk, speaking to the Boys and Girls Club and leading the annual Fourth of July parade.

Ford's regular-guy lifestyle distinguished him from other former presidents. Richard M. Nixon, who handed the presidency to Ford, wrote books to buff up his reputation. Ford's former adversary, Jimmy Carter, has built homes for the indigent and crisscrossed the globe brokering cease-fires and monitoring elections. Bill Clinton globe-trots as well, promoting AIDS awareness and, with George H.W. Bush, raising money for victims of the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

In comparison, Ford's biggest achievement -- helping his wife found the Betty Ford Center, the internationally known substance-abuse rehabilitation facility -- could be said to pale in comparison. But in his quiet unhurried way, friends and others said, the ex-president, who died here Tuesday, was a model citizen, known for the courtesy with which he treated people and the sincerity with which he lent his time and money.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

An Accountant, a Manson Devotee Remain in Prison for 1975 Attacks

Source: WaPo (12-29-06)

One was an acolyte of Charles Manson, the other a suburban mom who dabbled at the fringes of San Francisco's counterculture and served as an FBI informant.

Both still alive and serving prison sentences, they are scarcely footnotes now. But in September 1975 -- just 17 days apart -- Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore shook the country, already rattled by Watergate and the collapse of South Vietnam, with their attempts to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford, Nixon Sustained Friendship for Decades

Source: Bob Woodward in the WaPo (12-29-06)

Months before Richard M. Nixon set a relatively unknown Michigan congressman named Gerald R. Ford on the path to the White House, Nixon turned to Ford, who called himself the embattled president's "only real friend," to get him out of trouble.

During one of the darkest days of the Watergate scandal, Nixon secretly confided in Ford, at the time the House minority leader. He begged for help. He complained about fair-weather friends and swore at perceived rivals in his own party. "Tell the guys, goddamn it, to get off their ass and start fighting back," Nixon pleaded with Ford in one call recorded by the president's secret taping system....

... the tapes, documents and two lengthy recent interviews with Ford before his death this week, conducted for a future book and embargoed until after his death, show that the close political alliance between the two men seriously influenced Ford's eventual decision to pardon Nixon, the most momentous decision of his short presidency and almost certainly the one that cost him any chance of winning the White House in his own right two years later. Ford became president on Aug. 9, 1974; he pardoned Nixon just a month later. "I think that Nixon felt I was about the only person he could really trust on the Hill," Ford said during the 2005 interview.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK settles WWII debts to allies

Source: BBC (12-29-06)

Britain will settle its World War II debts to the US and Canada when it pays two final instalments before the close of 2006, the UK Treasury has said.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 1:19 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Latest Blue-Ribbon Panel Awaits Its Own Fate

Source: NYT (12-28-06)

For every impossible problem that official Washington faces, there is a blue-ribbon panel, and for every panel there is a predictable life cycle, which the Iraq Study Group has so far followed to a fault.

First, the unrealistic expectations, fueled by feverish news coverage, including speculation and leaks about just what might be proposed. Next, the report’s grand unveiling, complete with White House photo op, this time featuring President Bush with the co-chairmen, James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton.

And then, inevitably, the letdown.

Remember, for example, the Social Security commission of 2001? Neither do most Americans. The question now is whether a similar demise awaits the report of the Iraq Study Group — impeccably researched, comprehensive, bipartisan and having no legal authority beyond that of friendly advice.

One of its main proposals, the idea of talking to Iran and Syria, was swiftly brushed off by Mr. Bush. Now the administration seems to be leaning toward a temporary increase in American troops, an option the group said it “could support” if requested by commanders but did not endorse.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 8:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In Death Coverage, a Broadcast Rite of Passage Manages to Avoid the Melodramatic

Source: NYT (12-28-06)

Death is sad, at least in most cases. But the death of a former president has become an almost cheery television event.

It’s been more than 40 years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. His successors died out of office, relatively quietly and well into old age. The passing of a retired commander in chief perks up the day with a wallop of stately special reports and bittersweet nostalgia, (plaid jackets, “Saturday Night Live,” détente) without undue anxiety or grieving.

And in Gerald R. Ford, who was 93 and served less than one full term, television found the avatar of comfortable presidential fadeouts. The deaths of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon were too fraught with the Shakespearean tragedies they lived in office. Ronald Reagan’s life and two terms were so momentous that the days leading to his funeral, though full and colorful, were also weighed down with mourning and Hollywood pageantry.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 8:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford, at his request, will get less lavish state funeral than Reagan

Source: NYT (12-28-06)

The body of former President Gerald R. Ford will lie in the Capitol this weekend amid tributes marked by considerably less pageantry than the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan in 2004, Congressional officials said Wednesday.

Services for Mr. Ford, the 38th president, who died late Tuesday, will begin Friday in Palm Desert, Calif., with private prayers for the family at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Gregory D. Willard, a Ford family spokesman, said at a news conference.

The next day, his body will be flown to Washington. The hearse is to pause at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in recognition of Mr. Ford’s naval service in the Pacific. His state funeral is to be conducted on Saturday evening in the Capitol Rotunda, after which the public will be allowed to file by the coffin.

A service will be held next Tuesday in the Washington National Cathedral.

After the cathedral service, Mr. Ford’s body will be flown to Grand Rapids, Mich., where he got his start in national politics. The next day, after services at Grace Episcopal Church there, he will be interred on a hillside near his presidential museum. (Mr. Ford’s presidential library is at Ann Arbor, Mich.)

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China, Japan end first joint study session on bloody history, more talks next year

Source: International Herald Tribune (12-27-06)

Chinese and Japanese scholars on Wednesday finished the first in a planned series of historical study groups ordered by their governments amid fresh efforts to mend strained ties and reduce bitterness between the former World War II enemies.

Twenty academics — ten each from China and Japan — met in Beijing for two days focusing first on the basic format and dates of future talks, said Shinichi Kitaoka, a University of Tokyo professor and head of the Japanese delegation.

Kitoaka said the talks so far were "serious, frank and friendly" but that they had yet to delve into specific historical events such as the Nanjing Massacre — a particularly painful subject that the two sides have sharp differences on.

Nanjing suffered a rampage of murder, rape and looting by Japanese troops in 1937 that became known as "The Rape of Nanking," using the name by which the city was known in the West at that time.

Historians generally agree the Japanese army slaughtered at least 150,000 civilians and raped tens of thousands of women. China says that as many as 300,000 people were killed.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 1:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Killer's ashes kicked out of national cemetery

Source: CNN/AP (12-27-06)

The cremated remains of a convicted murderer must be removed from Arlington National Cemetery under a new federal law.

The provision ordering the removal of Russell Wayne Wagner's remains was included in a veterans' health care and benefits bill that President Bush signed into law on Friday.

Wagner, a Vietnam veteran, was convicted in 2002 of stabbing to death Daniel Davis, 84, and Wilda Davis, 80, in their home in 1994. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Wagner died in 2005 of a heroin overdose in prison at age 52. Because he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1972, he qualified for interment at Arlington. His remains were placed there July 27, 2005, at the request of his sister.

Vernon G. Davis, the son of the victims, objected to the honor for Wagner and has since tried to get the remains removed from the cemetery.

A 1997 law prohibited people convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to death or life imprisonment without parole from being interred at military cemeteries.

Wagner would have become eligible in 2017 for a review that could have led to parole, according to the Maryland Division of Corrections.

In January, Bush signed into law a ban on burial at national cemeteries for veterans convicted of capital crimes, which eliminated the loophole that allowed Wagner's remains to be placed at Arlington.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 1:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford escaped 2 assassination attempts in September '75

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (12-27-06)

But for some quick action, Gerald R. Ford's presidency, and his life, could have ended amid gunshots outside San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel on the afternoon of Sept. 22, 1975.

As Ford emerged from the historic Union Square hotel's Post Street entrance at 3:30 p.m. after addressing a World Affairs Council audience, he paused before getting into his limousine to wave to the crowd across the street.

In a flash, two shots rang out. The first narrowly missed the 38th president of the United States and the second was deflected by a bystander who grabbed at the arm of the shooter, a 45-year-old middle class housewife, dabbler in extremist politics and FBI informant named Sara Jane Moore.

A young San Francisco police patrol officer then subdued Moore before she could fire her .38 Smith & Wesson handgun again.

Secret Service agents pushed Ford into his limousine and in seconds had the presidential motorcade racing south toward San Francisco International Airport to get the president out of the city and back to the safety of Washington, D.C.

The Secret Service had good reason to believe it best to hustle Ford out of the state. After all, Moore's failed shooting was the second attempt on Ford's life in California within about two weeks. On Sept. 5, 1975, Charles Manson groupie Lynette "Squeaky'' Fromme had tried to fire at Ford on the state Capitol grounds in Sacramento as he walked from the Senator Hotel across L Street to a meeting with then-Gov. Jerry Brown.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 1:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

After Death, a Campaign to Praise Pinochet

Source: NYT (12-27-06)

When he died two Sundays ago, Gen. Augusto Pinochet was in disgrace, facing the prospect of trials for human rights abuses and for illicitly accumulating a $28 million fortune.

His closest associates, however, have seized upon his death as an opportunity to rehabilitate his tattered image and rewrite the recent history of Chile.

The widespread publication on Sunday of a farewell letter from General Pinochet to “all Chileans, without exception” was perhaps the most notable salvo in that posthumous public relations offensive, but it was not an isolated move. Rather, it appears to be part of a campaign to portray the former dictator as a victim of a vengeful leftist cabal, instead of a notorious human rights offender and embezzler.

“My destiny is a kind of banishment and solitude that I would never have imagined, much less desired,” General Pinochet lamented in the letter. He also referred to what he called his “captivity in London,” where he was held from late 1998 until early 2000 while British judges debated whether to extradite him to Spain to stand trial for some of the thousands of murders, kidnappings and acts of torture that occurred during the 17 years he was in power.

The main argument being presented to try to restore General Pinochet’s tainted reputation is a variant of one used to eulogize Mussolini, of whom it was said that “he made the trains run on time” in Italy. Right-wing commentators in the generally conservative Chilean press have praised General Pinochet for his role in transforming Chile into Latin America’s most dynamic economy, without mentioning that he crushed labor unions and outlawed political parties in order to do so.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 1:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey

Source: Press Release -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (12-28-06)

The prosecution and imprisonment of prominent Holocaust-deniers in Europe dealt a serious blow to the Holocaust-denial movement in 2006, according to this year’s annual report on Holocaust-denial activity around the world.

The year-end report, Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2006, is published by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which is based in Washington, D.C. The report’s co-authors are Holocaust scholars Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute, and Dr. Alex Grobman, coauthor of the book Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?

(For the complete text of the new report, please visit www.WymanInstitute.org)

Although “some civil libertarians decried the use of laws prohibiting Holocaust-denial,” the report noted, “there was a noticeable decline in denial activity following the jailing of the movement’s best-known figure, David Irving, in Austria, and the prosecution of prominent activists Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf in Germany.” The report added that the release of Irving from prison in December 2006, after serving only one-third of his three year sentence, “is likely to reinvigorate the denial movement in the year ahead.”

The report found that in the Middle East, “Holocaust-denial continued to enjoy official sponsorship” by many governments, including Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Iran’s Holocaust-denial conference, in December, resulted in substantial news media attention for the deniers, including appearances by David Duke on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” and Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review on Sean Hannity’s radio show. Iran’s plan to create a Holocaust-denying “research institute” will provide “a significance financial boost for the denial movement,” the report stated.

The report also warned that the deniers could receive an additional boost from the creation of the new English-language divison of the Qatari government-funded Al Jazeera television network, since in the past, Al Jazeera has broadcast remarks by Holocaust-deniers.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq

Source: Bob Woodward in the WaPo (12-28-06)

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

Related Links

Excerpts From Bob Woodward's Interview With President Ford

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Gay victims of Franco era to win compensation

Source: Independent (12-27-06)

In the dying days of General Francisco Franco's dictatorship, Antoni Ruiz found out for himself what thousands of others had already suffered for being gay. Now, 31 years later, Mr Ruiz and a dwindling band of others who suffered General Franco's ruthless repression of homosexuals, may finally be offered compensation by the state.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuscan church reveals answer to mystery of Medici deaths

Source: Guardian (UK) (12-27-06)

Picking through centuries-old rubbish, masonry and discarded body parts beneath an abandoned Tuscan church, an Italian historian believes she has solved one of history's great crime mysteries.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 9:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Former President Gerald R. Ford, who gently led the United States out of the tumultuous Watergate era but who lost his own bid for election after pardoning President Richard M. Nixon, died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Source: NYT (12-27-06)

He was 93, making him the oldest former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004, by just over a month.

His death was announced late Tuesday night in a statement issued by his wife, Betty Ford, which gave no details. Further family announcements today gave no cause of death, but he had been in and out of the hospital since January 2006, most recently in October at the Eisenhower Medical Center for medical tests. He returned to his home in Rancho Mirage after five days of hospitalization.

Thrust by Mr. Nixon’s resignation into an office he had never sought, Mr. Ford occupied the White House for just 896 days. But they were pivotal days of national introspection, involving America’s first definitive failure in a war and the first resignation of a president. It was Mr. Ford’s uncommon virtue to have presided with a common touch.

“He assumed power in a period of great division and turmoil,” President George W. Bush said in a statement broadcast early this morning. “For a nation that needed healing, and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we need him most. During his time in office, the American people came to know President Ford as a man of complete integrity who led our country with common sense and kind instincts.”

After a decade of division over Vietnam and two years of trauma over the Watergate scandals, Jerry Ford, as he called himself, radiated a soothing familiarity. He might have been the nice guy down the street suddenly put in charge of the nation, and if he seemed a bit predictable, he was also safe, reliable and reassuring. He placed no intolerable intellectual or psychological burdens on a weary land, and he lived out a modest philosophy. “The harder you work, the luckier you are,” he said once in summarizing his career. “I worked like hell.”

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 8:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Famous Headline Haunted Former President

Source: NYT (12-27-06)

Gerald R. Ford and Marie Antoinette did not have much in common, but he shared her frustration about having been misquoted, which probably cost both of them their jobs.

In Hollywood’s latest biography of the French queen, she denies having callously suggested that breadless peasants eat cake instead. “I never said that,” the actress Kirsten Dunst pouts. “I wonder why people keep saying I did.”

Mr. Ford never explicitly said “Drop Dead” to New Yorkers during the city’s fiscal crisis in 1975, either. Yet those two words, arguably the essence of his remarks as encapsulated in an immortal Daily News headline, would cost him the presidency the following year, after Jimmy Carter, nominated by the Democrats in New York, narrowly carried the state.

“It more than annoyed me because it wasn’t accurate,” he recalled years later. “It was very unfair.”

That view is echoed in an evolving version of historical revisionism. Only two months after saying or meaning or merely implying “Drop Dead” — or, perhaps, resorting to tough love by holding the city’s feet to the fire — Mr. Ford signed legislation to guarantee federal loans to the city.

Gov. Hugh L. Carey, among others, argues that Mr. Ford’s public recalcitrance bought time for the city to make its case to an even more reluctant Congress (“he told me he didn’t have the votes,” Mr. Carey recalled).

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 7:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gerald R. Ford Dies at 93; President Reached Out to Academe After Acrimony of Nixon Era

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (12-27-06)

beral academics may best remember Gerald R. Ford, the 38th president of the United States, unfondly because of the pardon he granted to his former boss, Richard M. Nixon, over Mr. Nixon's role in the Watergate scandal.

Mr. Ford, who died on Tuesday night at the age of 93, held the presidency for just under 2½ years and was defeated in his bid for re-election by Jimmy Carter in 1976. It was a short tenure in which issues affecting higher education did not feature prominently. Mr. Ford focused on trying to control soaring inflation and oil prices and to deal with a recession.

However, Mr. Ford did take several steps early in his presidency to extend a welcoming hand to academics and other bitter critics of Mr. Nixon's policies who had felt alienated from the White House. Mr. Ford suspended registration for the military draft and started a program to give clemency to people who had resisted it during the Vietnam War.

In that and other respects, Mr. Ford's legacy, for both academe and American society in general, was more symbolic than substantive.

For some, his presidency started to bring a sense of closure to the tumultuous decade that preceded it, including assassinations, race riots, Watergate, and strife and protests on college campuses and elsewhere over the Vietnam War. To others, including presidential historians, his tenure was ineffectual and marked by drift, and closure for the country did not truly begin until the election of Mr. Carter.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 7:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ford never second-guessed Nixon pardon

Source: AP (12-27-06)

The presidential pardon of Richard Nixon's Watergate misdeeds defined Gerald Ford's singular presidency. That's not exactly what Ford had hoped. He saw Nixon's pardon as the first step toward being elected to the presidency on the merits of his own work. And there was no way Ford could focus on the nation's business as long as Nixon's legal fate remained unresolved. A criminal trial could take years, and Nixon would not wait out that time quietly, Ford wrote in his autobiography.

Yes, he hoped that pardoning Nixon would soothe the wounds of anger and distrust inflicted on the nation by Watergate. He felt, too, that Nixon and his family had suffered enough.

But in pardoning Nixon Sept. 8, 1974, Ford was tending to his own future, too.

"I had to get the monkey off my back," Ford wrote in his 1979 memoir, "A Time to Heal."

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 7:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Schools history guide attacked for denigrating Churchill

Source: This Is London/Evening Standard (12-25-06)

History lessons for 13-year-olds blacken the name of Winston Churchill and promote the Kama Sutra, it is claimed.

Leading historians accused curriculum chiefs of adopting an "anti-British" stance and misquoting the revered former Prime Minister.

They said new teaching packs on the British Empire were grossly unsuitable for their intended audience of 13 and 14-year-olds since they directed pupils to a sexually-explicit internet edition of the Kama Sutra.

They claimed the link, and a separate reference to tantric sex, was being included to meet misguided and politically-correct doctrines to teach history from different perspectives including "gender and sexuality".

The new lessons, unveiled by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, are intended to give secondary school pupils an insight into the influence of British rule on the Indian subcontinent.

But the History Curriculum Association pressure group said a laudable attempt to teach pupils more about the British Empire had seriously backfired....

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 7:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mussolini's Roman villa restored to glory

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-27-06)

The magnificent historic villa that was the home of Benito Mussolini when he was the all-powerful Duce of Italy has been reopened to the public after nearly 30 years of restoration.

The nine buildings and gardens of the Villa Torlonia, which were largely built in the 19th century by the Torlonia princes of the Vatican aristocracy, will now house an art museum dedicated to the Roman school of 20th-century painting.

The complex will also house a high-tech playground and a museum of the Holocaust, dedicated to the 2,000 Jews who were deported from Rome during the German occupation of 1943-44.

The villa was taken over by Allied occupying forces at the end of the Second World War and later suffered years of neglect, becoming a haven for drug users, homeless people and vandals, as Mussolini’s legacy remained controversial.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 7:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cambodian killing fields museum appeals for help

Source: http://www.taipeitimes.com/ (12-27-06)

A Cambodian genocide museum yesterday called for help in preserving the deteriorating bones of more than 8,000 Khmer Rouge victims salvaged from its mass graves.

Rous Sophea Ravy, deputy director of the Choeung Ek Genocide Museum on the outskirts of the capital, said the thousands of skulls and other bones currently housed at the site needed to be preserved or risk deteriorating into dust.

She said curators of the private company JC Royal, which took over the site in May last year, were worried as some of the bones were again showing signs of deterioration.

"The company is seeking to unite with Phnom Penh City Hall to request countries or companies with sufficient skills to preserve the bones chemically to come forward and begin discussions with us," Ravy said.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 7:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bulgakov Museum in Moscow Vandalized by Religious Fanatics

Source: MosNews (12-26-06)

Moscow museum dedicated to a Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who was condemned by the Orthodox Church for his works, was largely destroyed last week, AFP reports.

The museum celebrated the life and work of Mikhail Bulgakov, author of “The Master and Margarita” a work of fantasy and satire telling us about the devil coming to Communist-era Moscow.

The Orthodox Church called the book published only 26 years after Bulgakov’s death in 1940 “the fifth gospel, that of Satan.”

According to Svetlana Kostina, deputy director of the museum, Alexander Morozov, a bitter critic of Bulgakov’s work, which he condemned as Satanic, last Thursday locked himself in the museum, situated on the ground floor of a building and demanded that it be evicted.

The man threw many objects out of the window, including valuable illustrations of Bulgakov’s works, signed by Great Russian artists, not to mention several computers, Kostina said. About half the contents were damaged.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 7:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

State Department concedes public already knew the total budget for intelligence in 1970

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (12-27-06)

The State Department said today that it will modify the latest Nixon-era volume of the official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series to include the amount of the 1970 U.S. intelligence budget after Secrecy News pointed out that this number had previously been disclosed in an earlier volume of FRUS.

According to an editorial note in the latest FRUS volume published last week, "The President [Nixon] stated that the United States is spending a total of about [dollar amount not declassified] per year on intelligence and it deserves to receive a lot more for its money than it has been getting." (Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, volume II, at document 210).

http://www.state.gov

But in another FRUS volume published last April, that ancient secret was already revealed (Secrecy News, 04/27/06):

"The President stated that the US is spending $6 billion per year on intelligence and deserves to receive a lot more for its money than it has been getting. (Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, volume VI, at document 344).

http://www.state.gov

"Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency between the editorial note in FRUS volume II and the document in volume VI," wrote Edward C. Keefer, General Editor of the Foreign Relations of the United States series in an email message to Secrecy News today.

"We have brought it to the attention of the declassifying agency [i.e., CIA] and they have agreed to release the actual figure in the editorial note of volume II, making it consistent with the document in volume VI. We will make the change on the internet version of volume II and we should be able to make the change in printed volume II as well."

"We are pleased that we have people like you who read our volumes with such care and help us make the series the best documentary record of U.S. foreign policy," Dr. Keefer wrote.

CIA classification policy generally lacks rhyme or reason, so although the 1970 intelligence budget total has been declassified, the 1969 and the 1971 budget figures, for example, remain classified.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 5:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China, Japan end first joint study session on bloody history, more talks next year

Source: International Herald Tribune (12-27-06)

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Gerald R. Ford, Ex-U.S. President, Dies

Source: AP (12-26-06)

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments -- including an angioplasty -- in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 12:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Trial Reveals How Serbian Fugitive Hid

Source: NYT (12-26-06)

After 11 years, the hunt for Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic may well be the most frustrating, infuriating and fruitless around.

The two, wanted for the most heinous crimes of Bosnia’s bloody civil war from 1992 to 1995, have managed to elude thousands of Western peacekeepers and local police forces with what is widely suspected to be the collusion of the Serbian military. Reality and myth have grown indistinguishable as stories have emerged of their possible hide-outs and of the failed attempts to track them down.

Now, for the first time, clear — even mundane — details of how General Mladic has managed to dodge arrest are emerging bit by bit in a Belgrade courtroom.

Until January this year, the general, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, was living in the Serbian capital protected by a network of former comrades in arms, according to testimony given during the trial of 11 people accused of helping to hide him.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Leaky basement is a trove of artifacts (Yorktown)

Source: Virginia Gazette (12-26-06)

YORKTOWN The oldest customhouse in America has unearthed new history in its own backyard.

Over the last three weeks local archaeologists have uncovered handfuls of artifacts from the 18th and 19th centuries as part of a routine pre-construction archaeological dig at the Old Custom House.

Wine bottles and pottery have been found by the James River Institute for Archaeology. Crews found a bayonet from a British Brown Bess Musket believed to have been used during the Revolutionary War.

The dig was not meant to turn up artifacts. The basement of the 1720s building was in dire need of waterproofing. To fix persistent leaks, the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owns the building, hired a company to bury piping and dig a dry well in the backyard.

The backyard was chosen to avoid disturbing the foundation of the nearby Ambler House, which burned in 1862.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US Iraq War Toll Passes That of 9/11

Source: AP (12-26-06)

In a span of a few hours, 2,973 people were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In a span of 45 months, the number of American troops killed in Iraq exceeded that grim toll as the war continues.

The milestone in Iraq came on Christmas, nearly four years after the war began, according to a count by The Associated Press.

The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the deaths of six more American soldiers, pushing the U.S. military death toll since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,977 four more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

President Bush has said that the Iraq war is part of the United States' post-Sept. 11 approach to threats abroad, and that going on the offense against enemies before they could harm Americans meant removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, pursuing members of al-Qaida and seeking regime change in Iraq.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:45 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Experts say entomb WWII sub off Norway

Source: AP (12-19-06)

he wreck of a World War II German submarine off Norway's coast should be covered with sand to contain its cargo of environmentally damaging mercury, a study said Tuesday.

The submarine U-864 was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine Venturer off western Norway on Feb. 9, 1945. Its wreckage, found by the Royal Norwegian Navy in March 2003, is believed to have about 70 tons of mercury aboard.

The submarine was sunk while trying to get to Japan, a German ally, with mercury for weapons production.

Studies revealed high levels of mercury around the wreck, which is in 500 feet of water about 2 1/2 miles off the western Norway island of Fedje.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush: Too early to worry about legacy

Source: Cox News Services (in Midland, Tex., Reporter-Telegram), (12-25-06)

When it comes to presidential legacy, the current George W. claims to have learned the lessons of the original George W.

Earlier this year, gazing at an Oval Office portrait of George Washington, President Bush, unprompted, offered this thought:

"The important thing about him is that I read three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting? People say 'So what?' Well, here's the 'so what.' You never know what your history is going to be until long after you're gone."

"So presidents shouldn't worry about history," Bush said in the chat with a German reporter. "You just can't. You do what you think is right, and if you're thinking big enough, that history will eventually prove you right or wrong."

"But you won't know in the short term," he concluded.

For now, the short term is the two years remaining in Bush's two-term presidency. With Iraq hanging in the balance, the facts historians will use to judge Bush are to be determined.

Despite Bush's admonitions about how future historians might judge him, some contemporary experts already have declared him among the nation's worst presidents. The more positive reviews say it's too early to tell. Bush is unimpressed and unconcerned with the instant analyses, noting this week that most "short-term historians" labor under a "political preference and so their view isn't exactly objective."

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Don't write off history, say UK teachers

Source: This Is London/Evening Standard (12-25-06)

An Ofsted [Office for Standards in Education] report found that many pupils wanted to drop British history and focus on world events

Historians have raised fears that A-level history will be "dumbed down" after teachers called for a new course with more film and TV for less academic teenagers.

An Ofsted report found that many pupils wanted to drop British history and focus on world events, which they said would be more useful for their future careers.

The Historical Association described the findings as "worrying", and urged teachers to use more imagination to make lessons interesting.

Ofsted inspectors questioned more than 70 teachers and 160 students for a new report on how history is taught in colleges in England.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Determined to bring last Nazis to justice

Source: LAT (12-26-06)

The tip came in an e-mail from the home office in Los Angeles, the headquarters of a human rights organization that promotes tolerance around the world.

It sent Efraim Zuroff and an informal network of associates on a hunt from Jerusalem to Scotland to Hungary. In Budapest, they found the subject of their search: Sandor Kepiro, a frail old man living quietly across the street from a synagogue.

Zuroff wanted him thrown in jail for crimes committed in 1942. It didn't matter that Kepiro was 92 and that some Hungarians appealed for mercy on his behalf.

"Misplaced sympathy is what I'm up against all the time," Zuroff said.

Sympathy defines the broader mission of Zuroff's employer, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, proprietor of the Museum of Tolerance. But the sentiment does not always extend to the nonprofit's more specific, unfinished task: tracking down the last of the suspected Nazi-era war criminals, Kepiro among them.

"We are not tolerant toward Nazis," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the center's founder and dean.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japanese island of Hokkaido losing link with 19th-century settler traditions

Source: International Herald Tribune (12-25-06)

OBIHIRO, Japan -- It was one of the last contests of the day at the draft- horse racetrack in this rural corner of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island.

The spotlights glimmered in the snow-streaked evening sky as the gamblers, who had been inside huddling around portable kerosene heaters, took their spots alongside the track. The gates opened, and 10 huge draft horses, each weighing about a ton and pulling an iron sled just as heavy, rumbled forward as the jockeys urged them on with cries and whips.

After easily clearing the first mound, No. 10 took the lead and waited for the others to catch up before trying the second, higher mound. Reinvigorated by the rest, No. 10 burst up the mound.

"Climb up! Climb over!" a jockey shouted, as the other horses struggled in the cold air, snorting white breath, one with forelegs buckling. No. 10 was the first over but was soon challenged by No. 7 a few lanes over. In the final stretch, as the jockeys whipped them into a frenzy of motion, No. 7 crossed the finish line first.

"By the time you reach the finish line, your horse is just about ready to collapse," said Toichi Sakamoto, 53, a jockey. "When it's really tired, it'll suddenly drop its head, just once, before raising it back. This requires an incredible amount of strength."

In Japan, draft-horse racing is peculiar to Hokkaido, the last of the country's four main islands to be developed.

The Japanese first migrated in the late 19th century to this cold, rugged island, which was thinly populated by indigenous peoples, as the nation took tentative steps to expand from its original islands.

Workhorses played a crucial role in building up Hokkaido, where the Japanese come closest to having a frontier spirit and still count the generations since their ancestors settled here.

Draft-horse racing grew out of this settler culture and, after tractors became common three decades ago, remained in place to celebrate it. It was also good business, especially during the peak of Japan's economy in the 1980s, when four racetracks in this region drew in huge gambling revenues.

But the sport's popularity has declined over the years, and after incurring almost $34 million in debt, the four municipalities in charge of the racetracks announced in the autumn that they would close them.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Recognition at last for WWI soldier 'shot at dawn'

Source: Northern Echo (Darlington, County Durham) (UK) (12-26-06)

A First World War soldier who was shot for cowardice is to be formally recognised on a war memorial.

Private Harry Farr of the 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Regiment was shot in October 1916 for cowardice despite suffering severe shell shock.

Pte Farr was one of 306 soldiers shot for military offences during the conflict. His was one of several cases highlighted by The Northern Echo and, after years of campaigning, all have now received pardons from the Government.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

274 items stolen from Azerbaijani Museum of Arts found in the US

Source: Regnum News Agency (Moscow) (12-27-06)

274 works of art stolen in July 1993 from the Azerbaijani National Museum of Arts were found in the United States, APA agency informs. According to head of the national Interpol Central Bureau Mamed Mikailov, six guidelines were sent to Interpol member-countries in connection with the theft. The stolen works of art were found after activity carried out together with Washington, Wiesbaden and other national central bureaus. According to him, persons involved in the crime were found.

In accordance with a presidential decree, 14 works of art were returned to the owner, Bremen Museum (Germany) and over 200 works were taken back to Azerbaijan.

Posted on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 9:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, December 25, 2006

Botswana 'Python Cave' Reveals Oldest Human Ritual, Scientists Suggest

Source: National Geographic News (12-22-06)

A team of archaeologists has discovered what it says is evidence of humankind's oldest ritual.

Africa's San people may have used a remote cave for ceremonies of python worship as much as 70,000 years ago—30,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known human rites—the team says.

"The level of abstract thinking within the peoples of [this period] and the continuity of their cultural patterns is proving to be astonishing for such an early date," said Sheila Coulson, an archaeologist at Norway's University of Oslo.

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 8:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Archive sheds light on Nazi death camps

Source: AP (12-23-06)

Within weeks of Hitler's 1933 rise to power, the iron gates slammed shut on inmates of the first Nazi concentration camps. It was the start of an unparalleled experiment in persecution and genocide that expanded over the next 12 years into a pyramid of ghettos, Gestapo prisons, slave labor camps and, ultimately, extermination factories.

Holocaust historians are only now piecing together the scattered research in many languages to understand the vast scope of the camps, prisons and punishment centers that scarred German-ruled Europe, like a pox on the landscape stretching from Greece to Norway and eastward into Russia.

Collecting and analyzing fragmented reports, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum say they have pinpointed some 20,000 places of detention and persecution — three times more than they estimated just six years ago.

And soon they will know much more.

They are about to have their first access to millions of documents locked away for a half century in the sprawling archive of the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in the central German resort town of Bad Arolsen.

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 8:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Spanish Prince Who Died in 1370 Was Not Poisoned

Source: AP (12-24-06)

Preliminary forensic tests conducted on the mummified body of 14th century prince found the 7-year-old may not have been poisoned by an uncle, as historians have suspected for centuries, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The preliminary tests indicated that Prince Sancho de Castilla may have died in 1370 of a lung infection after chronic exposure to smoke, likely to have come from a fireplace, El Pais reported.

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 8:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Report: Rains Damage Ancient Peruvian Ruins

Source: AP (12-23-06)

LIMA, Peru -- Heavy rains damaged several adobe walls in the ancient ruins of Chan Chan, the world's largest mud city on Peru's northern coast, the newspaper El Comercio reported Saturday.

An unusual downpour Friday morning saturated the top seven inches of the walls in a southern portion of the ruins and penetrated the sides, Cristobal Campana, the director of the archaeological site, told the newspaper.

With more rains expected in the usually arid coastal desert zone, workers were covering the walls with plastic tarps at the site near Trujillo, nearly 300 miles northwest of the capital, Lima.

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 8:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan emperor urges teaching about WWII

Source: BBC (12-23-06)

Japan's Emperor Akihito has said the practice of mourning Japan's war dead can help younger generations better understand the past.

He said he hoped facts about World War II would be correctly conveyed so the suffering his generation experienced would never be repeated.

The emperor's comments came in a speech marking his 73rd birthday.

Correspondents say teaching Japan's wartime history and remembering the war dead is still highly controversial.

"Now that the number of those who were born after the war increases as years pass by, the practice of mourning the war dead will help them to understand what kind of world and society those in the previous generations lived in," Emperor Akihito said, in remarks made on Wednesday, but only made public on Saturday.

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 8:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scrooge 'was a victim of brain disease'

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-24-06)

IT WAS the night before Christmas and Ebenezer Scrooge was facing a succession of supernatural terrors; or, as the latest medical thinking would have it, he was succumbing to a brain disease so obscure that doctors would not give it a name for another 150 years.

A pair of medico-literary sleuths claimed last week to have tracked down the illness that haunted Scrooge. They concluded that Charles Dickens brilliantly observed the symptoms in A Christmas Carol.

Robert Chance Algar, a Californian neurologist, and his aunt Lisa Saunders, a medical writer and physician, believe that the affliction that made Scrooge a byword for miserliness and redemption was Lewy body dementia (LBD), a disease so complex that doctors did not include it in the medical lexicon until 1996.

A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, presents readers with a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner” who dismisses the festivities as humbug until he is visited by ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. The spirits open his eyes and transform him into a philanthropist.

Scrooge himself appears to blame food poisoning for his experiences, telling Jacob Marley’s ghost that he is merely “an undigested bit of beef . . . there is more of gravy than the grave about you”. But that is before the ghosts of Christmas enter his cold bedroom.

Algar thought at first that Scrooge was in the grip of depression or a bipolar disorder, yet neither would explain his ghostly visitors. “All the events described in the story fit a person suffering from the early stages of LBD,” he said.

LBD is similar to both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. “Dickens says, ‘The cold within him froze his old features and stiffened his gait’, and he also suffers from tremors. But for me the most telling symptom is the ghosts,” said Algar.

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 8:18 PM | Comments (1) | Top

One or the other California icon might be doomed

Source: LAT (12-23-06)

MONTEREY -- A classic struggle is playing out here in the first capital of California, and it's anyone's guess who the victor will be: God or nature.

On one side stands San Carlos Borromeo de Monterey, believed to be the oldest continuously functioning church in California, completed in 1794. On the other, a small stand of stately redwood trees, whose roots have made their way through the chapel's foundation and threaten its survival.

For this clash of California icons, there is no easy solution: Church officials have asked the city of Monterey for a permit to cut all of the trees down to preserve this landmark of California's Spanish colonial era. The city recommends that at least two of the four redwoods remain, no matter what.

"You have the classic conflict," said Robert G. Reid, urban forester for the city of Monterey, a historic building versus "rightfully magnificent native redwood trees that also have some serious standing in the community."

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 8:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scholars Debate Viking Ships’ Fitness for a 3-Mile Journey

Source: NYT (12-25-06)

OSLO, Dec. 24 — The University of Oslo has decided to move three grand Viking ships, probably by truck and barge, to a new museum across town despite dire claims that the thousand-year-old oak vessels could fall apart en route.

A retired curator of Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum said the delicately preserved ships, two of which are nearly 80 feet long, were almost equal in archaeological importance to the Pyramids.

“Even if I have to live till I am 100, I will go on fighting this move,” the former curator, Arne Emil Christensen, 70, said in an interview. “The best way to stop it is still through diplomacy, but, if necessary, I will be in front of the ships, chained to the floor.”

The university’s board of directors voted 8 to 3 this month to move the sleek-hulled vessels over the objections of Dr. Christensen and several other Viking Age scholars, including the former director of the British Museum, David Wilson, and the director of Center for Maritime Archaeology in Denmark, Ole Crumlin-Pedersen. The board wants to transport the popular ships from a remote Oslo peninsula, where they have been housed for more than 75 years, to a large, multifaceted museum in the center of the capital.

