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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.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Descendants of slaves pull names--and pain--out of the past

Source: Washington Post (2-28-07)

It is a strange and bittersweet victory, to finally know the names of one's slave ancestors and precisely who enslaved them. It is what Carolyn C. Rowe calls the "victorious feeling" that comes from documenting a family history once lost in silence and shame.

A former president of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Rowe remembers well the excitement of her first discovery, back in 1990. In Burke County, N.C., she found a will that listed a young slave boy named Jack. The age -- 8 years old in 1827 -- fit what she already knew about her ancestry. The location fit, too. And when she cross-referenced the 1870 census -- the first in which former slaves were listed as people with names, not just chattel -- she found her confirmation: Andrew Jackson Corpening, her great-great-grandfather, a slave freed from anonymity.

It was the first of many such breakthroughs, each leading to a fuller picture of the ancestral shoulders on which Rowe stood. She has been in contact with three white families with slaveholding ancestors and visited plantation sites. It is difficult work, unleashing emotions from anger to resignation. But she is re-creating the family tree once shrouded by time. And the slaves, she believes, would be happy.

"I feel that my ancestors want me to know the story," says Rowe, 62, of Fort Washington. "You kind of feel their spirit there and they are rejoicing that we have finally found them."

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 7:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Polish, Jewish groups urge restitution of property seized by Nazis, Communists

Source: AP (2-28-07)

WARSAW, Poland -- The Jewish Claims Conference joined with Polish restitution organizations Wednesday to appeal for the return of private property seized in the country during World War II and under Communist rule.

Representatives of the Jewish conference, who met with Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, hope for legislation similar to a 1997 law that provided for restitution of Jewish communal property, such as synagogues or cemeteries...

Miroslaw Szypowski, the head of an alliance of Polish groups seeking restitution, estimated the value of seized property claimed by owners, or their heirs, was up to $23 billion. About 17 percent of that rightly belongs to Jewish owners or their heirs, Szypowski said.

Some of the property was seized by the Nazis during their wartime occupation of Poland and later taken into public ownership, and some was seized under Communist rule.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 7:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Why family size fell dramatically in 19th-century US, Europe

Source: Live Science (2-15-07)

The number of children a woman in America has in her lifetime declined during the past two centuries, and it's not just because of the birth control pill.

Historians are closing in on the socio-economic and cultural factors in family downsizing, a trend also found in most of Western Europe.

"There are two reasons fertility rates can decline," said J. David Hacker, a SUNY Binghamton historian. "One explanation is that marriage declines. Not as many women get married, and if they do marry, they do so at a later age, so that there is less time to have children. The second explanation is that people consciously try to limit having children, which was revolutionary in the 19th century."

According to most census estimates, an American woman had on average seven to eight children in 1800. By 1900 the number dropped to about 3.5. That has fallen to slightly more than two today. Birth rates fell first in New England, and then among pioneers as they headed west. Internationally, France led the way to smaller families.

Reconstructing the intricacies of census data has been difficult for dates prior to 1933, when the National Birth Registration system was put into place. With grant money from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Hacker is taking a closer look at long-term census trends thanks to a new database developed by the Minnesota Population Center.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 7:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UNESCO experts tour controversial Israeli dig near Muslim holy site

Source: Reuters (2-28-07)

JERUSALEM -- A team of experts from UNESCO toured on Wednesday an Israeli archaeological excavation that Muslims fear could damage Islam's holiest site in Jerusalem.

Israel says the dig, 50 meters (165 feet) from a religious compound known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, will do no harm to the Dome of Rock and al-Aqsa mosques on the plaza, which overlooks Judaism's Western Wall.

Israeli archaeologists began what they called a "rescue excavation" at the site on February 7 to salvage artifacts before planned construction of a walkway leading up to the complex, where the two biblical Jewish Temples once stood.

The dig touched off violent Muslim protests in Arab East Jerusalem, which includes the walled Old City where the compound is located...

Israeli Antiquities Authority spokeswoman Osnat Goaz said Israel invited the group, which consists of four officials, including the director of UNESCO's World Heritage Center, as part of its efforts to display "full transparency" over the dig.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

CIA papers reveal 1950s Japan coup plot

Source: AP (2-28-07)

TOKYO -- Declassified documents reveal that Japanese ultranationalists with ties to U.S. military intelligence plotted to overthrow the Japanese government and assassinate the prime minister in 1952.

The scheme —- which was abandoned —- was concocted by militarists and suspected war criminals who had worked for U.S. occupation authorities after World War II, according to CIA records reviewed by The Associated Press. The plotters wanted a right-wing government that would rearm Japan.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Camels, sword-dancing as Saudis mark heritage, both tribal and national

Source: Reuters (2-27-07)

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudis crowded to camel races and sword-dancing this week at a desert cultural festival that has come to reflect growing anxiety over national unity and the loss of tribal Arab identity to Western culture.

The Janadriyah began 22 years ago as a showcase for a Bedouin culture heritage of camels, tents, coffee pots and swords that seemed in danger of disappearing.

But as well as a jamboree of cultural affirmation, in recent years it has become an opportunity to encourage national unity, with state television showing King Abdullah and other Saudi royals performing a Bedouin sword dance known as 'arda.

The Saudi family used an austere version of Islam to conquer and unite the vast country in the Arabian Peninsula in the early 20th century; commitment to a supranational idea of Islam still comes before patriotism for many Saudis.

But the September 11 attacks of 2001 in the United States, where most of the attackers were Saudis, spurred the authorities to try to boost the sense of belonging to the Saudi state. Regional conflicts such as Iraq have increased this anxiety.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Re-creating the success of the Barbary pirates: sailing closer to the wind

Source: Times (of London) (2-27-07)

The seamanship of the Barbary pirates of North Africa was for two centuries as renowned as their cruelty as they plundered Mediterranean shipping lanes for slaves and treasure.

The key to their hit-and-run tactics was the fast getaway. They were able to sail far closer into the wind than the Europeans left trailing in their wake. The pirates ceased to be a problem after the French conquered their raiding base, Algiers, in 1830 —- and the secret of their crucial advantage was lost.

Now a tall ship with a full set of sails based on the pirates’ ships has successfully completed sea trials. TS Pelican, a 150ft converted trawler, has been fitted with the masts and sails of a polacre xebec —- a design last seen plundering shipping nearly two centuries ago. The Pelican, whose trials took place in Weymouth Bay [off the Dorset coast, England], did what no European square-rigged vessel could do before or since...

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New South Wales native title deal signed; covers 6,000 sq.km.

Source: The Age (Melbourne, Australia) (2-28-07)

A historic native title land use agreement covering vast tracts of north-east NSW will be signed on Wednesday, adding weight to a Federal Court native title claim over the same area.

The NSW government deal also puts pressure on Queensland to reach a similar arrangement with the Githabul people.

Parts of the Githabul nation straddles the NSW and Queensland border near Mt Lindesay and covers more than 6,000 square kilometres.

The NSW agreement, 10 years in the making, recognises the Githabul people's ongoing physical and spiritual connection to the land.

The largest indigenous land use agreement in Australia's eastern states will be signed on Wednesday at a ceremony in Woodenbong, in northern NSW.

It will give the Githabul people joint managerial control of World Heritage listed national parks and control over future development on some areas of crown and leasehold land.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Looking for the true Texas longhorn of the Wild West

Source: AP (2-28-07)

LUBBOCK, Tex. -- Rancher Debbie Davis has no beef with cattlemen who want the Texas longhorns they raise to be, well, beefier.

Her passion, though, lies with preserving the pure longhorn breed that roamed Texas and other parts of the West during the mid-1800s.

``A true Texas longhorn is endangered right now,'' said Davis, president of the Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Registry, which is striving to keep the bloodline of the longhorn as pure as possible.

The longhorn isn't on any endangered lists, but the crossbred longhorns competing in livestock shows have far more heft and girth than the rangy, gaunt animal of the Wild West.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Skeleton of the unknown pirate comes home to England

Source: Independent (2-28-07)

His name and reputation have been lost to history, but the skeleton of an executed English pirate is finally coming home. The likeness of the remains was captured for posterity by the artist Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy in a remarkable painting showing the work of the Guild of Surgeons in Amsterdam. [Image online here.]

That work, The Osteology Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz, is set to be a highlight of an exhibition of 17th-century Dutch painting at the National Gallery in London this summer.

It has never been shown in Britain but is important as an example of a genre of anatomy-lesson paintings that are peculiar to the Netherlands. The work, known as "the laughing skeleton" because of its apparent smile, clearly shows a horizontal line across the skull where the cranium could be opened...

Inventories show the skeleton was that of a pirate who was captured, executed and his body dissected. It was borrowed by Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz in 1615 for anatomy lessons organised by the surgeons' guild.

The work will be joined in the exhibition by one of Rembrandt's most important works, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp...

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Claims swirl around 'tomb of Jesus'

Source: Christian Science Monitor (3-1-07)

The makers of a new TV documentary claim to have uncovered the biggest archaeological story of the century –- the tomb of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. But several archaeologists and biblical scholars challenge the evidence. One calls it "much ado about nothing much."...

"The tomb is a fact, the names are facts, the DNA relationship is a fact, the statistical studies are facts," insists [Toronto filmmaker Simcha] Jacobovici. "There was enough to say it's time to bring this to the attention of the world and let a scientific, academic, theological debate begin."...

"The names [on the ossuaries] are coincidental," says Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University. "The historian Josephus records 21 Yeshuas [Jesus], and those are people famous enough to be included in his histories. And 25 percent of Jewish women at the time had the name Mary."...

As for the DNA evidence, critics say the idea captures people's attention today, but there is no DNA evidence related to the historical Jesus. "They simply say they've demonstrated that the two people are not related by DNA," says Ben Witherington, a New Testament expert and author of "What Have They Done With Jesus?" "That proves nothing. There are [many] explanations for why you could have two people in the same extended family tomb that are not related by DNA."...

Dr. Witherington also challenges the statistical analysis, charging that it involved a more selective sampling than should have been used. "Another problem is that the majority of the statistics are still in the ground – in ossuaries that haven't been dug up yet." he says. "We can't assume the evidence we have is representative of what is still in the ground." Jacobovici stands by the analysis, and says the expert, Andrey Feuerverger, has submitted it to a statistical journal for peer review. Apparently unfazed –- perhaps even pleased – by all the controversy (the bloggers are in full cry already), he concedes that the evidence "isn't 100 percent."

"All I'm saying is that you have here an interesting tomb, a compelling cluster of names, the DNA doesn't undermine the theory. Hey, world, let's look at this."

The critics have a different take. "It's the same hype that attended 'The Da Vinci Code,' which was plainly fiction. Yet this is cast as fact," says Dr. Maier. "The guy is a showman, an Indiana Jones wannabe."

Related Links

'Lost Tomb of Jesus' Claim Called a Stunt (Washington Post)
An Empty Theory and an Empty Tomb (by Ben Witherington III)
Critique at PaleoJudaica
'Lost Tomb of Jesus' website (with trailer)

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 6:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Smithsonian Spending Raises More Eyebrows

Source: AHA Blog (2-28-07)

This weekend the Washington Post reported on a recent audit of Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small and its surprising results. The Post reports:

"Lawrence M. Small, the top official at the Smithsonian Institution, accumulated nearly $90,000 in unauthorized expenses from 2000 to 2005, including charges for chartered jet travel, his wife’s trip to Cambodia, hotel rooms, luxury car service, catered staff meals and expensive gifts, according to confidential findings by the Smithsonian inspector general."

The article went on to note that Small’s compensation last year, $915,698, is higher than Harvard’s outgoing President, and Harvard “has an endowment about 30 times the size of the Smithsonian’s.” Small has also received $1.15 million over the past seven years in return for offering his house up for official functions.

Related Links

Watchdog group asks Gonzales to review Small's conduct

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 4:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Museum in Trenton taking extreme measures to stay open

Source: Newark Star-Ledger (2-27-07)

The historic Old Barracks Museum in Trenton, closed for the past two months for a lack of money, reopened to the public yesterday.

And now that it has, Richard Patterson, the director of the state-owned tourist attraction, is going to lay himself off for two months, effective April 1.

As director of the museum for the past 13 years, Patterson decided it should be shuttered for two months -- and its hourly employees laid off -- to cope with funding cuts. Now it's his turn.

"If I didn't take a layoff, the museum would be closed longer, maybe three weeks longer," Patterson said amid the clutter of construction from preparations for its latest exhibit. "And I would have had to have the staff laid off longer. It's only fair and practical."

Two months off from his $56,000-a-year job translates into a personal loss of more than $9,300 in income, but Patterson, 55, of Hamilton will be able to make up some of that by collecting state unemployment benefits while he is out.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Chicago History Museum receives $1m

Source: Press Release -- Chicago History Museum (2-28-07)

The Chicago History Museum is pleased to announce that funding has been secured for a new American history wing scheduled to open in fall of 2009. The Tawani Foundation has committed $1 million to support this essential addition showcasing the Chicago History Museum's American history collection.

The new 5,270 square foot wing will be located on the first floor of the Museum adjacent to the visitor center. The wing will feature the story of America from the founders and leaders of this country to the unknowns who immigrated to America to build a new life. The Naphtali Ben Jacov Pritzker American History Wing will be named after the Pritzker family patriarch, an immigrant from Russia who arrived in Chicago in 1881. The wing will open with the story of the immigrant‚s journey and search for freedom, which defines the theme of the permanent exhibition. "America is a place of opportunity for many immigrants including my great-grandfather who arrived at the age of 10 and taught himself English by reading the Chicago Tribune before eventually opening his own law practice in 1902," stated Tawani Foundation Founder and President, COL (IL) James N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Ret.).

The new permanent exhibition will focus on the people, experiences, and places that built this country. Guests will explore American history through personal discovery, narratives and in-depth stories, highlighting multiple perspectives which will appeal to diverse audiences by making meaningful connections and encouraging people to ask questions and explore their own stories. Important documents of American history will be a key feature of the new installation. „The documents of freedom, from our collection, are important documents from our past that are a crucial part of the story our Museum tells,‰ stated Gary T. Johnson, president of the Chicago History Museum. "We are grateful to the Tawani Foundation for this generous gift that allows us to showcase this rich collection relating to the founding of our country and beyond. It will be of tremendous educational value to the people of Chicago and the visitors of our Museum."

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Designer chosen for Philly slavery monument

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (2-28-07)

Almost five years after controversy flared over the ignoring of George Washington's old slave quarters on Independence Mall, a designer for a memorial to those slaves and to the presidential house they lived in was announced yesterday.

Kelly/Maiello Architects & Planners of Philadelphia, selected by city and National Park Service officials - with substantial community and academic input - will now break ground this summer on the $5.2 million President's House memorial. An extensive archaeological examination of the site will first be performed.

When completed, probably next year, the memorial will constitute the first national commemoration of slaves.

Kelly/Maiello was chosen from a group of five finalists for the project. The firm, over the years, has been involved with aspects of several big-ticket projects in the region, including the expansion of the central branch of the Free Library, expansion of the Convention Center, construction of the Criminal Justice Center, and restoration of City Hall and Family Court.

Their design, which outlines the house at the southeast corner of Sixth and Market Streets where slave owner Washington and anti-slavery John Adams lived and conducted their presidencies in the 1790s, utilizes audiovisual elements to tell the stories and re-create the environment of those who lived there, including the enslaved Africans and other servants.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 1:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Was a Jefferson ancestor Jewish?

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (2-28-07)

Researchers studying Thomas Jefferson's Y chromosome have found it belongs to a lineage that is rare in Europe but common in the Middle East, raising the possibility that the third president of the United States had a Jewish ancestor many generations ago.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Taiwan commemorates anniversary of deadly 1947 riot

Source: BBC (2-28-07)

Commemorative events are being held throughout the week as Taiwan marks the 60th anniversary of what is known as the "2/28 incident". The event was an uprising that began on 28 February 1947, sparked by the beating of a female vendor by authorities for selling untaxed cigarettes.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Argentina to UK's Falklands memorial invitation: no thanks

Source: Telegraph (2-28-07)

Britain expressed its regret yesterday after Argentina rejected an invitation to a joint commemoration service in London to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1982 Falklands conflict.

Jorge Taiana, Argentina's foreign minister, rejected the invitation on Monday, about three months after it was presented to Argentina's embassy in London.

"They have given it the character of a victory celebration and, given that, we cannot take part," Mr Taiana said during a visit to South Africa. "We consider the Malvinas to be an archaic colonial situation and in the 21st Century the persistence of this situation is difficult to explain."

The Foreign Office expressed "regret" yesterday at Argentina's decision. Public ceremonies are planned both on the islands and in Britain to mark the beginning and end of the April 2 to June 14 conflict.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 4:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Offer made to manage Museum of the Confederacy, keep it in Richmond, retain name

Source: Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch (2-27-07)

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, outraged that the Museum of the Confederacy might move out of Richmond, is offering to take over the management of the museum.

"Conditions at the museum have declined steadily for the past few years," said Frank Earnest, state commander of the 4,000-member Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. "The current administration has brought the situation to near crisis."...

[Museum President Waite] Rawls released a statement that said no decision has been made to change the museum's name.

"Retaining future economic viability and at the same time remaining faithful to the educational mission, identity and historic legacy of the museum is a challenge faced in the relocation," the statement said. "Consideration of a possible renaming of the museum, which might accompany relocation, should be considered speculation at this time."

Rawls announced in October that museum officials were seeking a new home for its Civil War collection, the world's largest, to escape the sprawling medical campus of Virginia Common- wealth University. Officials traveled to Lexington in January to tour a possible site there and are considering other locations. Dropping the word "Confederacy" from the museum's name could accompany a relocation.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 3:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Stop damaging historical sites, Pakistan archaeologists tell government

Source: Daily Times (Lahore, Pakistan) (2-27-07)

LAHORE, Pakistan -- The Punjab Archaeology Department (PAD) will ask the government to stop “damaging historical sites” by arranging functions or cultural shows, PAD director general Oriya Maqbool Jan told Daily Times on Monday.

Jan said the PAD had objected to the holding of the recent fashion show at the Lahore Fort and several other activities held in the past...

The PAD DG said hammering on the walls of the monuments weakened them and affected their structural integrity. He said that there was no law prohibiting the use of historical sites for functions...

The recent fashion show was arranged by a private company and a ramp had been made for the purpose on the Lahore Fort premises. Many people reportedly scaled the fort’s walls to enter the premises and attend the function. In the past too, a number of functions had been held at the Lahore Fort, Shalimar Garden and Bahadur Yar Jung Kokal Tash’s tomb.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 3:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Statisticians helped 'Jesus tomb' filmmakers

Source: AP (2-27-07)

NEW YORK -- To resolve the question of whether the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene may have rested in two limestone boxes discovered in a Jerusalem suburb, the filmmakers of a new documentary took novel approaches —- including turning to statisticians.

Some religious scholars and archaeologists, however, have not been convinced by the numbers.

Filmmakers showed the two boxes on Monday while promoting their documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," produced by Oscar-winning director James Cameron and airing on the Discovery Channel on March 4...

The first of the ossuaries' inscriptions, written in Aramaic, reads, "Yeshua bar Yosef," or "Jesus son of Joseph."

The second, in Hebrew, reads, "Maria."

The third, in Hebrew, reads, "Matia," or "Matthew."

The fourth inscription, in Hebrew, reads, "Yose," a nickname for "Yosef," or "Joseph."

The fifth, in Greek, reads, "Mariamene e Mara," which the filmmakers said means "Mary the master" or "Mary the teacher."

The sixth, in Aramaic, reads, "Yehuda bar Yeshua," or Judah son of Jesus."

[Toronto filmmaker Simcha] Jacobovici said the ossuaries did not initially seem extraordinary because the names were all common.

But the filmmakers had statisticians calculate the likelihood that any other family in first-century Jerusalem would have had that cluster of names.

"The numbers range from 1 in 100 to 1 in 1,000 that there is some other family," said Andrey Feuerverger, a professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto.

Related Links

'Lost Tomb of Jesus' press conference (60-slides)
Israel may open 'Jesus tomb' to public (Jerusalem Post)
True or not, `Lost Tomb' tale is never dull (preview in Toronto Star TV column)
The 'Lost Tomb of Jesus' Nonsense (L. Brent Bozell III)
Is this the biggest archaeological story of the century? (selected views of New Zealand Herald readers)
Official website of "Lost Tomb of Jesus"

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 2:55 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Brit blueblood, dead 90 years, may help bird-flu research

Source: BBC News (2-27-07)

A Yorkshire aristocrat who died nearly 90 years ago could help the global fight against bird flu, experts say.

A court has authorised the exhumation of the body of Sir Mark Sykes, the owner of the historic Sledmere House near Driffield.

Scientists hope the Spanish flu virus from which he died in 1919 may still be present in his body because it has been preserved in a lead-lined coffin.

If so, DNA samples could help experts develop drugs to fight the virus.

The Spanish flu virus killed more than 50 million people when it took hold at the end of the First World War.

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 2:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Arizona' placename origin identified as Basque (or maybe everyone knew that except this columnist)

Source: by Clay Thompson, Arizona Republic (2-25-07)

OK, remember a couple of weeks ago when we discussed the origin of Arizona's name? I said it was a Spanish corruption of "Aleh-Shonak," which was a Native American village south of present-day Nogales and near the site of a big silver strike in 1736.

I said this with great confidence -- yea, even hubris -- because I read it in a book by good old Marshall Trimble, our official state historian. I mean, if you can't believe our official state historian, who can you believe?

Well, it turns out good old Marshall Trimble doesn't believe it anymore. He sent me a note the other day to let me know he now agrees with Don Garate, historian and chief interpreter at Tumacacori National Historical Park.

Garate says the name came from the Basque words aritz ona, which means "good oaks." I guess there were a lot of oak trees around the site where the silver was found.

Anyway, it seems there was a ranch or a ranching community named Arizona in Sonora, a few miles south of the present U.S.-Mexican border. It was founded by Bernardo de Urrea, who was a Basque.

Related Links

Don Garate tells the story of Arizona's name

Posted on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 2:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Turkish Historical Society to raise claim against Armenians for 1914-1923 genocide

Source: APA (Azeri Press Agency) (2-27-07)

Turkish Historical Society is going to raise claim on the Khojaly genocide against Armenians in international courts, APA reports. The head of the society Yusif Halacoglu publicized the decisions made in the meeting of Coordination Organization on Armenian Issue...

The investigation of Turkish and Azerbaijani history and Armenian problem was discussed at the meeting. Noting that large-scale investigation based on documents will be carried out, Yusif Halacoglu said they will raise claim on the Khojaly genocide against Armenians in international courts.

The society said that special investigations will be carried out with regard to the Khojaly genocide and Turkish diplomats killed by Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and the events happened in 1914-1923.

The Coordination Organization on Armenian Issue will investigate the genocides against Turks in Baku, Nakhchivan, Anadolu, Armenia and Yerevan. The society is going to make feature and documetary films about the Khojaly genocide.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:31 PM | Comments (1) | Top

National law enforcement museum plans to be unveiled

Source: The Examiner (2-27-07)

WASHINGTON -- The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) will formally unveil plans Wednesday to construct the first National Law Enforcement Museum. At the event NLEOMF will also launch their fundraising campaign for the project, “A Matter of Honor: The Campaign to Support the National Law Enforcement Museum.”

Once the museum opens, NLEOMF Chairman and CEO Craig Floyd, says, “The highlight of the museum will be interactivity” [such as] “Shoot or Don't Shoot. “Actual police training courses use this simulation. It teaches trainees what to do in cases where they need to make split-second decisions."...

Former U.S. Attorney Generals Edwin Meese, Richard Thornburgh and John Ashcroft will attend the event. They will speak about the importance of the Law Enforcement Museum.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Communists' role in Malaysian independent recognized, historian says

Source: theSun (Malaysia) (2-27-07)

PETALING JAYA, Malaysia -- The communists' role in fighting for independence has been recognised by no less than first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, a historian said.

Two former deputy prime ministers -- Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman and Tun Ghafar Baba -- have also publicly acknowledged the contributions of the left wing movement towards nationhood, former Universiti Sains Malaysia history professor Dr Cheah Boon Kheng said today.

"Malay attitudes towards the communist movement have been changing over the years. While critical of some of their deeds, especially assasinations and acts of terrorism, many Malays now accept the fact that without their armed struggle against the British, Britain would not have readily conceded Malaya her independence in 1957," Cheah said in an e-mail interview.

He noted that the Tunku, in his 1983 memoirs "Lest We Forget", had said: "Just as Indonesia was fighting a bloody battle, so were the communists of Malaya who, too, fought for independence."...

Cheah was responding to reports that the Censorship Board had banned Amir Muhammad's latest film "Apa Khabar Orang Kampung" which interviews former Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) members because the film was "historically inaccurate" and tried to value the communists' struggle in Malaya.

"The (board's) reasons reflect intolerance towards alternative interpretations of historical events. Only in a totalitarian state is there only one version -- the official version - of any historical event," he said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Aboriginal occupation in Caledonia, Ontario, a year old--or 200?

Source: CP (Canadian Press) (2-24-07)

TORONTO -- Even as Canada's longest running aboriginal standoff closes in on its one-year anniversary, the Six Nations occupation of a former housing development site in a small southwestern Ontario town isn't going to end anytime soon, warns federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.

Negotiators working to resolve the 200-year-old land claim and end the year-long occupation are still working on peripheral parts of the claim, and have a long way to go before they can end the standoff that began one year ago Feb. 28.

They are dealing with intractable and challenging issues stemming from one of the oldest land claims in Canada, Prentice said.

"We'd be happy to be further toward the completion," he said in an interview. "But it is a complicated matter. I've always known that it would be a challenging situation that would go on for some time."

The occupation that began when a small group of aboriginals blocked construction on the housing development in Caledonia, Ont., a short drive south of Hamilton, could have been far worse, Prentice added. Negotiations have brought relative stability and calm to the small town, he said.

Compared to the armed standoff between Mohawks and the Canadian army in Oka, Quebec, that killed a police officer 17 years ago, Prentice said Caledonia has been handled in a very responsible way...

Janie Jamieson, who speaks for the protesters, said the year-old occupation embodies too much for Six Nations to back down now.

"The prosperity Canada enjoys comes at the expense of the country's First Nations, putting aboriginal pride and dignity at stake," Jamieson said.

"Our people are still marginalized," she said. "We're at the point where enough is enough. We've been backed into a corner for too long now."

Related Links

Land locked: Caledonia's broken peace and the search for answers
The myths of Caledonia [a lawyer's historical review]

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 9:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Serbia verdict 'closes chapter' in history, EU says

Source: EUobserver (2-27-07)

BRUSSELS –- The EU has welcomed the UN's top court ruling which sees Serbia cleared of direct responsibility for the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian village of Srebrenica, while urging Belgrade to distance itself from Milosevic-era crimes and hand over war criminals still at large.

"I appreciate very much that there [in the ruling] is no collective punishment", EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said, as it was the first time in the 60-year history of the International Court of Justice that an entire nation was being held to judicial account for genocide.

"The verdict will help to close a page of history which was dramatic, painful and damaging to many people", Mr Solana added, calling for reconciliation in the region.

Related Links

Bosnian Muslims view ruling as another defeat
Serbs' collective sigh of relief
Analysis: Serbia verdict may lead to peace

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 8:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

19th-century pop star: Longfellow's 200th birthday

Source: AP (2-27-07)

PORTLAND, Me. -- Remembrances of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would have turned 200 on Tuesday, are hard to escape in his native Portland, the place he described in ”My Lost Youth” as ”the beautiful town that is seated by the sea.”

In the heart of the downtown sits Wadsworth-Longfellow House, the three-story brick building where the poet lived as a youth. It’s a few blocks east of Longfellow Square and even closer to Longfellow Books. Some of the city’s elementary school pupils attend Longfellow School. Older folks can, in season, order a locally brewed Longfellow Winter Ale in a nearby bar or restaurant.

Longfellow, one of the most beloved literary figures in 19th-century America, has left his mark in the city where he was born on Feb. 27, 1807. Because of that connection, the Maine Historical Society is hosting a 200th birthday celebration Tuesday that kicks off a year of bicentennial activities.

Similar events, including poetry readings, lectures and exhibits, are also being held in Brunswick, where Longfellow attended Bowdoin College in the same graduating class as Nathaniel Hawthorne, and in Cambridge, Mass., where he spent most of his life and taught foreign languages at Harvard University.

Known for such familiar poems as ”Evangeline,” ”The Children’s Hour,” ”The Song of Hiawatha” and ”Paul Revere’s Ride,” Longfellow achieved fame during his lifetime comparable to that of today’s leading pop culture figures.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 8:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thurmond's biracial daughter says Sharpton 'overreacted' to ancestral link

Source: AP (2-27-07)

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The biracial daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond defended the former segregationist on Tuesday and said the Rev. Al Sharpton "overreacted" when Sharpton learned he is a descendent of a slave owned by the senator's relatives.

"In spite of the fact he was a segregationist, he did many wonderful things for black people ... I'm not sure that Reverend Sharpton is aware of all the things he did," said Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who was in South Carolina for a speech. "I kind of feel that there was an overreaction."

Professional genealogists working for Ancestry.com found that Sharpton's great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

When Sharpton learned of the link, he said: "It was probably the most shocking thing in my life."

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Posthumous 'Suite Francaise' becomes commercial hit

Source: AP (2-27-07)

NEW YORK -- Some books sell because Oprah Winfrey wants you to buy them. Others get help from a major prize, a controversy, a movie tie-in, a famous author or an especially clever marketing campaign.

And some, such as Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Francaise," sell because they're great books.

Born in 1903, Nemirovsky was a Ukrainian Jew who emigrated to Paris as a young woman. She was arrested in 1942 during the Nazi occupation of France and soon died at Auschwitz, where her husband, Michael Epstein, was later killed.

The author of several previous works, Nemirovsky had been discretely working on a five-part novel before her arrest. The first two sections, fictionalized accounts of the war, were discovered in the 1990s by her daughter, Denise Epstein, and published in France to great acclaim in 2004. The book was again praised highly when the English edition came out in the United States last spring.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

No indictment in 1955 Emmett Till slaying

Source: AP (2-27-07)

JACKSON, Miss. -- All but closing the books on a crime that helped give rise to the civil rights movement, a grand jury has refused to bring any new charges in the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was beaten and shot after whistling at a white woman in the Mississippi Delta.

The district attorney in rural Leflore County had sought a manslaughter charge against the white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was suspected of pointing out Till to her husband to punish the boy for what was a grave offense in the segregated South.

But the grand jury last Friday issued a "no bill," meaning it found insufficient evidence, according to documents made public Tuesday.

Federal authorities decided last year not to prosecute anyone, saying the statute of limitations for federal charges had run out. Mississippi authorities represented the last, best hope of bringing someone to justice. No one has ever been convicted in the slaying.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Judge approves settlement in Holocaust/insurance case

Source: AP (2-27-07)

NEW YORK -- A federal judge on Tuesday approved a settlement involving Holocaust victims, their relatives and an Italian insurance company that ends a lawsuit brought a decade ago.

U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels announced his approval after listening to lawyers on all sides, including an attorney for six objectors who insisted the deal with Assicurazioni Generali would deny justice for tens of thousands of victims.

"The settlement is not perfect, but it's hard to imagine any recovery for Holocaust victims after 60 years could be just compensation," Daniels said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Frederick Douglass honored as journalist

Source: AP (2-27-07)

Frederick Douglass is known for fiercely opposing slavery after running away from his Maryland owner, for championing equal rights and women's rights, and for being a forceful speaker.

But he spent much of his adult life as a journalist, first publishing a newspaper in Rochester, N.Y., where he lived near the Canadian border to be able to flee if pursued, and then in the District.

Douglass was the first black reporter allowed into the Capitol press galleries, where journalists watch lawmakers on the floors of the House and Senate.

His role as a pioneering journalist was honored yesterday during Black History Month, when the committee of reporters that controls access to the galleries dedicated a plaque and portrait to him.

Douglass was a member of the congressional press galleries from 1870 to 1874.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 5:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

FBI reopens civil rights era investigations

Source: CNN (2-27-07)

The FBI reopened investigations of about a dozen decades-old suspicious deaths, officials said Tuesday amid a Justice Department focus on cracking unsolved cases from the nation's civil rights era.

The high-priority cases, which FBI Director Robert S. Mueller described as numbering between 10 and 12, are among an estimated 100 that investigators nationwide are looking at as possible civil rights-related murders.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales acknowledged many of the cases may be beyond the boundaries of what the federal government can legally prosecute. But they "remain on our radar," he said.

"Much time has passed on these crimes," Gonzales told reporters in Washington. "The wounds they left are deep, and still many of them have not healed. But we are committed to re-examining these cases and doing all we can to bring justice to the criminals who may have avoided punishment for so long."

Addressing civil rights violators, Gonzales said: "You have not gotten away with anything -- we are still on your trail."

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 5:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

2,500-year-old Achaemenid dam in Iran demolished

Source: CHN (Cultural Heritage News, Iran) (2-24-07)

TEHRAN -- Didehgan Dam which was constructed some 2500 years ago during the Achaemenid dynastic era (550-330 BC) to the north of the world heritage site of Pasargadae in Iran’s Fars province in order to prevent seasonal flooding in the region has been demolished as a result of removing soil in the region by bulldozers.

Announcing this news, Mohammad Jafar Malekzadeh, secretary of the high commission for dam construction of Fars Regional Water Organization, told CHN: “A very high technique was implemented in construction of Didehgan Dam which has made it unique in the world. The core of this Achaemenid dam was constructed by soil and it was covered with stone -- something which has not been seen elsewhere. However, the activities of bulldozers of a private company in the vicinity of this historic dam have caused some serious damages to parts of Didehgan.”

Didehgan was recently discovered during archeological excavations in the region.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 5:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scholars Criticize New Jesus Documentary

Source: AP (2-26-07)

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Archaeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land derided claims in a new documentary produced by the Oscar-winning director James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets. "The Lost Tomb of Christ," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries _ small caskets used to store bones _ discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel. One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son. And the very fact that Jesus had an ossuary would contradict the Christian belief that he was resurrected and ascended to heaven. Most Christians believe Jesus' body spent three days at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City. The burial site identified in Cameron's documentary is in a southern Jerusalem neighborhood nowhere near the church. In 1996, when the BBC aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television. "They just want to get money for it," Kloner said....

Related Links

NYT Story
Time Magazine Story

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sharpton-Thurmond tie shows power of genealogical research

Source: NPR, All Things Considered (2-26-07)

The revelation that an ancestor of Rev. Al Sharpton was a slave owned by an ancestor of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond has highlighted the growing field of genealogy. Tracing family history is a challenge for many African-Americans who are the descendants of slaves.

For his part, Sharpton has said that he was "shocked" and "surprised" to learn that his great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by a woman named Julia Thurmond. Thurmond's grandfather was also Sen. Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather.

Genealogy has become a multi-million dollar industry, as people use Internet databases to track their lineage and family movements. Many government records are now available through the Web, and genealogical software helps navigate the process.

But for any family searching their roots, just because the information is available, it does not mean that it accurate, says Elizabeth Shown Mills, the former president of the American Society of Genealogists who edited National Genealogical Society Quarterly for 17 years.

Michele Norris talks with Mills, who currently lectures at the Samford University Library in Birmingham, Ala.

[Audio link at story website]

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 3:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

After 60 years of digs, 2m artifacts reveal history of Fort Vancouver

Source: AP (2-26-07)

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Archaeologists are using broken pottery, bullets and buttons found over the past 60 years to piece together the history of a 19th century fort along the Columbia River. Some 2 million artifacts have been dug up at Fort Vancouver, which from 1829 to 1866 served as a hub for fur and mercantile trade and military activity in the West.

The salvaged pieces have been stored in a replica fur store on the southern edge of a replica fort. Scientists are cataloguing the items, and hope to learn the history of the fort and the thousands who lived there...

Elaine Dorset, a Portland State University anthropology graduate student, [is] examining microscopic pieces of long-decayed plants in a formal garden that lay north of the fort...Heidi Pierson is finishing a study of the powder magazine, the only brick building at the fort, with a goal to rebuild an accurate replica...

Others will study the fort's sales shop, "basically the Wal-Mart of its day," said Doug Wilson, a Portland State professor and the Vancouver National Historic Reserve archaeologist.

"It was the only store in town. It sold a variety to everyone in the area: people in the village, missionaries, people on the Oregon trail," Wilson said. "If you go to any settler's house site in the area from the 1840s and 1850s, it'll probably have artifacts from this place because it dominated the trade."...

Louis Caywood began the first digs in 1947 in an open field between Pearson Field and downtown Vancouver. He found and staked out the exact location of the original fort.

Construction of a replica fort and buildings got under way in 1960 and continues today...The latest digs have been in the Kanaka Town area west of the fort. With some 600 workers living there, residents included Scots and English, Iroquois, Crees, Metis, Chinook, French Canadians, Hawaiians and Russians.

Scholars have determined that 32 languages were spoken in the town, creating a unique multicultural community, Wilson said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 2:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Chinese paper slams 'absurd' Korean history claim

Source: Chosun.com (2-27-07)

A Chinese newspaper has criticized as "imprudent" plans by Korea's Education Ministry to revise history textbooks to show that Korea's development began earlier than is currently stated.

The Ministry last week announced that it would change the high school textbooks to state as fact that the Old Chosun dynasty was founded by Dangun Wanggeom and that the Bronze Age on the peninsula was from 2000 BC to 1500 BC, a thousand years earlier than the textbooks now state.

Sanghai's Dongfang Zaobao newspaper on Monday said, “The South Korean government surprised the people with its imprudent attitude in accepting academics' assertions which have long been disputed.”

The Old Chosun kingdom existed until 108 BC in the Liaodong peninsula of what is now China and northwestern regions of Korea. Koreans believe that the possibly legendary Dangun Wanggeom established the kingdom in 2333 BC.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 2:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Artifacts in Baja California dunes could be from early galleon

Source: AP (2-27-07)

MEXICO CITY -- Archeologists said Monday that porcelain plates and other artifacts found along the Baja California coast could be from the wreckage of a Spanish galleon that sailed between the Philippines and Mexico hundreds of years ago.

Seals and other markings on some of the estimated 1,000 fragments of porcelain plates found at the site indicate they were made in China in the late 1500s, said archaeologist Luz Maria Mejia of the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

The site, near the port of Ensenada about 50 miles south of the U.S. border, is covered by shifting sand dunes that have kept artifacts like these hidden for centuries. Archeologists have been scouring the dunes for years to try to find relics from old Pacific trading ships.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 2:07 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'CSI' technology unlocks secrets of ancient fabric

Source: Live Science (2-26-07)

Fabric swatches dug up from archaeological sites often look like dull brown rags, but archaeologists are putting crime lab techniques to work to uncover the colors, patterns and other revealing features of antiquated textiles.

The patterns, in particular, have helped researchers identify the dyes, paints, skills and trade routes of the Hopewell, a broad network of Native American groups who lived in the eastern part of North America about 2,000 years ago. The Hopewell in Ohio made enclosures out of earthen walls called mounds, and traded materials with people as far away as Wyoming.

Color patterns are usually invisible to the naked eye under standard lighting conditions but behave differently in the infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) spectra than in visible light. So Ohio State University archaeologists employed IR and UV technology normally used to detect fingerprints to look for patterns on fabric specimens found in Ohio's Seip burial grounds. The fabrics excavated from the burial grounds are thought to be part of a canopy that was arched over the deceased 1,600 years ago.

"The camera sees what we cannot see with our eyes alone," said Christel Baldia, lead author of a report on the technique and findings published in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 2:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Austrian acquitted in 1944 San Polo massacre

Source: AP (2-26-07)

ROME -- An Italian military court on Monday acquitted an 87-year-old former lieutenant in the German army of charges stemming from the 1944 World War II massacre of 48 civilians in a small town in Tuscany, Italian news agencies reported.

The tribunal in the northern port city of La Spezia ruled that there was no evidence to convict Herbert Hantschk, an Austrian who was tried in absentia, the ANSA news agency reported. He was the sole surviving defendant in the case, Italian media said.

The massacre occurred in the town of San Polo, near Arezzo, as the German army was in retreat from north-central Italy. The victims were either shot, buried alive or killed with explosives during a roundup of Italian resistance fighters.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Taiwan prepares for 60th anniversary of infamous communal massacre

Source: AP (2-27-07)

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A steady stream of visitors paid their respects at Taipei's Peace Park on Tuesday, a day before it becomes the focus of observances commemorating the 60th anniversary of an infamous communal massacre.

On Feb. 28, 1947, Chinese Nationalist soldiers beat a local Taiwanese woman for selling contraband cigarettes near the Taipei rail station. The episode set off rioting throughout the island which Nationalist reinforcements put down at the cost of thousands of lives.

Sixty years later the "2-28 Incident" remains a sensitive subject for many Taiwanese, and a source of acrimony between President Chen Shui-bian's ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the Nationalist opposition.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Only known Roman imperial sceptre exhibited

Source: Telegraph (2-27-07)

ROME -- The only Roman emperor's sceptre to have been found has gone on public display in Rome for the first time.

The sceptre, which is topped by a blue orb that represents the earth, was discovered at the end of last year and is believed to have been held by Emperor Maxentius, who ruled for six years until 312AD.

Maxentius, who was known for his vices and his incapacity, drowned in the Tiber while fighting forces loyal to his brother-in-law, Constantine, at the battle of the Milvian bridge. Archaeologists believe that Maxentius' supporters hid the sceptre during or after the battle to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

It was found at the base of the Palatine hill, carefully wrapped in silk and linen and then placed in a wooden box. Alongside it were other boxes holding two other imperial battle standards and ceremonial lance heads. The depth of the burial allowed archaeologists to date the find to Maxentius' rule.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Khmer Rouge genocide trial close to collapse as judges dispute rules

Source: Guardian (2-27-07)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- With sad eyes Om Som sits in her shack in the Cambodian countryside waiting for answers. The shoeless 70-year-old has clung on for half a lifetime hoping to find out what happened to her beloved husband, and why...

Twenty-eight years after Pol Pot's brutal regime was toppled, the prospect of a long-awaited genocide trial of its senior leaders offers a faint glimmer of hope for Om Som. With her family she was evacuated from Phnom Penh when it was cleared by the Khmer Rouge in "Year Zero", starved and forced to labour in the fields.

She endured the sight of bound prisoners brought in ox-carts to a Buddhist pagoda near her village and heard their tortured screams floating on night breezes from the makeshift extermination centre where 30,000 died.

"I don't want any revenge, but if the government tries these leaders I'll be happy," she said. "What I really want to know is what happened."

But even that modest hope could be dashed. The trial to bring to book the Khmer Rouge's leaders for the extermination of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the "killing fields" is on the brink of collapse even before the first indictment can be handed down...

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

A long walk across wartime China in the winter--with 60 orphans

Source: Independent (2-27-07)

HENGDIAN, China -- The story of how a young Englishman, George Hogg, took 60 orphans on a journey of hundreds of miles to safety across war-ravaged China in the winter of 1944 is one of the more remarkable tales of the Second World War.

In the town of Shandan, in Gansu province on the Mongolian border, Hogg and his friend and mentor, the New Zealand philanthropist Rewi Alley, are remembered with a statue and affection, but Hogg is little known outside China. This is all set to change with a new film called The Children of Huang Shi currently being made by the Canadian-born director Roger Spottiswoode.

With Japanese forces snapping at their heels as they made their western advance across China in 1944, and with the help of Mao Zedong's Communist guerrillas, Hogg escorted the boys across 688 miles of treacherous mountainous terrain in north-western China to a temple town in Shandan. Just one year later, Hogg contracted tetanus after he injured his toe playing basketball with the students. With no medicines to stop lockjaw, he died aged 29.

His Chinese odyssey is just one small part of this remarkable Englishman's life, which encompassed the most radical changes the Middle Kingdom had seen for thousands of years.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, February 26, 2007

Ransacked Iraq provincial museum seeks lost treasures

Source: http://www.azzaman.com (2-25-07)

The Kufa Museum, which included the largest collection of artifacts after the Baghdad Museum, is striving to retrieve its treasures
plundered shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The museum, situated close to the southern religious city of Karbala, included hundreds of ancient pieces representing the
various periods of the country’s long history.

A source at the museum, refusing to be named, said many of the stolen pieces have found their way to international markets and
are currently being traded by private collectors and auction houses.
He said Iraqi Antiquities Department was aware of the contraband trade in Iraqi antiquities and has asked the Foreign Ministry to
intervene.

“We want the Iraqi authorities to ask the British government and police to seize these artifacts because they belong to our
museum,” he said.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 10:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

CIA recruited Japanese war criminals

Source: AP (2-24-07)

TOKYO - Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians and complicity in the Bataan Death March. And then he became a U.S. spy. Newly declassified CIA records, released by the U.S. National Archives and examined by The Associated Press, document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. The documents also show how ineffective the effort was, in the CIA's view.

The records, declassified in 2005 and 2006 under an act of Congress in tandem with Nazi war crime-related files, fill in many of the blanks in the previously spotty documentation of the occupation authority's intelligence arm and its involvement with Japanese ultra-nationalists and war criminals, historians say.

In addition to Tsuji, who escaped Allied prosecution and was elected to parliament in the 1950s, conspicuous figures in U.S.-funded operations included mob boss and war profiteer Yoshio Kodama, and Takushiro Hattori, former private secretary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister hanged as a war criminal in 1948.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German ultras on trial for burning Anne Frank diary

Source: DPA (German Press Agency) (2-26-07)

MAGDEBURG, Germany -- Seven far-right Germans in their 20s who flung a copy of Anne Frank's Diary into a bonfire amid cheers from beer-drinking neo-Nazis went on trial for sedition Monday.

The Summer Solstice Party last year in the small town of Pretzien, 130 kilometres west of Berlin, caused uproar in Germany last year after it was revealed that the town mayor and police were also
present and saw nothing wrong in the book and a US flag being burned...

Public prosecutor Arnold Murra said, "They mocked Anne Frank, and in her name, every victim of the concentration camps."

Denying the Holocaust is punishable in Germany as sedition by up to five years' jail. Judges were expected to examine the right-wing motivations of all the accused, who range in age from 24 to 29. The
other five men have not yet been heard.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Killing Fields' remains may be key in trials

Source: AP (2-26-07)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The bones of victims from the Khmer Rouge's notorious "killing fields" should be preserved because they could serve as critical evidence in upcoming genocide trials, Cambodia's prime minister said Monday.

Human remains, particularly skulls, serve as the centerpieces of several memorials to the victims of the Khmer Rouge, who were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians from starvation, overwork, medical neglect and execution when the communist group held power from 1975-79.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Book identifies 30 Polish bishops and priests as secret police informants

Source: AP (2-26-07)

WARSAW, Poland -- A book released Monday has dredged up more painful allegations from Poland's Communist era, naming some 30 Roman Catholic priests, including several bishops, as registered informants with the secret police.

The author, the Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, was twice brutally beaten by the secret police and is one of the leaders of a drive to expose clergy who supplied information to authorities. The church, he says, must confess and repent to heal wounds.

"The church's avoiding of the problem could lead to irreversible harm," he wrote in an introduction. "Above all, it will cast a shadow on those clergy (and they were the vast majority) who never cooperated with the secret police."

Publication of the book -- titled "Priests In The Face Of The Security Services" -- coincides with a surge of interest in the issue following the surprise resignation in January of Warsaw Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

File pirates fail in bid to buy offshore-rig 'country,' look for tropical isle

Source: Ars Technica (2-2-07)

The dream refuses to die. After The Pirate Bay failed in its quest to buy Sealand, some supporters of the idea believed that the idea of a libertarian paradise was too precious to drop, and they entertained hopes of hoisting the "live free or die" flag over another island, possibly Ile de Caille, a small and uninhabited island off the South American coast. Thus began the Free Nation Foundation, a group that hopes to form its own country governed by a "philosophy of freedom" where "people could actually live" (as opposed to all those other countries, where living has been outlawed by tyrants). The failure of the Sealand deal, it turns out, was a good thing. The rusting naval platform "was too small and aesthetically displeasing to support such a goal," according to the group, and the weather in the middle of the English Channel is not the stuff of which vacation fantasies are made.

Related Links

'Smallest Country' for sale -- sea views included, land extra

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Paleolithic European adults couldn't stomach milk, gene study shows

Source: National Geographic News (2-26-07)

Milk wasn't on the Stone Age menu, says a new study which suggests the vast majority of adult Europeans were lactose intolerant as recently as 7,000 years ago.

While cow's milk is a mainstay in the diet of modern-day Europeans, their ancestors weren't able to digest the nutritious dairy product after childhood, according to DNA analysis of human skeletons from the Neolithic period.

The study was led by Joachim Burger of the Institute of Archaeology at Mainz University in Germany.

The findings supports the idea that milk drinkers became widespread in Europe only after dairy farming had become established there—not the other way around.

Most mammals lose their ability to digest milk after being weaned, but some humans can continue to benefit from the calcium-rich, high-energy liquid.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Orleans' National WWII Museum prepares to expand but post-Katrina attendance plummets

Source: New Orleans City Business (2-26-07)

NEW ORLEANS -- A third contract has been awarded in the $300-million expansion of the National World War II Museum.

Bridge City-based Concrete Busters of Louisiana Inc. will soon begin the $481,827 demolition of the property bordered by Magazine Street, Andrew Higgins Boulevard and Camp and Calliope streets to make way for buildings that will quadruple the facility’s size in the next five years.

The facilities featuring battlefields and military services of World War II and a national center for war research are expected to attract about 700,000 visitors annually, compared with the 260,000 average pre-Katrina, said Clem Goldberger, senior director of marketing.

“Since Katrina, we have only been at about 50 percent of that,” she said.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 7:06 PM | Comments (1) | Top

New Stone Age finds in India may record new history

Source: Telegraph (Calcutta, India) (2-27-07)

RANCHI, Jharkhand, India -- Archaeologists might add a new chapter to the history of India, as certain remains of the stone-age civilisation have been discovered in the Damodar valley basin [in the new Indian state of Jharkhand, south of Bihar state].

