History News Network

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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.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Immigration reform campaign relaunched at Ellis Island

Source: San Jose Mercury News (3-30-07)

NEW YORK -- In the historic Great Hall of Ellis Island, where 12 million immigrants once trudged through to build a nation, top government officials Friday tried to recharge a campaign to solve the modern dilemmas of immigration.

Bush administration security officials, including Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar, along with an historian, demographer, economist and former officials grappled with the biggest problem: what to do with another 12 million people -- the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the country now.

"This magnificent building reminds us of what made America, and it's a great place to begin our discussion," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who decided to bring the House immigration subcommittee to the epicenter of the nation's immigration story.

Posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 3:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Red Scare' on Washington Square

Source: Independent (3-31-07)

The Red Scare on Washington Square began a week ago. News broke that New York University's Tamiment Library was giving sanctuary to the archives of the Communist Party of the USA -- Lenin buttons and all -- and that speakers at a planned seminar would include its current leaders.

The headline writers of Rupert Murdoch's local paper, the New York Post, predictably fulminated with headlines warning of a "Red 'Love-in" on campus. For some, it seems, the McCarthy mindset has still not lifted. Sound the alarm, there are commie subversives in our midst; the nation is in peril.

"It's annoying, but that's who they are," was the only response of Michael Nash, the director of Tamiment, which sits on the south side of Washington Square and has long served as a hub of US leftist scholarship.

Nothing is going to dampen his excitement over what he says is the most valuable trove of historical material he has ever been granted access to in 30 years of archiving.

Posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 3:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Artifacts link ancient Indian civilization with Rome

Source: Daijiworld (Mangalore, India) (3-30-07)

PANAJI, Goa, India -- Scientists from Goa-based National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) have found stunning artifacts off the Gujarat coast, near Dwarka island, which development focuses on Indian civilization's ties with Roman civilization more than two thousand years back.

"During the excavation, we found artefacts which are dating 3,500 years back which indicates that India's maritime history is much-much older and Indians used to travel by sea even before Vasco da Gama touched Indian shores," Dr K H Vora, deputy director and project leader, marine archaeology, stated.

"Archaeological excavations at Bet (island) Dwarka which is westernmost part of India revealed an interesting cultural sequence commencing from pre-historic period (3800 years BC) to historical period (1600 BC)," Vora said.

NIO scientists, during their study on shoreline changes during last 2000 years on the Saurashtra Coast of India, off the Gulf of Kucch, have encountered large number of stone anchors dated two thousand years back. "That means, the stone anchors were used even before iron anchor came in use by the ships which were anchored off the Gujarat coast," Vohra stated...

"Interestingly, we came across amphorae shreds of Mediterranean origin. This indicated that Indian and Roman civilizations had ties with each other through sea route," Vora stated.

Posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 3:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

FBI releases new report on infamous 1956 Emmett Till killing

Source: AP (3-31-07)

CHICAGO -- A [new] 464-page FBI report released Friday contains gruesome details from the autopsy of Emmett Till, but it is so highly redacted that it doesn't shed much light on the teen's killing, which helped galvanize the civil rights movement. The report found that Till, killed in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman, died of a gunshot wound to the head and that he had broken wrist bones and skull and leg fractures... The FBI report is part of an 8,000-page file investigators amassed during its three-year investigation into the killing, opened at the request of the district attorney in Greenwood, Miss. The local prosecutor recently announced that a grand jury had declined to return an indictment in the case. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who are deceased, were acquitted of the crime by an all-white jury. They later confessed in a 1956 interview with Look magazine... The report, available online, says investigators found no evidence of Ku Klux Klan involvement in the crime.

Related Links

FBI report on Emmett Till

Posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 3:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In 1943, Census released Japanese Americans' individual data

Source: Los Angeles Times (3-31-07)

The Census Bureau turned over confidential information, including names and addresses, to help the U.S. government identify individual Japanese Americans during World War II, according to government documents released by two scholars Friday...

In 2000, the Census Bureau acknowledged and apologized for its role in sharing aggregate data with the U.S. military to help relocate Japanese Americans from the West Coast to inland camps after Japan's 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.

But Friday's disclosure represented the first confirmation that the bureau also shared information about individuals...

The disclosures were legal under wartime legislation. But they were arguably unethical and could affect public trust in the bureau's confidentiality pledges as it prepares to launch its 2010 census, according to the scholars, William Seltzer of Fordham University and Margo Anderson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The pair presented their findings at a New York population conference...

Census Bureau spokeswoman Christa Jones stressed that the wartime actions were legal and that privacy protections are far stronger today. "It's our commitment to protect the confidentiality in everything we do," she said.

Posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 2:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 30, 2007

A 'comfort woman' who still seeks an apology, even in court

Source: Times (of London) (3-31-07)

NANJING, China -- Lei Guiying is slight and stooped with age. She is poor and illiterate. But the 79-year-old Chinese peasant says she knows that Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister, was wrong this month to deny that the Imperial Army coerced women into army-run brothels during the Second World War.

She was barely 13 when she was raped by a Japanese soldier and, for the next two years, forced to work in a Japanese-run brothel on the edge of the southern city of Nanjing.

In her first interview with a foreign newspaper, Ms Lei says that she is ready, if the Chinese authorities will support her, to file a case against the Japanese Government for its wartime abuses. She knows nothing of a private fund created in 1995 by the Japanese Government that provided a way to support former sex slaves without offering official compensation and which expires today. But she echoes the views of other “comfort women” who have rejected the payments, demanding formal government compensation and an apology approved by the Japanese parliament.

For more than 60 years Ms Lei concealed her history...

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Supersonic landmark at Heathrow goes the way of the Concorde

Source: Times (of London) (3-31-07)

HEATHROW -- A landmark image for millions of travellers disappeared when the British Airways Concorde model was removed from the gateway to Heathrow Airport.

BA decided not to renew the £1.5 million annual rent to advertise at the airport’s entrance.

Emirates Airlines has signed a six-year deal for the site. The Concorde will be replaced by a model of a double-deck Airbus A380 superjumbo.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Latino groups pressure PBS over Ken Burns WWII series

Source: AP (3-31-07)

WASHINGTON -- Hispanic groups unhappy with an upcoming Ken Burns documentary on World War II are stepping up pressure on PBS because they say the series omits mention of the role Latinos played in the war. The latest group to take their grievance to PBS is the American GI Forum, [which] is appealing to Hispanic veterans and other Latino groups to write members of Congress and their local PBS affiliates about the documentary, "The War," which has been six years in the making...the 14-hour Burns documentary [is] set to air this September, Hispanic Heritage month. In a statement issued by his publicist, Burns and co-producer Lynn Novick said they were "dismayed and saddened" by any assumptions they intentionally left out any group. "Nothing could be further from the truth," they said... The Burns series documents the war from the perspective of four U.S. communities: Waterbury, Conn.; Luverne, Minn.; Mobile, Ala.; and Sacramento, Calif.... "In this latest project, we have attempted to show the universal human experience of war by focusing on the testimonies of just a handful of people mostly from four American towns. As a result, millions of stories are not explored in our film," Burns and Novick said.

Related Links

'Defend the Honor' (of Latino vets) website
'The War' press release

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:24 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Chicago Tribune continues multi-part series on Obama

Source: Chicago Tribune (3-29-07)

Barack Obama packed his few belongings into his newly purchased but creaky old Honda and headed west from New York into a political and social battle zone.

When the raw 23-year-old community organizer hit Chicago in early 1985, the racially charged fighting between Harold Washington, the city's first black mayor, and white ethnic aldermen led by Ed Vrdolyak had earned the city a bitter nickname: Beirut on the Lake.

Obama learned just how bitter on his first trip to a Hyde Park barber, who recalled how Washington's victory two years earlier had sent African-Americans into the streets "like the day Joe Louis knocked out [Max] Schmeling," Obama writes in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father."

But Obama, the youthful outsider, brought a decidedly practical view of the Washington-Vrdolyak bouts to the Far South Side community he was organizing.

"They're not enemies, he used to tell us. They're both working for their constituents, and they have to do this," recalled Loretta Herron, a founding member of Obama's Developing Communities Project. "Whoever can help you reach your goal, that's who you work with. … There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies."