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lawsuit Reopens Old Wounds in German-Polish Dispute

Source: NYT (12-25-06)

In a sign of how badly German-Polish relations have frayed in recent months, a long-shot lawsuit by an obscure German claims group has prompted Poland to call into question a treaty meant to settle forever the borders between the countries.

The Polish foreign minister, Anna Fotyga, raised doubts about the treaty in a radio interview last Tuesday, a week after a group representing Germans expelled from present-day Poland after World War II filed suit at the European Court of Human Rights, seeking restitution of their property.

Though Ms. Fotyga has since backed away from suggestions that the treaty be renegotiated, she said Poland would push for a “legal solution” that “will respect the truth and the historical responsibility.”

In a statement issued Thursday, she condemned the German claims as “an attempt at reversing moral responsibility for the effects of World War II, which began with the German attack on Poland, and caused irreparable losses and sufferings to the Polish state and nation.”

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush-Watchers Wonder How He Copes With Stress

Source: NYT (12-25-06)

President Bush marched into his year-end news conference last week with the usual zip in his step. As always, he professed little worry about his legacy or the polls. As always, he said the United States would win in Iraq. The nation might despair, but not Mr. Bush; his presidential armor seemed firmly intact.

Yet a longtime friend of Mr. Bush’s recently spotted a tiny crack in that armor. “He looked tired, for the first time, which I hadn’t seen before,” this friend said.

Mr. Bush has never been one for introspection, in public or in private. But the questions of how the president is coping, and whether his public pronouncements match what he feels as he searches for a new strategy in Iraq, have been much on the minds of Bush-watchers these days.

Can the president really believe, as he said on Wednesday, that “victory in Iraq is achievable,” when a bipartisan commission led by his own father’s secretary of state calls the situation there “grave and deteriorating?” Is he truly content to ignore public opinion and let “the long march of history,” as he calls it, pass judgment on him after he is gone? Does he lie awake at night, as President Lyndon B. Johnson did during the Vietnam War, fretting over his decisions?...

Posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 at 2:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Soviet evidence points to Australian war correspondent Wilfred Burchett's involvement in one of the biggest communist hoaxes

Source: Australian (12-23-06)

LAST year Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett's extended autobiography Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist was released, receiving generally favourable reviews from writer Ross Fitzgerald in The Australian and academic historian Stuart Macintyre in the online magazine New Matilda.

I have been interested in Burchett, who died in 1983, for some time and decided to do some research recently, while on a Fulbright fellowship in the US, into the most controversial aspect of his career: the role he played in spreading the claim that the US had dropped biological weapons – infected insects – on North Korea and China in 1951 and 1952 during the Korean War.

It is a claim the Chinese uphold to this day. This accusation was controversial during the early Cold War and goes to the heart of a long-running dispute in Australian intellectual life about Burchett's credibility.

His supporters claim he was a rebel journalist reporting from the other side; his denouncers see him as a propagandist hack working for the communist bloc.

Evidence that emerged from the Soviet archives well after the fall of communism in Russia – first translated by the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun and subsequently reviewed and published in several well-regarded academic journals – may close the case. It suggests that the claim the Americans engaged in germ warfare during the Korean War was a well-orchestrated hoax, co-ordinated by Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung, the Chinese and North Korean dictators, to embarrass the Americans and turn global opinion against them.

The evidence is 12 documents from the Soviet archives, including high-level memos between senior officials as well as a memo to Mao. The correspondence to Mao from the Soviet government states that the "accusations against the Americans were fictitious" and recommends that Mao cease "accusing the Americans of using bacteriological weapons in Korea and China".

Other memos between Soviet officials discuss Chinese and North Korean attempts to fabricate evidence of germ warfare, which was to be shown to sympathetic scientists, lawyers and journalists from the West. More neutral observers from international organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross or the World Health Organisation were refused entry to China and North Korea to investigate the claims....

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Trans-Atlantic recordholder Concorde jet is barged downriver

Source: http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5851273 (12-22-06)

The British Airways Concorde jet that had been a featured attraction at New York's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum floated down the Hudson River today to a temporary home in Brooklyn.

The sleek white supersonic aircraft sat atop a barge as it made its way to the historic Floyd Bennett Field. It will remain open to visitors there, while workers rebuild the Intrepid's Manhattan pier.The World War Two aircraft carrier has been docked at Pier 86 since 1982, when it was turned into a floating museum. Intrepid was moved to a New Jersey shipyard for its own overhaul earlier this month.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A blow to the honour of Washington family

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-23-06)

A direct descendant of George Washington was held last night in a New York jail, facing extradition to France on charges that he beat a man into a coma with a bottle.

John Augustine Washington V, a history student at Oxford University, is accused of smashing the bottle over the head of Colin Hall, a fellow American, on July 24 in a bar in the French resort of St Tropez.

He was arrested in New York this week after federal police were tipped off about his whereabouts. If extradited, Mr Washington will be tried in Draguignan, southern France, where he is accused of assault and battery with a weapon, which carries a possible five-year jail sentence and £53,000 fine.

Mr Hall, 36, underwent emergency brain surgery and spent five days in a coma after the attack at the Caves du Roy club. He had been chatting to Laura Clegg, a friend of Mr Washington.

Speaking about the attack for the first time, Mr Hall said yesterday: “I was as close to being dead as you can be without dying.”

He said that Mr Washington “has shown complete dishonour and cowardice, both by hitting me from behind and sneaking out of the country while I was in a coma”.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:49 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Maine Coast Woman Who Spotted Nazi Spies in '44 Dies

Source: AP (12-22-06)

BANGOR, Maine -- A woman who had a key role in a little-known incident in World War II -- when she spotted two Nazi spies who arrived by U-boat along the Maine coast -- has died. Mary Forni, of Hancock, was 91.

Forni died Dec. 16, according to Hancock town officials.

Forni recalled the incident in a 2001 story in the Bangor Daily News. She reported that on Nov. 29, 1944, she saw the two men on the side of a rural road as she drove home from a card game in Hancock Point, near Bar Harbor on the central Maine coast.

The two men, German Erich Gimpel and American defector William Colepaugh, had slipped ashore from a German U-boat that had entered Maine waters.

"They just weren't like normal Mainers in November," Forni said in 2001. "You just never saw anybody walking without boots when it was snowy like that. It's a wonder I didn't stop and offer them a ride."

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Alabama Supreme Court blocks suit over Rosa Parks Museum

Source: http://www.wlns.com (12-22-06)

The Alabama Supreme Court is blocking a lawsuit against Troy University by the Rosa Parks estate.
The late civil rights leader's Detroit-based institute accused the school of violating an agreement when it expanded a museum bearing her name.The Rosa Parks Library and Museum was developed by Troy on its Montgomery campus and has become a civil rights tourist attraction.
The suit accused the university of exceeding the museum's authorized size and failing to collaborate with the institute on a planned children's wing. The institute also says the university didn't create a scholarship in Parks' name.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historian: Bok House important part of Kuala Lumpur’s history

Source: http://thestar.com.my (12-23-06)

Bok House might have been merely a rich man’s house, but the mansion still warranted conservation, said the Malaysian Institute of Architects.

Its president Dr Tan Loke Mun said the building was among several houses owned by the wealthy and formed the streetscape of Jalan Ampang.

He said such buildings should be preserved if the Government was serious about heritage tourism.

“There is nothing wrong with it being a rich man’s home. It shows the lifestyle of olden days,” he said yesterday in response to a statement by Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.

Bok House built by philanthropist Chua Cheng Bok which was demolished by KL City Hall on Dec 15 was considered by many as having heritage value.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

American Muslim Delegation Visits U.S. Holocaust Museum

Source: http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php (12-21-06)

On Wednesday, December 20, Washington-area Muslim leaders met at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to encourage humanity to take the lessons of the Holocaust to reaffirm a commitment to preserving human dignity for all people. Muslim American leaders—including Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, Imam Mohamed Magid, and MPAC board member Dr. Hassan Ibrahim—called for remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and commemorated the struggles endured by survivors.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cozying Up to the Enemy’s Friend, in Hope of Ending a Frustrating War

Source: NYT (12-24-06)

THE predicament: A president wants to end an unpopular war. A potential solution: Negotiate with enemies.

The question confronts President Bush today, in the case of Iraq. The question challenged President Richard Nixon in 1972, when he and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, secretly arranged a summit meeting with Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, in the hope that a grand bargain with Moscow might help the United States negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam.

Newly declassified documents and transcripts, some from White House tapes, published by the State Department in an official diplomatic history on Tuesday, show how hard it can be to talk peace with the friends of your enemies.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Chile’s Leader Attacks Amnesty Law

Source: NYT (12-24-06)

Gen. Augusto Pinochet died this month without ever being held legally accountable for human rights abuses that occurred during his dictatorship. But his subordinates are now facing a new threat: President Michelle Bachelet is pushing to invalidate an amnesty law that for nearly 30 years has exempted them from prosecution on murder and torture charges.

General Pinochet originally decreed the amnesty in April 1978, four and a half years after he seized power in the coup that overthrew an elected president, Salvador Allende. According to official reports of government commissions, his dictatorship was responsible for the deaths of at least 3,200 people, the bulk of which occurred before the amnesty edict, and the torture of 28,000 more.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 1:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hotel Log Hints at Illicit Desire That Dr. Freud Didn’t Repress

Source: NYT (12-24-06)

Maybe it was just a Freudian slip. Or a case of hiding in plain sight.

Either way, Sigmund Freud, scribbling in the pages of a Swiss hotel register, appears to have left the answer to a question that has titillated scholars for much of the last century: Did he have an affair with his wife’s younger sister, Minna Bernays?

Rumors of a romantic liaison between Freud and his sister-in-law, who lived with the Freuds, have long persisted, despite staunch denials by Freud loyalists. The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, Freud’s disciple and later his archrival, claimed that Miss Bernays had confessed to an affair to him. (The claim was dismissed by Freudians as malice on Jung’s part.) And some researchers have even theorized that she may have become pregnant by Freud and have had an abortion.

What was lacking was any proof. But a German sociologist now says he has found evidence that on Aug. 13, 1898, during a two-week vacation in the Swiss Alps, Freud, then 42, and Miss Bernays, then 33, put up at the Schweizerhaus, an inn in Maloja, and registered as a married couple, a finding that may cause historians to re-evaluate their understanding of Freud’s own psychology.

A yellowing page of the leather-bound ledger shows that they occupied Room 11. Freud signed the book, in his distinctive Germanic scrawl, “Dr Sigm Freud u frau,” abbreviated German for “Dr. Sigmund Freud and wife.”

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 11:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, December 22, 2006

Poli Sci prof faces continued anger over his participation in Teheran Holocaust meeting

Source: Inside Higher Ed (12-22-06)

Anger is growing at St. Francis Xavier University, in Nova Scotia, over a political science professor, Shiraz Dossa, who attended last week’s “conference” in Iran on the Holocaust — an event condemned worldwide as a platform for Holocaust deniers. More than 100 professors at St. Francis Xavier have signed a letter stating that while they uphold Dossa’s academic freedom “to espouse any views that he pleases,” they are “nevertheless profoundly embarrassed by his participation in the Holocaust-denial conference,” The Globe and Mail reported. Dossa is not responding to requests for interviews, but previously said that he is not a Holocaust denier and that he didn’t realize the conference was going to have many such people in attendance. Organizers of the letter — which does not call for any punishment of Dossa — said that they didn’t find that claim credible, given that Dossa is a political scientist and the conference and its aims were well publicized in advance.

Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 5:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush library appears headed to SMU

Source: Inside Higher Ed (12-22-06)

The committee appointed by President Bush to pick the site for his presidential library announced Thursday that it was entering into final negotiations with Southern Methodist University as the site. While the announcement is not a final agreement, it suggests that SMU will emerge as the winner of the competition to be the host of the library. The other finalists were Baylor University and the University of Dallas. SMU, which counts alumna Laura Bush among its trustees, has been pushing hard for the library. But some professors have been worried about the plans, especially recent reports that the president’s aides envision a center to promote the president’s ideas and to sponsor scholarship that praises his record.

Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 5:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

1918 killer flu 'came from birds'

Source: BBC (12-22-06)

The Spanish flu virus that killed up to 50 million people in 1918-19 was probably a strain that originated in birds, research has shown.

US scientists have found the 1918 virus shares genetic mutations with the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia.

Writing in Nature, they say their work underlines the threat the current strain poses to humans worldwide.

A second paper in Science reveals another US team has successfully recreated the 1918 virus in mice.

Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 3:34 PM | Comments (1) | Top

World Death Toll Of a Flu Pandemic Would Be 62 Million

Source: WaPo (12-22-06)

An influenza pandemic of the type that ravaged the globe in 1918 and 1919 would kill about 62 million people today, with 96 percent of the deaths occurring in developing countries.

That is the conclusion of a study published yesterday in the Lancet medical journal, which uses mortality records kept by governments during the time of "Spanish flu" to predict the effect of a similarly virulent outbreak in the contemporary world.

The analysis, the first of its kind, found a nearly 40-fold difference in death rates between central India, the place with the highest recorded mortality, and Denmark, the country with the lowest. The reason for the huge variation is not known, but it may reflect differences in nutrition and crowding.

Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 3:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Experts are going crackers over 40s Christmas find

Source: Daily Mail (UK) (12-19-06)

No Christmas celebrations would be complete without them but, with rationing in post-war Britain, Christmas crackers were an expensive luxury few could readily afford.

Now, after spending 60 years hidden in the dusty attic of a family-run newsagents, two rare and untouched boxes dating back to the 1940s have been unveiled for the first time.

Containing 12 crackers in each, the two boxes are sparingly decorated, with little description and few illustrations. On the lid of one - written in pencil - is the price of 8/6d.

Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust Museum Rebukes Member for Koran Comment

Source: NYT (12-22-06)

The board that oversees the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here publicly distanced itself on Thursday from a member who recently condemned the first Muslim elected to Congress for planning to use a Koran during the private part of his swearing-in ceremony.

In November, the board member, Dennis Prager, a conservative commentator and radio show host, said that Keith Ellison, the newly elected Muslim member of Congress, should give up his post if he could not take his oath on a Bible, which Mr. Prager said was the traditional religious text of the United States.

In its resolution, the council’s executive committee criticized Mr. Prager’s remarks as “antithetical to the mission of the museum as an institution promoting tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity.”

Mr. Prager, one of 68 members of the board, known as the Holocaust Memorial Council, was appointed to the unpaid post by President Bush, and is serving a five-year term, which expires in 2011, said Andrew Hollinger, a spokesman for the council.

Mr. Hollinger said Mr. Bush had the sole power to remove Mr. Prager.

Posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 2:38 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Stalin's grandson defends notorious Soviet leader's actions

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (12-17-06)

The resemblance, you have been told, is uncanny. Yet, even still, when the man himself finally steps out of the shadows, it causes a momentary hesitation, a faltering of your step. And indeed it is true -- even the photos don't accurately portray it.

Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is a compact, solidly built man. His neatly trimmed mustache is white, but at age 70, his gray hair is still thick. He has a fine, broad forehead, a strong nose, large ears and dark, watchful eyes. He speaks slowly and quietly. His home is a small, working-class apartment in Tbilisi, the capital of the mountainous Republic of Georgia, which 15 years ago was a privileged part of the once-mighty Soviet Union.

Yevgeny's family name is virtually unknown beyond Tbilisi. Yet Yevgeny carries an enormous psychological burden, for he is the grandson of one Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili -- better known to the world as Joseph Stalin, one of history's most infamous mass murderers.

According to the prominent Russian human-rights group Memorial, during the time that Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, from 1928 until his death in 1953, he was responsible for the deaths of probably 14 million people, including those starved to death by his purposely launched famines of 1932-33 and 1946-47. Stalin also imprisoned 25 million people in his network of brutal Siberian work camps known as the gulags.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Huge dairies approved near state park devoted to black settlers

Source: AP (12-19-06)

ALLENSWORTH, Calif. - Basque immigrant Sam Etchegaray had two seemingly perfect swaths for a pair of large dairies: 2,000 rural acres of dusty fields, where thousands of cows would be at home in the No. 1 milk-producing county in the nation.

The only problem is that the pastures were next to a state park that pays tribute to a community founded by a freed slave, raising the ire of environmentalists and blacks who objected to the pollution and stench that would come with the cows.

As the decade-old project moved a step forward Tuesday with Tulare County supervisors tentatively approving permits to house up to 12,000 cows, opponents said the decision was an insult to the history and legacy of the landmark, Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, and those who live nearby.

"I guess they're ready to put manure on top of us," said Nettie Morrison, 72, a resident of the unincorporated community of about 120 families.

If the board makes its approval final March 20, the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which helped mobilize Allensworth residents, will likely sue to stop the dairies, said spokeswoman Caroline Farrell.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Australian minister to enter the history wars

Source: Australian (12-22-06)

WESTERN Australia's new Education Minister wants to change the teaching of high school history to give students a deeper understanding of international conflicts and Australia's role in them.

Mark McGowan, who has inherited the state's troubled gradeless curriculum, said an assessment and possible overhaul of the state's history curriculum was a priority.

The former naval legal officer landed the state education portfolio last week from Ljiljanna Ravlich, who stumbled in attempting to introduce a system of "outcomes-based" courses into Years 11 and 12.

A proposed high school history course is among 13 new Year 11 and 12 courses that have been rewritten and their introduction delayed to 2008 as a result of mounting criticism that the courses lacked rigour and traditional instruction.

Pressure group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes gained crucial union support with its campaign last year against the new method of assessing students based on eight "levels of achievement" instead of giving them a grade or a percentage, which it claims is confusing for parents, labour-intensive for teachers and does not encourage students to compete with each other.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The market in stolen historical documents has gotten so hot that federal investigators have launched an operation to retrieve what belongs to the government

Source: Time (12-21-06)

On the face of it, the Washington Capital Area Historical Autograph and Manuscript Show seemed like many such shows held around the country each year. Some 20 top dealers gathered at an Alexandria, Va., hotel on Dec. 9 to peddle thousands of autographs, letters and official papers of the famous — many of the more expensive items locked in glass cases. But among the customers wandering through the exhibits this time were two investigators from the National Archives. They passed out brochures on how to spot historical documents stolen from the government and chatted with the dealers to let them know that the feds are now becoming more interested in retrieving the valuable loot. The investigators also quietly browsed through the wares on display, looking for anything that might belong to the Archives.

During this particular visit the document hunters found none, but they expect other forays will turn up important contraband. The investigators are part of Operation Historic Protector, which the Archive's Inspector General's Office launched in November to combat what many fear is a growing threat to the federal government's historical repository, as well as to state archives and university libraries: the pilfering of old letters, documents, maps, photographs, books and other historical artifacts.

The National Archives has beefed up security in recent years, with video cameras and staffers watching outside researchers who review material in its reading rooms. But the Archives and other repositories around the country have suffered a number of heists in recent years.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Panel: Atlanta civil rights museum should locate on Coke land, have global focus

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle (12-18-06)

Atlanta's proposed civil rights museum should showcase battles for equality across the globe and be built adjacent to Centennial Olympic Park on land donated by The Coca-Cola Co., according to an advisory panel convened by Mayor Shirley Franklin.

A museum that embraces all human rights issues, not merely the historic efforts of black leaders in Atlanta and the South, is something no other city has attempted, said Central Atlanta Progress president A.J. Robinson, who led the panel.

"We debated a lot about trying to do too much," Robinson said. "But we may be missing an opportunity if we just focus narrowly on Atlanta in the '50s and '60s."

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

History will be compulsory for Pakistan middle school grades next year

Source: Daily Times (Lahore) (12-21-06)

The new national curriculum of history for classes VI to VIII has chapters on religious tolerance and cultural syncretism to teach the young generation about the “soft image” of Muslim rulers of South Asia, Daily Times learnt on Wednesday.

The curriculum has been sent to the provinces for implementation from the academic year 2007 as a compulsory subject.

The main feature of the new curriculum is that it not only highlights the political developments during Muslim rule, but also gives due importance to the cultural and social aspects with special focus on the Sufi ethos and its spread.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Maryland to Buy George Washington's Army Resignation Letter

Source: AP (12-20-06)

Maryland will spend $600,000 to help buy George Washington's handwritten resignation from the Continental Army that he read to the Continental Congress, then meeting in Annapolis.

State archivists said in February that they acquired the two-page letter to put in the city's State House, where the Revolutionary War hero resigned his commission Dec. 23, 1783. On Wednesday, the state Board of Public Works approved that purchase, along with $150,000 for an accompanying letter written by one of Washington's aides describing the event.

The letter is considered a turning point in America's formation because it established that the military should be subservient to civil authority. Washington said: "Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action."

"This is a momentous occasion for the state," state archivist Edward Papenfuse said.

[The state is paying $750,000, half the cost. Private donors are putting up the rest.]

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Developers lose battle for Gettysburg

Source: USA Today (12-20-06)

The most recent fight for Gettysburg ended Wednesday when Pennsylvania gambling regulators rejected a proposal for a slot-machine casino near the Civil War battlefield.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board awarded five licenses for casinos in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the Pocono Mountains and Bethlehem. Among the 13 applications was a proposal to build a 3,000-slot casino, a luxury hotel and spa, and several restaurants a little more than a mile from a portion of the Gettysburg National Military Park.

The plan divided neighbors, local business owners and preservationists.

"We're very, very grateful," said Susan Star Paddock, chairwoman of the grassroots group No Casino Gettysburg. "The casino would have destroyed our history-based tourist economy."

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Getty museum says no to Italian demand for statue

Source: Reuters (12-20-06)

The Getty Museum, one of the world's leading repositories of antiquities, refused on Wednesday to hand over to Italy a 2,500-year-old Greek statue of a boy to end a bitter dispute over looted works of art.

Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli made the demand in Rome, saying Italy would break off ties with the wealthy Los Angeles museum, which funds several restoration projects in Italy, unless it quickly returned art works, including the bronze statue, that Rome says were looted.

"Either there is an agreement or there is a breakdown," Rutelli told reporters in Rome. "The time has passed when people could turn a blind eye to looting."

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Report Says Ex-National Security Adviser Berger Hid Archive Documents in 2003 Under Trailer

Source: AP (12-20-06)

President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday.

The report was issued more than a year after Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents.

Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinton administration witnesses for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission. Berger was authorized as the Clinton administration's representative to make sure the commission got the correct classified materials.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Shrine in Japan to Its War Dead Plans to ‘Soften’ Section on China

Source: Reuters (12-21-06)

The Japanese war shrine at the center of a long-running dispute between Japan and China has decided to soften the references to China in a war museum on its premises, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday.

Relations between Japan and China deteriorated to their worst in decades under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, partly because of his annual visits to the site, the Yasukuni Shrine, which is seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.

Bilateral ties have begun to improve under Mr. Koizumi’s successor, Shinzo Abe, who paid an official visit to China shortly after he took office in September....

The shrine authorities agreed in October to alter texts in the museum that state that the United States deliberately forced Japan into the war. The new display panels on the American role in the war will be installed next month, said the newspaper, the daily Mainichi Shimbun.

At the time, the shrine said it saw no need to change references to China, but a shrine panel has now decided that revisions are needed, the paper said.

The exhibition currently says, for example, that the Marco Polo Bridge incident — a 1937 battle near Beijing that marked the beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War — was set off by illegal attacks on the Japanese by Chinese nationalist troops, the newspaper said.

“There is no mistake in the facts, but the expressions are such that some parts could be misunderstood, so we will substitute softer expressions,” the newspaper quoted a person involved in the revisions as saying of the references to China.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 8:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

National Security Archive praises Bush administration for maintaining Clinton-era deadline on document release

Source: National Security Archive (12-21-06)

In his March 2003 executive order 13292, President Bush affirmed that on December 31, 2006, with certain limitations, "all classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2) have been determined to have permanent historical value under title 44, United States Code, shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed."

That December 31 deadline is now almost here, the New York Times noted in a front page story today.

See "U.S. to Declassify Secrets at Age 25" by Scott Shane, New York Times, December 21:

http://www.nytimes.com

The automatic declassification of 25 year old records, which will continue to apply to new records each year as they become 25 years old, is a genuine innovation in classification policy. It is a credit both to the Clinton Administration, which first adopted the proposal, and the Bush Administration, which did not abandon it.

In practice, however, the impact of the policy may not be as dramatic as one might imagine, for several reasons.

First, many agencies have sought and received exemptions for one of nine categories of information (war plans, intelligence sources, WMD information, etc.) that need not be declassified. Selected agency declassification plans may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/

Second, records that involve the interests ("equities") of more than one agency are not subject to this month's deadline. Rather, they are to be declassified by December 31, 2009.

Third, declassification does not imply immediate disclosure. Some declassified records may still need to be reviewed for privacy data and other exempt information.

Finally, the processing of hundreds of millions or billions of declassified pages to make them publicly accessible is a logistical challenge that may exceed the capability of the National Archives, which has faced increasing budgetary pressures.

Unless Congress chooses to provide supplemental resources for the Archives, many declassified records will remain inaccessible.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 3:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Texas city haunted by 'no blacks after dark' past

Source: CNN (12-13-06)

Vidor is a small city of about 11,000 people near the Texas Gulf Coast, not too far from the Louisiana border. Despite the fact that Beaumont, a much bigger city just 10 minutes away, is quite integrated, Vidor is not. There are very few blacks there; it's mostly white. That is in large part because of a history of racism in Vidor, a past that continues to haunt the present.

"We've been trying to live down something for 40 to 50 years," said Orange County Commissioner Beamon Minton. "Once convicted, you're a convicted felon. You can't ever put that aside."

Vidor was one of hundreds of communities in America known as "sundown towns," places where blacks were not welcome after dark. In some of these towns, signs -- handwritten or printed -- were posted, saying things like "Whites Only After Dark." But in general, sundown towns existed by reputation. Blacks knew they were places to avoid after dark.

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 3:01 PM | Comments (1) | Top

U.S. to Declassify Secrets at Age 25

Source: NYT (12-21-06)

It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government.

At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many F.B.I. cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic declassification of records.

Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains secret.

Historians say the deadline, created in the Clinton administration but enforced, to the surprise of some scholars, by the secrecy-prone Bush administration, has had huge effects on public access, despite the large numbers of intelligence documents that have been exempted.

And every year from now on, millions of additional documents will be automatically declassified as they reach the 25-year limit, reversing the traditional practice of releasing just what scholars request....

Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Hussein’s Trial Sees Videotapes of Chemical Attacks on Kurds

Source: NYT (12-20-06)

Images of villagers dying from what prosecutors said was a chemical attack on Kurds were shown here on Tuesday at the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Hussein is facing charges of genocide in connection with the deaths of 50,000 Kurds in a campaign that ultimately killed 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s. He has already been convicted in a separate trial and sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the killing of 148 Shiites.

The images shown by prosecutors were some of the most graphic evidence presented against Mr. Hussein to date. Shot in April 1987 and May 1988, the videotape shows attack helicopters flying low over the mountains as villagers scatter, some in trucks, others on foot. Women cluster near tents, crying as white smoke gathers.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 6:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mississippi Capital Eyed for Civil Rights Museum

Source: AP (12-20-06)

Before the Freedom Riders came to Jackson, nine black students from Tougaloo College entered the city's segregated main library branch and began reading.

After refusing orders by the police chief to leave, the so-called Tougaloo Nine were arrested, charged and convicted of breaching the peace.

Their actions in March 1961 were among the first high-profile efforts to break down a stubborn, long-standing system of segregation in Mississippi.

After that, the movement for racial equality gained momentum in other Mississippi communities and the Freedom Riders' arrival in Jackson put the nation's spotlight on the city.

Because of Jackson's prominence, several leading officials here think it's appropriate that a Mississippi civil rights museum be built in the capital city.

A legislative study group on Tuesday released a list of recommendations, saying the museum should be built somewhere in Jackson and should be part of a ``trail'' to highlight historically significant civil rights sites around the state.

The group said the museum should be national in scope, focusing on how the Mississippi movement - primarily in the 1950s and '60s - helped influence the civil rights struggle in other states.

The proposed facility would add to the list of civil rights museum and memorials across the nation, including the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama, the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum in Georgia, and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 4:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

18th-century Indian fort linked to 1922 colonial massacre now open to public

Source: Indo-Asian news service (12-20-06)

AMRITSAR, INDIA, Dec 20 (IANS) The 18th century Gobindgarh Fort here, once home toGeneral Reginald Dyer who was responsible for the massacre of 2,000 Indians in Jalianwala Bagh, was Wednesday thrown open to the public by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The prime minister handed over the symbolic key of the fort, which was under the Indian Army since October 1948, to the state government, opening up the sprawling 50-acre complex to the public.

The fort was first built in 1760 and called Bhangian da Kila. It was later re-built by Punjab's warrior king Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who converted it into his residence and christened the fort after the last Sikh guru Gobind Singh.

It is believed that the monument once had a tunnel connecting it to Lahore in Pakistan, the erstwhile capital of Ranjit Singh. But army authorities here deny its existence.

The historical complex could accommodate a 12,000-strong army, has 25 cannons and was adequately fortified for repulsing any attack at that time.

During British rule, General Dyer converted the fort into his sprawling residence and constructed a 'Phansi ghar' (gallows) right in front of it.

It is said that Dyer derived sadistic pleasure watching the execution of Indian freedom fighters while sitting in his house.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 4:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cheney testimony would be historic

Source: LAT (12-20-06)

Dick Cheney will be called to testify at the perjury and obstruction trial of his former chief of staff, in what would be a historic appearance by a vice president in a criminal prosecution, lawyers said Tuesday.

The decision by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's lawyers to call Cheney as a witness in the federal trial scheduled to begin here Jan. 16 ends months of speculation about the role senior White House officials would play.

It also sets the stage for a dramatic appearance that could offer insight into Cheney's relationship with his top aide, and for a cross-examination by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald that could lay bare how the Bush administration responded to its critics. ...

In 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush testified to investigators in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages probe, but his testimony was never used.

By contrast, a number of presidents have participated in trials over the years, often by videotape.

President Clinton gave videotaped testimony in a criminal trial involving two former business partners in the Whitewater land deal.

President Ford gave a videotaped deposition in the trial of Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who was convicted of trying to assassinate him.

And President Carter provided videotaped testimony in a grand jury investigation of financier Robert Vesco.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 4:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail Signed Into Law Today

Source: Southern Maryland Online (12-19-06)

Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD) applauded the signing into law today of legislation that would create the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, which would become the first national “Watertrail” in the country. The legislation, which was spearheaded by Senators Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD) and John Warner (R-VA) and Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis (VA) will trace the route of Captain John Smith’s two-year exploration of the Chesapeake Bay region almost 400 years ago.

In April 1607, three ships arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay after a four-month voyage from England carrying colonists who would establish the first permanent English settlement in North America and plant the seeds of our nation and our democracy. John Smith would then travel in a small 30 foot “shallop” some 3,000 miles, reaching from present day Jamestown, Virginia, to Smith Falls on the Pennsylvania border with Maryland and from Broad Creek in Delaware to the Potomac River and Washington, DC. His journeys brought the English into contact with many Native Americans for the first time, and his observations of the region’s people and its natural wonders are still relied upon by anthropologists, historians, and ecologists to this day.

“The signing of this legislation into law marks a new beginning in highlighting the historic voyages of Captain John Smith as part of the early exploration and settling of our Nation,” said a very pleased Sarbanes.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Blair's legacy will be Iraq 'debacle'

Source: BBC (12-19-06)

Historically, Tony Blair has had a closer relationship with a US president than any British prime minister since the Thatcher-Reagan era and, before that, since Harold Macmillan persuaded John Kennedy to give Britain the Polaris nuclear missile. .

Every prime minister faces this problem. All live in the shadow of the great Churchill-Roosevelt duo. They have varied enormously in their response. This has not depended on their political outlook.

The Conservative Ted Heath kept his distance from the US and took Britain into Europe. Labour's Harold Wilson trod a more careful course with Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam war.

Mr Wilson did not join that enterprise, but at the same time he refrained from criticising American policy, an approach that led his unfortunate Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart into some embarrassing verbal contortions.

Mr Blair veered towards Washington, not , however, because he thought there was something to be gained in return, though he might have wished for greater US action over the Israeli/Palestinian dispute.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How a teen's history project in 1958 became the U.S.'s official flag

Source: Houston Chronicle (12-20-06)

Robert G. Heft once sat patiently at an autograph signing in Dallas while hundreds of people flocked to NBA legend Michael Jordan to claim one of his $30 signatures.

Standing in Heft's 10-person line, a boy asked his father why they were waiting for the autograph of a man he'd never seen. The father replied that Heft — who designed America's 50-star flag — is a piece of history.

Although he'll grace the pages of history books one day for his accomplishment, Heft, 64, of Thomas Township, Mich., doesn't place himself on a pedestal.

"I never look at myself like anything special," Heft said recently. "I consider myself just a regular person."

Last fall, Heft put up the 48-year-old banner that he sewed as a high school history project on eBay and set the price at $250,000. Although the item received more than 10,000 hits during two 10-day bidding periods, Heft said he didn't get any serious offers.

A year later, he's happy that the flag — now in a glass case for preservation — still is safe with him.

"One thing I was concerned about was where it would end up," said Heft, a retired professor from Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Most Americans have had premarital sex

Source: Yahoo/AP (12-20-06)

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

FBI releases controversial Lennon files

Source: LAT (12-20-06)

The FBI agreed Tuesday to make public the final 10 documents about the surveillance of John Lennon that it had withheld for 25 years from a University of California, Irvine historian on the grounds that releasing them could cause "military retaliation against the United States."

Despite the fierce battle the government waged to keep the documents secret, the files contain information that is hardly shocking, just new details about Lennon's ties to New Left leaders and antiwar groups in London in the early 1970s, said the historian, Jon Wiener.

For example, in one memo, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon's chief aide, that "Lennon had taken an interest in `extreme left-wing activities in Britain' and is known to be a sympathizer of Trotskyist communists in England."

Another document that had been totally blacked out on the grounds of national security when Wiener obtained it more than 20 years ago through litigation brought under the Freedom of Information Act, said that two prominent British leftists, Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, had courted Lennon in hopes that he would "finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room in London."

But the newly released document adds, that Lennon apparently gave them no money "despite a long courtship by Blackburn and Ali."

Rather, the previously classified document states that Lennon was using his "tangible assets" to try to get custody of his wife Yoko Ono's child, who was in the care of her former husband.

Another surveillance report states explicitly that there was "no certain proof" that Lennon had provided money "for subversive purposes," and yet another states that there was no evidence that Lennon had any formal tie to any leftist group. Only one document alludes to Lennon's music, saying he has "encouraged the belief that he holds revolutionary views . . . by the content of some of his songs."...

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Veteran of both world wars dies (UK)

Source: BBC (12-19-06)

The last British serviceman to serve in both World War I and World War II has died aged 106.
Captain Kenneth Cummins served in the Royal Navy in WWI and in the Merchant Navy in WWII.

Until his death at home in Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire on 10 December, he was one of five WWI veterans living in the UK.

Dennis Goodwin, chairman of the WWI Veterans' Association, said: "Any death of a veteran of WWI means the end of a unique and special generation."

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic streetcar rolls through New Orleans again

Source: Reuters (12-19-06)

St. Charles streetcar rumbled and clanked through the Big Easy on Tuesday for the first time since Hurricane Katrina shut down the world's oldest continuously running line 16 months ago.

Operator Clarence Glover, with 25 years on the St. Charles line, pulled out the pine green car built in 1922 with his first post-Katrina passengers, including Mayor Ray Nagin.

"It feels great, like I've been away from home for a long time and now I'm back," said Glover, 54.

The St. Charles line, long a symbol of New Orleans, opened in 1835 with steam-powered cars before using overhead electricity from 1893. Before Katrina, it carried 3 million passengers a year, including many a Mardi Gras reveler.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nero's palace in Rome to reopen after safety scare

Source: Reuters (12-19-06)

The palace of Nero, one of Rome's most popular tourist sites, will partly reopen to the public in January after being closed for more than a year for emergency repairs, officials said.

The Domus Aurea, or House of Gold, had attracted an average of 1,000 visitors every day until water leaks last December stoked fears that the nearly 2,000-year-old palace might collapse.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US Congress mulls funds to tackle Agent Orange in Vietnam

Source: Breitbart (12-19-06)

The United States Congress is considering voting in funds next year to help Vietnam clean areas heavily contaminated by toxic defoliant Agent Orange, a US official said in Hanoi. "We are going to provide assistance to help clean up sites where dioxin continues to pose serious health threats to people living there," said Tim Rieser, aide to Democrat senator Patrick Leahy.

"We also want to look for ways to extend assistance to people with disabilities," he told journalists in Hanoi.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Chilean street to be named after Pinochet

Source: Reuters (12-19-06)

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is to have a street, square or public space named after him in the district where he lived during his 1973-1990 rule.