The state art and culture department has already begun excavations [at two sites near Hazaribagh]...Several remains of the stone-age civilisation have been found in these places...Several Buddhist statues of the 12th century have also been found here.

“The pre-historic cave paintings are located about 12 km from here. This proves that the region was an important centre of activities during the stone-age,” said deputy director H.P. Sinha.

The oldest pre-historic recoveries have been made in Hallur in Karnataka and could be traced back to 1100 BC.

Though the period of the recoveries made in Jharkhand are yet to be ascertained, experts are of the opinion that these, too, might belong to the same period.

They argue that excavations in places of historical importance ought to be given top priority.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 6:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Project aims to put small-town newspaper archives online

Source: PR.com (2-26-07)

SAN FRANCISCO -- As many newspaper publishers struggle with how to provide access to their printed archives without the content being exploited, small-market publishers are lining up to have their archives digitized and made online-accessible by SmallTownPapers, Inc. <http://www.smalltownpapers.com/>;

The Seattle-based company is working with more than 300 publishers from across the US to create high-quality digital images of their newspaper pages which are searchable and distributed online through defined partnerships. To date, the company has scanned more than two million newspaper pages of its 20 million page archive [dating back to 1865] and its digital database is expanding daily.

“While large newspapers have long had their archives electronically available, the small town newspapers were generally unable to do that because of the costs involved,” explained Paul Jeffko, president and founder of SmallTownPapers, Inc. “With this program, millions of newspaper pages are being viewed and searched online for the first time.”

[The papers range from the Merrimack (N.H.) Journal and the Harlan (Ia.) Tribune to the Clovis Livestock Market News (Clovis, N.M.) and the Spirit of Jefferson Farmer's Advocate (Charles Town, W.Va.)]

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 6:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Romney family tree has polygamy branch

Source: AP (2-24-07)

SALT LAKE CITY -- While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great-grandfathers had 12.

Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.

Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.

Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages.

Romney's great-great grandfather, Parley Pratt, an apostle in the church, had 12 wives. In an 1852 sermon, Parley Pratt's brother and fellow apostle, Orson Pratt, became the first church official to publicly proclaim and defend polygamy as a direct revelation from God.

Related Links

Fox News whitewashes evangelical hostility to Romney's faith (Media Matters)
Double standards in an AP article about the polygamous history of Mitt Romney's family (Newsbusters)

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 6:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

What to do with Connecticut's 1796 Old State House? Board it up, beg for funds...

Source: AP (2-25-07)

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Despite a recent $3.2 million renovation, one of the nation's oldest historic state houses is on the verge of closing its doors.

Unless the state comes to the rescue, visitors won't be able walk the halls of the 211-year-old Federal-style building where the Amistad slave ship trial began, where presidents from Andrew Jackson to George H.W. Bush have visited...

The Connecticut Historical Society, which took over operations at the Old State House about four years ago, has said it will begin boarding up the 1796 National Historic Landmark on June 30.

"We looked at the budget. To continue to operate the Old State House, it would be a financial drain and would potentially bring down the Connecticut Historical Society," said James C. Williams, chairman of the historical society's board of directors.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 6:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vietnam hero on film gets highest honor for valor

Source: CNN (2-26-07)

WASHINGTON -- Lt. Col. Bruce Crandall's heroics in Vietnam were immortalized in a movie and a critically acclaimed book.

More than 40 years after Crandall repeatedly risked his life to rescue American soldiers fighting one of the toughest battles of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military officially recognized his heroism Monday, when he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for military valor.

"For the soldiers rescued, for the men who came home, for the children they had and the lives they made, America is in debt to Bruce Crandall," President Bush said during the awards ceremony. "It's a debt our nation can never really fully repay."

Related Links

Crandall recounts 1965 battle in Ia Drang Valley (video)

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 5:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Repressed memory is cultural creation of 19th century

Source: UPI (2-26-07)

Researchers at Harvard Medical School said the disorder known as repressed memory has a cultural rather than a scientific basis.

In an unusual study conducted by a team of psychiatrists and literary scholars, the Harvard group was unable to uncover any examples of the phenomenon in Western writings that are more than 200 years old, The Washington Post reported.

Study leader Harrison Pope of Harvard Medical School says dissociative amnesia or repressed memory first appears in 19th-century literature such as the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

The group theorizes that if the disorder were anything other than a culture-bound syndrome, there would be examples of it in earlier literature because art draws its inspiration from life.

They point out that Shakespeare and Homer created numerous characters suffering from psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia or depression but none exhibiting repressed memory, the Post reported.

Writing in the journal Psychological Medicine, the researchers are offering $1,000 to anyone who can produce an example to disprove their theory that repressed memory is a cultural creation.

Related Links

Was Repressed Memory a 19th-Century Creation? (Washington Post)
Is dissociative amnesia a culture-bound syndrome? Findings from a survey of historical literature (Pschological Medicine abstract)

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 5:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

KGB trumped Ordnance Survey on UK mapping

Source: The Register (UK) (2-23-07)

Detailed maps of the UK created by the KGB between 1950 and 1990 have gone on sale in digital format for the first time.

The maps show 16,000 square kilometres and 103 UK town and cities in more detail than Ordnance Survey maps. The Russians used satellite images and spies on the ground to create the maps, which include army camps and warehouses that don't appear on other maps.

The maps include other information likely to be useful for an invading army, such as the height of bridges and depths and contours of river beds. Strategically important buildings like telephone exchanges, government buildings, and power stations were all colour-coded and identified with a numbered key.

It wasn't just the UK that was treated to such detailed attention -- most of the rest of the world was put under similar scrutiny, albeit not to such an indepth scale. For many countries in Africa and Asia the maps remain the most reliable and accessible source of geographic information.

Little is known of the how the USSR acheived such a mammoth task. The military cartography department was created in 1919 and the first map of the UK dates from 1938. The project accelerated from the mid-50s as the Cold War intensified. All place names on the maps are transcribed into Cyrillic script phonetically.

Related Links

Russian Military & KGB Maps (with link to sample map of London)

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 5:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scholars criticize new Jesus documentary

Source: AP (2-26-07)

JERUSALEM -- Archaeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land derided claims in a new documentary produced by James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets, but the Oscar-winning director said the evidence was based on sound statistics.

"The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries —- small caskets used to store bones —- discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.

One of the caskets even bears the title, "Judah, son of Jesus," hinting that Jesus may have had a son...

Cameron told NBC'S "Today" show that statisticians found "in the range of a couple of million to one in favor of it being them."...

Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television...

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight...

Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun." Ancient Semitic script is notoriously difficult to decipher...

"It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave," Kloner said. "The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time."...

"I don't think the James Ossuary came from the same cave," said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. "If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus."

Related Links

Reuters report on 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' (video)
'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' (Discovery Channel)

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 3:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Stood by in Srebenica massacre but Serbia cleared in Bosnia genocide

Source: AP (2-26-07)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The U.N.'s highest court cleared Serbia Monday of genocide against Muslims in Bosnia's bloody war. But it said the country's former government should have stopped the 1995 slaughter of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and ordered Serb leaders to hand over the alleged architect of the massacre.

The case marked the first time a state had been taken to court over allegations of genocide, outlawed in a U.N. convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust, although individuals have been convicted in genocide cases linked to massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda.

In a 171-page ruling, the International Court of Justice said the massacre of thousands of Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces at the U.N.-protected Srebrenica enclave was an act of genocide.

But the 15-judge panel rejected Bosnia's claim that the Serbian state was responsible for the killing, saying it did not have effective control over the Bosnian Serb forces it had helped arm and finance.

Instead, the judges ruled that Serbia stood by and allowed the massacre to happen.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 3:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

White Sharptons of Florida recoil at slavery's horrors

Source: New York Daily News (2-26-07)

MARIANNA, Fla. -- She is white and related to a U.S. senator who championed segregation.

She also shares the surname of a prominent black civil rights leader -- not because of any blood connection but because of her family's long-ago ties to the slave trade of the South.

Sharon Sharpton Hyatt, a 61-year-old widow who lives in a ranch house along a dirt road in this rural section of Jackson County, was unaware of the connections until the News contacted her...

A team of experts from Ancestry.com...determined that Hyatt shares her maiden name, Sharpton, with the Rev. Al Sharpton because her great-grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Sharpton, was the son of Julia Thurmond, whose family enslaved the reverend's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, in the 1860s.

"Oh my God, that's horrible," Hyatt exclaimed... She and her sister said they would consider coming to New York to meet the Rev. Sharpton if he were interested.

Asked how the world should view the "Sharptons of Florida," the sisters gave a simple answer.

"Just ordinary people," [Barbara] Bailey said.

"Yup, just people," her sister agreed. "Just people who are not responsible for their ancestors and what they did."

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 5:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Virginia first state to express 'regret' over slavery

Source: USA Today (2-25-07)

"Sorry" may be too expensive a word.

Once the heart of the Confederacy, Virginia has become the first state to express remorse for its past support of slavery, an action other states are in line to follow. The General Assembly passed a resolution of "profound regret" for "the involuntary servitude of Africans and the exploitation of Native Americans."

Virginia, which passed its resolution without objection Saturday, went further than any state has gone. This year, though, states and cities across the country are considering resolutions, launching studies and taking other actions to recognize slavery in their history.

Most are stopping short of apologizing. The Virginia resolution's authors, both great-grandsons of slaves, sought "atonement" for slavery but say they were told the word could prompt claims for reparations —- monetary compensation —- to the descendants of slaves...

[The resolution sponsor, Henry Marsh III] says the possibility of reparations would have sunk the effort he led with Delegate Donald McEachin, also a Democrat...

No state has apologized for slavery, although a measure to do so is pending in Missouri. No U.S. president or Congress has apologized. In 1988, Congress apologized to Japanese-Americans who were held in camps during World War II and gave each surviving internee $20,000.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 5:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Push for citizenship to honor Anne Frank no easy sell

Source: New York Times (2-26-07)

SAYVILLE, N.Y. -— A congressman from Long Island wants the United States government to grant honorary citizenship to Anne Frank, at least in part to atone for having denied her family entry in the years before her arrest and deportation to a Nazi concentration camp.

The House of Representatives is likely to take up the question this year, yet the proposal is not quite as easy and unobjectionable as it sounds. Only six people in history have been granted the honor, and some of Anne Frank’s relatives are not supporting it.

How the issue came to emerge from this old seaside Long Island village is almost as intriguing as the question itself. In a compact grid of a dozen square blocks that seem cut from a Currier and Ives catalogue, there are 11 churches and zero synagogues...

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 3:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Frederick Douglass home gets $2m facelift

Source: Washington Post (2-26-07)

Frederick Douglass rarely lacked for visitors at his estate in Anacostia [Washington, DC]. All sorts of people, including many of his 21 grandchildren, were often about, and the abolitionist writer saw to it that his home was equal to his hospitality.

For the past three years, preservationists have been working to keep it that way. And now the first major restoration project in more than three decades is complete, nearly 130 years after Douglass paid $6,700 for the hilltop mansion and the surrounding nine acres, which he would come to call Cedar Hill.

The National Park Service began showing off the finished product in mid-February with the reopening of the mansion for public tours that are booked into next month, the Park Service said.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 3:05 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Taiwan president blames Chiang Kai-shek for 1947 massacre

Source: AP (2-26-07)

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The late Gen. Chiang Kai-shek was responsible for the bloody suppression of a 1947 riot that led to the deaths of thousands of people, Taiwan's president said Monday.

Speaking to a seminar convened two days before the 60th anniversary of the "2-28 incident" —- so named because it followed riots that broke out on Feb. 28, 1947 —- President Chen Shui-bian put the full onus for the violent crackdown on Chiang.

"Although many people still harbor special feelings for former President Chiang Kai-shek, there is no doubt that Chiang was the foremost killer in the 2-28 incident," Chen said. "There is sufficient evidence that Chiang was not only aware of the massacre but spoke positively of it and supported it."

Chen's remarks, based in part on a 2006 book assembled from declassified Nationalist Party documents, appeared to have a distinct political edge.

Chen's comments came as Taiwan gears up for legislative and presidential elections, which pit his Democratic Progressive Party against the Nationalists, led by Chiang until his death in 1975.

Related Links

Taipei museum's exhibition shows valuable documents, records of 228 Incident

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Shoot the piano player: the Joyce Hatto scandal

Source: by Dennis Dutton, New York Times (2-26-07)

It seemed almost too good to be true, and in the end it was. A talented, conscientious pianist who had enjoyed an active if undistinguished career in Britain falls ill and retreats to a small town. Here in the last years of her life she launches a project to record virtually the entire standard repertoire for the piano. Her recordings, CDs made in her late sixties and seventies, are staggering, showing a masterful technique, a preternatural ability to adapt to different styles, and a depth of musical insight hardly seen elsewhere...

Related Links

About computer recognition of recorded performances (Stereophile)
'I did it for my wife' –- Joyce Hatto exclusive, William Barrington-Coupe confesses (Gramophone)

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

CIA's 'Dr. Zhivago' caper

Source: Boston Globe (2-20-07)

There is no reason to be nostalgic about the Cold War nightmare of a thermonuclear Armageddon, superpower proxy wars across the Third World, the Soviet gulag, the censorship imposed throughout the communist bloc, or the opportunistic witch-hunting of the McCarthy period in America. Yet there is something quaint about the revelation that the CIA had Boris Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago" surreptitiously published in Russian to boost his chances of winning the 1958 Nobel Prize in literature.

A forthcoming book about the "Doctor Zhivago" affair by Ivan Tolstoy —- yes, a member of that illustrious literary family —- recalls a bygone era when even CIA and KGB spies respected the power of literature. Tolstoy researched the covert operations of Soviet émigrés and CIA officers who arranged for the typesetting and publication of Pasternak's manuscript in the original Russian.

The novel had already been published in Italian by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, himself a member of the Italian Communist Party. Albert Camus had nominated Pasternak for the 1958 Nobel. "Doctor Zhivago" would bolster the case for a Russian writer previously known for his poetry. But the Nobel committee required, quite sensibly, that to be eligible for consideration a writer's work had to be published in its original language...

Pasternak knew nothing of the CIA's machinations, Tolstoy said in a recent online interview for the Washington Post. "Doctor Zhivago" was literature, not propaganda. The Soviet foreign minister of the time was unwittingly bestowing the highest praise on Pasternak's work when he decried its "estrangement from Soviet life" and its "celebration of individualism."

Related Links

CIA gets Dr. Zhivago's Nobel Prize? (Anatoly Korolev, RIA Novosti)

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:29 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Find of Roman coin shows ancient Britons in a new light

Source: Telegraph (2-26-07)

Experts are excited about a rare coin unearthed by an amateur treasure hunter which could change the accepted ancient history of Britain.

The silver denarius which dates back to the Roman Republic —- before Julius Caesar made Rome an empire —- was unearthed near Fowey in Cornwall.

Dating from 146 BC, it shows how ancient Britons were trading with the Romans well before the country was conquered in AD 43.

"It proves that there was a lot more going on between the continent and ourselves," said Anna Tyacke, Finds Liaison Officer at the Royal Cornwall Museum.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Dissect them alive: chilling Imperial that order could not be disobeyed

Source: Times (of London) (2-26-07)

HIRAKATA, Japan -- For 62 years Akira Makino spoke not a word of what he had done. But to those who knew him well it must have been obvious that he was a man with a tortured conscience. Why else would he have returned so often to the obscure, mosquito-blown town in the southern Philippines where he experienced such misery during the Second World War? He set up war memorials, gave clothes to poor children, and bought an entire set of uniforms for a local baseball team.

Last year, at the age of 83, he embarked on a gruelling pilgrimage to 88 Buddhist temples in Japan. After number 40 he collapsed from heat exhaustion, having permanently injured his knees. “My wife didn’t like me going back to the Philippines —- she called me ‘war crazy’,” said Mr Makino, a frail old man who lives alone in Hirakata, near Osaka. “But she let me go anyway. Right up until she died three years ago, I never told her. But over time I think she realised.”

Only in the twilight of his life has Mr Makino begun to talk about the secret he carried for more than 60 years...

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:24 AM | Comments (0) | Top

700-year-old copy of Koran restored

Source: UPI (2-26-07)

XINING, China -- Experts in China have restored a 700-year-old copy of the Koran, the sacred book of Islam.

The state-run news agency Xinhua reported that the two-volume, 867-page set is the oldest known in China and is written in Arabic.

The ancient copy of the Koran is believed to have been brought to China about 700 years ago when the Salar ethnic group moved east from Uzbekistan. Experts believe it was written some time between the eighth and 13th centuries.

Because the book is handwritten by Arabian Muslims, it is believed to be of great value as a research tool. All other ancient copies of the Koran that exist in China were written by Chinese Muslims, Xinhua reported.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

South Koreans sue over Japanese war shrine

Source: AP (2-26-07)

TOKYO -- A group of South Koreans filed a lawsuit Monday against a Tokyo war shrine criticized for glorifying Japan's militaristic past, demanding it remove relatives' names from the list of war dead honored there.

The suit, filed at the Tokyo District Court, is the first ever filed by South Koreans against Yasukuni Shrine, their Japanese supporter Naoyoshi Yamamoto said Monday.

The 11 plaintiffs, including a former soldier and 10 others whose fathers were impressed into the Japanese military during World War II, said their names have been enshrined against their will.

The Yasukuni Shrine honors Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including seven executed Class-A war criminals and an estimated 21,000 Koreans.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

400 years later, opera looks to the next act

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-26-07)

MANTUA, Italy -- The world of culture loves anniversaries, but rare is the occasion when an entire art form can celebrate a major birthday as opera did during the weekend, exactly four centuries after Monteverdi's pioneering work, "L'Orfeo," was created in this medieval Italian city.

Naturally enough, "L'Orfeo" was again presented in Mantua, albeit not in the Palace of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga I, where it was first performed on Feb. 24, 1607, but in the 18th-century Teatro Bibiena. Further, compared with the hand-painted décor and daring "flying" machines used at the premiere, this was a more modest semistaged affair.

Still, for opera sentimentalists, it was a moment to reflect on the origins of a unique genre of music theater — one later described by Samuel Johnson as "exotick and irrational entertainment" — which soon spread from Mantua to Venice and, by the end of the 17th century, had conquered much of Europe.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:14 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Japanese film to show nostalgia for 'bravery' of kamikaze pilots

Source: Telegraph (2-26-07)

Japan's kamikaze pilots are to be honoured in a new film praising their bravery, sacrifice and "beautiful lives" in the Second World War.

The release in May of I Go To Die For You confirms a growing nostalgia in Japan about its wartime generation, even among the majority who accept the cause was wrong.

The film tells the story of the young men based at Chiran air base in southwest Japan, where they trained for the suicide missions they hoped would spare their country from invasion.

The screenplay [is] by the 74-year-old outspoken politician [and governor of Tokyo], Shintaro Ishihara...

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Found, more or less: Tolstoy's short version of 'War and Peace'

Source: Independent (2-25-07)

With its exhaustive dissection of 19th-century Russian society, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is arguably the greatest, and certainly one of the longest, novels ever written.

Now, for those unable to face wading through its 1,500 pages, there is hope. What is being billed as Tolstoy's "original version" is to be published -- some 600 pages lighter, with the removal of Tolstoy's philosophical musings and the prospect of a happy ending. Not everyone, however, is pleased. Academics fear many will be tempted to settle for what they regard as an unfinished version.

The new book was the life's work of Russian scholar Evelina Zaidenshnur, who for 50 years pored over thousands of pages to assemble Tolstoy's first draft, matching different inks, changes in handwriting and types of paper to piece together the author's earliest version.

That work, originally intended for circulation among fellow scholars, is to be published by Fourth Estate in April in an English translation by Andrew Bromfield. War and Peace: The Original Version, weighs in at a relatively svelte 900 pages.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 2:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

With song about Boer War general, Afrikaans singer stirs controversy

Source: Guardian (2-26-07)

The question goes out, and the response is always the same.

"I'm proud of my language and culture. Are you?" Bok van Blerk demands of the emotionally charged crowd.

Up goes the cheer, and then comes the song - an Afrikaans folk number about a Boer war general that has become a sensation in South Africa as an anthem for young whites who say they are tired of being made to feel guilty about the apartheid past.

The song, De La Rey, has swept into rugby matches and pubs where Afrikaners belt out its plea for the old Boer general to come back and lead. Many stand with a hand over their heart as they sing the lyrics about a "nation that will rise up again" as if it were a national anthem.

But while the song is a best seller among South Africa's 2.5 million Afrikaners, it is also generating a heated debate about what its success means.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 1:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Exodus' of Iraq's ancient minorities

Source: Independent (2-26-07)

Iraq's minorities, some of the oldest communities in the world, are being driven from the country by a wave of violence against them because they are identified with the occupation and easy targets for kidnappers and death squads. A "huge exodus" is now taking place, according to a report by Minority Rights Group International.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 30 per cent of the 1.8 million Iraqis who have fled to Jordan, Syria and elsewhere come from the minorities.

The Christians, who have lived in Iraq for 2,000 years, survived the Muslim invasion in the 7th century and the Mongol onslaught in the 13th but are now being eradicated as their churches are bombed and members of their faith hunted down and killed along with other minority faiths.

The report, Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq's minority communities since 2003, written by Preti Taneja, says that half of the minority communities in Iraq, once 10 per cent of the total population, have fled. They include Mandaeans, whose main prophet is John the Baptist and Yazidis whose religion is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism and may be 4,000 years old. Other minorities who were persecuted under Saddam Hussein are under attack again. The so-called Faili, or Shia Kurds, who were stripped of their belongings under the old regime and expelled to Iran are now being forced to run again - forced out of Shia areas such as Sadr City because they are Kurds and Sunni cities such as Baquba, because they are Shia.

The small Jewish community, whose members arrived in chains as slaves, has been all but destroyed by persecution and the pervasive suspicion that Jews have collaborated with the US-led invaders.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 1:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Marketing stunt closes down historic graveyard in Boston

Source: AP (2-24-07)

BOSTON —- Less than a month after highways and bridges were shut down during a bomb scare touched off by an advertising stunt, a new marketing scheme has led angry city officials to shut down a historic site.

A clue in a Dr Pepper promotion suggested a coin that might be worth as much as $1 million was buried in the 347-year-old Granary Burying Ground, the final resting place of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and other historic figures.

After contestants showed up at the cemetery gates early Tuesday, the city closed it, concerned that it would be damaged by treasure hunters.

"It absolutely is disrespectful," Boston Parks Commissioner Toni Pollak told The Boston Globe. "It's an affront to the people who are buried there, our nation's ancestors."

British candy and soft-drink maker Cadbury Schweppes PLC, which makes Dr Pepper, canceled the Boston portion of the 23-city coin-hunt promotion Thursday, acknowledging it had hidden the coin in the downtown graveyard that is visited by thousands of tourists each year.

[Later report:]
Valuable discovery: The Dr Pepper promotion's most valuable coin, redeemable for $1 million, was found by a Houston woman near the Spirit of Confederacy statue in Sam Houston Park, Cadbury Schweppes said Friday.

Posted on Monday, February 26, 2007 at 1:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Black woman joins DAR despite its past

Source: Newhouse News Service (2-25-07)

FLINT, Mich. — Accepting an offer to join the Daughters of the American Revolution could be a hard sell for a black woman.

That's why Gail Buckner Odom once declined an invitation to attend a DAR meeting.

As the descendant of a Revolutionary War patriot, though, Odom has changed her mind. Today, the retired Flint teacher is the sole black member of Genesee County's DAR chapter and believes she's among a select few dozen black members in the nation. National organizers say they don't track such numbers.

"Why shouldn't he (her ancestor) get the recognition he deserves?'' said Odom, who lives in a south Flint home decorated with African and African-American art.

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Slavery report prompts Brown University donation

Source: CNN (2-25-07)

Brown University on Saturday promised to raise $10 million for local public schools and give free tuition to graduate students who pledge to work there in response to a report that found slave labor played a role in the university's beginnings.

The university will also explore creating an academic center on slavery and justice, strengthen its Africana Studies Department, begin planning for a slavery memorial and revise its official history to provide a more accurate account of the school's early years.

"One of the clearest messages in the Slavery and Justice Report is that institutions of higher education must take a greater interest in the health of their local communities, especially kindergarten through 12th-grade education," Brown President Ruth J. Simmons said in a statement.

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Producers release new details on 'Jesus family tomb' theory

Source: Jerusalem Post (2-26-07)

The Discovery TV Channel has released new details of the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" documentary that is to be officially launched at a New York press conference on Monday, including the claim that Jesus was buried in a Jerusalem tomb alongside Mary Magdalene and, possibly, their son Judah.

The film also suggests that the so-called "James, Brother of Jesus" ossuary, which surfaced in 2002 in the collection of Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan, may also have come from the tomb. The "James" ossuary made world headlines, but has been branded a forgery by the Israel Antiquities Authority though it still has many defenders.

According to the website of the Discovery Channel, for whom the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" documentary was produced, Israeli-born filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and his colleagues have gathered scientific evidence, "including DNA analysis conducted at one of the world's foremost molecular genetics laboratories," as well as expert scholarship, to bolster their staggering claim that a 2,000-year-old cave in the Talpiot neighborhood once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and, possibly, their son Judah...

Related Links

Jesus family tomb believed found (Discovery Channel)

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 7:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Letters From Prison: Castro Revealed

Source: WaPo (2-25-07)

In April 1959, just months after a charismatic 32-year-old revolutionary named Fidel Castro seized the reins of power in Cuba, a slim volume of his correspondence, titled "Cartas del Presidio," or "Letters from Prison," was published in Havana. The book contained 21 letters addressed to Castro's inner circle of supporters, including his wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart; his half-sister, Lidia; a future mistress; the father of a fallen comrade; and nine missives to his devoted friend and political devotee, Luis Conte Aguero, who published the book.

The letters, however, have not appeared in English until now, and after 1960, when a disillusioned Conte Aguero fled Cuba, no further copies were printed in Havana. Nevertheless, this collection of Castro's writings -- virtually the only unofficial writing he ever did -- has become something of a Rosetta Stone for historians, biographers and journalists seeking to understand the man who would become Cuba's ruler for life. Some may argue that a careful reading of the letters foretells what would transpire in Cuba over the next 50 years. Others could say that the Castro of these letters is not the Castro he would become.

Both are true to varying degrees.

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 5:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Grad student lives without technology for month

Source: Newhouse News Service (2-25-07)

Christina Wall has traveled back in time, to a place where there is no television, no Internet and no e-mail.

In this pre-1950 land, there are no frozen dinners, no nonstick skillets and no fast-food franchises. She can't use a dishwasher, clothes dryer or microwave; she has no access to ATMs, DVDs or CDs.

Wall, 32, an Eastern Michigan University graduate student, hasn't left her west-side Ann Arbor home for another plane in the space-time continuum. She's simply going a month - through March 2 - without using any technology created since 1950. It's part of her master's degree project on the impact of technology in modern life.

When she has a headache? Uncoated aspirin instead of ibuprofen. When she needs to contact a friend? Snail mail or an antique rotary phone. When it snows? Sledding instead of reality TV. Her project is a completely original conception, said professor Denise Pilato, who teaches in EMU's College of Technology.

"In some ways it's an experiment," she said. "And being that it's an experiment, there are a lot of surprises for her."

Perhaps most surprising is that there have been so many happy ones.

For example, Wall estimates she'll save up to $400 this month because it feels more "real" to spend cash than to use a debit card.

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 5:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Alabama college hosts n-word conference

Source: CNN (2-24-07)

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (AP) -- With a debate swirling nationwide over the n-word, a historically black college in Alabama has set aside four days to discuss the racial slur.

Participants at the conference, which began Thursday and ends Sunday, discussed topics ranging from the origins of the epithet to whether juggling a few letters makes it socially acceptable at the "N" Surrection Conference at Stillman College.

Organizers said the goal of the event is to challenge the use of the n-word "through the use of intelligent dialogue and a thorough examination of black history."

Debate over the use of the word has escalated in recent months, with comedian Michael Richards' racial rant prompting black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters to urge the public and the entertainment industry to stop using it.

Clarence Sutton Sr., president of the Tuscaloosa chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said he's taken deep offense to the slur since a 1960 incident when a knife-wielding white youth slapped him and said "Nigger, you wanna fight?"

"From that time on in my life, the word nigger was personal. I associated it with the hate and the very deep disdain that this gentleman had perpetrated on me at the time," he said.

These days, Sutton said, it's mostly other blacks he finds using the word.

"I'm fighting now because we have lost a generation of young people who don't know the history associated with that word," Sutton said.

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 5:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

College's invitation to integrate made history

Source: CNN (2-23-07)

SWANNANOA, North Carolina (AP) -- There is no monument to Alma Shippy.

No plaque describes how, in 1952, the shy teenager packed a bag of clothes, caught a ride in a friend's pickup truck and walked into history on the campus of Warren Wilson Junior College.

It's an obscure vignette in civil rights history. Shippy not only was Warren Wilson's first black student, but one of the few to attend any segregated college or junior college by invitation -- and not by court order and armed escort.

A core of Shippy's family and friends -- some of whom paved his way and some whose path was paved by him -- want wider attention for what they see as a bright moment of brotherhood in one of the South's darkest eras.

"There were no dogs, no guns. He didn't have to be shot at. There was nobody that was beaten up, nobody died because he came here," says Rodney Lytle, a 1974 Warren Wilson graduate and now the school's multicultural adviser. "And that -- that story -- that is beautiful!"

And it didn't happen by chance....

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 5:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Al Sharpton, Strom Thurmond linked through slavery

Source: UPI (2-25-07)

NEW YORK -- U.S. civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton is amused after learning his relatives were once slaves owned by relatives of late Sen. Strom Thurmond,

The New York Daily News said Sharpton was in disbelief when he learned that his great-grandfather's family was once owned by a distant relative of the late South Carolina senator.

"I have always wondered what was the background of my family," Sharpton said. "But nothing -- nothing -- could prepare me for this."

The link was made by genealogists, who used historical documents to prove that Coleman Sharpton, along with a woman and two children thought to be his family, were owned by Julia Thurmond.

The late senator's great-great-grandfather was Julia Thurmond's grandfather.

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Failing in Baghdad--the British did it first

Source: Washington Post (2-25-07)

At the center of Baghdad's neglected North Gate War Cemetery, near the edge of the old city walls, stands an imposing grave. Sheltered from the weather by a grandiose red sandstone cupola, it is the final resting place of a man from whom George W. Bush could have learned a great deal about the perils of intervening in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Stanley Maude was head of the British army in Mesopotamia when he marched into Baghdad on a hot, dusty day in March 1917...

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 3:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

New film claims Jesus and family buried in Jerusalem

Source: Jerusalem Post (2-25-07)

The Israeli-born, Canadian-based filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici is reigniting claims, first made over a decade ago, that a burial cave uncovered 27 years ago in Talpiot, Jerusalem, is the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

At a press conference in New York on Monday, the two-time Emmy winner Jacobovici and his team -- including Hollywood director James Cameron -- will detail claims that of 10 ossuaries found in the cave when it was discovered in 1980, six bear inscriptions identifying them as those of Jesus, his mother Mary, a second Mary (possibly Mary Magdalene), and relatives Matthew, Josa and Judah (possibly Jesus's son).

Their documentary will be screened this week in the US [on the Discovery Channel], UK [on Channel 4], [in Canada on Vision,] on Channel 8 in Israel and around the world. The producers are said to have worked on the project with world-renowned archeologists, statisticians and DNA specialists.

But Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. "It makes a great story for a TV film," he told The Jerusalem Post. "But it's impossible. It's nonsense."

Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that "Jesus son of Joseph" inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.

"There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb," Kloner said. "They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE."...

The Jacobovici documentary comes more than 10 years after similar speculation about the so-called Jesus family tomb made world headlines, prompting a London Sunday Times feature entitled "The Tomb that Dare Not Speak Its Name" and a BBC documentary.

The assertion that the ossuaries found in the Talpiot tomb were those of Jesus of Nazareth and family members was branded by The Sunday Times at the time as an archeological discovery "that challenges the very basis of Christianity."

Related Links

Conservative Christian group responds to film claiming proof against Jesus' resurrection

Profits from prophets

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 2:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tourist invasion threatens to ruin glories of Angkor Wat

Source: Observer (2-25-07)

It has survived the collapse of the sophisticated civilisation that built it, centuries of consumption by the suffocating jungle and the nihilism of the Khmer Rouge, who beheaded its stone Buddhas and used its walls for target practice. Now, Cambodia's awe-inspiring Angkor Wat complex is facing the biggest threat in a millennium - the fastest-growing tourist onslaught of any World Heritage site, which conservationists warn is already damaging its treasures irreparably.

In 1993, after Angkor was added to Unesco's World Heritage List, just 7,650 intrepid visitors ventured to the site. Last year Sokimex, the oil company controversially granted the entrance concession on behalf of the government's Apsara Angkor management, sold almost 900,000 tickets worth $25m (£12.8m), with British travellers making up the fourth biggest contingent behind South Koreans, Japanese and North Americans. Three million visitors are expected in 2010.

...Kerya Chau Sun, director of tourism at Angkor, said: 'We are finalising regulations for controlling visitors. We will train guards to watch the temples and educate visitors to help us protect the monuments.'

However, John Stubbs, who has spent 15 years working at Angkor with the New York-based World Monuments Fund, said: 'Tourism is already out of control, and unless the Cambodian government takes some pretty radical action to rein it in now much of Angkor's magic and heritage could be lost forever.'

Posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 2:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Study moves chimp-human split up to 4 million years ago

Source: Reuters (2-24-07)

WASHINGTON -- Chimpanzees and humans split from a common ancestor just 4 million years ago -- a much shorter time than current estimates of 5 million to 7 million years ago, according to a study published on Friday. The researchers compared the DNA of chimpanzees, humans and our next-closest ancestor, the gorilla, as well as orangutans. They used a well-known type of calculation that had not been previously applied to genetics to come up with their own "molecular clock" estimate of when humans became uniquely human. "Assuming orangutan divergence 18 million years ago, speciation time of human and chimpanzee is consistently around 4 million years ago," they wrote in their study, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Genetics.

Related Links

Genomic Relationships and Speciation Times of Human, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla Inferred from a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 6:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Virginia lawmakers pass slavery apology

Source: AP (2-24-07)

RICHMOND, Va. -- Meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery.

Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other state that has apologized for slavery, although Missouri lawmakers are considering such a measure. The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 6:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Europe split over best way to mark 50 years of, er, unity

Source: Times (of London) (2-24-07)

BRUSSELS -- Europe’s 50th birthday is fast approaching but nobody can agree what to write on the card.

A grand statement —- the Berlin declaration — is planned next month to commemorate the founding in 1957 of what is now the EU, but the 27 member states are increasingly divided about what to celebrate.

Luxembourg is pushing for a prominent mention of the euro as one of Europe’s greatest achievements. But this will not go down well in Britain and Denmark, where the single currency was rejected.

Poland and Italy want to emphasise Europe’s Christian values but are opposed by the French, who prefer to keep religion out of politics.

The Czechs and Poles want a strong statement on security but the French and Germans are worried that this will aggravate the Russians. Germany and Spain are keen to look ahead to a revived constitutional treaty, which is upsetting the Dutch and the British.

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 6:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

After nearly a century, Israel’s first kibbutz calls time on communism

Source: Times (of London) (2-24-07)

DEGANIA, Galilee, Israel -- When Eliezer Gal arrived at Israel’s first kibbutz he had already served in the Red Army as a platoon tank commander at the siege of Leningrad, escaped to West Berlin after being marked down by Stalin for the labour camps and been turned away by the British when he arrived in Palestine aboard the Jewish refugee ship Exodus.

Mr Gal took a lowly job in the cow shed for 18 years and married Michal, a daughter of the kibbutz’s founders, raising his family in the pastoral version of Zionist communism.

Now, aged 82, he is living one final adventure, which he and the other members of Degania call Shinui (The Change). The kibbutz has just voted to privatise itself and assume the trappings of capitalism.

His verdict? “It’s a lot more comfortable. We get a lot more independence, both economically and generally...

“I’m only surprised that it survived for so long. I came from the Great Mother of Communism and she only lasted 70 years. We made it to nearly a hundred.”

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 5:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Kennedy family items up for auction

Source: Reuters (2-23-07)

BOSTON -- A trove of Kennedy family paraphernalia, including a letter in which former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy appears to counsel her sister-in-law about marital troubles, will be auctioned off in Connecticut this weekend.

The letters, along with a life preserver from President John F. Kennedy's sailboat and other items, were found in a storage unit on the Cape Cod summer resort area of Massachusetts, where the Kennedys still maintain a family home.

"Be a bit mysterious," reads one of the letters in which Jacqueline Kennedy appears to advise Joan Kennedy on how to handle her marriage to U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 5:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lulu, the Belgian teen who took on the Gestapo

Source: Telegraph (2-24-07)

A little-known Second World War heroine who joined the Belgian resistance at 15, and was later tortured by the Gestapo, was buried near her home in Dorset yesterday.

Code named Lulu, Lucie Bruce, a Belgian national who moved to Britain in 1946, spied on Nazi troops and ammunition dumps, after joining the resistance in 1940 following Belgium's capitulation to German occupation.

She forged papers so she would appear old enough to be recruited, and by the time she was 17, she was a seasoned resistance fighter, destroying bridges, ambushing troops and repatriating airmen...

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 5:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Old Bailey celebrates 100 years of justice

Source: Independent (2-24-07)

His name may not be as recognisable as John Christie, the Krays or Dr Crippen. But the prosecution of Horace Rayner was, for its time, as sensational as any of the cases to have graced the dock of Britain's most famous court.

Rayner's appearance at the Central Criminal Court in May 1907 resulted in him acquiring the dubious honour of being the first defendant to be convicted of murder at the Old Bailey.

Next week Rayner's trial, and the trials of many others, will be remembered at the iconic court, which celebrates 100 years of justice with a week of commemorations.

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 23, 2007

Ancestry.com beefs up African-American online history resources

Source: PR Newswire (2-23-07)

PROVO, Utah -— In celebration of Black History Month, Ancestry.com, the world's largest online resource for family history, announced the launch of the largest collection of African-American family history records available and searchable online.

The collection, which represents the 19th and early 20th centuries, features more than 55 million black family history records that collectively dispel the common misconception that very few historical records were kept for African Americans and that tracing African-American ancestry is virtually impossible.

“The power and depth of this collection speaks directly to the misperceptions of black family research, offering hope that transcends time and inspires every generation,”said Tim Sullivan, president and CEO of The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 9:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In new text, ancient Korean kingdom of Gojoseon turned from myth into history

Source: Donga.com (Dong-A Ilbo) (South Korea) (2-24-07)

The founding of Korea’s ancient kingdom of Gojoseon will be officially written as part of national history in high school history textbooks. In addition, the Bronze Age on the Korean peninsula will be described to date back 1,000 years earlier than was previously thought.

The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development announced yesterday its plan to deliver the revised history books to schools nationwide for the class of 2007.

Academic and political circles have demanded that the founding of Korea’s first kingdom, currently depicted as a myth, should be rewritten as official history to counter the claim by neighboring countries, especially China’s latest historical re-mapping.

Page 32 of the present high school textbook mentions ancient documents such as “Samguk Yusa” and “Dongguk Tonggam” that describe the foundation by Dankun. According to the new plan, however, the ministry has altered the wording in high school texts to state that Dankun actually found the kingdom. Junior high school textbooks have already carried such an explanation.

China, denying the very existence of the Korean kingdom, teaches false information to its people. Japan also describes that Korean history started from Goguryeo in its chronicles. The books being used in secondary schools explain that the Bronze Age started in the 10th century B.C. on the Korean peninsula and 15th to the 13th century B.C. in Manchuria, but the new book dates it earlier by 500 to 1,000 years.

Related Links

New Textbook Stirs Debate Over Kojoson (Korea Times)

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 9:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Court delays so Aborigines must wait to free souls in torment

Source: Telegraph (2-23-07)

A High Court fight to stop tests on the 100-year-old remains of 17 Tasmanian Aborigines was deferred yesterday.

Lawyers for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, which was recently made administrator of the estates of the Aborigines, claim that they are "souls in torment" while their remains are subjected to the "sacrilege" of experimentation at the Natural History Museum.

That would stop only when they were buried according to Aboriginal custom.

They want a judge to quash the decision made by the museum's trustees to carry out tests, to prohibit the tests being carried out, and to declare that the centre is entitled to possess the remains.

Mr Justice Calvert-Smith, in London, set out a timetable yesterday for a three-day hearing, to start on March 7.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 9:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Campaign to remember victims of WW II sinking

Source: BBC (2-22-07)

Survivors and victims' families say more should be done to recognise those who died in one of Britain's biggest World War II disasters.

An estimated 4,000 people died when HMT Lancastria went down

A few miles off the coast of France lays the wreck of HMT Lancastria, sunk 67 years ago by German bombers.

It is a reminder of the afternoon of 17 June 1940, described as Britain's worst maritime disaster in history.

On that day an estimated 4,000 troops and refugees died when the 16,243-ton liner quickly went down.

"As the boat sank and turned over upside down, there were hundreds singing 'roll out the barrel'. They knew they were going to die," says Reg Brown, one of the 2,477 recorded survivors.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Uncovering the secrets of Ypres

Source: BBC (2-23-07)

Ninety years after the battle of Passchendaele, officially known as the third battle of Ypres, a group of enthusiasts is attempting to dig up some of the key trenches of World War I.

Across a flat, muddy Flanders landscape, a solitary figure is plodding along the furrows.

Geophysicist Malcolm Weale is a battlefield detective who specialises in uncovering history that has lain hidden for generations.

In this case, the ground beneath his feet shields secrets of World War I.

The farmland near the Belgian village of Zonnebeke was criss-crossed by the trenches that saw horrendous loss of life - the whining of Malcolm's equipment betraying the metal fragments of shells and equipment turned up by the ploughs every spring.

But Malcolm and the archaeologists who called him in are looking for one particular piece of history.

Somewhere nearby is a remnant of the hidden war - the shelters and deep bunkers that protected troops from the hail of explosive.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Princeton battle over battlefield

Source: Daily Princetonian (2-20-07)

The Princeton Battlefield has been a place of quiet contemplation for more than two centuries, where scholars and aspiring history buffs can walk on the hallowed ground of one of the nation's most pivotal battles. Yet a new struggle has emerged on this land in recent years, not between the redcoats and the rebels, but between an academic institution and a local preservation society.

At stake is a parcel of land, roughly 25 acres in size, owned by the Institute of Advanced Study, on which the Institute wants to build faculty housing. Members of the Princeton Battlefield Society — a volunteer group dedicated to preserving the Revolutionary War site — claim that the parcel is part of the original battlefield and must be saved.

"There are some sites that are hallowed ground, that are just too sacred to be played with," said Jerry Hurwitz, president of the Princeton Battlefield Society.

Hurwitz said that by developing the land, the Institute will permanently destroy an important part of history.

Critics of the planned development say the Institute, situated on over 500 acres of wooded and open property, has plenty of land to build on without compromising the small tract adjacent to the eastern edge of the battlefield, which is now a state park.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

MLK streets traverse nation's past, future

Source: CNN (2-22-07)

Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the streets, avenues, boulevards and highways that bear his name remain crossroads of the nation's past and future.

In Atlanta, not far from where King grew up and preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive winds through the heart of the city. For 10 miles, the road dedicated in King's name in 1976 stretches past homes, schools, restaurants, liquor stores, strip malls, churches, barbershops, a roller-skating rink, boarded-up government flats and a gated apartment community, all the way to the city's downtown and its golden-domed Georgia Capitol building.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Florida's stolen artefacts

Source: Economist (2-23-07)

THE archaeological site in Thonotosassa, which means “land of flint” in the Seminole-Creek language, is nothing much to look at: a few pits dug in the sandy soil among gnarled live oak trees, with cattle grazing round. No one guards it. Yet this place, about 17 miles (27km) north-east of Tampa, is a good spot to find Indian artefacts, on high ground close to fresh water. Robert Austin, an archaeologist who has dug there often, says that some of the remains discovered date back 12,000 years.

The chance of finding ancient objects draws thieves, too, to dig for arrowheads, flints and pots. A good arrowhead can fetch thousands of dollars. Trespassers usually scout the scene of the would-be crime during daylight hours, then return with shovels at night. No one stops them.

Last month five men were arrested at Thonotosassa on suspicion of intending to loot it. They said they were collectors, and had no intention of selling the arrowheads they were looking for. They have now been charged with trespassing.

The problem is not confined to one area of the country, or even to the open air; 26 bowls and bottles of the Caddo Nation, about 600 years old, were stolen from Southern Arkansas University in August 2006. But lack of security at Indian archaeological sites makes them particularly vulnerable.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ossabaw Island slave cabins offer rare perspective

Source: http://savannahnow.com (2-20-07)

Made from humble material, Ossabaw Island's three tabby slave cabins now represent a historical and archaeological treasure of immeasurable value.

The 19th-century tabbies are "probably the most-intact examples of their type in North America," said Georgia state archaeologist David Crass. They represent "wonderful archeology that can give voices to those who were voiceless in our history books."

The cabins survived the Civil War, stood through hurricanes and dodged coastal development, a remarkable achievement, said Crass, because they "were never intended to be permanent buildings."

Built of a rugged mixture of oyster shells, lime, sand and water, the tabby structures represent a remarkable historic record by themselves. The artifacts they have harbored for decades add a second layer of significance.

Archaeologist Daniel Elliott, president of the nonprofit LAMAR Institute, led extensive excavations on the cabins in 2005 and 2006. Buttons, ceramics, bottle glass, tobacco pipes, nails, marbles, and bullets have been unearthed, along with a diversity of food bones.

One discovery was especially telling - a half-cent coin dated 1825.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Man buys rare copy of Declaration of Independence for $2.48

Source: AP (2-23-07)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A rare, 184-year-old copy of the Declaration of Independence found by a bargain hunter at a Nashville thrift shop is being valued by experts at about 100,000 times the $2.48 purchase price.

Michael Sparks, a music equipment technician, is selling the document in an auction March 22nd at Raynors' Historical Collectible Auctions in Burlington, North Carolina. The opening bid is $125,000 and appraisers have estimated it could sell for nearly twice that.

Sparks found his bargain last March while browsing at Music City Thrift Shop in Nashville. When he asked the price on a yellowed, shellacked, rolled-up document, the clerk marked it at $2.48.

It turned out to be an "official copy" of the Declaration of Independence -- one of 200 commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Estonia president backs Soviet war memorial

Source: AP (2-22-07)

TALLINN, Estonia -- Estonia's president vetoed legislation Thursday calling for the removal of a Soviet war memorial, averting at least temporarily a confrontation with Russia.

The bill, which had provoked an angry response from Moscow, now goes back to parliament where lawmakers could override the veto.

The measure would prohibit the public display of monuments that glorify the five-decade Soviet occupation of Estonia. It was specifically aimed at the Bronze Soldier, a World War II memorial in Tallinn, the capital, that has become a rallying point for Estonia's Russian-speaking minority, about one-third of the 1.3 million population.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Author Details AJC Efforts to "Bowdlerize" Race Series

Source: Maynard Institute website (2-21-07)

The reporter who uncovered a 60-year pattern of expelling African Americans from communities around the country and wrote a series about it last year says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the flagship of the newspaper company he works for, tried to undermine what he produced.

In a book scheduled to arrive in retail stores by March 5, Elliot Jaspin quotes his boss, the Cox Newspapers Washington bureau chief, Andy Alexander, speaking of Julia Wallace, editor of the Atlanta newspaper.

"Wallace's refusal to run the series rankled Alexander," Jaspin wrote. "'I think we both know what's going on here,' he told me in frustration at one point. 'They are afraid of angering white people.'"

The book, "Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America," builds upon the four-part "Leave or Die" series Jaspin wrote last year.

The series was sponsored by Cox's Austin American-Statesman in Texas, and also ran in the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union; the Journal-News in Hamilton, Ohio; the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post; the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News; the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer and the Middletown (Ohio) Journal.

Using computer-assisted reporting, Jaspin documented that, "Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions. They drove thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white," as he wrote in the first installment.

One of those communities was Forsyth County, Ga., which is part of the Journal-Constitution's circulation area. In 1987, the county drew national attention, including a tense visit by Oprah Winfrey for her television show, after whites attacked a biracial brotherhood march.

According to Jaspin, who still works in the Cox Washington bureau, the Journal-Constitution has consistently soft-pedaled the racism in Forsyth County in its reporting. For him, that soft-pedaling was part of the story.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 4:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Did paleolithic women make weapons to compete with men?

Source: Telegraph (2-23-07)

Women may have developed the first weapons to compete with physically stronger males, scientists have claimed.

Researchers studying chimpanzees, which share 98 per cent of their DNA with human beings, found it was mainly females who used crude spears to attack other animals.

They now believe that early human females could also have pioneered hunting with tools to compensate for their inferior size and strength.

“Females will have to come up with creative ways at getting at a problem, whereas males have brawn,” said Jill Pruetz, of Iowa State University, who led the research in Senegal, west Africa.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 5:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Records of WWI British soldiers go online

Source: Telegraph (2-23-07)

Personal details of millions of British soldiers who fought in the First World War are to be revealed online.

In a remarkable development for family-tree researchers and social historians, the records have been put on a genealogy website.

They amount to some 2.5 million names, 28 thousand reels of transcribed microfilm and countless forgotten details about physical appearance, discipline record, regimental movements, postings, next of kin, military career histories and, in some cases, the manner of their deaths...

"This is not just military history, this is social history," said William Spencer, a senior military specialist at the National Archives in Kew...

The records, known as the WO363 British Army Service records and the WO364 British Army Pension records, can be searched at the website ancestry.co.uk as part of a deal with the National Archives.