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Slavery's long effects on Africa

Source: BBC (3-29-07)

Between the 15th and 19th Centuries, it is estimated that up to 12m Africans were forced onto European slave ships and taken across the Atlantic.

Two hundred years after the British parliament voted to abolish the trade, the effects on Africa are still being felt.

Head to a village in northern Ghana or indeed many villages in West Africa and at times you might wonder what century you are in.

Even though Ghana has achieved impressive growth rates in recent years, the scene in many rural areas appears to have changed little with grass thatched mud walled huts.

There is often no electricity and yes, the water is collected in plastic containers these days but it is still quite an effort to fetch it.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Merkel visit to Poland marred by reparations claim

Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-17-07)

Felix Hoppe was 13 when he fled his home, one of an estimated 12 million Germans forced to abandon Eastern Europe as the Third Reich collapsed in 1945.

Then his house was on Adolf Hitler Strasse in a town called Heilsberg.

Today that has become number six Bartoszycka street, a green stucco house in the small town of Lidzbark-Warminski in north-eastern Poland.

Nonetheless, Felix Hoppe, 75, now wants his childhood home back.

His claims for reparations, and hundreds more like them from those displaced in the turmoil of 1945 threaten to make Angela Merkel's visit to Warsaw, which begins today, her most delicate diplomatic mission as German Chancellor.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mexico to open 'archaeological windows' for tours

Source: AP (3-30-07)

MEXICO CITY -- Archaeologists in Mexico City announced plans Friday to hold tours of inaccessible buried ruins via glass-covered shafts looking down on the sites.

Two daylong guided tours of the sites, known as "archaeological windows," are scheduled for April, and will take visitors to about 20 sites currently open to the public, as well as 20 more "windows" hidden beneath stairwells, floors and patios of buildings normally not open to the public.

The underground ruins -- some swallowed or encased by the foundations of the Spanish buildings constructed atop them following the 1521 conquest -- cannot be fully excavated without destroying the crumbling colonial buildings above them.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Veterans condemn El-Alamein golf resort plan

Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-25-07)

The desert battlefield of El-Alamein, where Field Marshal Montgomery's Desert Rats famously defeated Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Second World War, is being developed into a golf resort by Egyptian businessmen.

British war veterans reacted angrily yesterday after hearing of the plans to turn the historic site into a complex including luxury villas.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Town features KKK museum

Source: CNN (3-28-07)

The arrest of two women teachers on charges of having sex with their male students has brought cries of lingering racism in one of South Carolina's most conservative counties and evoked some of the South's oldest and deepest-seated racial taboos.

Both women are white. The boys -- six in all -- are black....

In the town of Laurens, where one of the teachers taught, an old movie theater has been converted into a Ku Klux Klan museum and paraphernalia store called The Redneck Shop. There, visitors can buy Confederate flags and bumper stickers, such as one that depicts three Klansmen and reads "The Original Boys in the Hood."

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 9:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New bridge gives backpackers cheap backdoor entry to Machu Picchu ruins

Source: AP (3-30-07)

LIMA, Peru -- A village near Peru's famed Machu Picchu ruins has built a bridge over the turbulent Vilcanota River, opening a cheap backdoor route for adventurous, cash-strapped backpackers.

The bridge was inaugurated Saturday in the village of Santa Teresa despite the objections of government cultural experts, who fear increased tourism could threaten the UNESCO World Heritage site as hostels and restaurants spring up to serve travelers.

They also say increased tourism could imperil rare flora and fauna in the highland jungle surrounding the Inca ruins that are dramatically perched on a ridge 500 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of Lima.

But authorities in Santa Teresa, less than 20 kilometers (10 miles) from the base of the mountain on which Machu Picchu was built, are hoping the bridge will help the local economy get a piece of the tourism pie. Travelers would have to spend the night in the village before continuing on to Machu Picchu.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 6:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Once more, ancient history disappearing

Source: Guardian (3-30-07)

Ancient history will disappear as an A-level [in the UK education system] if recommendations from an examination board are approved later this year.

The OCR board announced today it proposed to abolish the qualification as part of its plans to reorganise its four classics A-levels.

The exam board wants to replace its four existing classics subjects -- ancient history, classical civilisation, Greek and Latin -- with new models.

Ancient history will disappear as a subject in its own right. Instead students will choose from four new A-levels in Latin, classical Greek, classical civilisation and a new subject title, classics.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 6:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jewish family wins $117.5m from German firm in Nazi seizure case

Source: AP (3-30-07)

BERLIN -- A leading retailer said Friday that it will pay $117.5 million to compensate a Jewish family for real estate that was taken by the Nazis and eventually resold to the German firm.

The Jewish Claims Conference said it will use an unspecified amount of the money from KarstadtQuelle AG to fund programs for Holocaust victims, and give the rest to heirs of the Wertheim family, which was been seeking compensation for 15 years.

The Wertheims once ran a grand department store at the best-known disputed property, known as the Lenne Triangle, on Potsdamer Platz in downtown Berlin. Under Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic "Aryanization" laws, which gave Jewish property to Germans, the family lost the business and several other properties.

The store was destroyed during World War II. After the war, the Hertie department store chain bought the seized Wertheim properties under disputed circumstances.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 6:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

25 years after defeat in war, Argentina again presses claim to Falklands

Source: AP (3-30-07)

BUENOS AIRES -- Twenty-five years after hostilities ceased, Argentina is opening a new front in the Falklands War.

Rather than jets and mortar rounds, however, this salvo involves diplomats appealing for help at the United Nations and the government reasserting long-standing claims to the island chain where far more sheep than people huddle against the forbidding South Atlantic winds.

London, however, maintains its hold on the island, which Argentina invaded 25 years ago this Monday.

Many Argentines -- especially the left-wing power base of President Nestor Kirchner -- see the war as a huge mistake pursued by the nation's discredited military dictators. But Argentines still universally call the Falklands -- known in South America as the "Malvinas" -- as their own. And in this election year, Kirchner appears poised to gain support by pushing hard against Britain's firm refusal to negotiate on the islands' fate.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 6:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ramses II's hair returning to Egypt

Source: Reuters (3-30-07)

CAIRO -- Egypt sent an archaeological team to France on Thursday to retrieve 3,200-year-old strands of hair from the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II, who presided over an era of great military expansion in Egypt, state media said.

The existence of the hair came to light last year when some of the strands were offered for sale on the Internet for between 2,000 and 2,500 euros ($2,668 and $3,336), in addition to tiny pieces of resin and embalmed cloth taken from the mummy.

The seller had said he obtained the relics from his deceased father, who had worked in a French laboratory entrusted with analysing and restoring the body of Ramses in the 1970s. He had offered to provide certificates of authenticity to buyers.

French archaeologists had reacted with horror to news that the hairs were on sale and French authorities arrested the suspected seller in November.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Like Savannah and Williamsburg, Philly wants tour guides to know the history

Source: AP (3-30-07)

PHILADELPHIA -- Paid tour guides on public property would have to pass history tests and be certified under a new bill introduced in City Council, drawing objections from some tourism groups and praise from history buffs.

Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown said the bill she introduced Thursday, like measures in Williamsburg, Va., and Savannah, Ga., would require certification and require the city to offer a study guide or class.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 6:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

WWI Museum plans vets ceremony after final taps

Source: USA Today (3-30-07)

The news that no national ceremonies are planned once the last of three World War I veterans has died prompted the National World War I Museum on Thursday to make plans for a national tribute.

“It would really be a shame if we didn’t do something,” said retired Marine Gen. Steve Berkheiser, who heads the museum in Kansas City, Mo. Two of the remaining five U.S. veterans of that war died this week...

[Charlotte Winters, 109, of Boonsboro, Md., died Tuesday and Lloyd Brown, 105, of Charlotte Hall, Md., died Thursday.]

The deaths left three known surviving American veterans of World War I: Frank Buckles, 106, of Charles Town, W.Va.; Russell Coffey, 108, of North Baltimore, Ohio; and Harry Landis, 107, of Sun City Center, Fla. All served in the Army.