The local council of Las Condes in the Chilean capital Santiago approved a proposal from the district's right-wing mayor Francisco de la Maza by a 6-2 vote, a council source told Reuters on Tuesday.

The council will now decide where to honor the dictator, who died on December 10 aged 91.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Landowner razed slave-built structure to ensure he could sell tract (Tenn.)

Source: Tennessean (12-15-06)

A battle over history and property is developing high up on a ridge in West Meade.

Gene Scott, who owns four acres in the west Nashville neighborhood, brought a bulldozer up to the ridge Dec. 8 and had the driver plow through a long stretch of a stone wall.

Scott, 76, said he owns the land where that section of the wall stood, and he eventually wants to sell it.

But some neighbors and historic preservationists are fuming. They say the 4-foot-high wall wasn't just any stack of stones: It was built by slaves living and working on the Belle Meade Plantation nearly 200 years ago.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient Egyptian carving sheds light on Karnak temple

Source: AFP at Yahoo News (12-17-06)

Egypt announced the discovery of a carving dating back to the 12th century BC which could hold the key to valuable information on Karnak temple, the largest ancient religious site in the world.

The large quartzite stone, carved with 17 lines of hieroglyphics, highlights the achievements of high priest Bak En Khonso and his contributions to the grand hall at Karnak.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Iran's Biggest Prehistoric Site Discovered in Bam

Source: http://www.payvand.com (12-18-06)

A prehistoric site, almost twice bigger than the Burnt City, has been discovered near the city of Bam, most probably belonging to 5000-6000 years ago. The blade of a bronze axe and statuette of a cow made of burnt brick are among the discoveries in the area.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

First $6.4M in Katrina grant funds awarded for historic preservation

Source: http://www.clarionledger.com (12-18-06)

The first round of grants in the federally funded Hurricane Relief Grant Program for Historic Preservation awarded more than $6.4 million to 57 applicants.

The grants, administered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, will be used to repair and restore historically significant publicly and privately owned structures that were hurricane damaged.

The largest is $1 million for the Old Hattiesburg High School. Among other significant awards was $400,000 for the Bond-Grant House in Biloxi. Other amounts ranged from $9,000 to $150,000.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan, China panel to discuss melding views on history

Source: International Herald Tribune (12-18-06)

Japanese and Chinese experts will meet in Beijing next week to discuss how to bring their historical understandings more in line, officials said Monday.

Experts from both sides will have their first meeting Dec. 26-27 in Beijing, the Japanese government announced. Each side will have 10 experts on the panel.

The meeting is part of an effort to resolve conflicts between the two nations over the interpretation of Japan's invasion and occupation of parts of China before and during World War II. Chinese have frequently claimed that Japanese schools whitewash the nation's militarist past.

But the discussions would also delve into ancient history and touch on sensitive issues in recent Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square protests.

"Since it covers modern history, I think there will be a broad discussion," Japanese government spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki said.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Millions attend Rembrandt 400th anniversary events in Netherlands

Source: AFP at Yahoo News (12-18-06)

Around 2.7 million visitors -- more than a million more than expected -- attended events and exhibitions in the Netherlands in 2006 marking the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt.

"On the cultural level, the Netherlands finds itself in the spotlight this year in a positive way," said Jan Michiel Hessels, head of the "Rembrandt 400" group, the Dutch ANP news agency reported Monday.

Exhibits featuring the work of the 17th century painter attracted the lion's share of visitors -- some two million people. Others flocked to a hodge-podge of Rembrandt-related events.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Toxic timebomb surfaces 60 years after U-boat lost duel to the death

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-19-06)

Sixty-one years ago a U-boat slipped out of the Baltic port of Kiel, sent by Hitler on a secret voyage to Japan in a mission to avert Germany’s looming defeat.

U864 never reached her destination. She was sunk by the British in the only known case of one submarine destroying another while both were submerged. It is a remarkable tale of wartime derring-do — but one with a sting in the tail.

The wreck now lies, in two pieces, 152 metres (500ft) beneath North Sea waters off the Norwegian coast, and contains 65 tonnes of mercury in 1,857 corroding canisters. It is a toxic timebomb, and today the Norwegian Government will announce plans to entomb it in a sarcophagus 12 metres thick.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 9:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Discovery of Japanese stealth sub stirs up the ghosts of war in Australia

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-19-06)

The discovery of a Japanese submarine that wreaked havoc with the wartime Australian psyche has divided opinion.

For 64 years the remains of two young Japanese sailors have lain in their undiscovered steel coffin — a midget submarine — not far off Sydney’s crowded northern beaches.

The amateur divers who found the M24 have opened up a debate about what should be done with the remains of Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban and his navigator, Petty Officer Mamoru Ashibe. Even their families cannot agree on whether they should be raised and returned to Japan.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 8:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Revealed: the unseen Goya painting of the boy who halted the Spanish Inquisition

Source: Guardian (12-19-06)

It is the portrait that everyone knew existed but few have been fortunate enough to see in the two centuries or so since it was painted.

Yesterday that painting of a cherubic-looking six-year-old member of the Spanish royal family, the Infante Don Luis Maria, was displayed to the world for the first time since Francisco de Goya put paintbrush to canvas in 1783.

But just as intriguing as the painting is the subject himself - an apparently studious little boy who would go on to become a cardinal at the age of 23 and who would put an end to that most infamous institution, the Spanish Inquisition.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 8:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

France's Louvre Museum Joined the "History-Distortion Business Club"

Source: Persian Journal (12-18-06)

The curator of the National Museum of Iran (NMI) said in a news conference that the distortion of the name of the Persian Gulf in the Louvre's catalogue is the result of the Arab financial influence in Europe. "The distortion of the Persian Gulf's name in the Louvre's catalogue is not something new. It has occurred due to the Arabs' economic influence over the museum during the 1990s," said Mohammad-Reza Kargar reported by CHN.

Kargar noted that French archeologists became pioneers of excavations in Iran after reaching an agreement with the Qajar dynasty (1787-1921 AD). However, after the 1979 revolution in Iran, they began working in Iran's neighboring countries, particularly newly formed Arab states, which provided appropriate financial opportunities, he added.

The money the Arabs spent to pay the archeological mercenaries created some expectations, one of them being the alteration of the name of the Persian Gulf, he explained.

"Most important research centers in the heart of Paris are run by France and Saudi Arabia. Several months ago, Paris played host to an exhibition of Arab civilization, which was opened by Jacques Chirac and King Abdullah of Jordan," he explained. Contradictory but not so surprisingly despite the fact that the exhibition was called "Arab civilization", majority of artifacts on show were Persian.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 8:39 PM | Comments (1) | Top

9/11 Family Members Sign WTC Beam in NYC

Source: ABC (12-17-06)

Sept. 11 victims' family members and others signed a 53.5-ton steel beam Sunday that is to form part of the base of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site.

The steel beam, which is to be put in place at ground zero this week, was on display in Battery Park City a few blocks from the trade center site Sunday.

Karen Miller signed in memory of her brother, firefighter John Santore.

"I want people to remember everyone who was lost and to remember him," she said.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 8:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Photo of Mozart's widow found

Source: BBC (12-18-06)

A print of the only photograph of Mozart's widow, Constanze Weber, has been found in Germany.

The photograph was taken in 1840 in the Bavarian town of Altoetting when she was 78. She died two years later.

The local authorities say detailed examination has proved the authenticity of the image, which is a copy of the original daguerreotype.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 8:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Leading Japanese politician labels Nagasaki bombing a crime

Source: BBC (12-18-06)

One of Japan's most senior politicians has said the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 was impermissible from a humanitarian point of view.

Shoichi Nakagawa, the policy chief of the governing party, said that the use of atomic weapons was a crime.

Mr Nakagawa has attracted controversy recently, calling for a debate on whether Japan should have nuclear arms. He raised the possibility that North Koreans might try to attack Japan with their own nuclear weapons.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Russert failed to challenge Gingrich's claim of exoneration by IRS in ethics controversy

Source: Media Matters (12-18-06)

On the December 17 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) claimed that, in 1999, the Internal Revenue Service "said there was nothing wrong" with funding a college course he had taught with tax-deductible donations, for which Gingrich was investigated by the House ethics committee, fined $300,000, and formally reprimanded by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Russert failed to challenge Gingrich's claim. In fact, even though the IRS' final report found no evidence of wrongdoing on Gingrich's part, it also said that the House ethics committee refused to provide all the evidence requested by the agency, despite recommendations from congressional investigators that evidence collected by the ethics committee be sent to the IRS, and that "if the Ethics Committee had rendered full cooperation with our examination, the transcripts might have affected our conclusion."

As Media Matters for America noted when Gingrich's former press secretary and current Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley baselessly claimed that the investigation into Gingrich was a Clinton administration vendetta, the IRS' inquiry was first reported nine months after the ethics committee -- which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans -- unanimously voted in December 1995 to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Gingrich had violated tax law. The New York Times reported on December 23, 1995, that the ethics committee had selected former Justice Department prosecutor James Cole to "investigate accusations that a course Mr. Gingrich taught at two colleges in Georgia was a political effort intended to circumvent tax laws." The Washington Post also reported on December 23, 1995, that there was a "question of whether Gingrich violated tax laws by using tax-deductible contributions to finance" the college course.

The ethics committee released its final report on January 17, 1997, and voted 7-1 to recommend that the House fine and reprimand for failing to obtain adequate legal advice regarding the courses and for providing false information to the committee. The New York Times reported on January 18, 1997, that "investigators urged the full ethics committee to send the evidence it had collected to the Internal Revenue Service to assist its investigations involving Kennesaw State University and Reinhardt College, where Mr. Gingrich's college course was taught." The IRS released the findings of its investigation in early 1999. According to a February 27, 1999, Los Angeles Times article:

On its face, the IRS finding seems unequivocal. The 74-page document systematically examines the facts in the complex case and determines that the foundation "did not serve the private interests of" Gingrich or the GOP and did not play a role in any campaign.

However, in an unusual caveat, the IRS said that its conclusions were based "upon the facts available to us" and the agency did not have access to transcripts of witnesses' statements before the House Ethics Committee, which the panel refused to provide.

"It is possible that if the Ethics Committee had rendered full cooperation with our examination, the transcripts might have affected our conclusion," the IRS memorandum said.

It still is not clear why the ethics panel did not provide the IRS with the transcripts.

There also have been debates over whether IRS supervisors really examined the evidence fully or simply took a bow in hopes of heading off a clash with a powerful figure.

From the December 17 broadcast of Meet the Press:

RUSSERT: But you were reprimanded by the full House. They --

GINGRICH: For having signed a letter.

RUSSERT: -- and that you paid a fine or -- $300,000 --

GINGRICH: That's right.

RUSSERT: It's significant. It's significant.

GINGRICH: It is. I just said it's significant. And I paid the $300,000. Now, but here's the point: The rest of the stuff in that article about my -- the ethics charges are false. The Internal Revenue Service said there was nothing wrong with the course. I am a Ph.D. in history. I was teaching a college course. It's totally -- it goes back to free speech. I was allowed to teach courses. The Federal Election Commission was reprimanded by a federal judge and told that the charges against GOPAC were totally false. All in the course -- those things didn't make page one. And I fully expected my opponents -- remember, the Democrats were very mad after the '94 election. They had lost power. They -- for the first time in 40 years. They knew it couldn't be their fault, so it must be mine.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 7:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

George W. Bush Library: Scholarly Archive or Ideological Center?

Source: Inside Higher Ed (12-18-06)

Southern Methodist University has long been considered the front-runner in the competition to be the site of President Bush’s presidential library. Laura Bush is an alumna and trustee. Dick Cheney was a trustee before being elected vice president. And the university’s main challenge — a lack of space — may have been fixed this month when SMU won a court fight over its right to demolish a condo complex the university had purchased, in part to have land for the Bush project.

But now, as President Bush prepares to decide among SMU, Baylor University and the University of Dallas, a new issue has emerged. Professors at SMU are circulating an open letter calling for the university to have a full discussion of the implications of being host to the Bush library. Several recent press reports have quoted Bush advisers as saying that SMU has the edge and that the library’s affiliated think tank will encourage scholarship with a specific political agenda.

An article in the New York Daily News — much discussed on the SMU campus — quotes a “Bush insider” as saying that the center would hire conservative scholars and “give them money to write papers and books favorable to the president’s policies.” Other articles have said that the center will be designed to spread the president’s ideas about “compassionate conservatism.”

Faculty critics say that although many of them disagree with Preside nt Bush’s policies, they would not object to a library-oriented archive and museum — and they say that in discussions with professors, the university has discussed a vision for such a Bush center. But creating an academic center with a specific goal of boosting the Bush image and agenda strikes many professors as antithetical to a university’s academic values.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 7:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan Rightists Fan Fury Over North Korea Abductions

Source: NYT (12-17-06)

The Japanese government’s posters show the map of a blood-red North Korea blotting out the eyes of a Japanese teenager. They hint darkly that this country’s youth are at risk and urge Japanese to open their eyes to the threat from North Korea.

The posters were on prominent display at a rally this week to call attention to Japanese abducted by North Korea three decades ago and who, Japan says, are still held there.

The people who usually show up at such events — family members, their supporters, members of right-wing organizations — waited for a special first-time guest: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “We can never compromise on the abduction issue,” Mr. Abe told the crowd. “I swear that my administration will tackle this as its top priority.”

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

G.I. Joes to the Rescue of Rembrandts and Raphaels

Source: NYT (12-19-06)

The story might sound like grist for a Dan Brown novel or a Steven Spielberg treatment. But the efforts of Allied officers and soldiers like Mr. Taper to save and repatriate stolen treasures during and after the war is a chapter of World War II history still not particularly well known. Even during the war their work — when compared with saving lives and preserving ways of life — was sometimes discounted. Some members of the military referred to these soldiers as “Venus fixers,” a term with more than a hint of the effete.

But the accomplishments of these soldiers, better known as the Monuments Men, are finally starting to come into sharper focus. “Rescuing Da Vinci,” a lavishly illustrated book devoted to them, with dozens of pictures newly unearthed from archives, has just been published by Robert M. Edsel, a retired Texas oilman. Mr. Edsel, 49, became obsessed with the story several years ago and even established a research office in Dallas, his hometown, with the goal of telling it better.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Romanian Leader Condemns Communist Rule

Source: NYT (12-19-06)

The Romanian president, Traian Basescu, on Monday formally condemned the Communist dictatorship that ruled his country for more than four decades, the first time a Romanian head of state had officially denounced the Soviet-era system.

“The regime exterminated people by assassination and deportation of hundreds of thousands of people,” Mr. Basescu told Parliament. He based his assessment on a 660-page report compiled by a presidential commission charged with analyzing the country’s Communist past.

The move, coming less than two weeks before Romania joins the European Union, represented a belated attempt by the country to make a more complete break with the Communist period than was possible in the managed revolution of 1989. After Communist authority weakened in Moscow, many of the region’s Communist officials simply changed hats and continued to participate in government when authoritarian one-party governments remade themselves, largely unchallenged, into independent free-market democracies.

When Romania’s last Communist-era dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was overthrown and executed in 1989, he was replaced by a coalition of former Communist Party officials under the banner of the National Salvation Front.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 5:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

White House Situation Room Overhauled

Source: NYT (12-19-06)

Perhaps no corner of the White House has starred in more movies and television shows than the Situation Room, the presidential decision center under the West Wing that Hollywood imagines as a high-tech beehive of activity, where presidents command covert operations around the world.

n reality, it was something of a low-tech dungeon.

Until it closed for its biggest overhaul since John F. Kennedy settled into its wood-paneled conference room, most of the room’s monitors used — get this — picture tubes. Communications were often by fax. The computers and telephones looked like the best technology available, in 1985. There was a small kitchen, but it had no sink.

On Dec. 27 the new Situation Room is to open formally, the result of planning that reaches back to before the Sept. 11 attacks but took on added urgency afterward. The White House offered a preview to two reporters on Monday, days before its new data center is pumped full of classified information and its doors are sealed to outsiders....

The Situation Room was largely an outgrowth of the Cuban missile crisis, an event that made President Kennedy and his aides realize that they needed a central hub for information during crises.

Since then, it has been the site of critical decisions: Lyndon Johnson spent long nights picking bombing targets there; Bill Clinton used it to handle Bosnia and the Asian financial crisis. Over the years, the technology became a patchwork of fixes, as Wang word processors were replaced by personal computers, and then for portable secure video. The 9/11 commission found that on the day of the 2001 attacks, communications frayed, making it hard for Mr. Bush, flying around on Air Force One, to get a picture of what was going on.

Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, December 18, 2006

Bush gives little thought to life after White House

Source: Seattle P-I (12-18-06)

In a recent hand-scribbled note, President Bush insisted he is not giving much thought to life after the White House.

"Thanks for 'Second Acts' and your very kind letter," he said in a letter to Mark Updegrove, author of a new book about post-presidential life. "I'm not quite ready to take the stage for the 2nd act. After a two-year sprint, then I'll take the lessons of your book to heart."

Bush may not be thinking about the next act, but planners are planning for it. And they foresee an unprecedented post-presidency, largely because of the war.

The White House sought $5 million in the 2007 budget to begin hiring and training the Secret Service detail that will protect Bush after he leaves office. The money also will be used to protect 2008 presidential candidates.

Congress bumped the appropriation up to $16.5 million.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Nagasaki' to publish Chicago Daily News articles banned in WWII

Source: UPI (12-17-06)

Articles written by former Chicago Daily News reporter George Weller, suppressed after World War II, are set to be revealed in a new book.

"First Into Nagasaki" is scheduled to be released Dec. 26, and will feature the articles Weller wrote after sneaking into the Japanese city of Nagasaki four weeks after the United States dropped an atomic bomb, the Chicago Sun-Times said.

The articles, being published by Weller's son Anthony, were censored by the U.S. military; U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had placed Japan off-limits to the media, the Times said.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Digital Technology Makes 'Citizen Journalists' Out of Eyewitnesses Eager to Click and Post

Source: WaPo (12-18-06)

GLASGOW, Scotland -- At 2:42 p.m. on Oct. 11, Dean Collins heard a thunderous explosion as he worked at his computer in his 30th-floor apartment in Manhattan.

Collins looked out his window and saw a small plane crashing into a building right in front of him -- the accident that killed New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor. Instinctively, he recalled, he pulled his Fuji digital camera from a drawer and started shooting, thinking to himself, "This is going to be on the news."

Collins, a consultant for a software company, said he remembered reading about Scoopt, a year-old agency in Scotland that brokers photos for "citizen journalists." Within minutes, he had e-mailed his digital shots to Scoopt. Hours later, his picture of a smoking Manhattan high-rise was in three British newspapers, including a front-page splash in the Times of London. He earned $650 for his work.

The rapid rise of digital technology, which enables ordinary people almost anywhere to record images and post them quickly on the Internet, is changing the way the world witnesses history, not to mention the dependable misbehavior of celebrities. Events that once were recorded only by human memory may now endure in full, pixelated detail, available in seconds around the globe.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Revisiting The Horrors Of The Holocaust (Sixty Minutes)

Source: CBS News (12-17-06)

For the first time, secrets of the Nazi Holocaust that have been hidden away for more than 60 years are finally being made available to the public. We’re not talking about a missing filing cabinet - we’re talking about thousands of filing cabinets, holding 50 million pages. It's Hitler’s secret archive.

The Nazis were famous for record keeping but what 60 Minutes found ran from the bizarre to the horrifying. This Holocaust history was discovered by the Allies in dozens of concentration camps, as Germany fell in the spring of 1945.

As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, the documents were taken to a town in the middle of Germany, called Bad Arolsen, where they were sorted, filed and locked way, never to be seen by the public until now.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Proposed land train to Stonehenge too 'intrusive'

Source: Salisbury Journal (UK) (12-15-06)

A PROPOSAL to run a land train as part of plans for a new £67.5m Stonehenge visitors centre has come under fire during the second week of the Salisbury public inquiry.

The aim is to use the train to transport tourists from the visitors centre to within walking distance of the ancient stones.

But the chairman of the Stonehenge Alliance, George McDonic, said the trains would conflict with both national and international policies that seek to protect the landscape around the World Heritage site.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:29 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Christmas "miracle" spared life of young rebel at brink of execution in 1956 uprising

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (12-17-06)

Pesti Gizella's life took a turn for the better when a guard came to her Budapest prison cell and told her she was about to be executed.

As a student leader in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Pesti expected her days might be numbered after she was captured during the Soviet crackdown. She had been made to lie on a cot beneath a brightly burning light and keep her hands still and plainly visible. She wasn't so much afraid of dying as she was of the insects that would crawl onto the bare bulb and fall on her face.

She could hear the gunshots of executions from her cell. She felt certain her short, hard life -- orphaned and wounded and still only 19 -- had reached an inevitable end.

"I don't really believe in miracles," she says now, "but . . . "A strange thing happened on her way to the firing squad 50 years ago yesterday. She was taken to the office of a Soviet interrogator, who told her he had a family in Russia he might never see again and he had a few hours to save the lives of some young people so he was going to spare hers. She was put on a truck, then a train, where she hid in a coal box. She figured she was headed to Siberia. As the train rumbled along, she passed out.

When she came to, the train had stopped. She slipped outside and asked an old man walking along the tracks where she was. Sopron, he said -- the last city in Hungary before the Austrian border.
Sick, cold and barely clothed, she started walking toward the bright lights of Austria.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:25 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Ministry of Culture announces the opening of the Iraqi museum early next year

Source: Iraqi News Agency/WNA (12-17-06)

A source from the Ministry of Culture said, that the ministry has set up a committee to re-open the Iraqi museum and to provide the necessary supplies, security and to rearrange again.

The Iraqi Museum has been subjected to looting after the fall of the previous regime, where the number of artifacts stolen from the museum was more than eight thousand assorted pieces.

The source pointed out that the Iraqi museum will be re-opening early next year through the provision of electronic protection and iron gates.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Joan of Arc's 'remains' not what they seem

Source: AFP at Yahoo News (12-16-06)

Researchers examining what were thought to be Joan of Arc's remains are fast coming to the conclusion that they are no such thing, a forensic scientist leading the investigation said.

"The chances that we are dealing with the remains of the French heroine are diminishing," Philippe Charlier said after completing six months of research.

"The results do not allow us to give an answer with certainty. But my historical prejudices on relics that turn out to be false lead me to think that we are headed towards a hypothesis of a false relic."

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Family at war with MI6 over secret files of Britain's greatest spy against the Nazis

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-17-06)

A fierce legal tussle has broken out between Cherie Booth, QC, and MI6 over top-secret files that relate to “The Griffin”, an Austrian who provided Britain with vital intelligence on the Nazi atom bomb programme during the Second World War.

The Prime Minister’s wife, who is representing the family of the secret agent, Paul Rosbaud, has lodged a claim demanding that MI6, then usually known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), release all its information on the case “so that the public can properly evaluate and appreciate the undoubtedly great contribution [he] made tothe Allied victory at considerable personal risk”.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the legal body that investigates the conduct of the Intelligence Service, has declined to rule on the issue, but the Rosbaud family has vowed to continue the campaign until the truth about the German agent is revealed.

Rosbaud was one of the most important agents of the war. A scientist bitterly opposed to the Nazi regime, he provided Britain with valuable intelligence on jet aircraft, radar, flying bombs and Nazi attempts to develop the atomic bomb.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 5:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Back from Tehran, UK rabbi claims Holocaust dead ‘deserved it’

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-17-06)

A BRITISH rabbi who angered fellow Jews by speaking at a “Holocaust denial” conference in Iran now says millions did die in gas chambers but may have deserved it.

Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading member of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live.

Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with 1,000 eggs lastyear because of his extremist views, told The Sunday Times: “There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too many eyewitnesses.

“However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering is obviously guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another.

“We have to look within to improve and try to better ourselvesand remove those characteristics or actions that may have been the cause of the success of the Holocaust.”

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:58 PM | Comments (1) | Top

A farcical attack on Hitler taboos

Source: LAT (12-17-06)

BERLIN — In a wacky corner of cyberspace, rubber duckies with Adolf Hitler faces sing in the bathwater. Their voices in unison, they bob to reggae music as bombs fall on Berlin, while the Fuehrer himself, a manic cartoon trapped in a bunker, sings: "Surrender? No, it's not my cup of tea."

The voice belongs to Thomas Pigor, a cabaret singer with a mischievous sense of timing. He and irreverent comic-book writer Walter Moers collaborated on the short video "Adolf — The Bonker." Mocking Hitler's southern German accent with the pronunciation "bonker" instead of bunker, the clip has been viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube and other sites since its Internet debut in July.

"It's a blasphemous joy to see Hitler shrunk into this tiny, pathetic cartoon figure. It destroys the myth of the cult figure some still hold," Pigor said, sitting near a candelabrum on a drizzly afternoon. "I didn't anticipate such a hit. I thought it would only be big on the cabaret scene. But its popularity shows that the time is ripe for breaking the Hitler taboo."

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Flier Shot Down in 1944 Was Escorted by Tuskegee Airmen

Source: AP (12-17-06)

A bomber pilot from World War II says he was shot down while being escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, an account that supports a recent report by two historians that the famed black fighter group, contrary to legend, did lose at least a few bombers to fire from enemy aircraft.

Warren Ludlum, who lives in Old Tappan, N.J., said that his B-24 bomber was shot down by enemy planes over Linz, Austria, in July 1944, while he was being escorted by P-51 fighters piloted by the Tuskegee Airmen.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

NYT Survey: Books on war recommended by experts

Source: NYT Book Review (12-17-06)

Theorists, novelists and partisans of all stripes have written on war. The Book Review asked a range of writers to recommend titles they find particularly illuminating.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

U.N. Prosecutor: Pressure Serbia, Bosnia on '90s war crimes

Source: AP (12-15-06)

The chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor urged the Security Council on Friday to pressure Serbia and Bosnia to arrest fugitive leaders from the Bosnian war, saying it was clear after 11 years that neither country was willing to do so.

Successive Serbian and Bosnian governments have lacked the political will to arrest wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, said Carla Del Ponte.

"My assessment remains that the Serbian government could easily arrest Ratko Mladic should the authorities want to do it," Del Ponte told the council. "It is simply a question of political will."

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Collector Pays $2.3M for 'Grand Watermelon'--1890 $1,000 Bill

Source: AP (12-16-06)

DALLAS -- An art collector has paid about $2.3 million for a $1,000 bill printed in 1890, according to the auction house that brokered the transaction between two anonymous private collectors.

"This $1,000 bill is one of only two known of its type; the other surviving example is in the museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco," Greg Rohan, president of Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, said Friday.

Rohan said that type of bank note is known to collectors as a "Grand Watermelon" because the green-striped zeros in the denomination "1,000" printed on the back of the bill look like the fruit.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Time Expiring for Latin America's Dirty War Prosecutions

Source: AP (12-16-06)

Latin America is finally owning up to its "dirty wars" -- the nightmarish campaigns of state-sponsored violence in which hundreds of thousands died or "disappeared." But the death of Chile's Gen. Augusto Pinochet shows the continent's leftist leaders of today must act fast to expose the truth while the masterminds of this savagery are still alive.

Momentum is growing behind new human rights investigations in Chile and other countries where dictators ruled with impunity. Prosecutors are dusting off cases of abduction and torture, digging up mass graves and using DNA to identify the victims.

In Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, judges are finding ways around the amnesty laws that long protected the perpetrators. In Brazil and Mexico, democratically elected presidents have finally opened up long-secret files to provide evidence against those responsible.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Kazakhs Remembering Uprising of 1986

Source: AP (12-16-06)

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- They see themselves as patriots who shed blood for their freedom in a rebellion that foreshadowed the demise of the Soviet Union.

But the Kazakhs who took to the streets in mass protests in December 1986 were dismissed as drunkards and hooligans by the Communist authorities who crushed their uprising. Now, 20 years later, these middle-aged former rebels feel their sacrifice and struggle have never been recognized.

Instead, this weekend's anniversary of the revolt in Kazakhstan -- a nation that spans Central Asia's steppes from European Russia to the Chinese border -- is being kept low-key by a government with reason to tread cautiously.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Survivors Recall Horror of Flu Pandemic of 1918

Source: Baltimore Sun (12-17-06)

CHEVY CHASE, Md. At the height of the flu pandemic in 1918, William H. Sardo Jr. remembers the pine caskets stacked in the living room of his family's house, a funeral home in Washington, D.C.

The city had slowed to a near halt. Schools were closed. Church services were banned. The federal government limited its hours of operation. People were dying -- some who took ill in the morning were dead by night.

"That's how quickly it happened," said Sardo, 94, who lives in an assisted living facility just outside the nation's capital. "They disappeared from the face of the earth."

Sardo is among the last survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic. Their stories offer a glimpse at the forgotten history of one of the world's worst plagues, when the virus killed at least 50 million people and perhaps as many as 100 million.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Slave Honored as 'African American Patriot' at Capitol

Source: WaPo (12-16-06)

For years, he was known only as the faithful servant. Through the long campaigns of the Revolutionary War, he toiled alongside his famous master. In a painting that has hung in the U.S. Capitol since 1899, he is the figure by the fire, roasting sweet potatoes.

Now Oscar Marion is anonymous no longer. He has had his name restored.

In a ceremony yesterday at the Capitol, Marion was recognized as the "African American Patriot" he always was. A proclamation signed by President Bush expressed the thanks of a "grateful nation" and recognized Oscar Marion's "devoted and selfless consecration to the service of our country in the Armed Forces of the United States."

The occasion was a triumph for his distant cousin, genealogist Tina C. Jones, who researched his identity and pressed officials to honor him.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

X-Mass gifts Hitler would have liked

Source: Richard Cohen at Slate.com (12-15-06)

I confess to being in the market for an expensive watch. I say I confess because I know the watch I buy for a lot of money will not be more accurate than a watch I could have bought for a lot less, but there you have it. This explains why I gave more than cursory attention to a double-page ad in the Sunday New York Times for expensive watches. One caught my eye. It seemed oversized, which is the fashion these days, and built to take a bullet or two, which is required these days, and undoubtedly water resistant down to where the homicidal stingrays roam, and it was altogether handsome, although not for me. But it was the name that caught my eye: U-Boat.

U-Boat? The Unterseeboot responsible for sinking untold allied ships during World War II, costing many lives and so impressing Winston Churchill that he said, "The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril"? That U-boat? Yes, apparently. And that raises another question: Who would buy, not to mention wear, a watch named after a killer sub that, while used in World War I, really earned its rep in World War II as a fighter on the side of the Nazis? In other words, who could be so ahistorical, ignorant, or just plain tasteless to wear something on their wrist that immediately brings to mind, among other things, the ovens of Auschwitz?

One answer is that it has to be the same people who will soon bid on the car CNNMoney.com and AOL both called "Hitler race car." This Auto Union D-Type is expected to go for as much as $12 million at a Paris auction. The car was built by Ferdinand Porsche, then with Auto Union, the company now known as Audi. In the '30s, Porsche accepted Hitler's challenge to build a car that would showcase German technological advances....

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Peace, love, exams--U.S. anti-war movement quieter than in 1970

Source: Reuters (12-15-06)

KENT, Ohio (Reuters) - Jerry M. Lewis has seen anti-war protests at their mightiest and most tragic. As a faculty peace marshal in 1970, he saw Ohio National Guardsmen kill four students at Kent State University during a protest against the Vietnam War.

Today, the sociology professor sees little anti-war sentiment at the liberal arts school. Iraq, he says, is a different war than Vietnam, in one big way.

"It's a pretty short explanation: D-R-A-F-T," Lewis said. "We've segregated the war. It's nasty, it's sad ... but it's 'over there.'"

Critics of President Bush have compared the bleak and bloody war in Iraq with the U.S. failure in Vietnam a generation ago, but the flower-power peace movement that marked the Vietnam era is mostly a memory.

The lack of a draft has kept the war at arm's length from most Americans, though polls show a majority believe the United States should leave Iraq -- sentiment that helped Democrats win control of Congress in November.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:36 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Survivors, diplomats condemn Tehran talks

Source: Toronto Globe and Mail (12-15-06)

Rita Weiss has some questions she'd like to put to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ms. Weiss was just 18 when the Nazis came to her village in Hungary in 1944, and put her entire family on a train to Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp. She lost her father, her mother, her brother and seven sisters in the gas chambers and crematoria. Of 49 relatives, she was the only survivor.

"I now ask you, Ahmadinejad, what happened to them? Where are they?" Ms. Weiss told a room of diplomats and scholars, her voice creaking with emotion. "They became smoke, ashes, dust."

Ms. Weiss was addressing a conference called "Holocaust denial: Paving the way to Genocide" that was held yesterday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, a pointed counterattack to a meeting of known Holocaust deniers being hosted in Tehran this week by Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

U.S. First Ladies to Be Honored on Coins

Source: AP (12-15-06)

Not to be outdone by their husbands, the first ladies are getting their chance to shine on the nation's coins. Starting next year, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams and all the rest will begin appearing on a new series of gold coins.

It will be the first time in history that the U.S. Mint has produced a series featuring women.

While a new presidential series will be $1 circulating coins, the wives will be on half-ounce gold coins with each likely to sell for more than $300.

Both coins were authorized by Congress in 2005 with lawmakers modeling the $1 coin series after the Mint's extremely popular 50-state quarters.

The hope is that changing the images on the presidential coins every three months will spur greater interest and help the maligned dollar coin finally achieve acceptance with Americans. The Susan B. Anthony dollar, introduced in 1979, and the Sacagewea, introduced in 2000, have both been flops.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Paris tramway glides back to life, 70 years on

Source: Breitbart (12-15-06)

Seventy years after the last streetcar vanished from the streets of Paris, the tramway, increasingly touted as a clean, fast mass transport solution, makes its big comeback to the capital on Saturday.

Once criss-crossed by more than 120 tramway lines -- horse-drawn from 1855, then steam- and finally electric-powered -- Paris, like most major European cities, was gradually seduced away by the car and underground train, closing its last line in 1937.

Running 7.9 kilometres (4.7 miles) along an east-west route, just inside the southern rim of the capital, the new "T3" tramway replaces an overcrowded bus line and will eventually be tripled in length to encirle the whole city.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US indicts 16 ex-Bosnian Serb soldiers in immigration case

Source: Breitbart (12-15-06)

US authorities indicted 16 former soldiers in the Bosnian Serb military, including one who allegedly took part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, for hiding their past to obtain refugee status.

Indictments issued in six states by the US Justice Department accused 15 of the 16 of fraudulently immigrating into the US by lying about their background in Bosnian Serb military forces, the department said in a statement.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bangladesh marks victory day amid political strife

Source: Reuters (12-15-06)

Bangladesh celebrated the 35th anniversary of its independence on Saturday amid continuing strife ahead of parliamentary elections due next month, with rival leaders laying wreaths at a war memorial near the capital.

Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan on December 16, 1971, following a nine-month guerrilla war which cost millions of lives.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Bush Cites Body Counts as Proof of Success in Iraq

Source: NPR (audio) (12-17-06)

President Bush has resisted comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, but this week, he started citing body counts as evidence of U.S. effectiveness in Baghdad and elsewhere. That raised a comparison with a PR tactic generally discredited after Vietnam.

Posted on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 9:20 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Ties Cut With Iran Institute Over Holocaust

Source: NYT (12-16-06)

Some of the world’s leading policy institutes announced Friday that they were breaking off relations with a group within the Iranian Foreign Ministry that organized a conference on the Holocaust in Tehran featuring discredited academics and Holocaust deniers.

In a statement, the leaders of the institutes said that the ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, which had served in the past “as a mainstream Iranian interface with foreign think tanks and research institutes,” was no longer an acceptable partner.

The 34 signers of the statement included the directors of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; the Aspen Institute Berlin; the German Marshall Fund in Washington; the Geneva Center for Security Policy; the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris; the United States Studies Center in Sydney, Australia; and the Center for International Relations in Warsaw.

Posted on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 1:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Smithsonian to Offer Details on Film Deals

Source: NYT (12-16-06)

The Smithsonian Institution has agreed to develop a system to document and explain its decisions about why television and film producers are granted or denied access to its collections outside of a widely criticized contract the institution entered into with Showtime Networks.

The agreement was disclosed in a report issued Friday by the Government Accountability Office that rebuked the Smithsonian for failing to provide the public with sufficient details about the Showtime contract.

Under the deal, Showtime Networks has some exclusive rights to create documentaries using the institution’s collections for broadcast on Smithsonian on Demand, a new cable channel that will be jointly owned by the two parties.

The deal attracted harsh criticism earlier this year from some documentary filmmakers and members of Congress, who questioned whether the agreement would limit the access of independent researchers to the Smithsonian’s public archives.

The Government Accountability Office reported that the Smithsonian followed its internal contracting guidelines. But, it added, the institution was negligent in waiting more than two months after the contract came into effect to publicly disclose its existence.