Related Links

Corporal's diaries tell of carnage
British Army WWI Pension Records 1914-1920 Release One (Ancestry.co.uk)

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 3:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Daniel Webster's N.H. farm to be preserved

Source: AP (2-22-07)

CONCORD, N.H. -- The farm of orator and statesman Daniel Webster will be preserved under a deal announced Thursday after it had been slated to become a housing development.

The Trust for Public Land put together the $2.5 million deal with help from the state and federal governments, private donors and the state's public-private Land and Community Heritage Investment Program...

Webster was born in 1782 in Franklin, although not on the 141-acre farm on the Merrimack River. He was a congressman, senator, presidential candidate and secretary of state.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 3:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Clovis People not the first American settlers, study finds

Source: Live Science (2-22-07)

The Clovis People, a prehistoric group of mastodon hunters distinguished by their unique spear points and once thought to be the first Americans, likely populated North America after other humans had already arrived, a new study concludes.

The Clovis and their hunting technologies were not the first inhabitants of the New World, researchers write in the Feb. 23 issue of the journal Science, addressing a longstanding debate on the first New World humans.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 3:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pakistan religious parties protest teaching pre-Islamic history

Source: Dawn (Karachi, Pakistan) (2-22-07)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Religious parties in the National Assembly were on Wednesday up in arms against teaching Pakistan’s pre-Islamic history in schools...

Members of the six-party Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal also staged a token protest walkout over the inclusion of chapters about Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient emperor Chandragupta Maurya in the history textbooks for classes VI to VIII after a heated discussion...

Five MMA members had raised the history textbook issue... [and claimed] that the inclusion of chapters they considered objectionable had caused a “grave concern amongst the public”...

[The] Minister of State for Education...accused the religious parties of seeking to keep students ignorant about glorious periods of the sub-continent’s history such as the Indus Valley or Gandhara civilisations....

“That may be your history, (but) ... our history (starts) from Makkah [Mecca] and Medina,” MMA member Farid Ahmad Piracha shouted as he led his alliance’s walkout...

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 1:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Beacons of history will shine on in S.F. Bay

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (2-22-07)

The lighthouses of the Golden Gate are going the way of the crow's nest, the sextant and Morse code.

The romantic icons of the sea have been replaced by high-tech buoys, shipboard computers and global positioning satellites. The Coast Guard no longer needs the lighthouses, no longer wants them and is giving them to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

"They're obsolete," Petty Officer Russ Tippets said Wednesday. "They're no longer relevant in today's maritime realm."

National Park Service officials are working out a deal to take over the lighthouses at Point Montara [1875], Point Bonita [1854], Point Diablo [1923], Lime Point [1883] and Alcatraz [1875]. The goal is to have them refurbished within a few years so the public can visit them.

"It's an exciting opportunity," said Chris Powell, spokeswoman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. "Lighthouses are part of the history of this area, and people are captivated by them."

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 9:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Writer claims cracks developing in 9/11 Commission Account

Source: HNN Staff summary of op ed in the WSJ (2-22-07)

The writer Edward Jay Epstein claims in an op ed in the Wall Street Journal that the Spanish judge investigating terrorism has found that Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohamed Atta lied when they claimed they had seen no one else but each other on visits to Spain. Epstein says this suggests that it's possible others were involved in the 9/11 plot than has previously been disclosed, including perhaps, people in Spain, Iran, Hezbollah, Malaysia, Iraq, the Czech Republic or Pakistan.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 9:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Edward Brooke profiled in the NYT

Source: NYT (2-21-07)

Maybe it is his compelling life story. Or perhaps it’s his insistence that Americans can look beyond race and rally around fresh ideas and the possibility of change. But by the time the charismatic African-American senator begins to speak passionately of his unwavering opposition to the war in Iraq, it is clear that something about the man and his message is resonating with the audience.

The man is former Senator Edward W. Brooke, Republican of Massachusetts and the first black politician popularly elected to the United States Senate, way back in 1966. Now, nearly three decades after leaving office, Mr. Brooke is promoting his autobiography, “Bridging the Divide.” More than just a personal window into a vanished era, his story, for many, offers some salient insights and more than a few parallels to the politics of today.

“But for him, there would not be a Barack Obama,” said Michael Jones, senior executive vice president for the National Association of Securities Dealers, who took his 15-year-old son, Michael Jr., to the Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Washington to hear Mr. Brooke earlier this month. The two were part of a standing-room-only crowd of about 300 that ranged from octogenarians to elementary school students, all gathered to hear Mr. Brooke speak just hours after Senator Obama, the Illinois Democrat, announced his candidacy for president.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

$1.2m and 37 years later, historic boat still under wraps at museum

Source: Belfast Telegraph (N. Ireland) (2-22-07)

The embarrassing case of a boat stranded at a Northern Ireland museum is to be the subject of yet another review by officials...

Stories surrounding The Result, a historic schooner, have been likened in Parliament to something from [the TV sitcom]'Yes, Minister'.

The vessel still lies under cover in the grounds of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum -- some 37 years after it was bought.

It has been estimated that around £627,000 [$1.2 million], at today's prices, has been spent on its purchase and maintenance to date.

Members of the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) were reduced to laughter at the case during a hearing last June.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 6:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Medieval mosques illuminated by complex mathematics

Source: NPR/All Things Considered (2-22-07)

Historic buildings in the Islamic world are often covered with breathtakingly intricate geometric designs. Both artists and mathematicians have long puzzled over them, wondering how the patterns were created.

Now, a Harvard physicist has some new ideas about the designs and the advanced math behind them.

The research, conducted by Peter Lu of Harvard University and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, appears in the journal Science.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 5:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Charges in 1964 civil rights killings stand

Source: AP (2-22-07)

JACKSON, Miss. -- A federal judge refused to dismiss charges Thursday against a reputed Ku Klux Klansman in the 1964 slayings of two black men, rejecting arguments that the statute of limitations ran out long ago.

U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate also denied a request to let James Ford Seale, 71, out on bail while he awaits trial. Seale's wife testified that her ailing husband was not getting proper medical care in jail.

Seale's lawyer Dennis Joiner asked Wingate to throw out the kidnapping charges. There was no time limit for filing federal kidnapping charges in 1964, but Joiner argued that when Congress in 1972 repealed a law that made kidnapping a capital offense, kidnapping became subject to a five-year statute of limitations.

The judge, however, sided with prosecutors, who contended the 1972 repeal did not apply retroactively.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 4:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

French ultra compares 9/11 to Dresden

Source: Telegraph (2-22-07)

The French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen provoked outrage among British veterans yesterday when he compared the September 11 attacks on the United States to RAF-led bombing raids during the Second World War.

The National Front leader said both were "terrorist acts as they expressly targeted civilians to force military leaders to capitulate". Mr Le Pen, 79, also dismissed the al-Qa'eda atrocities in 2001 as a mere "incident".

He told the Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix: "Three thousand dead — that is how many die in Iraq in a month and it's far less than the deaths in the Marseille or Dresden bombings at the end of the Second World War."

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 2:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

For Iraq war protest, Vietnam vets rally to protect memorial

Source: AP (2-22-07)

WASHINGTON -- Iraq war protesters are planning to converge on Washington next month and several organizations, including the POW-MIA group Rolling Thunder, are banding together to protect sacred ground for Vietnam War veterans.

The rally March 17 against the war, organizers say, is to get under way in a grassy park near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, known as the wall.

Two veterans' groups said Wednesday they fear protesters may deface the memorial, a claim dismissed by the demonstrating groups.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 2:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Germany to propose common EU history lessons

Source: Telegraph (2-22-07)

British school pupils could soon be learning history from a European Union textbook under a new proposal from Berlin to be tabled next week.

Germany is to urge the drawing up of a "European history book", to be taught in all schools to foster a common cultural identity across the EU.

The idea, said to have the backing of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is to be the flagship education proposal of Berlin's EU presidency. Annette Schavan, the federal education minister, will set out her plans at a meeting of EU education ministers in Heidelberg.

...The project faces opposition. Graham Brady, the Tory Europe spokesman, described the move as "typical bureaucratic mission creep".

"The teaching of our history is vitally important for any nation and particularly so for Britain, which has so much to be proud of," he said. "We should not under any circumstances lose control of our educational responsibilities."...

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 2:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Forgotten diary captures horror of the Somme

Source: Telegraph (2-22-07)

A British soldier's pocket diary of life in the trenches during the early days of the Battle of the Somme have been made public for the first time. [Private] Walter Hutchinson was a young shop manager when he enlisted in the 10th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment. His poignant record of the battle, in 1916, includes a moving account of the first day during which more than 62,000 comrades died. [Private] Hutchinson's handwritten account gives a graphic story of his own survival as wave after wave of soldiers went "over the top" only to be cut down by German fire.

Related Links

Extended extracts: Diary from the Somme

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 2:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Idi Amin's son breaks family silence to defend him

Source: Guardian (2-22-07)

The son of Idi Amin has broken his family's two-decade vow of silence about the tyrant, hoping to put the record straight about the dictator following release of the Oscar-nominated The Last King of Scotland.

Jaffar Amin has also called for a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate his father's reign of terror. "Dad is the only person that has ever been accused and sentenced, incarcerated by opinion, without it ever reaching any courthouse," said Jaffar, 40. Jaffar Amin does not deny the atrocities attributed to his father, and acknowledges it will be a difficult battle trying to humanise him. He says the film will compound many negative images...

Rights groups estimate that 500,000 people disappeared under Amin's eight-year regime, during which his secret police tortured and killed suspected political opponents...

Jaffar, the 10th of Amin's 40 official children by seven official wives, said: "I don't want to fight what has been written, but I want to show another side. I want to show a parent, I want to show my father."

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 2:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

W.H. Auden centenary: muted celebrations

Source: Guardian (2-22-07)

He was a coward, a bully, a lecher and many other dreadful things, according to his critics. All of which may explain why the centenary of the birth of Wystan Hugh Auden passed yesterday without the fanfare that a giant of English literature perhaps deserves.

But the cocktail party and several small soirees which honoured his memory may mark the start of a fightback by enthusiasts for a man whose complications have led to a uniquely split reputation.

"Maybe he's too 'popularly popular' for the academic world," said John Rhodes, one of a group of Auden's university enthusiasts who will take the revival a step further on Saturday with a conference at York University on the poet's contribution to verse, drama, film and music. Scholars from Britain will be joined by academics from the United States, where Auden controversially spent the war -- adding "traitor" and "coward" to his enemies' vocabulary.

Related Links

In praise of W.H. Auden (editorial)

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 2:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Flights of fancy: the Zionist and Hitler's airport

Source: Independent (2-22-07)

For a cosmetics billionaire, New York socialite and art collector who is also one of the world's most influential Jewish philanthropists, rescuing Adolf Hitler's favourite Berlin airport for posterity might seem an unlikely goal.

But yesterday, Ronald Lauder, the second son of the cosmetics-maker Estée Lauder, who died in 2004, was heading a last-ditch attempt to prevent closure of Berlin's Nazi-built Tempelhof. His suggestion is for a €350m [$460m or £235m] project to turn the relic of fascist architecture into a luxury fly-in beauty clinic for Europe's super rich.

With its vaulted ceilings and 3,000ft-long (0.9km) curved, stone terminal building, Tempelhof was once Europe's largest airport and a mammoth, even awe-inspiring, status symbol for the Third Reich. Its place in history was assured when it served as the crucial link to West Berlin during the Western Allies' Berlin Airlift in 1948.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 1:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Throwing their books into the ring

Source: New York Times (2-22-07)

The lineup of potential presidential candidates is a mishmash of senators, governors, former big-city mayors and a retired four-star Army general.

But nearly all of them share one title: published author.

“You’re not a real candidate, Pinocchio, if you haven’t written your own book,” said Mark Halperin, the political director of ABC News. “If you know everybody else is doing a book, you’ve got to do a book.”

The crowded field of early candidates has created a traffic jam of titles, from the rags-to-riches memoir to the earnest political manifesto.

All of them could be called candidate lit...

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 1:55 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Recovered artworks heading to auction

Source: New York Times (2-22-07)

A year ago the settlement was hailed as one of the largest restitutions of art seized by the Nazis. Now about 170 old master paintings returned to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Dutch dealer who fled Amsterdam in 1940, are to be offered at Christie’s in three sales, beginning in April in New York. The auction house says the paintings, many on view in Dutch museums and government buildings since the 1950s, could fetch from $22 million to $35 million...

The story of Jacques Goudstikker — and his heirs’ eight-year legal battle to wrest some of his paintings from the Dutch government — is a complex tale of scholarship and tenacity. Mr. Goudstikker, his wife and their son fled the Netherlands on May 14, 1940, as Amsterdam was invaded by the Nazis, leaving behind his gallery business and some 1,400 artworks.

A second-generation art dealer, Mr. Goudstikker was unable to take any of his prized paintings with him, but he did carry a small black notebook containing meticulous records of more than 1,000 works in his inventory. That notebook, which his wife retrieved after he died in a fall on the blacked-out freighter carrying them to safety, became crucial decades later when his widow and son began searching for the collection.

At one point many of the best works were owned by Hermann Göring. After the war, nearly 300 paintings from the Goudstikker collection were returned by the Allies to the Dutch and, despite the family’s protests, placed in the national collections. But in February 2006 the Dutch government agreed to return 202 paintings it had recovered after the war.

Hundreds of works are still missing.

Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 at 1:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

A reunion of refugees, class of ’57

Source: New York Times (2-21-07)

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. -- They were refugees of a failed uprising, most of them arriving penniless and alone, baffled by the language, knowing that returning home could mean jail or death.

But for eight weeks in the winter of 1956-57, roughly 300 Hungarians fleeing the Soviet tanks that crushed their startling revolt found a life raft in a small college 90 miles north of New York City.

Even if they could scarcely stop chatting in Hungarian, they learned enough English to manage the road ahead. Young men and women who served time in labor camps for being “class enemies” learned some of the peculiarities of a new country where police need not always be feared or bribed. They learned of scholarships that vaulted them to schools like Princeton and M.I.T. And, it’s worth noting, two refugees married each other.

Those eight weeks at Bard College so many years ago generated dividends that the United States is still collecting...

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 9:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thatcher, the 7-foot-6 PM

Source: BBC News (2-21-07)

Baroness Thatcher has become the first living ex-prime minister to be honoured with a statue in the House of Commons. A 7ft 6ins bronze sculpture was unveiled on Wednesday, with her immediate successor John Major and Tory leader David Cameron attending. Commons speaker Michael Martin said the tribute was a "fitting" tribute to Britain's first female prime minister. Baroness Thatcher, 81, said it was "an honour", adding: "I may be made of iron but bronze will do."

Related Links

Margaret Thatcher and statue (BBC News photos)

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 9:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

5,000-year-old artificial eyeball found in Iran

Source: Times (of London) (2-21-07)

ROME -- A 5,000-year-old golden artificial eye that once stared out mesmerisingly from the face of a female soothsayer or priestess in ancient Persia has been unearthed by Iranian and Italian archaeologists.

The eyeball —- the earliest artificial eye found -— would have transfixed those who saw it, convincing them that the woman —- thought to have been strikingly tall —- had occult powers and could see into the future, archaeologists said.

It was found by Mansour Sajjadi, leader of the Iranian team, which has been excavating an ancient necropolis at Shahr-i-Sokhta in the Sistan desert on the Iranian-Afghan border for nine years...

They said the eyeball consisted of a half-sphere with a diameter of just over an inch. It was made of a lightweight material thought to be derived from bitumen paste. Its surface was meticulously engraved with a pattern consisting of a central circle for the iris and gold lines “like rays of light”...On either side of it two tiny holes had been drilled, through which a fine thread, perhaps also gold, had held the eyeball in place.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study says freeze condemned the last Neanderthals

Source: BBC News (2-20-07)

A sharp freeze could have dealt the killer blow that finished off our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals, according to a new study.

The ancient humans are thought to have died out in most parts of Europe by about 35,000 years ago.

And now new data from their last known refuge in southern Iberia indicates the final population was probably beaten by a cold spell some 24,000 years ago.

The research is reported by experts from the Gibraltar Museum and Spain. They say a climate downturn may have caused a drought, placing pressure on the last surviving Neanderthals by reducing their supplies of fresh water and killing off the animals they hunted.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 6:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

400-year-old Bodleian Library begins new era with double-first: American woman takes over

Source: Independent (2-21-07)

One of the last remaining bastions of male domination has come crumbling down as one of the oldest libraries in Europe prepares to get to grips with the demands of the 21st century.

For more than 400 years, the Bodleian library - the main research library at the University of Oxford and the second largest in the UK after the British library -- has had a man at the helm. It has also never been run by anyone born outside these shores. But both of those taboos have been broken this week, with the accession of Sarah Thomas to the post of librarian.

Dr Thomas has a distinguished record in the United States, where she worked at the Library of Congress in Washington DC as acting head of its Public Service Collections before moving on to oversee the 20 libraries at America's Cornell University. They won an international award for excellence in 2002. Now, as executive head of the Oxford University Library Services, with its more than 11 million printed volumes in 40 different library sites, her task is to ensure the university's fantastic collection survives the move to the new digital era unscathed.

"The challenge is to bring forward the best of traditions - which in Oxford's case includes the superb collections and the commitment to preserving the record of our civilisation for current and future scholars and students -- while at the same time creatively reinterpreting these traditions for the digital age," Dr Thomas said.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 6:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The foreigner who links Japan to its soul

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-20-07)

MATSUE, Japan -- As snow silently fell on the miniature garden outside, Bon Koizumi sat on the same tatami mat floor where, more than a century before, his great-grandfather had penned some of Japan's best-loved traditional folk tales. It was the perfect image of Japanese repose, except for the sepia-toned photo of Koizumi's ancestor, whose bushy mustache and aquiline nose showed an unmistakably Western face.

His great-grandfather was Lafcadio Hearn, the Irish-Greek author whose wanderings brought him here after a career as a muckraking journalist in the United States. And while Hearn lived in Matsue only 15 months, this castle city on Japan's remote coast still claims him as its favorite son, displaying his face on park statues, street signs and local brands of beer, sake and even instant coffee.

Hearn's colorful descriptions of this medieval city and its ancient tales of gods and ghosts first put Matsue on the map in the 1890s. Even now, Matsue remains a popular tourist destination, thanks to Japan's enduring fascination with Hearn, who married a local samurai's daughter, took Japanese citizenship and died in Tokyo in 1904.

Many countries have favorite foreign observers, who are embraced for shedding light on the local culture in ways that native authors cannot.

For many Japanese, Hearn's appeal lies in the glimpses he offers of an older, more mystical Japan lost during the country's hectic plunge into Western-style industrialization and nation- building. His books are treasured here as a trove of traditional legends and folk tales that otherwise might have vanished because no Japanese had bothered to record them.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 6:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The 'Nixon in China' effect: ping pong diplomacy 35 years later (audio report)

Source: The World (PRI/BBC) (2-21-07)

Thirty-five years ago today, President Richard Nixon got off a plane in Beijing, China. That began a new era in US-China relations. The opening for it came with something that's now called ping-pong diplomacy. The World's Mary Kay Magistad has more on how it started. [audio report]...

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Two US prisoners in China, 1952–73: a CIA journal report

Source: by Nicholas Dujmovic, Studies in Intelligence (Unclassified Edition) (12-31-69)

[CIA editorial note:] This article draws extensively on operational files and other internal CIA records that of necessity remain classified. Because the true story of these two CIA officers is compelling and has been distorted in many public accounts, it is retold here in as much detail as possible, despite minimal source citations. Whenever possible, references to open sources are made in the footnotes.

* * *

Beijing’s capture, imprisonment, and eventual release of CIA officers John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau is an amazing story that too few know about today. Shot down over Communist China on their first operational mission in 1952, these young men spent the next two decades imprisoned, often in solitary confinement, while their government officially denied they were CIA officers. Fecteau was released in 1971, Downey in 1973...

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 6:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Fictional career of a famous newsman: George Polk's real WWII record

Source: Weekly Standard (2-26-07)

George W. Polk was honored as a truth-teller. A correspondent for CBS News, he was murdered in Greece in 1948. A coveted, respected award named after him, the George Polk Award, was established in 1949 and is given every year to journalists in numerous specialties. According to a statement on the official website, the winners have exemplified the unearthing of "myriad forms of scandal and deceit." They comprise a two-generation roll call of distinguished names in journalism...

Polk cut a dashing figure as a newsman, but he also cut out the real story of his World War II service as a naval officer and replaced it with a huge fraud. He deserves to join the growing roster of American journalists whose dishonesty has gravely injured their profession...

Related Links

Richard B. Frank: George Polk's real World War II record (extended web version)

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

U.Illinois mascot Chief Illiniwek to perform for last time

Source: AP (2-21-07)

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - After 81 years of war paint and feathered headdresses, the University of Illinois' controversial American Indian mascot is performing his last dance.

After that, Chief Illiniwek's image and regalia will continue to be a subject of negotiations.

The mascot, whose fate was decided by school officials last week, will take center stage at Assembly Hall for one last performance Wednesday night during the men's basketball game between Illinois and Michigan.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Australia, UK in court over artifacts

Source: Courier Mail (Australia) (2-21-07)

The Australian and British governments today will be pitted against each other in a heavyweight court battle over whether scientists can conduct tests on Aboriginal remains.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

British abolition's faith-based roots

Source: LAT (2-21-07)

In the fierce struggles of the 19th century to abolish slavery, Abraham Lincoln remains the mythic American champion. In Britain, however, that honor belongs to William Wilberforce, the Christian activist and member of Parliament who thundered against the slave trade for 20 years. Friday marks the 200th anniversary of his legislative triumph — a campaign rich with lessons for modern-day reformers.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Oral histories describe S.C. civil rights struggle

Source: Charleston Post and Courier (2-21-07)

A group of South Carolina professors and historians are gathering oral histories to preserve a piece of the state's civil rights history. They have been traveling throughout the state to videotape leaders and grass-roots participants in the struggle for civil rights as they recount their experiences growing up and during the movement.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Piece of Washington's war tent is found

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-21-07)

For nearly a century, a large oval-shape linen tent where George Washington is believed to have slept during the Revolutionary War sat on display in Valley Forge, Pa., with a gaping hole in its roof. But now a combination of luck and forensic detective work has led to the discovery of the missing section of fabric — snipped out, historians believe, by a memorabilia seeker — and to the discovery that the tent was originally striped blue and white.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New footage captures moments before JFK assassination

Source: Independent (UK) (2-21-07)

The hitherto unknown 8mm colour film of JFK's last motorcade, donated to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, does not cover the assassination itself. Instead its centrepiece is a radiant Jacqueline Kennedy, waving to the crowds lining the downtown pavement, a few blocks from Dealey Plaza where her husband John was assasinated.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Is Mint snubbing real 1st president?

Source: Connecticut Post (2-21-07)

Instead of the grim visage of George Washington staring out from the hard metal of the new $1 presidential coins, imagine the face of one-time cooper's apprentice — and Connecticut native — Samuel Huntington. That, according to historian Stanley Klos, is who should have been on the coin that entered circulation last week.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 1:01 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Mona Lisa is Believed To Be Buried at Convent

Source: AP (2-21-07)

It may be that the world's most famously enigmatic woman has shed some of her mystery. An amateur historian believes he has found the final resting place of the Florentine Renaissance woman who inspired Leonardo da Vinci's most renowned painting: the Mona Lisa.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A history department bans the citing of Wikipedia as a research source

Source: New York Times (2-21-07)

When half a dozen students in Neil Waters’s Japanese history class at Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong. The Jesuits were in “no position to aid a revolution,” he said; the few of them in Japan were in hiding.

He figured out the problem soon enough. The obscure, though incorrect, information was from Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.

Dr. Waters and other professors in the history department had begun noticing about a year ago that students were citing Wikipedia as a source in their papers. When confronted, many would say that their high school teachers had allowed the practice.

But the errors on the Japanese history test last semester were the last straw. At Dr. Waters’s urging, the Middlebury history department notified its students this month that Wikipedia could not be cited in papers or exams, and that students could not “point to Wikipedia or any similar source that may appear in the future to escape the consequences of errors.”

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 4:29 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Just how do you smuggle secret papers out of the Archives wrapped around your leg?

Source: Washington Post (2-21-07)

In a chandeliered room at the Justice Department, the longtime head of the counterespionage section, the chief of the public integrity unit, a deputy assistant attorney general, some trial lawyers and a few FBI agents all looked down at their pant legs and socks.

While waving his own leg in the air in illustration, Paul Brachfeld, inspector general of the National Archives and Records Administration, asked the group rhetorically if "something white" could be easily mistaken if it was wrapped around their legs, beneath their pant legs.

Former national security adviser Sandy Berger leaves court Sept. 8, 2005, after being fined and put on probation for taking classified documents from the Archives. A recent House committee report says the case was mishandled.

Under debate during the Nov. 23, 2004, meeting was Brachfeld's contention that President Clinton's former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger could have stolen original, uncatalogued, highly classified terrorism documents 14 months earlier by wrapping them around his socks and beneath his pants, as National Archives staff member John Laster reported witnessing.

Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 3:05 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Confederacy museum to change name?

Source: Times-Dispatch (2-20-07)

The Museum of the Confederacy will likely drop the word "Confederacy" from its name when it moves its collection to a new home.

"One of our challenges is a gap between the public's perception of who we are and the role we play, and the reality of who we are and the role we play," Waite Rawls, the museum's president and CEO, said yesterday.

"The repositioning we have done over the past 30 years is to be more of a modern education institution and less of a memorial . . . to the Confederacy."

The museum dates to Feb. 22, 1896, when The Confederate Museum opened in the former home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Missing piece of GW's tent found

Source: Press Release -- American Revolution Center (2-20-07)

Today the American Revolution Center announced an extraordinary discovery surrounding the tent or "marquee" which George Washington used as his traveling "oval office" during the American Revolution. During the completion of the marquee's conservation process, a missing piece from the marquee ceiling was miraculously found. This announcement comes two days before the 275th birthday of the nation's first president.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The mysterious case of Columbus's silver ore

Source: Willie Drye in National Geographic News (2-20-07)

Residents of a 15th-century New World mining colony founded by Christopher Columbus turned to desperate measures in the face of rapidly deteriorating conditions, a new study suggests. According to researchers from the University of Arizona, the colony of La Isabela's situation was so dire that the miners tried to smelt their own supplies by extracting silver from lead ore they brought with them from Europe. Archaeologists working at the site—located in what is now the Dominican Republic—in the 1990s found slag and other by-products of mining operations indicating that the miners had processed some ore there. The initial conclusion was that the ore had been found near La Isabela, processed there, and found to contain no significant amount of silver or other precious metals. But the new report suggests that the colonists, beset by hunger, disease, hurricanes, mutiny, and conflicts with the natives, were instead pilfering their own supply of ore.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Croatia probes Hitler likeness, jokes on sugar packets

Source: CNN (2-19-07)

ZAGREB, Croatia (Reuters) -- Small packets of sugar bearing the likeness of Adolf Hitler and carrying Holocaust jokes have been found in some cafes in Croatia, prompting an investigation, the office of the state prosecutor said on Monday.

"The local district attorney in (the eastern town of) Pozega has opened an investigation and is currently looking at the matter," said Martina Mihordin.

The Novi List daily newspaper reported that officials at a small factory in Pozega have confirmed the sugar packs were produced on their premises.

The incident will embarrass the government which has been keen to play down the country's past links with Nazism.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Henry Towne demands more research

Source: AP (2-18-07)

A group of Virginia historians and an Army archaeologist say more research is needed before anyone can determine for sure that an early 17th-century settlement known as Henry Towne ever existed.
A Fort Eustis spokeswoman said Friday that Randy Amici, the Army's lead archaeologist for Fort Eustis on the Peninsula and Fort Story in Virginia Beach, has been at the center of the possible Henry Towne discovery and will continue to participate in that research.

"When I asked how long would it take, I was told years and maybe decades," spokeswoman Cindy Your said. "So, not any time soon."

Amici said the settlement was established as early as 1610--three years after Jamestown--at or near Baylake Pines, a neighborhood off Shore Drive near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia Beach.

Colonial Williamsburg's former chief archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume remains unconvinced but agreed that the historical documents "need to be looked at a lot more carefully."

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Renovation gives clues to life in 1648 Boston

Source: Boston Globe (2-17-07)

To the uninitiated, the dirty mix of mud, bone, and cow dung is a 350-year-old piece of trash. But to archeologists, the recent discovery at Boston's oldest house is a gleaming, golden nugget.

The brick-hard concoction, used in the mid-17th century for insulation and retrieved during restoration at the James Blake House in Dorchester, is giving archeologists their earliest glimpse of the everyday lives of the city's first European settlers.

The mix, called wattle and daub, will be examined under a microscope beginning next week in the city's archeology lab. What researchers find, they say, could change long-held theories about what the early Puritans ate and farmed and how they built their houses.

"This is a window of opportunity that we have here right now," said city archeologist Ellen Berkland, who is live-in curator at the house in Edward Everett Square. "It will be sealed up soon with new shingles, and we won't be able to get to it for another 100 years."

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Columbus' failing mining colony tried smelting silver from European lead ore

Source: National Geographic News (2-20-07)

Residents of a 15th-century new world mining colony founded by Christopher Columbus turned to desperate measures in the face of rapidly deteriorating conditions, a new study suggests.

According to researchers from the University of Arizona, the colony of La Isabela's situation was so dire that the miners tried to smelt their own supplies by extracting silver from lead ore they brought with them from Europe.

Archaeologists working at the site—-located in what is now the Dominican Republic—-in the 1990s found slag and other by-products of mining operations indicating that the miners had processed some ore there. The initial conclusion was that the ore had been found near La Isabela, processed there, and found to contain no significant amount of silver or other precious metals.

But the new report suggests that the colonists, beset by hunger, disease, hurricanes, mutiny, and conflicts with the natives, were instead pilfering their own supply of ore. The attempts came as the miners prepared to abandon the colony after a breakdown in authority, the authors speculate.

"Our paper, which describes the extraction of silver from lead ore at La Isabela, concludes that these ores were processed very late in the history of the settlement, just shortly before La Isabela was completely abandoned in late 1497," said Alyson Thibodeau, one of the study's authors.

The study appears this week on the Web site of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 6:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Egypt finds show Sakkara necropolis lasted longer, Memphis remained de facto capital

Source: Reuters (2-20-07)

SAKKARA, Egypt -- Egypt's chief archaeologist displayed on Tuesday the latest discoveries from the Sakkara cemetery south of Cairo and said many more treasures clearly lay hidden beneath the sands.

The new finds, outlined in statements over the past week, also show that Sakkara remained a necropolis, from the Greek "City of the Dead", for Egypt's elite long after the Old Kingdom period for which it is famous, said Zahi Hawass of the Supreme Antiquities Council.

The finds include the tomb of a royal cupbearer from the time of the "rebel" pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt's old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.

Akhenaten ruled between 1379 and 1362 BC, just before the famous boy king Tutankhamun...

Maarten Raven, the field director of the Dutch mission which has excavated the tomb over the past two months, said he expected more tombs from the period to turn up in Sakkara, which is most famous for pyramids and tombs from 1,000 years earlier.

The nearby city of Memphis remained the de facto capital of Egypt for most of pharaonic history, even when the official capital was at Luxor in the south or in the new city which Akhenaten built at Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt.

"It was business as usual and Memphis still functioned as the capital, so there were courtiers and high officials and they must have had their burials, so I'm sure there is a lot more to be found in this area," Raven said.

"We thought all the tombs of the period were in Amarna but Akhenaten built temples in Sakkara ... and this shows that the officials who ruled the north were buried here," said Hawass.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 4:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dioramas 'demeaning' to Native Americans Protested

Source: http://www.mlive.com (2-19-07)

A University of Michigan museum exhibit showing how Native Americans lived hundreds of years ago was the target of a unique protest Sunday by students who say it's offensive and should be taken down.

A group of six art students, as part of a class project, placed translucent screens over the collection of dioramas that are prominently displayed on the fourth floor of the U-M Exhibit Museum of Natural History.

They handed out fliers asking why the museum won't remove what they called "racist and demeaning dioramas.'' Among the students' complaints: The dioramas show romanticized depictions of Native American life and don't tell how those lives were changed with the introduction of Europeans to North America.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US anti-terrorism laws keeping out old Vietnam War allies

Source: AP (2-19-07)

Another irony of history: laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks aimed at keeping terrorists out of the United States have disqualified many Hmong refugees, the very people specially recognized by Congress for helping American troops in the Vietnam war.

Under provisions of the USA Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, the Hmong who fought alongside the Americans in the "secret war" against communists in Laos are considered terrorists and are therefore ineligible for asylum or green cards. These are laws from the same Congress that in 2000 passed a law easing the citizenship requirements for the Hmong in recognition of their Vietnam era efforts.

"Clearly, it's absurd that people who fought with us - people who have received special exemptions from the law precisely for that conduct - should be barred from coming to the U.S. as refugees as a result of that conduct," said Melanie Nezer, an attorney for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, who is coordinating a working group aimed at changing the laws.
The Hmong began arriving in large numbers during the 1970s, in the aftermath of Vietnam, and there were about 170,000 in the U.S. as of the 2000 U.S. Census, with most settled in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. A later wave of about 15,000 settled in this country in 2005.

The anti-terror restrictions, which have ensnared other groups as well, also bar people who provided "material support" to terrorist organizations. Last month the Bush administration announced it was granting waivers of that restriction to eight groups, but the Hmong was not among them.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 3:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Honoring a Westerner Who Preserved Japan’s Folk Tales

Source: NYT (2-20-07)

MATSUE, Japan — As snow silently fell on the miniature garden outside, Bon Koizumi sat on the same tatami mat floor where, more than a century before, his great-grandfather wrote down some of Japan’s best-loved folk tales.

It was the perfect image of Japanese repose, except for the sepiatoned photo of Mr. Koizumi’s ancestor, whose bushy mustache and aquiline nose highlighted an unmistakably Western face.

His great-grandfather was Lafcadio Hearn, the Irish-Greek author whose wanderings brought him here after a career as a muckraking journalist in the United States. Mr. Hearn lived in Matsue only 15 months, but this remote castle city still claims him as its favorite son, displaying his face on park statues, street signs and local brands of beer, sake and even instant coffee.

Mr. Hearn’s descriptions of this medieval city and its ancient tales of gods and ghosts put Matsue on the map in the 1890s. Even now it is a popular tourist destination, thanks to Japan’s enduring fascination with Mr. Hearn, who married a local samurai’s daughter, took Japanese citizenship and died in Tokyo in 1904.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

N.Y. Times publishes unusual list of Vietnam War friendly-fire incidents

Source: New York Times (2-18-07)

[Note: In a Sunday Times 'Week in Review' article by C.J. Chivers about a recent friendly-fire incident in Iraq in which an American pilot accidentally killed a British soldier (see link below), reference was made to a once-secret Vietnam War report by an Army captain "that provided a glimpse at [the] grim, ineludible facts [of friendly fire]. Replying to a request from another headquarters, he compiled a list of the small-arms mishaps in which American soldiers were killed or injured in the first six months of 1967.

["The record he sent back to the United States, of 353 incidents in 172 days that killed or injured 398 soldiers, is a catalog of fratricidal and self-inflicted bloodshed caused by mistakes, negligence, exhaustion, panic, horseplay, dim lighting, dense vegetation, inattentiveness, faulty equipment, poor training, foolishness, ill fortune or some combination of the above."

[The record is now at the National Archives center in College Park, Md. The sidebar has selected examples:]

1 KIA, 3 WIA, HG. Pin pulled out by heavy vegetation.

1 WIA, M16. Trigger caught on bushes.

2 WIA, M79. Unit on search and destroy mission fired from boat at movement on shore.

1 WIA, M16. Hit by ricochet while in friendly fire fight.

2 KIA, 2 WIA, M60. Men were guarding tank — took friendly troops under fire.

1 KIA, M60. Enlisted man was unable to swim and during a river crossing operation a friendly helicopter mistook the unit for an enemy force and fired upon them. Man panicked, submerged — body has not been found.

1 KIA, WU. One ambush patrol ambushed by another.

1 WIA, WU. Patrol leader failed to notify perimeter guards that individual was returning from patrol.

1 WIA, M16. Platoon leader was shot while checking ambush positions. Didn’t answer challenge.

1 KIA, M16. Mistaken for hostile infiltrator.

1 WIA, M16. Self-inflicted loading.

2 WIA, .45. Man tried to unload weapon injuring 2 men.

1 KIA, M14. Weapon accidentally discharged when man fell asleep riding in rear of 2 ½ ton truck fatally wounding driver...

Related Links

Killed in Action, but Not by the Enemy

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 2:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Low-key honors for man who reshaped China

Source: Times (of London) (2-19-07)

BEIJING -- When Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, the tallest building in China was the 18-floor Beijing Hotel. Today the Jingguang building soars to 53 storeys and by 2008 will be eclipsed by the 330-metre China World Trade Centre.

China might still be low-rise but for Deng’s determination to open the country after decades of isolation, and to try to end grinding poverty by forcing through market-style economic reforms.

But despite his role in reshaping the nation, the memorials for Deng today, the tenth anniversary of his death, are likely to be as low-key as the man himself.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 1:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

France still haunted by Nazi past

Source: UPI (2-19-07)

BERLIN -- Maurice Papon, an infamous French Nazi collaborator, died Saturday in a Paris hospital at the age of 96. How France dealt with the man is exemplary for how the country continues to deal with dark chapters of its past.

A leading official in the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis during France's occupation in World War II, Papon had personally organized the deportation of 1,690 Jews in southwestern France...Yet after the war, Papon embarked on a successful career in French politics. Before the end of the Nazi occupation, he had established contacts with resistance leaders, who vouched for him after the war. He served as a prefect in Algeria, served as the Paris police chief, then became a lawmaker; and later, from 1978 until 1981, was finance minister under Prime Minister Raymond Barre and President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

For decades, France was unwilling to deal with its Vichy past. Yet in 1981, a son of a man who died in a German concentration camp found documents showing that Papon had signed the man's deportation order, and several hundred more. It was not until 1995 however that President Jacques Chirac first acknowledged that France bore criminal responsibility for what officials like Papon had done during the Nazi occupation...

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 1:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, February 19, 2007

Heir of Franz Ferdinand Fights to Gain Castle

Source: NYT (2-19-07)

KONOPISTE CASTLE, Czech Republic — When a young Serb named Gavrilo Princip stepped forward on a Sarajevo street and fired a pistol at a middle-aged couple 93 years ago, he sent history stumbling down an unexpected new path.

The couple, of course, was Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria-Este, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife, Sophie. They were killed. The world went to war. Millions of people died and the political map of Europe was redrawn.

Now, Franz Ferdinand’s great-granddaughter, Her Serene Highness Princess Sophie von Hohenberg (or Sophie de Potesta to her neighbors), is trying to right what she sees as one of the wrongs from those years. She hopes to get Franz Ferdinand’s castle back in the bargain.

The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye carved up the old Hapsburg empire into new states: Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and parts of Poland. The Hapsburg family, which had ruled that part of Europe for more than 600 years, was stripped of its properties and titles. Franz Ferdinand’s children had already been turned out of their parents’ beloved home, Konopiste Castle, in the empire’s province of Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. It was taken by the state.

The problem, Princess von Hohenberg says, is that Franz Ferdinand’s children — Sophie, Maximilian and Ernst — were not Hapsburgs and so the castle and its dependencies — nearly 15,000 acres of woodland and a brewery — should never have been seized.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In Italian Town, a Civics Lesson From Pelting Neighbors

Source: NYT (2-19-07)

IVREA, Italy, Feb. 18 — For the uninitiated, the annual orange battles of Ivrea in northern Italy are a lesson in both physics — the impact of the thrown fruit as it hits the flesh — and the history of this medieval town and its need to act out a legendary tale of civic rebellion in such a bruising fashion.

“It’s a bit masochistic,” admitted Elisabetta Dottelli, 20, an Ivrea native and a member of one of the participating teams, during a short lull in fighting at Piazza P. Ottinetti, one of five major battlegrounds. She was referring to the Historic Carnival of Ivrea, the three-day orange-throwing festival set here to mark the celebration before Lent.

Within moments, fighting would resume and the sky above would be filled, yet again, with a hailstorm of oranges.

Thousands of spectators gazed on the battles from behind canopies of fish netting stretched throughout the city. The netting served to protect noncombatants from any errant oranges among the hundreds of thousands thrown, smashed, mulched and stomped on throughout a daylong symbolic battle between the citizens of the city and the imaginary forces of oppression. Some of the spectators, though, joined right in.

The carnival is a bizarre and messy affair and, like most everything in Italy, has a long story behind it.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 10:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Worldwide poll finds most reject 'clash of civilizations' view

Source: VOA News (2-19-07)

LONDON -- A large-scale survey commissioned by the BBC finds that, despite current global tensions, the majority of people around the world reject the notion of a clash of civilizations between the west and Islam.

A violent clash between the west and the Islamic world is not inevitable. That is the view of the majority of those surveyed for the BBC.

The research, carried out by pollsters from GlobeScan, examined the views of around 28,000 people in 27 countries around the world.

Those who felt that common ground could be found between the west and the Islamic world outnumbered those who felt that a clash was inevitable by a two-to-one margin.

While 29 percent responded that religious and cultural differences lie at the heart of current tensions, many more, 52 percent, believe that political power and political interests stand as the most important root causes.

Related Links

Views of relationship between Muslim and Western cultures (table)
BBC poll findings (PDF)

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 8:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New film shows JFK moments before assassination

Source: Reuters (2-19-07)

DALLAS, Tex. -- Previously unreleased footage of John F. Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas moments before he was gunned down was released Monday, a surprising new twist in a saga that has gripped the United States for four decades.

The silent 8mm film shows a beaming Jacqueline Kennedy close up in vivid color waving to the crowd.

A group of excited bystanders -- women sporting big 1960s hairstyles -- waves to the cameraman shortly before the motorcade sweeps past.

The president's coat is clearly, if briefly, seen bunched up on his back -- a detail that will be scrutinized by conspiracy theorists who see evidence of a plot in, among other things, the fact the bullet wounds on his jacket and body did not appear to match.

The film was donated to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas by amateur photographer George Jefferies and his son-in-law, Wayne Graham. It was released to coincide with the Presidents Day federal holiday.

Related Links

Never-before-seen JFK footage (MSNBC video)

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 8:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hillary Clinton objects to Confederate flag at South Carolina statehouse

Source: AP (2-19-07)

ORANGEBURG, S.C. -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from its Statehouse grounds, in part because the nation should unite under one banner while at war.

"I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day," Clinton told The Associated Press in an interview.

"I personally would like to see it removed from the Statehouse grounds," the New York senator said during her first trip to the early voting state since announcing her White House bid.

Other Democratic hopefuls, including Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, have said the flag should come down. The banner, which once flew over the Statehouse dome and now flies nearby, is the subject of an ongoing NAACP boycott.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 8:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mud tomb found near oldest Egyptian pyramid, contained unique double statue

Source: AP (2-19-07)

CAIRO -- A mud brick tomb dating back more than 4,000 years has been discovered near Egypt's most ancient pyramid in the Saqqara complex south of Cairo, antiquities official announced Monday. The tomb, which was found by an Egyptian-Australian mission, belonged to Ka-Hay, who kept divine records, and his wife, said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief.

Excavators found five wooden statues depicting the tomb's owner and his wife in a niche at the tomb's forefront. Among the wooden figures was a unique double statue of a seated Ka-Hay and his wife, Hawass said.

The tomb, which also features two offering tables and a wooden false door, was found near the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser -- believed to be Egypt's oldest pyramid -- in the necropolis of King Teti, a funerary area containing scores of burial chambers, false doors that ancient Egyptians said the souls of the dead would use to leave their tombs, and temples.

[Update: According to a Reuters report Tuesday, "A third discovery, announced by the Supreme Antiquities Council on Monday, was of a cache of wooden statues dating back to about 2200 BC, the heyday of the Sakkara necropolis. The council said in a statement that the cache contained five statues, including a rare double wooden statue of the scribe Ka-Hay and his wife. But Hawass said there were only three wooden statues, two of the scribe and a separate one of his wife." http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2012923420070220]

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 8:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush Compares Revolutionary, Terror Wars

Source: AP (2-19-07)

President Bush honored the 275th birthday of the nation's first president on Monday, likening George Washington's long struggle that gave birth to a nation to the war on global terrorism.

"Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life," said Bush, standing in front of Washington's home and above a mostly frozen Potomac River.

"And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone."

Bush chose the national Presidents Day holiday to make his first visit as president to Mount Vernon. He and first lady Laura Bush helped lay a wreath at Washington's tomb, then the president gave a speech from a platform on the bowling green lawn of the estate.

"I feel right at home here. After all, this is the home of the first George W. I thank President Washington for welcoming us today. He doesn't look a day over 275 years old," Bush said to laughter.

Washington was born on Feb. 22, 1732.

"On the field of battle, Washington's forces were facing a mighty empire, and the odds against them were overwhelming. The ragged Continental Army lost more battles than it won, suffered waves of desertions, and stood on the brink of disaster many times. Yet George Washington's calm hand and determination kept the cause of independence and the principles of our Declaration alive," Bush said on a clear but frigid day, speaking to several hundred people.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 3:23 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Japan condemns US sex slave bill

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2-19-07)

Japan has denounced a resolution before the US Congress demanding that Tokyo make amends for forcing foreign women into sexual slavery during World War II. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso says his country has already said and done enough on the issue of "comfort women".

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 1:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New find on Roanoke Island creates stir

Source: Outer Banks Sentinel (2-19-07)

Scott Dawson, a native of Hatteras Island and now a resident of Colington, has shared the location of a discovery he made on National Park Service property with that agency, which has now secured the area and posted surveillance to insure that intruders don't disturb the site.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 1:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US News: 10 Worst Presidents

Source: US News & World Report (2-19-07)

It's too soon to judge the current one, but for past presidents, the verdict is in. U.S. News has averaged the results of five presidential polls to make a gallery of the worst chief executives. The years before the Civil War produced an era of failure: Six of seven presidents who served from 1841 to 1861 made the list.

Buchanan
Harding
A. Johnson
Pierce
Fillmore
Tyler
Grant
Wm. Henry Harrison
Hoover
Nixon
Taylor

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Papers left by French novelist killed at Auschwitz cause sensation

Source: Times (of London) (2-18-07)

When Irène Némirovsky [one of France's leading novelists] was sent to Auschwitz she left behind a hidden literary sensation – [a suitcase full of manuscripts] ....

... The manuscripts inside the suitcase contained the text of Suite Française, the French publishing sensation of 2004 that is taking the Anglo-Saxon world by storm. It tells in vivid prose the story of the early days of the second world war and the reaction of the French to the German invasion.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Michelangelo's San Lorenzo to be finished five centuries late

Source: Times (of London) (2-19-07)

ROME -- It was an architectural gem that Michelangelo never completed. Now the magnificent façade that he designed for the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, is to be erected five centuries late, thanks to the detective work of Renaissance scholars.

Gabriele Morolli, an architectural historian and a member of the reconstruction team, said that he had traced three of the façade’s columns to a depository at Pisa.

One has already been brought to Florence and is being guarded “day and night”. The team plans to dig up another of the columns, known to have been buried near the church in the 17th century.

Professor Morolli said that he was on the trail of other marble components of the façade, including reliefs and statues. A digital reconstruction of the façade is to be projected on to the front of San Lorenzo next weekend.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 4:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sculptor transforms the Iron Lady into the Bronze Baroness

Source: Telegraph (2-19-07)

Until Wednesday night, Margaret Thatcher will be hidden in a wooden box in the House of Commons. Then the Speaker, Michael Martin, will unveil her, and Britain's first woman Prime Minister will face Winston Churchill in the Members' Lobby.

The version of Lady Thatcher which will give her a permanent place in the Palace of Westminster is a 71-stone [994-pound], full-length, 7-foot 4-inch statue of silicon bronze.

As Mr Speaker sits in his chair and looks down the Chamber through the open doors beyond, he will see her, notes in one hand, leaning forward to make a point with the forefinger of the other. Her left heel lifts off the ground.

Although this is not literally the first time that skirts have been depicted in parliamentary sculpture – Queen Victoria is on the premises, and Pitt the Elder is there, wearing a toga – Antony Dufort, the artist, faced a challenge for which there were no real precedents.

How should he adjust the heroic traditions of formal sculpture to portray a modern woman in modern clothes?

Lady Thatcher herself helped him. She was impressed by pictures Mr Dufort sent her of his bronze of a Nottinghamshire coal miner...

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 3:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

London museum accused of mutilating Aboriginal bones

Source: Independent (2-18-07)

[London's] Natural History Museum has been accused by Tasmanian Aboriginals of "mutilating" the remains of their ancestors. Native Australians say the institution has defiled the 17th-century bones by removing parts for scientific tests.

The dispute centres on 17 skeletons held by the museum in London since the 1940s. Although it has agreed to return the remains in its possession, the museum has been collecting samples from skulls and bones for DNA analysis.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC), which is bringing legal action against the museum today, complained the tests were "racist" and desecrated the beliefs of the Aboriginal community.

The dead are believed to be "souls in torment" until buried according to Aboriginal custom, which involves being returned to their birthplace and read their last rites.

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 3:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Maryland to unveil the page that began new chapter in history

Source: Washington Post (2-19-07)

It was a speech so moving the crowd wept. It was a speech so personally important George Washington's hand shook as he read it until he had to hold the paper still with both hands. After the ceremony, he handed the thing to a friend and sped out the door of the State House in Annapolis, riding off by horse.

For centuries, his words have resonated in American democracy even as the speech itself -- the small piece of paper that shook in his hands that day -- was quietly put away, out of the public eye and largely forgotten.

Today, however, amid festivities celebrating his birthday, Maryland officials plan to unveil the original document -- worth $1.5 million -- after acquiring it in a private sale from a family in Maryland who had kept it all these years...