Berkheiser said he planned to “form fairly quickly” a committee to plan a national memorial service to be held there within 30 days after the last veteran dies.

A USA Today story published this week, featuring Buckles, noted that the British government plans an elaborate ceremony at Westminster Abbey after its seven World War I veterans die. The Canadian government is weighing a state funeral after its three remaining veterans are gone.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 6:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vatican will hold onto Parthenon fragments

Source: Discovery News (3-30-07)

The Vatican is expected to announce its decision to keep some fragments of the Parthenon housed in the Vatican Museums, dashing Greek hopes that the artifacts would be returned to their homeland, according to the Italian press...

The horsemen, deities and other creatures — carved by Phidias in the 5th century B.C. -— are scattered throughout several European museums, including the Louvre in Paris. But most of the marbles are kept in London's British Museum.

Greece has been demanding the return of 17 figures and 56 panels, which have come to be known as the Parthenon marbles, since the country's independence from Turkey in 1829.

Related Links

As arranged, Getty returns ancient wreath to Greece

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 5:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuskegee Airmen given congressional medal

Source: Air Force Times (3-30-07)

The Tuskegee Airmen, black pilots of World War II whose combat contributions languished as historical footnotes until a 1995 movie helped turn them into legends, capped their record of honors Thursday with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan orders history books changed

Source: Boston Herald (3-30-07)

The government ordered changes Friday to seven history textbooks describing how the Japanese army forced civilians to commit mass suicide at the end of World War II, the country’s latest effort to soften brutal accounts of its wartime conduct.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historian documents Japan's role in sex slavery

Source: IHT (3-30-07)

It was about 15 years ago, recalled Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a mild-mannered historian, that he grew fed up with the Japanese government's denials that the military had set up and run brothels throughout Asia during World War II.

Instead of firing off a letter to a newspaper, though, Yoshimi went to the Defense Agency's library and combed through official documents from the 1930s. In just two days, he found a rare trove that uncovered the military's direct role in managing the brothels, including documents that carried the personal seals of high-ranking Imperial Army officers.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic houses becoming hotter property

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-29-07)

John Adams, second president of the United States and the son of a noted Puritan, would undoubtedly blush at the makeover planned for his former London residence.

While the developer is maintaining the historical features of the three-story house, including a broad ballroom with high ceilings and an ornate fireplace, he is adding the latest in high-tech gadgetry. Improvements will include Lutron-brand controlled lighting, electrically operated curtains, under-floor heating and a state-of-the-art audio-video system throughout the structure.

"If you're buying a property like this, you're definitely interested in period fixtures," said Ben Carson, the London-based developer who paid £3.5 million, or almost $6.9 million, for Adams's Mayfair house earlier this year. "But at the same time, people spending this kind of money also want the sophisticated audio-video system" and other amenities.

Around the world, from Panama to Shanghai, high-end buyers are paying top dollar for historic houses, spurring owners to spend both time and money on sensitive renovations that include modern improvements. But finding properties worthy of such effort can be a challenge.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Hemingway-Dietrich letters being made public

Source: UPI (3-29-07)

BOSTON -- U.S. writer Ernest Hemingway and German siren Marlene Dietrich flirted but likely didn't hook up, family members said.

Peter Riva, the late actress' grandson said the two were only "great pals" and Valerie Hemingway, the author's daughter-in-law, said "there is absolutely no evidence of there being an actual affair," ABC News reported Thursday.

Riva and Hemingway discussed 30 letters written from 1949-59 donated to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston by Dietrich's daughter four years ago but won't be made public until next week.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Great Pyramid built from inside out, says architect

Source: Independent (3-30-07)

It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the only one of them to remain standing today.

Yet the story of how the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually built has remained a mystery for more than four millennia -- until, perhaps, now.

A French architect believes he has finally solved one of the most puzzling construction problems in history by working out how the ancient Egyptians built such a massive structure without the benefit of iron tools, pulleys or wheels.

In Paris tomorrow, Jean-Pierre Houdin will unveil the fruits of eight years' work by describing at a conference how the pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu was built from the inside out. He will propose that the Egyptians carried the building blocks up an internal ramp that formed a spiral tunnel within the structure's outer wall. These tunnels, he believes, must still exist today.

With the help of sophisticated computer software developed by the French company Dassault Systemes, M. Houdin has been able to reconstruct a three-dimensional simulation of how the great limestone and granite blocks of the pyramid were put together stone by stone.

The simulation shows the logic behind building such a pyramid from the inside out. M. Houdin even believes he has solved the mystery of the king's chamber -- why it had five granite ceilings instead of one, and how these great granite blocks were lifted to such a height.

The first recorded attempt to explain how the Pyramid of Khufu was built came from Herodotus, the Greek historian.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Greece talks tough on Parthenon marbles

Source: Guardian (3-30-07)

The Greek prime minister, deploying the strongest language yet for the return of the Parthenon marbles, yesterday said that Britain had run out of "feeble excuses" to retain the treasures.

At a ceremony to mark the return to Athens of two art works Greece has long claimed from the Getty Museum - and the imminent completion of a £94m Acropolis museum -- Costas Karamanlis said it was only a matter of time before the sculptures' repatriation.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:31 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Documents reveal Israeli hero Teddy Kollek spied for MI5

Source: Telegraph (3-30-07)

JERUSALEM -- Israel is reeling from the revelation that one of its founding fathers was a British spy who betrayed Jewish freedom fighters in the turbulent years before the state's creation in 1948.

Teddy Kollek, who later served as mayor of Jerusalem for almost 30 years, fed sensitive information to MI5 when Britain ran Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

Evidence of Kollek's secret past has been disclosed in documents discovered at the Public Record Office in Kew by Ronen Bergman, an investigative journalist working for the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

"From all the documents it is clear he worked very closely with British intelligence for a number of years between 1943 and 1947," Mr Bergman told The Daily Telegraph.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Titanic passenger had forboding

Source: Times (of London) (3-30-07)

A passenger who died in the Titanic disaster had written to his wife from the liner, saying that he thought it was unsafe.

While most of his fellow passengers in first class were awestruck by their palatial surroundings, Alfred Rowe —- his mood perhaps soured by a bad cold —- sat down to write to his wife Constance, confiding that he thought the ship “too big” and a “positive danger”.

Mr Rowe, 59, a British businessman, was on his way to his ranch in Texas and had been on the ship for only 24 hours. His letter has come to light for the first time in 95 years...

The letter was posted from Queenstown, Cobh, near Cork in Ireland —- the Titanic’s last stop — on April 11, 1912. On April 14, the ship struck an iceberg and sank...

The letter, which runs to four sides, has been made public for the first time after Mr Rowe’s family decided to auction it.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:28 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Controversial '1470' man gets major facelift

Source: Live Science (3-29-07)

An ancient member of the human family has gotten a digital facelift, and the new mug looks more ape-like than scientists previously thought.

The new reconstruction suggests the large brains and flatter faces characteristic of modern humans did not appear in our lineage until much later in our history.

"For how many years now, people have been using this [skull] and the numbers may not be very meaningful," said Timothy Bromage, an anthropologist at New York University who led the new reconstruction effort.

The skull in question, KNM-ER 1470, is arguably the most controversial fossil in the history of anthropology. When it was first discovered in northern Kenya in 1972, it was initially dated to nearly 3 million years old. Yet the skull—which scientists painstakingly pieced together from hundreds of bone fragments—had a large brain and a flat face, features reminiscent of modern humans but completely unlike any hominid known to exist at the time.

So troublesome was the skull that famed paleo-anthropologist Richard Leakey, the leader of the team that discovered it, once told reporters: "Either we toss out this skull or we toss out our theories of early man. It simply fits no models of human beginnings."

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Newly discovered WWII documents favor Pius XII

Source: Telegraph (3-30-07)

ROME -- Pius XII, the wartime pontiff often condemned as "Hitler's Pope", was actually considered an enemy by the Third Reich, according to newly discovered documents.

Several letters and memos unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at Pius's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.

In one, the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentropp, the Third Reich's foreign minister, that the Catholic Church was providing assistance to Jews "both in terms of people and financially".