[Click here to read the GAO report.]

Posted on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 1:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, December 15, 2006

Jesus Christ, Cover Star

Source: Columbia Journalism Review (12-14-06)

It's that time of year again for the newsweeklies: Christ-as-Cover-Boy time.

Jesus, of course, is as reliably evergreen a cover subject as they come -- ever-mysterious, ever-controversial -- and one that, naturally, pops up annually on newsstands around Easter and/or Christmas. With the appearance this week of two visually similar Jesus Cover Stories (Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report), we wondered: How has the Jesus Cover Story been packaged over the years? How has it changed (or not)?

Often, such covers involve a painting of a cherubic Jesus cradled in Mary's arms accompanied by a question (some variation on Who Was He?) or a nod to some book or bit of research which shows How Jesus Isn't Who You Thought He Was. Such is the case this week with Newsweek's and U.S. News' dueling Jesus covers -- which, although they feature paintings from entirely different centuries, can be hard to differentiate for a newsstand browser with no art history training.

On U.S. News' cover, reporter Jay Tolson is "In Search of the Real Jesus" -- having apparently lost track of Him sometime after March of 2004 (when Tolson wrote a cover story titled, "The Real Jesus.") While Time "Search[ed] for Jesus" on a December 1996 cover (and "Search[ed] for Mary" back in 1991), its cover has thus far been Jesus- (and Mary-) free this year (ditto the years 2000-2003). Not so Newsweek, with the current cover headline: "The World of the Nativity: How First-Century Jewish Family Values Shaped Christianity" (which reminded us a bit of Tolson's above-referenced 2004 Jesus Cover Story for U.S. News, subtitled,-"How the Jewish reformer lost his Jewish identity.")...

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 6:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historians happy Congress declines to fund Woodrow Wilson presidential library

Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (12-15-06)

The bill was introduced by Congressman Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) and supported by eleven members of the Virginia Congressional delegation. The bill sought to authorize the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to make a grant contribution of an undisclosed amount at some future undisclosed date toward the establishment of the "Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library" in Staunton, Virginia.

This legislation was never subjected to the scrutiny of a congressional hearing. It was rammed through the House in late September in an effort to enact the measure and provide federal funding for a private museum in Virginia prior to the 150th anniversary of the birth of President Woodrow Wilson on 10 December 2006. If enacted the bill would have diverted NARA funds to a private museum that has neither any significant library holdings nor any archival collection associated with President Wilson (the Wilson papers, for example, are housed at Princeton University). The measure specified that federal money would be channeled to the site by NARA to "provide interpretive and educational services that communicate the meaning of the life of Woodrow Wilson," with the proviso that "the Archivist shall have no involvement in the actual operations of the library, except at the request of the non-Federal entity responsible for the operation of the library."

National Archives insiders report strong opposition to the legislation by professional staff. According to one source, had the measure come to hearing, NARA would have opposed the bill for a variety of reasons, perhaps chief of which would be that the bill would have set a dangerous precedent in which other private presidential museums and historic sites would feel at liberty to pursue special earmarked funding for their private institutions as well. With NARA running a $10-$12 million projected shortfall in FY 2007, the agency clearly cannot afford a diversion of limited funds to such special-interest purposes. In addition, designations by small historic sites and museums claiming to be "presidential libraries" add to the already confusing miscellany of nomenclature relating to presidential libraries, thus making it that much harder for the general public to understand what is and what is not a true presidential library.

For the reasons cited above, the National Coalition for History opposed enactment of this measure and communicated that opposition to Virginia senators and key members of the Senate, including members of the Homeland Security Committee to which the bill was referred for consideration.

While the measure was not acted on in the 109th Congress, according to a spokesperson for Representative Goodlatte, the Congressman plans to reintroduce the bill and hopes to see the measure enacted early in the 110th Congress.

Readers who reside in Virginia who wish to make their voices heard on this measure are encouraged to contact their House member or senator and express your views on the proposed legislation. Member offices can be reached via the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 5:58 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Germans File WWII Claims Against Poland

Source: AP (12-15-06)

A group of Germans kicked out of Poland after World War II want restitution for lost property, arguing in a complaint that their human rights were violated when Eastern Europe's boundaries were redrawn and they were driven from their homes.

The case has put fresh strains on German-Polish ties -- a relationship still troubled by painful memories of Nazi brutalities.

The Prussian Claims Society complaint filed with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in November stems from territorial rearrangements reached after the war by the victorious Allies -- the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union -- at the 1945 Potsdam conference.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 5:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan Lawmakers OK Patriotism Bill

Source: AP (12-15-06)

A Japanese parliamentary committee approved a revised education law Thursday that would require schools to promote patriotism, part of the prime minister's efforts to distance Japan from its pacifist postwar system.

Critics have attacked the education reform as reminiscent of the pre-World War II system that encouraged children to sacrifice themselves for the emperor and nation.

The measure, a reform of Japan's 1947 education law, would call on schools to teach "love of country" and "public spirit."

Related Links

NYT: Japan Takes Steps Away From Postwar Pacifism

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 5:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war

Source: Independent (UK) (12-15-06)

The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, "at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests."

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 5:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Why has the portrayal of Jesus in art drifted far from the likelihood he was a brown-skinned Semitic Jew?

Source: Newsweek (12-9-06)

Shopping for nativity scenes? At Macy’s you have two options to choose from: "The Vatican Edition" and "The Byzantine Edition." The first comes with a set of white figurines, including a red-headed Mary, a brown-haired Joseph and a blue-eyed baby Jesus. In the second, all three are black, as are the shepherd and three wise men. Both cost $10, and more than likely, both are historically inaccurate.

While we can never be exactly sure of what Jesus, Mary and Joseph actually looked like, we know they were not fair-skinned, flaxen-haired Europeans. And, though an emerging fringe of historians would argue otherwise, it’s fairly certain they weren’t black Africans. In all likelihood, what they were was something in between: olive-skinned, dark-featured Semitic Jews living in Israel. Yet depictions of them as such are exceedingly rare compared to the countless number of images that have proliferated through the millennia portraying them as Caucasians.

Until now. With New Line Cinema’s new movie, “The Nativity Story,” we finally get what many historians agree is a more accurate representation of the Holy Family. Cast with a group of dark-haired, dark-complexioned actors whose nationalities range from Guatemalan to Australian and Irish to Israeli—those who aren’t Middle Eastern certainly look like they could be—the movie strives for physical accuracy, and in doing so may challenge some Christians’ notions of what the story’s central characters looked like: the Angel Gabriel, for one, is played by Sudanese actor Alexander Siddig, who you might have caught this time last year playing the part of an Iranian prince in “Syriana.” (Ethnically ambiguous baby Jesus gets only about a minute of screentime at the end.)

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 5:41 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Philadelphia Works to Keep 'Gross Clinic' Treasure

Source: NPR (audio) (12-14-06)

Two Philadelphia museums are scrambling to raise $68 million, enough money to keep a local art treasure from slipping away. If they fail to reach their goal by a Dec. 26 deadline, "The Gross Clinic," Thomas Eakins' 1875 masterpiece, will be sold to museums in Washington, D.C., and Arkansas.

The painting depicts doctors performing surgery on a boy's leg -- an unusual subject for art at the time. Dr. Samuel Gross, a world-famous Philadelphia surgeon, stands, lecturing to students, scalpel in his bloody, gloveless, right hand. There's more blood on his assistants and, of course, the patient.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Greece protests Louvre exhibit of Apollo statue

Source: Breitbart (12-14-06)

Greece has asked the Louvre Museum in Paris to not show a disputed 4th century BC statue of Apollo on loan from a US museum, saying it may have been illegally acquired, a culture ministry source said. "We do not want this work, attributed to the great sculptor Praxiteles, to be presented at the Louvre because doing so would legitimize" its acquisition by the Cleveland Museum in Ohio, the source told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

First Female U.S. Scoutmaster Dies at 88

Source: Salon (12-14-06)

Catherine Pollard, who became the Boy Scouts of America's first female U.S. scoutmaster after a years-long legal fight, died Wednesday. She was 88.

Pollard, who volunteered with the Scouts in Milford, died in Seminole, Fla., said Shawn Smith of Smith Funeral Home in Milford, which is handling arrangements.

Pollard ran a Milford troop from 1973 to 1975 when no men volunteered. But her application for a leadership position was denied when the Boy Scouts contended a woman was not a good role model for young boys enrolled in Scouting.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German court rejects return of art to Nazi's family

Source: Reuters (12-14-06)

A top German court rejected on Thursday restitution claims by relatives of a Nazi doctor for art confiscated by Soviet occupiers after the war in a ruling which could set a precedent for a host of similar cases.

Gustav Schuster, a gynecologist who worked in Nazi courts which ordered the sterilization of handicapped women as part of Adolf Hitler's drive to create a 'master race', had collected hundreds of paintings, graphics and etchings.

The paintings, among them a work by German impressionist Max Liebermann, reviled by the Nazis for his Jewish background, were confiscated by occupying Soviet forces in 1945. It was not clear where Schuster himself had obtained the works of art.

Relatives of Schuster, who delivered Nazi party propaganda speeches, applied for their return after German re-unification in 1990, starting a legal battle that has dragged on for several years.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 4:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Greek bishop asks Pope to return piece of Parthenon

Source: Reuters (12-14-06)

Greece's top religious leader asked Pope Benedict on Thursday to return a piece of the Parthenon in the Vatican Museums, Greek officials said.

Christodoulos, Orthodox archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, made the request during a visit when he and the Pope signed a joint declaration on issues of common concern, such as the defense of life.

According to spokesmen for Christodoulos, the Pope was a bit perplexed by the request, perhaps not knowing that the vast museums he technically owns as sovereign of Vatican City have a fragment of the 5th century BC structure.

He said he would consider the request, they said.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Russia no longer murders spies: KGB veteran

Source: Reuters (12-14-06)

[NOTE: IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR "Ronald Dworkin debates possibility of democracy" CLICK HERE.]

The head of an organization of former Russian spies was quoted as saying on Thursday Moscow abandoned its policy of assassinating enemies long ago, and that Alexander Litvinenko was probably murdered by criminals. Former KGB agent Valentin Velichko said fellow former agent Litvinenko, who died in London on November 23 from radiation poisoning, was a traitor but was not killed by Moscow.

"That was long ago. It belonged to the days of Stalin," Velichko, head of the Veterans of Foreign Intelligence, told Die Welt newspaper in an interview. Millions died under the rule of dictator Josef Stalin.

"In those days there was a special department ... which handled the liquidation of political opponents," said Velichko, who also heads the Moscow-based Russian nationalist foundation Dignity and Honor.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 4:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Neglecting history, civics, literature and the arts threatens U.S. economic competitiveness, leaders say

Source: Press Release -- Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (12-12-06)

Doubling the time that schools devote to math and reading in response to state and federal testing requirements won’t truly prepare young Americans for life in the 21st century. It probably won’t even boost reading and math scores long term, concluded a conference of policymakers, business leaders, and educators today.

At the event, hosted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and supported by the Louis Calder Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, scholars and education leaders highlighted alternatives to a hyper-narrow curriculum, including testing added subjects like history, lengthening the school day to encompass art and music, and providing stronger curricular guidance and instructional materials for teachers.

“Narrowing the K-12 curriculum isn’t just a problem that arrived with No Child Left Behind,” said Fordham president Chester E. Finn, Jr. “Since the dawn of standards-based education reform, some states and schools have reacted to pressure for better basic skills by squeezing out history, civics, literature, and the arts. This is wrong. Our kids need both to walk and chew gum and our schools must prepare them accordingly, ensuring that they’re adept in the basic skills while also acquiring a broad liberal arts education.”

Business leaders, including technology mastermind Dr. Sidney Harman; artists, including poet and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Dana Gioia; statesmen, historians, and practicing educators from around the country gathered at the Fordham symposium, Beyond The Basics: Why reading, math, and science aren’t sufficient for a 21st century education, to ponder possible remedies, including:

Increasing instructional time in U.S. classrooms. According to data newly analyzed by Kate Walsh, president of the National Council for Teacher Quality, students in some cities (e.g. Chicago) spend the equivalent of eight weeks less in school per year than their peers in other cities (e.g. New York). Such sharp differences mean less time for learning basics—and everything else.

Adding subjects to the testing docket. Brown University scholar Martin West presented research showing that, at a national level, instructional time for reading has risen dramatically while time for non-tested subjects such as history has eroded. However, states that test students in history haven’t experienced these same declines; their students spend more time studying history than in other states. UNESCO researcher Aaron Benavot also found that U.S. primary schools spend more time on reading instruction—and less on the arts—than do other OECD nations.
Equipping teachers with better instructional materials and professional development to teach a well-rounded curriculum. A range of leaders including Kati Haycock of the Education Trust, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. of the Core Knowledge Foundation, and Antonia Cortese of the American Federation of Teachers faulted states for lacking a coherent curriculum that teachers can use in class. As most state standards are too vague to be helpful, teachers crave clear expectations and powerful classroom tools.

“The narrowing of the curriculum is not an inevitable response to testing and accountability,” said education historian Diane Ravitch. “Some schools, districts, and states have done a better job ensuring a broad education for all of their students, and they deserve to be emulated. The educators in charge of schools must hew close to a vision of a good education for their students, regardless of NCLB requirements.”

In the coming months, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute will release a volume highlighting today’s discussions and conclusions.

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 2:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust Activists Weren't Draft-Dodgers, Author Admits

Source: Press Release -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (12-15-06)

The author of a recent book about President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust has admitted that he wrongly portrayed two Holocaust rescue activists as draft-dodgers.

South Carolina attorney Robert N. Rosen, author of Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust, has admitted that he was wrong to claim that Yitshaq Ben-Ami and Dr. Alexander Rafaeli, two leaders of the activist Bergson Group, "sat out the war in America, preferring to agitate for the overthrow of the British in Palestine rather than enlist and fight Nazis themselves."

Rosen's admission came in response to protests by the families of Rafaeli, Ben-Ami, and other Begson Group leaders, represented by Washington, D.C. attorney Jeffrey Weiss.

Rosen's book staunchly defends FDR's response to the Holocaust and harshly attacks those who, in the 1940s, pressed the Roosevelt administration to aid Jewish refugees. Rosen devotes a portion of the book to attacking the Bergson Group, a Jewish activist group that used rallies, newspaper ads, and lobbying Congress to try to bring about U.S. rescue of refugees from the Holocaust. One of the major points of Rosen's attack on the Bergson Group is his claim (on p.313) that the group's leaders "sat out the war in America, preferring to agitate for the overthrow of the British in Palestine rather than enlist and fight Nazis themselves."

In fact, two of the group's five leaders, Ben-Ami and Rafaeli, enlisted and fought in the U.S. Army. Ben-Ami fought in the Battle of the Bulge and elsewhere; Rafaeli fought in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Ruhr, and the liberation of Maastricht (in Holland), and served in the army's Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC). The other three Bergson Group leaders --Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), Samuel Merlin, and Eri Jabotinsky, were classified 4-F and thus exempt from military service.

The families, in requesting an apology and retraction from Rosen, pointed out that Rosen had access to accurate information about the Bergson leaders' military service, since that information appears in other books which Rosen mentions in Saving the Jews.

In correspondence with Mr. Weiss in recent weeks, Rosen acknowledged that his statement about Ben-Ami and Rafaeli was wrong, and promised that it would not appear in any future editions of the book. At the same time, however, the families expressed their strong disappointment that Rosen, instead of issuing an unambiguous public apology, claimed that his statements had been misunderstood.

The families of Ben-Ami, Rafaeli, and a third Bergson group leader, Eri Jabotinsky, issued this statement through The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies:

"Robert Rosen's error about our parents is not some minor point; it is an important part of his book's attempt to denigrate all those who challenged FDR's refusal to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. The draft-dodging charge is an attempt to undermine the credibility and integrity of the Bergson Group. In his book, Rosen smears our parents as fascists and terrorists who were supposedly disloyal to the Allied war against Hitler. This accusation is blatantly false. We are glad that his erroneous statement about Yitshaq Ben-Ami and Alexander Rafaeli will not appear in future editions of his book. We are disappointed that he refused to issue a simple, clear, public apology for smearing our parents. We are equally disappointed that the publisher of his book, Thunder's Mouth Press, has not had the decency to publicly apologize for publishing erroneous statements that harm a person's good name."

Earlier this year, fifty-five leading Holocaust scholars denounced Rosen for writing, in Saving the Jews, that criticism of President Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust is "anti-American" and "America-bashing." The scholars' protest was the subject of a recent feature story in the Washington Post. (For the full text of the petition and the list of signatories, call the Wyman Institute at 202-434-8994 or visit www.WymanInstitute.org)

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 12:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Truman's Trials Resonate for Bush

Source: WaPo (12-15-06)

He led the United States into war and saw his popularity plummet, yet some 60 years later his reputation has never been higher: It's small wonder Harry S. Truman seems to hold a special fascination for President Bush these days.

That interest came into focus recently after Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) went public with an account of a meeting last Friday in which he said the president seemed to be comparing his situation to that of Truman in the late 1940s. According to Durbin's account and another source familiar with the meeting, Bush told the gathering of congressional leaders that Truman's approach to dealing with the Cold War was not initially popular but that he was vindicated by history -- the implication being that Bush would be vindicated about Iraq as well.

White House aides later disputed this reading of Bush's comments, but the episode may offer a glimpse into the psychology of a president who, like Truman in his second term, seems beset by trouble and pressures on all sides and who is ready to look to history for some comfort and guidance.

"Everyone loves a winner, and history reflects Harry Truman was a winner," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), whose father was a longtime friend of the late president and who met Truman as a young man. "It is all familiar front-yard psychology -- associate yourself with a winner."

By many accounts, Bush is fascinated by history and biography -- he reads extensively and meets periodically with presidential scholars -- and Truman has certainly seemed to be on his mind in recent months. In his commencement address this year at West Point, Bush discussed Truman at some length, lauding his early role in structuring U.S. forces and institutions for the Cold War....

Posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 12:51 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Thursday, December 14, 2006

For Sale: 142 Acres With a Storied Past

Source: AP (12-14-06)

LOS GATOS, Calif. -- It was called Holy City, but it was not exactly a model of Christian piety. It was, rather, a commune and tourist trap created in the 1920s by a white-supremacist huckster.

Now, decades after Holy City fell into ruin, the 142-acre site is a prime piece of real estate in the hills outside booming Silicon Valley, and it is up for sale for $11 million.

"Bad, good or indifferent, there is a history here, and my hope is that somebody will take that history and spin it into a good thing for the future," said Jim E. Miller, the real estate agent who is selling Holy City for three elderly investors who have owned the property since 1966.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 4:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Spain Debates Civil War Victims' Reparations Law

Source: AP (12-14-06)

Parliament on Thursday began debating a law that seeks reparations for victims of Spain's 1936-39 Civil War and the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.

The bill, proposed by the Socialist government in July, would also ban symbols and references to the Franco regime in public buildings and asks local and regional governments to rename streets or plazas that are named after Franco or refer to his regime.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 4:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Humans Migrated Out of Africa, Then Some Went Back, Study Says

Source: National Geographic News (12-14-06)

Humans first moved out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, but 30,000 years later some of them moved back.

That's according to a new study based on DNA evidence from ancient human remains found in Africa. The findings are reported in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

What the sudden mania for anniversaries says about the computer industry

Source: Economist (12-13-06)

THE iPod is five years old this autumn. It already has its own biography*, by the journalist Steven Levy, who considers the gizmo an icon of modern times. Its birthday generated glowing tributes in newspapers from India to Egypt to Brunei. And this is just one of the many anniversaries that the computer industry has seen fit to celebrate this year.

Last month the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California hosted a symposium commemorating the 35th anniversary of Intel's 4004 microprocessor, which revolutionised computing by combining disparate functions into a single chip and was Intel's first step towards becoming the world's biggest chipmaker. Other notable dates this year include the 25th birthday of the IBM personal computer, the 50th anniversary of the first hard-disk drive and the 60th anniversary of the first general-purpose digital electronic computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), which weighed 27 tonnes and contained over 19,000 vacuum tubes. Never before has the computer industry seemed so preoccupied by such historical milestones.

“History”, said Cicero, “illuminates reality, vitalises memory, provides guidance in daily life.” By that measure, there is a lot of illumination and guidance going on in Silicon Valley. Any excuse to celebrate an anniversary is seized upon and milked for all it is worth. Why?

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Rumsfeld Career Ending in Ignominy of Iraq

Source: Guardian (12-14-06)

History seems to be in a hurry to judge Donald H. Rumsfeld.

And despite his half century in public service, a defense secretary who served three presidents and oversaw two wars is being sized up not by the long reach of his career but by its ending - the body slam of Iraq.

With an eye on his legacy, Rumsfeld asked to be judged by the extraordinary nature of today's threat, like none that has come before.

``There's no road map, no guidebook,'' he said. ``The hope has to be - not perfection - but that most decisions, with the perspective of time, will turn out to be the right ones and that the perspective of history will judge the overwhelming majority of those decisions favorably.''

In the early going, the assessment is harsh.

Ex-generals asserted he was a failure months before his continued service became untenable, an extraordinary airing of protest. Then came a clamor from Democrats and some Republicans for President Bush to show the door to a man who leaves the Pentagon on Monday after nearly six years on the job....

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monet letters sell for $1.7 million

Source: AP (12-13-06)

A collection of about 1,000 letters to French impressionist painter Claude Monet from his friends and admirers fetched more than $1 million at an auction Wednesday, Artcurial auction house said.

The letters sold for $1.7 million — more than double the estimated price.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

3,246-year-old Hittite dam revives farming in Turkish village

Source: AFP at Yahoo News (12-13-06)

In this central Turkish village, peasants and archaeologists celebrate a unique achievement -- a 3,246-year-old dam, once buried under mud and slime, is back in service to irrigate farmlands.

The dam is a heritage of the Hittites, who ruled over vast areas of the Middle East from 2000 to 1000 BC, fought Pharaoh Rameses The Great, among others, and built some of the biggest cities of the time in the heart of Anatolia, the Asian part of modern Turkey.

The 2,500 inhabitants of Alacahoyuk know the Hittites well: since the early 20th century, archaeologists have been digging the remains of a royal city at the entrance of their village about 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of Ankara.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Olmert Asks Pope to Protest Holocaust Denials

Source: AP (12-13-06)

Israel's prime minister asked Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday to urge Christians to protest Holocaust denials, Israeli government officials said.

During their meeting at the Vatican, Benedict told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert he would consider the request, which followed an Iranian conference questioning the Nazi genocide against the Jews.

Benedict met with Olmert alone for 35 minutes, longer than the 10 minutes expected, and praised Israel's restraint in Gaza, Israeli spokesman Jacob Galanti said. In response to an invitation from Olmert, Benedict said he wants to visit Israel "when things calm down," the Israeli officials said.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

CUNY Chief Orders Names of '70s Fugitives Stripped From Student Center

Source: NYT (12-13-06)

The chancellor of the City University of New York yesterday directed the president of City College to remove the names of two fugitives linked to violent crimes from the entrance to a student clubroom.

Matthew Goldstein, the chancellor, called the designation of the room as the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center “unauthorized and inappropriate.”

Ms. Shakur — once known as Joanne Chesimard — was a member of the Black Liberation Army convicted in the 1973 killing of a New Jersey state trooper. She is currently a federal fugitive living in Cuba. Mr. Morales, also in Cuba, was a leader of the Puerto Rican independence group known as the F.A.L.N., which claimed responsibility for a tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan that killed four people and injured others. Both were students at City College.

Students at the center yesterday said the names had been posted there for 17 years, since a student group won the right to use the lounge in the aftermath of a campus shutdown over proposed tuition increases in 1989.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pinochet Death Renews Calls for CIA Files

Source: Salon (12-13-06)

The blast rocked Washington's Embassy Row on Sept. 21, 1976, ripping through the car of one of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's most outspoken critics.

The assassination of Orlando Letelier and his American assistant two miles from the White House prompted demands for explanations and helped expose what President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a series of CIA officials tried for years to conceal: U.S support for a military dictatorship that was killing thousands of its own citizens.

In the wake of the former leader's Sunday death, officials at the think tank where Letelier and Ronni Moffitt worked said they are sending U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a letter asking for the release of the remaining information.

In 1998, the Clinton administration declassified more than 16,000 documents related to Chile, but withheld documents on the Letelier bombing, citing an ongoing investigation.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China to Add Shrine Visits in Memorial

Source: Salon (12-13-06)

A memorial marking the slaughter of Chinese citizens of Nanjing by Japanese troops will soon include exhibits showing visits by Japanese politicians to a Tokyo shrine that honors war dead, state media reported Wednesday.

The visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted Japanese war criminals are honored, have become a sticking point in relations between Beijing and Tokyo.

Lu Yunfei, Web master for the Patriots League, a nationalist Web site, called the planned exhibition "a silent protest and strong condemnation of the Japanese government."

Repeated trips to the shrine by former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi severely strained ties, but relations have improved since Shinzo Abe succeeded him in September.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

School sued for barring yearbook picture of student with medieval sword

Source: Breitbart (12-13-06)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - The mother of a high school senior who posed in chain mail with a medieval sword for his yearbook picture has sued after the school rejected the photo because of its "zero tolerance" policy against weapons.

Patrick Agin, 17, belongs to the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international organization that researches and recreates medieval history. He submitted the photo in September for the Portsmouth High School yearbook.

But the school's principal refused to allow the portrait as Agin's official yearbook photo because he said it violated a policy against weapons and violence in schools, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by the Rhode Island branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US needed 'Iraqi De Gaulle' for invasion: Perle

Source: Breitbart (12-13-06)

Top US neoconservative Richard Perle, a key former architect of US President George W. Bush's foreign policy, has admitted there were mistakes in the execution of the Iraq war, saying the invasion had needed "an Iraqi De Gaulle." Perle, who was an advisor to former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, told German weekly broadsheet Die Zeit in an issue to be published Thursday that a string of tactical errors had resulted in the chaos reigning in Iraq today.

"The idea was good, the execution was bad," he was quoted as saying in an advance German transcript of the interview.

"We should have agreed on a post-war Iraqi leadership" but were thwarted by opposition at the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, Perle said.

"We should have marched into Baghdad with an Iraqi De Gaulle," he said.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:25 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Pinochet grandson to be punished for funeral speech

Source: Reuters (12-13-06)

The Chilean army will punish Augusto Pinochet's grandson for criticizing the judiciary at his grandfather's funeral, the army said in a statement on Wednesday.

Pinochet's grandson, also called Augusto, was roundly criticized for his funeral speech on Tuesday, in which he praised Pinochet for overthrowing the socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973, and attacked prosecutors who tried to bring the ex-dictator to trial for human rights abuses.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bosnian Serb gets 24 years in jail for war crimes

Source: Reuters (12-13-06)

The appeals chamber of Bosnia's war crimes court on Wednesday sentenced Bosnian Serb Nedjo Samardzic to 24 years in jail after his original sentence of 13 years and four month was overturned.

Samardzic had been sentenced in April for abetting and aiding persecution, rape and torture of Muslims in an eastern Bosnian town early in the 1992-95 war but the appeals chamber then ordered a re-trail because of procedural errors.

In Wednesday's verdict, the chamber said Samardzic took part in persecution of Muslim population, forced sexual slavery, rape and other crimes against humanity in the town of Foca.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Russia criticizes Iran for Holocaust conference

Source: AP (12-13-06)

Russia's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday criticized Iran for hosting a conference of Holocaust deniers, saying Moscow opposed "the concealment of the truth about the monstrous crimes of the Nazis."

In a statement posted on the ministry's Web site, spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said Russia had condemned Tehran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the past for threatening Israel and denying the systematic killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II.

Russia opposes "the distortion of historic events, the concealment of the truth about the monstrous crimes of the Nazis, and revision of results of humanity's most difficult struggle against Nazism," he said.

"Russia shares the determination of the UN general assembly not to allow the denial of the Holocaust."

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In Scotland, a revival of Gaelic

Source: International Herald Tribune (12-8-06)

Scotland's first contemporary feature film in Gaelic is in post-production. The BBC has begun broadcasting live sports coverage in Gaelic. A Gaelic-only high school has opened in Glasgow. A leading Scottish politician is seeking, via Brussels, to ensure Gaelic's place as a European language.

Currently spoken by fewer than 2 percent in Scotland, Gaelic is enjoying a revival here that has blossomed since the country held elections in 1999 to create a Scottish Parliament for the first time in almost 300 years.

Last year, the Parliament passed a Gaelic Language Act that recognized Gaelic as an official language of Scotland and granted it equal respect with English. In August, the Parliament introduced a National Plan for Gaelic under which public bodies are obliged to offer provisions for Gaelic speakers.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gerhard Schröder, in memoir, goes on the offensiv

Source: International Herald Tribune (12-8-06)

The kindest thing one can say about Gerhard Schröder's return to private life last year is that it was not as unseemly as that of his predecessor as German chancellor, Helmut Kohl.

Kohl admitted to taking illegal cash payments, which shredded his reputation. Schröder, 62, took a job as chairman of a Russian-German pipeline venture and was roundly condemned by critics who said he had championed the pipeline while in office and was improperly cashing inon his friendship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Now Schröder is back in the news, and on the offensive, with a memoir in which he defends Putin, the pipeline deal and many other things he did in his seven years as chancellor.

The book, "Decisions: My Life in Politics," has been a best seller here since it was published in October and was lavishly excerpted in Der Spiegel, suggesting that Germans have a soft spot for, or at least a residual fascination with, their canny former leader.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Life-size sketch of Michelangelo's St. Peter's uncovered

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-13-06)

Archaeologists digging to reach the tomb of St Paul have stumbled across a life-size "sketch" of the dome of St Peter's produced by one of its architects in the 16th century.

The excavation of St Paul's tomb at the church of St Paul's Outside-the-Walls in Rome is now complete, and the sarcophagus will be on view from the beginning of next year.

However, three feet below the floor of the enormous church, which is the second-largest in the city, the project's team came across a surprise from the Renaissance.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hume, Borger, Cavuto falsely reported Sen. Johnson would be replaced if "incapacitated"

Source: Media Matters (12-14-06)

Fox News Washington bureau managing editor Brit Hume, CBS national political correspondent Gloria Borger, and Fox News host Neil Cavuto reported that if Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who was hospitalized on December 13 with intracerebral bleeding and underwent brain surgery, were "incapacitated" or "unable to serve in any way," or his condition were to "worsen," then South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds (R) would appoint a replacement to take Johnson's seat until the 2008 general election. In fact, the U.S. Constitution states that the governor may appoint a replacement senator only if Johnson's seat becomes vacant and, in contrast with provisions concerning the presidency, includes no provision allowing officials to declare that a senator is incapable of serving. Indeed, several senators have remained in office despite significant infirmities.

The 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct." The Constitution does not address the ability of a Senator to carry out his or her duties. In contrast, the 25th Amendment deals specifically with "Presidential Disability" and provides a mechanism for people other than the president to determine that the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and appoint a replacement without the president's permission.

South Dakota state law echoes the 17th Amendment: "Pursuant to the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, the Governor may fill by temporary appointment, until a special election is held pursuant to this chapter, vacancies in the office of senator in the Senate of the United States."

As USA Today reported on December 14, there exists no legal precedent for declaring a senator unable to serve, and senators have continued to serve in spite of infirmities:

Political scientist David Brady of Stanford University's Hoover Institution said history is filled with examples of lawmakers remaining in office no matter how severe their disabilities. Brady recalled Sen. Clair Engle of California [D], unable to speak because of a brain tumor, casting an "aye" vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act by pointing to his eye.

More recently, 100-year-old Strom Thurmond [R] completed his last term as a South Carolina senator while living at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

There is no legal provision for declaring a member of Congress too infirm to serve, Brady said.

"The Constitution also does not provide an effective way for filling temporary vacancies that occur when members are incapacitated," said a May 2003 report by a government panel convened to determine how Congress would continue in the wake of a terrorist attack.

MSNBC.com offered other "examples of a senator being incapacitated for years and remaining in office":

Most recently, Sen. Karl Mundt [R] (coincidentally, also from South Dakota) suffered a stroke in 1969 and was incapacitated, but he refused to step down. He remained in office until January 1973, when his term expired. Mundt was pressured repeatedly to step down during his illness, but he demanded that the governor promise to appoint his wife. The governor refused, and Mundt remained in office.

Another example was Sen. Carter Glass, D-Va. Glass had a heart condition that prevented him from working for most of his last term after his re-election in 1942. Yet Glass refused to resign, and finally died of congestive heart failure in May 1946, in his apartment at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 2:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Newsday profiles Donny George

Source: Newsday (12-14-06)

The tipping point for Donny George came the day last summer his sister found a letter with a bullet in it in the driveway of their mother's home in Baghdad.

George, an antiquities expert recently recruited for the faculty of Stony Brook University, said the letter threatened to kidnap and behead his son Martin, 17, for allegedly "cursing Islam and teasing Muslim girls," unless he apologized and paid a $1,000 fine.

"The letter also mentioned his father was working with the Americans," said George.

George already was disenchanted with what he said was his diminishing authority as director general of the National Museum in Baghdad and president of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, so he decided it was time to leave. He retired in August from his positions, and he and his family fled to Damascus, Syria.

George, 56, accompanied by his wife, Najat Daniel Sarkees and Martin, his youngest son, has now settled in Port Jefferson Station. He will shortly assume his duties as a visiting professor at Stony Brook.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 2:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Poli Sci Professor’s Attendance at Teheran Holocaust Denial Conference Stuns Canada

Source: Inside Higher Ed (12-14-06)

The president of a Canadian university on Wednesday condemned the “conference” on the Holocaust held in Iran this week — amid shock at his institution and elsewhere in Canada at the news that one of his professors had presented a paper there.

“I express my shock and regret that the name of St. Francis Xavier University has been associated with the recent ‘conference’ in Tehran due to the presence of a member of university faculty,” said the statement from Sean Riley, president of the institution, in Nova Scotia. “The gathering, in its origins and focus, contained elements that are deeply abhorrent to the St. Francis Xavier University community and the traditions of our 153 years of history. Given previous statements and actions from key personalities in Iranian authority, and given the focus on the subject of the Holocaust and the well-known positions of many participants, it is no surprise that the conference revealed unmistakable and deplorable anti-Semitism.”

Shiraz Dossa, a professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier, confirmed his attendance to The Globe and Mail and told that newspaper that he was surprised to find that the conference attracted Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, among others. Dossa’s attendance has been criticized by Canadian Jewish leaders, among others, who have noted that statements from Iranian leaders questioning the reality of the Holocaust have been widely publicized, as has their desire to use the conference to legitimize such views.

In the interview with the Globe and Mail, Dossa said that he did not doubt the Holocaust and said that he had not been pressured to alter his views. He said his paper was about the abuse of imagery of the Holocaust....

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 2:39 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Deep Roots of Denial for Iran’s True Believer (Holocaust Denial)

Source: NYT (12-14-06)

Iran’s so-called Holocaust conference this week was billed as a chance to force the West to reconsider the historical record and, thereby, the legitimacy of Israel. But why would the Iranians invite speakers with so little credibility in the West, including a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and disgraced European scholars?

That question misses the point. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, portrays participants like David Duke, the former Louisiana Klan leader, and Robert Faurisson of France, who has devoted his life to trying to prove that the Nazi gas chambers were a myth, as silenced truth-tellers whose stories expose Western leaders as the hypocrites he considers them to be.

Just as Soviet leaders used to invite Americans who suffered racial or political discrimination to Moscow to embarrass Washington, Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to enjoy pointing out that countries like Germany, France and Austria claim to champion free debate yet have made Holocaust denial illegal.

He has also repeatedly tried to draw a moral equivalency between questioning the Holocaust and the decision in Europe last year to publish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. It wins him favor at home and across the Arab world for standing up to the West and allows him to present himself as morally superior to the West.

But there is another important point. Mr. Ahmadinejad actually seems to believe that the volumes of documentation, testimony and living memory of the Nazi genocide are at best exaggerated and part of a Zionist conspiracy to falsify history so as to create the case for Israel. As a former member of the Revolutionary Guards, he was indoctrinated with such thinking, a political analyst in Tehran said, and as a radical student leader, he championed such a view.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 2:02 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Black History Trove, a Life’s Work, Seeks Museum

Source: NYT (12-14-06)

Behind the dusty stools and the old towels, under the broken telephones and the picture frames, amid the spider webs, sits one of the country’s most important collections of artifacts devoted to the history of African-Americans.

Painstakingly collected over a lifetime by Mayme Agnew Clayton — a retired university librarian who died in October at 83 and whose interest in African-American history consumed her for most of her adult life — the massive collection of books, films, documents and other precious pieces of America’s past has remained essentially hidden for decades, most of it piled from floor to ceiling in a ramshackle garage behind Ms. Clayton’s home in the West Adams district of Los Angeles.