The speech, scholars say, was a turning point in U.S. history. As the Revolutionary War was winding down, some wanted to make Washington king. Some whispered conspiracy, trying to seduce him with the trappings of power. But Washington renounced them all.

By resigning his commission as commander in chief to the Continental Congress -- then housed at the Annapolis capitol -- Washington laid the cornerstone for an American principle that persists today: Civilians, not generals, are ultimately in charge of military power...

Related Links

George Washington's resignation speech (PDF)

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 3:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Stalin's gift' finds new role in Warsaw

Source: Reuters (2-18-07)

WARSAW -- A local joke runs that the luckiest man in Warsaw is the caretaker who lives on the top floor of its towering Palace of Culture -- because he is the only one who can look out of his window and not see it.

Loathed by many older Poles as a symbol of oppression, the 754-foot (230-meter) neo-Gothic skyscraper was a "gift" from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1950s, but as a post-Communist generation matures it is finding a new role.

The grey-brown stone edifice between the central station and the main shopping area has survived calls for its demolition, and now what was originally a trophy monument to communist solidarity houses one of the city's trendiest music venues.

The building was last week awarded the status of historic monument and now symbolizes how Poles, who ditched communism in 1989, straddle two starkly opposed systems as the capital booms.

"The palace is now the heart of our city and is used by huge numbers every year," said Krzysztof Markowski, the building's technical director and vice-president of its management board. "It may be a reminder of a long-gone epoch, but it is now having a second life, serving us all."

Still Poland's tallest building, the Palace dominates the capital's skyline and is visible for up to 20 miles: its peculiar, ornate design by Russian architect Lev Rudnev is part Empire State Building, part Socialist Realism...

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 2:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush looks to historic parallels for final legacy

Source: Reuters (2-18-07)

WASHINGTON -- In the Lincoln Bedroom, President George W. Bush likes to show off one of the most treasured historical artifacts in the White House, a handwritten copy of Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address.

The building's walls speak of past battles, victories, defeats, heartache. President George Washington's portrait hangs in the Oval Office. Civil War Commander and two-term President Ulysses Grant is placed in Bush's private study.

The Queen's Bedroom offers memories of Winston Churchill, who stayed there before and after World War Two, as Bush told C-SPAN, "waddling around ... with a cigar in one hand, a brandy in the other, demanding attention."

As Bush marks the Presidents Day holiday and George Washington's 275th birthday on Monday, he faces a drumbeat a criticism for the event that will likely be a big part of his legacy -- the Iraq war...

Posted on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 2:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Papon's lawyer vows to bury him with Legion of Honor medal--taken away in 1998

Source: AP (2-18-07)

PARIS -- A prominent French political figure who ordered hundreds of Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II will be buried wearing his Legion of Honor medal, his lawyer said Sunday, even though the deceased man was stripped of his right to wear the decoration in 1998.

Maurice Papon, the No. 2 official in the Bordeaux region in southwestern France during Germany's World War II occupation, was convicted in 1998 on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity. The former French cabinet minister was sentenced to 10 years in prison for ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,690 Jews, including 223 children, to Nazi death camps.

He died on Saturday at age 96.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 9:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

60th anniversary of the Jewish refugee ship Ben Hecht

Source: Press Release -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (2-18-07)

A special event will be held in Silver Spring, Maryland this week to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the voyage of the S.S. Ben Hecht, an unusual Jewish refugee ship that not only tried to crash the British blockade of Palestine, but also brought down the barriers of racial segregation in Baltimore, and played a role in one of the most spectacular prison breaks in history.

The commemoration will take place at the Silver Spring Jewish Center, 1401 Arcola Avenue, on Sunday evening, February 25, 2007, at 7:00 pm. There is no admission charge.

The event, which is sponsored by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, will feature remarks by:

David Miller of Silver Spring, a nephew of the ship’s captain, Bob Levitan.

Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute, on the “Hollywood coalition” (Marlon Brando, Milton Berle, and others) that backed the ship.

Jeffrey Weiss, Esq., of Potomac, author of Am I My Brother’s Keeper?, a book about American volunteers in the Israeli War of Independence.

Rabbi Herzl Kranz of the Silver Spring Jewish Center, who will --for the first time in public-- discuss his involvement, as a teenager, in surreptitious efforts to aid the Jewish fighters in Palestine.

A rare video interview with Captain Levitan will be shown.

To coincide with the anniversary, the Wyman Institute will next week unveil an online photo exhibit, “The Voyage of the S.S. Ben Hecht: A Jewish Refugee Ship That Changed History.” The exhibit will be posted at: www.WymanInstitute.org

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 6:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Human knowledge eroded as endangered languages die

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (2-18-07)

A tiny community of reindeer herders in Siberia holds intimate knowledge of the lives, the foraging and the rutting season of their priceless animals, and it's the kind of information that is vital to anyone concerned by the loss of human cultures -- and to biologists worried about the loss of species diversity anywhere in the world.

Of the 426 members of Siberia's isolated Chulym people, only 35 still speak Tuvan, their ancient language, fluently, and they're all older than 50. Everyone else speaks only Russian, according to K. David Harrison, an adventuresome linguist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Harrison has lived with the Chulym and hopes to preserve their vanishing language.

The Chulym can fully describe a "2-year-old male castrated rideable reindeer" with only the single word chary, and to Harrison, that not only shows how ancient languages differ from their modern counterparts, but is symbolic of a worldwide loss in important cultural diversity.

Harrison was among those who addressed the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco. Of the estimated 7,600 languages known in the world today, half are endangered and could be lost forever within a few decades, he said...

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Two WWI tommies finally honoured

Source: Sky News (2-18-07)

Two First World War soldiers shot for cowardice but pardoned 90 years later have been formally honoured on a war memorial.

The granddaughter of one of the men said her family now had the chance to "put everything to rest and carry on with our lives".

The names of Privates Harry Farr and James Swaine have finally been engraved on to Wealdstone war memorial in north-west London.

They were among 306 soldiers shot for military offences during the First World War to receive posthumous pardons last year.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 4:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israeli archaeologist: Muslim prayer room may have been found at dig site

Source: AP (2-18-07)

An Israeli archaeologist said Sunday that what could be a Islamic prayer room was found at the site of the Mugrabi ramp in the Old City of Jerusalem, where excavation work has sparked angry protests by Muslims who say that the work endangers the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Muslim leaders and critics of the work said the announcement of the find, three years after it was discovered, confirmed their fears that the Antiquities Authority is intent on hiding Muslim attachment to the site.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 4:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Maurice Papon, Convicted Vichy Official, 96, Dies

Source: NYT (2-18-07)

Maurice Papon, a prominent French functionary convicted in 1998 of complicity in Nazi crimes against humanity during the German occupation in World War II, died yesterday at a private clinic near Paris. He was 96.

He underwent heart surgery related to his pacemaker on Tuesday, and died in his sleep, said his lawyer, Francis Vuilleman, The Associated Press reported.

In the end, Mr. Papon served less than three years of his 10-year sentence for deporting hundreds of Jews to their deaths in German concentration camps from southwestern France, where he was an official of the Vichy government, which collaborated with the Germans. He always protested that he had done only what the Germans had made him do.

He appealed after his trial ended in April 1998, but fled to Switzerland the next year rather than go to jail, where French law required him to be before his appeal could be heard.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Does Bob Morgan own the only pieces of Sputnik I? Well, they're 13 pieces of something

Source: New York Times (2-18-07)

SAN FRANCISCO -— For nearly 50 years, Bob Morgan and his family have kept a box full of charred debris that they swear fell out of the early morning sky on Dec. 8, 1957.

“My dad said it was glowing so bright that you couldn’t look at it with your naked eye,” Mr. Morgan said of the pieces of metal and plastic that came to rest behind his grandfather’s house in Encino, Calif. “So they grabbed some sunglasses until this thing had cooled down.”

Although no one has ever confirmed what the objects were, Mr. Morgan has long believed that he has a piece — or 13 pieces to be exact — of one of the most famous objects ever to fly: Sputnik I, the first man-made object to orbit the earth.

Experts are skeptical...

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 5:07 AM | Comments (0) | Top

New history, old wounds: China and Japan battle over history textbook

Source: Boston Globe (2-18-07)

Most people may believe that the reason for studying history is to learn what happened in the past," begins the foreword to Japan's "New History Textbook," "but that is not necessarily correct."

This is not the kind of opening that inspires confidence in a text's objectivity. The "New History Textbook" was introduced in 2001 by a group of right-wing scholars and politicians with the explicit aim of giving junior high school students a more positive sense of their national history. It characterizes Japanese aggression in World War II, notably its invasion of China, as a counterattack against Western imperialism, and consigns the Japanese Army's atrocities following its 1937 conquest of Nanjing -- known as the "Rape of Nanking" -- to a footnote, even questioning the number of victims.

The book has proven disastrous for Japan's image abroad; indeed, it seems there are more Chinese students who have rioted over the "New History Textbook" than Japanese students who have read it. Almost no Japanese junior high schools have actually adopted the text -- just 18 out of more than 11,000. But it is certified by the country's Education Ministry, and the Chinese find this deeply offensive.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 4:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Man, 22, arrested in N.J. in attack on Wiesel in S.F. hotel

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (2-18-07)

A New Jersey man charged Saturday with attacking Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel at a San Francisco hotel earlier this month was a "lone wolf" who had also stalked the Nobel laureate in Florida, authorities said.

Police found 22-year-old Eric Hunt at a mental health treatment center in Belle Mead, N.J., where he had sought treatment within the past week for undisclosed reasons. He remained jailed Saturday night in Somerville, N.J.

Hunt faces charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and committing a hate crime. San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris pledged to vigorously prosecute what she called "horrible, outrageous crimes" by "someone who traveled here" to target Wiesel on Feb. 1.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Spy reveals KGB's 1960s plot to taint ‘Nazi pope’ Pius XII

Source: Times (of London) (2-18-07)

The KGB hatched a plot to smear the late Pope Pius XII as an antisemitic Hitler supporter and fostered a controversial play that tarnished the pontiff, according to the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence officer to have defected to the West.

Former Lieutenant-General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who headed the Romanian secret service before defecting in 1978, has broken a silence of nearly half a century to reveal [in an article for the National Review Online January 25--link below] that he was involved in the operation code-named Seat12, a Kremlin scheme launched in 1960 to portray Pius XII “as a cold-hearted Nazi sympathiser”.

The result, according to Pacepa, was the 1963 play The Deputy, by Rolf Hochhuth, which argued that Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged him to launch the Holocaust. It ignited a furious debate over Pius XII’s attitude towards Hitler...

Asked about Pacepa’s article, Hochhuth has denied any KGB influence and insisted that the play was all his own work. In the early 1960s he defended his portrayal of Pius XII, saying: “The facts are there — 40 crowded pages of documentation in the appendix to my play.”...

The Vatican is now pursuing its efforts to have Pius XII declared a saint. Among those who have defended Pius is Israel Zoller, the chief rabbi of Rome in 1943-44, who said the Pope had instructed bishops to allow Jews to seek refuge in convents and monasteries.

Related Links

Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Isolated but defiant, the Serbs trapped by blood and history

Source: Times (of London) (2-18-07)

GORAZDEVAC, Kosovo/Serbia -- To the outside world, they are the bullyboys of Europe. The Serbs have a rather more romantic image of themselves; not so much Roman-style imperialists as the plucky Gauls of Asterix fame.

Like the cartoon character’s besieged village, Serbia is surrounded by enemy garrisons, according to a postcard on sale in Mitrovica. “One small country of indomitable Serbs still holds out against the invaders.”

But it is in this western corner of Kosovo, beneath the jagged peaks of the Mountains of the Damned, that the real siege is taking place.

The Serb enclave of Gorazdevac is surrounded not by hostile Roman garrisons but Albanian villages peopled by bitter survivors of Belgrade’s war against them. Instead of wooden stockades, they are protected by the tanks and soldiers of an Italian peacekeeping force.

When Serb and Kosovan leaders sit down next week to discuss UN plans for the province’s future, it is the fate of enclaves like Gorazdevac and its Kosovan Serbs that present the greatest threat to stability.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:29 AM | Comments (0) | Top

British army to move Ulster memorials

Source: Telegraph (2-18-07)

Hundreds of memorials dedicated to soldiers murdered by terrorists in Northern Ireland over the past 30 years are to be moved amid fears they will be vandalised by Irish republicans.

More than 250 memorials, including plaques, stone carvings and trees, located at more than 20 bases across Ulster will be removed to more secure locations within the province and the British mainland during the next few months.

Defence chiefs have ruled out any possibility of permanent memorials remaining at the Northern Ireland bases, which are now being abandoned as the MoD scales down operations in the province. Relatives of -hundreds of dead soldiers have been informed that the memorials cannot stay where their loved ones were murdered on active service, for fear that they might be destroyed by IRA sympathisers.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Iraq's hopes lie in rubble of Golden Shrine

Source: Telegraph (2-18-07)

SAMARRA, Iraq -- The labour would be unpaid, but the rewards in Heaven would be guaranteed.

When Iraq's Shia religious leaders issued an appeal last summer for volunteers to help rebuild the bomb-damaged wreckage of Samarra's Golden Shrine, a task force of more than 3,000 people formed almost overnight.

Yet despite the massed show of willing hands, so far not a single tile of the distinctive gold-plated dome that once dominated the city's skyline has been put back in place.

It remains exactly as it was after last February's demolition job by Sunni insurgents -- a glaring, symbolic reminder of the orgy of sectarian violence that its destruction was intended to spark...

Everyone agrees that rebuilding the shrine would help rebuild Shia-Sunni relations, but so far the project, backed by both the Iraqi government and the United Nations, has slipped into the same sectarian faultlines that it is trying to bridge.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:24 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Island's 'cargo cult' celebrates 50 years worshipping the US

Source: Telegraph (2-18-07)

The US's standing in the world may have plummeted under President George W. Bush, but a bizarre cargo cult in the Vanuatu island nation holds America in god-like esteem.

The Jon Frum movement celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding yesterday with a lavish feast in which village men dressed up as US soldiers and marched in front of a giant Stars and Stripes flag on a bamboo pole...

The origins of the cult date back to the 1930s, when Britain and France jointly ran what was then the colony of New Hebrides. Tanna's inhabitants bridled at colonial rule and the missionaries who badgered them...

Village elders tell of how a mysterious outsider came to their forbears in a series of apparitions, telling them to go back to their traditional ways. The idea of a messiah-like outsider was given a huge boost during the Second World War...The movement was officially founded on Feb 15, 1957, to celebrate the release of cult leaders who had been imprisoned by the ruling Anglo-French authorities.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

British Library to display rare sacred scrolls

Source: Independent (2-18-07)

The rarest and most elaborate collection of religious manuscripts in the world, including one of the earliest Korans and a Torah from a lost community of Chinese Jews, is to be displayed at the British Library in a unique exhibition on the great religions.

Sacred texts from Christianity, Judaism and Islam are to be displayed side by side in an exhibition showing what the three great faiths have in common.

The exhibition includes one of the earliest surviving Korans, completed in the Arabian peninsula 160 years after the death of the Prophet Mohamed, and an elaborate book of fatwas.

Blasphemous and esoteric documents will also be on show. A 6th-century Christian text, suppressed by the church because it omits the genealogy of Christ, will be displayed, along with a Jewish manuscript containing an illustration of God's face -- forbidden in Jewish tradition.

The Torah scroll used by Chinese Jews of Kaifeng, a remote community which no longer exists, is made of strips of sheepskin sewn together with silk thread, rather than customary animal sinews. Many of the manuscripts have never been publicly displayed, including an extremely rare 16th-century book of psalms in Arabic.

Manuscripts from collections around the world, including the Royal Library in Rabat, Morocco, will sit alongside texts in the British Library's own collection, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, considered the masterpiece of early Anglo-Saxon book production.

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

£4,000 for a single bottle of Hitler's birthday wine

Source: Independent (2-18-07)

A fierce bidding war erupted yesterday over a rare bottle of 1943 Führerwein featuring a portrait of Adolf Hitler on the label. The bottle, with a predicted auction price of £500, finally sold to an anonymous buyer for almost £4,000.

It came from a batch given to German officers during the Second World War. But, rather like the Nazi dream of a 1,000-year reich, the wine has spectacularly failed to stand the test of time and is undrinkable.

A spokeswoman for Plymouth Auction Rooms said competition for the bottle was "vigorous" in the room as six telephone lines buzzed with bids. "We understand that these bottles were given out to Hitler's top-ranking officers on his birthday," commented auctioneer Paul Keen. "I have never seen or heard about anything like this in my 20 years as an auctioneer. This is extremely rare."

Posted on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Winners & Losers in History Funding in 2007

Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History (2-16-07)

On February 14, the U.S. Senate passed a continuing budget resolution (H.J. Res. 20) to fund most federal government programs through the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year on September 30, 2007. The continuing resolution passed 81-15. Despite this show of bi-partisan support, many Republicans were upset that the new Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) brought the bill to the floor utilizing a parliamentary rule that did not allow amendments. Like the version passed by the House, the bill was also stripped of nearly all specially designated projects known as “earmarks.”

In general, federal agencies and their programs were flat-funded at the same amount they received in fiscal year 2006. However, there were exceptions to this general rule.

One agency that had some bright spots was the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). While the final operating expenses number of $278.2 million was relatively flat, some important programs within the agency received increased funding.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), which had its budget zeroed out in the Bush administration’s FY ‘07 budget request, was funded at its FY ‘06 level. The NHPRC will receive $5.5 million for grants and $2 million for overhead expenses.

The Electronic Records Archives program received a nearly $10 million increase over the FY 2006 appropriated level of $37.5 million. NARA also received $3 million in mainly reprogrammed money to help repair damage to its Washington, DC headquarters from flooding last summer.

Another winner is the Department of Education's “Teaching American History” initiative which will see a funding level of $121 million –– the amount appropriated to the program in FY 2006. This figure is some $71 million more than recommended by the President in the FY 2007 budget proposal.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) would be allotted $141 million – about what was proposed for the agency in FY 2007 by President Bush. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) will experience a significant loss as the agency will not get the $15 million (or 6% percent) increase that the White House supported for the IMLS in its FY 2007 budget proposal; funding for the IMLS will be set at $247 million.

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 6:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A Divided House Denounces Plan for More Troops

Source: NYT (2-17-07)

A sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution on Friday formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.

The rare wartime rebuke to the commander in chief — an act that is not binding, but that carries symbolic significance — was approved 246-to-182, with 17 Republicans breaking ranks to join all but two Democrats in supporting the resolution....

Several historians compared its significance to the repeal by Congress in 1971 of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the Vietnam War. That vote did not halt the conflict as members of Congress approved continued financing for two more years....

Iraq has dominated this session of Congress. While Democrats are broadly aligned against the war, there is little unity on the next step. Some lawmakers seek to cut financing and cap troop levels while others propose delving into war strategy.

“There is a long tradition of Congressional dissent during wartime, but I don’t know that it’s ever formalized itself the way this is shaping up,” said the associate Senate historian, Donald Ritchie. “Taking a stand in opposition to a commander in chief’s decision on a war policy, that’s unusual.”

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 5:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

French judge to Kagame: J'accuse!

Source: Los Angeles Times (2-17-07)

PARIS —- More than a decade after the genocide, a mystery still lies at the heart of Rwanda's darkness.

But France's most celebrated anti-terrorism magistrate believes he knows who assassinated two African presidents on April 6, 1994. The shooting down of the Rwandan presidential jet that night was followed by the killings of an estimated 800,000 people, most of them members of the Tutsi minority.

In a report to French prosecutors late last year, Magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere accused the Tutsi leader who is now president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, of ordering the assassination.

The investigation includes allegations that U.S. and U.N. officials helped quash earlier inquiries to protect Kagame, an ally of the United States.

The French judge's report, which was obtained by The Times, has caused an uproar in Africa and Europe, and led Kagame's government to break off relations with France.

A United Nations tribunal is judging perpetrators of the genocide, but the ghosts of Rwanda still haunt a world community that failed to intervene...

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 5:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Symbol of France's Nazi collaboration dies

Source: AP (2-17-07)

PARIS -- Maurice Papon, a former Cabinet minister who was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity for his role in deporting Jews during World War II and became a symbol of France's collaboration with the Nazis, died Saturday. He was 96.

Papon, who underwent surgery on his pacemaker at a clinic east of Paris last week, died in his sleep on Saturday, said his lawyer, Francis Vuillemin.

Papon was the highest-ranking Frenchman to be convicted for a role in the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.

The April 2, 1998, guilty verdict was the culmination of a trial that offered a painful look at one of the darkest periods in modern French history.

However, Papon -- who at one point fled France to avoid prison -- lived out his final years a free man, released from Paris' dour La Sante prison on Sept. 18, 2002, because of failing health.

In a February 2001 letter to the justice minister, Papon said he had neither "regrets nor remorse for a crime I did not commit and for which I am in no way an accomplice."

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lawmaker Apologizes for Memo Linking Evolution and Jewish Texts

Source: NYT (2-17-07)

A leader of the Texas House of Representatives apologized Friday for circulating an appeal to ban the teaching of evolution as derived from “Rabbinic writings” and other Jewish texts.

“I had no intention to offend anyone,” said the lawmaker, Warren Chisum, a Republican from the Panhandle who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chisum said he had received the information from Ben Bridges, a Georgia legislator, and “I never took it very seriously.”

On Feb. 9, Mr. Chisum, 68, an 18-year veteran of the House and second in power only to the speaker, Tom Craddick, sent a memorandum to all 149 other state representatives in Texas.

The one-page memorandum, marked “From: Representative Ben Bridges,” declared that “tax-supported evolution science” was based on religion and therefore unlawful under the United States Constitution.

It continued, “Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called secular evolution science is the Big Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion.”

“This scenario,” the memorandum stated, “is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings on the mystic ‘holy book’ kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

The memorandum said that inquiries could be directed to the Fair Education Foundation, a group in Georgia, and gave its Web address, fixedearth.com. The site features items belittling the Holocaust and portraying Earth as stationary as depicted in the Bible, with Jewish thinkers like “Kabbalist physicist Albert Einstein” responsible for contrary scientific theories.

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sale of JFK sniper window falls through quickly

Source: AP (2-17-07)

DALLAS -- The auction of a window advertised as Lee Harvey Oswald's sniper perch in the killing of President John F. Kennedy brought a bid of about $3 million, but the sale quickly fell through.

The window was up for auction Friday on eBay with a starting price of $100,000, and bidding quickly rose to seven figures. But 32 bids were either retracted by the bidders_ normally because a wrong price had been entered, including one for $17 million -- or canceled by the seller because a bidder didn't meet qualifications.

Then, it turned out that the winning bidder "didn't have the cash," said Fred McLane, a business representative for owner Caruth Byrd. "This guy slipped into the bidding in the last minute," he told The Dallas Morning News.

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:52 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Police identify Holocaust denier in Elie Wiesel attack

Source: Reuters (2-17-07)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Police have issued an arrest warrant for a New Jersey man suspected of accosting Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in the elevator of a San Francisco hotel in early February.

Eric Hunt, 22, was being sought on charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime, according to the warrant issued by San Francisco police on Friday.

Wiesel, 78, was attending the World Forum, an interfaith conference on non-violent conflict resolution, when he was accosted on February 1 at the Argent Hotel, according to police.

The suspect got into an elevator with Wiesel and insisted he accompany him to his room for an interview. At the sixth floor, the suspect forced the author into the corridor and ran away when Wiesel began to yell, the authorities said.

A Holocaust denier who gave his name as "Eric Hunt" wrote in a February 6 posting on an anti-Semitic Web site about why he had confronted Wiesel, who has written extensively on the Holocaust.

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Seeing Amin's ghost as the red carpet unrolls in Kampala

Source: New York Times (2-17-07)

KAMPALA, Uganda -— This year, the Oscar buzz has made it all the way to Kampala.

On Saturday, Forest Whitaker, a leading contender for best actor, parted a crowd of paparazzi in front of a chic hotel here in Uganda’s capital, and he strutted down a red carpet for the official opening of “The Last King of Scotland.”

Official being the key word. Because the movie, about the blood-soaked reign of Uganda’s mercurial dictator, Idi Amin, actually arrived a few weeks ago, via bootlegged DVDs shipped in from China. It has already created quite a stir in Kampala’s tin-roofed video halls.

Ugandans are struck by Mr. Whitaker’s likeness to Amin, and moved by the scenes of an era they would like to forget. What is more, they are proud that one of this year’s surprise Hollywood hits is about their country, was filmed in their country and, now, nearly five months after its release in the United States, is finally being seen here.

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In the refined world of classical music, a first: plagiarized piano recordings

Source: The Gramophone (UK) (2-15-07)

It was already one of the strangest stories the classical music world had witnessed. But the discovery of the late English pianist Joyce Hatto as the greatest instrumentalist almost nobody had heard of, appears to have taken a bizarre, even potentially sinister turn.

It was around a year ago that Gramophone’s critics began to champion this little-known lady, whose discs –- miraculous performances, released by her husband William Barrington-Coupe on the tiny label Concert Artist –- were notoriously difficult to get hold of. Such was the brilliance of this pianist across Liszt, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Dukas and more in a dizzying range –- that it was worth making the effort to seek out Concert Artist to get these discs, and they became much sought-after. By the time she died in June 2006, Joyce Hatto was not only a sudden widespread success, she was a cause célèbre. To love Hatto recordings was to be in the know, a true piano aficionado who didn’t need the hype of a major label’s marketing spend to recognise a good, a great, thing when they heard it.

But at the same time as the cult of Hatto was burgeoning, there were persistent rumours on the internet as to the true origins of the recordings. How, wondered the doubters, could one woman –- especially one who had battled cancer for many years –- have mastered a range of repertoire and recorded a catalogue that arguably makes her more prolific than even the Richters and the Ashkenazys...

Related Links

Piano ‘genius’ is branded a fake

A Pianist’s Recordings Draw Praise, but Were They All Hers?

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Researchers re-create Washington's face

Source: AP (2-16-07)

PHOENIX -- Researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Pittsburgh have mixed technology, art and science to re-create the real face of George Washington. Using anthropology, 3-D scanning and digital reconstruction, the 2-1/2-year project has culminated in new life-size figures of the nation's first president and some say the images are the most accurate yet of Washington at a younger age.

There is Washington at age 19 as a land surveyor, Washington at 45 during the Revolutionary War, and Washington at 57 when he took the presidential oath.

"The whole idea is to put science, history and art together and come up with the absolute best guess of what he looked like," said James Rees, executive director of George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate, which funded the project. [See picture at http://www.mountvernon.org/visit/plan/index.cfm/pid/829/]

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 3:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sold--used window from Texas Schoolbook Depository; interesting history

Source: BBC News (2-17-07)

An item described as the window and frame from where Lee Harvey Oswald shot US President John F Kennedy in 1963 has been sold at auction on eBay.

A mystery bidder paid more than $3m (£1.5m) for the item, apparently from Oswald's shooter's nest at the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

The starting price was just $100,000 but bidding was brisk and the item eventually fetched $3,001,501.

The depository was owned by a local family that listed the item on eBay.

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 3:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Gladiators fought to the death in Chester coliseum

Source: Telegraph (2-17-07)

Gladiatorial contests took place at the largest amphitheatre in Roman Britain, according to new evidence unearthed by archaeologists.

Finds at an excavation of the arena in Chester provide the most conclusive proof yet that it played host to grisly fights to the death for public entertainment, and reinforce the view of the town's importance in the Roman Empire.

A stone block with iron fittings was discovered at the centre of the two-storey amphitheatre, which dates back to about AD100. It is similar to one depicted in a 3rd century mosaic found at a Roman villa at Bignor, West Sussex, which shows two gladiators fighting.

Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 3:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 16, 2007

Smithsonian and Oliver North Make up

Source: WaPo (2-14-07)

That little spat between Oliver North and the Smithsonian? Everyone kissed and made up -- and now North has permission to film in front of the Enola Gay and can talk about nuclear weapons, reports our colleague Jackie Trescott. The Smithsonian originally rejected his request to film in front of the historic bomber for a Fox News docu-series, claiming the production wanted more than "incidental use" of the plane and the site; North countered that the decision was fueled by the Smithsonian's deal with Showtime, which limits access of independent film crews.

But yesterday the two sides sat down and the application was accepted, said Claire Brown, National Air and Space Museum spokeswoman.

"We are respectful of the needs of the institution," said series producer Pamela Browne."And they understand the lighting and equipment we need to do a long-form documentary."

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 7:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hitler on the label, wine under the hammer

Source: Telegraph (2-16-07)

A rare bottle of Nazi wine with a label bearing a photograph of Hitler and handed out to senior German officers during the Second World War is expected to fetch £500 at auction.

The unopened bottle of red Fuhrerwein dates back to 1943 when it would have been presented to a high-flying Nazi general to mark Hitler's 54th birthday.

A label around the bottle, a 12 per cent Schwarzer Tafelwein, features a photograph of Hitler dressed smartly in suit and tie.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

University of Illinois to drop Indian mascot unless ...

Source: Inside Higher Ed (2-16-07)

The University of Illinois was planning today to announce that it was ending the use of Chief Illiniwek — a student dressed as an Indian who performs at athletic events — but may be forced to change its plans because of a lawsuit, The Chicago Tribune reported. The mascot’s use has been controversial for years, with American Indian groups calling its use offensive and athletic boosters calling the American Indians and their supporters politically correct or overly sensitive. But Illinois officials, after long defending the mascot, may change their stance under pressure from the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The Tribune reported that two students who play the chief filed the suit to block the action, and that the university is awaiting the results of a hearing today before deciding whether to go ahead and end use of the mascot.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 6:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Webcams fuel furor over Jerusalem excavation

Source: Boston Globe (2-16-07)

JERUSALEM -- Israel activated webcams yesterday at the site of a controversial building project in Jerusalem's Old City as part of an effort to refute accusations by Muslims that the work is threatening the Al-Aqsa Mosque...

Islamic leaders denounced the streaming video as "cosmetic," and said they would organize massive demonstrations in Jerusalem after prayers today...

Yechiel Zeligman, the Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist overseeing the excavation, said the three webcams would broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the authority's website, antiquities.org.

The live feed from three cameras shows workers from the Antiquities Authority digging to uncover ancient buildings and artifacts hidden beneath the surface.

"Really, we don't have anything to hide," Zeligman said as he supervised 40 workers at the site yesterday. "We hope the presence of the cameras will show people that nothing here is threatening the mosques and things will quieten down so we can continue our work.

"The ramp ends more than 5 meters from the wall and the gate into the mosque compound, so we are nowhere near the Al-Aqsa Mosque and nothing we are doing here poses any threat to it," he said...

Yousef Natshe, chief archeologist at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, said the new webcams did nothing to allay Muslim fears.

"It's a cosmetic act designed to draw away the attention of the people who are concerned about this," Natshe said. "Putting this online doesn't give Israel any legal rights -- the act itself is illegal."...

Natshe conceded that the Israelis were probably not excavating underneath the mosque, but he accused them of continuous encroachments.

" This work is being carried out on the approach to one of the historic gates entering the Haram. . . . Maybe it is not physical damage, but it is cultural damage. It is distorting the site," he said.

Related Links

Violent protests in Kashmir over al-Aqsa excavation

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 5:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

U. of Illinois retiring its Indian mascot, 'Chief Illiniwek'

Source: UPI (2-16-07)

URBANA, Ill. -- After years of debate, the University of Illinois is retiring Chief Illiniwek, its American Indian sports team mascot.

Illinois was one of 18 universities sanctioned by the NCAA in 2005 for keeping mascots and imagery deemed "hostile and abusive." By dropping the American Indian mascot, who has danced at athletic events since 1926 in a feathered headdress and Indian regalia, the university regains eligibility to host NCAA championship events.

Chief Illiniwek will perform his last war dance at halftime of the season's final men's home basketball game at Assembly Hall Wednesday, the U of I said Friday in a release. The mascot had been limited to home game performances and did not travel with teams.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 5:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Virginia won't celebrate Lincoln bicentennial

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (2-15-07)

On the same grounds that once served as the Capitol of the Confederacy, the past seeped into the present yesterday as a House panel discussed Abraham Lincoln and slavery.

The House Rules Committee tabled a measure pushed by state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, D-Richmond, that sought to establish a commission to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the 16th president's birth, which will occur Feb. 12, 2009.

"Lincoln is regarded by many as the most outstanding president of all time," Marsh told the committee, pointing out that the slain leader's parents were born in Virginia.

A Richmond resident spoke against the commission, charging it represents "historical myopia and amnesia at its worse" and "kowtowing to the leader of Virginia's enemies."

Robert Lamb, a lawyer and member of Sons of Confederate Veterans who said he was speaking as an individual, said Lincoln as U.S. president during the Civil War sent armies into Virginia who "laid waste to the land," among other grievances.

If anyone's 200th birthday should be honored, it should be that of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, who was born on June 3, 1808, said Lamb, who was wearing a tie with a pattern of Confederate flags.

Congress created a federal commission seven years ago, and 10 states have established their own commissions to mark the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, said spokesman David Early. Most states - including Virginia - have appointed liaisons to the federal panel to help coordinate their own celebrations.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 4:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sundown towns: effects of racial exclusion long-lasting

Source: Detroit Free Press (2-15-07)

If you were an African American in one of a number of predominantly white, Detroit-area towns in the late 1890s, you probably knew the tacit rule: Get out of town before sunset.
Today you'll still see the legacy of these so-called sundown towns, thousands of which sprang up all over the United States after Reconstruction and flourished through the civil rights era.

Such towns have been documented by sociologist James Loewen in his 2005 book "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism." "I thought I'd find a few hundred across the country, but I found thousands," he said.

One of those towns was Wyandotte.

In 1955, when librarian Edwina DeWindt published her history of Wyandotte, the chapter labeled "Negro" didn't make the cut. But her research establishing the city as a sundown town remains on file at Wyandotte's Bacon Memorial District Library.

"It includes about 50 pages of oral histories, along with local newspaper accounts and minutes from City Hall," said library director Janet Cashin. "I think the publishers may have said, 'We don't need that chapter in the book because it doesn't shed the right kind of light on the city.' "

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 3:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Giuliani’s Run: History's got a mixed message

Source: New York Times (2-16-07)

No United States senator has been elected president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, but former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is challenging an even more formidable historical hurdle: No former mayor has been elected president since Grover Cleveland of Buffalo in 1884 and Calvin Coolidge of Northampton, Mass., in 1924.

And no mayor has ever become president without serving first in some other elective office beyond City Hall.

“Should Rudolph Giuliani attain the presidency in 2008 he will have faced down this longstanding record,” Michael H. Ebner, a history professor at Lake Forest College, said in a telephone interview.

Professor Ebner, writing on the History News Network, a Web site, quoted the columnist Walter Lippmann as concluding that what cost another New Yorker, Gov. Alfred E. Smith, the presidency in 1928 was voters’ antipathy to Smith’s “distinctly urban values,” rather than opposition to his Roman Catholicism alone.

Mr. Giuliani, who would be only the second Catholic president and the first of Italian heritage, faces an additional hurdle: “urban values” have tended to resonate more with Democratic voters; before he faces them, he must win the nomination from Republicans....

Related Links

Michael Ebner: Giuliani for President? America's Mayor for President?

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 1:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Congressman (mis)quotes Lincoln on hanging anti-war lawmakers

Source: Washington Post (2-16-07)

During floor debate on the Iraq war yesterday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) quoted Abraham Lincoln as advocating the hanging of lawmakers who undermine military morale during wartime.

"Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged," Young declared.

One problem: Lincoln never said such a thing.

Conservative scholar J. Michael Waller did, in an article for Insight magazine in December 2003. Waller later told Annenberg Political Fact Check that the supposed quote "is not a quote at all" but that a copy editor mistakenly put quotation marks around his words, making them appear to be Lincoln's.

Annenberg has counted 18,000 references to the Lincoln "quote" by those who typically support President Bush's war policy.

After he left the House floor yesterday, Young found out that -- whoops -- he had mistakenly put words in Abe's mouth. His spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, says the congressman took the quote from an article he read in the Washington Times on Tuesday.

"Now that he's been informed these are not the actual words of Lincoln, he will discontinue attributing the words to Lincoln. However, he continues to totally agree with the message of the statement," Kenny said. "Americans, especially America's elected leaders, should not take actions during a time of war that damage the morale of our soldiers and military -- and that is exactly what this nonbinding resolution does."

And no, Kenny said, Young was "not advocating the hanging of Democrats."

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 3:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Suwannee steamboat skeleton: is it the Madison, scuttled in 1863?

Source: National Geographic News (2-15-07)

In the crystal-clear waters of a Florida spring, decades-old remains are defying identification, tantalizing experts who are trying to solve a Suwannee River mystery.

Local legend has it that the remains are all that's left of the steamboat Madison, a floating general store that chugged up and down the Suwannee in the mid-19th century...

The river touches eight Florida counties as it meanders from its source in the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico...Suwannee River steamers brought mail, supplies, and a few luxuries to backwoods residents during the 19th century.

When the U.S. Civil War began in 1861, the Union Navy imposed a blockade of southern ports that gradually eliminated steamboat traffic on southern coastal rivers.

By the fall of 1863, as the fighting got closer to the Suwannee region, [owner James] Tucker decided to scuttle his ship to prevent it from falling into Navy hands...

Whether it's actually the Madison, though, remains to be seen.

So far state archaeologists have found and are working to identify the remains of at least ten steamboats in the Suwannee River, three of which are accessible to divers.

In addition to the ruins in Troy Springs, divers can visit the David Yulee near the Suwannee's mouth, as well as the well-preserved ruins of the City of Hawkinsville, the last steamboat to operate on the Suwannee.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 2:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Claim: bones in Cuban mausoleum are not Che Guevara's

Source: Independent (2-16-07)

WASHINGTON -- Four decades after he was executed by Bolivian troops and 10 years after scientists claimed to have discovered his remains, doubts have been raised over whether the bones and skeleton interned in the mausoleum in Cuba are really those of Che Guevara.

An investigation carried out by a Spanish-Mexican magazine claims that Cuban specialists were not telling the truth when in, 1997, they said that they had discovered the revolutionary's remains, along with those of six of his fighters, buried alongside an airstrip in the remote jungle village of Villagrande, Bolivia.

The magazine, Letras Libres, argues that the specialists were under pressure from Fidel Castro, Cuba's leader, who wanted his comrade's remains identified for political reasons and to "relaunch the country's revolutionary fervour"...

For many years it was believed that the corpse of "El Che" - his hands having been cut off - was burned and his ashes scattered. But in the mid-1990s a number of retired Bolivian military officers said they had buried the remains alongside a nearby airstrip; the authorities had kept it secret to avoid the location becoming a site of pilgrimage.

Following those claims, a team of Cuban, Bolivian and Argentine experts launched a search that located the remains in Villagrande. The remains were flown to Cuba and, in October 1997, President Castro led a ceremony at which the remains were interred in a mausoleum in Santa Clara, a city captured in January 1959 by rebels led by Guevara in a battle that proved decisive for the revolution.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 2:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

J.M.W. Turner 'Swiss Lake' published for first time, goes on sale with 13 others

Source: Times (of London) (2-16-07)

A previously unseen Turner watercolour is published for the first time in The Times today after its owner’s decision to sell a collection of 14 important works.

'A Swiss Lake, Lucerne', which was unrecorded because it has been in private hands until now, is among the shimmering landscapes that make up the finest collection of watercolours by the 19th-century master to come on the market in decades.

They are expected to send prices soaring to around £15 million at Sotheby’s in London this summer and range in subject matter from naturalistic depictions of British coastal scenes to impressionistic views of Switzerland, Germany, France and Italy.

Each exudes Turner’s energetic handling of colour, often applied in rapid strokes, smeared with his fingers or scratched with the tip of a brush...[The collection] was put together over about 20 years by Baron Guy Ullens, a Belgian who made a fortune in the food industry and whose company owns WeightWatchers. He has long been passionate about Turner and classical and contemporary Chinese art. He will now focus his resources on this other love.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Critics say Red Square project will alter character, endanger St. Basil's

Source: Telegraph (2-16-07)

Repairs to Stalin's depot threaten St Basil's

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 2:06am GMT 16/02/2007

Like any dictator fearful of his people, Joseph Stalin had a contingency plan to prevent a popular revolution.

Unknown to the Muscovites that shivered their way along the cobblestones above, he hid a unit of his best and most powerful tanks in the basement of the Lower Trading Rows on the eastern perimeter of Red Square.

If the huddled masses tried to storm the Kremlin, they were under orders to trundle up specially built ramps and come to Uncle Joe's rescue.

Stalin never had to give the order but talk today to some of Moscow's leading architects and you get the impression that it would have been better if he had. Last summer, the Kremlin's presidential properties department gave the order to turn the Lower Trading Rows into an upmarket hotel and auction house.

The scaffolding is now up and the bulldozers have moved in. Predictably perhaps, the defenders of Moscow's dwindling architectural heritage, wearily familiar with the city's post-perestroika credo of "restoration by means of demolition", are in uproar.

Not only, they say, does the construction work threaten to change the character of Red Square, a UNESCO-protected site, it also endangers the nearby onion domes of Russia's most famous cathedral, St Basil's. Even Stalin, who revelled in destroying many of the country's churches, did not have the nerve to destroy it...

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 2:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

France denies asylum to Habyarimana widow, blaming her for genocide role

Source: AP (2-15-07)

PARIS -- France rejected an asylum appeal from the widow of late Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana on Thursday, saying she was at the heart of the regime responsible for her country's 1994 genocide.

The French refugee agency originally rejected Agathe Habyarimana's request on Jan 4. The case went before the Appeals Commission for Refugees, which denied her appeal Thursday.

The decision came nearly three months after Rwanda cut off diplomatic relations with Paris over a French probe into Juvenal Habyarimana's mysterious assassination. The downing of his plane in 1994 sparked the slaughter of more than half a million people in less than 100 days.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 2:29 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Anger at France over role in 1994 genocide drives Rwanda into Commonwealth

Source: Times (of London) (2-16-07)

Paul Kagame, the Rwandan President, says that his country will cement its bitter divorce from France and the French-speaking world, which he holds responsible for the 1994 slaughter of up to one million of his countrymen, by joining the Commonwealth later year. “There are many benefits for us in joining the Commonwealth — cultural, economic, political,” he told The Times. Mr Kagame has been invited to attend the next Commonwealth summit as an observer. “I hope they will then approve our membership. I am looking forward to it.” Mr Kagame, a lanky former guerrilla fighter with an austere manner, rarely shows any emotion. But the softly-spoken 50-year-old struggles to contain his anger when discussing France in Africa. “They are the ones who armed and trained the militias . . . the evidence is everywhere. They continued to do so even after the genocide started,” he said. The bitter relations between the two countries came to a head in November when a French judge accused Mr Kagame and several of his top aides of shooting down the aircraft carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, the former President — the incident that triggered the 100-day massacre of mainly Rwandan Tutsis and of moderate Hutus opposed to his regime...

Related Links

Video: Times interview with Rwanda President Kagame

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 2:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Missed the millennium? Catch it Sept. 12 in Ethiopia

Source: Reuters (2-13-07)

ADDIS ABABA -- The countdown has started on a flickering billboard high above a roundabout in Ethiopia's capital, blinking out recently in red and gold letters: only 209 days, 15 hours, 22 minutes and 22 seconds to the Millennium...

A variation on the archaic Julian calendar -- which started disappearing from the West in the 16th century -- means Ethiopia will not enter the year 2000 until September 12 this year.

"When everyone else celebrated their millennium, they said all sorts of things were going to happen, but nothing happened," Addis Ababa-based film director Tatek Tadesse said.

"Now all the prophecies they made about 2000 will happen this time round on the true Millennium. It will be a new age for Ethiopia," said Tatek who is putting the final touches to a film inspired by the historic event.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 10:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

11 Presidential libraries join forces on website

Source: AP (2-15-07)

AUSTIN, Tex. -- On Aug. 4, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson had a busy day juggling his civil rights initiative, a growing crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin and the discovery of the bodies of three missing civil rights workers in Mississippi.

He also got a call from the first lady with a gentle reminder about dinner and a quick "I love you."

Under a new Web-based archive project launched Thursday, audio and visual records of Johnson's day are just a mouse click away for anyone who wants to dig into the president's life and actions in office.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum is leading a collaborative effort with the other 11 presidential libraries and the University of Texas to create http://www.presidentialtimeline.org, to put records from each library on the Web for easy access.

It features records related to significant events and issues faced by 12 presidents, from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton.

Materials include audio and video clips, photos and documents, including diaries, some of which have been available only to scholars.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 10:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Greek archaeologists discover unknown theater near Athens

Source: AP (2-16-07)

ATHENS -- Sections of an ancient Greek theater were discovered on Thursday during construction work in an Athens suburb, archaeologists said.

Until now, only two such buildings were known in the ancient city where western theater originated more than 2,500 years ago.

Fifteen rows of concentric stone seats have been located so far in the northwestern suburb of Menidi, according to Vivi Vassilopoulou, Greece's general director of antiquities.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

At U.S. hearing, WWII sex slaves spurn Japan apologies

Source: Reuters (2-15-07)

WASHINGTON -- Three women who were forced into sexual servitude by Japan in World War II on Thursday told the U.S. Congress harrowing tales of abuse and said they rejected Japanese official apologies as an insult.

The now elderly "comfort women" -- a Japanese euphemism for the estimated 200,000 mostly Asian women forced to provide sex for Japan's soldiers -- testified in a debate on a House of Representatives resolution calling on Japan to apologize for that practice.

The women, two South Koreans and a Dutch-born Australian, said Tokyo's efforts to atone for their ordeal were insufficient because official apologies were not accompanied by offers of government compensation...

Jan Ruff O'Herne, 84, who was snatched by Japanese officers from a sugar plantation in 1942 in Indonesia...said she had forgiven the Japanese but rejected a payment from Tokyo's Asian Women's Fund in 1995 as "an insult to comfort women" because the money was from private donations -- a formula that she felt skirted Japanese state responsibility...

Japan in 1993 acknowledged a state role in the wartime brothel program and later issued apologies and set up the Asian Women's Fund. About 285 of the women who accepted payments of about $20,000 from that fund received personal apologies from Japan's prime minister.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mashpee Wampanoag, tribe at 1st Thanksgiving, is recognized

Source: AP (2-15-07)

MASHPEE, Mass. - The tribe that shared in the first Thanksgiving celebration received federal recognition Thursday as a sovereign American Indian nation, 32 years after it began its quest.

The ancestors of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe were at the area where Plymouth was founded long before the Pilgrims arrived, but their population was nearly wiped out by war and disease.

The roughly 1,500 members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe learned last March that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had given their bid preliminary approval. Elders and other members gathered Thursday at their tribal seat in anticipation of the bureau's phone call announcing the latest decision...

In September, Mashpee town officials endorsed the request after the tribe agreed not to build a casino on Cape Cod or try to use the courts to take over private land. The tribe has been open about its desire to build a casino outside tribal lands, if Massachusetts alters its laws to permit it.

After the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, members of the Mashpee tribe dined with the English settlers at the first Thanksgiving. The harmony, though, gave way to a brief period of bloody war.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 10:33 PM | Comments (1) | Top

El Salvador still seeks children who disappeared in 1980-92 war

Source: Prensa Latina (Havana, Cuba) (2-15-07)

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- The more than 460 minors who disappeared in the 12-year combat between the guerrillas and the Army during the Salvadorian Civil War are searched for by the humanitarian organization Pro-Search, at the request of the relatives. "We still have an unresolved matter with the families of those boys and girls who disappeared during the 1980-1992 armed conflict, assured Ester Alvarenga, general director of Pro-Search. The director pointed out that 323 of the 787 missing children registered by the organization have been found, noting Pro-Search does not have support in this task from State institutions. Of the children located, 150 were living with adoptive families in El Salvador, 130 with adoptive families abroad, and it is believed that 43 died. According to official sources, Honduras, United States, Italy, France, Belgium and Holland are some of the countries where these now young men and women live.

Related Links

DNA Matching Reunites Families Separated for Decades from War (PBS News Hour, with audio link

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 9:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Yale Portrait Demeaning to Blacks Coming Down

Source: http://www.courant.com (2-8-07)

After years of complaints, Yale University is taking down a painting of Elihu Yale that shows the wealthy merchant being waited on by a black man with a silver collar around his neck - an unmistakable symbol of bondage.

Elihu Yale apparently did not own slaves but critics over the years have objected to the painting's racist overtones and the significant place it is displayed at the university named for him. The portrait hangs over an ornate fireplace in the Corporation Room in Woodbridge Hall, meeting place for the university's board of trustees.

The flap over the painting comes as some of the nation's oldest, most prestigious colleges confront a shameful side of their past. Important founding figures at Yale, Brown and other schools had ties to the slave trade, as did many of America's founding fathers. In 2001, several graduate students at Yale revealed that a majority of Yale's dorms were named after prominent people who owned slaves or at one time expressed pro-slavery views, including U.S. Vice President John Calhoun and inventor Samuel Morse.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How Belfast was linked to slave trade

Source: BBC News (2-15-07)

Peter Hain has apologised for Northern Ireland's involvement in the slave trade, or as it was back then, simply Ireland.

While there was opposition to slavery across the island there were also men who made fortunes out of the exploitation of slaves.

Part of Belfast's commercial and industrial advances of the time were linked to trade with the slave economies of the West Indies.

Waddell Cunningham, founding president of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce and first president of the Harbour Board, numbered among those who made fortunes from slavery and tried to set up a slave company in Belfast...

Historian Eamon Phoenix said Belfast had less to apologise for than ports like Liverpool or Bristol...

"There was a very, very strong pro-abolition and anti-slavery movement in Belfast which chimed with the kind of reception of the French revolution in the city in the 1780s 1790s associated with the rise of the United Irishmen," he said.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 7:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkey to inspect Jerusalem Temple Mount excavation

Source: BBC News (2-15-07)

Turkey is to send an inspection team to survey excavation work being carried out near the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem...