A report from a spy at work in the Vatican states: "Our source was told to his face by Father Robert Leibner [one of Pius's secretaries] that the greatest hope of the Church is that the Nazi system would be obliterated by the war."

La Repubblica, the newspaper that discovered the papers, said they were sent to the heads of the Stasi, after the Second World War.

The revelations they contain will help to clear the name of Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who has long been criticised for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. During the war, the British Foreign Office even described him as the "greatest moral coward of our age".

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Iran loses UK High Court battle to recover 'stolen' antiquities

Source: Independent (3-30-07)

Iran has lost a High Court battle to recover a collection of 5,000-year-old grave relics it says were looted from desert sites. In a ruling that could have implications for attempts by other countries to secure the return of antiquities, Mr Justice Gray said that, under the provisions of Iranian law, it could not show that it had obtained valid title to the artefacts.

Iran had sued the Barakat Gallery, an antiquities specialist with offices in Mayfair, central London and Beverly Hills, seeking to recover carved objects it said were taken from the ancient city of Jiroft in the Halil river valley in south-eastern Iran.

Lawyers acting for Iran said the treasures were among thousands of pieces stolen after floods washed away the topsoil and exposed relics in Jiroft in 2001.

But the judge said Iran had failed to prove its legal ownership of the jars, cups and other items but gave permission for his ruling to be challenged at the appeal court.

Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:14 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Woodstein say Bush admin lies more than Nixon's

Source: American Statesman (3-24-07)

George W. Bush's supporters often compare him to men they consider among the greatest presidents of American history: George Washington, Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan.

Friday's Watergate symposium at the University of Texas suggested a less flattering point of comparison: Richard Milhous Nixon.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story for The Washington Post more than 30 years ago, spent three hours Friday afternoon at the University of Texas discussing the scandal that made them famous.

But "The Legacy of Watergate: Why It Still Matters" didn't focus on the past: For much of the time, Woodward and Bernstein — Bernstein, especially — kept bringing the discussion back to the present.

"This administration is not evolutionary, it is sui generis," meaning of its own kind, unique, Bernstein said of the Bush White House. "We are dealing here with a level of untruthfulness that is so constant that it is exceeding what we saw in the Nixon presidency."

The audience, which seemed to be made up largely of UT students and people who were adults when Watergate broke, was sympathetic to such sentiments, laughing and applauding when Bernstein asserted that, "One thing Bush II and Nixon share is a psychological unfitness for the presidency."

Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkey restores Armenian church

Source: BBC (3-29-07)

Turkey has renovated a 1,100-year-old church in the east of the country, in what is seen as a gesture to improve ties with neighbouring Armenia.

Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 4:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient fabric tweaked for modern use

Source: UPI (3-29-07)

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- U.S. researchers say chain-mail, once popular with medieval knights, may become the high-tech fabric of the future.

Scientists say the world's smallest chain-mail fabric, developed at the University of Illinois, holds promise for "fully engineered smart textiles," the university said in a release.

The fabric and the fabrication process, described in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, consists of a network of small rings about 500 microns in diameter and even smaller links about 400 microns long.

Chang Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering who designed the fabric with graduate student Jonathan Engel, said the mechanical and electrical properties could prove useful for the development of smart fabric and wearable electronic devices for pervasive computing.

Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 3:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

García Márquez v. Vargas Llosa, 1976: photos of the famous literary fight emerge

Source: New York Times (3-29-07)

The feud between the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, onetime best of friends, had all the elements of a literary classic: accusations of betrayal, jealousy and adultery, and a brutal encounter 31 years ago when things turned bloody.

What it had lacked, however, was a wealth of documentary evidence.

That all changed this month, with the publication of two black-and-white portraits taken on Valentine’s Day, 1976, in Mexico City that show Mr. García Márquez with a shiner —- in turns smiling and serious —- two days after being slugged by Mr. Vargas Llosa. The writers are said not to have spoken to each other since the fight.

Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 3:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Last American female WWI vet dies at 109; only 5 men survive

Source: AP (3-28-09)

BOONSBORO, Md. -- The last known surviving American female World War I veteran, a refined Civil War buff who met face-to-face with the Secretary of the Navy to fight for women in the military, has died. She was 109.

Charlotte Winters died Tuesday at a nursing home near Boonsboro in northwest Maryland, the U.S. Naval District in Washington said in a statement. Her death leaves just five known surviving American World War I veterans.

In 1916, Winters met with Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels to persuade him to allow women in the service.

Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 2:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Wartime Cupid may have to go home

Source: Telegraph (3-29-07)

The fog of war may have begun to lift 62 years ago but pockets linger on -- not least in the art world where the theft and mayhem of the Nazis still cast a shadow.

This time the exploits of a daring woman war reporter, the US 101st Airborne Division -- the Screaming Eagles of D-Day renown, a hoard of art plundered by Hermann Goering, and a day in charge of Hitler's Alpine lair have left the National Gallery with a headache over one of its most popular paintings.

Cupid Complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder, a Renaissance masterpiece worth millions, may have to be given up by the gallery after claims that it was looted by the Nazis and then grabbed by Patricia Lochridge Hartwell, a war correspondent for Women's Home Companion magazine, in 1945.

Miss Hartwell, who was with the Screaming Eagles in Germany after the bloodbath of Omaha Beach, is thought to have taken the painting when she was given control of Hitler's former residence for a day by Lt Col Robert S Smith of the 101st Airborne, an experience she wrote about in an article titled: "I governed Berchtesgaden."...

[Hartwell died in 1998. The painting was purchased by the National Gallery in 1963 for £34,000 and has soared in value, reported The Times.]

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 10:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study debunks theory of 'Napoleon complex'

Source: Independent (3-29-07)

Napoleon, Stalin and Franco had more in common than being tyrants and dictators. They were all rather on the short side and helped to engender the belief that men of below average height were more aggressive than their taller peers.

But now the so-called Napoleon complex or Short Man Syndrome -- which determines that 80 per cent of the population believe that small men are angry -- has been put to the test by scientists who have established that, on average, it is tall men who are more likely to become the aggressor in conflicts.

The research is likely to be welcomed by shorter men, who have complained that they face discrimination and more challenges in life than their taller compatriots. Research has shown that shorter men tend to earn less and are deemed less attractive to women, although the three-times married Tom Cruise might disagree with the estimate that for every inch shorter you are, 5 per cent fewer women will find you attractive.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Congress: Speed up opening of Nazi archives

Source: AP (3-28-07)

WASHINGTON -- A congressional committee approved a resolution yesterday calling for expediting the opening of millions of Nazi files on concentrations camps and their victims.

Earlier this month, an 11-nation body overseeing the long-secret archive set procedures to open the records stored in Bad Arolsen, Germany by the end of the year. All the member countries must ratify an agreement adopted last year to end the 60-year ban on using the files for research.

The resolution approved by the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives calls on the member countries to ratify quickly. Israel, the U.S, Poland and the Netherlands have done so. Germany, Britain and Luxembourg said they would ratify before the commission meets again in May. National elections in France and Belgium could cause delays, and the status in Italy and Greece was unclear.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 6:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dismembering in ancient Peru was purposeful for the powerful, study suggests

Source: Live Science (3-28-07)

Ancient Peruvian aristocrats dismembered their less well-off neighbors as a scare tactic, new archaeological finds suggest.

Several deformed corpses were found during recent excavations at the burial necropolis of El Trigal, a once-downtrodden community located in the Nazca province of Peru and dating to the 1st century A.D.

Members of nearby wealthier communities looking to send a message about their power may have been responsible for the mutilations, say archaeologists.

"When a dominant class appears, [it] always seeks mechanisms to impose fear," said Pedro Castro-Martinez of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB), who headed up a study of the corpses. "The power of an elite is exercised and maintained by means of force and fear. Mutilations can be part of those tactics to frighten."

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 4:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Great solar flare in 1859 damaged ozone, created aurora light show, caused fires, disrupted telegraph

Source: Discovery News (3-27-07)

A titanic burp of protons from the sun in 1859 appears to have temporarily weakened Earth's ozone layer, say scientists studying ice cores from Greenland. The evidence of the massive radiation event is in the form of an excessive amount of ozone-related nitrates in the ice from that year.