Only now is her son Avery Clayton close to forming a museum and research institute that would bring her collection out of the garage and into public view. Just days before Ms. Clayton died, he rented a former courthouse in nearby Culver City for $1 a year to become the treasures’ home, leaving him to scrape together $565,000 to move the thousands of items and put them on display for the first year.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

When senators are struck down by illness

Source: NYT (12-14-06)

Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, was in intensive care today after undergoing surgery late Wednesday night for a brain hemorrhage, a development that highlighted the fragility of the Democrats’ new majority in the Senate.... [HNN: If he dies or resigns, he would be replaced by the Republican governor. The new senator would remain in place until Johnson's term is up in 2008.]

According to information from the Senate historian cited on CQ.com, at least nine senators have taken extended absences from the Senate for health reasons since 1942. Robert F. Wagner, Democrat of New York, was unable to attend any sessions of the 80th or 81st Congress from 1947 to 1949 because of a heart ailment. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, missed about seven months in 1988 after surgery for a brain aneurysm. And David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, suffered a heart attack in April 1991 and returned to the Senate in September that year.

[HNN: In 1969 South Dakota Sen. Karl Mundt (R) suffered an incapacitating stroke. He continued to hold the office until the end of his term in 1973.]

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 1:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Kofi Annan cites Truman in speech chiding US on unilateralism

Source: NYT (12-12-06)

Kofi Annan, the departing secretary general of the United Nations, challenged the Bush administration yesterday to shun go-it-alone diplomacy and remain committed to observing human rights as it acts to forestall terrorism.

In a speech delivered at the Truman Presidential Museum and Library in Independence, Mo., billed as his last address to an American audience as secretary general, Mr. Annan said, “You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less than 60 years ago?”

Mr. Annan did not directly cite the Bush administration, with which he has had a fraught relationship, but he made his rebuke of current American foreign policy clear by urging a return to “far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition.”...

He reminded his audience that Mr. Truman had once said, “We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please.”

Mr. Annan also cited President Truman’s statement that “the responsibility of great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world,” and noted approvingly how Mr. Truman had used American power to face down a threat to international order during his administration.

“He believed strongly that henceforth security must be collective and indivisible,” Mr. Annan said. “That was why, for instance, that he insisted, when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations and placing U.S. troops under the U.N. flag, at the head of a multinational force.”

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 10:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

One of America’s unresolved civil rights cases has some calling for a renewed investigation.

Source: http://www.columbiatribune.com (12-10-06)

LIVE OAK, Fla. ... It is here, just where the water puddles and the sky opens, that Willie James Howard, perhaps the one black boy in town whom everybody believed had a shot at something good, was taken. Just 15, he was dragged from his home at gunpoint, hogtied and forced into the river on Jan. 2, 1944, by three white men for the cultural offense of having a crush on one of their daughters.

He was never seen alive again. But was he never forgotten in the black community, his death affecting the people of Live Oak in sometimes unexpected ways.

“We need what really happened to come out. Everybody needs to know the truth,” said Beasley, a former councilman who was elected as the first black to serve on the council since Reconstruction.

To appreciate the legacy of Willie James is to understand how three men — a cousin of the dead boy, a funeral director and a Miami historian — men without much in common beyond a deep sense of loss, have come to demand justice.

Eleven years before Emmett Till was lynched for whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, an atrocity that helped launch the civil rights movement, the Willie James Howard story became a cautionary tale about what happens when blacks cross the line. Under the patina of good race relations, progress and Southern hospitality, the story, in all its layers, still resonates in this sawmill town.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 9:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Why are Jews at the 'Holocaust denial' conference?

Source: BBC (12-12-06)

Why are Jews attending a conference on the Holocaust in Tehran at which star guests include deniers of the genocide? Clue: they also want an end to the Israeli state.
A handful of Orthodox Jews have attended Iran's controversial conference questioning the Nazi genocide of the Jews - not because they deny the Holocaust but because they object to using it as justification for the existence of Israel.

With their distinctive hats, beards and side locks, these men may, to the untrained eye, look like any other Orthodox believers in Jerusalem or New York. But the Jews who went to Tehran are different.

Some of them belong to Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City), a group of a few thousand people which views Zionism - the movement to establish a Jewish national home or state in what was Palestine - as a "poison" threatening "true Jews".

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 9:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Civil Rights history captured online

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/ (12-5-06)

Over the last 50 years, civil rights litigation has spurred dramatic changes in American life, affecting hiring, housing, voting, education, law enforcement and the justice system itself.

The litigation has produced countless reams of important documents, which are difficult and time-consuming to find and search through. To remedy the problem — and preserve a critical part of our nation's history — a team of professors and students at the Washington University School of Law has created a free electronic library that opened to the public for the first time last month. The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, the brainchild of law professor Margo Schlanger, houses thousands of documents including settlements, court orders, opinions, case study research, key filings and other papers related to more than 1,000 civil rights cases. It can be accessed at clearinghouse.wustl.edu.

The clearinghouse is impressive. Cases in the collection address issues as wide-ranging as immigration, policing, child welfare, disability rights, election and voting rights, jail and prison conditions, juvenile institutions, nursing homes, mental health facilities and school desegregation. The documents are of particular interest to historians, sociologists, judges, students, lawyers, policymakers and journalists.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 8:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

University clarifies position on Nathan Bedford Forrest

Source: Letter to the editor of the Murfreesboro Post (TN) (12-12-06)

Much has been written about the appropriateness of the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest on the Military Science Building on the campus of MTSU. I would like to clarify one or two points and elaborate on what the university’s position is on this issue.

The university annually receives numerous resolutions from the Student Government Association. While non-binding on the university, these resolutions are an expression of the sense of the Student Government Association and the students represented by that body. The administration values these resolutions and takes seriously its responsibility to review them. The university also reserves the right to take action, or to take no action, based upon the administration’s best understanding of state law, Tennessee Board of Regents policy and university policy.

The university has never taken a position on the appropriateness of the name Nathan Bedford Forrest and whether it should remain on the building in question. The building in question houses the Military Science Department and was named to honor the military accomplishments of Forrest. The original program for the naming of the building said, in part, “It is appropriate that the instructional unit devoted to military science and tactics be named in honor of the intrepid Confederate cavalry leader who won fame with his brilliant raids.” In every military conflict there are great generals who accomplish great things, but who are not necessarily great men. The original resolution by the SGA has been rescinded, which means there is no pending request for action.

When the matter first became an item of public discussion, it was my recommendation to President McPhee that we view this as an opportunity for a public airing of the issues. We have argued that issues being raised on both sides have legitimacy and are matters for open discussion. A university is supposed to be a “Marketplace of Ideas,” where competing notions can be considered through rational discourse. We believe that the best response to a situation like this is to provide a forum through which accurate information can be disseminated and opposing views heard.

As a result of the primary arguments voiced in a variety of forums, a group of faculty, staff and students has identified three basic issues for our initial discussions. Those issues include, but are not limited to: (1) the history of how the name and image of Nathan Bedford Forrest has been used on campus; (2) the development of the Ku Klux Klan and Forrest’s involvement with the organization; and (3) a discussion of the battle of Fort Pillow. I believe we will also want to discuss the wisdom of changing names of public buildings based upon current politics.

We expect to engage recognized scholars from across the South for these discussions. We expect these forums to be open to both the university and local communities. We will identify places in the community where we can host these discussions in order to make them more accessible. Because we expect that new issues for discussion will be identified throughout this process, these forums may extend over several semesters. They will be widely announced and publicized.

As we work to develop these discussions, we will appreciate the patience of everyone on both sides of the issues. While we know this may not be the resolution for which either side was hoping, we believe it is a good university response. You are always welcome to share your thoughts and opinions. My office will act as a conduit throughout this process. You may contact me at 898-2440 or at rglenn@mtsu.edu.

Robert K. Glenn, Ph. D.
Vice President for Student Affairs and
Vice Provost for Enrollment Management
Middle Tennessee State University

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 8:01 PM | Comments (1) | Top

So you want to be the next President? Then get writing

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-12-06)

Most will end up in piles of remaindered copies or lie unread in the rooms of students. As literature, they have few redeeming qualities, while their relationship to reality is often questioned, as is their true authorship.

But the presidential candidate's book has become as much part of the race for the White House as the wooing of wealthy donors in Manhattan, trudging through the snows of New Hampshire and endless stump speeches in Iowa.

With the 2008 election arguably the most open contest since 1928 – the last time no sitting president or vice-president ran for their party's nomination – a record number of turgid tomes are on offer.

Today sees the re-release of Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village, 10 years after it was published when she was First Lady. Among its insights is that "our village has changed over the last decade" in ways ranging from "the impact of the internet to new research in early child development".

Al Gore is due to publish The Assault on Reason, billed as an examination of how "the public arena has grown more hostile to reason", while Senator John McCain is working on Hard Call, his fifth book, which will explore historic decisions in politics, history and science.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A Dead Indian Language Is Brought Back to Life (Virginia)

Source: WaPo (12-12-06)

MATTAPONI INDIAN RESERVATION, Va. -- "Muh-shay-wah-NUH-toe. Chess-kay-dah-KAY-wak."

In his house overlooking the silvery Mattaponi River, Ken Custalow said the words over and over until it drove his wife crazy. Until she yelled from the next room: Have you memorized that thing yet?

Custalow, 70, a member of the Mattaponi tribe, was preparing to give a blessing at a powwow for Virginia Indians in England, part of the events commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Colony. He was nervous. He would be speaking -- and some of the audience would be hearing -- his native language for the first time.

Muh-shay-wah-NUH-toe, he began the salutation. "Great Spirit . . ." Then: Chess-kay-dah-KAY-wak. "All nations . . ."

The words came from a language that once dominated coastal Virginia, including part of what is now suburban Washington. Pocahontas spoke it. Tongue-tied colonists littered our maps with mispronunciations of it: Potomac, Anacostia, Chesapeake. Then, sometime around 1800, it died out.

But now, in a story with starring roles for a university linguist, sloppy 17th-century scribes and a perfectionist Hollywood director making a movie about Jamestown, the language that scholars call Virginia Algonquian has come back from the dead.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The world into which Jesus was born and raised has shaped morals for two millennia. How Jewish mores became Christianity's customs

Source: Newsweek (12-18-06)

Sometime around the beginning of the Common Era, a nice Jewish girl comes to her fiancé with a problem. She is pregnant; he is not the father. The groom-to-be is understandably enraged. In his world, almost nothing brings more shame on a man and his family than a broken promise of virginity. Her explanation, that the baby was conceived by God, must have sounded implausible, desperate, even insane. On reflection, though, the man, who is profoundly decent—"righteous," as the story goes—decides that he cannot bear to inflict upon the girl the rare (but wholly legal) punishment for such crimes, which is stoning. And so he resolves to handle the matter in his own way. He will "divorce her quietly."

If the story ended there, it would be an ordinary drama about a family in crisis, one familiar in many times and many places. But this story was only beginning. The righteous man, Joseph, goes to sleep and receives a visit from an angel. "Joseph, son of David," the angel says, "do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins." Like all good Jews who had received visits from God or angels before him—Abraham, Moses—Joseph does as he is told. The baby is born in Bethlehem; his human parents name him Jesus.

As the world's 2 billion Christians prepare to commemorate the birth of the figure they believe to be the Son of God, it is important to note that Christianity's origins lie more in the image of the empty tomb on the Sunday after the crucifixion than they do at the crèche. It was their fervent belief in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that convinced his followers he was, as Peter put it, "the Christ, the son of the living God" who had told them of a new way of salvation: that he would die and rise again, thus effecting the forgiveness of sins and offering a portal to eternal life.

But whatever one's personal beliefs, no student of religion or culture should overlook the significance of the world of the Nativity, for the milieu into which Jesus was born—and in which he was raised—has fundamentally shaped the manners and morals of the ensuing two millennia. The Jewish family values that were prevalent in first-century Judea—the values of Mary and Joseph and of the young Jesus—became the values of Christianity, and of the regions of the world in which Christianity has long been a critical force.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Doubt Is Cast on Tuskegee Air Group’s Perfect Record

Source: NYT (12-12-06)

It has been part of the lore of America’s first black fighter pilots since the end of World War II: the famed Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber to enemy fire.

Now, more than 60 years later, a leader of the group says he has uncovered records proving the claim is not accurate.

Air Force records show that at least a few bombers escorted by the red-tailed fighters of the Tuskegee Airmen were shot down by enemy planes, the man, William F. Holton, historian of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. And the group’s losses may have been much greater, Mr. Holton said.

He said his research, first reported on Sunday by The Montgomery Advertiser, showed that though the group’s record was stellar, it was not perfect, as long believed.

Some surviving members of the group are offended by the findings of Mr. Holton and Daniel Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base here, who came to the same conclusion.

A former Tuskegee airman, Carrol Woods of Montgomery, called their claims outrageous.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust Conference in Iran Provokes Outrage

Source: NYT (12-12-06)

A gathering in Iran billed as a conference to “debate” the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews continued on its second day to spark outrage in the West, drawing fierce criticism today from European leaders, the Vatican and the White House.

The hail of criticism came as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told participants of the conference in Tehran today that a committee should be set up to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred. Among the more than 60 participants in the conference was the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who asserted today that Israel feared an inquiry into the Holocaust more than it did the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons.

The Vatican today called the Holocaust an “immense tragedy” for all humanity, and it issued a statement that there was no doubt that the Holocaust took place and that it must serve as a warning for people to respect the rights of others. The statement used the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, Shoah, and expressed “great compassion” for what happened to the Jews during World War II, according to Agence France-Presse.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:38 PM | Comments (1) | Top

New Book Publishes Key Documents on 25th Anniversary of Crackdown on Solidarity

Source: National Security Archive (12-11-06)

Twenty-five years after Polish authorities, on December 13, 1981, declared martial law and cracked down on the Solidarity movement, the Washington DC-based, non-governmental National Security Archive is publishing, through Central European University Press, a collection of previously secret documentation entitled "From Solidarity to Martial Law," edited by Andrzej Paczkowski and Malcolm Byrne. The documents from inside Solidarity, the Polish leadership, the Kremlin as well as the White House and CIA provide a vivid new perspective on one of the most dramatic episodes in the Cold War.

Among many important details, the new collection shows that although a crackdown of some kind against the union had long been feared and anticipated (ever since Solidarity's founding in August 1980), it nonetheless took most observers outside of Poland, especially the United States, by surprise. U.S. officials also misread the Polish leadership, concluding earlier in 1981 that they would use martial law only as a way to "maximize deterrence" against Moscow, whereas internal Polish and Soviet records make clear that Poland's leaders were intent on reasserting control over society, a goal they fully shared with the Kremlin.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Re-opening of the Iraq National Library and Archive

Source: Jeff Spurr in the IraqCrisis newsletter (12-12-06)

The latest news from Dr. Saad Eskander, Director-General of the Iraq National Library and Archive, is that he and the department heads have met. Despite the fact that the security situation is not one whit better than it has been of late, they have decided to re-open their institution. Dr. Eskander has divided the librarians and archivists into two groups; each group will work a three-day week, permitting access throughout the week. As he put it in an e-mail communication, "We all felt that it was vital to serve our people regardless of the security situation." Given that all citizens of Baghdad--and other places in Iraq--face many challenges simply trying to make their way, day to day, our Iraqi colleagues deserve sympathy, admiration, and honor for risking their lives in service of their institution and the commonweal.

Jeffrey B. Spurr
Islamic and Middle East Specialist
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
Fine Arts Library, Harvard University

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 7:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

British vicar bars Father Christmas from carol service

Source: Breitbart (12-12-06)

A British vicar banned a man dressed as Father Christmas from a carol service at his church, he said. Reverend Tim Storey said he told Henry Cuff, a member of volunteer group the Lions Club, to disrobe because he wanted to "reclaim the Christian story of the birth of Jesus Christ as being the heart of the celebration".

"I do not believe that Father Christmas should be part of church services any more than Santa's grotto should have a manger and a baby Jesus present," Storey said in a statement.

But Cuff labelled the move "political correctness gone mad."

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 5:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study Shows What Helped During 1918 Flu

Source: AP (12-11-06)

Government health officials tried to build their case for school closings and similar steps during a flu pandemic by showcasing new research Monday that suggests such measures seemed to work during the deadly Spanish flu of 1918. Researchers found that cities like St. Louis, which instituted "social distancing" at least two weeks before flu cases peaked in their communities, had flu-related death rates less than half that of Philadelphia, which didn't act until later.

The whirlwind historical research project _ which started in August _ involves a team of researchers from the University of Michigan and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who combed through health records, newspaper clippings and other documents from 45 cities.

"This is a Manhattan Project of history," said Michigan's Dr. Howard Markel, one of the lead researchers, in a presentation at a pandemic flu planning meeting of health officials in Atlanta.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 5:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Key hominid South African fossil emerges from the shadows

Source: Breitbart (12-12-06)

After being ensconced for millions of years in the heart of a South African cave, the most complete hominid fossil found to date is finally seeing the light of day ... or almost. A cast of Little Foot, a fossil with both ape-like and human features, was unveiled last week at an interactive museum at Maropeng, near the Sterkfontein caves where it was found, effectively bringing it closer to an eager public.

Another cast will be displayed at New York's natural history museum and a third is already there for all to see at the Sterkfontein caves.

Little Foot generated huge excitement when it was found in the 1990s at the Sterkfontein caves north of Johannesburg as it was first dated to between 3.0 and 3.5 million-years-old.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Police stumped as Lenin goes missing in Latvia

Source: Breitbart (12-12-06)

Officials in central Latvia said they were stumped by the theft of a 300-kilogram (660-pound) bust of Lenin from in front of a museum in the town of Rujiena. The headless torso of the first leader of Soviet Russia, which had been displayed outside the museum since 1998, disappeared one night late last week. The head had been detached by hooligans in an earlier incident and was kept inside the museum.

"We have no tangible leads as to what happened," Normunds Sulcs of the Rujiena police told AFP.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 4:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Antarctic hut eerily intact after nearly a century

Source: Reuters (12-12-06)

CAPE EVANS, Antarctica (Reuters) - A neat stack of seal meat sits in an enclosed porch, tins of cocoa and cabbage are piled on shelves inside, and all seems ready for Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton to take shelter.

Of course they won't: their kind of exploration of the southern continent ended nearly a century ago. But this remote, snow-shrouded shelter hut appears eerily intact.

Prefabricated in New Zealand in 1910, transported by ship and reassembled on a spit of land on McMurdo Sound in January 1911, the hut was built for the final expedition led by Britain's Scott, whose ill-fated race to reach the South Pole has become the stuff of legend....

Now accessible only with permission and a key, the hut was restored as a shrine to Scott and his men in 1960.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sheet music of all Mozart's works online for his 250th anniversary

Source: Breitbart (12-12-06)

Sheet music of all of Mozart's works is now available online for free, following an initiative by Salzburg's International Foundation Mozarteum in honour of the 250th anniversary of his birth. "With over 400,000 hits on the website in the first 12 hours, one can say demand surpassed our expectations," Mirjam Nellman, spokeswoman for the foundation, based in Mozart's birthplace of Salzburg, told AFP Tuesday.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 4:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ethiopian ex-dictator Mengistu convicted of genocide

Source: Breitbart (12-12-06)

An Ethiopian court has convicted former dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam of genocide for atrocities committed during his 1974-1991 Marxist regime after a marathon 12-year trial. Mengistu, on trial in absentia, and 11 co-defendants who served on the ex-government's central committee were found guilty, of genocide, homicide, illegal imprisonment and illegal confiscation of property by Ethiopia's Federal High Court Tuesday.

"Accused numbers one to 12 are found guilty of all charges," Justice Medhin Kiros told a packed courtroom in Addis Ababa, reading from a unanimous verdict by the three-judge panel hearing the case.

Mengistu, who was ousted in 1991 and now lives in exile in Zimbabwe, was known as "defendant number one" in the case against himself and other senior members of his so-called Derg (Committee) regime.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 4:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US denounces Iran Holocaust conference

Source: Breitbart (12-12-06)

The White House denounced Iran's Holocaust conference, featuring revisionist historians who doubt the World War II-era slaughter, as "an affront to the entire civilized world." "The United States condemns the conference on the Holocaust convoked by the Iranian regime on Monday in Tehran," spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.

"The gathering of Holocaust deniers in Tehran is an affront to the entire civilized world, as well as to the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and mutual respect," she said.

"While people around the world mark International Human Rights Week and renew the solemn pledges of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was drafted in the wake of the atrocities of World War II, the Iranian regime perversely seeks to call the historical fact of those atrocities into question and provide a platform for hatred," she said.

Her comments came as Iran pressed on with its controversial conference, even as international outrage mounted over its hosting of revisionist historians who cast doubt on the mass slaughter of six million Jews in World War II.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 4:15 PM | Comments (1) | Top

1849 Shipwreck Found in Lake Ontario

Source: AP (12-12-06)

After more than 160 years, the twin masts of the Milan still stand erect _ all the more remarkable because the commercial sailing ship sits in the dark depths of Lake Ontario. "It almost looks like it could be floated" to the surface, said shipwreck explorer Dan Scoville on Monday.

Scoville and fellow explorer Jim Kennard located the schooner in the summer of 2005 off the southern shore of the lake. They videotaped the 93-foot-long, square-stern vessel this year using an unmanned submersible built with the help of college students.

The ship sits upright on the lake bed at a depth of more than 200 feet. Its masts extend 70 feet upward in the dark waters.

"At those depths, and the water being so cold, there's not a lot of oxygen" Scoville said. "It basically helps preserve the wood. If a shipwreck is in shallow, fresh water, the ice will get it or storms will beat it up."

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 4:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Asian History Carnival #10

Source: Asian History Carnival (12-12-06)

The tenth edition of the Asian History Carnival, a monthly roundup of blog posts about the history of Asia -- Near East to Far -- is up at Westminster Wisdom.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 4:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scientists in US injected humans with polonium in experiment in 1944

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (12-12-06)

The apparent murder of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko through polonium poisoning seemed like an outlandish innovation in crime. But it was not the first time that polonium had been deliberately administered to human subjects.

In 1944 at the University of Rochester in New York, "tracer amounts of radioactive polonium-210 were injected into four hospitalized humans and ingested by a fifth," according to a 1995 retrospective account.

Four men and one women who were already suffering from a variety of cancers reportedly volunteered for the dangerous experiment. One patient died from his cancer six days after the injection.

See "Polonium Human-Injection Experiments," Los Alamos Science, Number 23, 1995:

http://www.fas.org/sgp

That polonium article appeared as a sidebar in a larger paper called "The Human Plutonium Injection Experiments" by William Moss and Roger Eckhardt, which follows on the work of reporter Eileen Welsome, builds on the declassification activities of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary and complements the research of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. See the Moss and Eckhardt paper from Los Alamos Science here:

http://www.fas.org/

Polonium was classified in July 1945, the authors note, and given the code name "postum."

The basic chemistry and physics of polonium were declassified in 1946. The fact that polonium-210 was used in nuclear weapon initiators was declassified in 1967, according to a Department of Energy historical account.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 3:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Brown v. Board of Education, Second Round

Source: NYT (12-10-06)

IF there is a sacred text in the American legal canon, it is the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. [HNN Editor: Actually, Brown has many critics. See RELATED LINKS below.] It is the court’s one undisputed triumph, and no Supreme Court nominee who expressed doubt about the decision would ever be confirmed. Who can argue, after all, with the wisdom of putting an end to state-sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools? But, as an extraordinary two-hour Supreme Court argument last week demonstrated, the meaning and legacy of Brown remain up for grabs. The court was considering whether school systems in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., could take account of students’ races to ensure racial balance. During the argument, two sets of justices managed, with equal vehemence, to invoke Brown — while understanding it to require precisely opposite things. One side relied on the logic of the case: Brown, these justices said, forbids racial classifications by the government, period, even when the goal has changed from segregation to integration. The other side relied on its music, saying that the real point of Brown was to achieve and maintain integrated public schools, whether through social progress or through government action that takes account of race. The disagreement was, in short, whether the meaning of Brown can be found in what it said or what it did.

Related Links

Hot Topics: Brown v. Board of Education, Fifty Years Later

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 3:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

CBS Poll: More now say Iraq was a mistake than said Vietnam was

Source: HNN summary of CBS report (12-12-06)

A new poll by CBS News broadcast Monday night indicates that 62 percent of the American people now believe that it was a mistake to invade Iraq.

At the height of the Vietnam War in 1973 only 60 percent said it was a mistake to send troops to Vietnam, according to a Gallup Poll.

Related Links

HNN Staff: Have Americans Usually Supported Their Wars?

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 2:39 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Scientists look for answers in 2,100-year-old computer

Source: AP (12-12-06)

Scientists hope that a reproduction of the 2,100-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, believed to be the earliest surviving mechanical computing device, will provide clues to a variety of questions: who built the device, and for what purpose? Why did the technology behind it disappear for the next thousand years? What does the device tell us about ancient Greek culture? And does the marvelous construction, and the precise knowledge of the movement of the sun and moon and Earth that it implies, tell us how the ancients grappled with ideas about determinism and human destiny?

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historians Debate Holocaust Research in Berlin

Source: Deutsche Welle (12-12-06)

Leading Holocaust historians gathered in Berlin to discuss the current state of Holocaust studies. The meeting has been widely seen as a reaction to a controversial Holocaust conference in Iran.

Posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, December 11, 2006

Colonial Williamsburg plans to sell historic plantation

Source: Newport News Daily Press (12-10-06)

JAMES CITY, Va. - The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's part in the history of Carter's Grove plantation is coming to an end. CW officials said that they're planning to sell the centuries-old plantation that the foundation has owned since 1969.

They said the 400-acre property's view of the James River, its archaeological sites and other treasures would remain protected in any sale. Restrictions will prohibit residential and commercial development, the foundation said.

Officials said the decision to sell to a private buyer was largely based on Carter's Grove not fitting into CW's mission. That mission is to "tell the story of citizenship and becoming America in the 18th century," they said.

"This is best accomplished in the Historic Area, where we present and interpret Revolutionary War-era Williamsburg," the foundation's president, Colin Campbell, said in a statement. "Carter's Grove, with its multiple stories to tell, does not support this strategic focus."

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:25 PM | Comments (1) | Top

U.S. woman listed as world's oldest person dies at 116

Source: IHT (12-11-06)

MEMPHIS, Tennessee -- Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bolden, recognized as the world's oldest person, died early Monday, the administrator of the nursing home where she lived said Monday. She was 116.

Bolden was born Aug. 15, 1890, according to the Gerontology Research Group, a Los Angeles-based organization that tracks the ages of the world's oldest people.

Guinness World Records recognized Bolden as the oldest person in August after the death of Maria Ester de Capovilla of Ecuador, who previously was listed as the oldest.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Iran students denounce Holocaust denial

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-11-06)

Dozens of Iranian students burnt pictures of President Ahmadinejad and chanted “Death to the dictator” as he gave a speech at a university in Tehran yesterday.

Never has the hardline leader faced such open hostility at a public event, which came as Iran opened a conference questioning whether Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews.

One student activist said that the protest was against the “shameful” Holocaust conference and the “fact that many activists have not been allowed to attend university”. The conference “has brought to our country Nazis and racists from around the world”, he added.

Mr Ahmadinejad responded by saying: “Everyone should know that Ahmadinejad is prepared to be burnt in the path of true freedom, independence and justice”, according to an Iranian students’ news agency. He accused the protesters of being “Americanised”.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:21 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Study Detects Recent Instance of Human Evolution

Source: NYT (12-10-06)

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

Throughout most of human history, the ability to digest lactose, the principal sugar of milk, has been switched off after weaning because there is no further need for the lactase enzyme that breaks the sugar apart. But when cattle were first domesticated 9,000 years ago and people later started to consume their milk as well as their meat, natural selection would have favored anyone with a mutation that kept the lactase gene switched on.

Such a mutation is known to have arisen among an early cattle-raising people, the Funnel Beaker culture, which flourished some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago in north-central Europe. People with a persistently active lactase gene have no problem digesting milk and are said to be lactose tolerant.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:19 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Iran hosts Holocaust conference

Source: CNN (12-11-06)

Iran on Monday opened a two-day conference exploring the validity of the Nazi Holocaust, a move that has sparked outrage among Jewish groups.

One such group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, planned to counter the event with a teleconference showcasing stories from Holocaust survivors.

Manouchehr Mohammadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister for research, told Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA, that Tehran's leaders would accept that the Holocaust occurred if scholars attending the conference could prove that the Nazi regime exterminated 6 million Jews during World War II.

But Mohammadi said Iran does not deny the murders and damages caused by Hitler's genocide, nor that 50 million people were the victims of his racism, according to IRNA.

He said the conference is to be held in response to international outrage at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated assertion that the Holocaust is a myth. (Full story)

"If the Holocaust is a historical event, then is it not warranted to be looked into and researched?" Mohammadi asked rhetorically.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:18 PM | Comments (1) | Top

US tied to Pinochet, from ascent to demise

Source: AFP (12-10-06)

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died at a Santiago hospital, was a long-time protege of the United States who backed him in 1973 when he overthrew the Socialist government of Salvador Allende.
Later, he fell out of favor as human rights abuses under his watch got out of hand, including the 1976 assassination in Washington of a former Chilean ambassador, and in 2004 US lawmakers helped build a case of fraud against him.

General Pinochet rose to fame on September 11, 1973, when he led an anti-Allende military coup with the complicity of Chilean right-wing forces and the US government.

Conservatives in Chile and Washington feared Allende's attempts to pave "a Chilean way toward Socialism" would usher in a pro-Soviet communist government.

Henry Kissinger, US secretary of state under then president Richard Nixon, made quite clear what US intentions were after Allende's election.

"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves ... I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people," Kissinger said at the time.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cambodia's healing history lessons

Source: Christian Science Monitor (12-11-06)

... Choeung Ek is one of Cambodia's handful of memorials of the Khmer Rouge genocide that, between 1975 and 1979, claimed the lives of nearly 2 million citizens - a third of the nation's population then.

Van and Bei - and 396 fellow villagers from across the country - are here on a two-day, all-expense-paid educational trip organized by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), a leading research institution on the killing fields.

Mention Cambodia, and the first image that most Westerners think of is heaps of skulls. So it may sound peculiar that numerous survivors - and some perpetrators - themselves have yet to learn about the true extent of the killing fields. During the Khmer Rouge era, rural Cambodians were isolated and resigned to fates imposed by tyrannical overlords. Many still don't understand why they and their families were condemned to extreme suffering, let alone murder, by the Khmer Rouge who proclaimed themselves the liberators of the dispossessed. And governments since have done little to educate them about the period.

"Most survivors living in rural communities have only isolated memories of atrocities," explains Ly Sok Kheang, a researcher for DC-Cam, who is escorting the villagers around memorial sites. "Many don't even know what happened in neighboring provinces."...

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Grenada 17' may walk free 23 years after Caribbean coup

Source: Guardian (12-11-06)

One of the most controversial armed conflicts of the cold war era and one which caused a rift between Britain and the US is to be revisited this week in a British court. The case will re-examine an episode that led to more than 100 deaths on the Caribbean island of Grenada and still has ramifications for the region today.

The 14 Grenadians sentenced to death for the assassination of the former prime minister Maurice Bishop more than 20 years ago are due to have their case for an appeal heard by the Privy Council.

In 1983 Maurice Bishop, the socialist prime minister of Grenada, was killed during a coup, along with 10 others, following a violent split within his party. The deputy prime minister, Bernard Coard, Bishop's childhood friend turned rival, declared himself prime minister.

Six days later, President Ronald Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada, claiming that 650 American students on the island were at risk. According to US figures, 45 Grenadians, 24 Cubans and 19 Americans were killed in the invasion.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Antikythera Mechanism' --first computer?--Provides More Questions Than Answers

Source: WaPo (12-11-06)

The device is so famous that an international conference organized in Athens a couple of weeks ago had only one subject: the Antikythera Mechanism.

Every discovery about the device has raised new questions. Who built the device, and for what purpose? Why did the technology behind it disappear for the next thousand years? What does the device tell us about ancient Greek culture? And does the marvelous construction, and the precise knowledge of the movement of the sun and moon and Earth that it implies, tell us how the ancients grappled with ideas about determinism and human destiny?

"We have gear trains from the 9th century in Baghdad used for simpler displays of the solar and lunar motions relative to one another -- they use eight gears," said Fran?ois Charette, a historian of science in Germany who wrote an editorial accompanying a new study of the mechanism two weeks ago in the journal Nature. "In this case, we have more than 30 gears. To see it on a computer animation makes it mind-boggling. There is no doubt it was a technological masterpiece."

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Fort Ancient is largest, best preserved earthwork of its kind in America. Its purpose is not known.

Source: Ohio.com (12-10-06)

Fort Ancient remains a mystery.

The extensive earthen mounds and walls in southwest Ohio are unlikely a fortress, although they might have been used for social gatherings and religious ceremonies and astronomical viewings.

The site, atop a wooded bluff 235 feet above the Little Miami River in Warren County, was built 2,000 years ago by ancient Indians that archaeologists call Hopewells.

The intricate mounds stretch nearly 3 ½ miles and enclose about 100 acres atop a promontory on the east bank of the river in Washington Township.

The earthen walls are as high as 23 feet and as wide as 68 feet. The walls are divided by 67 crescent-shaped gateways. There are stone pavements in some places.

Some call Fort Ancient Ohio's Stonehenge and it is one of Ohio's top prehistoric sites.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Colleagues wonder about professor of anatomy's search for Bigfoot

Source: LAT (12-10-06)

POCATELLO, IDAHO — At a glance, professor D. Jeffrey Meldrum would seem to be a star on the Idaho State University campus here.

A popular instructor, Meldrum has written or edited five books, written dozens of articles in academic journals, and ranged across the American West and Canada for his field research. Famed primatologist Jane Goodall wrote a blurb for his latest book, which she said "brings a much-needed level of scientific analysis" to a raging debate.

The problem is the debate: Is Bigfoot real?

Meldrum, a tenured associate professor of anatomy, is in pursuit of the legendary ape-man also known as Sasquatch.

Some of his colleagues are not amused. They liken Meldrum's research to a hunt for Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, and 20 of them signed a letter earlier this year expressing worry that Idaho State "may be perceived as a university that endorses fringe science over fundamental scientific perspectives that have withstood critical inquiry."

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 9:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Using Communist-era secret files, Poland brands thousands of citizens as traitors

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-10-06)

When Polish secret police tried to recruit Karol Malcuzynski, a BBC researcher, as a spy in 1979, he flatly rejected them after just 20 minutes' conversation.

Three decades on, however, it has taken him nearly a year of legal battling to clear his name, after he was retrospectively branded a "communist secret agent" by Poland's Right-wing government.

In a move that nearly wrecked his reputation as a respected journalist, Mr Malcuzynski received a letter from Poland's National Remembrance Institute, a government agency, which presides over communist-era secret police files.

It informed him that there was "no doubt" he had passed on "operationally useful" information to Poland's communist-era authorities.

"Suddenly the contracts for television appearances dried up," he said.

During a subsequent court case, however, it emerged that the secret policeman had fabricated evidence about the journalist.

Yet according to critics of Poland's government, headed by the twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski as president and prime minister respectively, hundreds of thousands of other Poles are in a plight similar to Mr Malcuzynski's.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 9:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

DNA Gatherers Hit a Snag: The Tribes Don’t Trust Them

Source: NYT (12-10-06)

The National Geographic Society’s multimillion-dollar research project to collect DNA from indigenous groups around the world in the hopes of reconstructing humanity’s ancient migrations has come to a standstill on its home turf in North America.

Billed as the “moon shot of anthropology,” the Genographic Project intends to collect 100,000 indigenous DNA samples. But for four months, the project has been on hold here as it scrambles to address questions raised by a group that oversees research involving Alaska natives.

At issue is whether scientists who need DNA from aboriginal populations to fashion a window on the past are underselling the risks to present-day donors. Geographic origin stories told by DNA can clash with long-held beliefs, threatening a world view some indigenous leaders see as vital to preserving their culture.

They argue that genetic ancestry information could also jeopardize land rights and other benefits that are based on the notion that their people have lived in a place since the beginning of time.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 9:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bring back Victorian values, says key Tory

Source: Observer (UK) (12-10-06)

The Tories are to launch the biggest crusade for personal morality since John Major's ill-fated 'back to basics' campaign, demanding the right for citizens to tackle teenage yobs physically and calling for a reduction in family breakdowns.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow Attorney General, told The Observer that people who slapped others or scuffled with youths while trying to stop crimes being committed should not be prosecuted. His words mark a clear break with David Cameron's 'hug a hoodie' rhetoric. Asked about family breakdowns, he said the strict Victorian approach to family life had, in some ways, been successful, adding that parents must be responsible for their children and communities.