The work on an ancient mound near Jerusalem's holiest site has caused widespread anger in the Muslim world.

Israel is now showing the work live on the internet in a bid to calm Muslim fears the site is being damaged...<http://www.antiquities.org.il/home_eng.asp>;

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Israeli leader, Ehud Olmert, had showed him photographs of the construction, "but they have failed to convince me 100%".

"I proposed to send a technical team to inspect on site the work that is being done and he (Olmert) has agreed," he told a press conference.

Mr Olmert welcomed the move, saying Israel had nothing to hide. "We will not touch any place that is holy to both Christians and Muslims," he said.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 7:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Northern Ireland leader in row over slavery apology

Source: ireland.com (2-15-07)

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain has been caught up in a political storm today over an apology he made in the United States about the slave trade.

He appeared to apologise in a BBC Wales television interview for Northern Ireland and Wales's role in the slave trade.

Mr Hain, who addressed an event on slavery, said: "I'm here on behalf of both Northern Ireland and Wales to say we have had a part to play in the slave trade.

"We acknowledge that. We take responsibility for it and we now are going to try and at least say that historical legacy must be recognised and we are sorry for it," Mr Hain said.

The Northern Ireland Secretary's comments puzzled historians in the North, who insisted that there was no sympathy for slavery in Belfast.

Democratic Unionist MP Sammy Wilson said: "I think a lot of people would love Peter Hain to apologise for the things he has done while he has been in charge of the Northern Ireland Office rather than for him to delve into the past and apologise for things we had no responsibility nor sympathy for," he said.

"If you look at slavery, Belfast and the people of Belfast were at the cutting edge of enlightened attitudes, and there was no association between Northern Ireland and the slave trade."

The Northern Ireland Office insisted Mr Hain had praised Belfast's stance against slavery in the speech he made in New York to the event organised by the Welsh Office.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Body of U.S. airman lost in WWII returned from New Guinea jungle

Source: UPI (2-15-07)

SAN ANTONIO, Tex. -- The body of U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Dudley Ives is set to return to his Texas home after being lost in New Guinea nearly 63 years ago.

The Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times reported that since Ives' plane was downed by a massive storm on April 16, 1944, the airman's body was lost until plane wreckage was found in 2002.

Among the wreckage discovered in the jungles of Papua, New Guinea, authorities found 10 bodies and using DNA from relatives of Ives, eventually determined he was among them.

"It will be a very happy day," Rodney Ives, the airman's son, said of the body's return. "Just that his bones are out of the jungle in New Guinea and coming back to Ingleside."

The paper said that while the airman was born in Rockport, Texas, he resided in the nearby city of Ingleside with his family before joining the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Korean Americans Protest Inclusion of Controversial Novel

Source: Aruna Lee in New America Media (2-14-07)

Editors Note: The addition onto class reading lists of a novel written by a Japanese American depicting her experiences in wartime Korea has led to a bitter dispute between supporters of the novel and the Korean American community, who say their history being distorted. Aruna Lee is a writer for New America Media.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Korean American parents in Los Angeles, New York and Boston are protesting the addition of a novel in school reading lists that they say inaccurately depicts Koreans as egregious wartime abusers. Many say their children are being forced to learn a distorted version of history.

"So Far from the Bamboo Grove" by Yoko Kawashima Watkins is a fictionalized autobiography based on Watkins' experiences. It tells the story of the flight of Japanese families from Korea after World War II and the many atrocities they suffered at the hands of Koreans.

A seventh-grade student at Westchester Country Day School in New York, Bo Un Heo is one of several students who refused to attend class while the novel remained on the school's reading list. "I wasn't nervous about missing class because I knew it was the right thing to do," Heo said. Parents charge that the novel is not only historically inaccurate, but that it also fails to address the decades of abuse Koreans suffered at the hands of Japanese colonial administrators.

One example they point to is the fact that no mention is made in Watkins' novel of the many Korean women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. The issue remains a major point of controversy between the neighboring countries. Survivors of Japanese abuse, so called "comfort women," still stage weekly protests in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

In the novel, Watkins instead writes about Japanese women who were raped by Koreans and other atrocities following the surrender of Japan to Allied forces.

Koreans in the United States and in Korea have challenged the authenticity of these and other accounts in the novel, however, arguing that the rape of Japanese women by Koreans could never have occurred as the Japanese military presence remained throughout the country until well after American and Russian forces arrived in the area. They also contend that Watkins' accounts of U.S.-led bombing in Korea never occurred during the period covered in the novel, and, for example, her descriptions of removing the uniform of a dead Communist soldier are false since the Communist army did not exist until 1948, years after the events in Watkins' tale....

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Release of Nazi concentration camp files awaits panel's OK

Source: AP (2-15-07)

AMSTERDAM -- Concentration camp and incarceration records would be the first Nazi documents released under a just-completed plan to make millions of files stored in Germany accessible to Holocaust researchers, the archive director said Thursday.

The 11 nations overseeing the huge archive must still ratify the plan approved by technical experts at a three-day meeting in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The plan is a critical step toward opening files maintained by the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Holocaust survivors and researchers have waited decades to see information buried in the gray metal cabinets and shelves stored in six nondescript buildings in the small German spa town. Many of the documents are yellowed and fragile.

Among the records meticulously kept by the Nazis are transport documents and death lists, and notes on concentration camp inmates ranging from their hereditary diseases to the number of lice plucked from their heads.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

London to site bombing victims memorial in Hyde Park

Source: AP (2-15-07)

LONDON -- A permanent memorial to the victims of the 2005 bombings of three London subway trains and a bus will be built in Hyde Park, the government said Thursday.

The 350-acre park -- already home to a memorial to Princess Diana -- had been chosen because of its "prominence, history and central London location," said Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell.

Four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters and wounded 700 during the morning rush hour on July 7, 2005.

The government had initially planned to build a monument to mark the attacks at Tavistock Square -- where one of the blasts ripped apart a double-decker bus, killing 13 passengers.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush Offers a Rare Look at Relations With Father

Source: NYT (2-14-07)

It was a moment of public sentimentality that seemed almost un-Bush-like.

Speaking on C-Span on Monday, President Bush said of his father, “I am actually more concerned about him than I have ever been in my life, because he’s paying too much attention to the news.”

Mr. Bush continued: “I understand how difficult it is for a person who loves somebody to see them out in the political process and to kind of endure the criticism. My answer to him is, ‘Look, don’t pay attention to it. I’m doing fine.’ ”

His comments were a rare window into a complicated father-son relationship that has been a source of endless fascination in Washington and promises to fascinate future historians no less.

Mr. Bush has often spoken with pride of his father, and even made the case to invade Iraq in 2002 by once saying of Saddam Hussein, “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.” Yet Mr. Bush, who is more frequently likened to his strong-willed mother than his more sentimental father, has at times seemed to run his administration based on what he and his aides view as his father’s mistakes....

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust denier gets prison in Germany

Source: AP (2-15-07)

MANNHEIM, Germany -- A far-right activist was convicted of incitement and sentenced to the maximum five years in prison Thursday for anti-Semitic activities, including contributing to a Web site dedicated to Holocaust denial.

Ernst Zundel was deported to his native Germany from Canada in 2005 and has also lived in Tennessee. He and his supporters have argued that he is a peaceful campaigner denied his right to free speech.

Zundel, 67, showed no emotion when Judge Ulrich Meinerzhagen read the verdict, only nodding occasionally.

His attorney, Ludwig Bock, said he would appeal.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Greek claim over 1943 massacre hits snag in court

Source: AP (2-15-07)

BRUSSELS -- A group of Greeks seeking compensation from Germany for a Nazi massacre in 1943 suffered a setback Thursday when the European Union's high court said the claim was not covered by an EU convention on civil and commercial law.

Irini Lechouritou and other descendants of victims of the World War II atrocity have been fighting since 1995 in Greek courts to secure compensation from Germany for financial loss, nonmaterial damage and mental anguish.

An earlier bid was rejected on the grounds that such cases could not be brought against a sovereign state.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study shows first peck of peppers picked 6,100 years ago

Source: Reuters (2-15-07)

CALGARY, Alberta -- Here's a hot, new discovery: archaeologists have traced what they believe is evidence of the first home-grown chili peppers, used in South America 6,100 years ago.

And it was people in tropical, lowland areas of what is now western Ecuador who first spiced up their cuisine, not those from higher, drier Mexico and Peru as was previously assumed, said Scott Raymond, a University of Calgary archaeologist.

His team, led by Linda Perry, researcher with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, made the finding by analyzing starch microfossils from grinding stones and charred ceramic cookware recovered from seven sites in the Americas. Their report is published in the journal Science.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Estonian lawmakers vote to remove Soviet memorial but president will veto

Source: AP (2-15-07)

TALLINN, Estonia -- Estonian lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill calling for the removal of a disputed Soviet war memorial, ignoring warnings from Moscow, but the president said he would veto the measure.

In a 46-44 vote, lawmakers in the 101-member assembly approved the Law on Forbidden Structures, which prohibits the public display of monuments that glorify the five-decade Soviet occupation of Estonia. Eleven lawmakers were absent or abstained.

The measure was specifically aimed at the Bronze Soldier, a World War II memorial in downtown Tallinn that has become a rallying point for Estonia's ethnic Russians, who make up about one-third of the Baltic country's 1.3 million residents.

Plans to remove the two-meter (six-foot) statue and a nearby war grave have infuriated officials in Russia, who accuse Estonia and neighboring Latvia of discriminating against Russian-speakers.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 4:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German Holocaust Denial Case Proceeds

Source: Deutsche Welle World (1-26-07)

As one of the most famous Holocaust deniers goes on trial in Germany, the EU takes steps to criminalize denying the Shoah.

German prosecutors in Mannheim demanded a five-year jail sentence Friday for one of the most high-profile figures in the Holocaust denial movement, Ernst Zündel, in closing arguments at his trial.

Zündel, a 67-year-old German citizen, stands accused of inciting racial hatred for disputing the historical fact that Nazi Germany systematically slaughtered six million European Jews during World War II.

German authorities say Zündel operated a website from Canada on which he expressed anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi views and presented "revisionist" history. He left Germany for Canada at the age of 19 but was deported in March 2005 on a German arrest warrant.

Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany and if convicted, Zündel faces up to five years in jail.

The trial began almost a year ago but has run into several legal hurdles. It follows a high-profile case in which controversial British historian David Irving spent 13 months in jail in Austria for questioning the Holocaust before being released last month.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 3:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

WWII sex slaves to testify against Japan

Source: AP (2-15-07)

Three women who say they endured rape and torture at the hands of Japanese soldiers during World War II and a lifetime of mental and physical scars are asking that U.S. lawmakers urge the Japanese to apologize.

The two Koreans and a former Dutch colonist were among as many as 200,000 "comfort women" who historians say were forced to have sex with millions of Japanese soldiers during the war. Japan objects to a proposed congressional resolution calling for an apology, and the measure has led to unease in an otherwise strong U.S.-Japanese relationship.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Campaign underway to honor Britain's first female doctor

Source: Scotsman (2-15-07)

A campaign to honour Britain's first woman doctor, who was forced to pretend to be a man for 53 years in order to practise medicine, has been launched in the Capital. Miranda Stewart had to don the disguise in the early 1800s to gain entry to the exclusively male world of Edinburgh University.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 11:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Nobelist Pamuk, fearing Turkish nationalists, flees to U.S.

Source: UPI (2-14-07)

ISTANBUL -- Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk reportedly is in exile in the United States, living in fear for his life.

Istanbul columnist Fatih Altayli told The Telegraph he heard that "Pamuk recently withdrew $400,000 from his bank account and said he would leave Turkey and would not be returning to his country any time soon."

After the killing of Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist, last month, Pamuk, 54, told others that he fears for his own safety. The writer angered Turkish nationalists by acknowledging that under the Ottoman Empire Turks triggered the deaths of 1 million Armenians a century ago.

With its candidacy to join the European Union already in trouble because of its Islamic government and the treatment of its Kurdish minority, Turkey's bid would be hindered more if its most prominent writer decided he was no longer safe in his homeland, the newspaper said.

In meetings with Western leaders, Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, promised reform of an ambiguous law allowing nationalists to demand punishment for those they accuse of insulting the Turkish nation.

Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 1:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

U.S. Mint introduces new Presidential dollar coins

Source: AP (2-14-07)

WASHINGTON -- George Washington's birthday celebration will have a golden tinge this year. Millions of new gold-colored dollar coins bearing the first president's likeness are being introduced in time for the festivities.

U.S. Mint officials are hoping they have overcome the problems that doomed the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollars. Coin experts are skeptical.

The new $1 coins, the first in a series featuring four presidents a year, were to go into circulation on Thursday, just before next week's President's Day celebrations.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 10:35 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Historical figures called upon in Iraq debate

Source: AP (2-14-07)

WASHINGTON -- On one side: Abe Lincoln, Davy Crockett, poet Robert Frost. On the other: Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Martin Luther King Jr.

The House debate on the Iraq war has a ghostly quality as lawmakers tap the wisdom of long-dead men to press their case. No one knows what any of them would have thought about this war. But their thoughts about grand events of their time are coming in handy now.

In perhaps the oddest use of history, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., imagined Davy Crockett, his back against the wall at the Alamo, getting a message on his Blackberry from Congress saying ``we support you'' but won't be sending any reinforcements.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 7:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Remaking a speculative piece of history

Source: Washington Post (2-15-07)

Two things we know for sure about the desk: It is an exact replica of the one on which Abraham Lincoln is believed to have drafted the Emancipation Proclamation.

And it was not in the White House at the time, but in the president's cherished cottage retreat three miles away, where Lincoln penned the document freeing the slaves.

Are historians certain he committed his seminal prose to paper at said desk? No.

Nonetheless, the meticulous replica goes on display today for four days at the National Trust for Historic Preservation headquarters near Dupont Circle. Commissioned by the trust's Save America's Treasures program, it will go to the restored cottage at the President Lincoln & Soldiers Home National Monument off North Capitol Street when the retreat reopens. The original is now in the White House Lincoln Bedroom.

The $22,000 reproduction of black walnut, poplar and bird's-eye maple was built by woodcarvers Rob McCullough and Fred Hoover of Christiana, Pa. There are no plans to reproduce it commercially.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 6:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New site picked for American Revolution museum

Source: AP (2-14-07)

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. -- A long-planned Revolutionary War museum will be built on private land after years of arguing with the U.S. government over the previous site, museum organizers said Wednesday...

The new site is within the boundaries of Valley Forge National Historical Park, the place where George Washington's troops waited out the winter in 1777.

The museum is buying about 130 acres (52 hectares) of land for $7.1 million and hopes to begin construction on the $150 million museum in the next 18 months, according to Thomas M. Daly, the nonprofit group's president and CEO...

Daly said the museum could be ready by late 2010 or early 2011.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 6:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Now at Emory, Rushdie gets annual reminder of Iran's fatwa

Source: AP (2-14-07)

Author Salman Rushdie started a five-year appointment with the Emory University faculty on Tuesday, one day before the 18th anniversary of the death threat that catapulted him into worldwide fame.

Rushdie says he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him...

Rushdie was forced into hiding for a decade after the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a 1989 fatwa, or opinion on Islamic law, ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because the book allegedly insulted Islam.

In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would not support but could not rescind the fatwa. But the yearly notes continue. "It's reached the point where it's a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat," Rushdie said.

The 59-year-old Rushdie is also donating his archive to the university, including a diary of his decade in hiding and two early, unpublished novels.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 6:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mystery of Madonna and child painting partially solved

Source: Live Science (2-13-07)

Chemists have solved a 20-year mystery surrounding the date of a Madonna and Child painting, the "de Brecy Tondo," painted by an as-yet unidentified artist...

Howell Edwards, a specialist in Raman spectroscopy at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, used laser-based technology to detect yellow pigments and glue typical of the Renaissance period, which dates the painting between the 14th and 16th centuries...

During the past 24 years, 8 laboratories around the world have also scientifically examined the "Tondo" to try and determine when it was painted and by whom. In 2003, researchers in Belgium discovered that the painting appears to be the first in which an artist used a medieval blue dye called turnsole...

Several art historians have assumed that the similarities between the "Sistine Madonna" and the "Tondo" show that Raphael painted both artworks. Although the artist of the "Tondo" still cannot be verified, the scientific evidence described by Edwards and Benoy help place the painting within Raphael's reach.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 4:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Archaeologist at Mayan site had to rely on looters' trenching

Source: USA Today (2-11-07)

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, goes the old saw. But when you are an archeologist and life gives you looters, often all you can do is make lamentations. Looting afflicts archaeological sites worldwide, from the wide-spread plundering of ancient Sumerian sites in Iraq, to pot-hunters in the American Southwest, to the looting of Inca and other sites in the Peruvian Andes.

However, a few archaeologists have figured out a way to put the looters to work for them, as archaeologist Lisa Lucero of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces demonstrated in a recent talk about her team's study of the ancient Maya ceremonial center at Yalbac in Belize...

At Yalbac, Lucero and her colleagues with the Valley of Peace Archaeology Project are faced with unraveling the riddle of three sets of pyramids and other structures surrounding three broad plazas in central Belize, all buried under dirt, vegetation and decay at the site.

Belize antiquities officials want more information about the archaeological site, but also want as few excavations as possible to limit damage at Yalbac. "So I only have looter's trenches, and I'd rather stick with that than destroy more temples," Lucero says.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dutch team finds 'heretic Pharaoh' era tomb in Egypt

Source: AFP (2-14-07)

CAIRO -- Dutch archaeologists have discovered a tomb in the Saqqara necropolis from the time of Egypt's monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaton some 3,300 years ago, the Supreme Council of Antiquities has said.

The discovery shows that notables contemporary with Akhenaton continued to be buried in Saqqara, just outside the modern day capital of Cairo, indicating the enduring importance of old religious orthodoxy under "the heretic pharaoh"...

The tomb, which bears the royal cartouche for "Ptah Am Waya" is covered with wall paintings done in the realistic style of the period when classic artistic conventions were abandoned.

The wall paintings include those of "Ptah" going to the afterlife as well scenes of daily life, such as monkeys eating dates.

The Dutch team has been working in Saqqara since the 1990s, and focuses on New Kingdom tombs, particularly those from Akhenaton. Previously they discovered the tomb of the Akhenaton-era priest Meri Neet.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 4:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Anne Frank's father tried to get family to U.S.

Source: AP (2-14-07)

NEW YORK -- Anne Frank's father tried to arrange U.S. visas for his family before they went into hiding, but his efforts were hampered when Allied and Axis countries tightened immigration policies, according to papers released Wednesday.

Otto Frank also sent desperate letters to friends and family in the U.S. pleading for help with immigration costs as the family tried to escape the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.

"I would not ask if conditions here would not force me to do all I can in time to be able to avoid worse," Otto Frank wrote to his college friend Nathan Straus in April 1941. "It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance."

The letters, along with documents and records from various agencies that helped people immigrate from Europe, were released by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, a New York-based institution that focuses on the history and culture of Eastern European Jews. The group discovered the file among 100,000 other Holocaust-related documents about a year and a half ago.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 4:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

India to Fulbright scholars: Don't Come

Source: Opinion column by Shubhajit Roy in Indianexpress.com (2-11-07)

Are you an American scholar? You aren’t welcome in India.

That’s the signal from the UPA to Fulbright scholars in the US: delaying their visas for weeks, months; rejecting their research proposals without any reason. Even asking them to change their subject. This when Indo-US equation couldn’t have been better.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 1:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Italy and Croatia reopen old WWII wounds

Source: Guardian (2-13-07)

A furious row was raging across the Adriatic today over the Second World War after the presidents of Croatia and Italy traded accusations of racism and barbarism.

Italian diplomats called off visits to Zagreb and summoned the Croatian ambassador in Rome for a stiff talking-to; and the Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi, attacked Croatia after its president, Stipe Mesic, accused his Italian counterpart of racism and trying to rewrite history.

Croatia and Slovenia were stunned by a weekend speech by Italy's president, Giorgio Napoletano, devoted to the suffering of Italians in former Yugoslavia towards the end of the second world war.

Describing the pogroms of Italians by Yugoslav communist partisans as "the barbarism of the century", "ethnic cleansing" and a campaign of annexation of Italian territory fuelled by "Slav bloodthirsty hatred and rage", Mr Napoletano stirred a storm of controversy and appeared to raise questions about Croatia's bid to join the European Union.

Mr Prodi and his foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema waded into the row yesterday, with Italian officials implying that while Italy had faced up to its fascist past, Croatia had yet to do so.

"We don't need any lessons in fascism from Italy," quipped a Croatian politician after Mr Mesic said the Italian statesman's speech smacked of "open racism, historical revisionism, and political revanchism".

The dispute has to do with the pogroms and population shifts enforced at the end of the second world war all across central Europe, but it also touches on sensitive current property claims and compensation demands...

Similar rows are currently simmering between Germany and Poland since a German lobby has gone to the European court to reclaim property lost at the end of the war...

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 3:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Coin shows the ugly truth about Cleopatra

Source: BBC News (2-14-07)

Antony and Cleopatra, one of history's most romantic couples, were not the great beauties that Hollywood would have us believe, academics have said.

A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen, famously portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor, had a pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose. Her Roman lover, played by Richard Burton, had bulging eyes, thick neck and a hook nose.

The tiny coin was studied by experts at Newcastle University. [See BBC webpage for photo.]

The size of a modern 5p piece, the artefact from 32BC was in a collection belonging to the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle, which is being researched in preparation for the opening of a new Great North Museum...

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 3:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Goya's statue in Bordeaux has a head, anyway

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-13-07)

by Michael Johnson

BORDEAUX -- On daily walks through one of the big Bordeaux parks, le Jardin public, I kept noticing a large, isolated statue of a man in a frock coat grasping a top hat and frowning. One day I took a closer look and discovered that the bronze statue with the pained expression was of the aging, tormented painter Francisco Goya, the "Spanish Rembrandt" and a genius Bordeaux likes to claim as its own.

Now, at the request of Goya's admirers, the great statue — a gift from the city of Madrid — is about to be hosed down and scrubbed, and then moved from this isolated spot. By this summer, the statue will be given the prominence the great artist deserves, standing in a central square overlooking the church of Notre Dame, where Bordeaux's finest are baptized, married and honored at funerals. Goya's own funeral was held there in 1828.

Goya came to Bordeaux at the age of 78 to escape Spanish oppression and to join the thriving artistic community in what was then one of Europe's richest cities. Where there was wealth there were commissions for portraits, and Goya was a proven master.

Bordeaux still has a large Spanish population that congregates at Casa de Goya, the painter's old Bordeaux address.

Superstitious locals are wondering, however, if the statue of Goya will have a head when it is unveiled at its new location. Goya died just four years after settling here and was buried in a local cemetery. When his remains were exhumed for return to Madrid 60 years later, his head was missing...

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 3:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Barbados: George Washington slept here

Source: AP (2-12-07)

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados -- The newly renovated Barbados home where George Washington lived as a young man in 1751 has attracted hundreds of visitors from the United States and Britain only weeks after opening, officials said.

The George Washington House and Museum, completed in mid-January after an 8-year restoration project costing nearly $3.5 million, honors the first U.S. president and documents his time in the Caribbean.

The site in the Garrison Historic district, just outside Bridgetown, includes a yellow home in the Caribbean Georgian style with green shutters and louvered windows, stables, a bath house and a windmill.

Washington came to Barbados — the only foreign country he ever visited — at age 19 with his older half-brother Lawrence...During his two-month stay, Washington rode around the island on horseback, saw his first fireworks shows and play and met the governor and generals. He also contracted smallpox, making him immune to the disease when it later claimed lives during the American war for independence.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 2:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Versailles' Hall of Mirrors renovated

Source: AP (2-14-07)

VERSAILLES -- At last, the Hall of Mirrors is once again fit for a king.

Workers at the Chateau of Versailles are putting the finishing touches on a 3-year, $15.6 million renovation of the gilded gallery of 357 mirrors where King Louis XIV entertained — and intimidated — diplomats and courtiers.

The hall's grand reopening will likely come sometime in June.

...The vaulted ceiling is especially astonishing.
Before the renovation, Charles Le Brun's overhead paintings — marking important moments in the Sun King's reign — were dark and faded, and visitors rarely looked up.

Skies that were supposed to be sunny blue were a ghoulish green. Details were lost, covered over by grime, darkened varnish and overzealous restorations of the past. Now, a pair of chubby children playing cards is visible again. In another panel, restorers revived a strand of pearls in a treasure chest, a detail that was masked over in the 19th century.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 2:24 AM | Comments (0) | Top

New women's museum at home of Susan B. Anthony

Source: Press Release -- Helise Flickstein (2-13-07)

Freddie Mac Bank has donated the childhood home of Susan B. Anthony to New York State Parks Department for $1. Helise Flickstein, mother of five children, is the sole person who convinced the bank to donate the house has plans to make it into a museum. She had also gotten the house on the New York State & National Historic Register! She has the knowledge of five years of research behind her in regards to the Anthonys & the Stantons. Coline Jenkins, the great great grand daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the woman who held the first women's rights convention in 1848, has agreed to donate in writing 3,000 reproductions of women's suffrage to adorn the walls. Helise’s mother contacted Assemblyman Steven Englebright to help with the acquisition of the house and finalized the acquisition to the New York State Parks Department with Assemblyman Roy McDonald.

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 1:07 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Argentina seeks Isabel Peron extradition

Source: AP (2-13-07)

BUENOS AIRES -- Argentina said Tuesday it has sent Spain an extradition request for former President Isabel Peron, who is wanted for questioning about a disappearance that occurred when death squads terrorized the country during her rule.

The Foreign Ministry said extradition papers were sent at the request of Federal Judge Raul Acosta in Mendoza, who last month ordered Isabel Peron detained for questioning about the February 1976 disappearance of leftist Hector Aldo Fagetti Gallego.

The third wife of three-time president Juan Domingo Peron, Isabel Peron ruled Argentina after the strongman's death for 20 chaotic months until a March 1976 coup...

Isabel Peron also is being investigated by a federal judge in Buenos Aires who said he is focusing on death squad activity predating the 1976 coup...

Prosecutors say at least 1,500 people were killed or went missing as a result of the Argentine Anti-communist Alliance, or "Triple A," death squad during Isabel Peron's rule, what some called the earliest origins of the dirty war.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 10:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Norway to bury sunken German WWII sub and its toxic cargo

Source: AP (2-13-07)

OSLO -- A German submarine that was sunk off Norway at the end of World War II will be buried in special sand to protect the coastline from its cargo of toxic mercury, the government announced Tuesday.

The U-864 submarine, which was found by the Royal Norwegian Navy in March 2003, is believed to have about 70 tons of mercury on board.

Despite demands from local villagers to remove the mercury, Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs Dag Terje Andersen said the government was following expert recommendations to instead bury the sub in sand and stone...

The U-864 had been headed for Japan when it was sunk Feb. 9, 1945 about 2 1/2 miles off the island of Fedje. The sub now lies under about 500 feet of water.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK: more history but fewer students

Source: Guardian/Mortar Board (blog) (2-13-07)

First modern foreign languages, now history. Just as ministers are about to embark on a shake-up of the school curriculum to place more emphasis on "Britishness" in history lessons, more bad news comes their way.

Seven out of 10 schoolchildren have given up studying history by the time they are 14, according to Paul Armitage, history adviser for the education standards watchdog Ofsted, who spoke at a conference yesterday.

Mr Armitage gave the example of seven and eight-year-old children who were given three topics to study in the school year: the Romans, the second world war and ancient Egypt. They went from one to another, leaving them with little understanding of the chronology of historical events.

History is not alone. Geography -- the subject ministers think will be crucial in teaching pupils about climate change -- is also losing popularity. The number of 14 to 16-year-olds studying the subject for their GCSE fell by 3,287 last year...

But with losers come winners and while history, geography and modern languages are haemorrhaging pupils, media studies, psychology and religion are gaining popularity.

However this latest warning must be making ministers wonder if the history lessons on offer are relevant to youngsters and whether their proposed tweaks can keep teens from ditching the subject. --Alexandra L. Smith

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 10:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study accuses Belgium of Nazi collaboration

Source: AP (2-13-07)

BRUSSELS -- A government-backed report released Tuesday blamed Belgian authorities and the ruling elite for collaborating with the Nazi persecution of Jews during World War II.

Although Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has already recognized the level of collaboration, the report was the first time it had been presented in such detail.

"The Belgian authorities cooperated with the racial anti-Jewish policies during the occupation," and acted in a way "unworthy for a democracy," said the study.

The report documents how an influx of Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930s combined with a turn to the political right because of an economic crisis created an unsavory mix where anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism could rise.

Parliamentarians and Jewish representatives sat in silence as chief researcher Rudi Van Doorslaer read the conclusions of the report, "Submissive Belgium," for 50 minutes in the Senate.

"It presents a mirror of ourselves," said Senate chairwoman Anne-Marie Lizin, who condemned the "cowardliness of our administration" during the 1940-1944 occupation.

Some 50,000 Jews lived in Belgium in the 1930s and about half were exterminated in the Holocaust.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Preserving Uganda's history in a statue, African style

Source: Kampala (Uganda) Monitor (2-12-07)

KAMPALA, Uganda -- It is exactly one week since the historic unveiling of the [President's] Shs40 million shilling statue at Kabamba military barracks.

It depicts a youthful Popular Resistance Army (PRA) guerrilla leader, Yoweri Museveni [now president of Uganda], directing the attack on the armoury at the beginning of the five year 'bush war' between 1981 and 1986 against the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) government of the late Dr Apollo Milton Obote.

The world over statues, monuments, medallions, portraits on legal tender and naming of institutions, roads and buildings are ways in which communities preserve history, reward and motivate contributions to the development of society.

In Africa's case, these have always been sources of controversy to the extent that wherever there is regime change, predictably, the first action that characterises the new government is destruction of anything that brings memories of the deposed leaders.

In Uganda's case for instance the huge medallion that commemorated Obote as Uganda's first post independence premier and graced the entrance at the gates of The Parliamentary Buildings was brought down by Field Marshall Idi Amin Dada following the coup of 1971.

The life size statue of Amin erected by himself at Jaja Villas in Munyonyo was obliterated after he was deposed in 1979. The currency on which he had his portrait was replaced just as it happened in 1987 to the money that was adorned by the face of Dr Obote.

Opposition Forum for Democratic Change top official Maj. Rubaramira Ruranga, a veteran of the bush war predicted on a radio that at an appropriate time, Gen. Yoweri Museveni's statue "will also certainly be brought down like that of Saddam Hussein."

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 6:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tempelhof Airport, site of historic Berlin airlift, set to close in 2008

Source: AP (2-13-07)

BERLIN -- A German court threw out a bid Monday to prevent the closure of the capital's historic Tempelhof Airport, clearing the way for the one-time base of the Berlin airlift to close to passengers next year.

Thirteen companies that use the inner-city airport had sought to block its closure as part of plans to build a new airport hub on the edge of the capital...

Tempelhof opened in 1923 and was expanded under the Nazis into a huge horseshoe-shaped complex. Its massive terminal is one of the most prominent remaining examples of the era's architecture in Berlin.

After the Second World War left the city divided into east and west, Tempelhof became the hub of the nearly year-long U.S.-led Berlin airlift when the Soviets blockaded West Berlin in 1948.

The future of the Tempelhof site remains unclear...
Germany's BUND environment group on Monday suggested turning the grounds into a huge "Airlift Park."

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 6:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Value of a historic oak tree? at least $200,000

Source: KVUE-TV (Austin, Tex.) (2-13-07)

It appears efforts to move a giant historic live oak tree [in downtown Austin] over the weekend were successful.

The tree is estimated to weigh about 400,000 pounds and could be between 200 and 300 years old.

The tree used to sit on a hill at the corner of 9th Street and Neches. It was moved across the street to the property of the First Baptist Church...to make way for a new 10-story condominium project being built by a company called Noble Development Group.

The developer paid more than $200,000 for the move.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 6:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Archives wants Columbine records in Denver center

Source: Denver Post (2-13-07)

The National Archives and Records Administration has proposed that the depositions of the parents of the Columbine High School killers be kept at its Denver regional center and ideally be made public after 20 years.

The agency, weighing in on a legal debate over what to do with statements given by the parents in connection with various now-settled lawsuits, said that any materials from Columbine given to it would be considered to be of significant historical value and would be permanently preserved and never destroyed...

The National Archives said...that after receiving physical custody of court records the normal practice of its Denver center is to assume legal custody after 20 years. Then it normally gives the public full access to the records, it said. Should [U.S. District Judge Lewis] Babcock desire to seal the records for a longer period of time, the agency would abide by his wishes.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 6:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Social history: mummified cat finds home in museum

Source: UPI (2-13-07)

EDINBURGH -- Contractors renovating a building in Edinburgh, Scotland, were surprised to find a mummified cat believed about 180 years old under basement floorboards.

In fact, none of the workers would even touch the cat, which has distinct features and its paw resting on its face, The Scotsman reported Tuesday.

DX Network Services Manager Angus Philip said...he is donating his ancient -- and rather dead -- pet to the National Museum of Scotland.

The museum has two other mummified cats in its collection. Its curator told The Scotsman it was common in the 1830s to keep dead animals in buildings to "ward off evil spirits and bring good luck."

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 6:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Australia calls for British museum to return Aboriginal remains

Source: ABC-Radio Australia (2-14-07)

The Australian Government says it is commited to repatriating Aboriginal remains held in overseas collections.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has obtained a court injunction in Britain, preventing that country's Natural History Museum from carrying out scientific tests on the remains of 17 Aborigines, before they are returned to Australia.

The centre wants the federal government to help fund its continuing legal challenge.

The attorney-general Philip Ruddock says his office is still waiting on a formal funding request, but is committed to bringing back remains held by institutions like the British museum:

"We think they've had plenty of opportunities to do what they think might be required to get information from scientific research," he said. "They ought to just get on with the job and return the remains to Australia."

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 6:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Even as Rwanda moves on, it does not want to forget...'

Source: Public Radio International/The World (2-13-07)

[Transcript + audio] Jeb Sharp: The memorial at Murambi sits on a hilltop near the town of Gikongoro in the southwest. The site was supposed to be a technical college. The campus was still under construction when the genocide began. Thousands of Tutsis sought refuge in the empty buildings. They were slaughtered there. The bodies were dumped into mass graves.

The day I visit with my translator, the place is deserted. There are two guides who work at the memorial. They catch a ride up with us from the village below. A lone dog lies in the road near the entrance. It heaves itself up and lopes off into the grass. Rolling green farmland stretches out in every direction. All you can hear is the buzz of insects. One of the guides, Francois Rusanganwa, launches into his spiel.

Rusanganwa: "Many people, Tutsis, have been killed here, in 1994. They came here to find their protection because it was the plan of the genocide by the authorities told them to come here, to be protected."

Sharp: But it was really a ruse, according to Rusanganwa, to get the Tutsis to assemble in one place to be killed. Rusanganwa explains that a year after the massacre some of the bodies were exhumed and reburied. About a thousand were kept above ground for the memorial. I brace myself, knowing I'm about to see those remains...

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 5:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Last of Northern Ireland's watch towers removed

Source: Reuters (2-13-07)

DUBLIN -- Britain removed the last of its armoured watch towers in Northern Ireland on Tuesday in a significant symbolic step towards erasing the visible reminders of the province's 30-year conflict.

Improved security conditions following the 1997 cease-fire by the IRA have seen Britain drastically reduce its military presence in Northern Ireland.

It began dismantling the watch posts that dotted the countryside and towered over small towns and villages in 2000 and has pledged to end all military support for the Northern Ireland police force on July 31 this year.

The iron-clad, cube-shaped observation post, or sangar, removed by crane on Tuesday had stood 20 feet (6.5 metres) above the army-backed Crossmaglen police station in County Armagh...

"This is at the heart of what used to be called 'Bandit Country'," [army spokesman Mervyn] Wynne Jones said. "Times move on, it's tremendous."

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 5:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

For Valentine's Day: Italian archaeologists won't separate prehistoric couple

Source: VOA News (2-13-07)

Italian archaeologists say they will not separate the remains of stone age lovers, which they unearthed last week on the outskirts of the northern city of Mantua.

Archaeologists said Tuesday they would scoop out the tightly embraced male and female skeletons and keep them together. The couple was buried between 5,000- and-6,000 years ago. They are believed to have died young because their teeth were found intact.

The discovery during construction work has sparked theories about prehistoric love in Italy. The hugging skeletons were found not too far from Verona, the city where Shakespeare's fictional lovers Romeo and Juliet took their lives.

Archaeologists say there is no doubt the couple's pose reflects deep love, but caution that it is almost impossible to determine the exact nature of their relationship and the circumstances of their death.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 4:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

History entangled in the evolution debate in Kansas

Source: AP (2-13-07)

A debate over how evolution is taught in Kansas also has become a debate over what students should hear in science classes about the Nazis, forced sterilization and an infamous study of syphilis in black men.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mystery of Madonna and Child painting solved

Source: MSNBC (2-13-07)

Chemists have solved a 20-year mystery surrounding the date of a Madonna and Child painting, the "de Brecy Tondo," painted by an as-yet unidentified artist. However, a debate continues as to who painted the "de Brecy Tondo," which looks suspiciously similar to the "Sistine Madonna," painted by the renowned Italian Renaissance artist Raphael.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 12:45 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Experts to investigate mass grave in Turkey

Source: Pan Armenian Net (2-13-07)

Examination of mass graves discovered on October of 2006 in Turkish district of Nusaybin will be carried out by an international expedition. Swedish historian David Gaunt is sure that the graves belongs to 270 Armenians and Assyrians, who were killed by order of a Young Turks chieftain. Turkish authorities have not carried out any investigation, journalists were not allowed to approach the burial and obtain more information.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 12:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tracing Abraham's path to show region's common roots

Source: Christian Science Monitor (2-13-07)

Using a tiny global-positioning device to measure their location via satellite and a map superimposed on topographical images provided by Google Earth, Daniel Adamson and Mahmoud Twaissi are tracking the route that Abraham might have trod.

The ends, however, are as ancient as can be. The two researchers – one British, one Jordanian – are tracing the footsteps of the ancestral patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the hope that people today will rediscover the common roots of many generations past – and inspire coexistence and understanding in the present.

This is the making of the Abraham Path, a route that will start in Harran, Turkey – the place where many sources suggest Abraham heard "the call" from God – and will continue into Syria, down through Jordan, across the river into the West Bank, winding through both Israeli and Palestinian territory before ending in Hebron, or Al Khalil, described in the Book of Genesis as Abraham's burial place.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 9:55 AM | Comments (0) | Top

A year after attack, a Shiite treasure still lies in ruins

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-12-07)

SAMARRA, Iraq -- There is still no gold dome on the Mosque of the Golden Dome.

It has been a year, by the Muslim calendar, since an attack on one of the Shiites most sacred shrines here shattered this ancient mosque, ripping a hole to the heavens in its once glorious dome. Now, it is a hulking shell of its former self, gnarled and twisted metal snaking around the crumbling concrete structure. The blue and gold tiles that adorned the facade of the Al Askariya Shrine, covered with graceful Arabic script from the Koran, are in tatters, the broken pieces still on the ground in the empty courtyard.

Not a single brick moved since the attack on Feb. 22, 2006. There has been no rebuilding and no healing.

But the blast did not just destroy a building. More than any event since the American invasion in 2003, it set this country on its present course, unleashing a tide of sectarian bloodletting that has left tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and hundreds of thousands more displaced from their homes as the result of sectarian cleansing.

On Monday, the first anniversary of the attack by the Muslim calendar, bombings at two Baghdad markets, evidently targeting Shiites, killed at least 67 people.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 2:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Revealed: the fate of Idi Amin's hijack victim

Source: Independent (2-13-07)

The grisly truth about the disappearance of a British woman believed to have been murdered on the orders of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, has been revealed for the first time in secret papers released by the government.

Dora Bloch, a 74-year-old grandmother, was a passenger on an Air France plane from Athens to Paris when it was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and forced down at Entebbe airport, Uganda, in 1976.

During the hijack, Mrs Bloch was taken ill after choking on some food and released to be treated in a hospital in Kampala.

Days later, Israeli commandos stormed the airport, killing all the terrorists and destroying half of Amin's air force...

Now confidential cabinet papers released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the British High Commission in Kampala received a report from a Ugandan civilian that Mrs Bloch had been shot and her body dumped...

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 1:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush celebrates Black History Month

Source: AP (2-12-07)

WASHINGTON -- To honor black history, President Bush on Monday didn't spend much time looking back. He focused instead on people contributing today _ those who are seizing opportunities gained at great price, the president said. "Their stories," Bush said, "speak a lot louder and a lot clearer than I could."

Like the breakthrough by Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy, who this month became the first black coaches to take their teams to the Super Bowl. Or the work of astronauts Robert Curbeam and Joan Higgenbotham, whose helped rewire the International Space Station.
And then there's Tyrone Flowers, a once aspiring basketball star who was shot and paralyzed. Instead of seeking sympathy or revenge, Flowers became a lawyer and teamed with his wife to form a leadership program for at-risk children.

"That's what we're honoring today: ordinary citizens who do unbelievably fine things," Bush said in an East Room ceremony honoring Black History Month.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 1:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Answers sought in 1946 killing of Georgia black: was it because he voted?

Source: AP (2-12-07)

ALBANY, Ga. -- Two civil rights groups plan to ask federal officials to investigate the 60-year-old unsolved killing of a World War II veteran who was shot after becoming the first registered black voter in a rural Georgia county.

Maceo Snipes, who served most of his two-year Army hitch in the Pacific, was shot in the back by four white men in 1946 -- a day after the 37-year-old voted for the first time, relatives say. He collapsed in the doorway of his farm house in Taylor County, about 90 miles south of Atlanta.

State NAACP officials and the Prison & Jail Project, a prison advocacy and civil rights group, plan to ask the Taylor County Commission on Tuesday to support the probe before mailing their request to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales...

Snipes was shot on July 18, 1946, and died two days later. Fearful relatives buried him at night in an unmarked grave before some family members fled the county, relocating as far north as Ohio.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 1:12 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Maltese Falcon' stolen again in S.F.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (2-12-07)

It's been nearly 80 years since Sam Spade wandered the streets of San Francisco in search of the Maltese Falcon. Now, the statue is missing again.

John Konstin, the owner of San Francisco's John's Grill on Ellis Street, said someone broke into a locked cabinet on the second floor of his establishment and took a signed reproduction of the Maltese Falcon -- one used for publicity stills for the movie -- along with several vintage and signed books by and about Maltese Falcon author Dashiell Hammett.

Konstin said the theft was noticed Saturday afternoon. He guesses the theft took place sometime late Friday night or in the early morning hours of Saturday.

The black statue was signed by actor Elisha Cook Jr., a San Franciscan who played the role of Wilmer the Gunsel in the movie. He presented it to the restaurant after Konstin and San Francisco private investigator Jack Immendorf failed in their attempt to buy the original bird that was used in the movie.

Police have been summoned to the scene of the broken cabinet on the second floor of the restaurant, and Konstin has offered a $25,000 reward for return of the statue and books.

Posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 1:05 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Monday, February 12, 2007

Historic Moment if Cheney Testifies Live

Source: NYT (2-12-07)

If he testifies as expected, Dick Cheney would be the first sitting vice president, at least in modern times, to appear as a witness in a criminal trial. And if he testifies in court, he may also be the first to give live testimony in defense of a subordinate’s actions on his behalf, legal historians said.

Mr. Cheney’s testimony as a courtroom witness for his former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., would break with one of the closest historical parallels, when former President Ronald Reagan testified in 1990 via videotape as a defense witness in the trial of his former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter.

The Reagan videotape offered an insight into the unpredictability of criminal trials. His appearance seemed to have little direct impact on the trial, but it created a permanent historical record of his failing memory, which would have been preserved through a printed transcript had he appeared as a live witness but would not have caused the same impact as the widely broadcast videotape.

Courts have traditionally shown great deference to high-ranking executive branch officials, requiring them to testify only when they are thought likely to provide crucial testimony that cannot be obtained elsewhere through documents or other witnesses.

“One of the considerations is, you can’t start dragging the vice president or president away from their jobs,” said Theodore B. Olson, a lawyer in Washington who represented Mr. Reagan when he was asked to testify in Mr. Poindexter’s trial.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 11:30 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Deadline May Be Extended for Holocaust Claims

Source: NYT (2-12-07)

Survivors of the Holocaust and their relatives, who have been fighting to compel European insurance companies to pay death benefits for victims of the Nazis, are getting a break from a big Italian insurance company, lawyers for the insurer and policyholders said yesterday.

As part of a proposed class-action settlement, the company, Assicurazoni Generali, has agreed to give heirs of Holocaust victims another 18 months to uncover documentation on unpaid life insurance policies at long-sealed Nazi archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Representatives of several countries, including the United States, have been pushing to open the archives since May.

“This adds another motivation and a very concrete one to get the archives opened right now,” Paul Shapiro, an executive of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, said of the deadline extension.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 11:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In pop culture, everyone loves Abe

Source: Baltimore Sun (2-12-07)

Abraham Lincoln was born 198 years ago today, but his melancholy visage has perhaps never been as popular. He's the star of television commercials -- including one in which a beaver is his co-star -- and is the subject of at least eight recent books, with more on the way. A motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Liam Neeson is in the works.

Politicians, too, are getting in on the act. Officials ranging from Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who launched his presidential quest Saturday in Springfield, Ill. -- where Lincoln honed his political skills and is now entombed -- to Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold are invoking the martyred president.

Some of the interest is based on the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth in 2009, as well as new insights into the Civil War president's medical, marital and mental issues. But experts say there's more to the renaissance of Lincolniana -- such as a nation weary of war and yearning for trusted leadership.

"So much of what we think of him is happening in our own time," said Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of the recently published Lincoln's Melancholy.

"He met and wrote to widows. He had the courage to acknowledge his responsibilities," Shenk said. "He was open and available in the White House, compared to our increasing fast-food politics."

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 11:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'50s buildings: Historic--but worth preserving?

Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com (2-12-07)

Subdivisions. Strip malls. Roadside motels.

The Baby Boomers of buildings have hit a milestone this decade: They're turning 50, the benchmark age for historic designation.

Mid-century modern architecture -- think Brady Bunch houses and drive-in restaurants -- is eligible to join the ranks of its architectural ancestors, such as Queen Anne, Art Deco and Classic Revival.

"We're the new kids on the block for historic preservation," said Virginia Courtenay, owner of a 1955 home in Delray Beach that has a local landmark designation. "We're all steel and glass."

In a state that measures its history in decades rather than centuries, Florida historic preservationists are grappling with how to determine what development during the state's largest building boom is considered historic. Preservationists say it's the first time they have found themselves in this position: Instead of fighting to save a few treasures, they have an abundance of old but unremarkable buildings.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 11:16 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Cyprus complaining about Greek textbook

Source: http://www.cyprus-mail.com (2-11-07)

A NEW history textbook for children in the last year of primary school has incurred the wrath of Cypriot politicians, who are demanding its immediate withdrawal because it allegedly distorts and over-simplifies the island’s history. The textbook, covering four centuries of Greek history in 150 pages, devotes three pages to Cyprus, which refer to the anti-colonial struggle, the coup, Turkish invasion and the continuing division. Cypriot politicians found plenty to complain about in these three pages, while the Education Ministry has prepared a letter in which it lists the changes it wants made to the book.

It was not only Cypriot politicians who were outraged with the contents of the book. A small handful of nationalist politicians and academics in Greece have also lambasted it, because of the neutral terminology it used and its failure to mention the killing of thousands of Greek civilians by the Turkish troops in Smyrna in 1922. All it said was that the Turkish army had entered the town and thousands of Greeks had crowded to the port in order to get on a ship that would take them to Greece. The Greek Education Minister, responding to the criticism, said some corrections would be made to the book, but had no intention of withdrawing it from schools, as had been done in the case of other ‘nationalistically incorrect’ textbooks in the past.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 11:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Chiang Kai-shek statues to be moved out of view

Source: http://www.taipeitimes.com (2-7-07)

The good news for Chiang Kai-shek is that he may get to come inside after braving the elements for more than half a century. The bad news for him is that "inside" may be some dark and obscure corner of a warehouse.

The statues of Chiang that had been a ubiquitous feature of the nation's streets, parks and military bases have been subjected to increasingly diffident treatment since power transferred from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2000.

DPP legislators have asked the Ministry of National Defense to move all of the statues at its bases indoors before the anniversary of the 228 Incident at the end of this month. The party is also working to have Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall renamed "Taiwan Democracy Hall." After a report last year on the 228 Incident placed the blame for the incident on Chiang and with the coming 60th anniversary of the incident, anti-Chiang sentiment has seen something of a revival.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

BYU drops website on polygamy

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (2-12-07)

There is no place for polygamy in Mormon life -- not even on a Web site.

That's the message a Brigham Young University assistant dean got when administrators ordered him to take down a Web page from the university's server that discussed the history of polygamy and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Within a day, though, he had moved all the content to an independent Web site called Mormon-Polygamy.org, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

Jim Engebretsen, assistant dean for corporate relations and M.B.A. director at Brigham Young's Marriott School of Management, says many people mistakenly believe that polygamy is still practiced by Mormons. He says he wants to provide facts for people interested in the church's history.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jewish settlers' project to alter skyline of Jerusalem's Old City

Source: Washington Post (2-11-07)

JERUSALEM -- From the roof of his home just inside the Old City walls, Palestinian landlord Nasser Karain has a view of the valleys and plateaus where scriptures say Solomon built the first Temple, Jesus was betrayed and Muhammad rose to heaven.

A new landmark may soon rise next to his family compound.

The Israeli government is funding the first construction of a Jewish settlement in the Old City's Muslim Quarter since taking control of it nearly four decades ago. The Flowers Gate development plan calls for more than 20 apartments and a domed synagogue that would alter the skyline of the Old City.