The huge September 1859 solar flare appears to have gushed 6.5 times the protons of the largest flare seen by modern science —- which was in 1989...

"The flare itself was observed directly," said researcher Brian Thomas of Washburn University in Kansas...The flare was followed by a historic aurora light show and a geomagnetic storm that caused telegraph lines to spark and start fires.

In some places power surges created by the storm of charged solar particles blasting Earth’s magnetic field made it possible to operate telegraph systems without any added power...

Figuring out the 1859 event has been the center of study for many researchers because it seems to indicate that the sun is capable of much more violent weather than we’ve seen –- or are prepared for, said Thomas...

A paper using the ice core data to model the historic solar blast’s effects on Earth’s atmosphere, with Thomas as the lead author, appears in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historical writers lose another round against 'Da Vinci Code'

Source: Reuters (3-28-07)

LONDON -- Two historians have lost another legal battle in British courts over claims that U.S. author Dan Brown plagiarized their ideas for his blockbuster novel "The Da Vinci Code."

Three of Britain's senior judges dismissed the appeal by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh against an earlier High Court ruling which had also rejected their claims.

The decision leaves the historians facing estimated legal costs of three million pounds ($6 million).

It seems unlikely that the case will go any further as no application has been made for permission to appeal to Britain's highest court, the House of Lords.

In their action against the novel's British publishers Random House, Baigent and Leigh claimed that Brown copied significant parts of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" which they wrote in 1982.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 4:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuskegee Airmen to be honored at Capitol

Source: Reuters (3-28-07)

TUSKEGEE, Ala. -- The first black U.S. Air Force unit will finally receive national recognition this week for fighting a double war -- one against the Nazis abroad, the other against racial segregation at home.

President George W. Bush will honour the surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen with a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress, at a ceremony on Thursday at the U.S. Capitol...

But just as their success is being recognised, one aspect of the story is in dispute...

For decades, they were also credited with never having lost a bomber under their escort. Yet Daniel Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency said some of the many bombers escorted were in fact shot down.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 3:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New report outlines state of Black Studies programs

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (3-28-07)

A new study has found that 311 American colleges and universities offer programs in black studies, according to an article in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. But a majority of the programs are in the East and the West — the two regions of the country with the fewest black residents. The study was conducted by Abdul Alkalimat, a professor of sociology and the director of Africana studies at the University of Toledo.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Indiana U. Press withdraws book, saying it insufficiently acknowledges another author's work

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (3-28-07)

When Edward H. Blickstein picked up a copy of Vladimir de Pachmann: A Piano Virtuoso's Life and Art, by Mark Mitchell, published by Indiana University Press, he was "absolutely stunned" -- but not by Mr. Mitchell's fresh new take on the subject.

As a young man, Mr. Blickstein had been turned on to Pachmann (1848-1933) by his piano teacher. For almost half a century, on and off, he toiled on his own biography of the once-legendary Chopin interpreter whose onstage antics earned him the nickname "the Chopinzee."

What he read in Mr. Mitchell's book felt all too familiar. "He took maybe 40 to 50 percent of the material for his book from my manuscript," Mr. Blickstein says. "There was no way he could have gotten this information" from any other source.

Indiana University Press reached a similar conclusion. In October, it withdrew Mr. Mitchell's book from circulation, saying that the volume "does not sufficiently acknowledge the intellectual debt it owes to Mr. Blickstein's prior labors."

With the possible exception of their manuscripts, the two Pachmann scholars have almost nothing in common. Mr. Blickstein lives in what Mr. Benko describes as a very modest circumstances on Staten Island, supplemented by occasional help from friends. Mr. Mitchell travels in high-flying circles; he landed a Guggenheim Fellowship this year, and his longtime partner is David Leavitt, a novelist who wound up on the wrong side of a plagiarism charge in 1994 when English writer Stephen Spender sued him for borrowing too heavily from Spender's memoir, World Within World.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Only 3 cooks in Lisbon know the 200-year-old secret of the 'pasteis de Belem'

Source: AFP (3-27-07)

LISBON -- For almost two centuries people from around the world have flocked to a pastry shop in Lisbon for a creamy custard tart made according to a recipe that has been kept secret since it was bought from a monastery in the early 1800s.

The cavernous establishment located near the tombs of Portugal's kings and queens is the only place that sells the tiny "pasteis de Belem," named after the riverside neighbourhood where the shop is located.

"There is nothing else like these," said Augusto Moraes, 37, as waiters wearing white shirts and black bow ties hustled back and forth to deliver plates of the tarts which can be eaten in just two or three bites.

While the shop serves other traditional cafe foods, waiters say most people who visit come for the tarts which sell for less than one euro (dollar) each.

It is especially busy on Sundays when entire families along with tourists and young couples fill its tile-walled rooms of differing sizes and a line of customers waiting to get inside often stretches outside its doors.

Around 100 workers make 15,000 of the tarts each day which can be served with a sprinkling of cinnamon or powdered sugar -- or both.

The shop tries to stay faithful to the recipe -- known only by three people -- to ensure the cakes taste the same as when they were first made despite changes over the years to the suppliers of the ingredients causing difficulties.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 2:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

. . . And let's not forget to save historic pubs in Scotland

Source: The Scotsman (Edinburgh) (3-28-07)

Urgent action must be taken to safeguard Scotland's few remaining historic pubs, the author of a new guide has warned.

Scotland's True Heritage Pubs, to be launched at Leslie's Bar in Edinburgh today, lists only about 120 that have kept the same bar for at least 40 years.

During this time, most pubs have gone through a number of refits and typically Scottish features, such as a central bar in the main room, have been lost...

"We want to try to preserve the genuine historic interiors of pubs, as well as preserving the genuine and historic beers," [said Slaughter].

'Island bars' -- such as the fictional TV bar Cheers or the Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow -- have been a distinctively Scottish layout for more than 100 years...

Other particularly Scottish historic features include ornate gantries -- the word gantry comes from the old Scots word gantress or gauntress, meaning a wooden stand for casks -- water taps on the bar for whisky and pubs on the ground floors of tenement flats beside shops.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 2:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Long-lost Galileo watercolours of moon authenticated

Source: Times (of London) (3-28-07)

ROME -- Long-lost illustrations by Galileo of the Moon’s surface as he saw it through his telescope have come to light after four centuries.

The five watercolours are in Galileo’s own copy of Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger) [published in Venice in 1610] in which he gave details of his revolutionary "celestial discoveries"...

The illustrations show the Moon with ochre and light brown shadings, highlighting the Moon’s craters and valleys. They do not feature in any other copy of the book.

They were authenticated by Professor Horst Bredekamp, head of the Art History Institute at Humboldt University in Berlin, and Professor William R. Shea, holder of the Galileo Chair of the History of Science at Padua University [where they were unveiled this week. The book, turning up after 400 years, was apparently] in a collection in South America...

Professor Bredekamp said that the drawings showed a “refined hand”, reflecting the fact that Galileo was a talented painter. The Italian daily Corriere della Sera, published the illustrations, saying that they helped readers "to imagine the fascination which gripped Galileo as he scanned the night skies above Padua. It wasn’t enough to draw what he saw, he felt impelled to use colour as well to bring his vision alive." The paper said that Padua University hoped to buy the book.

Galileo was the first scientist to report lunar mountains and craters, concluding that the Moon was "rough and uneven, and just like the surface of the Earth itself," rather than a perfect sphere as Aristotle had claimed.

Related Links

Corriere della Sera coverage including pictures

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 2:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

No shortage of candidates for Smithsonian post

Source: Washington Post (3-28-07)

A day after Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small's resignation, the names of possible successors began to circulate.

Cristián Samper, 41, a respected biologist and the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, was named acting secretary on Monday, and though it was purely water cooler talk, his stock seemed to be up...

Other potential successors to Small from the top rungs of Smithsonian management are Deputy Secretary Sheila Burke and Ned Rifkin, the undersecretary for art and the former director of the Hirshhorn Museum.