'You can argue that our Victorian forebears succeeded in achieving something very unusual between the 1850s and 1900 in changing public attitudes by - dare one use the word - instilling moral codes. I don't want to suggest this was an ideal society, but it was one where a sense of moral values and of the responsibility people owed to each other did seem to be pervasive. There was a much greater sense of shame in respect of transgressions.'

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 9:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

San Francisco Fights Over Its Character ... 1960s history threatened?

Source: AP (12-8-06)

An effort to clean up some of the city's seedier neighborhoods and rid the streets of junkies, hookers and runaways has run headlong into San Francisco's free-to-be-who-you-are ethos.

Nearly four decades after the Summer of Love, residents and merchants frustrated with what they regard as blight are turning to the city for help or taking revitalization into their own hands.

But other residents of the Tenderloin district and Haight-Ashbury contend a crackdown would rob their neighborhoods of their identity and violate everything San Francisco stands for.

Joey Cain, a board member of the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, complained that those who would drive the vagrants from the neighborhood are turning their backs on the Haight's "historic obligation" to shelter the downtrodden.

This is, after all, the city that proved so appealing to the Beats, the hippies and practically every other brand of noncomformist.

Haight-Ashbury was the very capital of the Summer of Love in 1967, when young people flocked for the music, sexual freedom and drug culture. They are still coming, panhandling on corners and sleeping under the trees in nearby Golden Gate Park.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 9:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic or Not, Georgia Erases 488 Places Off the Map

Source: AP (12-8-06)

Poetry Tulip has vanished. So have Due West and Po Biddy Crossroads. Cloudland and Roosterville are gone, too.

A total of 488 communities have been erased from the latest version of Georgia's official map, victims of too few people and too many letters of type.

Georgia's Department of Transportation, which drew the new map, said that the goal was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many of the dropped communities were mere "placeholders," generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Some are unincorporated and so small they are not even recognized by the Census Bureau.

The state began handing out the new map at rest stops and welcome centers over the summer.

Gone are such places as Dewy Rose, Hemp, Experiment, Retreat, Wooster, Sharp Top and Chattoogaville, a spot in far northwestern Georgia that consists of little more than a two-truck volunteer fire department, a few farmhouses and a country store where locals fill up their gas tanks.

"We're not under obligation to show every single community," department spokeswoman Karlene Barron said. "While we want to, there's a balancing act. And the map was getting illegible."

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 9:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Moses Hardy, last known black WWI vet, dies at 113; listed as 2nd oldest man in the world

Source: IHT (12-8-06)

JACKSON, Mississippi -- Moses Hardy, believed to be the second-oldest man in the world and the last black U.S. veteran of World War I, has died at age 113, family members said Friday.

Evelyn Davis, 68, one of Hardy's eight children, said her father died Thursday at a nursing home in Aberdeen. He would have been 114 on Jan. 6.

"He had been doing great. He didn't suffer and he wasn't sick — he died of old age," said Davis, of Aberdeen. "He knew everybody and those he knew, he always knew them when they came in to visit."

Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records, said research by his group, National Public Radio and others had been unable to locate any other surviving black WWI veterans. He said only about 10 to 12 American veterans of that war remain.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 9:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Reporter names three-star Vietnam general who was the source for a 1967 story that predicted US would lose

Source: NYT (12-11-06)

Three star General Frederick Weyand was the secret source for a front page New York Times story in 1967 that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, according to an op ed published in the paper today by Murray Fromson.

The 1967 story in the Times was written by the late R.W. Apple and dealt a thunderous blow to the Johnson administration's claim that the war was being won.

Weyand, now 90 and living in Hawaii, agreed to reveal his identity in time for a public memorial that is to be held in Apple's honor.

Weyand was serving as commander of III Corps in the Mekong Delta when he was quoted in Apple's story. The general went on to serve as the Army Chief of Staff. He oversaw the withdrawal of US forces rom Vietnam.

William Westmoreland derided the Times's story in '67. He said none of his generals would have stated the war was unwinnable.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 8:47 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Hundreds Pay Respects to Pinochet

Source: AP (12-11-06)

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Hundreds of supporters of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, many in tears, filed Monday past the brown wooden coffin for the ex-dictator, who was denied a state funeral normally granted to former presidents.

While Pinochet's relatives mourned his death Sunday from heart failure at age 91, his many opponents celebrated with champagne and lamented that he escaped justice for the torture and killings that marked his 17 years in power after a bloody 1973 coup.

Police surrounded key buildings and intersections Monday to prevent more of the violent protests that spread past midnight to several working class districts.

Deputy Interior Minister Felipe said 43 police officers were injured and 99 demonstrators were arrested in the clashes, which were blamed on a small contingent of the thousands of demonstrators who jammed streets to denounce Pinochet's legacy.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 7:22 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Getty Museum to Return 2 Greek Treasures

Source: AP (12-11-06)

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced Monday that it would return to Greece an ancient gold wreath and a marble bust that Greece claims were illegally spirited out of the country.

At a news conference with the Greek culture minister, museum director Michael Brand said they had "reached an agreement in principle on the return of two objects."

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 7:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Iran Opens Holocaust Conference

Source: AP (12-11-06)

Iran on Monday opened a Holocaust conference that it said would examine whether the genocide took place, claiming the meeting was an opportunity for discussion in an atmosphere free of Western taboos.

The conference, "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision," was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Even before it opened, the gathering was condemned by Germany, the United States and Israel.

The organizers, the Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies, say the two-day conference has drawn 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries.

In his opening speech, the institute's chief, Rasoul Mousavi, said the conference provided an opportunity to discuss "questions" about the Holocaust away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe.

In Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 7:17 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Sarcophagus of Saint Paul to be on public display

Source: Breitbart (12-11-06)

The sarcophagus containing the remains of Saint Paul will in future be displayed for followers to visit in Rome at the Christian apostle's tomb, the Vatican said. The Vatican's archaeological services made an opening under the main altar of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, to allow visitors to see the sarcophagus of the saint buried there, said Giorgio Filippi, head of the Epigraphical department of the Vatican Museums, in a news conference.

The authenticity of the tomb of Saint Paul, who was beheaded in 67 A.D. in Rome, "is of no doubt", according to Italian Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, archpriest of the basilica.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 7:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Churchill painting sold for record price

Source: Breitbart (12-11-06)

An oil painting by Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister during World War II, sold at auction for nearly three times its estimate, Sotheby's said. "View of Tinherir", painted in 1951 during one of his frequent trips to Morocco after the conflict, made 612,000 pounds (1.2 million dollars) including premium, from an estimate of just 250,000 pounds.

The price tag is a record for a work by Churchill, who was a keen artist.

He gave it to United States General George Marshall, the wartime chief of staff, as a symbol of Anglo-US solidarity in 1953.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 7:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cyprus seeks answers and closure on missing

Source: Reuters (12-11-06)

NICOSIA (Reuters) - The skeleton lying on the white sheet, identified only by a serial number on the wall above, is a stark reminder of years of conflict in divided Cyprus and the legacy of bitterness that remains.

Nobody knows who this man was: all they know is that he wore dark gray trousers, a pale shirt, probably lace-up shoes and pale brown socks, which remained surprisingly intact during years buried in the damp earth.

It's not much to go on.

"How many men were wearing gray trousers back then?" a researcher asked as he picked up a small piece of linen and examined it. "About two-thirds of the population."

The nameless man, and scores of others like him who disappeared decades ago, offer a poignant reminder of the disputes keeping Turkish and Greek communities apart on this east Mediterranean island.

Cyprus has been divided since a Turkish invasion in 1974 which followed a brief coup by Greek Cypriot extremists seeking union with Greece.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 7:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ambassadors to Honor Female WWII Spy

Source: AP (11-10-06)

In 1942, the Gestapo circulated posters offering a reward for the capture of "the woman with a limp. She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies and we must find and destroy her." The dangerous woman was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore native working in France for British intelligence, and the limp was the result of an artificial leg. Her left leg had been amputated below the knee about a decade earlier after she stumbled and blasted her foot with a shotgun while hunting in Turkey.

The injury derailed Hall's dream of becoming a Foreign Service officer because the State Department wouldn't hire amputees, but it didn't prevent her from becoming one of the most celebrated spies of World War II.

On Tuesday, the French and British ambassadors plan to honor Hall, who died in 1982 at age 78, at a ceremony at the home of French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte in Washington.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 6:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

America's `Iraq syndrome'

Source: Toronto Star (12-11-06)

... For many analysts, analogies with the Vietnam War are useful; for others, they are anathema.

Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow in defence policy at the Council on Foreign Relations concedes there are similarities. But he cautions against taking them too far. Vietnam was "a people's war," he notes, a class-based insurgency against a ruling regime. Iraq, by comparison, is a "communal civil war," a battle in which sectarian factions are fighting for survival.

And there will not be a repeat of the Fall of Saigon in Baghdad, he says. There are no mechanized divisions advancing on the city.

But there will be an "Iraq Syndrome," he stresses — just as there was a "Vietnam Syndrome" that followed the Vietnam War, a cooling period during which Americans will be loath to endorse the kind of "forceful foreign policy" that leads to expensive and bloody military adventures.

Prof. John Mueller of Ohio State University agrees. He says the syndrome will take hold "big time." In fact, it's already taking hold.

"The attitude to North Korea has mellowed, even when they exploded a weapon," he notes. "As for Iran, the idea of (America) doing anything militarily seems to be declining."
At the Boston conference this year, the similarities between the Iraq and Vietnam wars — and the lessons from the latter — were on everyone's mind.

Many of the key historical figures attended: Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Walter Cronkite, Kennedy confidante Ted Sorenson, LBJ's former aide Jack Valenti and the war's most famous reporter, David Halberstam.

Halberstam, whose pinpoint-accurate dispatches from the front as a 28-year-old reporter for The New York Times infuriated the Kennedy White House, vigorously warned of what he called, "The Lying Machine."

"Washington had created — and it is something that we have to deal with any time we talk about Vietnam ... a great lying machine.

"And what is a lying machine?" said Halberstam, tall and muscular at 72. "A lying machine exists on a major issue when an administration has a policy that does not, for historic reasons, work out, but where the administration believes it is important to continue it — for a variety of domestic political reasons — and to pretend that it works. So it forces its employees at the top to be disingenuous and punishes those government employees who dare to tell the truth ...."
Critics of the Iraq war have long claimed the Bush administration has been nothing if not disingenuous and that the war itself was launched on a lie: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 5:55 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Iran: Official Sanction Of Holocaust Conference Distresses Many

Source: Radio Free Europe (12-11-06)

Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki addressed the participants, saying that Iran intends neither to confirm nor deny the Holocaust. Drawing an implicit comparison with Western countries in which denying the Holocaust is a crime, Mottaki said the gathering provides a platform for open discussion of the topic and questioned a Europe "which claims to be free."

Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Augusto Pinochet, 91, Ex-Dictator of Chile, Dies

Source: NYT (12-10-06)

Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption, died today at the Military Hospital of Santiago. He was 91.

Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1975, during his rule.
Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara, head of the medical team that had been treating him, said his condition degenerated sharply a week after he underwent an angioplasty after an acute heart attack.

General Pinochet seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody military coup that toppled the Marxist government of President Salvador Allende. He then led the country into an era of robust economic growth. But during his rule, more than 3,200 people were executed or disappeared, and scores of thousands more were detained and tortured or exiled.

Posted on Sunday, December 10, 2006 at 5:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Former envoy Dennis Ross says Jimmy Carter copied him

Source: NYT (12-9-06)

A Fox News commentator accused former President Jimmy Carter of copying material from one of his books without proper attribution. The commentator, Dennis Ross, a former envoy to the Middle East who is now a foreign affairs analyst for Fox News, said Mr. Carter used maps he created without giving proper credit for the material, which was included in the former president’s controversial new book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” “I think there should be a correction and an attribution,” Mr. Ross said in an interview on Fox News. “These were maps that never existed, I created them.” Mr. Ross had previously published the maps in his own book, “The Missing Peace.”

Posted on Sunday, December 10, 2006 at 12:40 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Series by historians on Chinese television focuses on the rise of great powers

Source: NYT (12-9-06)

... In the past several weeks China Central Television has broadcast a 12-part series describing the reasons nine nations rose to become great powers. The series was based on research by a team of elite Chinese historians, who also briefed the ruling Politburo about their findings....

The documentary, on China’s main national network, uses the word rise constantly, including its title, “Rise of the Great Powers.” It endorses the idea that China should study the experiences of nations and empires it once condemned as aggressors bent on exploitation.

“Our China, the Chinese people, the Chinese race has become revitalized and is again stepping onto the world stage,” Qian Chengdan, a professor at Beijing University and the intellectual father of the television series, said in an online dialogue about the documentary on Sina.com, a leading Web site.

“It is extremely important for today’s China to be able to draw some lessons from the experiences of others,” he said.

The series, which took three years to make, emanated from a Politburo study session in 2003. It is not a jingoistic call to arms. It mentions China only in passing, and it never explicitly addresses the reality that China has already become a big power.

Yet its version of history, which partly tracks the work done by Paul Kennedy in his 1980s bestseller, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” differs markedly from that of the textbooks still in use in many schools.

Its stentorian narrator and epic soundtrack present the emergence of the nine countries, from Portugal in the 15th century to the United States in the 20th, and cites numerous achievements worthy of emulation: Spain had a risk-taking queen; Britain’s nimble navy secured vital commodities overseas; the United States regulated markets and fought for national unity.

The documentary also emphasizes historical themes that coincide with policies Chinese leaders promote at home. Social stability, industrial investment, peaceful foreign relations and national unity are presented as more vital than, say, military strength, political liberalization or the rule of law.

In the 90 minutes devoted to examining the rise of the United States, Lincoln is accorded a prominent part for his efforts to “preserve national unity” during the Civil War. China has made reunification with Taiwan a top national priority. Franklin D. Roosevelt wins praise for creating a bigger role for the government in managing the market economy but gets less attention for his wartime leadership.

Government officials minimize the importance of the series. He Yafei, an assistant foreign minister, said in an interview that he had watched only “one or two episodes.” He said the documentary should not signal changes in China’s thinking about projecting power, saying that colonialism and exploitation “would go nowhere in today’s world.”...

Posted on Saturday, December 9, 2006 at 4:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s Forceful Envoy, Dies

Source: NYT (12-9-06)

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the Reagan administration’s first United Nations ambassador and a beacon of neoconservative thought who helped guide American military, diplomatic and covert action from 1981 to 1985, died Thursday at her home in Bethesda, Md. She was 80.

Her death was announced yesterday by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, where she was a senior fellow. The cause was congestive heart failure, said her personal assistant, Tammy Jagyur.

Ms. Kirkpatrick was the first American woman to serve as United Nations ambassador. She was the only woman, and the only Democrat, in President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council. No woman had ever been so close to the center of presidential power without actually residing in the White House.

“When she put her feet under the desk of the Oval Office, the president listened,” said William P. Clark Jr., Mr. Reagan’s national security adviser during 1982 and 1983. “And he usually agreed with her.”

Posted on Saturday, December 9, 2006 at 4:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, December 8, 2006

Rumsfeld Farewell: History Will Be the Judge

Source: AP (12-8-06)

With 10 days left in office, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld bade a sometimes emotional farewell to Pentagon employees Friday and predicted that the period since he took office nearly six years ago would eventually be seen as one of "enormous challenge and historic consequence."

Asked how he wants history to remember him, he said simply, "Better than the local press."

With a couple of dozen troops from each military service and a few civilian Pentagon employees seated behind him on stage in the Pentagon's main auditorium, Mr. Rumsfeld spoke to an audience of several hundred people. With a broad grin, he strode into the room to a cascade of applause and a few approving yelps.

"I suspect this will be among my last public remarks as secretary of defense," he said. His last full day will be Dec. 17.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 6:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Stone Age Burial of Babies Suggests Prehistoric Compassion

Source: Livescience.com (12-7-06)

Infants may have been considered equal members of prehistoric society, according to an analysis of burial pits found in Austria.

Two separate pits, one containing the remains of two infants and the other of a single baby, were discovered at the same Stone Age camp of Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria. Both graves were decorated with beads and covered in red ochre, a pigment commonly used by prehistoric peoples as a grave offering when they buried adults.

Using radiocarbon dating, archaeologists from the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences put the remains at about 27,000 years old.

"Nothing comparable to these burials of such young Upper Paleolithic individuals has been found before," study co-author Christine Neugebauer-Maresch wrote in a recent edition of the journal Nature.

The discovery could challenge the long-held belief that—since child burials seem to be so rare—infants in this period were treated with a degree of indifference, the researchers said.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 6:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Technology reveals hidden 18th-century drawings

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-8-06)

Drawings by the renowned architect Robert Adam, who designed some of the most impressive buildings of the Georgian era, have been uncovered for the first time in 170 years.

Adam's family glued around 9,000 of his drawings into 57 albums and in the process hid hundreds of sketches, plans and letters on the back of the paper which he used for his designs.

Some of the hidden material has now been revealed for the first time since the early 19th century with the aid of a technique involving digital photography and computer software.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 6:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Diary of soldier on the Western Front

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-8-06)

The heart-rending diary of a British soldier was sold at auction yesterday, 90 years after it was written in the mud of Flanders.

James Beatson described life on the Western Front after finding the tattered journal of a German officer that had somehow found its way into the British trenches in 1915.

In the months before his own death on the Somme, he conducted an imaginary conversation with the author, and penned his own descriptions of the horrors of the First World War.

In one passage, Beatson, from Edinburgh, wrote: "Are you dead Heinrich? Fate has labelled you a Prussian and me British, but I would do a long pilgrimage to lay flowers on the grave that holds your body." Of the second battle of Ypres, he said: "The ground is full of dead bodies of rats... the fellows had some furious fun at night baiting the rats. There is a plague of the repulsive vermin... slow, fat, waddling monsters.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 6:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Auschwitz inscribed t-shirts offered on online shopping site

Source: http://www.ynetnews.com (12-6-06)

The proprietors of the site www.cafepress.com seem to think that the sale of t-shirts with Holocaust inscriptions is amusing.

The most popular t-shirt offered on the online shopping site is a shirt with the inscription "My grandparents went to Auschwitz and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" printed on the front.

Also printed on the shirt is the gruesome inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei", which was the inscription that met deportees at the gates of the German concentration camps.

Following recent complaints by Holocaust survivors and their families offended by the inscriptions on the T-shirts, the Anti-Defamation League contacted the proprietors of the site asking them to remove the dubious merchandise.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 6:25 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Russia's East Siberia: from Gulag to oil frontier

Source: Reuters (12-7-06)

VANKOR FIELD, Russia (Reuters) - Half a century ago, Josef Stalin banished his foes to labor camps in East Siberia. Now volunteers are lining up to drill the frozen wastelands for their vast reserves of oil.

A 130-strong team of drillers, hardened frontiersmen who live in barracks set in sparse fir forests, have so far drilled 12 exploration wells.

They are helping fulfill President Vladimir Putin's strategy to wean Russia of its dependence European markets. Vankor's oil will go east, via a new pipeline being built to China and the Pacific.

Set in the frozen tundra, the Vankor field has recoverable reserves of 2.5 billion barrels, enough to supply booming Asian markets for decades to come.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 5:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

End of Soviet Union anniversary passes without notice

Source: Breitbart (12-8-06)

The 15th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union passed practically without notice in Russia, even though the collapse of the communist regime is still a traumatic event for many Russians. The date of December 8, 1991, marks the day of a meeting between Soviet bloc leaders in a Belarussian hunting lodge where they signed the death warrant of the USSR.

Now 15 years later, no celebration or demonstration was held in Moscow. "What's there to celebrate on this anniversary?" asked Natalia Kokoreva, a 60-year-old retiree in the Russian capital.

"With the fall of the USSR, my life went downhill," said Evgueni, 49, a Moscow street sweeper. "Before, I lived well, I could go on vacation, I went to the mountains. Now I can't even go visit my brother in Tver," a city about 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Moscow.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 4:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

From Ruins of Afghan Buddhas, a History Grows

Source: NYT (12-6-06)

The empty niches that once held Bamiyan’s colossal Buddhas now gape in the rock face — a silent cry at the terrible destruction wrought on this fabled valley and its 1,500-year-old treasures, once the largest standing Buddha statues in the world.

It was in March 2001, when the Taliban and their sponsors in Al Qaeda were at the zenith of their power in Afghanistan, that militiamen, acting on an edict to take down the “gods of the infidels,” laid explosives at the base and the shoulders of the two Buddhas and blew them to pieces. To the outraged outside world, the act encapsulated the horrors of the Islamic fundamentalist government. Even Genghis Khan, who laid waste to this valley’s towns and population in the 13th century, had left the Buddhas standing.

Five years after the Taliban were ousted from power, Bamiyan’s Buddhist relics are once again the focus of debate: Is it possible to restore the great Buddhas? And, if so, can the extraordinary investment that would be required be justified in a country crippled by poverty and a continued Taliban insurgency in the south and that is, after all, overwhelmingly Muslim?

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 2:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cuban medical students get a dose of Cuban history

Source: NYT (12-8-06)

HAVANA, Dec. 7 — Anatomy is a part of medical education everywhere. Biochemistry, too. But a course in Cuban history?

The Latin American School of Medical Sciences, on a sprawling former naval base on the outskirts of this capital, teaches its students medicine Cuban style. That means poking at cadavers, peering into aging microscopes and discussing the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power 48 years ago.

Cuban-trained doctors must be able not only to diagnose an ulcer and treat hypertension but also to expound on the principles put forward by “el comandante.”

It was President Castro himself who in the late 1990s came up with the idea for this place, which gives potential doctors from throughout the Americas and Africa not just the A B C’s of medicine but also the basic philosophy behind offering good health care to the struggling masses.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 2:06 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Pearl Harbor survivor witnesses history — twice

Source: NBC News (12-7-06)

For 65 years, Jim Levealle has treated his role in the attack on Pearl Harbor much like many of his fellow survivors — with grace and humility. In fact, until a few years ago, only a few friends and family even knew he had been at Pearl Harbor.

That's because Levealle was too busy talking and giving interviews about another infamous event in American history.

For Pearl Harbor survivors, the 65th anniversary of the attack represents a chance to reflect on the defining moment of their lives.

For Leavelle, Pearl Harbor would be only the first of two Sundays that would change his life, and the course of American history....

Leavelle left the Navy shortly after Pearl Harbor and headed for Dallas -- and his second date with destiny.

November 22, 1963: Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates President John F. Kennedy, then guns down Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit less than an hour later.

Homicide detective Jim Leavelle is the first to interrogate the suspect.

“Of course he denied any connection to it whatsoever,” recalls Leavelle.

Within a few hours, detectives tie Oswald to the JFK assassination. The ensuing media frenzy forces police to move Oswald out of police headquarters on Sunday, Nov. 24

“I said, ‘Lee, if anybody shoots at you, I hope they're as good a shot as you are,’” remembers Leavelle. “He kind of smiled and said, ‘Nobody’s going to shoot at me.’”

Wearing a light suit and hat, Leavelle is handcuffed to Oswald when Jack Ruby fires his fatal shot on live television. A photographer captures the moment in a Pulitzer prize-winning picture that makes Leavelle famous around the world.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, December 7, 2006

One Last Mission for Ship Sunk in Pearl Harbor Attack

Source: WaPo (12-7-06)

For 65 years, the wreck of the USS Arizona has been leaking oil from its grave at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, staining the water, visitors often say, as if it were the ship's blood.

The leaks come from about 500,000 gallons of thick, bunker C fuel oil that remain trapped in the deteriorating hulk -- oil whose "catastrophic" release experts now think is inevitable.

Today, on the anniversary of the attack that plunged the United States into World War II, scientists at a federal research center in Gaithersburg are trying to predict when that might happen. In five years? Or 50? And to do that, they are building a model of the ship: not of plastic and glue, but of data.

The experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology think it is the first mathematical model to simulate the deterioration of a sunken ship and could be used to predict the deterioration of hundreds of wrecks around the country.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Key hominid fossil found at "Cradle of Humankind" is younger than thought

Source: Yahoo (12-7-06)

A key fossil found at South Africa's Sterkfontein Cave, a site dubbed "the Cradle of Humankind" for its trove of hominid relics, is far younger than initially thought, a new study says.

"Little Foot," a fossil with both ape-like and human features, was found in the 1990s thanks to remarkable luck and diligent work.

It was first dated to between 3.0 and 3.5 million years old, and later to more than 4.1 million years.

Those dates generated huge excitement.

For one thing, they threw up a South African contemporary to "Lucy," the famous Australopithecus afarensis fossil found in Ethiopia's Awash Valley in 1974 and, until then, chief contender for the title of ancestor of mankind.

But a paper published in the US journal Science on Thursday says Little Foot's age is likely to be around 2.2 million years. If so, rather than being man's direct ancestor, Little Foot is more likely to have been a distant cousin.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Details of attack still vivid for USS Arizona veterans

Source: http://starbulletin.com (12-7-06)

Pearl Harbor survivor Lonnie Cook remembers completing his morning shower in the forward section of the battleship USS Arizona and returning to his locker just before the Japanese began their attack.

"I was standing in front of my locker changing clothes," the 86-year-old said, "when the bombs started falling."

Had Cook taken a bit longer in the shower, he would have been killed along with 1,177 of his Arizona shipmates. The 1,760-pound armor piercing ordnance that sank the Arizona ignited its forward ammunition magazine near the showers.

From the mundane to the most important details, Pearl Harbor survivors retain vivid images of that day 65 years ago, when Japanese airplanes dotted the sky above Oahu, their bombs blowing up massive ships out of existence.

And their memories show that at least among the rank and file, everyone was expecting a normal day.

"I was there in front of my locker in my white shorts and I grabbed my wallet out of locker," Cook said yesterday. "I had $60 in it that I had won in a crap game the night before."

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

MacArthur aide: U.S. must learn from errors

Source: Salt Lake Tribune (12-7-06)

Lennox Tierney, who was on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff during the Japanese occupation, says cultural errors by the U.S. can't be hidden in Iraq.

Toward the end of the occupation of his nation, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced he would formally apologize to U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur for Japan's actions during World War II - including the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

Lennox Tierney was there, on the fifth floor of the Dai-Ichi Insurance Building in Tokyo, where MacArthur held court from 1945 to 1949, on the day Hirohito arrived. Now 93 years old, Tierney fears a brutishness he saw in MacArthur that day is being repeated by Americans involved in today's wars.

But these days, he says, the country can ill-afford such behavior.

In the years that followed the war, MacArthur came to be thought of as an expert in Japanese culture, but that's not what Tierney says he saw in the eminent general.

"He was culturally stupid," says Tierney, Japan's commissioner for arts and monuments during the occupation, now a semiretired professor and museum curator living in Holladay.

"Apology is a very important thing in Japan," said Tierney. "With us, we don't apologize unless we get caught with our hand in the cookie jar, but for the Japanese, there is a very strong sense of what an apology means."

But when the emperor arrived at his office, MacArthur refused to admit him or acknowledge him, Tierney said.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bulgaria Lawmakers Vote to Open Secret Police Archives

Source: AP (12-6-06)

Lawmakers on Wednesday adopted a much-delayed law to open the archives of Bulgaria's former communist secret service, but also voted to keep a small portion of the files secret for "national security reasons."

The new law, adopted more than 17 years after the collapse of the communist regime, requires the publication of all files identifying public figures -- politicians, senior public officials, magistrates, clergymen and journalists -- as former communist secret agents.

Researchers believe that the secret files could shed light on the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II and the murder in London of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was working for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Bulgarian Service.

The legislation includes no sanctions for the former agents, such as stripping them of public office, but only makes their past public.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Once Enemies, Pearl Harbor Vets Reconcile in Hawaii

Source: AP (12-7-06)

HONOLULU -- Sixty-five years ago, Takeshi Maeda and John Rauschkolb tried to kill each other at Pearl Harbor. This week, now both 85, they met face-to-face for the first time -- and shook hands.

The Japanese veteran gripped Rauschkolb's arm with his left hand and briefly hesitated, as if he was searching for the right words. Then he said, "I'm sorry."

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy navigator Maeda guided his Kate bomber to Pearl Harbor and fired a torpedo that helped sink the USS West Virginia.

Rauschkolb, a Navy signalman, stood on the West Virginia's port side as a series of Japanese planes pummeled the battleship with torpedoes and bombs. The West Virginia lost 106 men in the assault.

"He may have been shooting at me," Rauschkolb said as he shook Maeda's hand.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The macabre debate on Auschwitz

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-7-06)

The gas chambers of Auschwitz are to be rescued from decay under a modernisation plan that has sparked controversy over how to preserve the infamous death camp. “We have to preserve rather than reconstruct,” Piotr Cywinski, the new head of the Auschwitz museum, said. “We must take this step if we want to be able to see these gas chambers in 20 years’ time.”

It is a macabre dilemma. Should one give new life to a Nazi camp that has become synonymous with evil? Or should one let the camp crumble gently? Should Auschwitz become an overgrown site for mourners or a tourist destination? The International Auschwitz Council meeting this week decided that it was possible to strike a balance. Auschwitz remains a museum as well as a crime scene and, as such, should be more accessible to those wanting to learn about the Holocaust.

“It is the oldest exhibition about the shoah [Holocaust] in the world,” Mr Cywinski said. “We really must change.” ...

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lost hoard of 2,000-year-old gold refound

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-7-06)

A priceless collection of Afghan gold, thought to have been destroyed by the Taliban, resurfaced in Paris yesterday after mysteriously disappearing almost 20 years ago.

A hundred items from the so-called Hoard of Bactrian Gold – a trove of stunning artefacts from the first century AD – are now on public display in the Guimet museum near the Eiffel tower. The delicate masterpieces include granite or turquoise encrusted necklaces, goblets, cupids, dolphins, dragons, and a thumb-sized ram figurine.

The exhibition, Afghanistan – the Refound Treasures, displays 228 objects dating from 2000 BC to the third century AD. They form part of a hoard of 21,618 items of gold, ivory and precious stone unearthed by archaeologists in 1979 from six Bactrian tombs at a site in Tillya Tepe, in the north of Afghanistan.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

LA returns water that helped make it a city

Source: Guardian (12-7-06)

The Owens Valley is unique in south-eastern California. A place of unsurpassed beauty nestling between the eastern Sierra Nevada and Inyo mountain ranges, there are no strip malls, no cities to speak of, none of the agriculture that dominates so much of the state.

Instead there is sage brush and dry, dusty earth. But this is no pristine wilderness. A hundred years ago, the Owens Valley had thriving agricultural communities that grew crops and raised livestock.

Then came the aqueduct, built to take the water from the Owens river to fuel the growth of Los Angeles, 250 miles to the south. The river - and the valley - were left dry, in what many claim was the greatest theft of water ever perpetrated.

But yesterday all that was due to change. A turn of a crank by the Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, would allow water from the Owens river to return to its original course. The ceremony brings to a close a chapter that has become an emblem for the rapacious growth that defined the rise of LA. It will also return life to the barren river and perhaps stimulate the local economy.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Big Question: Should Turner's 'Blue Rigi' and other masterpieces be saved for Britain?

Source: Independent (UK) (12-7-06)

Why are we asking this question now?

Tate galleries have launched a campaign to buy The Blue Rigi, a late-period watercolour by the great British artist JMW Turner. The work was sold at auction in June to an anonymous bidder who paid £5.8m - three times the expected price. The new owner was required under British laws to apply for an export licence to remove the work from UK.

The body responsible for considering the application, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, awarded the painting a starred rating - the highest level of protection - and recommended the export be deferred.

The Culture Minister, David Lammy, responded by imposing a temporary export ban on the painting, giving organisations until March 2007 to match the price paid at auction in the summer to keep it in the UK. Unfortunately, Tate has only £2m to put towards the purchase, and is looking to the publicly funded National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund, an independent charity, to make up the difference.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In New York, Taking Years Off the Old, Famous Faces Adorning City Hall

Source: NYT (12-6-06)

“Is that just a bust?” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked. “Or is that a figment of his imagination?”

Mr. Bloomberg was regarding a ghostly head floating at the edge of a 154-year-old portrait of Hamilton Fish by Thomas Hicks that hangs outside the mayoral bullpen at City Hall. Though the head is transparent enough to be an apparition, it probably is just a bust.

The point is, you can’t tell.

Details, color and life in the painting have been hidden by pollutants, dirt, varnishes and the smoke of smoke-filled rooms. And that is true of much of City Hall’s historical portrait collection, 108 paintings from the late 18th century through the 20th, almost unrivaled as an ensemble, with several masterpieces.

Today, the mayor will announce a fund-raising campaign to conserve the portraits. The restoration work itself, by Kenneth S. Moser, has begun, and six portraits have already been refurbished. The announcement is to highlight the fact that the CIT Group, a financial company, and its chairman and chief executive, Jeffrey M. Peek, will pay the cost of conserving five paintings.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

On Pearl Harbor Day, a move to expand Texas memorial

Source: NYT (12-6-06)

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is always a major event in the hometown of World War II Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Chester Nimitz. [Fredericksburg is 70 miles NNW of San Antonio.]

Thursday, the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is no different.

Veterans will lead a solemn tribute at the National Museum of the Pacific War, where a middle school choir will sing the National Anthem, a Pearl Harbor survivor will address the crowd and a 21-gun salute will echo through downtown before taps is sounded.

But there's a special twist to this year's observance.

Thursday is the long-scheduled competitive sale of $9 million in Texas Historical Commission bonds to expand the museum, the George Bush Gallery and Nimitz Steamboat Hotel so the tragedy of Pearl Harbor and the ensuing Pacific battles won't be forgotten.

The bond sale falling on Pearl Harbor Day is "pure coincidence," said Texas Public Finance Authority Director Kim Edwards. The authority usually convenes the first Thursday of the month, she told the Houston Chronicle.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 10:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vatican archaeologists find tomb believed to be that of Apostle Paul

Source: USA Today (12-6-06)

Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.
The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said this week.

"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and be visible," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who headed the project at St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica.

The interior of the sarcophagus has not yet been explored, but Filippi didn't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.

Two ancient churches that once stood at the site of the current basilica were successively built over the spot where tradition said the saint had been buried. The second church, built by the Roman emperor Theodosius in the fourth century, left the tomb visible, first above ground and later in a crypt.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 9:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies Debuts

Source: IraqCrisis newsletter (12-7-06)

Drawing from a variety of specialists, this cutting-edge new journal studies Iraqi society and the forces that have brought it to its current juncture.

€ In a political culture that punishes deviation and rewards convention, the study of Iraq has increasingly become the pursuit of professional ideologues, mercenary scholars working in the service of government. These hired hands, de facto spokesmen for government policy, form the coterie of experts whom the mass media draw upon, communicating a message of acquiescence to their millions of viewers.

€ Cumulatively, these efforts harden disinformation, dissuading critical thought and guaranteeing a state monopoly of opinion; particularly disturbing of these efforts is their tendency to erode liberal and democratic values. This is a predicament to be challenged. IJCIS stands in opposition to the co-option of academia, against the trend of scholar as professional propagandist.

€ There is no premise here of perfect objectivity or absolute truth as Œobjectivity.¹ The focus is practised neutrality in a time of moral crisis.
Moving beyond the drama of Œhigh politics¹ between states, this journal studies the socio-economic phenomena that weigh daily on Iraqi society.

€ Each issue will have a particular theme, dissecting Iraqi society and international relations, with particular consideration given to those issues neglected in popular coverage.

€ As an inaugural theme, the question of ŒAmerica and Iraq¹ is considered, a theme encompassing not only the impact of America¹s military assault on the country, but also a consideration of the economic, cultural, and political forces that America has mobilized in its encounters with Iraq and the larger region.
Click here to read the Journal's first issue, which is already posted.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Stony Brook Hires Baghdad Museum Director

Source: NYT (12-7-06)

Donny George, who directed the National Museum in Baghdad and became a vocal advocate for protecting Iraqi antiquities before leaving his post recently and fleeing to Syria, has been hired as a visiting professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, the university announced. Mr. George became the international face of the plight of ancient artifacts in Iraq, many of which have been stolen or destroyed since the war began in 2003, but left his job in August after telling colleagues that he felt threatened. Mr. George, a Christian, was a midlevel official in the Baath Party under Saddam Hussein’s government and could have been the target of a revenge campaign by conservative Shiites, American officials said at the time. Beginning next semester, Mr. George will teach two courses, “The Archaeology of Mesopotamia” and “The Cultural Heritage of Iraq.” He will also conduct archaeological research. His appointment was sponsored by Stony Brook and the Scholar Rescue Fund, a program run by the Institute of International Education to provide refuge to persecuted scholars.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 9:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thieves threaten the Elimination of the Sumerian civilization in Dhi-Qar

Source: http://www.wna-news.com (12-6-06)

Iraqi national- WNA / Office of Dhi-Qar / report / Since the beginning of the war on Iraq and the archeological sites in Iraq are subjected to theft, voices rise and demand an end to cross-border smuggling operations.