Karain's property is at the center of an accelerating campaign by Jewish settler organizations to change the ethnic and physical character of this city's oldest Arab neighborhoods. The Israeli government is financing projects that dovetail with the settlers' goals, which they say are to secure the Old City and an adjacent valley for Israel in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians...

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 8:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Oil seeping from the USS Arizona is a poignant reminder -- and a potential environmental hazard

Source: Los Angeles Times (2-11-07)

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -— The 1.6 million visitors a year to the USS Arizona Memorial are told by their guides about the legends surrounding the oil that still bubbles up from the sunken battleship.

One legend holds that the oil represents the tears of the 900-plus sailors and Marines entombed below decks since the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. Another says the oil will continue to surface until the last Arizona survivor dies.

But the fact is that 500,000 or more gallons of fuel oil are estimated to remain aboard the Arizona. Now the National Park Service and the Navy, which jointly maintain the memorial, are in the early stages of a comprehensive study of the ship and the possibility that its oil might someday spill into Pearl Harbor, fouling the shoreline and hampering naval operations.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 8:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

For black Cherokees, past and future collide in fight over identity

Source: AP (2-10-07)

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -— When Lucy Allen sets out to tell her family's story, she first finds an empty room with plenty of open table space.

Others, she knows, illustrate their ancestral legends by passing around a single prized photograph or diagram of the family tree. But Allen arrives wheeling two big black suitcases, each stuffed with enough supporting evidence to do Perry Mason proud...

And years later, a long-forgotten document proved her suspicions right.

It was just as her parents told her. Yes, she was black. But there was Cherokee in her veins, too.

There was a catch, though, and it was bound to persist no matter how clear the evidence might seem to Allen.

She could call herself an Indian. She and others like her could argue that, Indian blood or not, they had as much right to the Cherokee Nation's identity as anyone else.

But Allen's "proof" could just as easily be cited to show her people were not real Cherokees at all, but a human burden a defeated tribe had been forced to shoulder.

A century past, Allen's ancestors had secured what they thought was a permanent place in the tribe. Now, though, it was clear the only way she could ever be acknowledged as Cherokee would be to take on the very Cherokees who refused to count her as one of their own...

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wiesel says attack shows Holocaust deniers are getting bolder

Source: AP (2-12-07)

ROME -- Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel said in an interview published Monday that an attack on him earlier this month in San Francisco shows that Holocaust deniers are increasing worldwide and getting bolder by the day.

The Holocaust scholar was dragged from an elevator and roughed up during a peace conference at a San Francisco hotel on Feb. 1, according to police. The author was not injured.

"Until today they used words; now they have switched to violence," Wiesel told Milan-based daily Corriere della Sera. "Their numbers are growing by the day."

The assailant fled after Wiesel began to scream, and police have opened a criminal investigation.

San Francisco Police Sgt. Steve Mannina confirmed authorities have located a suspect on the East Coast. They believe the unidentified man traveled to San Francisco to carry out the attack, Mannina said, refusing to elaborate.

The 78-year-old Holocaust survivor said the incident shook him and that, for the first time since World War II, he felt he was being personally targeted.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 7:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israel to halt holy site repairs but continue excavations

Source: AFP (2-12-07)

JERUSALEM -- Israel has frozen contested building work near Jerusalem's most volatile holy site but pressed with archaeological excavations, triggering further Muslim outcry.

Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski decided to suspend the work to allow public discussion of Israel's plans to replace a damaged wooden bridge leading to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound with a stone ramp.

Protests by Palestinian worshippers descended into several days of violence in Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank and there were also demonstrations across the Islamic world.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 6:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

History banned by British colonials given to Indian museum

Source: Telegraph (Calcutta, India) (2-12-07)

CALCUTTA -- Raj Bhavan’s move to dig out pre and post Independence history may redefine happenings under British rule.

Birendra Singh, a history professor, has gifted Raj Bhavan [the former viceroys' mansion, built by the Marquis Wellesley in 1799-1803] a rare history book penned by Sundar Lal, 'Bharat Mein Angrezi Raj', which the British [suppressed] in 1938.

In response to an open invitation from the Raj Bhavan to gift manuscripts, documents, photographs and diaries related to the freedom struggle since 1857 for setting up a museum, Singh has handed over the book that his family had kept safe for the past 80 years...Of the 2,000 copies, printed on September 30, 1938, the police could confiscate 1,700.

The police action prompted Gandhiji to make an appeal to 'Young India' that they should face the ignominy of the search operation but refuse to hand over the book to the police.

Singh pointed out that the action of the British indicated that the history books were written at the diktat of the colonial rulers. Several events penned by historians under the British rule are still being taught in schools.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 6:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

1857 'Bleeding Kansas' document returns briefly to its drafting place

Source: AP (2-12-07)

LECOMPTON, Kan. -- A document that historians say helped usher in the Civil War was back in the room where it was drafted 150 years ago, on display at Constitution Hall over the weekend as part of "Bleeding Kansas '07" events.

The Lecompton Constitution, under which Kansas would have been admitted into the union as a slave state, has been preserved at the Kansas State Historical Society since Rutgers University donated it in 1957 to commemorate the document's 100th anniversary...

"It's an important benchmark and an overlooked benchmark in the road to the Civil War," said historian Brian Matthew Jordan, of Gettysburg College, who spoke as part of the program of lectures and dramatic interpretations. "It's absolutely awe-inspiring to stand here and know that this document is here for the first time since it was signed."

The eight-page document was written by men who wanted Kansas admitted to the United States as a slave state. The fight over the Lecompton Constitution caused a split in the Democratic Party of the time, resulting in the election of President Abraham Lincoln.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jewish group criticizes Romney for launching presidential bid at Henry Ford Museum

Source: AP (2-12-07)

WASHINGTON -- Republican Mitt Romney's choice of a museum honoring auto pioneer Henry Ford as the site of his presidential announcement was strongly criticized Monday by Jewish Democrats, who noted Ford's history of anti-Semitism.

The former Massachusetts governor, who is scheduled to formally launch his presidential candidacy from the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit on Tuesday, was taken to task by The National Jewish Democratic Council...

"Romney has been traveling the country talking about inclusiveness and understanding of people from all walks of life," [executive director Ira] Forman said. "Yet he chooses to kick (off) his presidential campaign on the former estate of a well-known and outspoken anti-Semite and xenophobe."

Forman said Romney's "embrace of Henry Ford and association of Ford's legacy with his presidential campaign raises serious questions about either the sincerity of Romney's words or his understanding of basic American history."

Ford was bestowed with the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle by Adolph Hitler

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 6:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Baader-Meinhof gang killer to be freed

Source: BBC News (2-12-07)

A former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang is to be freed on probation after serving 24 years for her involvement in kidnappings and murders in the 1970s.

A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.

The group, also known as the Red Army Faction, were behind kidnaps and killings in West Germany.

The prospect of Mohnhaupt's release has sparked a fierce debate in Germany.

Mohnhaupt was convicted of involvement in nine murders. Victims included a judge, a banker and the employers' federation president.

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Berlin, says she was once described as the most evil and dangerous woman in West Germany.

Separately, another prominent Red Army prisoner, Christian Klar, is seeking early release.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japanese documentary denies Nanjing Massacre

Source: People's Daily Online (1-31-07)

A Chinese government official said on Thursday that the evidence for the Nanjing Massacre was "ironclad" in response to reports that a Japanese filmmaker in planning a documentary denying the atrocity.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said Japan should take a correct and responsible attitude to history issues in order to win true trust from its Asian neighbors and the international community.

Jiang made the remarks when asked to comment on the plan to make the film about the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937, when Japanese troops killed 300,000 Chinese.

The film reportedly has the tentative title "The Truth About Nanking". The documentary aims to deny Japanese soldiers massacred Chinese civilians and prisoners of war in Nanjing.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

"Rape of Nanking" vanishes from revised Taiwan history textbook

Source: DPA (German Press Agency) (2-11-07)

TAIPEI -- The 'Rape of Nanking,' an important part of modern Chinese history, has disappeared from Taiwan's revised history textbook, a newspaper said on Sunday.

The United Evening News said the textbook from one publishing house has ommitted mention of the World War II atrocities committed by the Japanese in China, while the textbooks from four publishing houses only make a brief reference to it...

The 'Rape of Nanking' refers to the massacre which began after Nanking, then the Chinese capital, fell to the Japanese troops on December 13, 1937. Japanese soldiers carried out rape, execution, arson and looting in and around Nanking which lasted for six weeks.

China estimates the total death toll at about 300,000. Japan has denied the Nanking massacre took place and some Japanese rightists plan to make a documentary to deny it happened.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 3:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic mansion to display rare Lincoln portraits

Source: Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star (2-11-07)

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. -- Visitors to the David Davis Mansion and State Historic Site will soon have the chance to view two rare portraits of a great American president.

Paintings of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Dalton Marchant and Alban Conant were loaned to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency for temporary exhibits...

"We're very excited because the (Marchant) portrait hasn't been out on exhibit that much," said site manager Marcia Young, explaining the portrait was found in storage at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, then displayed for a short time at Morris Library...

Young said historians believe Marchant's portrait of Lincoln may have served as a model for his most famous portrait, the Union League of Philadelphia, which he painted in 1863 to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation.

The portrait shows a sitting Lincoln. The background shows a broken chain wrapped around a pillar, which symbolizes the end of slavery.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 3:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Symbol of Civil Rights movement sits in ruin, awaiting a buyer

Source: Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger (2-11-07)

MONEY, Miss. -— The place where the civil rights movement began now lies in ruin.

Bryant Grocery and Meat Market has been broken by years of neglect and battered by high winds from Hurricane Katrina, but few have forgotten the events during the summer of 1955 that started here with a wolf-whistle and ended with the slaying of a black teenager named Emmett Till.

"Like the Liberty Bell, it's the symbol of the movement," said state Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood. "That ought not to be lost."

Leflore County Tax Assessor Leroy Ware said the store isn't worth a penny on the county's books, but that didn't stop owners from initially asking local officials last year for $40 million for the crumbling store before reducing their price to $4 million.

Local officials say they balked at the price, countering with a $50,000 offer. Talks broke off, and the store has continued to rot, despite being placed on the Mississippi Heritage Trust's list of 10 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 2:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Mussolini 'diaries' may solve war riddle

Source: Guardian (2-12-07)

ROME -- Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Italy's late dictator, has said newly found diaries, allegedly kept by her grandfather before the second world war, show that he took Italy into the conflict only with great reluctance.

A controversial Italian senator and bibliophile, Marcello Dell'Utri, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera that the books were with a lawyer at Bellinzona, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. He said he examined them last summer and found five day-to-a-page Red Cross diaries covering the years from 1935 to 1939...

Valerio Castronovo, a professor of contemporary history at the University of Turin, was cautious. "Lots of [Mussolini diaries] have surfaced in the past 20 years and none has been found to be genuine."

But the British historian Denis Mack Smith said yesterday he thought the diaries might be from the same collection as one he examined 20-30 years ago. "I had no reason to doubt their authenticity," he said. "But they were just boring ... the sort of things you or I might write."

Posted on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 1:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Cheney's been press-phobic since 70s

Source: NYT (2-11-07)

RETURNING to the White House after the Memorial Day weekend in 1975, the young aide Dick Cheney found himself handling a First Amendment showdown. The New York Times had published an article by Seymour M. Hersh about an espionage program, and the White House chief of staff, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was demanding action.

Out came the yellow legal pad, and in his distinctively neat, deliberate hand, Mr. Cheney laid out the “problem,” “goals” while addressing it, and “options.” These last included “Start FBI investigation — with or w/o public announcement. As targets include NYT, Sy Hersh, potential gov’t sources.”

Mr. Cheney’s notes, now in the Gerald R. Ford presidential library, collected and synthesized the views of lawyers, diplomats, spies and military officials, but his own views shine through. He is hostile to the press and to Congress, insistent on the prerogatives of the executive branch and adamant about the importance of national security secrets.

Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 5:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thomas Paine Day Vote Fails in Arkansas

Source: NYT (2-11-07)

Thomas Paine may have helped inspire the American Revolution, but inspiring Arkansas lawmakers to commemorate a day in his honor is another matter.

The proposal by Rep. Lindsley Smith, D-Fayetteville, to commemorate Jan. 29 as ''Thomas Paine Day'' failed in the state House of Representatives after a legislator questioned Paine's writings criticizing the Bible and Christianity.

The vote Thursday was 46-20 in favor of the measure, but 51 votes were needed to pass.

Smith said before the vote that Arkansas would join nine other states that have established Thomas Paine Day. She said the day would not be considered a state holiday and would not require any additional costs.

''I think if Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were standing here today, they would give you the same presentation about Thomas Paine,'' Smith said. ''He needs to be remembered and he's not remembered.''

But Rep. Sid Rosenbaum, R-Little Rock, quizzed Smith about Paine and quoted passages from Paine's book, ''The Age of Reason,'' which Rosenbaum criticized as anti-religion.

''He did some good things for the nation, but the book that he wrote was anti-Christian and anti-Jewish,'' Rosenbaum said. ''I don't think we should be passing things out like this without at least debating it and letting people in the House know what we're voting on.''

Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Battle to save 'Hound of Baskervilles' house

Source: Independent (2-11-07)

The leafy country mansion Undershaw, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created his most famous work, The Hound of the Baskervilles, is at the centre of a literary controversy.

The home is revered by millions of Sherlock Holmes devotees around the world. Campaigners are furious that their efforts to upgrade the listed status of the 36-room property in Surrey, designed partly by Conan Doyle himself, to preserve it for future generations, have been blocked by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The writer was judged not significant enough to merit such a move.

Leading writers -- including Julian Barnes and Ian Rankin -- have condemned the Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, for failing to recognise the author's place in the nation's cultural canon.

Barnes, whose own Booker-shortlisted novel Arthur & George features the home extensively, has criticised Ms Jowell for the "regrettable" failing.

Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 3:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Art sleuth has 30-year quest: what happened to Leonardo's 'Battle of Anghiari' fresco?

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-9-07)

FLORENCE -— Maurizio Seracini claims not to be pleased that he is the only person mentioned by his real name in “The Da Vinci Code.” A scientist turned art detective, he has no need for any manufactured mystery around Leonardo. For 32 years he has chased a real one —- and he seems now, finally, poised to solve it.

It is a long, and satisfyingly complex, story. But it can be summed up with one question: What happened to “The Battle of Anghiari,” a grimacing crunch of men and horses considered by some experts to be Leonardo’s greatest painting?

Mr. Seracini thinks he knows, and he was recently given permission to restart his search, which involves using the most modern detecting equipment to peer through a 500-year-old wall in the Palazzo Vecchio here. On that wall, in 2002, he found a tantalizing crevice behind a Vasari fresco where the Leonardo may be.

If he succeeds, he could bring to light what one Leonardo scholar calls potentially “one of the great art finds of all time.” Or he could find nothing. Or he could find the painting wrecked by time and its own defects. In any case, after three obsessive decades Mr. Seracini is very much on the hook.

Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 2:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Behind the Leica lens: secret life of man who saved Jews from Nazis

Source: Guardian (2-10-07)

He was responsible for bringing to the world a high-quality compact camera that changed the face of 35mm photography. But after dogged research by a British rabbi it has emerged that Ernest Leitz II had a secret but possibly greater claim to fame -- saving Jews from Nazi persecution in prewar Germany.

Days after Hitler's rise to power, Leitz, who manufactured the Leica camera, began taking on a string of young Jewish apprentices from the town of Wetzlar where his optics factory began producing Leicas in 1925. He purposely trained them so that he could transfer them to New York to work in the Leica showroom on Fifth Avenue or at distributors across the US and thus rescue them from the fate that was to befall many other Jews.

Others were able to escape punishment for being related to Jews by marriage, thanks to Leitz's intervention. The numbers he saved, about 50 sent to the US plus 23 others, are much smaller than those rescued by Sudeten German industrialist Oskar Schindler, to whom he is being compared. But the risks he took were arguably just as high.

Only now have details of the Leica refugees come to light, thanks to the detective work of a London-based rabbi...

Posted on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 1:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Some Churches Celebrate "Evolution Sunday"

Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com (2-9-07)

The calendar boasts plenty of religious holidays, but how many scientific holidays can you name? One of the red-letter days is coming up on Monday, when more than 850 events around the globe will mark Darwin Day, the 198th anniversary of the evolutionary theorist's birth. You can hear about Charles Darwin and the revolution he sparked from hundreds of church pulpits this weekend, as part of a program called Evolution Sunday.

Are those godless secularists trying to take on the trappings of religion? Not at all, says Robert Stephens, one of the organizers behind Darwin Day. "We're not trying to make a saint out of Darwin," he said. "We're just using him as a symbol." Stephens and his colleagues say this long holiday weekend is as good a time as any to turn science into a cause for celebration.

Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 4:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Web Users To Pick 7 Wonders Of Illinois

Source: http://cbs2chicago.com (2-8-07)

Illinois may not have the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes or the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt.

But it does have the Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee National Forest the southern part of the state.

That is just one in a list of sites and attractions that have been nominated in a contest to choose the Seven Wonders of Illinois.

Anything from historic sites to cheesy tourist attractions can be nominated. ...

Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 4:07 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Moroccan capital rebuilds, uncovers past

Source: http://www.middle-east-online.com (2-8-07)

Morocco's capital Rabat is rebuilding its seafront and in so doing uncovering a vast treasure trove of relics, artefacts and ruins.

"We have made some fantastic discoveries not only for the history of Rabat but of the kingdom," said archaeologist and historian Mohammed Essemmar.

Essemmar, 43, heads the heritage department of the agency in charge of redeveloping the Bouregreg valley, a watercourse linking the twin cities of Rabat and Sale.

Roman columns and capitals, 12th-century enclosing walls, Islamic ceramics and coins have emerged from the sands.

The prize discovery in the 2,500 square-metre (27,000 square feet) site is the enclosing wall of the Tachfin "ribat,"or military camp, attached to the Oudayas casbah, dating from the 12th century and completed during the brief reign of Almoravid dynasty King Tachfin ben Ali (1143-1145).

Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 4:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Skeptics question existence of Henry Towne

Source: Hampton Roads (Va.) Daily Press (2-9-07)

WILLIAMSBURG -- A skeptical group of archaeologists and historians will meet here Monday with an embattled Army archaeologist who recently identified a site near Cape Henry in Virginia Beach as a previously unknown early Colonial settlement called Henry Towne.

Made up of prominent figures based in the Williamsburg area, the group believes that the documentary evidence on which the identification is partly based actually refers to a Richmond-area settlement known as Henricus.

They also have questions about the date of a group of artifacts originally recovered at the Lynnhaven River site in the 1950s.

"I'd never heard of any settlement in that area dating to 1610 and - just in case I missed it - I began asking around. No one else had heard of it, either," said archaeologist Nicholas Luccketti, head of the James River Institute for Archaeology and a co-discoverer of Jamestown.

"Everyone agrees that the reference we've seen is to Henricus. So unless he's got something that none of us has ever seen, his documents do not refer to someplace that is now in Virginia Beach."

Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Still a Struggle to ID Holocaust Victims

Source: Breitbart (2-10-07)

BUCHENWALD, Germany (AP) -- The hunt begins with a number.

Harry Stein sits nose-to-screen, squinting at the fuzzy digits in column after column on faded microfilm, searching for clues to a mystery: Who was Auschwitz inmate 185403?

The number was tattooed on the left forearm of one of the thousands who were processed through Auschwitz, shipped off to Buchenwald concentration camp, and never seen again.

Male? Female? Old? Young? Jewish? Christian? Reason for arrest? The list Stein is scrutinizing says nothing. There's only that number.

More than six decades after the Nazi Holocaust ended, historians such as Stein are still struggling with a gargantuan task _ to make a semblance of order among hundreds of thousands of dead by finding, at least, their names.

Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 2:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Survival of an ancient faith threatened by fighting in Iraq

Source: AP (2-10-07)

TRENTON, N.J. -- Among the casualties of the Iraq war is a little-known religious faith called Mandaeanism that has survived roughly two millennia and whose adherents believe that John the Baptist was their great teacher.

While there were more than 60,000 Mandaeans in Iraq in the early 1990s, only about 5,000 to 7,000 remain. Many have fled amid targeted killings, rapes, forced conversions and property confiscation by Islamic extremists, according to a report released last week by the New Jersey-based Mandaean Society of America...

Mandaean leaders say tens of thousands of their brethren are scattered around the world, including a U.S. community centered around New York and Detroit.

With the dispersion comes concern that the faith is withering, especially as more Mandaeans marry non-Mandaeans, with no mechanism to bring their children into the fold.

"There's not much hope for us to survive to two or three generations," Nashi said.

Scholars who study the Mandaean religion and culture say its extinction would be a great loss, the end of an ancient religious movement. Dating to the time of the Roman Empire, it survived primarily in what is today Iraq and Iran, a branch of the Gnostic movement that borrowed elements of Christianity.

Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 4:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 9, 2007

Israeli police raid Muslim shrine to quell protest over excavation

Source: Los Angeles Times (2-9-07)

JERUSALEM -- Israeli police raided the grounds of Islam's third-holiest shrine Friday, chained the compound's gates behind them, and fired tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of thousands of Muslim worshippers to quell a rock-throwing protest over Israeli excavation work nearby.

The clash outside the Al Aqsa mosque set off protests across the Muslim world and scattered violence in the West Bank. It came a day after the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah agreed to end months of factional fighting, a step that some Israeli leaders believe could lead to stepped up attacks against the Jewish state.

Friday's 90-minute battle erupted at the end of noon prayers and forced about 150 protesters to retreat into the mosque and set up barricades. The standoff ended when an Arab member of the Israeli parliament persuaded the protesters and the 200 police officers to leave the compound peacefully.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 11:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust denier says he attacked Wiesel

Source: UPI (2-9-07)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Holocaust survivor and chronicler Elie Wiesel escaped unharmed from an attacker who may have been a Holocaust denier, police in San Francisco say.

Wiesel was accosted in the elevator at the Argent Hotel, where he was attending a conference on "Facing Violence: Justice, Religion and Conflict Resolution," police said. A man insisted on interviewing Wiesel, who agreed but said they would talk in the hotel lobby.

Police Sgt. Neville Gittens told the San Francisco Chronicle the man stopped the elevator and tried to force Wiesel into a room on the sixth floor. Wiesel, yelling, was able to break free and get to the lobby, where he called police.

A man using the name Eric Hunt posted an account of the attack on an anti-Semitic Web site and claimed to be the person who approached Wiesel, the Chronicle said.

"I had planned to bring Wiesel to my hotel room, where he would truthfully answer my questions regarding the fact that his non-fiction Holocaust memoir, 'Night,' is almost entirely fictitious," Hunt wrote.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 9:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Missile museum sparks Cold War memories

Source: NPR All Things Considered (includes audio link) (2-9-07)

Twenty-five years ago, a missile silo south of Tucson was one of the most top-secret places in America. At the height of the Cold War, it was part of a network of nuclear warheads designed to avert a nuclear attack. The silo housed the Titan 2 Missile, which could be launched in less than a minute from its position 150 feet beneath the Sonoran Desert.

The missile was never launched. And the site is now a National Historic Landmark that hosts a museum dedicated to the Titan 2 Missile.

Yvonne Morris led a crew in the 1980s that was trained to respond to launch orders that they hoped would never come...Morris is now the director of the museum where the Titan 2 still rests in its silo. It's the last of 54 such missiles that were clustered in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas. The rest have been destroyed. The Command Post deep inside the ground is like something from a sci-fi movie. Mint green metal panels are full of blinking lights, large switches, dials, and meters...

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 9:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Obama to announce at Illinois' Old State Capitol: Lincoln associations but others too

Source: Chicago Tribune (2-9-07)

By announcing his presidential intentions on Saturday at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama is wrapping himself in the mystique of Abraham Lincoln.

The crimson-domed Old State Capitol, just east of the present Illinois capitol, is where Lincoln served his fourth and final term as a state representative in 1840-41. And it's where, in 1858, in a debate with Stephen Douglas during their campaign battle for the U.S. Senate, Lincoln gave his "House Divided" speech...

Such Lincoln associations are golden in American politics.

But the Old State Capitol has other, less attractive associations as well.

A plaque, on a kiosk in the plaza just south of the building, commemorates the spot as "the departure point of the Donner Party on April 15, 1846, for their ill-fated trip to California."...

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 6:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush Budget: History's winners & losers

Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History (2-9-07)

The "Teaching American History" grants program at the Department of Education would be substantially cut under the Bush proposal. In FY ‘06 the program received $120 million and the administration would slash that by over $70 million to $50 million in fiscal year 2008. The administration’s rationale is “the number of quality applications for assistance under this program in recent years does not justify the current level of funding.” Senator Robert C. Byrd, the original sponsor of the program, chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. So one can assume that the proposed cut will not likely stand.

The Academies for American History and Civics, which supports workshops for teachers and students in those subjects, would be see their $2 million budget zeroed out.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION: The Bush administration’s proposed fiscal year 2008 budget calls for $379.5 million for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). This is an increase of $39.5 million over the FY 2007 appropriations of $340 million which is expected to be enacted as a year-long continuing resolution by the Congress.

Under the President’s FY 2008 request, NARA would receive $312.8 million for operating expenses; an increase of $34.6 million over the FY 2007 expected appropriation of $278.2 million. This includes funds to prepare for the George W. Bush Presidential Library, provide oversight by the agency’s Inspector General of the work to develop ways to preserve electronic records, and to continue work on reducing the backlog of unprocessed text records.

The operating expenses also include funds for the operation of the Richard M. Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California, which will become part of the NARA system of presidential libraries this year after being a privately-run institution since 1990.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) once again had its budget zeroed out in the Bush administration’s FY ‘08 budget request, and our annual battle to restore funding for this vital program begins anew.

The Electronic Records Archives (ERA) program, a key NARA strategic goal aimed at providing a means to preserve electronic records and make them more accessible in the future, is funded in the FY 2008 request at $58 million which is $13 million over the expected FY 2007 appropriation. This higher funding level for ERA will allow NARA to maintain progress on increment 1 of the system, which is scheduled to begin this fall.

For repairs and restoration to facilities owned by NARA, such as the National Archives at College Park, the National Archives Building in downtown Washington, and the presidential libraries, the President's FY
2008 budget requests $8.6 million.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE–HISTORIC PRESERVATION PROGRAMS: Overall, the National Park Service would receive the largest budget increase in its history, an additional $258 million over the amount it received in fiscal year 2006. The centerpiece of the budget is the "National Parks Centennial Initiative," a ten-year effort to improve the nation’s parks prior to the NPS centennial in 2016. In releasing the budget, President Bush announced the “National Parks Centennial Challenge,” which has the potential of providing $3 billion in new funds over the next ten years. It includes a federal commitment of $100 million annually in discretionary funds, and a challenge to the private sector and the public to contribute $100 million, with a match of another $100 million in mandatory federal funding.

The 2008 budget includes $63.7 million for historic preservation programs. The budget allocates $10 million for the "Save America’s Treasures" program, $10 million for "Preserve America," and $43.7 million for historic preservation grants-in-aid to states, territories and Indian tribes. It would also establish a National Inventory of Historic Properties grant program. Matching grants of $4 million would be available to states, tribes, local governments, and federal land management agencies to make inventories more accessible. The budget also provides $10 million for heritage areas. The Heritage Partnership Program provides seed money for congressionally designated, but locally managed, national heritage areas.

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES: The National Endowment for the Humanities would see a small increase of $400,000 over the amount the administration requested last year for total funding of $141 million. The “We the People” initiative that focuses on the teaching and learning of American history and culture would receive $15.2 million. Two new “We the People” programs would be initiated. The “We The People Videoshelf” would distribute American films that focus on historical events and themes to libraries nationwide. The second program would be run in conjunction with the State Department and bring foreign school teachers and humanities practitioners to the U.S. to participate in Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops.

The NEH’s new Digital Humanities Initiative would receive funding of $1.4 million, which will support projects that use, or study the impact of, digital technology on research, education, preservation, and public programming in the humanities.

Funding for NEH’s Federal and State Partnership programs would increase by $133,000, but Education, Preservation and Access, Public Programs, Research, and Challenge Grants would all be cut.

The National Endowment for the Arts would receive $128.4 million or a $4 million increase.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION: The budget request for the Smithsonian is $678.4 million. Of that amount, $571.3 million is for salaries and expenses and the facilities capital budget is $107.1 million. Included in the request is nearly $10 million for planning and staffing of the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture, which will eventually be built on the National Mall. The capital budget will help fund the continuing renovation of the National Museum of American History-Behring Center, which is scheduled to reopen in 2008.

INSTITUTE OF MUSEUM AND LIBRARY SERVICES: The President’s budget request for the Institute of Museum and Library Services is $271 million, which is
$24 million or almost 10 percent more than it received in 2006. Library grants would be funded at $214 million and museum grants at almost $40 million. These amounts reflect nearly $8 million in new funding for each grant program.

Both the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation would be flat-funded at $9 million and $6 million respectively.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 6:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Doubt surrounds evidence of colonial settlement at Virginia Beach

Source: AP (2-9-07)

An Army archaeologist who recently identified a Virginia Beach site as a previously unknown early Colonial settlement called Henry Towne is to meet Monday with a group of dubious archaeologists and historians.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 6:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Edison's light bulb could be endangered

Source: AP (2-9-07)

EDISON, N.J. -- One of the inventions that put this central New Jersey town on the map could go the way of the typewriter and the horse and buggy if some lawmakers have their way.

The incandescent light bulb, perfected for mass use by Thomas A. Edison in the late 19th century, is being supplanted by fluorescent lighting that is more efficient and longer lasting.

Last month, California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine announced he would propose a bill to ban the use of incandescent bulbs in his state.

And Thursday, New Jersey Assemblyman Larry Chatzidakis introduced a bill that calls for the state to switch to fluorescent lighting in government buildings over the next three years.

"The light bulb was invented a long time ago and a lot of things have changed since then," said Chatzidakis, a Republican from Burlington. "I obviously respect the memory of Thomas Edison, but what we're looking at here is using less energy."

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In Jerusalem archaeology is politics

Source: BBC News (2-9-07)

The very stones of Jerusalem are political weapons in the age-old struggle for possession of the Holy Land. And nowhere is more sensitive than the great platform built by King Herod, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to the Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. To understand the current row over excavation and repair work just outside one of the gates onto the compound, it is important to know that here history, religion and politics meet. Nothing in Jerusalem can be understood without all three...

Related Links

Jerusalem 'tense' after clashes

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 5:15 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Shanghai restoring historic synagogue

Source: AP (2-9-07)

Shanghai has started restoration work on one of its two remaining synagogues as part of China's effort to revive Jewish heritage in a city that provided refuge to tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.

In another sign of the new interest, a rabbi ministering to the city's Jewish community said Thursday he believes officials will eventually turn over the other synagogue for regular worship services.

The restoration of the Ohel Moishe synagogue, now a Jewish history museum, is due to take five months. The budget hasn't been revealed, although reports said the government has already spent $1.3 million on fixing up the surrounding area and promoting it as a tourist site.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 5:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gold Rush-era skeleton unearthed at Sacramento

Source: AP (2-8-07)

The capital city's ties to the Gold Rush are everywhere, from the historical old town where fortune-seekers arrived on the Sacramento River to Sutter's Fort, where costumed actors recreate the Wild West for schoolchildren.

It was at that fort, just two miles west of the state Capitol, that Swiss explorer Johann Sutter set it all in motion when he built his adobe trading post in 1839 on land that was then Mexican territory.

What remains of the fort is now a state historical site that encompasses just one square city block. It is perched one block from a freeway and is surrounded on all sides by modern city life, including a hospital, restaurants and homes.

Underneath an intersection next to the fort, however, archaeologists said Thursday that they found another piece of the city's, and California's, history: human remains they believe date to the Gold Rush era.

A skeleton, with shreds of "Western-style clothing" still identifiable, was found inside a deteriorating wooden coffin by construction workers who are plowing underground to build a new medical facility.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 5:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Warning on shortage of UK history teachers

Source: BBC News (2-9-07)

There are warnings of a shortage of history teachers in England -- weeks after the subject was made central to plans to promote social cohesion.

History teacher training places have been cut by 40% since 2004, according to data obtained by Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Sarah Teather...Ms Teather said many schools were struggling to fill history posts and that a third of teachers were over 50.

The figures emerged shortly after Education Secretary Alan Johnson said he wanted to use teaching about slavery and the legacy of the British Empire as part of citizenship lessons...

"It's so short-sighted to write off history as a low priority subject. In the next decade we are going to see the majority of history teachers hit retirement age," Ms Teather said. "Without a real effort to get young, dynamic graduates into the classroom there's a risk of a whole generation of pupils missing out on a core plank of their education."...

The concerns were reflected by the Historical Association, which represents history teachers.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 5:00 PM | Comments (2) | Top

US to help fund Agent Orange clean-up

Source: Guardian (2-9-07)

The US is to help fund efforts in Vietnam to clean up soil contaminated by the defoliant Agent Orange in a move hailed today as the first step in healing a long-running rift between the two former enemies.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Michelangelo lived inside St Peter's Basilica

Source: German Press Agency (2-9-07)

Michelangelo lived in a small room inside Rome's
Basilica of St Peter's during the last 17 years of his life, according to a report Friday in daily La Repubblica. The report cites a recently discovered receipt dating back to March 1557, in which an engraver was paid "10 scudi" for making a key
for a chest "in the room in St Peter's where Master Michelangelo retires to."

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 2:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Olmert spurns bid to reconsider Jerusalem dig

Source: Reuters (2-8-07)

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has spurned a call by his defense minister to consider halting excavations near Jerusalem's most sacred Islamic shrine that have angered Muslims, an official said on Thursday.

The dig, outside a compound housing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, has exposed the depth of Arab suspicions over Israeli activities in Arab East Jerusalem and the simmering tensions between Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

Arab states have asked Israel to halt the work at Islam's third holiest shrine, charging it could damage the mosque's foundations. Palestinian militants have threatened to end a three-month old Gaza truce with Israel.

Israel said the holy places would not be harmed by what it called an attempt, mandated by law, to salvage artifacts before construction of a pedestrian bridge leading to the complex known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 2:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Scrap-metal thieves in UK also target statues, history

Source: Independent (2-9-07)

The First World War poet Rupert Brooke would have been horrified. His poem, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester", written in 1912, was a loving homage to his Cambridgeshire home, which he thought epitomised idyllic, rural England.

But now the area eulogised by Brooke for its "peace and Holy quiet" has been hit by a crime wave, with the Old Vicarage itself -- home of disgraced author and Conservative peer Jeffrey Archer -- the scene of the latest outbreak.

Two life-size sculptures, worth several thousand pounds each, were stolen on Tuesday evening from the garden of the Old Vicarage in the latest in a series of metal thefts in the region. Police believe the scrap is being stolen and shipped to the Far East for recasting...

The Old Vicarage was built around 1685, passing into private hands in 1820. From about 1910 onwards, Brooke rented a room and then a larger part of the house. He wrote the poem, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester", in Berlin in 1912, as a lament for his much-missed English village home. After the poet's death in 1915, the house was bought by his mother.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 2:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Groups propose changes to law on insulting Turkishness, and some say revoke it

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-9-07)

ISTANBUL -- A group of civic organizations submitted suggestions Thursday for rewording a section of the Turkish penal code under which noted intellectuals and writers have been charged with the crime of insulting the Turkish identity and state.

But some groups broke with the main umbrella organization and said the law need to be revoked, not amended...

Many in Turkey consider the law, known as Article 301, to be at the root of the murder of the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink last month. According to this argument, his conviction under the article, for comments he made about the mass killings of Armenians by Turkish forces in the early 20th century, branded him a traitor in the eyes of many Turks and put his life in jeopardy.

For Turkey, the Armenian question is among the thorniest issues of free speech, since a characterization of the killings as genocide is often interpreted by the courts as an "insult against the Turkish state" under Article 301.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 1:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Blair: I wish I'd kept a diary

Source: Press Association (2-9-07)

Prime Minister Tony Blair has revealed that he does not keep a diary - but wishes he had.

The news will raise questions over the memoirs Mr Blair is expected to write after he leaves 10 Downing Street later this year.

Publishers are believed to be queuing up to get their hands on what will be one of the biggest political books of the decade, potentially earning millions of pounds for Mr Blair.

But they now know that he will not have the benefit of a detailed record of his private thoughts, discussions and feelings to draw on when recreating the story of his 10 years in office.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 1:39 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Top Russian aide likens Putin to FDR

Source: AP (2-8-07)

MOSCOW -- Vladimir Putin has been likened to czars and Communist Party chiefs, but a top aide came up with an unusual comparison Thursday for the Russian president: Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Speaking at a conference marking 125 years since Roosevelt's birth, Vladislav Surkov, the deputy chief of staff seen as the Kremlin's main ideologue, drew a parallel between one of America's most famous Democrats and a Russian leader who has been accused by Washington of backtracking on democracy...

"Like Roosevelt in his time, today Putin must and should strengthen administrative control and use the potential of presidential power to the maximum degree for the sake of overcoming the crisis," RIA-Novosti quoted him as saying.

"In the 20th century, Roosevelt was our military ally, and in the 21st century he is our ideological ally," the agency quoted him as saying.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 11:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Congress to hear WWII sex slaves' testimony

Source: Reuters (2-8-07)

WASHINGTON (-- Three women who were forced into sexual servitude by Japanese soldiers in World War Two will testify before a U.S. congressional committee next week, the author of a resolution calling on Tokyo to apologize for the practice said on Thursday.

Rep. Mike Honda, a California Democrat who introduced the nonbinding measure on February 1, told reporters he was confident the resolution would pass by the end of March...

Honda's resolution calls on the government of Japan to "formally and unambiguously apologize for and acknowledge the tragedy that comfort women endured at the hands of its Imperial Army during World War Two."

"Comfort women" is a Japanese euphemism for the estimated 200,000 women forced to provide sex for Japan's soldiers at battle-zone brothels during World War Two.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A shipwreck yields cargo of treasured porcelain

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (1-26-07)

[Last] week in Amsterdam, Sotheby's [began] selling 76,000 pieces of Chinese Export porcelain recovered from a circa 1725 shipwreck off the coast of present-day Vietnam. Because it was bound for the western market, the cargo reveals the era's fads and fashions in Europe, and precise details about the arduous journey made by goods in demand...

"In the 18th century, if it took two years to get something, it was still worthwhile doing," says Marcus Linell, Sotheby's Export-porcelain expert in London. "There was this incredible passion in Europe, and America as well, for tea and for coffee -- stimulating drinks that were not alcoholic. And if you want to drink a hot drink, unless you have porcelain to drink out of, it's something of a problem."...

The cargo [being] sold at Sotheby's...includes thousands of tea bowls, teapots, jugs, mantel vases and figural pieces, such as a rare ewer in the form of a monkey. Though many pieces were recoverable in good condition, the sale also includes lots of fascinating "sea sculptures" - nested porcelain pieces welded together by encrustations.

The sale is being held in Amsterdam because the wreck took place on the trading route of the Dutch East India Company, as the loaded junk made its way from Canton to the trading center at Batavia (modern-day Jakarta)...

"The cargo was an accidental find by Vietnamese fishermen. They pulled up their nets, and there was porcelain in them. They quickly discovered that the porcelain was valuable, and they went out day after day trawling for porcelain. In fact, they brought up 35,000 pieces."

When news of the find reached the Vietnamese press in 1998, Linell says: "The government jumped in, mounted an official salvage operation, and forced the fishermen to return what they had found." Eventually, 130,000 pieces were recovered from one ship, an indication of the huge amounts that were exported each year.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 9:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Researchers: Darwin omitted preface from first edition

Source: MSNBC (2-8-07)

Charles Darwin could have saved himself from some of his first critics if he had remembered to include his preface in the first edition of his influential book on evolution and natural selection, "The Origin of Species."

A new study shows that Darwin was composing the introductory chapter to his book as early as 1856, even though that preface remained unpublished for six years until Origin's second edition. The findings suggest Darwin also wrote the chapter on his own accord and not in reaction to people who had read the book.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Polish Catholic nuns withstood secret police

Source: Catholic News Service (2-8-07)

Polish nuns withstood pressure from communist secret police better than male clergy, according to research by the country's women religious orders.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Conscripted WWII British Miners to be honored

Source: BBC (2-8-07)

Thousands of men conscripted into the pits as miners during World War II are to be recognised for their contribution to the war effort.

Up to 50,000 young men became Bevin Boys, named after wartime minister Ernest Bevin, who devised the scheme to maintain the mining industry's output.

The Bevin Boys Association has long campaigned for its members' efforts to be recognition as war service.

Veterans Minister Derek Twigg agreed to badges being struck for the survivors.

It was in 1942 that, due to a serious shortage of coal, Ernest Bevin introduced various schemes to get extra men to go into the coal mines.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

East Indiaman Gotheborg finally sailing east

Source: Rediff (India) (2-8-07)

It's a 261-year-old tragedy.

On September 12, 1745, the Swedish ship East Indiaman Gotheborg almost reached the Gothenburg dock on Sweden's west coast after completing 30 months of her third voyage to China.

The ship -- belonging to the Swedish East India Company, which was established in 1731 to trade in southeast Asia -- was on a trade voyage, with goods like tea, porcelain, silk and spices worth millions on board. But she sank at the entrance of the dock.

The world forgot about her, till December 1984 when amateur divers working for the Marine Museum of Sweden found a part of the shipwreck -- a small piece of wood -- beside the submerged rock, Hunnebadan, 900 metres from the New Elfsborg Fortress.

That was when the idea to make a replica of the Gotheborg originated. In June 1995, the keel of the new Gotheborg was laid at Gothenburg's Terra Nova shipyard. On October 2, 2005, the new Gotheborg left on its first two-year-long sailing expedition on the historical route to China.

En route to China, the Gotheborg called on several ports, including Cadiz in Spain, Cape Town in South Africa, Fremantle in Australia, Jakarta in Indonesia, and Singapore, before arriving in Chennai, India.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush's Truman Show

Source: Newsweek (2-12-07)

The president did seem mildly chastened by his party's defeat in the midterm elections—but not inclined to change course dramatically in Iraq.

He compared his situation to the crisis Harry Truman faced in the early days of the cold war. Then, as now, Bush said, the United States confronted a dangerous ideological foe. Truman had answered with the Truman Doctrine, a vow to protect free peoples wherever they were threatened with communist domination. Truman's policies had been unpopular in their time, but "history showed he was right," said Bush, according to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate.

The Truman comparison didn't seem quite right to Durbin. When the president went to him for comment, Durbin voiced his doubts. "Harry Truman had allies," Durbin pointed out. The Truman administration had helped create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to contain communism. After Britain withdraws its troops later this year, Durbin says he told Bush, "we will be virtually alone in what we are trying to accomplish there." Durbin says that Bush did not become angry, but he did seem irritated and "insisted that this was an ideological struggle, which wasn't my point at all," says Durbin. "He was very defensive." (White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed the exchange between Bush and Durbin but said "the president was not really trying to compare himself to Harry Truman so much as to talk about the duration and nature of the struggle.")

Bush's grasp of history may have been a little shaky, but there is no doubting the force of his conviction. Bush wants his legacy to be the long-term defeat of Islamic extremism. Indeed, senior officials close to Bush who did not wish to be identified discussing private conversations with the president tell NEWSWEEK that Bush's plan after he leaves the White House is to continue to promote the spread of democracy in the Middle East by inviting world leaders to his own policy institute, to be built alongside his presidential library.

Many presidents find solace in comparing themselves to their predecessors, the only people who could truly understand the job at hand. Truman is a favorite, particularly for presidents with low poll numbers. By 1952, the last year of his presidency, Truman's approval rating sank as low as 22 percent, about 10 points lower than Bush's. David McCullough, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "Truman," tells NEWSWEEK that, faced with an uphill re-election fight in 1992, George H.W. Bush invited McCullough to the White House to talk about how Truman had beaten the odds in the 1948 campaign (unlike Truman, Bush lost his re-election bid). The two Roosevelts and Lincoln, of course, are popular role models. Bill Clinton, who spent many hours in office fretting over his legacy, lamented that he might not rank highly because he lacked the opportunity to be a "war president"—perhaps overlooking in his meditations the impact of the Lewinsky scandal.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UN says: protect historic sites in Jerusalem

Source: UPI (2-8-07)

PARIS -- The United Nations has expressed "deep concern" over Israeli construction projects around the Temple Mount, or al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.

Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of UNESCO, said Thursday he has written a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asking for the construction plans for the sites. He also asked the prime minister to refrain from action that could increase tension in the area, which could endanger the historic sites.

The Old City of Jerusalem is protected by a U.N. convention on the preservation of world heritage sites and is on the U.N. World Heritage List, according to a press release from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New book focuses on medical apartheid

Source: Newsweek (2-12-07)

When Harriet Washington, a med-school graduate and former fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School, decided to research medical crimes against African-Americans, she feared she'd turn up much more than the Tuskegee experiment. She was right.

Washington's new book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present," reveals that the 40-year Tuskegee study—which allowed black men with syphilis to die untreated so their cadavers could be used for research—was neither the first nor the last time that unwitting black subjects were exploited by medical researchers in the United States. "Tuskegee is just the most well-known example," says Washington, currently a visiting scholar at DePaul Law School.

"Medical Apartheid" starts with the chilling story of John (Fed) Brown, an escaped slave in 1855 who recalled his owner, a doctor, causing blisters on his arms and legs to see "how deep his black skin went." The study, if that's the word for it, had no therapeutic value. It reflected a distorted fascination with the outward appearance of African-Americans at a time when racial differences were thought to be much more than skin deep.

"One thing that surprised me," Washington told NEWSWEEK, "was the brutal honesty of the doctors' notes. There was no hiding their racist views. They made it clear how they felt about African-Americans and saw no problem with what they were doing. They were proud to write it down."

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 7:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

18 picked for Inventors Hall of Fame

Source: AP (2-8-07)

WASHINGTON -- Inventors of the MRI, the Ethernet, the LP record and a popular weedkiller are among 18 people picked for induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

The Akron, Ohio-based hall of fame was founded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations. It has inducted members since 1973 and will have honored 331 inventors with the new class.

The hall once was at the Patent Office in Washington, but has been in Akron since 1995.

The new inductees include seven living and 11 deceased inventors. Two induction ceremonies will take place in May in Akron.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 6:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israel weighs webcast of Old City project to allay fears

Source: AP (2-8-07)

JERUSALEM -- The Israel Antiquities Authority is considering broadcasting real-time, 24-hour video from a contentious Jerusalem holy site in a bid to allay Muslim fears the shrine will be harmed by repair work, an official said Thursday.

Muslim leaders ridiculed the idea, and Israeli police were on heightened alert before Friday Muslim prayers at the site, imposing travel restrictions and planning for a helicopter to hover overhead.

Israel says it needs to replace a centuries-old earthen ramp leading to the hilltop compound known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, which was damaged heavily in a 2004 snowstorm. It has promised the work would not harm Islamic shrines at the site, some 60 yards away, but those assurances have not calmed Muslim outrage over the project.

Lawmaker Israel Hasson said he proposed installing cameras so "all the Arab world would be able to see everything that goes on there."

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 6:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Red Army Faction terrorist debate in Germany

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-7-07)

[Detlev Karsten ] Rohwedder was one of the last victims of a German terrorist movement that had horrified a wealthy and fairly complacent society while killing 34 people. Called the Baader-Meinhof gang after its founding members, Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader, the Red Army Faction had its roots in the 1968 student protest movement.

It moved quickly to waging an armed struggle against the capitalist system. This involved bank robberies, bomb attacks on government buildings and U.S. military sites, kidnappings and assassinations.

Rohwedder has returned to the news over the past few days because of the intense and emotional debate surrounding the fate of two leading Red Army Faction terrorists, Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar. Each has spent 24 years behind bars. Both are hoping to be freed this year.

Mohnhaupt, 57, is serving five life sentences plus 15 years for her involvement in the murders of a banker, a prosecutor and the president of the employer's federation. Unlike other Red Army Faction prisoners, she has never spoken to journalists, has never applied for clemency and has never expressed regret for her crimes.

In most countries, a terrorist with such a record would never stand a chance for parole. But in Germany, life sentences rarely mean life in prison.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 4:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Project to record black families' oral histories

Source: AP (2-7-07)

WASHINGTON -- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced a project Wednesday that hopes to record at least 1,500 oral histories from black families over the next year.

The recordings are to be placed at the Library of Congress and in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution's future National Museum of African American History and Culture...

The CPB is funding the $1.4 million StoryCorps Griot project. Part of the project's name, "griot," is derived from the West African tradition of storytelling where a respected tribe member, a "griot," is a living repository of the community's history.

The first recording sessions are planned for Feb. 15 in Atlanta through a mobile recording studio that will stop in nine cities over the next year. The mobile recording units also will travel to Chicago; Clarksdale, Miss.; Detroit; Memphis, Tenn.; Montgomery, Ala.; Newark, N.J.; Oakland, Calif.; and Selma, Ala.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 3:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Jewish professor shocks Italy with 'blood libel' book claim

Source: Telegraph (2-8-07)

ROME -- A Jewish academic has shocked Italy by stating that Jews murdered Christians during the Middle Ages so that their blood could be used in ritualistic ceremonies.

The details were revealed in yesterday's Corriere Della Sera newspaper which published extracts of the book by Professor Ariel Toaff, "Easter of Blood: European Jews and Ritual Homicides".

Last night his claims were denied by leading Jewish figures including his father Elio, once chief rabbi of Rome.

In the book, Prof Toaff describes the mutilation and crucification of a two-year-old boy to recreate Christ's execution at Pesach, the Jewish Easter. The festival marks the fleeing of the Jews from Egypt and Prof Toaff says Christian blood was used for "magic and therapeutic practices."