In addition to Samper, the names of several Smithsonian scientists have been mentioned, including Hans-Dieter Sues, a paleontologist and associate director for research and collections at Natural History, and Rick Potts, an anthropologist and director of the Human Origins Program, which promotes research and public awareness about human evolution. Two members of the Board of Regents also have both scientific credentials and administrative experience: Shirley Ann Jackson, a theoretical physicist and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Walter Massey, a physicist and president of Morehouse College.

Scientists outside the Smithsonian who have been mentioned include Peter H. Raven, a botanist and head of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis; Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astronomer and the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Thomas E. Lovejoy, a tropical biologist and director of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington; and Sir Peter Crane, the former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 2:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In Ethiopia, squalor and shrinking hope for remnants of a lost tribe of Israel

Source: Reuters (3-27-07)

GONDAR, Ethiopia -- Thousands of Ethiopians who say their Jewish roots entitle them to live in Israel are stuck in a squalid camp in Ethiopia, their dream of a promised land fading as Israel scrutinizes their family ties.

Known as "Falashas Mura", the descendants of Ethiopian Jews have reverted to Judaism since their late 18th and 19th century forbears converted to Christianity, sometimes under duress.

Tens of thousands of practicing Ethiopian Jews or Falashas -- which means "outsiders" in Ethiopia's Amharic language -- were airlifted to Israel in dramatic, top-secret operations in the 1980s and 1990s after a rabbinical ruling that they were direct descendants of the biblical Jewish Dan tribe.

By 1998, Israel said it had brought all of Ethiopia's Jews home to the Jewish state but another rabbinical ruling that year complicated matters by also recognizing as Jews those Falashas Mura -- converted outsiders -- who revert to Judaism.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 1:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Vietnam service decades ago puts veterans on both sides on Iraq

Source: Washington Post (3-28-07)

Mike Marceau and O.P. Ditch both served in the Vietnam War. But one's dedication to the military mission became the other's disillusion. The conflict set them on profoundly different paths in life, propelled them into activism over the war in Iraq and deposited them on opposite sides of the barricades at this month's antiwar march on the Pentagon...

With the war in Iraq going on for four years, Vietnam vets on both sides of the issue have begun to take leading roles in trying to shape public opinion and direct its course. But which side they take, which reports they believe and whom they trust depends largely on how they fared in the crucible that divided the country more than three decades ago.

Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 1:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

After Falklands War, army of lost souls ignored on their return to Argentina

Source: Telegraph (3-28-07)

The Argentine veteran never talked about the war.

When Jorge Martire met his wife-to-be, Maria Laura, he omitted to mention that he had recently gone through hell in the Falklands...

Then in 1992, a decade after the end of the conflict in the Falklands, something inside him snapped...

In his hospital bed, being treated for atypical psychosis -- known by veterans as "Malvinas syndrome" after the Argentine name for the islands -- it all finally came flooding out...On March 1, 1993, he slipped out of the hospital and bought a gun. Then he had a coffee in a bar, and afterwards walked into the lavatory and shot himself...

Britain lost 258 servicemen in the conflict. Twenty-five years later, there are no exact figures, but relatives of the Argentine dead believe that more of their countrymen have now committed suicide because of the trauma than the 650 men who were killed on the battlefield or at sea. The most conservative estimate is 350.

"Only now, is the reality of what we went through finally being talked about," said Edgardo Esteban, a veteran and journalist who has made the one and only feature film in Argentina about the conflict. Illuminated by Fire is not a story of heroes and glory but a catalogue of military incompetence and cruelty, human suffering and shattered lives.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 11:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

No peace yet for anarchist who failed to kill a king in 1878

Source: Guardian (3-28-07)

ROME -- Giovanni Passannante did not achieve much in life. The Italian cook turned anarchist failed in 1878 to kill the king with a kitchen knife, then went insane in solitary confinement on Elba.

Now his brain, still pickled in a glass box in Rome's crime museum, is at the centre of a row over whether to give him some peace, dragging in his home town mayor, actors, writers and politicians...

After emerging from the crowd in Naples in 1878 during a visit by Umberto I, the 28-year-old mistimed his lunge at the king, instead wounding the prime minister.

Passannante was jailed for life, and chained up in an underground cell. Declared insane after a decade living among his own excrement and sent to an asylum, he died in 1910. His body was fed to pigs, his brain removed to be studied for signs of innate criminality. "I am convinced we must immediately give some peace to the mortal remains of Passannante," [Deputy PM Francesco] Rutelli said.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In England, Northerners have the last 'laff'

Source: Telegraph (3-28-07)

Editor's note: The British Library has just opened its 'Sounds Familiar: Accents and Dialects' website, featuring 671 recordings and sound clips. A map with this Telegraph story shows the regions where 'bath' is pronounced with 'a' or 'aa' or 'ah'.

The grarse spreading out from its London roots is gradually stifling the graaas, but one of Britain's leading accent experts said yesterday that a larf will never drown out a laff.

Students of the voices that make up a patchwork quilt of spoken English across the country have drawn up a map of the way in which the long "a" of received pronunciation has followed the exodus of Londoners into the rest of southern England.

But a sort of linguistic Hadrian's Wall just south of Birmingham is keeping the long grass out of northern England and the rest of Britain...

Related Links

Sounds Familiar website (British Library)
The Big Question: Are regional dialects dying out, and should we care if they are? (Independent)

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 11:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Protester disrupts abolition commemoration with Queen and Blair

Source: New York Times (3-27-07)

LONDON -— A protester ran to the front of Westminster Abbey during a service on Tuesday commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, shouting, "You should be ashamed!" and "This is an insult to us!" at Prime Minister Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth, who were only a few yards away.

The protester, identified as 39-year-old Toyin Agbetu, was then seized by security guards, taken outside and arrested. He has not been charged but remains in police custody, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said...

The incident took place when the service, marking the enactment of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in March, 1807, was well underway.

Related Links

Forgotten hero who plotted a route to abolition

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

South Carolina Senate committee kills bill on Confederate Memorial History Month

Source: AP (3-27-07)

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A Senate committee has killed a bill to designate May as Confederate Memorial History Month.

Anderson Republican Kevin Bryant had sponsored the bill, which he called a simple way to "memorialize the dead from the War Between the States."

Several black senators argued against the bill, threatening to attach amendments requiring the state to apologize for slavery -- or putting the Confederate flag back on top of the Statehouse.

The committee voted 14-to-7 to adjourn debate on the bill, with an understanding it wouldn't come up again during this session.

Related Links

In Georgia Senate, Confederate History Month bill to be abandoned

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Some Houdini relatives oppose exhumation as sensationalism

Source: AP (3-27-07)

NEW YORK -- The family of Harry Houdini's widow wants to block a plan to exhume the escape artist's remains, saying a disinterment to determine whether he was murdered smacks of sensationalism.

"It is our firm belief that Bess Houdini would never approve of this," said a statement from her grandnephews, John and Jeffrey Blood. "The family believes this is likely being done to promote sales of a recent book on Harry Houdini, suggesting he may have been murdered."

A spokesman for Houdini's grandnephew, who supports the exhumation, and one of the new biography's authors on Tuesday quickly protested the Bloods' suggestion.

"I'm sorry that Bess' side of the family feels that way, because this is not a publicity stunt in any shape or form," said Larry Sloman, co-author of The Secret Life of Houdini. "This is not something frivolous. This is a serious scientific study."

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Darwin's delay' myth rebutted by scholar

Source: Telegraph (3-28-07)

Scholars call it "Darwin's delay," a reference to the best-known case of dithering in science, in which the great English naturalist sat on his theory of evolution for decades because he was so fearful its findings would be mauled by religious leaders and powerful figures in the establishment.

Today, that long-held belief within the scientific community is rebutted by a leading Darwinian scholar.

Dr John van Wyhe, a Cambridge University academic and director of the Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, says the reasons why Darwin procrastinated are far more prosaic.

He was obliged to catalogue the vast numbers of specimens he found on his South American voyage on the Beagle, developed an all-consuming obsession with barnacles and was a slow and methodical worker.

By the standard account, Darwin became convinced of evolution in 1837 and was only prompted to publish his work On the Origin of Species in 1859, after receiving a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist and explorer who had arrived at the same idea...

There has been endless speculation about its cause: fears for his reputation; religious persecution; upsetting his religious wife and even disturbing the social order.