The Administrator of archeological Inspectorate of Dhi-Qar Abdul Amir Al-Hamadani believes that thieves threaten the Elimination of the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq, where the stronghold of civilizations in the world. But today, the cradle of humanity is in danger, and they are subjected to looters of archaeological sites since the start of the war, and in a way that it exceeded all of the robberies that were exposed too in its history, which extends for thousands of years. Al-Hamadani pointed "that the number of archaeological sites within the boundaries of Dhi-Qar exceed 800, each territory has seen eras of civilization starting from the era of pre-history to the late Islamic era. In some locations there are 18 civilization layers.

Al-Hamadani pointed that the risks the cradle of civilizations exposed too are many, but no one is trying to save what can be saved only Archeological Inspectorate of the province, which is concentrated at the present time to provide protection for sites registered on the archaeological map A number of new sites had been discovered not included in the archeological map, which was flooded with water in the form of partial or total or was inaccessible because they are located in remote areas. "Sites targeted by thieves extended to the right and left of the old course of the Euphrates (and Mesopotamia), located on a border strip between the four provinces of southern Iraq", According to Al-Hamadani, a 100 civilian guard employed to report on abuses occurring in near locations. There is a monument protection taskforce and they provide 25% of its members with weaponries.

Al-Hamadani added: "The work of these armed guards is based on the protection of monuments during patrols around the clock. But they do not possess the necessary cars to do their job well, they only possess nine cars operating in the four hubs of the province, this number is insufficient, especially with the increasing number of archaeological sites. "The task force is "to deter those looters", Al-Hamadani said. He also added that "some people of the area, but they're not inherently as thieves looking for opportunities to the exhumation of archaeological sites and dug", Then, "comes smugglers and dealers from away provinces like Karbala, Baghdad and the Kurdistan region and pay large amounts of money for the exhumed antiquities.

This consumes the area of its cultural heritage. There might be museums worldwide seeking to obtain these parts at any price because the Sumerian civilization is a unique civilization, the rise in the prices of these items with the passage of time is hi and they will be sold at exorbitant prices in the world markets in both the United States and Europe. And with the lack of real protection of this World Heritage, the old towns destroyed and their archeological pieces scattered.

It should be noted that the fear is growing that the trade of archeological pieces will eradicate completely the Sumerian civilization. During the last three years, destroyed and vandalized more than one hundred archaeological site, and if the Iraqi government or occupation forces will not provide necessary support in the near future, the humanity will lose an important part of its civilizations memories."

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 9:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Iraq's National Library and Archive, Caught on the Front Line of Sectarian Fighting, Is Closed

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (12-7-06)

After months of determined efforts to keep going amid Iraq's deepening violence and chaos, the National Library and Archive, the country's largest depository of books and documents, has closed.

Saad Bashir Eskander, the library's director-general, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday that he had reluctantly decided to shutter the institution on November 21 after several staff members were killed and the building had increasingly come under fire.

The institution and its collections were heavily damaged when the library was twice looted and burned shortly after the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The national library was only one of many institutions -- including libraries, museums, universities, and hospitals -- that were plundered in the lawlessness that followed the invasion.

But after being gradually repaired, the National Library and Archive, which is known as the NLA, had become a haven for students and scholars in Baghdad, the capital.

The library, on Rashid Street, is a modern three-story structure with four wings built around a central courtyard. Unfortunately for the institution, it is located on the front line of battles between Shiite and Sunni militias, which have escalated in recent months.

"On many occasions, the NLA was hit directly," Mr. Eskander wrote on Wednesday. "Windows were smashed. My staff are naturally frightened."

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Fairy-tale German town fights neo-Nazi violence

Source: Reuters (12-7-06)

QUEDLINBURG, Germany (Reuters) - The Christmas market in this medieval German town could be off a page in a children's picture book.

The sugary smell of "Gluehwein" (mulled wine) wafts over wooden stalls selling toys and gingerbread while children sway to seasonal songs. Christmas lights illuminate the half-timbered houses around the square.

Last Saturday evening, three burly policemen stood under those fairy lights clutching truncheons.

Their job: to stop neo-Nazi violence.

Sure enough, a couple of hours later bottles started flying, a scuffle ensued and an ambulance drew up. The chatty waitress in a restaurant under Quedlinburg's town hall suddenly became flustered and locked the door, keeping her customers inside.

"Sorry, this has been happening a bit lately," she said, mentioning a neo-Nazi attack last weekend on some teenagers.

In statistics which make alarming reading given Germany's Nazi history, right wing-motivated violence is on the rise in the country as a whole and especially in the former east German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 4:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Suitable for hanging: Chicago's gallows sold

Source: Reuters (12-7-06)

Escaped convict "Terrible" Tommy O'Connor can rest a little easier.

The warped wooden gallows used more than a century ago to hang convicts in Chicago, beginning with those condemned for the May 4, 1886, Haymarket Square riot, has been bought at auction by Ripley's Believe It or Not museums for $68,000, Mastro Auctions said on Thursday.

Between 1887 and 1927, 86 men were hanged from the gallows built to execute those convicted of inciting the violence at the labor rally in which eight policemen died. Four of the supposed conspirators were hanged from the gallows.

The contraption had been kept disassembled in the basement of Chicago's criminal courts building awaiting the recapture of cop killer O'Connor, who was 31 when he escaped a few days before his scheduled execution in 1921.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 3:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pearl Harbor Survivors Meet for Last Time

Source: AP (12-7-06)

With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy.

Posted on Thursday, December 7, 2006 at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Iraq National Library and Archive to remain closed

Source: IraqCrisis newsletter (12-6-06)

Friends and Colleagues,

Numerous individuals have expressed concern over the status of the Iraq National Library and Archive since I reported on its closing a week ago Monday. I have conveyed some of these messages directly to Dr. Saad Eskander, Director-General of the library. He has stated that he and his staff deeply appreciate the moral support provided under such extremely difficult conditions.

Dr. Eskander was contemplating the issue of whether to reopen this past weekend. However, on Sunday, December 3rd, just as he reached his office, a bomb exploded in the building directly opposite the National Library and Archive. Furthermore, he reports that the Ministry of Culture is itself closed. Having received no instructions from his government or minister, and with the level of insecurity unabated, he has decided that the NLA should remain closed for the time being.

Yours truly,
Jeff

Jeffrey B. Spurr
Islamic and Middle East Specialist
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
Fine Arts Library, Harvard University
Fogg Art Museum
32 Quincy St.
Cambridge, MA 02138-3802

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 8:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkish University Suspends Professor for Criticism of Nation's Founder

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (12-6-06)

A professor of public administration at Gazi University, in the Turkish capital of Ankara, has been suspended for his comments at a conference last month about the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Associated Press reported that the professor, Atilla Yayla, was suspended last week after he referred to Atatürk, who died in 1938, as “that man,” criticized the display of portraits of the leader in government offices, and said Atatürk’s dictatorial rule had led to “regression rather than progress.”

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

House Passes Bill to Preserve 10 WWII Internment Camps

Source: AP (12-6-06)

World War II internment camps for Japanese-Americans will be preserved as reminders of how the United States treated some citizens in wartime.

The Republican-led Congress sent President Bush on Tuesday a bill for $38 million in National Park Service grants to restore and pay for research at 10 camps. The lawmakers returned on Tuesday for four days of work, and the House passed the bill on a voice vote.

The park service operates centers at two camps, the Manzanar National Historic Site in California and the Minidoka Internment National Monument in Idaho.

The Senate passed the bill last month. The park service says the program is too expensive, but the White House has not signaled opposition to it.

“Preserving these internment sites is a solemn task we all bear,” said Representative Doris Matsui, Democrat of California, who was born in 1944 in the Potson camp in Arizona. “Those who come after us will have a physical reminder of what they will never allow to happen again.”

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Textbooks In Israel to Designate West Bank

Source: WaPo (12-6-06)

Maps in future Israeli public school textbooks will show the boundary that existed between Israel and the West Bank before the 1967 Middle East war, Israel's education minister announced Tuesday. The move drew sharp protest from lawmakers, settler groups and religious leaders who claim the West Bank as part of the Jewish state.

The minister, Yuli Tamir, is a member of the Labor Party and a founder of the advocacy group Peace Now, which opposes Jewish settlement in the occupied territories. Palestinians envision a future state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, all of which Israel occupied in 1967.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has stated that Israel should evacuate parts of the West Bank so as to define its borders around land with a solid Jewish majority. He has said that several large Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank would be included as part of Israel in any final peace deal.

The Israeli government has frequently criticized the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states for using maps in classrooms that do not define the state of Israel, now 58 years old. The maps generally mark it as "Palestine."

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hitler race car could fetch $12 million

Source: CNN (12-6-06)

A rare 1939 German race car commissioned by Adolf Hitler is expected to command the highest price ever paid for any automobile at auction, according to Christie's, which will conduct the auction in Paris in February 2007.

The car, one of five remaining "Auto Union D-Types," is expected to sell for as much as $12 million, said Rupert Banner, head of Christie's motor cars department.

In 1933, after becoming chancellor of Germany, Hitler offered 500,000 reichmarks for a company to design a race car to show off the nation's technological prowess. Originally, Mercedes-Benz got the nod. But Ferdinand Porsche, then an engineer working with Auto Union, which today is known as Audi, was able to secure some of that financing to build a revolutionary car he had designed.

That car was modified over the next few years to become the 1939 Auto Union D-Type.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Auschwitz Death Camp Site to Be Renovated

Source: AP (12-5-06)

WARSAW, Poland -- The International Auschwitz Council agreed Tuesday to modernize a 51-year-old exhibition at the site of the Nazi death camp and build walls to prevent the ruins of gas chambers from sinking into the ground.

The decision to renovate and preserve remains of the vast Nazi death camp in southern Poland marks a change in the long-standing approach to maintaining the site, which has been left as the Allies found it when they liberated the camp at the end of World War II.

But two of the gas chambers are slowly sinking into the ground and will likely slide out of sight within the next two decades if nothing is done. How to save them prompted debate on the council, with a majority favoring a Polish expert's proposal to halt the erosion by building walls sunk into the ground on either side of the slipping chambers.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Iran to Host Forum on Holocaust Evidence

Source: AP (12-5-06)

Iran, whose president has described the Holocaust as a "myth," said Tuesday they will hold a conference to discuss the evidence that the Nazis committed genocide against the Jews in World War II.

The two-day conference scheduled for next week was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the systematic killing of some six million Jews, which has been extensively researched and documented, a "myth" and "exaggerated."

"The president simply asked whether an event called the Holocaust has actually taken place," Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi as saying. "No rational response was ever given to Ahmadinejad's questions," he added, explaining the rationale for the conference.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Family Sues U.S. Mint Over Rare Coins

Source: AP (12-5-06)

A family is suing the U.S. Mint, saying it illegally seized 10 gold coins that are among the rarest and most valuable in the world that the family found among a dead relative's possessions.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, accuses the Mint of violating the Constitution and breaking federal forfeiture laws by refusing to return the 1933 "double eagle" coins to the family after it handed the coins over to have their authenticity confirmed.

Plaintiffs Joan S. Langbord and her sons, Roy and David, are seeking the immediate return of the coins, said their attorney, Barry H. Berke.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Richest tenth own 85% of world's assets

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-6-06)

The richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, according to the most comprehensive study of personal assets.

Among the largest economies, Britain boasted the third-highest average wealth of $126,832 (£64,172) per adult, after the United States and Japan, a United Nations development research institute found.

Those with assets of $500,000 could consider themselves to be among the richest 1 per cent in the world. Those with net assets of $2,200 per adult were in the top half of the wealth distribution.

Although global income was distributed unequally, the spread of wealth was more skewed, according to the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University.

“Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high-income AsiaPacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90 per cent of total world wealth,” the report said. ...

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 6:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Egyptians Find 4,000-Year-Old Mummy

Source: AP (12-6-06)

Archeologists discovered the mummified remains of a doctor they believe lived more than 4,000 years ago and who was buried along with metal surgical tools.

Egypt's official Middle East News Agency quoted Zap Haws, chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, as saying Tuesday that archaeologists discovered the mummy in Saqqara, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Cairo as they were cleaning a nearby archaeological site.

Hawass said the doctor, named Qar, lived under the sixth dynasty from about B.C. 2350 to B.C. 2180 and that the upper part of the tomb was discovered in 2000 while the sarcophagus was found during more recent cleaning work.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 6:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Santa's evil sidekick gives jolly fright to kids

Source: Reuters (12-6-06)

As Christmas nears, Austrian children hoping for gifts from Santa Claus will also be watching warily for "Krampus", his horned and hairy sidekick.

In folklore, Krampus was a devil-like figure who drove away evil spirits during the Christian holiday season.

Traditionally, he appeared alongside Santa around December 6, the feast of St. Nicholas, and the two are still part of festivities in many parts of central Europe.

But these traditions came under the spotlight in Austria this year, after reports last week that Santa -- also known as St Nicholas, Father Christmas or Kris Kringle -- had been banned from visiting kindergartens in Vienna because he scared some children.

Officials denied the reports, but said from now on only adults the children knew would be able to don Santa's bushy white beard and red habit to visit the schools. Now, a prominent Austrian child psychiatrist is arguing for a ban on Krampus, who still roams towns and villages in early December.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 6:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Original Edison light bulbs to go under hammer

Source: Reuters (12-6-06)

A box containing 23 light bulbs used at the 1890 court case where Thomas Edison defended his patent for the invention is to be auctioned later this month and is expected to fetch up to 300,000 pounds ($600,000).

Christie's auctioneers said the bulbs disappeared after the tussle over U.S. patent number 223,898, but were discovered by chance in 2002 in the attic of a house in the United States in their original wooden case complete with the original key.

According to Web sites devoted to the U.S. inventor and businessman, the 1890 case between Edison Electric Light Company and United States Electric Light Company was one of the world's most important technology infringement cases.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 6:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Legacies bind Castro, Pinochet in their twilight

Source: Reuters (12-6-06)

Fighting serious illnesses in their old age, Cold War icons Fidel Castro of Cuba and Augusto Pinochet of Chile are united in stubborn adherence to their opposing and now largely unfashionable ideologies.

In Havana 80-year-old Castro, leader of Cuba for more than four decades, handed power to his brother on July 31 after an operation and has not reappeared in public. Despite official denials, many Cubans believe he is terminally ill.

Pinochet, 91, military leader of Chile from 1973 to 1990 and now pursued by courts for human rights and financial crimes, was recovering after a heart attack nearly killed him on Sunday.

Their Cold War battles shaped an era and they forged global reputations. Castro took power in 1959 in a revolution that overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Castro's Chilean ally, socialist Salvador Allende, was toppled by Pinochet's U.S.-backed 1973 coup.

Both have been called despots by their critics but Castro's passionate supporters admire him for standing up to U.S. imperialism while Pinochet fans say he saved Chile from Marxism.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 6:04 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Neanderthal Women Joined Men in the Hunt

Source: NYT (12-5-06)

A new explanation for the demise of the Neanderthals, the stockily built human species that occupied Europe until the arrival of modern humans 45,000 years ago, has been proposed by two anthropologists at the University of Arizona.

Unlike modern humans, who had developed a versatile division of labor between men and women, the entire Neanderthal population seems to have been engaged in a single main occupation, the hunting of large game, the scientists, Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, say in an article posted online yesterday in Current Anthropology.

Because modern humans exploited the environment more efficiently, by having men hunt large game and women gather small game and plant foods, their populations would have outgrown those of the Neanderthals.

The Neanderthals endured for about 100,000 years, despite a punishing way of life. They preyed on the large animals that flourished in Europe in the ice age like bison, deer, gazelles and wild horses. But there is no evidence that they knew of bows and arrows. Instead, they used stone-tipped spears.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Unscrambling the History of a Nazi Camp

Source: NY Times (12-6-06)

As in many of the other former concentration camps dotted across Europe, there is little left to indicate the horror that took place here. Green fields and avenues of trees have grown up where barracks and workshops used to stand; poplars sway gracefully next to the languid Sava River, which skirts the camp.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Site of African American Town Founded by Former Slave in California Threatened

Source: LA Times (12-6-06)

In 1908, a former slave and retired Army chaplain named Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth realized his life's dream: a town started and run entirely by African Americans.

Long ago shuttered, the original Allensworth now is a state historic park, cherished by families and church groups who see it as a hardscrabble monument to California's black history.

Posted on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Since Nixon Dick Cheney has pushed for more executive powers

Source: Boston Globe (12-3-06)

In July 1987, then-Rep. Dick Cheney, the top Republican on the committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal, turned on his hearing room microphone and delivered, in his characteristically measured tone, a revolutionary claim.

President Ronald Reagan and his top aides, he asserted, were free to ignore a 1982 law at the center of the scandal. Known as the Boland Amendment, it banned U.S. assistance to anti-Marxist militants in Nicaragua.

"I personally do not believe the Boland Amendment applied to the president, nor to his immediate staff," Cheney said.

Most of Cheney's colleagues did not share his vision of a presidency empowered to bypass U.S. laws governing foreign policy. The committee issued a scathing, bipartisan report accusing White House officials of "disdain for the law."

Cheney refused to sign it. Instead, he commissioned his own report declaring that the real lawbreakers were his fellow lawmakers, because the Constitution "does not permit Congress to pass a law usurping presidential power."

The Iran-Contra scandal was not the first time the future vice president articulated a philosophy of unfettered executive power -- nor would it be the last. The Constitution empowers Congress to pass laws regulating the executive branch, but over the course of his career, Cheney came to believe that the modern world is too dangerous and complex for a president's hands to be tied. He embraced a belief that presidents have vast "inherent" powers, not spelled out in the Constitution, that allow them to defy Congress.

Cheney bypassed acts of Congress as defense secretary in the first Bush administration. And his office has been the driving force behind the current administration's hoarding of secrets, its efforts to impose greater political control over career officials, and its defiance of a law requiring the government to obtain warrants when wiretapping Americans. Cheney's staff has also been behind President Bush's record number of signing statements asserting his right to disregard laws.

A close look at key moments in Cheney's career -- from his political apprenticeship in the Nixon and Ford administrations to his decade in Congress and his tenure as secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush -- suggests that the newly empowered Democrats in Congress should not expect the White House to cooperate when they demand classified information or attempt to exert oversight in areas such as domestic surveillance or the treatment of terrorism suspects....

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 10:12 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Pearl Harbor Memorial Event Inspired By Life Of Coats Veteran

Source: http://www.dunndailyrecord.com (11-24-06)

A son whose father was a Pearl Harbor survivor is making sure the attack will not only live in infamy, but live in the minds of the many who are too young to remember World War II.

Brad Williams, whose father was born and raised in Coats, has organized the commemorative event "Pearl Harbor Attack - The Day Of Infamy Remembered" to be held Saturday at the state capitol building in Raleigh. The event is free and begins at 10 a.m.

Mr. Williams' mission is to keep what happened at Pearl Harbor in the public's hearts and to honor his father, Homer Williams. Homer Williams died in May 2000 at age 79.

"I'm a son trying to honor my dad and all the other World War II veterans. I don't want 9-11 to be forgotten, but if we forget Pearl Harbor, it could happen again," he said.

According to Mr. Williams, his father was a gunner's mate first class on the USS Maryland.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 9:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Seeking peace at Pearl

Source: http://www.newsobserver.com (12-3-06)

Zenji Abe plans to make one last trip to Hawaii to remember Pearl Harbor this Dec. 7.
But there is a major difference between him and the other Pearl Harbor survivors gathering in Honolulu for what may be their final reunion.

Abe was on the other side.

A longtime Tokyo resident, Abe is one of the very last of the Japanese survivors from the Dec. 7, 1941, raid on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Only a handful of the 751 aviators remain.

For people living in the Triangle, Abe's presence in Hawaii is particularly noteworthy -- he was the dive-bomber pilot who attacked and scored a hit on the light cruiser USS Raleigh, which lay moored northwest of Ford Island in the center of Pearl Harbor.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 9:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vatican Holocaust claim disputed

Source: BBC (12-5-06)

The man who later became Pope John XXIII tried in vain to challenge the Vatican's perceived indifference to the Nazi Holocaust, a new study has found.

Papers and diaries show then Archbishop Giuseppe Roncalli posted an urgent telegram in 1944 to Pope Pius XII on the atrocities at Auschwitz.

The telegram's date contradicts the Vatican's official version of when it received a report.

The new insight comes from the papers of a Jewish emissary, Haim Barlas.

He had befriended Archbishop Roncalli, then the papal nuncio to Istanbul, in the 1940s.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils

Source: Yahoo (12-3-06)

Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya's national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors.

Leakey called the churches' plans "the most outrageous comments I have ever heard."

He told The Daily Telegraph (London): "The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind. The collection it holds is one of Kenya's very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science." Leakey was for years director of the museum and of Kenya's entire museum system.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:34 PM | Comments (1) | Top

In French-Speaking Canada, the Sacred Is Also Profane

Source: WaPo (12-5-06)

MONTREAL -- "Oh, tabernacle!" The man swore in French as a car splashed through a puddle, sending water onto his pants. He could never be quoted in the papers here. It is too profane.

So are other angry oaths that sound innocuous in English: chalice, host, baptism. In French-speaking Quebec, swearing sounds like an inventory being taken at a church.

English-speaking Canadians use profanities that would be well understood in the United States, many of them scatological or sexual terms. But the Quebecois prefer to turn to religion when they are mad. They adopt commonplace Catholic terms -- and often creative permutations of them -- for swearing.

In doing so, their oaths speak volumes about the history of this French province.

"When you get mad, you look for words that attack what represses you," said Louise Lamarre, a Montreal cinematographer who must tread lightly around the language, depending on whether her films are in French or English. "In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms."

And the words that are shocking in English -- including the slang for intercourse -- are so mild in Quebecois French they appear routinely in the media. But not church terms.

"You swear about things that are taboo," said André Lapierre, a professor of linguistics at the University of Ottawa. In the United States, "it is not appropriate to talk about sex or scatological subjects, so that is what you use in your curse words. The f-word is a perfect example.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Neanderthals Were Cannibals, Study Suggests

Source: livescience.com (12-4-06)

Neanderthals suffered periods of starvation and may have supplemented their diet through cannibalism, according to a study of remains from northwest Spain.

Paleobiologists studied samples from eight 43,000-year-old Neanderthal skeletons excavated from an underground cave in El Sidrón, Spain since 2000. The study sheds light on how Neanderthals lived before the arrival of modern humans in Europe.

Researchers found cut marks and evidence that bones had been torn apart, which they say could indicate cannibalism.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Unearthed Afghan treasures overcome odds for Paris show

Source: Yahoo (12-4-06)

Two years ago, a rich and ancient trove of some of Afghanistan's most treasured archaeological artefacts was rediscovered after lying hidden and feared lost through years of war and instability.

Illustrating about 2,000 years of Afghan history, the items were believed stolen or destroyed as the turbulent country emerged from civil strife and the 2001 fall of the hardline Taliban regime.

Now, a collection of 220 of the objects, which include major ivory, bronze and glassware pieces, will go on display, many rarely or never exhibited before, at a Paris Asian arts museum from December 6.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Hitler Youth' Protest Buttons Contested

Source: AP (12-4-06)

The parents of two students threatened with suspension for donning buttons depicting Hitler youth are suing, claiming the boys' free speech rights were violated.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court on Friday, seeks to bar the Bayonne school district from suspending or disciplining seventh-grader Anthony LaRocco and fifth-grader Michael DePinto if they wear the protest buttons.

The buttons, which were made to protest a mandatory uniform policy for grades K-8 adopted in September, have the words "no school uniforms" with a slash over a superimposed photo of young boys wearing identical shirts and neckerchiefs.

A lawyer for the parents, Karin R. White Morgen, said her clients did not want to speak to reporters, but provided a statement from DePinto's mother, Laura DePinto.

"I've gotten overwhelming support from MANY people that tell me that they absolutely agree with what the image depicted, an ominously homogenous group of blindly cooperative children," the statement said.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Doubts over French claim on Kagame role in 1994 Rwanda killing

Source: BBC (12-5-06)

A witness says his testimony was distorted by a French inquiry which accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame of killing his predecessor.

Former Rwandan soldier Emmanuel Ruzigana denies admitting to being part of a group that assassinated the president, reports a French newspaper.

Earlier, Mr Kagame accused France of "bullying" his country after a judge issued arrest warrants for his aides.

Rwanda has cut off diplomatic relations with France over the accusations.

The 1994 shooting down of the plane carrying former President Juvenal Habyarimana sparked the genocide, in which some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates were massacred.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Diaries reveal passions at the court of King George III

Source: Observer (12-3-06)

Vivacious, flirtatious and yet serious-minded, Mary Hamilton first created waves in the court of George III when she was appointed to help look after his six daughters in the royal nursery.

A niece of Emma, Lady Hamilton, the famous mistress of Lord Nelson, her alluring looks quickly drew her to the attention of the teenage Prince Regent, later to become King George IV. In spite of the fact that Mary Hamilton was six years his senior, the infatuated youth sent her 78 passionate letters, clearly rehearsing some of the seductive skills that were to earn him a playboy reputation in adulthood.

The love letters, all written in 1779, are signed George P, GP or 'Palemon toujours de meme', and in one the excitable 16-year-old prince writes: 'I will follow, I will be conducted, I will be guided by you, throughout the whole maze of Labyrinth of this world.'

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pulitzers to Credit Anonymous but Prize-Winning 1979 Iran Photo

Source: AP (12-5-06)

The Pulitzer Prize board will consider changing its records to recognize a photographer who is now credited with taking a Pulitzer-winning picture of a 1979 Iranian execution, the administrator said Monday.

Sig Gissler said the board had the matter under review, following a Wall Street Journal story on Saturday that identified the photographer as Jahangir Razmi.

The "evidence in the story appears clear and convincing," Gissler said.

The photo is one of the most iconic images in the history of Iran, a symbol of the brutality of the regime that terrorized the country after the shah was overthrown. It depicts a line of 11 blindfolded men who are executed by a firing squad.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Rare stamp on ballot envelope? Cancel that

Source: Miami Herald (12-4-06)

The rare, attention-grabbing stamp found on the envelope of a Broward County absentee ballot has officially been declared a fake.

Two independent stamp organizations examined the Inverted Jenny stamp in person today. Representatives from both the Pennsylvania-based American Philatelic Society and the California-based Professional Stamp Experts agreed the Broward stamp was a copy of the actual World War I-era stamp.

The forged stamp has several differences from a real Inverted Jenny, including border perforations.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 8:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Build a road right through the Great Wall of China?

Source: Reuters (12-5-06)

A Chinese company that had sought to build a highway through the Great Wall paid a fine for damaging the structure Sunday, days after new penalties were enacted to protect China's most famous tourist attraction, state media reported.

Hongji Landbridge Investment Development Inc. paid 500,000 yuan ($63,800) in penalties for deliberately damaging a section of the Great Wall in Inner Mongolia as part of an unauthorized road project, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The company ignored warnings from officials and suggestions on how it could complete the project without damaging the wall, including digging tunnels and building overpasses, Xinhua cited unnamed cultural heritage officials as saying.

Instead, it demolished large sections of the Great Wall along with three ancient villages that were under government protection, it cited Wang Dafang, an official with the regional cultural heritage bureau, as saying.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 7:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Using ‘Google Earth’ in the History Classroom

Source: History Today (subscription only) (12-1-06)

Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) is a fantastic free tool which allows you to explore the globe from your home computer. Download the software onto your computer and within seconds you can find yourself touring the planet at high altitude, zooming in and out of countries, towns and even streets; examining the terrain, adding your own overlay maps and constructing virtual ‘flyover’ tours of selected locations. This software has obvious applications in the Geography classroom, but it also has incredible potential for History teaching.

1. Three ways that Google Earth can enhance history

a. Terrain / Overlays
‘Overlays’ are maps which are scanned from a computer (or taken direct from the web) and then dropped over a historical site to give a much better sense of ‘place’: for example, a contemporary engraving showing London After the Great Fire, or aerial photographs of Concentration Camps around the Third Reich. Even more impressively, ...

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 7:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Afghans consider rebuilding Buddhas

Source: International Herald Tribune (12-5-06)

The empty niches that once held Bamiyan's colossal Buddhas now gape in the rock face - a silent cry at the terrible destruction wrought on this fabled valley and its 1,500-year-old treasures, once the largest standing Buddha statues in the world.
Archaeologists have been taking advantage of the greatly increased access that became possible, once the statues were gone, to make new discoveries - and to pursue ancient tales of a third giant Buddha, possibly buried between the two that were destroyed.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 12:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Four of six major papers left out prescient warnings in coverage of 2002 Iraq war vote

Source: Media Matters (12-4-06)

Summary: A December 4 Washington Post article pointed out that the newspaper's own reporting from October 2002 on the House's passage of the Iraq war resolution failed to quote a single Democrat expressing concerns about "postwar challenges," though many had done so. Media Matters found that contemporaneous articles from three other major print outlets also left out any mention of such warnings.

In a December 4 article, Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus highlighted the congressional Democrats who voted against the October 2002 Iraq war resolution and who predicted at the time that the Bush administration was not prepared for certain "postwar challenges" -- warnings that, in Pincus' words, "turned out to be correct." He further pointed out that the Post, in its two October 11, 2002, articles on the resolution's passage in the House, failed to quote a single Democrat voicing these prescient concerns.

Expanding on Pincus' critique, Media Matters for America reviewed the coverage by five other major print outlets -- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Associated Press. Our survey found that some did better than others in their coverage of the Democratic opposition to the resolution. But like the Post, three of these five outlets failed to mention the numerous Democrats who warned of "postwar challenges" during the congressional debate on the resolution.

From Pincus' December 4 article, headlined "Democrats Who Opposed War Move Into Key Positions":
Although given little public credit at the time, or since, many of the 126 House Democrats who spoke out and voted against the October 2002 resolution that gave President Bush authority to wage war against Iraq have turned out to be correct in their warnings about the problems a war would create.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 11:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

On Second Try, Intrepid Agrees to Leave Dock

Source: NYT (12-5-06)

ABOARD THE INTREPID IN THE HUDSON RIVER, Dec. 5 — The Intrepid is no longer stuck in the mud.

This morning, one month after the first attempt failed, a team of tugboats yanked the old, gray ship from its berth on the West Side of Manhattan, where it has served as a military museum for 24 years.

After three weeks of dredging provided by the United States Navy to clear the Intrepid’s four giant propellers from the river bottom for a second try, the lead tug, the Christine M. McAllister, started pulling at 8:30 a.m.

For the first 25 minutes, the ship hardly budged, and officials who had gathered for the event looked concerned. But just before 9 a.m., the Intrepid began slipping away from the pier.

“We got it!” said Pat Kinnier, who was overseeing the towing, as officials in charge of the ship and the towing operation embraced one another on a rear deck of the Intrepid, and about 100 people watched from the neighboring pier.

Once the 900-foot-long World War II-era aircraft carrier was finally clear of the berth that has been its home since 1982, the tugs began towing it stern-first down the river toward the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. After a slow five-mile voyage, the Intrepid is scheduled to tie up later today in Bayonne, N.J., where it will spend several weeks in drydock next spring as its hull is sandblasted and repainted.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 11:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, December 4, 2006

In Boon to Art Historians, Leading Museum Will Make Digital Images Available Free

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (12-1-06)

Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum will make digital images of objects in its collections freely available to scholars beginning in early 2007, a move that The Art Newspaper said “could transform art publishing.” The move comes at a time when art-history scholars are facing a host of problems in getting their research published, including rising permissions costs.

The new policy will allow visitors to the Collections Online Web site to download high-resolution files free of charge, according to a museum news release. The Web site already contains more than 25,000 images from the museum, with more being added. The museum is one of the largest repositories of works in design and the decorative arts from cultures around the world.

“We want to respond to the needs of the academic and education community by making collection images available with greater convenience and minimum cost,” Mark Jones, the museum’s director, said in the news release. “High charges have acted as a barrier to spreading knowledge, and we want to play a part in removing this.”

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 9:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Foreigners to be quizzed on UK history

Source: Reuters (12-4-06)

Foreigners wanting to settle in the country will be tested on their knowledge of British history and customs from next year, the Home Office said on Monday,

From April, applicants will be expected to answer questions on subjects ranging from The Queen, to regional dialects and customs in the 45-minute "Life in the UK" test already taken by those applying to become British citizens.

The government says the test helps integrate migrants into society.

"It is essential that migrants wishing to live in the UK permanently recognise that there are responsibilities that go with this," Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said in a statement.

Applicants will also be expected to demonstrate a knowledge of English. As well as questions on the workings of government, the test also expects applicants to know details of British history and also a wealth of statistical data.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

WWII recipes for today's cooks

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-4-06)

As an antidote to over-fussy modern cuisine it could not be better, and as a source for sensible, healthy and economical recipes it could not be improved.

In the pinched austerity of 1944 The Daily Telegraph appealed to its readers to send in their answers to the problems posed by rationing for the contemporary cook.

The newspaper's "Home Cook", a reassuringly anonymous figure, wrote in the foreword to the appropriately lean volume - now being republished by The Daily Telegraph: "Cookery, always influenced by wars and social changes, has come to one of its greatest turning points.

"It is to the home cooks rather than to the food specialists and the scientists that we must now look for the most practical and pleasing solutions of new problems."

The Home Cook's weekly column offered a prize of 10/6d - about £40 at today's values - for the best recipe of the week. And what solutions did these "painstaking, purposeful" kitchen toilers come up with?

Well, it was meals such as Corned Beef and Beetroot served up piping hot by Miss Evans of East Horsley in Surrey, or Curried Tripe, to be served with boiled rice.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Towering Ancient Tsunami Devastated the Mediterranean

Source: Yahoo (12-1-06)

A volcano avalanche in Sicily 8,000 years ago triggered a devastating tsunami taller than a 10-story building that spread across the entire Mediterranean Sea, slamming into the shores of three continents in only a few hours [image].

A new computer simulation of the ancient event reveals for the first time the enormity of the catastrophe and its far-reaching effects [video].

The Mt. Etna avalanche sent 6 cubic miles of rock and sediment tumbling into the water—enough material to cover the entire island of Manhattan in a layer of debris thicker than the Empire State Building is tall.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Eternal city reveals new layers during metro dig (Rome)

Source: Reuters (12-1-06)

Raffaela La Pasta is not sure but thinks that the still half-buried skeleton she is unearthing in downtown Rome is female, and at least 1,600-years-old.

A leg-bone is sticking up through the dirt and the outline of the skull is just visible, even in this pit 8 meters (26 feet) below the surface of the city.

"She's not the only one. There are others we found too," La Pasta said, coolly.

This archaeological site, which has also yielded a trove of Roman coins, pottery and even toys, is just one of dozens being drilled in the eternal city thanks to a metro project that is giving La Pasta and other scientists a rare, deep look below.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust Papers Could Aid Compensation

Source: AP (12-2-06)

Public access to millions of Nazi war documents, kept in closed archives for 60 years, could help Holocaust survivors win larger claims for restitution, survivors groups say.

Plans to open the Red Cross-administered archives at Bad Arolsen, Germany, should persuade committees handling compensation for survivors "to halt the rush to judgment" in settling claims, said the Holocaust Survivors' Foundation-USA, a national coalition of American survivors' organizations.

Some of the survivors also are appealing a federal court's dismissal of class action suits against the Italian insurance company Assicurazioni Generali for allegedly refusing to honor policies predating World War II.

"Survivors have been denied access to the necessary information required to mount full and effective disgorgement of the ill-gotten gains of the European plunderers," said an open letter by the coalition, which has more than two dozen groups representing about 20,000 Holocaust survivors.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Egyptians living above tombs agree to go

Source: AP (12-2-06)

After six decades of wrangling, Egyptians living in the hills near Luxor have agreed to move out and give tourists and archaeologists access to nearly 1,000 Pharaonic tombs that lie beneath their homes, the government said Saturday.

Officials said most of 3,200 families in the brightly painted, mud-brick houses have agreed to pack up and move to a $32 million residential complex being built three miles away. No deadline for moving has been set and there is no target date for finishing the complex.

"Most of them want to leave and they demand to leave," said Rania Yusuf, a spokeswoman for Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities in Luxor.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Roger Mudd Donates Major Southern Literary Collection to Washington and Lee Universit

Source: Press Release-- Washington & Lee (11-18-06)

Roger Mudd, an acclaimed television journalist and alumnus of Washington and Lee University, has donated his extensive collection of 20th-century Southern writers to the Washington and Lee University Leyburn Library. The collection, some 1,500 volumes in total, will be transferred in installments. Mudd, W&L class of 1950, presented the first 100 volumes at a program sponsored by The Friends of the Library on Oct. 21 during W&L's 2006 Presidential Inauguration Weekend.

The total collection comprises first issue or first editions of the complete works of almost 200 writers, including William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren and Ellen Glasgow. His initial gift consisted of the complete works of Faulkner, Glasgow and Erskine Caldwell.