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 3:24 AM | Comments (3) | Top

In Spain, largest swoop against archaeological looters

Source: Guardian (2-8-07)

MADRID -- Spanish police have arrested 52 people accused of plundering 300,000 artifacts from excavation sites throughout Andalusia in the largest swoop against illegal archaeological treasure hunting in the world, the interior ministry said.

The coins, urns, sculptures and mosaics from Iberian, Roman and Islamic settlements were stolen at night using metal detectors, historical maps of the digs and excavation manuals, police said. Sometimes watchmen collaborated with the thieves, letting them into sites and keeping a lookout.

Most of the 31 sites plundered were in the province of Seville, rich in ruins from Roman and Moorish times. Others were in the southern cities of Cadiz and Malaga...

Police learned about the antiquities ring during an investigation of illegal underwater looters who scavenged the Bay of Cadiz in search of shipwrecks and treasure from Spanish galleons. The underwater pirates used hi-tech equipment such as a submersible robot worth nearly £400,000 to identify, salvage and treat artifacts from the wrecks.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 3:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Jerusalem plans rooftop promenade to link Old City's Jewish and Muslim quarters

Source: Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (2-7-07)

In S.Y. Agnon's story "As a Musician Playing," a character, Avigdor, stands on the roof of his house and looks out over the Old City of Jerusalem. "House touches house and roof touches roof. A person can pass from one end of Jerusalem to another by the roofs, as a city built connected together, Avigdor said, alluding to the Psalms, sighing deeply. Jerusalem is connected by its houses and divided by its inhabitants."

It is hard to know whether the the Jewish Quarter Development Company's inspiration for the rooftop walk came from Agnon, but it will link, at least to some extent, the Jewish and the Muslim quarters.

The Old City is divided into quarters more or less according to the identity of its residents - Jews, Muslims, Christians and Armenians. In the Camp David summit of 2000, Ehud Barak expressed willingness to divide the Old City between Jews and Arabs, leaving Israel the Jewish and Armenian quarters and giving the Palestinians the Muslim and Christian sections. Now, with the approval of the government, the Jewish Quarter Development Company is planning a rooftop promenade that will extend from south to north, linking the Jewish and Muslim quarters.

A million and a half tourists visit the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall annually, but only about one third visit the other quarters. The company hopes the development of the promenade will change all that, with tourists first visiting the rooftops, and eventually the quarters as well.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 2:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Vast UCLA film, TV collection moves to state-of-art theater

Source: Los Angeles Daily News (2-6-07)

The UCLA Film & Television Archive makes its long-awaited move to the new, state-of-the-art Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood on Friday...

"With this theater's level of technology, we can go from silent film to the most extraordinary and contemporary surround sound, and we can go from the nitrate era all the way up to digital in a contemporary setting," [UCLA Dean Robert] Rosen enthuses...

With its store of more than 220,000 movies and television programs - only the Library of Congress has a larger collection - UCLA plans to program its heart out at the Wilder.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 2:05 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Footnote's digitized Archives available free at NARA centers

Source: Footnote.com press release (2-6-07)

WASHINGTON and LINDON, Utah -- Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Footnote, Inc. Chief Executive Officer Russell Wilding today announced the release of Footnote.com in all the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) locations nationwide [list at http://www.archives.gov/locations]. This new service at the research centers will provide patrons free access to NARA content that Footnote has digitized and indexed.

[Searching and index browsing is free online outside the NARA centers at Footnote.com but external access to most content is by subscription. See http://www.footnote.com/freedocuments.php]

According to Professor Weinstein, "It [the new service] will immediately allow much greater access to approximately 4.5 million pages of important documents that are currently available only in their original format or on microfilm." Professor Weinstein, along with Mr. Wilding, will be at Archives I in Washington DC to commemorate this important occasion.

NARA and Footnote, Inc. previously announced an agreement to digitize selected records from the vast holdings of the National Archives. This non-exclusive agreement, beginning with the sizeable collection of materials currently on microfilm, enables researchers and the general public to access millions of newly-digitized images of NARA historical records, which now can be accessed for free at the NARA research centers.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 2:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Jamestown at 400: yes, there are no buildings

Source: Chicago Tribune (1-31-07)

JAMESTOWN, Va. -- So this guy is walking toward the parking lot with his wife, big guy with a small camera around his neck, and he's obviously not happy.

"I thought there would be buildings," he says.

The first permanent English settlement in the New World is celebrating, in a responsibly big way, its 400th birthday this year.

To put that in era-perspective: In 1607, Shakespeare's latest hit play, "Antony and Cleopatra" (follow-up to his smash "Macbeth"), was playing to standing-room crowds at the Globe.

There will be commemorative huzzahs and meaningful new stuff to see and enjoy on permanent exhibit, and we'll talk about all that.

But no, after 400 years, there are no original buildings left on the original historic settlement site, Historic Jamestowne. No original fort. No original saloon. No original slaughterhouses for your photographic pleasure. Nothing.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 1:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Prehistoric Romeo and Juliet discovered

Source: AP (2-8-07)

ROME -- They died young and, by the looks of it, in love. Two 5,000-year-old skeletons found locked in an embrace near the city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale "Romeo and Juliet" have sparked theories the remains of a far more ancient love story have been found.

Archaeologists unearthed the skeletons dating back to the late Neolithic period outside Mantua, 25 miles south of Verona, the city of Shakespeare's story of doomed love.

Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, because their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig.

"As far as we know, it's unique," Menotti told The Associated Press by telephone from Milan. "Double burials from the Neolithic are unheard of, and these are even hugging."

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 1:32 AM | Comments (0) | Top

SMU won't vote on Bush think tank

Source: AP (2-7-07)

DALLAS -- Southern Methodist University professors on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected a plan to hold a faculty-wide vote on whether the campus should host a partisan think-tank as part of George W. Bush's presidential library.

Faculty Senate President Rhonda Blair said it was defeated because the measure was too narrow, asking professors if they approved or disapproved of the partisan institute, which would report to the Bush Foundation, not SMU. The issue may be discussed again next week, Blair said.

A petition signed by 175 of SMU's 600 professors had called for the vote. Some professors have said the think tank would hurt SMU's reputation because it would further the ideas of the Bush administration.

Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 1:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

CIA Proposes Upping FOIA Fees

Source: National Security Archive (2-7-07)

Washington, DC, February 7, 2007 - The CIA's proposed new rule on Freedom of Information Act processing fees is likely to discourage FOIA requesters while imposing new administrative burdens both on the Agency and the public, according to formal comments filed with the CIA today by the National Security Archive of George Washington University.

The Archive's general counsel, Meredith Fuchs, commented that, "Significant time, money, and other resources were spent by the CIA on fee disputes last year. One of those disputes involved the CIA's refusal to abide by a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judicial decision about the Archive's fee status. Given that the Agency recouped only $4,732.80 in fees in FY 2006, those disputes served mainly to delay and obstruct FOIA requests."

The Archive recommended that the Agency change its proposed rule to: (1) eliminate the unnecessary and improper definitions of FOIA requester categories; (2) eliminate the requirement that all requesters make open-ended, written fee commitments because many FOIA requests can be processed without the requester incurring any fees and the CIA proposal would discourage requesters and add to the Agency's administrative processing time; (3) eliminate the illegal provision mandating prepayment of fees before the CIA will honor form or format requests; (4) revise the proposed duplication fees provisions so that requesters pay only those "direct costs" actually incurred in the processing of the individual request, whether for paper or electronic duplication; and (5) revise the public interest fee waiver provisions to follow the letter and intent of the FOIA to promote dissemination of information in the public interest.

The Archive has had to sue the CIA twice over FOIA fee issues, despite the D.C. Circuit's definitive 1989 ruling in the Archive's favor. The most recent case, filed in 2006, covered 42 FOIA requests that the CIA deemed not to be "newsworthy"; only after the Archive filed its legal complaint and a motion for summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did the CIA reverse course on the 42 requests, but even then fell short of committing to abide by the judicial precedents.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Baghdad Day to Day: Librarian’s Journal

Source: NYT (2-7-07)

Saad Eskander, the director of Iraq’s National Library and Archive in Baghdad, finally had some time to catch up on his diary after a couple of very busy weeks. As he wrote in his latest entry, he was having trouble repairing the Internet system; the Restoration Laboratory “was hit by 5 bullets”; and “another librarian, who works at the Periodical Department, received a death threat. He has to leave his house and look for another one, as soon as he can; otherwise, he will be murdered.”

For a month now, Dr. Eskander’s intermittent diary entries have been appearing on the Web site of the British Library (bl.uk/iraqdiary.html), and they detail the daily hurdles of keeping Iraq’s central library open, preserving the surviving archives and books and, oh yes, staying alive.

“We thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight the conditions Dr. Eskander and his staff are really facing and that they are risking their lives to provide this service,” said Catriona Finlayson, a spokeswoman for the British Library.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Paris' Orsay Museum gets renovation to restore train depot details

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-6-07)

PARIS -- Two decades ago, France transformed an abandoned railway station into a glittering museum for Impressionist masterpieces. Now, the Orsay Museum is getting another overhaul — to resurrect forgotten architectural details of the original train depot.

The museum on the banks of the Seine River is shrouded in scaffolding and netting as experts paint it, rebuild corroded metal marquees and restore pollution-stained stonework.

The touchups on the facade are part of a broader renovation that will cost upward of €12.4 million (US$16 million). Instead of just cleaning up the stones, researchers have gone on a search for the building's roots.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 3:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

House takes steps toward national Latino museum

Source: McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (2-7-07)

WASHINGTON —- The House of Representatives laid the groundwork Tuesday for an ambitious new museum honoring Latinos.

Supporters of the proposed National Museum of the American Latinos still face a long road ahead, but moved a crucial step forward when the House agreed to spend $3.1 million on a commission to study the idea.

"Walk through the National Mall in Washington, D.C., visit our outstanding national museums and you can learn a lot about who Americans are and where we have been," said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif. "Yet the official narrative still fails to recognize the significant contributions made by Latinos to the culture and history of the United States."

The proposed museum would be in Washington. Beyond that, key questions involving cost, governance, fundraising, collections and precise location remain unresolved. The museum might be folded into the Smithsonian Institution, for instance.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 3:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Exodus' ship survivors sought, 60 years after tragic voyage

Source: Washington Post (2-7-07)

Sixty years ago this summer, the Exodus 1947 sailed from Marseilles, France, with 4,500 passengers, most survivors of the Holocaust, and began another horrific chapter in Holocaust-era history.

The refugees were bound for Palestine, then a British territory, and, a few miles from shore, the British Royal Navy boarded the ship and eventually deported the passengers to France. When they arrived back in Marseilles, the refugees refused to disembark. They went on a hunger strike and ended up in displaced-persons camps in Germany. It wasn't until 1948, and the creation of Israel, that some passengers made the journey they had started.

Yesterday the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum announced that it was returning to the Exodus story. The ship had no passenger manifest, so the museum, along with the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem and other agencies, is trying to compile a complete list of passengers from survivors and their families.

"The project is about honoring the survivors," said Michael Haley Goldman, acting director of the museum's Registry of Holocaust Survivors.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 3:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust survivors to press Poland for compensation

Source: Reuters (2-7-07)

WARSAW -- Holocaust survivors from around the world will gather in Warsaw this month to urge the Polish government to compensate them for property confiscated by the former communist regime, Jewish organizations said yesterday.

Poland, the biggest post-communist European Union member, is the only country from eastern Europe, besides Belarus, that has not enacted a program for the restitution of property seized after World War II. Attempts to solve the issue since the collapse of communism in 1989 have failed, mostly on the grounds that it would be too costly for the state budget.

Representatives of Jewish groups will gather here on February 27, hoping to convince the authorities to speed up legislation allowing the restitution of lost property.

Poland had Europe's biggest Jewish community until World War II, when the Nazis killed nearly 90 percent of the country's 3.3 million Jews. The post-war communist rulers seized their property as well as that of people who left or fled the country.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 2:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Dig near Temple Mount stirs tensions

Source: Christian Broadcasting Network (2-6-07)

JERUSALEM –- The Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City is probably the single most disputed piece of real estate in the world. A new archeological dig there is stirring tension in the already volatile region.

The dig is required by Israeli law before any major construction project can take place. The government plans on building a permanent replacement for a bridge near the site that collapsed a few years ago in a heavy snow storm.

The bridge is used by Christians and Jews to enter the Temple Mount via the Mugrabi Gate. Israeli police also use it when they’re called in to quell riots on the Temple Mount, which usually occur on Fridays when Moslems gather there to pray.

Tuesday, following threats of terrorist attacks inside Israel, police fanned out throughout Arab-populated East Jerusalem, where they ducked rocks thrown by rioting youth at several locations.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In hot pursuit of Egypt's lost mummies

Source: CSMonitor (1-4-07)

CAIRO –- Zahi Hawass is one part celebrity, one part investigator. Egypt's lead sleuth in the country's hunt to reclaim ancient antiquities has gained a reputation for often strong-arming curators and bullying museum directors. But while he's attracted critics in his hunt for Egypt's mummies and pharaonic masks, his hard-nosed techniques are indeed paying off.

Mr. Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has recovered some 3,500 objects, including the Ramses I mummy from Atlanta's Michael C. Carlos Museum and an ancient sarcophagus from the chairperson of Chicago's electric utility, Exelon.

At home, his quest has broken up smuggling rings and will possibly increase punishments for illegal trading. Abroad, he's demanding that Boston's Museum of Fine Arts return the bust of Ankhaf, the Khafre pyramid builder, and the St. Louis Art Museum hand over a pharaonic mask...

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 2:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Uffizi renovation moves fitfully forward

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-6-07)

FLORENCE -- A bright yellow crane has recently gone to work, the most solid sign yet that the reconstruction of the Uffizi Gallery here may really, finally, actually happen.

But even with the ground broken, 10 years after the project was first announced, few are betting on it. "In Florence, the disputes are never over," said Antonio Natali, the museum's director...

It is hard to blame him. Nearly 30 years have passed since the lower of the Uffizi's two grand floors was emptied of a mass of state archives. Thus the old Medici office complex, begun in 1560 by Vasari, was opened to a needed, if theoretical, expansion...

The need for an expansion has never been questioned: Paintings by Leonardo, Botticelli and Michelangelo, a few of the masters who make up the museum's extraordinary collection, are jammed so closely that they practically overlap. Tourists without reservations can wait outside for hours when Florence is crowded. Last year 1.5 million people visited the Uffizi, up 20 percent over the previous year.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 2:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

DNA clue to Jefferson ancestry puzzle

Source: BBC News (2-6-07)

DNA tests carried out on two British men have shed light on a mystery surrounding the ancestry of Thomas Jefferson, America's third president.

In the 1990s, DNA was taken from male relatives of Jefferson to see if he fathered a son with one of his slaves.

They found the president had a rare genetic signature found mainly in the Middle East and Africa, calling into question his claim of Welsh ancestry.

But this DNA type has now been found in two Britons with the Jefferson surname.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 2:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Foundation Gives $2 million to LC to Digitize Rare Books

Source: AHA Blog (2-5-07)

The Library of Congress, which already has several million digital items that are accessible—mostly through the American Memory web site—to users around the world, received a grant of $2 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support a program to digitize thousands of public-domain works, with a major focus on fragile books and U.S. history volumes.

The project, “Digitizing American Imprints at the Library of Congress,” will include not only the scanning of volumes, but also the development of suitable scanning and display technologies.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 12:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Campaign to put Iraq's Citadel on Heritage List

Source: NPR (2-4-07)

In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, Kurdish authorities are trying to turn a historic landmark into a United Nations-approved World Heritage Site. According to local historians, the ancient citadel in Irbil has been the site of human habitation for more than 7,000 years.

The Sumerians built a town on the flat Mesopotamian plains here they called "Ur Bilum." Civilizations came and went. Each wave of new inhabitants — including Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Ottomans - built on top of the other. Today, a crumbling brick citadel looms over modern-day Irbil on a giant man-made hill.

"It's the oldest continuously inhabited place in the world," says Sami Al Koja, who serves as an adviser to the citadel's board of renovation.

Many scholars contest this claim. Al Koja says that the mountain upon which the citadel sits has never been excavated or studied by archaeologists, due to decades of conflict and isolation.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 9:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Women played leading role in history

Source: Archaeological News (2-6-07)

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. ˜ Hold on to your bearskin hats and
your macramé snoods, readers: You are in for a wild
verbal ride through your deep, deep past.

The authors of a new book have fashioned a 16-chapter
prehistory theme park worthy of Disney, but in their
confection, lame, even egregious, past assumptions
about our past are hunted down and slain, and stars ˆ
in the form of womankind ˆ are born.

"The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women
in History" (Smithsonian Books/Collins) is a roller
coaster ride through Homo sapiens' unsteady past. No
stone tool is left unturned to bring us up on what is
ˆ and what is not ˆ probable about our long and
miraculous journey.

The authors are archaeologists J.M. Adovasio, the
founder and director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological
Institute; Olga Soffer, a professor of anthropology at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and
Jake Page, a freelance writer. Adovasio is an expert
on perishable prehistoric artifacts; Soffer is an
expert on the Paleolithic Period and peoples of the
Old World.

Of greatest import in this book is the idea that women
have always been major players ˆ not simply
baby-machines who tended to the children, rustled up
roots, collected nuts and berries and relied on macho
male hunters to bring home the bacon.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 9:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Increasing flooding damaging archaeological sites at Valley Forge

Source: AP (2-4-07)

POTTSTOWN, Pa. - Flooding from storms has been encroaching on the archaeological site at Valley Forge Park, sending historical artifacts tumbling away in the creek, according to park officials.

Standing on the banks of Valley Creek near its confluence with the Schuylkill River, it is possible to see several stone fences and a pipe that were part of the grist mill that used to stand next to George Washingtons headquarters.

Deirdre Gibson, chief of planning and resource management at the park, said workers used laser technology to record the buried ruins while documenting the former village.

"Once we saw it was going to go, there wasnt much we could do about it. Now we are watching the ruins drop into the creek," Gibson said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

KKK is growing again, report says

Source: AP (2-6-07)

NEW YORK — Huge street protests made millions of immigrants more visible and powerful last year, but they also seem to have revived a hateful counter force: white supremacists.

Groups linked to the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads and neo-Nazis grew significantly more active, holding more rallies, distributing leaflets and increasing their presence on the Internet — much of it focused on stirring anti-immigrant sentiment, a new report released by the Anti-Defamation League says.

"Extremist groups are good at seizing on whatever the hot button is of the day and twisting the message to get new members," Deborah Lauter, ADL Civil Rights director, said Monday. "This one seems to be taking hold with more of mainstream America than we'd like to see."

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 9:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pub builders uncover leper colony (UK)

Source: BBC (2-5-07)

Evidence of a medieval leper colony has been uncovered by builders who are renovating a pub in Coventry.

Human remains thought to date back some 900 years were found in the area of the men's toilets at the Four Provinces pub in the Spon End area of the city.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 9:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Black history's 'father' sought integration into history

Source: http://www.delawareonline.com (2-5-07)

When Carter G. Woodson first proposed Negro History Week in 1926, the history of black Americans was an afterthought in most school curriculums, if it was there at all.

Woodson, a Harvard-educated son of former slaves, believed encouraging schools to spend just a single week on black history would be a first step toward instilling a sense of pride in black students, toward breaking down the edifices of racism.

He chose the second week in February to acknowledge the birthdays of Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader, and President Abraham Lincoln.

"Woodson went on the philosophy that he was committed to studying black people so that black people wouldn't become 'a negligible factor in the thought of the world,' " says Pero Dagbovie, a Michigan State University history professor who has a book on Woodson and the early black history movement coming out later this year.

"He wanted to make sure that blacks' contributions to American democracy and history were recognized within the broader scope of U.S. history," Dagbovie says.

And what he wanted was not just a Black History Week, designated in 1972, or a Black History Month, which it became in 1976, but the integration of black history into the history of the American people and the world.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 9:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush proposes large increase for national parks

Source: AP (2-6-07)

National parks would get extra money next year to prepare for a big birthday bash — their own.

President Bush's 2008 budget, unveiled Monday, would give the National Park Service its largest-ever funding increase in preparation for the park system's 100th birthday in 2016.

In all, Bush allots $2.4 billion for the National Park Service for 2008, $230 million more than he requested last year. His plan would add $100 million each year leading up to the centennial, and pledges another $100 million to be matched by private donations...

Combined, the public and private investments could equal a $3 billion investment over 10 years, Park Service officials said...

Other key features of the proposed budget include:

--$20.0 million for cultural and natural resource programs at 20 parks to meet specific improvement goals, such as upgrading historic structures, eradicating exotic species and restoring disturbed lands.

--$22.5 million for federal land acquisition, including completing land acquisition for the Flight 93 National Memorial and funds for Civil War battlefield grants.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 6:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient Angkor Wat temples face modern assault--tourism

Source: Washington Post (2-6-07)

ANGKOR, Cambodia -- Built by a mighty 9th-century Khmer king, the soaring temple of Phnom Bakheng stands atop the highest peak of ancient Angkor. With a sweeping view that takes in Angkor Wat -- the world's largest religious structure -- the monks stationed here were probably among the first to glimpse the approaching Siamese troops that snuffed out this city's centuries-long domination of much of Southeast Asia.

So perhaps it is not surprising that more than 500 years later, Phnom Bakheng has become the ideal perch from which to watch another assault on Angkor -- by marauding armies of tourists.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 6:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn letters on display

Source: UPI (2-6-07)

LONDON -- Private letters between prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn, revealing her doubts as a dancer, and an English painter can be read by the public at a London museum.

The nine handwritten letters from Fonteyn to Robert Furse were bought by the Royal Opera House and were never made public, the Scotsman said Tuesday. They are on display at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms in London.

The letters offer insight into the Sadlers Wells Ballet -- the future Royal Ballet -- during World War II, when it performed to boost morale, the Royal Opera House said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 5:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Genealogist claims Obama related to Founding Fathers

Source: AP (2-6-07)

A Big Island genealogist says presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has some ancestral ties to the White House.

Bruce Harrison, founder of the Waikoloa-based Family Forest Project, said he found links between the Democratic senator from Illinois and Presidents George Washington, James Madison, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter.

Millisecond Publishing Co., the company that was first to establish the cousin relationship between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 race, traced Obama's maternal ancestors in establishing his relationship to the former presidents.
Harrison said Obama's exact relationships are calculations based on a wealth of fully sourced knowledge within the "Family Forest," his company's proprietary family history research tool.

The company searched the ancestors of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, dating back many centuries.

He said the Family Forest shows Dunham having a number of her ancestral pathways leading back to early colonial Virginia and New England, and some extend back for many centuries into Europe.

One of her ancestral pathways leads to one of Obama's 12th great-grandfathers, the Hon. Laurence Washington, who built Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire, England.

Over the course of five centuries, according to recorded history, he became the ancestor of Washington, Carter, Gen. George S. Patton, Gov. Adlai Stevenson and Quincy Jones, Harrison said.

"Of course, the Honorable Laurence Washington is also the ancestor of at least a million other living people, including some very famous ones, but most are everyday folks," he said....

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 5:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Himmler's secret quest to locate the 'Aryan Holy Grail'

Source: Independent (2-6-07)

BARCELONA -- Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, made a secret wartime mission to an abbey in Spain in search of what he believed was the Aryan Holy Grail, a new book claims.

Himmler visited the famous Montserrat Abbey near Barcelona where he thought he would find the Grail which Jesus Christ was said to have used to consecrate the Last Supper.

According to The Desecrated Abbey, by Montserrat Rico Góngora, the Reichsführer-SS thought if he could lay claim to the Holy Grail it would help Germany win the war and give him supernatural powers...

Góngora has interviewed a former monk who was ordered by his superiors to greet Himmler during the visit in 1940.

Now a pensioner living in an old people's home near Barcelona, Andreu Ripol Noble was at the time the only German-speaker in the abbey and was asked to help Himmler with his odd quest.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK couple face £200,000 bill from ancient church law

Source: Times (of London) (2-6-07)

A couple who lost a seven-year legal battle against an ecclesiastical law that required them to pay the cost of repairs to an ancient parish church were ordered to meet the final demand for more than £200,000 yesterday.

The initial bill presented to Andrew and Gail Wallbank for restoration of St John the Baptist Church in Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire, was about £95,000...

The Wallbanks own Glebe Farm, in Aston Cantlow. The site includes a field called Clanacre, which is classified as rectorial property, making them “lay rectors” of the parish.

The couple, who also have a sheep farm in Carno, Powys, became liable for restoration costs under the Chancel Repairs Act 1932, which is based on centuries-old law.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bulldozing Chinese antiquities at an Olympian's speedy pace

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-5-07)

BEIJING -- When this city began its gargantuan construction job for the 2008 Olympics, an early complication involved dead eunuchs. Workers had discovered a eunuchs mausoleum buried under the site of the skeet-shooting venue on the city's western fringe. And the eunuchs had company.

Along the city's northern rim, surveyors examined the sites for the main Olympic stadiums and discovered archaeological remains tracing back 2,000 years to the Han dynasty. In all, archaeologists excavated 700 ancient burial sites and recovered 1,538 artifacts, such as porcelain urns and jade jewelry, while collecting more than 6,000 ancient coins.

The subterranean Olympics cache would be considered remarkable in many countries, but in a China convulsing with demolition and construction, it amounted to just another work site. Building the new China usually entails digging up the old China. Construction zones across China are uncovering so many antiquities that it might be considered a golden era for archaeology, except that sites and antiquities are often simply demolished by bulldozers or looted.

"There are two enemies of antiquity protection," said Xu Pingfang, president of the China Archaeological Society. "Construction is one. Thieves are the others. They know what they want, and they destroy the rest."

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Russian saint's alleged bones for sale online

Source: UPI (2-5-07)

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Russian Orthodox Church is outraged after a skull and bone supposedly belonging to St. Phillip showed up for sale online.

The Russian Web site that had the relics up for sale described them as the "remains of an Orthodox saint, in good condition, with an inscription on the cranium confirming the saint's name," the BBC reported.

The church called the advertisement immoral, but did not state whether it thinks the bone and skull are real.

The item's seller, Boris Georgiev,...said that the 16th-Century relic was found along with the remaining pieces from the St. Petersburg Atheism Museum that was closed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Landclearing threatens ancient settlement in Antigua

Source: AP (2-6-07)

ST. JOHN'S, Antigua -- A land-clearing project in southern Antigua is threatening a unique ancient settlement where Arawak Indians lived from roughly 500 B.C. until the arrival of Christopher Columbus, an archaeologist said Monday.

Crews that began removing trees on privately owned property over the weekend risk damaging pottery and other artifacts at Indian Creek, one of the most valuable archaeological sites in the Caribbean, archaeologist Reginald Murphy said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Atomic bomb survivors' benefits upheld in Japan

Source: AP (2-6-07)

TOKYO -- Japan's highest court ordered Hiroshima's local government to settle medical backpayments to three Japanese citizens who survived the 1945 U.S. atomic bomb attack but were deprived of government benefits because they moved to Brazil, a court official said Tuesday.

Japan's Supreme Court upheld a Hiroshima High Court ruling last February ordering the local government to pay the three more than $24,000 each as compensation for unpaid medical expenses, court spokeswoman Rie Ueda said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Arab League denounces Israeli escavations near mosque

Source: Xinhua (China) (2-6-07)

The Arab League (AL) denounced on Tuesday the Israeli excavations near the Islamic holy shrine in Jerusalem, the official MENA news agency reported.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Missouri Lawmaker seeks apology for slavery

Source: AP (2-6-07)

The state would formally apologize for permitting more than 140 years of slavery under a proposal that would make Missouri one of the first in the country to make such a move.

The resolution, which details the history of Missouri slavery, says that "an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot ease the past, but confession of the wrongs can speed racial healing and reconciliation."

Rep. Talibdin El-Amin said Missouri should be one of the first states to apologize for slavery because the Dred Scott case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that black people in the United States cannot sue, originated in Missouri.

"That case set a legal precedent, and I’m looking for Missouri to set another precedent and be one of the first states to apologize for slavery," El-Amin, D-St. Louis, said yesterday.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient skeleton creates religion-science battle in Kenya

Source: AP (2-6-07)

NAIROBI, Kenya - Deep in the dusty, unlit corridors of Kenya's national museum, locked away in a plain-looking cabinet, is one of mankind's oldest relics: Turkana Boy, as he is known, the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric human ever found.

But his first public display later this year is at the heart of a growing storm — one pitting scientists against Kenya's powerful and popular evangelical Christian movement. The debate over evolution vs. creationism — once largely confined to the United States — has arrived in a country known as the cradle of mankind.

"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."...

Against him is one of the planet's best-known fossil hunters, Richard Leakey, whose team unearthed the bones at Nariokotome in West Turkana, in the desolate, far northern reaches of Kenya in 1984.

"Whether the bishop likes it or not, Turkana Boy is a distant relation of his," Leakey, who founded the museum's prehistory department, told The Associated Press. "The bishop is descended from the apes and these fossils tell how he evolved."

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

CA Bill: Fire Educators Who Teach "Untruths" About Terrorism

Source: HNN news story based on Press Release issued by Assemblyman DeVore (1-24-07)

California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would prohibit teachers "from teaching untruths about extremist terror networks." Teachers found in violation of the act could be fired.

Assembly Bill 137 would also authorize the firing of any public employee who belongs to an "extremist terrorist network" or donates money to one.

The bill would amend an existing statute passed in the 1950s that prohibited membership in the communist party.

DeVore began thinking about the necessity of such a bill when he came across the now antiquated legislation aimed at communists. He said in a press release that "We should act to update our laws before someone uses a position of trust in state government to facilitate a dirty bomb attack on a California port, or uses a position of authority at a state university to recruit students into service of a violent and hateful cause."

Excerpts from the legislation:

Existing law prohibits a teacher from giving instruction and prohibits a school district from sponsoring any activity that reflects adversely upon a person because of his or her race, sex, color, creed, handicap, national origin, or ancestry.
This bill would additionally prohibit a teacher from giving instruction in a school or on property belonging to an agency included in the public school system from teaching untruths about extremist terror networks, as defined. The bill would delete obsolete provisions regarding communism.
(4) Under existing law, a public employee may be dismissed if he or she advocates or is knowingly a member of an organization which during the time of his or her membership the employee knows advocates overthrow of the Government of the United States or of any state by force or violence. Under existing law, a public employee is required to answer, under oath, specified questions, including, but not limited to, knowing membership in an organization advocating the forceful or violent overthrow of the Government of the United States or of any state.
This bill would additionally provide that a public employee may be dismissed if he or she advocates or is knowingly a member of an extremist terror network, as defined, or a financial supporter of an extremist terror network. The bill would require a public employee to answer, under oath, specified questions, including, but not limited to, knowing membership in, or financial support of, an extremist terror network. The bill would delete obsolete provisions regarding knowing membership in the Communist Party.

Related Links

Dave Ellison: Outlaw the teaching of "untruths" about terrorism?

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 3:51 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Veep secrecy challenged by federal agency

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (2-6-07)

In an extraordinary internal challenge to the unruly Office of
the Vice President (OVP), the Information Security Oversight
Office (ISOO) has formally petitioned the Attorney General to
direct the OVP to comply with a requirement that executive
branch organizations disclose statistics on their classification
and declassification activity to ISOO.

For the last three years, Vice President Cheney's office has
refused to divulge its classification statistics to ISOO,
despite a seemingly explicit requirement that it do so. Prior
to 2002, such information had routinely been transmitted and
reported in ISOO's annual reports to the President.

The disclosure requirement appears in ISOO Directive 1 (at
section 2001.80): "Each agency that creates or handles
classified information shall report annually to the Director of
ISOO statistics related to its security classification program."

Such ISOO directives "shall be binding upon the agencies,"
President Bush wrote in Executive Order 13292 (section 5.1).
Significantly, an "agency" here means not only a
statutorily-defined executive branch agency (which would not
include the OVP), but also refers to "any other entity within
the executive branch that comes into the possession of
classified information" (which would include the OVP).

Last May, the Federation of American Scientists urged ISOO to
press for the Vice President's compliance. (SN, 05/31/06).

"Since the Office of the Vice President has publicly staked out a
position that openly defies the plain language of the executive
order, ISOO now has a responsibility to clarify the matter," we
wrote at that time. "Otherwise, every agency will feel free to
re-interpret the order in idiosyncratic and self-serving ways."

This week ISOO indicated that it was actively pursuing the
matter.

"With respect to the question you raised, I was unsuccessful in
achieving a common understanding with OVP," wrote ISOO director
J. William Leonard in a February 5 email message.

"Accordingly, in early January, pursuant to section 6.2(b),
Executive Order 12958, as amended, I wrote the Attorney General
requesting that he render an interpretation on the issue," he
wrote.

(Section 6.2(b) of the executive order states that "The Attorney
General, upon request by the head of an agency or the Director
of the Information Security Oversight Office, shall render an
interpretation of this order with respect to any question
arising in the course of its administration.")

"I have not received a reply to this request as of yet," Mr.
Leonard wrote.

He declined to provide a copy of his January letter to the
Attorney General, explaining that it is pre-decisional.

The Justice Department has been asked at least once before to
resolve a dispute over implementation of the executive order on
classification.

In 1999, the Central Intelligence Agency refused to accept the
jurisdiction of the Interagency Security Classification Appeals
Panel over Agency classification activity. But the Justice
Department Office of Legal Counsel issued a ruling in October
1999 that the CIA classification decisions were indeed subject
to ISCAP review. That state of affairs was modified by
President Bush in 2003, when he effectively gave the Director of
Central Intelligence a veto over ISCAP decisions.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 3:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK notes discord over Bush's lavish library

Source: BBC (2-6-07)

Like many aspects of his presidency, George W Bush's plan for his presidential library has been mired in controversy from the start.

Bush representatives appear to be closing in on a post-presidency deal to build the reported half-a-billion dollar library, museum and policy institute at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas.

Libraries can play a leading role in shaping a president's legacy. But sometimes it is a legacy that people do not want to be associated with.

The SMU faculty has been forced to meet on a number of occasions in the past month to address strong protests by a number of academics and Methodist leaders to Mr Bush's plans.

Two professors kick-started the debate last November by arguing that the library would associate the university with a president who took the country to war unnecessarily, violated international law and was guilty of "misleading the American public."...

James Hollifield, a political science professor at the university, said SMU would benefit from the institute because of the discussion, debate and research prompted by the eight years of documents from the Bush administration.

"We have to set politics aside and build this library and institute and give scholars and historians a chance to do their work," Mr Hollifield said.

But Sidney Blumenthal, former Clinton aide and political journalist told the BBC News website that that "depends on whether you are talking about historians now or in 100 years' time."

"Secrecy is a fetish with the Bush administration," says Mr Blumenthal, author of How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime.

"Mr Bush has already shown that he wants to fight disclosure of his records. His administration has classified a tremendous amount of material as top secret - material that other administrations would not have classified in such a way."

Related Links

Scott Jaschik: Broadening the Bush Library Debate

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

As church shows its age, Bard is still the rage

Source: Washington Post (2-6-07)

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, England -- At 2:30 on a cold January afternoon, Paul Ruan walked into Holy Trinity Church, stood before William Shakespeare's grave and read the curse engraved on the headstone.

"Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones/And curst be he yt moves my bones."...

At 2:45, a busload of Argentine students crowded around the brass railing and red velvet kneelers at the foot of the grave. Other visitors followed, eager to glimpse the final resting place of the man often called the world's greatest writer. Most paid the white-haired lady collecting the suggested (but not mandatory) $3 admission fee, $1 for students.

Money is a big issue for the 800-year-old church these days because the roof leaks, the metal in the windows is corroding and a small invasion force of deathwatch beetles is boring into the ancient timbers. It is a familiar story in England, where hundreds of centuries-old churches, left largely devoid of worshipers by a modern trend toward secularism, need hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of repairs...

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 2:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

White House Lincoln Bedroom is restored to its 19th-century glory

Source: Newsweek (2-12-07)

A hundred and ninety-eight years after Abraham Lincoln's birth, the White House's Lincoln Bedroom finally looks like a room the great man would recognize.

Until recently, Lincoln furniture and a copy of the Gettysburg Address were displayed against the pale walls, curtains and carpet of a 1950s city hotel—not the vivid golds and purples, heavy fabrics and large patterns of Lincoln's era.

One reason for this mild historical fib was to focus attention on the chamber's historic objects. Another: midcentury Americans disdained Victorian décor, which they equated with the horrific house in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho."

But now, under First Lady Laura Bush and White House curator Bill Allman, the bedroom has been impressively restored to the time of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln signed there in 1863.

Posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 1:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, February 5, 2007

New discoveries prompt re-examination of slavery in Gold Rush California

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (1-27-07)

Adam Willis was brought to California as a slave in 1846, gained his freedom nine years later, then searched the country using newspaper ads to find his family and build a home for them in Solano County.

The recent discovery of Willis' 152-year-old manumission record in the Solano County Archive has, along with other records from that era, stimulated a new examination of California's past that's been left out of the Gold Rush history books.

The existence of slavery in early California and the debate over whether it would enter the union as a free or slave state had momentous import. That past is featured in...[a new exhibit] at San Francisco's Museum of the African Diaspora, known as MoAD.

"As you know, slavery just tore apart so many families," said Vallejo resident Sharon McGriff-Payne, who found Willis' document in August while doing research for a book about the history of African Americans in Solano County.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mississippi civil rights museum gains momentum, but not a done deal

Source: AP (2-4-07)

JACKSON, Miss. -- In a state long defined by strident racial divisions, there's serious discussion about building a civil rights museum.

It would be a place where scholars and tourists could learn about lynchings, segregation and voting-rights struggles.

A bill that cleared the Mississippi House 117-3 last week would authorize the state to issue $50 million in bonds to develop a museum.

The discussion among elected officials now is not about whether a museum should be built -- but rather about where the potential tourist magnet could go.

Civil rights museums are attracting thousands of visitors each year in Memphis, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, and officials in Mississippi see the potential for revenue.

Related Links

Editorial: Museum belongs in Jackson

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 9:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient Semitic snake spells deicipered in pyramid

Source: National Geographic News (2-5-07)

The ancient Egyptians believed themselves superior to their neighboring nations in almost every aspect.

The passages, inscribed on the subterranean walls of the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara, reveal that the Egyptians enlisted the magical assistance of Semitic Canaanites from the ancient city of Byblos, located in what is now Lebanon. The Canaanite spells were invoked to help protect mummified kings against poisonous snakes, one of ancient Egypt's most dreaded nemeses...

The passages were first uncovered in the 19th century, but they have remained a mystery to scholars for generations...But in 2002 a colleague asked Richard Steiner, a professor of Semitic languages and literature at New York's Yeshiva University, if the texts might be Semitic.

"I immediately recognized the Semitic words for 'mother snake,'" Steiner said at a recent lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he presenting the findings.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Germany court won't extradite ex-SS guard

Source: AP (2-5-07)

MUNICH -- A German court has blocked the extradition to Denmark of a former member of the Nazi SS wanted in the Scandinavian country for the assassination of a journalist in 1943, it said Monday.

A senior Nazi-hunter in Israel criticized the decision, saying time and old age could not erase guilt for Nazi crimes.

Soeren Kam, an 84-year-old German citizen born in Denmark, was detained at his home in Bavaria in September 2006 on a European arrest warrant. He was released from custody in October pending a ruling on his extradition.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 7:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Small Jerusalem dig angers Palestinians

Source: AP (2-5-07)

JERUSALEM -- In the space of one day, a small archaeological dig in Jerusalem's Old City became a rallying call aimed at uniting Palestinians against Israel.

The dig -- a few waterlogged sandbags and black buckets of earth behind aluminum walls -- is meant to prepare the way for a new pedestrian walkway up to one of the world's most explosive holy sites, the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

Though archaeologists insist there is no danger to the walled compound, it inflamed Muslim fears that Israel was planning to damage Islamic holy sites and briefly caused rival Palestinian factions to put aside their differences and condemn Israel together.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 7:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historians press SMU to reject presidential library

Source: Dallas Morning News (2-5-07)

Archivists and historians are urging Southern Methodist University to reject the Bush presidential library unless the administration reverses an executive order that gives former presidents and their heirs the right to keep White House papers secret in perpetuity.

"If the Bush folks are going to play games with the records, no self-respecting academic institution should cooperate," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The policy triggered outrage and a still-pending lawsuit when President Bush issued it about seven weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, as SMU officials try to complete a deal for a Bush library, museum and policy institute, the Society of American Archivists plans a public relations offensive meant to pressure Congress and the university to force a change.

"Whether they like it or not, they have become a player in that discussion," said Mark Greene, president-elect of the archivists and director of the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center. "There's been no indication from the Bush administration that they have in any way rethought the executive order, and it is our hope that these negotiations provide a possible pivot point."

SMU Vice President Brad Cheves said the university is well aware of the debate but is mindful that rules regarding release of presidential papers have evolved in the last 30 years. He said SMU is taking the long view as it tries to land a facility that will stand "for generations to come as a storehouse of history."

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 7:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Cold War hiding place

Source: Guardian (2-5-07)

So this is where world war three would have been waged. And this is the tub in which, in between ordering retaliatory nuclear strikes, the prime minister would have taken a bath. There is his toilet, and here, in the dead centre of a 34-acre underground bunker in Wiltshire, is the reinforced chamber in which preparations for nuclear winter would have been made. As you stand in the torchlit cold, with the doorframes collapsing from dry rot and with water dripping down incipient stalactites, the room seems to fill with the voices of Harold Macmillan, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher, and you find yourself shivering. But not from the chill.

Until two years ago, the existence of this complex, variously codenamed Burlington, Stockwell, Turnstile or 3-Site, was classified. It was a huge yet very secret complex, where the government and 6,000 apparatchiks would have taken refuge for 90 days during all-out thermonuclear war. Solid yet cavernous, surrounded by 100ft-deep reinforced concrete walls within a subterranean 240-acre limestone quarry just outside Corsham, it drives one to imagine the ghosts of people who, thank God, never took refuge here...

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Briefcase 'that changed the world'

Source: BBC News (2-5-07)

In the summer of 1940, the war with Germany was at a critical stage.

France had recently surrendered and the Luftwaffe was engaged in a concerted bombing campaign against British cities.

The United Kingdom was being cut off from the Continent, and without allies to help her, she would soon be near the limit of her productive capacity - particularly in the all important field of electronics.

On the morning of 29 August, a small team of the country's top scientists and engineers, under the direction of Sir Henry Tizard and in conditions of absolute secrecy, was about to board a converted ocean liner.

With them they carried possibly the most precious cargo of the war - a black japanned metal deed box containing all of Britain's most valuable technological secrets.

They were on their way to America - to give them away...

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Documents of slain NAACP leader found

Source: AP (2-5-07)

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A briefcase stuffed with letters, notes and newspaper clippings belonging to slain civil rights leader Harry T. Moore was found in an old vacant barn not far from where he was killed in a house bombing, officials said.

Workers for the Brevard County Historical Commission stumbled across the briefcase as they prepared to move the barn to make way for a planned subdivision.

The documents discovered in November were turned over to the state attorney general's office to determine their significance. None was found, so they were given to Moore's 76-year-old daughter, Evangeline Moore.

Moore and his wife, Harriette Moore, died in 1951 in a bombing at their home in Mims on Christmas Day. Harry Moore was the first NAACP official killed during the modern civil rights struggle, but it took years for investigators to determine that four now-dead Ku Klux Klan members were responsible.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 4:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

World's oldest newspaper no longer on paper, goes digital only

Source: AP (2-5-07)

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer. The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.

The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals...

Queen Kristina used the publication to keep her subjects informed of the affairs of state, Holm said, and the first editions, which were more like pamphlets, were carried by courier and posted on note boards in cities and towns throughout the kingdom.

Today, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, which means mail and domestic tidings, runs legal announcements by corporations, courts and certain government agencies -- about 1,500 a day according to Olov Vikstrom, the current editor.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 4:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A primer from the past for Iraq diplomacy

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (2-4-07)

As President Bush and Congress fight over his plan for a military surge in Iraq, they might do well to study the lessons of diplomacy from quagmires past.

Diplomats, historians and activists who have studied the wars in Vietnam and Lebanon say the history of negotiations in those conflicts can be instructive in finding a way out of Iraq.

"It's a silly argument to say you shouldn't talk to Iran and Syria," said Winston Lord, a top aide to U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger during the Vietnam War negotiations in Paris that resulted in the Jan. 27, 1973, accord and led to the final U.S. troop withdrawal. "Of course you do, much in the same way as in Paris," Lord said.

The Vietnam negotiations started in March 1968, and dragged on for nearly five years. While the talks initially were unpopular among Americans, with opponents calling them a prelude to "cutting and running," support grew as war casualties mounted.

"The negotiations took much longer than any of us expected, but by the end of it almost everyone in (the United States) was in favor," said Tom Hayden, the former California state legislator, who during the Vietnam era was a leader of the anti-war movement and met several times in Paris with U.S. and North Vietnamese negotiators.

"It was known among the U.S. chattering class as 'talk-talk-fight-fight,' which is what they called the North's position, but the United States was doing the same thing, hoping to break down the will of the other side while talks went on," said Hayden...

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Plagiarism charged to author of Bestseller on Iraq War

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com (2-3-07)

The Canadian publisher of an acclaimed bestseller on the U.S. invasion of Iraq has halted shipments of the book after an Atlanta newspaper said its text contains numerous passages that should have been attributed to one of its writers.

Toronto author and Harper's magazine contributor Paul William Roberts has admitted that his 2004 book, A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq, contains "elements [that] . . . closely resemble or are indistinguishable from passages" in an article in the Sept. 29, 2002, Atlanta Journal-Constitution by deputy editorial-page editor Jay Bookman.

In a Jan. 19 letter of apology to a lawyer for the newspaper, Mr. Roberts called his failure to acknowledge the use of Mr. Bookman's material in five of his book's 350-plus pages "a journalistic travesty" and "an egregious lapse of professional conduct," but he said the failure was inadvertent, more the result of "the dangers of sloppiness" than an act of malice or bald plagiarism.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 1:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Beijing accuses Taipei museum of cutting China roots

Source: Financial Express (Dhaka, Bangladesh) (2-3-07)

TAIPEI -- Beijing has accused Taiwan of seeking to sever the priceless Chinese cultural treasures held in the National Palace Museum in Taipei from their national roots.

China's state media has denounced as "exceedingly dangerous" a planned revision of the charter of the museum, which is home to the most precious artefacts from Beijing's fabled imperial Forbidden City, accusing Taiwan of pursuing a policy of "de-Sinification"...

The Chinese complaints centre on Taiwanese plans to revise the charter of the museum, the repository of Forbidden City treasures brought to the island by Kuomintang forces defeated on the mainland by Mao Zedong's Communists in the late 1940s. Taiwan's cabinet recently submitted to parliament a draft amendment of the museum's charter which no longer states at the top that the artefacts in it come from Beijing's Forbidden City...

Chinese scholars routinely reject claims that Taiwan's culture has been influenced by the island's indigenous Polynesian inhabitants, its extended Japanese rule and its very different history of European colonial contacts...[The People's Daily] called for vigilance against any further efforts to excise Taiwan's Chinese roots. "When slanders pass from mouth to mouth, people will believe there is a tiger in the market place. When evil people incite the crowd, the buzz of mosquitoes turns to thunder," it said.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 3:05 AM | Comments (0) | Top

War of words over Tallinn's bronze soldier

Source: Telegraph (2-5-07)

TALLINN, Estonia -- A Nazi state has been reborn within the European Union and its "blasphemous" leaders are bent on glorifying the Third Reich and insulting Russia. There is talk of sanctions and even of internal armed resistance.

That, at least, is the view from Moscow, where politicians from President Vladimir Putin on down have condemned the government in the tiny Baltic republic of Estonia.

On a snow swept square outside the medieval walls of Tallinn's old town stands the cause of a row that is straining Russia's relations with its former-Soviet neighbours.

The Bronze Soldier of Tallinn was erected 60 years ago. For the country's Russian-speaking minority, the statue symbolises liberation and the defeat of Nazism; for the Estonian majority it represents half a century of brutal Soviet occupation.

Last month Estonia's parliament gave initial backing to legislation that could see the statue moved to a war cemetery on the capital's outskirts along with what are believed to be the remains of 13 Russian soldiers buried under a nearby bus stop.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 2:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Give us back our bones, pagans tell British museums

Source: Guardian (2-5-07)

British museums have become used to requests that foreign treasures be repatriated. Greece has persistently requested the return of the Parthenon marbles, while some administrators have agreed to return the remains of Australian Aborigines. Now the pressure is coming from closer to home.

British pagan groups are increasingly asking for human remains and grave goods from pre-Christian burials to be returned to them as well. The presence of what they see as their ancestors in dusty drawers or under harsh display lights is an affront to their religion. To them, the bones are living beings, whose existence is bound up with their religious descendants and the sacred land.

"This is quite a big issue for museums around the country, but one that was not being discussed," said Piotr Bienkowski, the deputy director of Manchester Museum. "Discussion had been deliberately clamped down in some circles."

Many scientists counter that, because of numerous influxes of people into the British Isles, it is impossible to identify the cultural or genetic descendants of Anglo-Saxon pagans and older peoples. They say handing back the bones for reburial would be a betrayal of a museum's duty to society and a loss to science.

But requests from pagans for reburials are becoming more common. The Natural History Museum, British Museum, Leicester Museum, Manchester Museum, Devizes Museum and Duckworth Laboratory at Cambridge University have all been in dialogue with pagan groups. Last week, the Council of British Druid Orders demonstrated outside the Alexander Keiller Museum in Wiltshire for the reburial of a child skeleton excavated from Windmill Hill in 1929. The council is in dialogue with English Heritage and the National Trust about the issue.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 2:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Enslaved, shipwrecked, abandoned: the Crusoes of Tromelin island

Source: Independent (2-4-07)

Shipwrecked and abandoned: the story of the slave Crusoes

In 1776, 57 years after Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe, eight people were rescued from a tiny, treeless island in the Indian Ocean. Seven of them, all women, had survived on the island for 15 years. The eighth, a baby boy, was born there.