Dr van Wyhe's re-evaluation of Darwin's papers, published today in the Notes and Records of the Royal Society, rewrites this pivotal chapter in the story of Darwin's life.

Related Links

Mind the gap: did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years? (Notes and Records -- subscription required)
Darwin and the 20-year publication gap (Nature -- subscription required)

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 9:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK attorney general accused of coverup on Queen Mother's will

Source: Guardian (3-28-07)

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, took part in a secret court session which concealed the amount of inheritance tax avoided by the Queen on her mother's death, it was disclosed yesterday.

Lord Goldsmith arranged, with the high court judge Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss in 2002, that details of the Queen Mother's will should be kept secret. This emerged yesterday after the Guardian successfully applied to open up a private court hearing challenging the secrecy of royal wills.

In a hearing at the high court, Geoffrey Robertson QC was seeking to unseal the wills of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret...

Mr Robertson told the head of the family division, Sir Mark Potter, that there had been a royal cover-up over the wills. "A secret, unconstitutional and unlawful practice has grown up of the attorney general going to the court and asking to put royal wills outside the law," he said...

The practice had been invented in 1911 to conceal the will of Prince Francis, King George V's brother-in-law, who had given family jewels to a mistress.

Related Links

Philandering Prince Frank set seal on wills

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 9:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lottery bid for new Bard theatre

Source: BBC News (3-27-07)

A £20m bid for lottery funding to build a theatre dedicated to the Bard's links with Merseyside has been launched.

Shakespeare North wants to create an education and community arts complex, including an Elizabethan cockpit-style theatre, in Prescot, Knowsley.

William Shakespeare spent time in the area, staying with the Stanley Family, the Earls of Derby, at Knowsley Hall.

School pupils and local residents are being invited to a series of drama workshops to get to know the Bard.

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

Maryland to express 'profound regret' for slavery

Source: CNN (3-26-07)

Maryland lawmakers approved an apology Monday for the state's role in the slave trade, expressing "profound regret" that it once "trafficked in human flesh."

Maryland follows Virginia in issuing a formal apology.

The vote in the House of Delegates makes the apology official, because a resolution doesn't require the governor's signature. The state Senate already approved it.

The resolution notes that slavery "fostered a climate of oppression not only for slaves and their descendants but also for people of color who moved to Maryland subsequent to slavery's abolition."

Co-sponsor Sen. Nathaniel Exum, a Democrat, said he was exhilarated that Maryland lawmakers decided to finally recognize the painful role the state played in slavery.

"Once we come to that recognition, maybe we will also recognize steps we need to do to get rid of the lingering effects of it on the people," Exum said....

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 9:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Woodstein' Deep Throat archives now open

Source: Press Release -- University Newswire (3-23-07)

The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center has opened materials from Watergate journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's on Mark Felt, the source known as Deep Throat, to researchers, scholars and the public.

A selection of the Deep Throat materials can be viewed in an online exhibition at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online , and portions of the materials from the Felt file will be displayed on the first floor of the Ransom Center from Friday, March 23 through Sunday, April 8.

Woodward and Bernstein's papers, including notebooks, memos, interviews, story drafts, clippings and manuscripts for "All the President's Men" and "The Final Days," are housed at the Ransom Center.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 8:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

RAND report says Cold War offers lessons on engaging with Muslim world

Source: Press Release -- University Newswire (3-26-07)

Just as it fought the spread of Communism during the Cold War, the United States must do more to develop and support networks of moderate Muslims who are too often silenced by violent radical Islamists, according to a RAND Corporation report issued today.

"The struggle in much of the Muslim world today is a war of ideas," said Angel Rabasa, a RAND senior policy analyst and the lead author of the report. "This is not a war of civilizations; it's not Islam versus the West. It's a struggle within Islam to define the character of Islam."

"We cannot come in as outsiders, as a non-Muslim country, and discredit the radicals' ideology," Rabasa said. "Muslims have to do that themselves. What we can do is level the playing field by empowering the moderates."

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 8:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Prehistoric man preferred the full-figured female

Source: Discovery News (3-27-07)

Thin may be in now, but prehistoric men 15,000 years ago prefered full-figured gals, suggest dozens of flint figurines excavated from a Paleolithic hunting site in Poland.

Since almost identical depictions have been found elsewhere throughout Europe, the figurines indicate a shared artistic tradition existed even then.

The findings are published in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.

Co-author Romuald Schild explained that the artifacts offer "a cultural inventory" for the late Magdalenian era (18,000-10,000 years ago).

In the paper, Schild and colleagues Bodil Bratlund, Else Kolstrup and Jan Fiedorczuk describe the carvings as "stylized voluptuous female outlines" that "are cut out of flint flakes."

The same symbolic representations of women displayed in the artifacts extend across Europe, added Schild, a researcher in the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 6:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pollen clue to origins of China's 'terracotta army'

Source: BBC News (3-26-07)

Ancient pollen could lead scientists to the kilns where the figures in China's terracotta army were made.

The 2,200-year-old clay army of 8,000 soldiers, 300 horses and 200 chariots guards the tomb of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China.

Soils from different regions contain distinct pollen "signatures", reflecting variations in vegetation.

This could help solve the mystery of where the clay figures were made, says the Journal of Archaeological Science.

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

French railways win appeal against WWII deportees

Source: BBC News (3-27-07)

A French court has overturned a ruling that ordered the state railway to compensate the family of World War II Jewish deportees.

Appeal judges in Bordeaux ruled administrative courts could not decide the liability of the operator SNCF.

Last June a court ruled SNCF must pay 61,000 euros ($81,300; £41,400) to the Lipietz family, whose members were taken to a camp near Paris in 1944...

The Lipietz family said it would now go to the highest administrative court, the State Council.

Other plaintiffs will have to go to criminal or civil courts, legal experts say.

However, a similar case in 2003 against SNCF in a civil court was thrown out as the 30-year statute of limitations had expired.

Between 1942 and 1944 some 76,000 Jews were deported from France.

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

Britain and the slave trade: the legacy is all around

Source: Independent (3-26-07)

Blink and you'll miss it. The tiny obelisk on the road out of the Hertfordshire village of Wadesmill hardly presents itself to the world, yet it is one of the most important monuments in British history. It marks the spot where the slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson had an epiphany: on that day in June 1785, on a journey from Cambridge to London, he committed his life to ending the transatlantic slave trade.

That marker serves as an appropriate symbol for the hidden history of the slave trade. The exchange in Africa of British goods for 3.25 million people (the international figure is nearer to 20 million Africans) to work the plantations of the West Indies and America is the single most important contributory factor in the country's accumulation of wealth in the 19th century. In one sense that history is hidden; in another, it is clear for all to see.

It is there in virtually every major building: the factories, mills and warehouses of the Industrial Revolution, stately homes, churches, banks -- the Bank of England, HSBC and Barclays have their roots in slavery -- the National Gallery, Guy's Hospital, the Houses of Parliament, the London docks, and Bristol and Liverpool. And it is in what we consume: cigarettes, coffee and sugar.

This trip round the Britain of the anti-slavery movement cannot be just a geographical one: it has to be a tour of understanding...

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 6:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Can the monkey god help Hindus save Rama underwater bridge?

Source: Times (of London) (3-27-07)

DELHI -- Hindu groups are launching an international campaign today to halt India’s plans to create a shipping channel by dredging the sea between India and Sri Lanka.

They say that the project will destroy an ancient chain of shoals known as Adam’s Bridge, which Hindus believe was built by an army of monkeys to allow Lord Rama to cross to Lanka to rescue his abducted wife. They are also protesting on environmental grounds, arguing that the 30-mile string of limestone shoals, also known as Ram Sethu, protected large parts of India from the 2004 tsunami.

"The bridge is as holy to Hindus as the Wailing Wall is to the Jews, the Vatican to Catholics, Bodh Gaya to Buddhists and Mecca to Muslims,” said Kusum Vyas, president and founder of Esha Vasyam, a US Hindu environmental lobbying group. “It is an unacceptable breach of the religious rights of over one billion Hindus to destroy such a sacred landmark without even consulting us."