Mudd dates his love of books to when he was eight years old. He was inspired to begin his collection as an undergraduate by the late W&L Professor of American Studies Marshall Fishwick (1949-1962). "It was Marshall Fishwick who really got me started and convinced me book collecting was a hobby worth pursuing," he said. Mudd made the donation to his alma mater in memory of Professor Fishwick, who passed away in May 2006 after a distinguished career at W&L and Virginia Tech University. Fishwick is regarded by many as the originator of the discipline of popular culture.

"We are delighted that Roger Mudd has seen his way to make this important donation to W&L's library," says University Librarian Merrily E. Taylor. "A complete collection of this magnitude is rare, and we are very fortunate to be able to make it available to W&L students and faculty, as well as the public. We are also honored to preserve this fine collection for use for generations to come."

Mudd, who said he had run out of space and has now stopped collecting, adds, "Not collecting does not mean that I have lost my fascination with books, their welcoming warmth, their heft, their permanence, the brilliance of their creation from the first little hints and scribbles to the final shiny product with its distinctive fragrance.

"Above all, giving my Southern collection to my alma mater means that those thousand friends I got to know over the years, those friends who lived in our home and slept on our shelves will get to stay together as a family in a splendid new home, with proper climate and protection, where I know they will give as much pleasure and joy to those who love books and love Leyburn Library as they gave to me."

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

S.Korea moving ancient gate 15m to right old wrong

Source: Reuters (12-4-06)

- South Korea started a $30 million (15.2 million pound), three-year project on Monday to move the main gate of an ancient royal palace about 15 metres (50 feet) in order to right a wrong it sees as being caused by Japan's colonial occupation.

The gate burnt then down in the early stages of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

The gate, which stands at the end of a main thoroughfare in the capital, was rebuilt by South Korea in 1968, using materials such as concrete, in a spot removed from its original location because of new roads constructed during Japanese rule.

"The Japanese invasion caused the gate to be shifted from where it had historically been located," said Park Wang-hee, a Cultural Heritage Administration official.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Early sketch of Stonehenge found

Source: Guardian (11-27-06)

They got the date wrong by some 3,000 years, but the oldest detailed drawing of Stonehenge, apparently based on first hand observation, has turned up in a 15th century manuscript.

The little sketch is a bird's eye view of the stones, and shows the great trilithons, the biggest stones in the monument, each made of two pillars capped with a third stone lintel, which stand in a horseshoe in the centre of the circle. Only three are now standing, but the drawing, found in Douai, northern France, suggests that in the 15th century four of the original five survived.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient American Indian skull found (NY)

Source: http://www.int.iol.co.za (12-2-06)

Watermill, New York - Archaeologists surveying a property earmarked for a suburban housing development discovered an ancient American Indian skull.

The Suffolk County medical examiner's office determined on Thursday that the skull dated back 1 000 to 3 000 years.

The skull, unearthed on Wednesday, was given to the Shinnecock Indian Nation in nearby Southampton for reburial, the Town of Southampton police said.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A forgotten figure from colonial era gets the digital treatment

Source: AP (11-29-06)

ALBANY -- Now that he's going digital, maybe Sir William Johnson will finally emerge from the dusty pages of American history.

The William Johnson Papers will be digitized for a DVD, giving students, scholars and history buffs easier access to the 15,000 pages of documents generated by the wealthy and powerful British official who was a towering figure in 18th-century America but is largely forgotten today.

During a news conference Wednesday in Lake George, the site of one of Johnson's battlefield victories, officials from New York historical organizations said the yearlong Johnson Papers "legacy project" will involve scanning the material onto a searchable DVD scheduled for release in October 2007.

"It's an extraordinary treasure trove of material," said Nicholas Westbrook, director of Fort Ticonderoga and vice chairman of the New York State French and Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration Commission.

The project is being launched by the commission, the New York State Library, the New York State Archives Partnership Trust, SUNY Press and Johnson historic sites in the Mohawk Valley. Its goal is to distribute the Johnson Papers DVD to every school and public library in New York state.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Older than the sun, the meteorite scientists call 'the real time machine'

Source: Guardian (12-1-06)

As lumps of rock go it looks much like any other, unexceptional despite the deep red of its cool, smooth surface. The pieces range in size from pea-sized lumps to larger fist-sized chunks. But today, scientists will announce this is no ordinary stone. Prised from a frozen lake in northern Canada, it has become a prime candidate for the oldest known object on Earth.

The chunk came from a meteorite that scored an arc of fire across the skies before slamming into Lake Tagish in British Columbia in 2000. It has been pored over by scientists ever since, and is today revealed to contain particles that predate the birth of our nearest star, the sun.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkey trip 'defines Benedict papacy'

Source: BBC (12-2-06)

The 79-year-old Pope scored a considerable diplomatic success.

Popes usually go down in history more for what they do than for what they say.

The reign of the 16th-Century Pope Sixtus V is still remembered for his architectural transformations of the city of Rome.

Pope John XXIII is remembered for having called the Second Vatican Council. And Pope John Paul II is remembered as the most travelled Pope in history.

In Istanbul, we have, I believe, witnessed some defining moments of the papacy of Benedict XVI.

He reached out to Muslims by praying facing towards Mecca in a famous mosque.

And he reached out to Orthodox Christians, seeking to heal a rift that has lasted more than 1,000 years by holding joint services and giving a joint blessing to their faithful by the side of Patriarch Bartholomew, their spiritual leader, on the holiest day in their church calendar.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Python may have been the first sacred idol 70,000 years ago

Source: Times Online (UK) (12-2-06)

Pythons were probably the first idols to be worshipped by man, archaeologists said after unearthing evidence of a ritual dating back 70,000 years.

A rock shaped like an enormous python’s head, discovered in a cave in the Tsodilo hills of Botswana, puts back the date of the first known human ritual by 30,000 years, they say.

Behind the rock, which was covered in man-made indentations, was a chamber that the archaeologists believed was used by a shaman who could have spoken without being seen, giving the impression that it was the snake speaking.

“The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect,” Sheila Coulson, from the University of Oslo, said.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German Railway to Show Holocaust Role in Exhibition

Source: AP (12-1-06)

Germany's national railway, Deutsche Bahn, said Friday it had reached an agreement with the Transport Ministry to open an exhibition documenting its predecessor's role in the Holocaust.

The decision follows a clash between Deutsche Bahn chief Hartmut Mehdorn and Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee over Mehdorn's refusal to host a French exhibit on the former Reichsbahn's role in deporting 11,000 Jewish children to concentration camps.

Mehdorn had argued that the focus of the French exhibition was too narrow, and Deutsche Bahn said the new display will be broader.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Argentine Judge: Ex-Iran Leader Fugitive

Source: AP (12-1-06)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- A court on Friday declared former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and eight others fugitives from justice in Argentina, where they are wanted in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center.

Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral said the nine must be considered fugitives for failing to respond to arrest warrants he issued earlier this month, when he said he had "serious" evidence of the suspects' involvement in the attack.

Some 85 people were killed and more than 200 were injured 12 years ago when a bomb exploded in a van outside the seven-story AMIA center in the capital of Buenos Aires.

Iran has denied any involvement and has said it does not recognize the validity of the arrest warrants. It said it would oppose any attempt to detain the former president or other Iranian citizens.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan to Compensate Korean-Occupation Victims of Leprosy

Source: AP (12-2-06)

Japan will compensate former leprosy sufferers in South Korea who were forced into isolation during Tokyo's colonial rule, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Friday.

The Japanese government will pay $69,000 each to 64 people forced to live in a sanatorium on a small island, bringing to 155 the number of South Korean beneficiaries of such compensation, the ministry said.

Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry confirmed the number, adding that 282 South Korean victims were yet to receive compensation.

Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910 to 1945, and Taiwan from 1895 to 1945.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 8:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Legend of the sword in the lake halts plans to build huge dam in NE India

Source: Independent (UK) (12-2-06)

North-east India's equivalent of King Arthur has ridden to the rescue of thousands of people opposing a massive dam project that will flood their homes.

The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, cancelled plans to lay the foundation stone for the dam this weekend in the face of massive protests by tribal groups who say it will inundate the sacred lake still believed to hold the region's answer to Excalibur.

Manipur, the state where the dam is supposed to be built, lies in India's impoverished and insurgency-racked north-east, and is home to tribal groups who have their own distinct culture. Now that culture has brought a major project to build a 520ft hydroelectric dam to a standstill.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

FOIA request for White House visitor records comes back with 100 + redacted pages

Source: Website of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) (12-4-06)

CREW has been trying to obtain access visitor records to the White House for months now. Those records had been under the control of the Secret Service, which made them subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The White House is now claiming visitor records are under their control -- and, therefore, not subject to FOIAs because the White House is exempt. We believe that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been in a dispute with the White House about those records. NARA doesn't quite buy the White House argument -- and we want to know what they've said to the White House. So, we sent a FOIA request to NARA requesting the relevant the relevant documents. You can see the very heavily redacted response we got from NARA, which is fairly typical from this administration.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 7:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Emperor Maxentius insignia found in Rome

Source: AP (12-3-06)

Archaeologists have unearthed what they say are
the only existing imperial insignia belonging to
Emperor Maxentius ˜ precious objects that were buried
to preserve them and keep them from enemies when he
was defeated by his rival Constantine.

Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the
Colosseum turned up items including three lances and
four javelins that experts said are striking for their
completeness ˜ digs usually turn up only fragments ˜
and the fact that they are the only known artifacts of
their kind.

Clementina Panella, the archaeologist who made the
discovery, said the insignia were likely hidden by
Maxentius' people in an attempt to preserve the
emperor's memory after he was defeated by Constantine
I in the 321 A.D. battle of the Milvian Bridge ˜ a
turning point for the history of the Roman empire
which saw Constantine become the unchallenged ruler of
the West.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 4:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Seven decades later, civil war still splits Spain

Source: Reuters (12-4-06)

Seventy years after he was shot during the Spanish civil war, 90-year-old Leandro Saun turns red with anger when talking about a conflict that still divides Spain.

"We're only partially over it," he says during a debate in Marca, a small village near the Ebro river, site of one of the bloodiest battles of the 1936-1939 war.

Saun fought with the Republican forces against General Francisco Franco's men, and spent 12 years in prison, four of them under a death sentence.

He has been telling his story at a string of events this year to mark 70 years since the outbreak of the war -- an anniversary that has opened a bitter debate between Spain's left and right on a subject long shrouded in silence.

"People of the first generation carry this in their hearts, but the present generation is different, we're on our way to this becoming less traumatic," says Jose Luis Ledesma, a professor at the University of Zaragoza.

The grandchildren of those who fought in the war are lifting the lid on an era their parents sought to ignore for fear of Franco, whose 36-year dictatorship only ended with his death in 1975. Around 50,000 people disappeared, were imprisoned or tortured during his time in power.

Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006 at 4:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, December 3, 2006

How often do they change the nation's citizenship quiz?

Source: Slate (12-1-06)

The Department of Homeland Security released sample questions from a new version of the naturalization test on Thursday. In the current system, immigration officers quiz would-be citizens on a set of 10 civics questions, chosen from a list of about 100. How often does the test change?

Every few decades. The list of questions used today dates back to the last large-scale amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1986. Before then, the process wasn't nearly as standardized as it is today. Each immigration officer could ask whatever questions (and however many) he deemed appropriate during a naturalization interview. This loosey-goosey system wasn't equipped to handle the large number of naturalizations that resulted from the 1986 amnesty. So, a pair of officers at the INS got together and came up with the standard questions used today.

The new list didn't make the test predictable. Individual officers could still decide exactly which questions to ask, and they sometimes strayed from the samples. As late as the 1990s, testers were still inconsistent in the way they administered the test: Some might ask 10 questions, for example, and others 12.

Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 8:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

World War I Museum Opening in Mo.

Source: Salon (12-2-06)

December 01,2006 | KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- World War I ended nearly 90 years ago, only a few of its U.S. veterans are still alive, and about a decade ago, its national monument was closed after years of neglect and deterioration.

But this weekend, the "war to end all wars" takes center stage when the National World War I Museum opens, giving the public a chance to learn about -- and from -- the conflict that catapulted the United States toward superpower status.

"Unfulfilled needs, national ambitions, national culture clashes, all of the things that were in play in World War I are still with us today," said Brig. Gen. Stephen Berkheiser, executive director of the new museum.

Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 8:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan to Pay Compensation to War Orphans

Source: Salon (12-2-06)

A court Friday ordered the government to pay millions of dollars in compensation to dozens of Japanese who, as children, were stranded in China at the close of World War II.

The 65 plaintiffs claimed the government was responsible for their delayed return to Japan and upon their return, had failed to provide adequate support to help them reintegrate into Japanese society. They were each seeking $285,000 in compensation.

The Kobe District Court ordered the state to pay between $57,000 and $199,000 to 61 of the plaintiffs, according to court official Yukio Ogushi. The court rejected claims by four others, he said. The total amount of compensation will be more than $4 million, Kyodo News agency reported.

Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 8:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Living Memories of Bound Feet, War and Chaos in China

Source: NYT (12-3-06)

AT ages 84 and 83, Wang Zaiban and Wu Xiuzhen are old women, and their feet are historical artifacts. They are among the dwindling number of women in China from the era when bound feet were considered a prerequisite for landing a husband.

No available man, custom held, could resist the picture of vulnerability presented by a young girl tottering atop tiny, pointed feet. But Mrs. Wang and Mrs. Wu have tottered past vulnerability. They have outlived their husbands and also outlived civil war, mass starvation and the disastrous ideological experiments by Mao that almost killed China itself.

In recent years, drought drove them out of the mountains of Shaanxi Province to this farming village beside the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia. They now collect cigarette cartons or other scraps for recycling, or they help in the fields. They are widows, grandmothers, mothers and, more or less, migrant workers.

At this particular moment, they are resting.

Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 8:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historians Rank Bush -- Worse than ... ?

Source: HNN Staff (12-3-06)

The Washington Post asked four historians to rank President Bush.

Eric Foner says flat out that Bush is "the worst ever."

David Greenberg says that Nixon is still the worst but Bush's record is certainly comparable.

Douglas Brinkley ranks Bush with Hoover.

Vincent J. Cannato says it's too early to tell.

Related Links

HNN Hot Topics: Where George W. Bush Ranks as President

Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 6:59 PM | Comments (5) | Top

Friday, December 1, 2006

Traffic Issues Lead Army to Move Proposed National Museum of the Army

Source: WaPo (12-1-06)

The Army said yesterday that it will build a national museum at Fort Belvoir instead of on a nearby site that local officials warned would worsen the congestion expected with the military's planned relocation of thousands of employees to the area.

The reversal came under pressure from Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), who share local officials' concerns that Belvoir's expansion could create a traffic disaster.

"We've got transportation chaos looming over the horizon here if we're not careful, and the Army museum situation was just going to exacerbate it," Moran said. "What the Army wanted to do was create a destination point on I-95 contiguous to one of the worst traffic congestion points in the Washington area."

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Is 1,400-year-old treasure evidence of Christianity's first foothold in Britain?

Source: Independent Institute (12-1-06)

Archaeologists excavating near the edge of Trafalgar Square in London have found evidence of early Christianity in England, suggesting the area has a much older religious significance than was originally believed.

A team from the Museum of London has discovered a hoard of what is almost certainly royal treasure, buried in a mysterious, empty human grave laid out in the traditional Christian manner - east to west.

"Our excavations demonstrate the position as a significant and important place at an earlier date than we thought," said Alison Telfer, the senior archaeologist in charge of the dig.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pakistan invites tourists to Churchill's battlefield

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-1-06)

The battlefield of a long-forgotten, far-off imperial war that once gripped the imagination of the British public is to be opened up for the first time to tourism.

Much of the Malakand battlefield, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, has been under tight military control since Sir Winston Churchill's eyewitness accounts of the campaign were published in The Daily Telegraph in 1897.

The government has now decided to grant access to historic sites such as Malakand Fort where 1,000 Sikh infantry, under British command, fended off 10,000 Pathan tribesmen led by the "Mad Mullah of Malakand", Mullah Mastun. The mullah roused the tribes against British dominion and said the Prophet had ordained that they would eject the foreigners from India.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Exiled Greek royals sell off the family silver

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-1-06)

The Greek royal family in exile, stripped of almost all of its property after a coup in 1967, is to sell silverware and other heirlooms rescued from one of its palaces in the hope of raising at least £2 million.

The treasures will be auctioned in London in January, Christie's announced yesterday.

The property is formally described as coming from the collection of King George I of the Hellenes, modern Greece's first monarch, who reigned from 1863 to 1913. But the vendor, who refuses to be named, is almost certainly the deposed King Constantine II of Greece, who has lived in London in relatively straitened circumstances for more than 30 years.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:50 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Eden wanted legal team to justify Suez

Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-1-06)

Those who believe that history is condemned to repeat itself need only examine newly-released files on the Suez affair showing how the government struggled to justify a legally dubious military operation.

Just as Lord Goldsmith, the current Attorney General, strove to put a legal gloss on Tony Blair's position on Iraq, so Lord Kilmuir, the Lord Chancellor in Sir Anthony Eden's cabinet in 1956, performed similar gymnastics.

Documents released at the National Archives 50 years after Suez, one of Britain's greatest foreign policy blunders of the 20th century, are reminiscent of debates surrounding what has turned out to be the first great fiasco of the 21st century.

The files also disclose the extremes to which Eden was prepared to go in his desire to remove Nasser, who he believed was a threat to Britain's weakening position in the Middle East.

The Chiefs of Staff, the files show, even considered closing a dam in British-controlled east Africa that would have stemmed the flow of the Nile to damage Egypt's economy and raise its population against their new dictator.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

History for Sale; Needs Work (Paris real estate)

Source: NYT (12-1-06)

For sale: history, with a view.

France is selling dozens of historic properties in Paris and the provinces, using the proceeds to move government bureaucrats into less expensive properties and to help pay off the national debt.

So far it has unloaded dozens of chateaus, villas and “hôtels particuliers,” the stone mansions of Paris’s golden age. Foreigners, primarily American pension funds and private equity firms, are the biggest buyers so far. For all their Gallic pride, the French seem happy to have anyone take the properties off the hands of taxpayers.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study Says That Egypt’s Pyramids May Include Early Use of Concrete

Source: NYT (12-1-06)

In new research on the great pyramids of Giza, a scientist says he has found more to their construction than cut natural limestone: some original parts of the massive structures appear to be made of concrete blocks.

If true, historians say, this would be the earliest known application of concrete technology, some 2,500 years before the Romans started using it widely in harbors, amphitheaters and other architecture.

Reporting the results of his study, Michel W. Barsoum, a professor of materials engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, concluded that the use of limestone concrete could explain in part how the Egyptians were able to complete such massive monuments, beginning around 2550 B.C. They used concrete blocks, he said, on the outer and inner casings and probably on the upper levels, where it would have been difficult to hoist carved stone.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Who Did What in China’s Past? Look It Up, or Maybe Not

Source: NYT (12-1-06)

Just who was Mao Zedong?

In the English-language version of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, he was a victorious military and political leader who founded China’s modern Communist state. But he was also a man whom many saw as “a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese.”

Switch to Wikipedia in Chinese, though, and you read about a very different man. There, Mao’s reputation is unsullied by mention of any death toll in the great purges of the 1950s and 1960s, like the Great Leap Forward, a mass collectivization and industrialization campaign begun in 1958 that produced what many historians call the greatest famine in human history.

Wikipedia, an open encyclopedia founded in 2001 that allows ordinary users to create and edit the vast bulk of its entries, has always posed a challenge to China’s hypersensitive censors. Earlier this month, the government opened access to both the English and Chinese sites, though it has since resumed its blackout on the Chinese site. But on questions of this country’s modern history or on hot-button topical issues, the Chinese version diverges so significantly from its English counterpart that it sometimes reads as if it were approved by the censors themselves.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Civil Defense Logo Dies at 67, and Some Mourn Its Passing

Source: NYT (12-1-06)

The stark insignia of civil defense — a C and D forming a red circle in a white triangle on a blue disk — died yesterday after a long eclipse. It was 67 years old and lived in the mind’s eye of anyone who remembers air-raid drills, fallout shelters and metal drums filled with what had to be the stalest biscuits in the world.

Its demise was announced by the National Emergency Management Association, the group that represents state emergency managers.

The CD insignia, which the association called “a relic from the cold war,” was eulogized by Richard Grefé, the executive director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

“The old mark fits in the same category of simplicity and impact occupied by the London Underground map,” Mr. Grefé said.

Tom Geismar, a principal in Chermayeff & Geismar Studio, a design firm, said the insignia was “authoritative and appropriate for the serious work” of civil defense.

The insignia was born in 1939, said Michael Bierut, a partner in the Pentagram design firm. Its father was Charles T. Coiner, the art director of the N. W. Ayer advertising agency, who also designed the National Recovery Administration’s blue eagle.

The CD insignia was called anachronistic in 1972 by the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, successor to the Office of Civil Defense. “The image was World War II vintage,” the agency said.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 5:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Citizens Will Need Deeper Knowledge

Source: NYT (12-1-06)

The federal government rolled out a new citizenship test Thursday to replace an exam that critics say has encouraged prospective Americans simply to memorize facts, rather than fully understand the principles of a democracy.

The exam will be assessed in a pilot program in 10 cities beginning early next year.

Gone are these questions: “How many stripes are there in the flag?”; “What color are the stripes on the flag?”; “What do the stripes on the flag represent?”; and the obvious, “What are the colors of our flag?” The new exam rephrases the questions to focus on what the stripes represent, asking, “Why do we have 13 stripes on the flag?” or “Why does the flag have 13 stripes?” (The answer: Because the stripes represent the original 13 colonies).

“Our goal is to inspire immigrants to learn about the civic values of this nation so that after they take the oath of citizenship they will participate fully in our great democracy,” said Emilio Gonzalez, director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, which has been working since 2000 to develop a new test.

The result is 144 questions on civics and history, including 57 rephrased questions from the current exam. (All the questions are available on the agency’s Web site, www.uscis.gov).

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 4:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Experts reconstruct Leonardo fingerprint

Source: AP (12-1-06)

Anthropologists said they have pieced together Leonardo da Vinci's left index fingerprint — a discovery that could help provide information on such matters as the food the artist ate and whether his mother was of Arabic origin.

The reconstruction of the fingerprint was the result of three years of research and could help attribute disputed paintings or manuscripts, said Luigi Capasso, an anthropologist and director of the Anthropology Research Institute at Chieti University in central Italy.

"It adds the first touch of humanity. We knew how Leonardo saw the world and the future ... but who was he? This biological information is about his being human, not being a genius," Capasso said in a recent telephone interview.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 4:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German Book Reveals New Evidence in Death-Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Source: Dissident Voice (11-24-06)

"The history of the criminal case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, which is by now almost 25 years old, has been characterized by bias right from the start: against a black man whom the court denied a jury of his peers, against a member of the economic underclass who did not have a real claim to a qualified defense, and against a radical, whose allegedly dangerous militancy obliged the state to eliminate him from the ranks of society."

So writes German author Michael Schiffmann in his new book Race Against Death. Mumia Abu-Jamal: a Black Revolutionary in White America (an expansion of Schiffmann's PhD dissertation at the University of Heidelberg), just released in Germany this past month.

In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death in a trial that Amnesty International has declared a "violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty."

Schiffmann writes that a third person (not Abu-Jamal or his brother Billy Cook) most likely shot and killed police officer Daniel Faulkner on the morning of December 9, 1981. This third person was Kenneth Freeman (Billy Cook's friend and business partner), who -- according to the available evidence -- was a passenger in Cook's car. Freeman likely shot him in response to Faulkner shooting Abu-Jamal in the chest, and was therefore the black male that six eyewitnesses reported to see fleeing the scene moments before other police arrived.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 3:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Roman coffin find redraws map of ancient London

Source: Reuters (12-1-06)

The discovery of an ancient Roman coffin in a part of London previously thought to have had no Roman settlements has forced a re-evaluation of the history of the city, experts said on Friday.

The headless skeleton in a limestone sarcophagus was found during excavations under St. Martin-in-the-Fields church on the eastern side of Trafalgar Square in central London.

Experts said the skeleton, whose head is believed to have been removed as a trophy by workmen building a sewer in the early 20th century, dates from around 410 AD, in the later stages of the Roman occupation of ancient Britain.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 3:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Crusader' takes on eBay to stop relics sales

Source: CNN (11-24-06)

Hardly an hour goes by without Thomas Serafin or one of his cyber-sleuths checking what eBay has to offer.

They're not hunting for bargains and never place a bid. Their interest is bone shards, bits of wizened flesh and a contemporary twist on the sacred and the profane: How the ancient trade in the most coveted religious relics has moved into the global flea market of online bidding.

"You can find bone fragments supposedly from St. Augustine being hawked on the Internet along with trinkets and antiques. There is something very wrong here," said Serafin, a professional photographer and Catholic activist based in Los Angeles, who has led an expanding campaign since the late 1990s to block the online sale of objects purported to contain the remains of Christian saints.

Last month, Serafin's group, the International Crusade for Holy Relics, opened a new front that's truly worthy of a David and Goliath metaphor: a call to boycott eBay.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 3:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Two groups may have populated Australia: researcher

Source: ABC.net.au (11-30-06)

New genetic evidence suggests Australia may have been populated by two separate groups of humans - one arriving via Papua New Guinea, the other via Indonesia, a researcher says.

But more work is needed to confirm the idea. And not all scientists agree that these latest results shed new light on the long-standing debate on how humans colonised Australia.

Dr Sheila van Holst Pellekaan, a molecular anthropologist from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, will present her research at a Australian Archaeological Association conference in Melbourne next month.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient 'curse' tablet unearthed in mammoth archaeological dig

Source: 24dash.com (11-30-06)

An ancient curse aimed at a thief is one of a number of treasures to be unveiled to the public for the first time, following the largest archaeological excavation the city of Leicester has ever seen.

Over the past three years, a team of up to 60 archaeologists from University of Leicester Archaeological Services has been working on a number of sites in the city.

Almost 9% of Leicester's historic core has been subject to investigation in some form, giving new insights into the appearance and development of the Roman and medieval towns.

One of the most interesting finds from a site on Vine Street was a 'curse' tablet – a sheet of lead inscribed in the second or third century AD and intended to invoke the assistance of a chosen god.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

World’s oldest ritual discovered. Worshipped the python 70,000 years ago

Source: http://www.apollon.uio.no (11-30-06)

A new archaeological find in Botswana shows that our ancestors in Africa engaged in ritual practice 70,000 years ago — 30,000 years earlier than the oldest finds in Europe. This sensational discovery strengthens Africa’s position as the cradle of modern man.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Black History Month with an English Twist

Source: Washington Informer (11-30-06)

Father of Black History Month Carter G. Woodson would probably be jumping for joy in his grave if he knew what Pamela Roberts was doing in a small buzzing metropolis north of London in England.

On the campus of Oxford University, a premier institution in the English-speaking world, Roberts leads a tour group regularly of people interested in uncovering Black scholarship.

Launched at the beginning of October in commemoration of Black History Month (BHM) in the United Kingdom, “Black Oxford-Untold Stories” is garnering attention at a rapid pace, much to the surprise of Roberts’ detractors.

“I got the idea after I overheard someone say that Black people did not contribute to any scholarship at Oxford,” Roberts told The Informer.

So, equipped with Oxford archival records, photos, and her own fortitude, Roberts convinced Oxford Town Hall to allow her to administer the tours. An 18-month long project in the making, “Black Oxford” highlights the accomplishments of students who went on to become prime ministers, renowned lawyers, artists and academics. Among the list of notables is Alain Locke, the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1910 who later served as Howard University’s Philosophy Department Chair. Locke was also a pioneer of the Harlem Renaissance.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Family Steeped in History Mourns Soldier

Source: AP (11-29-06)

Flags waved, a bagpipe wailed "Amazing Grace" and eulogies of courage and comradeship flowed Wednesday for Army Sgt. 1st Class Schuyler B. Haynes, a descendant of a famous Revolutionary War general, who was killed in Iraq two weeks ago.

"He was a loyal friend and courageous leader, equally at home with any soldier, NCO or officer," said Jimmy Campbell, who served with Haynes in Iraq, and was among 300 at the funeral Wednesday at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Haynes, 40, "just wanted to be where the action was," his father, Robert Haynes, said outside the midtown Manhattan church, where police held honking motorists and buses at bay while pallbearers carried the flag-covered coffin in a tightly choreographed ritual.

With 17 years of service, Schuyler Haynes was on his second tour of duty in Iraq when he was killed Nov. 15 by a roadside bomb that exploded near his Humvee in Baquba, where he was a platoon leader in the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division. Also killed in the blast was Spc. Mitchel T. Mutz, 23, of Falls City, Texas.

The elder Haynes said his son was directly descended from Philip Schuyler, a wealthy 18th-century landowner and patriot who served in the British colonial forces and later as one of four major generals in George Washington's Continental Army.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Strange story of King Edward VIII and hypnotist doctor (UK)

Source: Telegraph (UK) (11-30-06)

In the months immediately before his abdication, Edward VIII was hypnotised by a doctor who was fascinated by the occult and counted fascists among his patients, it was claimed last night.

A report from a country vicar that Dr Alexander Cannon, a qualified psychiatrist who used spirit mediums to "advise" hypnotised patients on how to counter alcoholism and other problems of addiction, reached the Archbishop of Canterbury on Dec 4, 1936.

So seriously did the archbishop, Dr Cosmo Lang, take the information that he immediately questioned a Harley Street doctor to find out about Dr Cannon and later informed Downing Street of the news.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Britain's special relationship 'just a myth'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (11-30-06)

A senior American official has spoken of "the myth of the special relationship" between the United States and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair got "nothing, no payback" for supporting President George W Bush in Iraq.

Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested that Mr Blair should have been ditched by Labour but the party had lacked the "courage or audacity" to remove him.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was "shrewd, astute" to have distanced himself from America.

In candid comments that will embarrass Mr Bush and Mr Blair, the veteran official said America "ignored" Britain, and he urged Britain to decouple itself from the US.

He asserted that the "special relationship", a term coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946, gave Britain little or nothing.

Click here for the Times (UK) story.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

World's oldest whiskey comes at 300 pounds a peg!

Source: Asia News International (11-29-06)

Fine art auctioneers and valuers Bonham's, which has been in the business of auctioneering since 1793, will today auction off the world's oldest known bottle of whisky.

The Glenavon, produced by a Speyside distillery, which closed down in the 1850s, could fetch as much as 10,000 pounds [almost $20,000] or 300 pounds a peg [= 60 ml], reports The Scotsman.

Collectors, it seems, have expressed a willingness to pay thousands for the olive-green bottle that sports a yellowing label that simply declares that it is "Glenavon HHH Liqueur Whisky", and has no date. The bottom line states: "Bottled by the Distillers."

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lifesize: £10m bowl is world's costliest piece of china

Source: Times Online (UK) (11-29-06)

A tiny 18th-century ceramic bowl decorated with apricot blossom and swallows that was made for an emperor smashed the world record for a piece of Chinese porcelain yesterday by selling for more than $19 million (£9.8million).

The exquisite masterpiece of famille rose ware, which once belonged to Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, fetched double its expected sale price to become the most expensive artwork sold in Asia. Famille rose refers to the type of glaze used to coat the bowl.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Loch Ness Monster 'most famous Scot'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (11-29-06)

Gordon Brown, Robert Burns, Lorraine Kelly, Robert the Bruce - which one is the most famous Scottish person past or present? The answer, none of them.

The Loch Ness monster, whose existence is still seriously in doubt, beat them all in a poll to discover the top Scot down through the ages.

More than 2,000 adults across the UK were asked who they thought was the country’s best-known son or daughter. Almost a third of them named the mythical creature.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Florida State 'Seminoles' to Learn about Real Seminoles

Source: AP (11-28-06)

Florida State University student Daniel Lee learned in fourth grade most of what he knew about the Seminole Indians, namesakes of his school's athletic teams. It wasn't much.

"You get the puddle deep in-depth analysis," joked Lee, 22, of Gainesville. "I want to know why we chose the Seminoles and how our university's policies embody the spirit and strength of the Seminole culture."

Lee, a music education major, had to wait until his senior year to find out. He's one of 22 students enrolled in a Seminole history class that was launched this year partly in response to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's attempt to force Florida State to abandon its nickname and mascot, Chief Osceola.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Anne Frank's Name Stands Out in Nazi Archive

Source: AP (11-28-06)

The lists run into the tens of thousands -- men, women and children tossed into the Nazi machinery of death from just one small country, Holland. Most are unknown, lost in the ashes of the Holocaust.

But buried in List No. 40 in a frayed ledger in the world's largest storehouse of documents on Holocaust victims, the name Anne Frank is quickly recognizable.

Today, her diary has made her world famous, but on a day in September 1944 she was just another name -- a terrified teenager herded into a train of cattle cars with 1,018 other Jews, headed east to the concentration camps.

After World War II, the Dutch Red Cross collected the deportation lists from the Westerbork transit camp and sent the names to the International Tracing Service, or ITS, the repository of Nazi papers set up to help trace missing people in the postwar chaos.

More than six decades after the war ended, the International Committee of the Red Cross is due to open the vast ITS archive to survivors, their relatives and to Holocaust researchers for the first time.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Evidence offers insight into Unabomber

Source: AP (11-28-06)

To evade authorities chasing him, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski kept shoes with smaller soles attached to the bottom in his reclusive Montana cabin, according to evidence released 10 years after his capture.

The shoes were intended to make it appear as if a person with smaller footprints were walking in them, investigators believe.

Kaczynski, 64, is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for a bombing spree that lasted from 1978 to 1995. The blasts from homemade bombs killed three people and injured 23.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 2:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Were woodworms the key to Stradivarius success?

Source: AFP (11-29-06)

A plague of woodworm and a handy local
drugstore were the secrets behind the extraordinary
success of the Stradivarius violin, a scientist
believes.

For centuries, historians of music, instrument makers
and chemists have been trying to decipher how Antonio
Stradivari, working in the small Italian town of
Cremona three centuries ago, was able to make violins
whose acoustic qualities have never been surpassed.

Theories abound as to how Stradivari worked his magic.

Did he have some special glue? Did his maple come from
old cathedrals? Or did it come from trees that had
grown during a mini-Ice Age in Europe and whose
bunched-up rings would have made for a denser wood?

But a study published on Thursday in the British
journal Nature by a Hungarian-born scientist who has
been exploring the Stradivarius enigma for decades
gives the lie to such thinking.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 1:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Single massive asteroid wiped out dinosaurs: study

Source: Reuters (12-1-06)

A single, gigantic asteroid slammed into Earth 65 million years ago, dooming the dinosaurs and many other species, scientists said on Thursday in a new study rebutting theories that multiple impacts did the deed.

An examination of rock sediments drilled from five sites at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean strongly supports the notion that one massive hunk of space rock caused the mass extinction, a research team led by University of Missouri-Columbia geology professor Ken MacLeod found.

"It's a completely straightforward, single-impact scenario," MacLeod, whose findings appear in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, said in an interview. "It was a haymaker that nobody saw coming. One shot, and that's all you need to explain it."

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 1:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Shops destroy Santas giving "Hitler salute"

Source: Reuters (12-1-06)

A German chain of shops has removed miniature wooden Santa Claus figures from its shelves and destroyed them after customers complained it looked like they were giving the stiff-armed Hitler salute that is outlawed.

Josef Lange, a spokesman for the Rossmann chain that has 1,200 outlets, told Reuters Friday the figures depicting Father Christmas with his right arm stiffly upright toward the sky and holding a sack in his left hand upset some customers. "We were astonished by the reaction," Lange said. "It looks like he's just pointing up to the sky and we were surprised that anyone saw the so-called 'Hitler salute' in that. But we responded and had the entire inventory removed and destroyed."

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 1:45 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Poverty, tradition shackle Mauritania's slaves

Source: Reuters (12-1-06)

NOUAKCHOTT - Born a slave, like his entire family, Matalla Mbreik toiled from dawn to dusk selling water and tending his master's flocks on the lonely fringes of the Saharan desert, until he could take no more.

"I still have the scars from my beatings, like my mother and sisters," said the 32-year-old Mauritanian, staring at the floor, dressed in flowing pale-blue embroidered robes. "All they gave us to eat were leftovers."

After years spent dreaming of escape, Mbreik seized his chance two months ago when a Mauritanian army truck passed him searching for an oasis in the desert.

"I told them to shoot me rather than take me back to my master," said Mbreik, red-faced with shame, sitting in the office of anti-slavery group SOS-Slave.

Although banned by law in 1980, slavery in Mauritania has persisted, perpetuated by poverty and rigid customs. Authorities long denied its existence but campaigners estimate there are still hundreds of thousands of slaves among the 3 million population -- the highest ratio in the world.

Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 1:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Home Newsletter Submissions Advertising Donations Archives Internships About Us FAQs Contact Us All Articles