The women were the remnants of a group of 60 people who were shipwrecked and then marooned on the scrap of coral and sand in 1761. They were abandoned, and then forgotten, 300 miles from the nearest land, for a simple, brutal reason. They were slaves.

Now, 230 years later, a team of French archaeologists has spent a month searching the wreck of the ship and excavating the flat, shelterless island. They have uncovered some of the secrets of how the castaways clung to life - and developed an elaborate community - on a fragment of near barren land, frequently swept clean by typhoons...

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 2:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Discovered: Britain's very own Colosseum

Source: Independent (2-4-07)

Archaeologists have discovered that what had been thought to be a relatively small, down-market amphitheatre in Britain was in fact a top-of-the-range, though admittedly more intimate, version of Rome's famous gladiatorial arena.

Indeed, this British Colosseum -- in Chester -- may well have been built as a replica of the one in Rome, possibly on the orders of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, who was in Britain at the time.

Although it was much smaller than the Colosseum, its outer wall appears to have had a blind arcade of 80 arches, giving it a superficially similar appearance to the one in Rome. If the archaeologists' calculations are correct, Rome and Chester were the only places in the Roman world to have amphitheatres with that number of arches.

Chester's inhabitants appear to have been enthusiastic supporters of their Colosseum. Evidence suggests that the audience gorged on salmon, oysters, hazelnuts, venison, lamb, pork, beef and chicken. The "entertainers" did not have such a good time. The archaeologists -- led by Dr Tony Wilmott of English Heritage and Dan Garner of Chester Archaeology -- have not only found broken daggers and bits of shattered armour, but also fragments of body parts...

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 1:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

UK students must now learn about Shakespeare, slavery, Holocaust

Source: Guardian (2-5-07)

Shakespeare, the world wars and algebra are "untouchable" parts of pupils' study, the education secretary will today tell a review of the secondary curriculum.

Alan Johnson will stress the importance of traditional topics as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority publishes its plans for overhauling the subjects studied by 11- to 14-year-olds.

The proposals will give schools greater flexibility in deciding what to teach pupils, including dropping French and German lessons in place of Urdu or Mandarin tuition. They also aim to make it easier to allow children of different abilities to progress at their own speeds.

The education secretary has already announced that studying Britain's involvement in the slave trade and broader issues of "identity and diversity" will become compulsory. Today Mr Johnson will focus on existing subjects. "There are certain untouchable elements of the secondary curriculum that all teenagers should learn for a classic, well-rounded British education. It's nonsense to claim that the curriculum is being dumbed down."

Mr Johnson will say that essential elements of education include algebra and geometry in maths, and classic authors such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot in English. He has insisted that Shakespeare's sonnets, as well as his plays, should remain on the curriculum.

He will add: "It is essential too that children learn about important parts of history like the world wars and the Holocaust - and the debt of gratitude we owe those who gave their lives for their country."

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 12:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

UK to block Diego Garcia islanders, evicted '66-73, from ever returning home

Source: Telegraph (2-5-07)

More than three decades after British islands in the Indian Ocean were depopulated to make way for an American base, the Government will ask the courts today to ban the inhabitants from ever returning home.

The Chagos Islands, forming the British Indian Ocean Territory, are one of the world's most isolated archipelagos, found some 2,200 miles east of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast.

At America's request, Britain cleared the islands of all 2,000 of their inhabitants –- referred to by one Foreign Office diplomat as "Tarzans and Men Fridays" –- between 1966 and 1973. After this, a US naval and air base was constructed on the biggest island, Diego Garcia.

The High Court has twice given the islanders, known as the Chagossians, the right to return and Britain had initially accepted the ruling when the islanders won their first case in 2000...But after the terrorist attacks on September 11, this policy was abruptly reversed.

But today the Government will try and overturn a second ruling in the Court of Appeal.

Bombers operating from Diego Garcia can strike deep into the Middle East and South Asia. Naval vessels using its harbour can patrol the strategically vital waters of the Indian Ocean and the approaches to the Red Sea. Diego Garcia was a crucial launching pad for the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Some 1,000 American and 40 British military personnel are based there.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 12:55 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Armed welcome was prepared when Amin threatened 1977 London visit or claim Scottish throne

Source: Telegraph (2-5-07)

British police and troops were prepared for an airport shoot-out with President Idi Amin and 250 supporters if he tried to attend a meeting for Commonwealth heads of government in London, according to files released at the National Archive yesterday.

The secret security plans included snipers in the airport terminal, explosives experts and armoured ambulances to recover the wounded from the tarmac.

The files have been revealed along with a contingency plan in case the Ugandan president decided to fly to Scotland and take up his claim to the Scottish throne.

In May 1977, the Prime Minister Jim Callaghan had sent Amin a private message, via Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia, warning him that he would not be permitted to enter the country. Britain had already broken off diplomatic relations, and the scale of the dictator's brutality meant he was cold-shouldered by many African leaders.

But Amin had announced that he intended to arrive with 250 supporters, including tribal dancers, and would stay at St Ermin's Hotel, near Scotland Yard, or if that was not big enough he hoped to be accommodated at Buckingham Palace.
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He expressed outrage at the ban and then disappeared from public view, while his government spokesmen claimed he was on his way to Britain with 900 followers.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 12:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Bulgarian rightists protest attempts to 'rob history'

Source: Novinite (Sofia News Agency) (2-4-07)

A rightist leader criticized the statements of Bulgarian President trying, in his words, to rehabilitate a shameful page in the history of post-communism socialists.

The events of February 4, 1997 is the "late Prague spring" of Bulgaria, Union of Democratic Forces leader Petar Stoyanov said on the same day ten years later.

"There is nothing heroic in returning a government mandate when the people is ready to kill you with stones," he said.

Stoyanov, who was at the time President of Bulgaria, denounced claims of the socialists - reiterated by the president - that it was the quit mandate that had saved Bulgaria from civil war.

"The Bulgarian Socialist Party tries to re-write history," he warned and thanked the Bulgarian people who had instinctively known that ruling was destructive for the country.

Posted on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 12:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Druids call for burial (UK)

Source: http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk (2-1-07)

DRUIDS are demanding the re-burial of a child's skeleton displayed in the stone circle museum in Avebury.

On Tuesday the Council of British Druids backed up their request with a small ceremony at the Alexander Keiller Museum.

The child's skeleton was discovered during excavations at the North Ditch at Windmill Hill in 1929. Dubbed Charlie or Charlotte, is one of the most popular exhibits in the museum.

Now the Order of Druids, the group that celebrates mother earth and holds solstice ceremonies at Avebury, wants the skeleton reinterred.

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 8:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

1867 nanomachine now reality

Source: CNN (2-2-07)

Nearly 150 years ago it was no more than a concept by a visionary scientist, but researchers have now created a minuscule motor that could lead to the creation of microscopic nanomachines.

Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first imagined an atom-size device dubbed Maxwell's Demon in 1867. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have made it a reality.

"We have a new motor mechanism for a nanomachine," said David Leigh, a professor of chemistry at the University.

A nanomachine is an incredibly tiny device whose parts consist of single molecules. Nature uses nanomachines for everything from photosynthesis to moving muscles in the body and transferring information through cells.

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 8:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

We're vilified like Jews by the Nazis, says UK Muslim leader

Source: Times (of London) (2-3-07)

Birmingham’s most senior Muslim leader yesterday compared the political situation in Britain to that of Nazi Germany.

Mohammad Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, said that Muslims were being labelled as a threat like the Jews were under Hitler.

Speaking outside the mosque before Friday prayers, Dr Naseem said that Britain was turning into a police state, and accused the Government of “picking on” the Muslim community to pursue a political goal. “The German people were told Jews were a threat. The same thing is happening here,” he said.

Dr Naseem described the terror arrests in the city as an example of the Government justifying its political agenda and anti-terrorism laws. “This is a persecuting course of action that the Government has taken. They have invented this perception of a threat. To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on. There is dismay and people feel they are being persecuted unjustly.

“There is no reason for that. If there is a reason, the process should be open and for everybody to see what is happening.”

He called on police either to charge the nine men being detained or release them. “People are upset,” he went on. “If there is evidence either charge them or release them.

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 6:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Looters still ransacking Afghanistan antiquities

Source: AP (2-3-07)

More than five years after the fall of the Taliban regime, the plundering of Afghanistan's archaeological sites and museums not only continues but has evolved into a sophisticated trade that could be financing the country's warlords and insurgents, experts say.

The International Council of Museums, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of the world's natural and cultural heritage, on Friday published a "red list" of Afghan antiquities at risk, urging collectors, dealers and museums to be vigilant when they come across objects that might have been stolen.

The list includes pottery and statuettes from the 3rd millennium B.C., golden reliquaries from the 1st century and Islamic panels from the 13th century...

Much has been made of an exhibit at Paris' Guimet Museum, where 22,000 pieces of jewel-encrusted crowns, golden daggers and baubles from an ancient burial mound are back on display after being hidden for years by Afghans at great personal risk.

Still missing, however, are more than 55,000 art objects that were stolen from all over the country since the 1980s, said Zemaryalai Tarzi, a prominent Afghan archaeologist.

"Never has a country been looted so systematically as Afghanistan," he said. "It was before the Taliban, it was during the Taliban, it was after. And it continues," he said.

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 4:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Secret WWII plan to hide soldiers in Gibraltar

Source: The Independent (2-4-07)

The Gibraltar chamber had the innocuous name of the "Stay Behind" Cave. But this was no game. This was a top-secret wartime mission, code-named Operation Tracer, in which six men volunteered to be buried alive in the cave if the Rock were captured by the Germans, so they could continue to monitor enemy movements.

More than 60 years after the end of the Second World War, a retired doctor from Preston has been named as the chamber's last survivor, as researchers struggle to unlock its remaining secrets.

"I had a telephone call one day and they came over," Dr Bruce Cooper said yesterday. Only now has the 92-year-old broken his silence on the mission whose existence was one of the war's best-kept secrets.

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 4:35 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Historic papers reveal life of Edwardian schoolgirls

Source: The Observer (2-4-07)

Thousands of old photographs, exam papers, magazines and books unearthed from the cellars of some of the country's leading girls' schools have revealed a remarkable picture of school life in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

File after file emerged after school heads were encouraged by the Girls' Schools Association to scour their buildings for historic documents. Among them were stories of girls taught to be dutiful housewives who could wash shirt cuffs properly and control household dust, and children as young as 11 sitting down to tough examinations in which they were expected to be able to draw maps of the physical geography of Australia and tackle questions of grammar such as identifying predicates in passages of writing.

The documents, which will be a goldmine for historians, also held accounts of university life from as early as 1883, when young women would fit tennis and tea parties around eight hours of study each day.

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 4:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Dr. Livingstone, I presume' presumed false

Source: The Observer (2-4-07)

'Dr. Livingstone, I presume.' Four words that made the explorer Henry Morton Stanley enduringly famous. They have been repeated in history books and entered into common speech. Unfortunately it looks as if he never said them.

An exhaustive study of Stanley's life to be published next month contains new evidence about the first meeting in Africa between the lost missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, and Stanley, the adventurer who had spent two years looking for him...

They met in 1871 in Ujiji, now in western Tanzania, but the initial account in Stanley's diary of the moment when he spotted Livingstone just refers to 'a pale-looking white man in a faded blue cap'. The following two pages have been ripped from the book.

'Stanley told lies, that is the problem,' said author Tim Jeal. 'And a liar can never subsequently tell the truth.'

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 4:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Asian History Blog Carnival #11

Source: Frog In A Well: Japan (blog) (2-4-07)

The 11th edition of the Asian History Carnival has been published. This edition covers almost two months of blogging about Asian history, from the Near East to Japan.

Posted on Sunday, February 4, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, February 3, 2007

Man guilty of downing Cuban plane in '76 profiled

Source: NYT (2-3-07)

THERE are not many places where a man convicted in the bombing of a commercial airliner that killed 73 people can be found roaming the streets. This city, home to Freddy Lugo, is one of them.

Mr. Lugo, like an uneasy memory from the cold war, is tucked away here, obscure to most of his countrymen but not completely forgotten. He was one of two men sentenced to 20 years in prison for placing explosives on a DC-8 jetliner flown by Cubana Airlines in 1976.

The plane blew up in the sky above Barbados, killing everyone on board, including two dozen members of Cuba’s national fencing team and a 9-year-old Guyanese girl. That explosion, considered the first act of midair terrorism in the Americas, poisons relations between Havana and Washington to this day.

Mr. Lugo, 65, who was released in 1993 after 17 years in prison, has tried to put the past behind him. “I have a tranquil life now,” he said in a rare 90-minute interview, his eyes darting around him, at a bakery cafe near his home. “I have a clean conscience.”

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust: 29 Diplomats Who Made a Difference

Source: NYT (2-3-07)

The book is called “Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust,” and perhaps the most telling thing about it is that it is very slim.

Richard C. Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations, made that point during a ceremony, held Jan. 24 at Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s East Side, to mark the book’s publication.

During the years of Nazi persecution and then mass murder of Jews, Mr. Holbrooke noted, Europe’s embassies and consulates were filled with thousands of officials, but very few of them proved willing to toss aside protocol and instructions to save the lives of people threatened with death in the camps.

“Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust” is a documentary record of 29 exceptions. It was written by Mordecai Paldiel, director of the department at Yad Vashem — the main Holocaust memorial museum in Israel — that designates non-Jewish rescuers of Jews with the honorific title Righteous Among the Nations.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient Middle East fascinates Mexican museum goers

Source: WaPo (2-2-07)

Fascinated by cultures as old as their own, Mexicans are pouring into museum exhibitions in wonder at ancient Middle Eastern artifacts never before seen in the Western Hemisphere.

Nearly 14,000 people visited the "Persia, Fragments of Paradise" display from Iran in Mexico City's Anthropological Museum on a recent Sunday, the highest single-day attendance in years.

That followed a blockbuster show of Egyptian archeological artifacts here last year that was one of Mexico's most successful ever, pulling in 600,000 people in three months.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 8:12 AM | Comments (0) | Top

South African military museum sues against army raid

Source: Independent Online (Capetown) (2-2-07)

The South African National Museum of Military History is making a civil claim against the South African National Defence Force over a raid on the museum in 2005.

Museum director Major John Keene confirmed on Thursday that there was a claim underway, but would not divulge for how much or any other details.

"I don't think this matter is appropriate for public consumption," he said.

According to a report in Beeld, the claim could cost the defence force up to R3-million for unlawful arrest, detention without medical care and pain and suffering.

SANDF spokesperson Colonel Petrus Motlhabane could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.

In January 2005 Keene and two curators, Susanne Blendulf and Richard Henry, were arrested after military intelligence and police raided the museum in Saxonwold, Johannesburg. This after receiving information that "war-capable weapons and vehicles" were being stored on the premises.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 8:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

India: History texts can't derogate freedom fighters

Source: India-Asian News Service (2-2-07)

NEW DELHI --Delhi High Court Friday dismissed a renewed plea by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to be allowed to set questions on certain objectionable sections in school history text books that describe some late freedom fighters as 'militants' and make derogatory references to some communities and historical incidents.

The plea by NCERT, the apex government body to advise on academic matters related to school education and the official publisher of school textbooks, was made despite the court's earlier direction for deletion of at least 20 objectionable paragraphs and not to set any question based on them.

Dismissing the plea, a division bench of Chief Justice M.K. Sharma and Justice Hima Kohli sternly warned NCERT as well as Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) against showing leaders and freedom fighters in a derogatory light in the textbooks.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 8:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The n-word still holds huge power (Canada)

Source: http://thechronicleherald.ca (2-2-07)

History isn’t pretty, says RCMP Cpl. Craig Smith — especially black history in Nova Scotia.

And that history includes the n-word, which Cpl. Smith, a Halifax Mountie, used in his new book, You Had Better Be White by Six A.M.: The African-Canadian Experience in the RCMP. He used the word in describing a scene in a segregated New Glasgow in 1946.

But he says that word has made the Education Department hesitant about using the book in the classroom, where he thought the book would be best served.

"If it doesn’t get in the hands of kids, then I’ve missed the mark," Cpl. Smith said. "That’s where my aim was."

"It’s the kids that are the losers in this case Black History Month would have been a great time to get it in their hands."

Cpl. Smith is one of only 225 black RCMP officers in a force of 17,000 and has participated in Black History Month since 1984.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 8:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In Virginia House, 'profound regret' on slavery

Source: Washington Post (2-3-07)

RICHMOND, Va. -- The House of Delegates unanimously approved a resolution Friday expressing "profound regret" for Virginia's role in the slave trade, a significant act of contrition by a body that used to start the day with a salute that symbolized the state's Confederate heritage.

The resolution, one of several that lawmakers are considering as part of the 400th anniversary celebration of the founding of Jamestown, is one of the biggest steps any state has taken in offering remorse for the enslavement of millions of Africans and Caribbean islanders during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

The statement also condemns the "egregious wrongs" that European settlers inflicted on Native Americans.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

How Woodrow Wilson's illness was kept under wraps

Source: Washington Post (2-3-07)

STAUNTON, Va. -- While U.S. troops were fighting in World War I in the summer of 1918, President Woodrow Wilson underwent treatment for a breathing problem in a hushed episode that foreshadowed worse health troubles to come.

The White House doctor, Cary T. Grayson, later recounted the incident to his wife in one of a slew of newly public documents that show how far Wilson's innermost circle went to conceal his frail condition amid major world events.

" The patient is progressing most satisfactorily, so far, and I have good reasons to hope for a most beneficial result. It has been a big undertaking. . . . No one knows anything about it except Miss E., Miss Harkins, Hoover -- It is one secret that has been kept quiet, so far, and I think it is safe all right now," the doctor wrote Alice Grayson in a July 16 telegram...

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

O.J. Simpson transcript describes murder

Source: New York Times (2-3-07)

In November O. J. Simpson sat for what would have been one of the most unusual interviews in television history —- a hypothetical recounting of how, if he had been the killer, he might have murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald L. Goldman more than a decade ago.

The interview, taped in Miami to publicize a book, “If I Did It,” was never broadcast, as public outrage exploded over the idea that Mr. Simpson might profit from the murders that many people believe he committed, despite his acquittal in a criminal trial.

But a partial transcript of the interview Mr. Simpson had with Judith Regan, the publisher of the proposed book, makes vividly clear the disquieting nature of the entire exercise...

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Push to resolve fading killings of Civil Rights era

Source: New York Times (2-3-07)

ATLANTA -— For every infamous killing that tore at the South in the 1950s and ’60s, there were many more that were barely noted, much less investigated.

Virtually all such cases gained momentum only when the victims of the past found voices in the present, like those that helped arrest a 71-year-old man last month in connection with the Klan killings of two black teenagers in Mississippi in 1964. Rather than police officials, it has often been journalists and filmmakers who have combed through documents and tracked down witnesses, fueling some 15 years of successful prosecutions.

Only now, with time running out because potential witnesses and suspects are dying off, have law enforcement officials begun to take a systematic approach to unsolved civil rights crimes. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently canvassed its field offices for the first time, compiling a list of 51 victims in 39 cases, most of which were never investigated by the bureau.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:28 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Reaching into the history books for undiplomatic gibes

Source: Guardian (2-3-07)

In the lexicon of political insults it will take some beating. Already known for his somewhat colourful use of language Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has probably written himself into the history books for a new sidewipe at his US counterpart George Bush.

In the latest salvo in the war of words between the two countries Mr Chávez described Mr Bush as "evil," a "criminal" but then added that he was "more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade"...He added: "I pray to God for the people of the United States. I hope they're capable of liberating themselves from the tyranny they have. Who would be the greater fascist -- Hitler or Bush? They might end up in a draw."

Insults have been fired between US politicians and Venezuela for some months now. Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the house and a Democrat, said of Mr Chávez's earlier remarks at the UN that "he fancies himself as a modern day Simón Bolívar, but all he is an everyday thug."

Politicians have swapped insults for generations. In Britain, the former Liberal MP Clement Freud once described Margaret Thatcher as "Attila the Hen". Former French president François Mitterrand said: "She has the mouth of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula."

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

UK teachers told to focus on slavery, also cookery

Source: Telegraph (2-3-07)

Proposals to give teachers more freedom over the topics they cover in the first years of secondary education have been overruled by the Government.

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, yesterday released a list of extra topics that he wants to see taught...He has told the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) that it must put more emphasis on teaching:

• Global warming
• The British slave trade and the anti-slavery campaign
• Britishness
• The British Empire
• Racism and ethnicity
• Immigration
• Commonwealth
• Cookery

The topics will be included in the new curriculum for 12 to 14-year-olds which will be taught in schools from September 2008. Though most are already included in the list of things which must be taught, Mr Johnson wants to give them more prominence.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

After 32 years, families may uncover how loved ones died in a East Timor dirty war

Source: Times (of London) (2-3-07)

In the three decades since Brian Peters died during Indonesia’s secret invasion of East Timor, his sister Maureen Tolfree has been told countless versions of who killed him and how.

There was the story put out by the Indonesians in 1975: that he and four fellow journalists died accidentally, caught up in shooting between rival groups of East Timorese. There was the testimony of several witnesses: that Brian and his colleagues were murdered by Indonesian commandos. And then there was the version favoured by the British Government, and by two official Australian inquiries: that, conveniently, it was impossible to know...

For 31 years, the stink of a cover-up has lingered around the tragedy of the Balibo Five, as they are known after the obscure village where they died. But finally the truth may be about to emerge. Next week, Mrs Tolfree, now 61, will sit in an Australian court where a coroner will conduct the first judicial inquiry into the death of Brian Peters. It is likely to be the last chance to discover who killed the five men, and it will focus further attention on the British and Australian diplomats who tacitly encouraged Indonesia’s brutal invasion and did their best to avoid embarrassing its Government with questions about the killings.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Multimillion-dollar question: 'Shall we call it a Rembrandt?'

Source: International Herald Tribune (2-2-07)

NEW YORK -- The break of contemporary culture with the artistic past is now so radical that most of us are no longer able to look at Old Master paintings.

A series of occurrences in Sotheby's $110 million sale last week lead to that astonishing conclusion.

One was the good old game which could be dubbed "Shall we call it a Rembrandt?" The master's oeuvre goes up and down depending on the mood of those who know. From the early 20th century, when nearly 700 pictures were accepted, to the current revision process driven by the Dutch Rembrandt Research Project, the Rembrandt wagon has been riding a bumpy road.

This is a multimillion-dollar drama. If promoted to the lowest rungs of the Rembrandt order, your little picture may be graced with a $3 million to $4 million estimate, as witness the likeness of a woman that came up in Sotheby's sale on Thursday, Jan. 25. If deemed to belong to the artist's late period when he probed deeper than any Western artist into the human soul, a Rembrandt portrait might be estimated to be worth $20 million or $25 million, or more. Such was the case with the second Rembrandt in Sotheby's sale, "Saint James the Greater," to which the media paid the obligatory tribute of admiration.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 4:14 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Navy seeks new owner for vintage sub

Source: AP (2-2-07)

SAN DIEGO -- Free to a good home: vintage submarine, recently restored. One prior owner.

That's not quite how the notice is worded, but that's the message from the Navy, which is looking for someone to take over the USS Dolphin, one of the oldest submarines in its fleet.

The Dolphin, a one-of-a-kind research vessel, was commissioned in 1968. In a notice published in this week's Federal Register, the Navy said it will accept offers from government agencies, nonprofit groups or other institutions willing to make the submarine into a museum.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 3:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Mmm, pieces of Queen Victoria's wedding cake

Source: AP (2-2-07)

LONDON -- They won't let you eat cake at Windsor Castle, but visitors are being invited to admire a couple of 167-year-old slices.

Pieces of Queen Victoria's wedding cake will go on display as part of an exhibition on Royal weddings from 1840 to 1947 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's diamond anniversary this year, palace officials said.

The slices will be on display for a year starting on April 27 in small boxes, one cardboard, another silver, marked "Buckingham Palace February 10, 1840" -- the date of Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert.

They are from one of the couple's several wedding cakes, the largest of which measured 3 yards across and weighed more than 300 pounds.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 3:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Vietnam vets in Senate will vote on Iraq troop surge

Source: AP (2-3-07)

Four of the senators who will vote next week on putting more troops in Iraq bear the scars of another war in another time, in a place called Vietnam. Three will vote against sending more troops. One will vote the other way.

John McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot, was captured by the Vietnamese, tortured and imprisoned for more than five years. Knowing what it's like to have fought before and lost, he's with President Bush on sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

Chuck Hagel, an infantryman in Vietnam, was seriously wounded by an enemy mine explosion beneath the armored personnel carrier he and his brother were in. He opposes the troop increase.

So does Senate newcomer Jim Webb, an ex-Marine who speaks Vietnamese, who opposed the Iraq war from the outset and campaigned for the Senate wearing the combat boots of a son who recently went off to the war...

John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran as well as a Vietnam war protester, also opposes sending more troops into Iraq...

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 3:39 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'First suburb': Levittown celebrates 60 years

Source: Newsday (1-28-07)

The area of Long Island that would become synonymous with suburbia was farmland on the edge of the Hempstead Plains until William J. Levitt arrived in 1947 to build the development that shares his surname.

Levitt, then 40, broke ground for the first of the 17,000 homes that would pop up on 1,000 acres of potato farms 15 miles east of New York City on July 1, 1947. He earned his nickname as "the Henry Ford of Housing" by building fast, using mass-production techniques. By breaking down the construction process into 27 operations done by specialized teams, Levitt could sell houses for between $8,000 and $12,000 and still make a $1,000 profit.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the birth of Levittown, the Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages in Stony Brook has assembled what it is calling the the most comprehensive exhibit ever done on the landmark affordable housing development and its creator.

"Living the American Dream -- Levittown and the Suburban Boom" opens Feb. 10 and runs until July 8. It combines artifacts, photographs, video and text to tell the story of the opportunities Levittown provided -- and denied -- and their relevance to today's shortage of affordable housing on Long Island.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 3:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

State seeks artwork from Israel Museum

Source: UPI (2-2-07)

JERUSALEM -- A government-run company has asked the Israel Museum to relinquish 400 works of art owned by Jews killed in the Holocaust. American troops found the paintings -- appropriated by Nazis from private collections throughout Europe -- hidden in salt mines in Germany.

The museum is negotiating with the company, which was established to locate and restore assets belonging to Holocaust victims, Haaretz reported. The company wants the artwork -- housed in the museum since its founding -- based on a law requiring property whose owners died in the Holocaust be transferred to it.

If the company receives the artwork, official said it will try to locate its owners' heirs. If the heirs cannot be located, the company will sell the works, using any proceeds to assist needy Holocaust survivors or support institutions that commemorate the Holocaust.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Why ancient Greeks in art are always nude

Source: Live Science (2-2-07)

Male nudes are the norm in Greek art, even though historians have stated that ancient Greeks kept their clothes on for the most part. New research suggests that art might have been imitating life more closely than previously thought.

Nudity was a costume used by artists to depict various roles of men, ranging from heroicism and status to defeat.

"In ancient Greek art, there are many different kinds of nudity that can mean many different things," said Jeffrey Hurwit, an historian of ancient art at the University of Oregon. "Sometimes they are contradictory."...

Hurwit's newly published research shows that the Greeks did walk around in the buff in some situations...[His] research, published in the Jan. issue of the American Journal of Archaeology, also found examples of defeated, dying and dead naked men. In these cases, nudity was chosen to represent the subjects' vulnerabilities.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 2:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

First Americans arrived recently, settled Pacific coast, DNA study says

Source: National Geographic News (2-2-07)

A study of the oldest known sample of human DNA in the Americas suggests that humans arrived in the New World relatively recently, around 15,000 years ago.

The DNA was extracted from a 10,300-year-old tooth found in a cave on Prince of Wales Island off southern Alaska in 1996.

The sample represents a previously unknown lineage for the people who first arrived in the Americas.

The findings, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, shed light on how the descendants of the Alaskan caveman might have spread.

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 2:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Rome subway planners try to avoid relics

Source: AP (2-2-07)

ROME -- In a city where traffic rumbles past the Colosseum and soccer fans celebrate victories among the remains of the Circus Maximus, it comes as no surprise that relics of the glory that was Rome turn up almost every day, and sometimes get in the way of the modern city's needs.

The perennial tug-of-war between preserving ancient treasures and developing much-needed infrastructure is moving underground, as the city mobilizes archaeologists to probe the bowels of the Eternal City in preparation for a new, 15-mile subway line.

Eyesore yellow panels have sprung up over the past months to cordon off 38 archaeological digs, often set up near famous monuments or on key thoroughfares of the already chronically gridlocked historical center...

Posted on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 2:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 2, 2007

47 tombstones found in dead man's locker

Source: AP (2-2-07)

LINCOLN, Neb. -- A dead man's storage locker yielded dozens of tombstones, a macabre collection that police believe represents "a lifetime of stealing."

Some of the 47 gravestones date to the late 1800s; others are relatively recent. Police say they probably came from different cemeteries at different times...

Police Chief Tom Casady said the tombstone collection "probably came from a lifetime of stealing headstones."

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 5:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Texas teacher punished for showing 'Amistad' clip

Source: AP (2-2-07)

FORT WORTH, Texas -- An elementary school teacher was disciplined for showing her fifth-graders parts of the R-rated film "Amistad" during a lesson on slavery.

On Jan. 25, Larue Washington showed her Ridglea Hills Elementary class clips from the 1997 Steven Spielberg film depicting slaves en route to the Americas, including a scene in which a character was stabbed, district officials said.

Washington failed to follow school board policy requiring commercial movies to be reviewed and approved by the school principal, the district said.
The policy also prohibits showing any portions of an R-rated movie, and the principal would not have approved the film, district spokeswoman Barbara Griffith said. Letters explaining what happened were sent to parents this week, Griffith said.

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 5:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

EU bid to outlaw genocide denial faces backlash

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (2-2-07)

People who question the official history of conflicts in Africa and the Balkans could be jailed for up to three years for "genocide denial", under proposed European Union legislation.

But the proposals, seen by the Telegraph of London, go much further and would criminalise those who question the extent of war crimes that have taken place in the past 20 years.

Deborah Lipstadt, professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University, Atlanta, said the proposals were misplaced. "I adhere to that pesky little thing called free speech and I am very concerned when governments restrict it," Professor Lipstadt said.

"How will we determine precisely what is denial? Will history be decided by historians or in a courtroom?"

The proposals extend the idea of Holocaust denial to the "gross minimisation of genocide out of racist and xenophobic motives", to include crimes dealt with by the International Criminal Court.

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 2:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

David Horowitz video slams "Islamic Mein Kampf"

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (2-1-07)

David Horowitz, the conservative activist, has unveiled a new terrorism-awareness campaign aimed at college campuses. It encourages students to look beyond what Mr. Horowitz calls anti-American teachings by college professors and understand the threat of radical Islam.

“The curriculum, particularly in Middle East studies and women’s studies, is geared to painting a very negative picture of America and showing that there is some kind of justification for the attacks on us,” Mr. Horowitz said in an interview. “The academic left teaches that and preaches that.”

The campaign features a Web site with a chilling video, The Islamic Mein Kampf, that juxtaposes pictures and quotations from Hitler and Islamic militants. The site says it wants to “wake up Americans — and particularly American college students — to the threat we face.” The campaign also plans to place advertisements in student newspapers titled “What Americans Need to Know About Jihad.”

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 12:54 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Jamestown Sister Settlement Found

Source: Discovery News (2-1-07)

U.S. army archaeologists believe they have located a very early English settlement known as "Henrytowne," which they say historical accounts and artifacts suggest was contemporaneous with Jamestown — America’s first permanent English colony.

While Jamestown, founded in 1607, probably predates Henrytowne by at least a few years, the newly identified Virginia Beach Cape Henry site could have been home to one of the nation's earliest English colonies, indicated lead archaeologist Randy Amici.

He will present information about the site, located off Virginia’s Lynnhaven River, at the Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference in March.

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Normandy grave hints at defiance of Roman Empire

Source: Independent (UK) (1-27-07)

A macabre 1,700-year-old mass grave of people and horses, discovered in Normandy, poses perplexing new questions about the Roman conquest of France. Was there a small part of ancient Gaul which refused, Asterix-like, to surrender for 300 years?

The grave site, from the 3rd century, which was discovered by French state archaeologists at Evreux, appears to contain ritual arrangements of human and horse remains. In one, a human skull is clasped between two horse's skulls, like the two halves of a giant shell.

In Gaullish times, 300 years earlier, graves containing both horses and people were common. No such grave has ever been found from the Roman period, and even in the previous era, the remains were kept carefully apart.

In the recently discovered grave, about 50 miles west of Paris, the bones appear to have been intentionally mixed. The skeletons of 40 people and 100 horses have been found so far.

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Obama not black enough for some African-Americans

Source: NYT (2-2-07)

He is hailed by his supporters as the hope of an increasingly multicultural nation, a political phenomenon who can wow white voters while carrying the aspirations of African-Americans all the way to the White House....

But while many whites embrace Mr. Obama’s melting pot background, it remains profoundly unsettling for some blacks who argue that he is distant from the struggles and cultural identities of most black Americans. The black columnist Stanley Crouch has said, “When black Americans refer to Obama as ‘one of us,’ I do not know what they are talking about.”

Ms. [Debra J.] Dickerson echoed that sentiment.

“I’ve got nothing but love for the brother, but we don’t have anything in common,” said Ms. Dickerson, who wrote recently about Mr. Obama in Salon, the online magazine. “His father was African. His mother was a white woman. He grew up with white grandparents.

“Now, I’m willing to adopt him,” Ms. Dickerson continued. “He married black. He acts black. But there’s a lot of distance between black Africans and African-Americans.”

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Barclays' slavery ties imperil NYC sports deal

Source: NYT (2-2-07)

With all the public criticism and praise laid at the doorstep of the Atlantic Yards project, the naming of the arena did not figure to be controversial. Last week, Bruce Ratner, the owner of the Nets and the president of Forest City Ratner, the Atlantic Yards developer, announced that the British bank Barclays would pay $400 million over 20 years for naming rights to the 18,000-seat stadium, to be called the Barclays Center.

Barclays’ accusers say the bank’s early founders had ties to the African slave trade in the 18th century. More recently, they say, the bank cooperated with the apartheid regime of South Africa. A spokesman for Barclays denied both claims.

In remarks reported last Friday in The Brooklyn Paper, a local weekly that is critical of the Atlantic Yards project, Mr. Jeffries said, “Of all of the companies in the world to pursue a naming rights agreement, Barclays is inappropriate to be in a borough which has one of the largest populations of African descent in this country,” Mr. Jeffries, who is black, said in an interview.

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Victims of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge fear derailment of trials

Source: Washington Post (2-2-07)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- When a sprawling courthouse was inaugurated on the outskirts of this capital last year, it was largely welcomed by Cambodians, who expressed hope that one day the leaders of the Khmer Rouge would sit inside, squirm in the docks and face comeuppance for overseeing the brutal deaths of as many as 1.7 million people a quarter-century ago.

Today, however, the hopes of many Khmer Rouge victims have turned to frustrations. Rather than providing a promised airing of truth, the proceedings have become mired in a debate over legal standards that has delayed indictments and pushed back the start of the trials by months. Some observers now fear the dispute could derail the trials altogether.

At stake is the best chance for a reckoning of a regime that presided over the systematic mass murder of its own people with a fervor still little understood. On a radical communist crusade to create a peasant society free from foreign influence, the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 executed, tortured and starved to death Cambodians -- particularly the educated, moneyed and devout.

Last Friday, a multinational tribunal of Cambodian and United Nations-appointed judges, prosecutors and defenders said it had failed to resolve all of its differences over the adoption of internationally accepted legal procedures for the trials.

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 3:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Nero's Golden Palace to partly reopen

Source: AP (1-31-07)

Nero's Golden Palace will partly reopen to visitors next week, offering rare insight into archaeologists' efforts to preserve the first-century imperial residence from decay and humidity.

Visitors will have access to half of the palace, wandering through a maze of underground passageways, officials said Wednesday. They can also climb a 43-foot scaffolding and take a close look at the building's frescoed vaulted ceilings, as restorers and archaeologists work to clean the paint...

The sumptuous residence — also known by its Latin name, Domus Aurea — rose over the ruins of a fire that destroyed much of Rome in A.D. 64 and was completed in A.D. 68, the year the unpopular Nero committed suicide amid a revolt.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 11:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Roman descendants found in China?

Source: Telegraph (2-2-07)

LIQIAN, China -- Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity.

Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city...

Studies claiming that Liqian has Roman ancestry have greatly excited the impoverished county in which it is situated. The village is now overlooked by a pillared portico, in the hope of attracting tourists. A statue at the entrance of the nearby county town, Yongchang, shows a Roman legionary standing next to a Confucian scholar and a Muslim woman, as a symbol of racial harmony...

The town's link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New bridge to Machu Picchu causes worries

Source: BBC News (2-1-07)

In the year that Peru is trying to get Machu Picchu voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, there are growing tensions over the country's greatest tourist attraction.

A former mayor has built a bridge which creates a new route to the World Heritage site, threatening to bring more tourists and, some say, open up a new route for drug traffickers.

The 80-metre long Carilluchayoc bridge, which crosses the Vilcanota river near the base of the 15th-Century Inca citadel, is to be inaugurated in February, despite a court order prohibiting its construction and protests from the government and environmentalists.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 6:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dayton proposes two more Wright Brothers sites for national historical park

Source: Dayton Daily News (1-30-07)

DAYTON, Ohio -— Under draft legislation being proposed for consideration by Congress, Hawthorn Hill —- the longtime home of aviation pioneer Orville Wright —- and the Wright brothers' airplane factory —- now part of Delphi Corp.'s Home Avenue auto parts plant —- would become part of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.

The Dayton-based Aviation Heritage Foundation, created at the direction of Congress, collectively promotes nine regional sites that Congress recognized in 2004 as the National Aviation Heritage Area. Those independently operated sites are a diverse mix including the national aviation park, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta and the Wright B Flyer Museum at the Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport in Miamisburg.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 5:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US Congress Calls for Japan to Apologize for Comfort Women

Source: Korea Times (2-1-07)

U.S. Rep. Michael M. Honda introduced a bipartisan resolution to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, calling for Japan to formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for sexually enslaving women during World War II.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Leopold Mozart's violin teachings are republished

Source: German Press Agency (2-1-07)

A Salzburg publishing house has reissued Leopold
Mozart's legendary treatise on violin playing - 237 years after it was first in print, the Austrian press agency reported on Thursday. Polzer, an art publishing house, published 3,000 linen-bound copies of a revised version of the comprehensive treatise written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father around 1756.

A team of musicians and historians carefully adapted Leopold Mozart's 334-page work for the 21st century.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Trees used in lynchings photographed

Source: Ken Gonzales-Day, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, writing about his book. (2-1-07)

The initial research for my book Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 grew out of an interdisciplinary approach in which I sought to pair historical case records with the analysis of photographic and historic images. In addition to tracking down historic photographs, drawings, and prints, I began looking for any kind of official documentation that I could find: an announcement in a newspaper, published leaflets, or first-person narratives which could be confirmed in multiple sources.

In California, there is only one historical marker. It is located in Placerville, or "Hangtown," as it has long been known. The sign marks a spot that is just yards from where one of California's most infamous hang trees stood. The marker is in front of Hangman's Tree Bar, and inside, next to the jukebox, a small papier-mâché tree branch spouts from the wall and is said to mark the site of the original tree. As recently as 2005, a mannequin was tethered to the building with a hangman's noose and dangled above the bar's entrance. According to the bartender, this Western-clad creation must be relynched each year due to the bleaching effects of the sun. ...

The historical record clearly indicates that while telephone poles, bridges, corral gates, and, in at least one case, a wagon could be used to hang a person, the method of choice for lynch mobs and vigilantes usually involved throwing a piece of rope over a low-hanging branch of one of California's many native oak species....

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 1:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Catholic Church in Czech Republic to screen priests for collaboration with Soviet secret police

Source: Radio Praha (2-1-07)

The head of the Czech Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, announced on Wednesday that it was setting up a joint project with the Interior Ministry under which the country's Catholic priests will be screened for evidence of collaboration with the former regime. Historian Petr Blazek, present at the ministry's StB archive during a visit by the cardinal, explains that such collaboration took various forms.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Teens learning U.S. history -- on Saturdays

Source: Times-Picayune (New Orleans) (2-1-07)

Lesley Herrmann says there are a couple of ways to convince teens that school at the new Saturday Academy of American History at Karr High School in Algiers is a good idea.

"It looks very good on your resume," said Herrmann, executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. "Also, it's a perk. The courses are very interesting and entertaining," covering material beyond the regular classroom.

Plus, there are no tests, grades or homework.

The Lehrman Institute is partnering with the Algiers Charter School Association to offer the free course for grades eight through 12. The series started Saturday and runs through March, covering World War II, the Civil War, the American civil rights movement and geography and technology.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pennsylvania Academy Sells One Eakins to Get Another

Source: NYT (2-1-07)

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has sold a painting by Thomas Eakins to help it buy another.

Yesterday it announced that it had sold “The Cello Player,” an 1896 portrait that it had owned since 1897 (and that until Sunday had been at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as part of the exhibition “Americans in Paris, 1860-1900”) to raise the money to pay for “The Gross Clinic,” a revered work the academy is buying with the Philadelphia Museum of Art from Thomas Jefferson University, a Philadelphia medical college, for $68 million.

Herbert S. Riband Jr., vice chairman of the academy’s board, would not say who had bought the painting or how much money the academy and the Philadelphia Museum of Art had raised toward paying for “The Gross Clinic.”

After Thomas Jefferson University agreed last fall to sell “The Gross Clinic” to the National Gallery of Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a museum being founded by a Wal-Mart heir in Bentonville, Ark., it gave Philadelphia institutions a chance to match the offer. In December, Wachovia Bank agreed to provide financing until all of the money had been raised.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pay of Smithsonian Executives Tops President, Report Finds

Source: NYT (2-1-07)

Salaries for some Smithsonian Institution executives are higher than those for other top federal jobs, including those of the United States president and vice president, according to the institution’s acting inspector general.

The salaries are, however, “generally comparable to those at selected nonprofit organizations,” the acting inspector general, A. Sprightley Ryan, said in a report issued on Tuesday....

Lawrence M. Small, the Smithsonian secretary, earned $884,733 in 2006, while President Bush makes $400,000 a year. Edwin L. Rifkin, the Smithsonian’s under secretary for art, earned $440,000 in 2006. Sheila P. Burke, the deputy secretary and chief operating officer, earned $400,000.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Kosovo ghosts

Source: Mark Mardell's Europe Diary at the website of the BBC (2-1-07)

There are too many freshly-cut flowers lying next to pictures of teenage boys in Kosovo.

On a hillside surrounded by snow-capped mountains, I am looking at the graves of those who died fighting for the Kosovo Liberation Army. A portrait of a young man in uniform is etched into the shiny marble head stone of each one, an Albanian flag flutters above every grave. The last person who lies here was killed only six years ago, the oldest grave is just 11 years old...

It was to stop the killing of Albanians who make up nearly 90% of Kosovo's population that Nato fought its last European war. Now the US and Britain believe that speed is of the essence in making Kosovo independent...

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 3:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Judge halts Holocaust hearing after objections to settlement on insurance claims

Source: New York Times (2-1-07)

A federal judge abruptly adjourned a hearing yesterday on the settlement of a dispute over unpaid life insurance policies of Holocaust victims after a Miami lawyer and a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp raised objections.

Judge George B. Daniels of Federal District Court in Manhattan gave no explanation for ending the session that he had convened to determine the fairness of a settlement in which an Italian insurance company agreed to provide several million dollars to Holocaust victims. The company, Assicurazioni Generali, has repeatedly denied allegations that it systematically refused to pay billions of dollars in claims on insurance policies of Holocaust victims.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 3:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Proposed Virginia slavery apology is now broader

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (2-1-07)

The General Assembly would express "profound regret" for Virginia's role in slavery and for "historic wrongs visited upon native peoples" in the latest version of a proposed apology that cleared a House panel yesterday...

The committee accepted a substitute...which calls for the assembly to express "its profound regret for the commonwealth's role in sanctioning the immoral institution of human slavery, in the historic wrongs visited upon native peoples, and in all other forms of discrimination and injustice that have been rooted in racial and cultural bias and misunderstanding."

[Del. A. Donald] McEachin's measure originally called for the General Assembly "to atone for the involuntary servitude of Africans and call for reconciliation among all Virginians."

Yesterday he offered to change the word "atone," which he said could carry the implication of reparations - "and that's not what his resolution is meant to do" - to "contrition," which means "a sincere remorse for wrongdoing."

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 3:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

WTC steel found buried at ground zero

Source: AP (2-1-07)

Large steel columns from the fallen twin towers have been found beneath a service road being excavated at ground zero in the search for long-buried Sept. 11 remains, officials said Wednesday.

The surprising discovery of World Trade Center steel in the past week raises more questions about what was left at ground zero in the cleanup after the 2001 attacks and how the service road was created in the first place.

The steel, found during a dig for human remains that has yielded nearly 300 bones in the past three months, includes two heavy beams that were stacked horizontally in the landfill, as if moved and placed there, a person with direct knowledge of the discovery told The Associated Press. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss the findings and insisted on anonymity...

Diane Horning, who lost her son on Sept. 11 and is a leading critic of the city's search for remains, said the steel discovery proves that the city ended cleanup too quickly and paved over the service road without searching it.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 3:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Arab Holocaust centre reaches out

Source: BBC News (1-28-07)

Khaled Mahameed admits his museum, in Nazareth in northern Israel, is small. But he believes it is unique.

According to Mr Mahameed, it is the first and only Arab run centre for promoting the study of the Holocaust.

The museum contains a collection of just 60 photographs depicting the genocide with Arabic captions explaining the scenes. The pictures were purchased from Yad Vashem - the Israeli national Holocaust memorial.

Mr Mahameed firmly believes that it is only by understanding the truth about how the state of Israel was created that Arabs can fully understand Jews and ultimately resolve the conflict between them.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Chinese see red over Taiwan textbook revisions

Source: Times (of London) (2-1-07)

BEIJING -- China has accused Taiwan of trying to promote independence by rewriting its history textbooks.

The revised books for secondary school students will cease to refer to the mainland, or “our country” or “this country” and substitute the word China, emphasising the view that the island is not a part of China.

Yang Yi, the spokesman for China’s policymaking Taiwan Affairs Office, accused Taipei of playing tricks and insisted that Taiwan remained an inseparable part of China.

“We’ve noticed the developments. The political motive behind it is to transform the island’s education into an ideological one for ‘Taiwan independence’,” he said.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

France proposes 14 Vauban citadels for coveted World Heritage status

Source: AFP (2-1-07)

PARIS -- France has submitted 14 citadels and fortifications built by Marshal Vauban, the 17th-century military engineer, for a place on Unesco’s list of World Heritage sites [to mark the tricentenary of his death]...

The 14 sites include the French port city of Saint-Malo and its fortifications, left; a royal fort on the Brittany island of Belle Île, renovated by Vauban in 1689; the citadel in the eastern town of Besançon; and a mountain fort in southeastern Briançon.

They were selected as some of the best preserved of about 150 fortified sites built by Vauban across France, a formidable legacy of walled towns, bridges and coastal observation towers.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

After 200 years, fight to end slavery in the world goes on

Source: Telegraph (2-1-07)

CAPE COAST, Ghana -- Under the battlements ringing Cape Coast Castle, Britain's former colonial seat in Ghana, a guide showed two dozen schoolgirls the underground passage linking the slave dungeons to the Door of No Return.

Until Britain led the world in outlawing the transatlantic slave trade 200 years ago next month, countless Africans shuffled through here to cramped ships waiting beyond the pounding surf.

But hundreds of Ghanaian girls the same age as those on their school trip to Cape Coast still live in conditions echoing the 18th century plantations in the Americas.

An ancient practice still strong in the country's north and east allows mystic priests to demand virgin brides as servants as atonement from families deemed to have offended ancestral gods...

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Germans defy call to take down painting of Nazi envoy in London embassy

Source: Telegraph (2-1-07)

A portrait of Adolf Hitler's foreign minister will remain hanging in the German embassy in London, the Berlin government has insisted.

It is defying calls to take down the picture, seen by critics to be "honouring a Nazi".

The Left party in Germany has campaigned for the removal of the oil painting of the convicted war criminal Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath, but the government rejected its motion in the Bundestag.

It said that the painting was a "factual documentation" of the embassy's past. Neurath served as the German ambassador in Britain between 1930 and 1932. He was also foreign minister until 1938 and "Reichsprotector" of Bohemia and Moravia until 1941. He was jailed for 15 years for "crimes against humanity" at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.
He died in 1956 at the age of 83.

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Lessons from killing of Hussein in 7th century define lives, ambitions of Saudi Shiites today

Source: Washington Post (2-1-07)

QATIF, Saudi Arabia -- Fawzia al-Hani dropped her black veil over her face and wept softly on Sunday, enveloping herself in the sadness of the last days of Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad and Shiite Islam's most tragic and revered martyr.

The women in the packed community center commemorating Ashura, the anniversary of Hussein's death in A.D. 680, watched on a projection screen as a turbaned cleric described how Hussein set out with a small band of family and followers to confront a large army, then was filled with anguish when his favorite son was slaughtered before he himself was killed.

Beside the cleric, men huddled on the floor with their heads bowed, dabbing at their eyes with tissues.

To many of the region's historically persecuted Shiites, the death of Hussein in what is now Karbala, Iraq, the event that triggered the schism between Sunnis and Shiites, remains central to their lives. Shiite belief that Hussein and his descendants were robbed of their rightful succession as rulers of the Islamic world heightens their sense of persecution and victimization...

Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 2:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

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