The £280 million Sethusa-mudram project has been mired in controversy ever since it was inaugurated by Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, in July 2005.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 2:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Lord Carrington: Falklands and Iraq both 'intelligence failures'

Source: Telegraph (3-27-07)

The Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 was caused by a "failure of intelligence" equal to that leading up to the invasion of Iraq, according to Lord Carrington, who resigned as Foreign Secretary for his role in allowing the Falklands to be invaded.

As the crisis over the Falklands developed in the early spring, Lord Carrington, who as Foreign Secretary had overall responsibility for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, was told by intelligence chiefs that Gen Galtieri, the Argentine dictator, had no immediate plans to invade.

"On the Falklands the intelligence was that Galtieri would not take any action to get the Falklands until he had exhausted all the other options at the UN. The truth of the matter is that the intelligence proved to be wrong," said Lord Carrington. "One should never base one's policy solely on intelligence. Mr Blair made the same mistake on the intelligence available on Iraq."
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Speaking on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the conflict, he said he had no regrets about resigning. "What I regret is that the invasion happened in the first place," he said.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 2:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Abe's apology not seen as full apology

Source: Guardian (3-27-07)

TOKYO -- Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, apologised yesterday for Japan's use of wartime sex slaves but stopped short of acknowledging that they had been forced into it by the Japanese military.

Mr Abe said he echoed a 1993 statement of apology to the victims - known as comfort women - issued by the then chief cabinet secretary, Yohei Kono. The statement expressed the government's "sincere apologies and remorse" for its role in forcing an estimated 200,000 mainly Chinese and Korean women to work in military brothels in the 1930s and 40s.

"I am apologising here and now as the prime minister, as it is stated in the Kono statement," Mr Abe said. "I feel sympathy for the people who underwent hardships, and I apologise for the fact that they were placed in this situation at the time."

Campaigners said what was really needed was an official apology by parliament and compensation, and accused him of trying to placate both international opinion and conservatives in the Liberal Democratic party.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 2:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In TV poll, former dictator Salazar chosen as greatest Portguese

Source: AP (3-26-07)

Former dictator Antonio Oliveira Salazar was chosen as the greatest Portuguese of all times by viewers of a TV show.

Salazar, prime minister of a repressive right-wing regime also known as the New State from 1932 to 1968, received 41 percent in Sunday evening's final of "Great Portuguese."

The show, broadcast by state-owned RTP, asked viewers to choose people who had contributed to the greatness of Portugal's history. Ten figures were selected for voting, from statesmen like the Marquis de Pombal to explorers like Vasco da Gama.

Salazar's secret police, PIDE, used detentions without trial, torture and kangaroo courts to keep opponents off the streets.

Salazar died in 1970, although his regime continued until 1974, when the regime's unpopular wars against independence movements in its African colonies led to an army revolt, the carnation revolution, which toppled the regime and later gave independence to the colonies.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 2:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Florida music teacher pushes new state song

Source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com (3-25-07)

A music teacher hopes he can convince state lawmakers to adopt a new state song to replace "Old Folks at Home," the 1851 Stephen Foster tune that has been criticized as racist.

Temple Terrace music teacher Stephen Ulrey is pitching a version of "I Want to Wake Up in the Morning Where the Orange Blossoms Grow" to replace the current state song, also known as "Swanee River."

Critics have said Foster's minstrel show tune is racist. They also say Foster never visited Florida and misspelled Suwannee in the song's most memorable line, "Way down upon the Swanee River."

Supporters Of "Old Folks at Home" argue the controversial lyrics should be — and often have been — replaced. The song was adopted by the state legislature in 1935 and has survived two previous attempts to replace it.

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

Holocaust Museum looking for Exodus stories

Source: Baltimore Sun (3-26-07)

"What happens to people after the war is somewhat neglected. The story doesn't end in 1945," says Michael Haley Goldman, project coordinator for the Holocaust Museum's Registry of Holocaust Survivors. "We're trying to complete the historical record."

Since the museum's opening in 1993, its central mission has been to advance knowledge of the Holocaust and to preserve the memory of survivors through comprehensive records and individual stories. It's a daunting if not impossible task to find and tell the story of every Holocaust survivor. But to museum officials, every story is important and is worth knowing - if it can be known.

The general facts of the Exodus have long since been established but not the personal stories of many of the passengers. This year, the 60th anniversary of the voyage, museum officials are working to compile a complete passenger manifest since none existed.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 1:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Castle reveals secrets after 900 years (UK)

Source: http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk (3-24-07)

AN ancient castle which has been off limits to the public since it was built in 1088 is about to reveal its secrets for the first time.

Aberlleiniog Castle, located on the south east corner of Anglesey, has been witness to a long and fascinating series of owners and events.

The little-known castle has been the site of a murder mystery, love triangles and even fatal duels, but few people are aware of its significance and no one has been allowed to visit for almost a thousand years.

All that is now set to change thanks to a £317,500 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 1:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

More teachers push for civics education

Source: Fox News (3-26-07)

Iain Macpherson cares so deeply about teaching civics that the 61-year-old Scottish immigrant turned himself into a show-and-tell project.

He arranged for a federal judge to perform his own citizenship ceremony in front of his fifth-graders, hoping to show what it means to be an American citizen. "I wanted them to know what the experience is like," Macpherson said.

Macpherson and other social studies teachers say they have to shoehorn civics lessons into their regular classes because Tennessee and most other states don't require civics to be taught separately.

Since the federal No Child Left Behind law was passed in 2002, schools have focused on reading and math, and that has squeezed out other subjects like arts, music and civics, educators say. So lawmakers in Tennessee and other states have proposed bills this year to save civics.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 1:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Scholarly society petitions Congress to save Iraq's sites

Source: American Oriental panel and resolutuion circulated on the Internet by IraqCrisis newsletter (3-26-07)

This year's special panel "Where Have all the Tablets Gone" was
organized by Robert Englund and included panelists Jerrold Cooper, Steven Garfinkle and Micah Garen. Among the news that was generated by the presentation was the information that a relatively modest outlay of funds (about 5 million) could help protect the more aggressively looted sites (Umma among them). After some discussion and debate a resolution was formulated that was presented at the business meeting to the membership. The resolution was one vote shy of unanimous passage. It will be posted as a petition on the AOS website where it will accept signatories.

"Whereas the looting of ancient sites in Iraq continues in our day with little sign of abatement, leading to incalculable loss of
historical and cultural knowledge;

And Whereas diverse archaeological and journalistic organizations have already compiled a register of such affected sites;

And Whereas responsible opinion and evaluation, based on
established precedence, have suggested that a relatively modest
numbers of guards can discourage if not stop looting at the most distressed archaeological sites in Iraq;

And Whereas the funding of cohorts of guards at Iraqi
archaeological sites requires, in present dollars, a relatively
modest sum of money;

Therefore, be it Resolved that the American Oriental Society, in
meeting assembled at San Antonio, Texas, on March 18th, 2007, calls on and urges the Congress of the United States of America to legislate with dispatch a program to fund the systematic
safeguarding of distressed sites until such time as the proper
Iraqi authorities are ready to bring such a program under its own
control."

This resolution will be posted at the AOS website. All those
agreeing with it are invited to communicate its sentiments to their senators and congressional representatives.

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 12:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, March 26, 2007

Steamy love letters of Tsar go on sale

Source: Times (of London) (3-24-07)

BERLIN -- The intimate details of a royal love affair were exposed yesterday when seven erotically charged letters between Tsar Alexander II and his mistress went on sale in Germany. "I am expecting to make love three times tomorrow," writes Ekaterina Dolgorukaya in a letter to the Tsar dated 1871.

She goes on to describe, in remarkably free terms, how she was preparing to sleep with the Russian emperor. "I want to drink your juices," she says, slipping a Russian phrase into a letter written largely in French.

Alexander —- known as “the Liberator” because of his decision to emancipate the Russian serfs —- was married to Princess Marie of Hesse, who bore him six sons and two daughters. Having met Ekaterina "Katya" Dolgorukaya —- descended from a noble Muscovite family —- as a schoolgirl, he decided to install her as a mistress in 1866. She was then 19, he was 48 and already an avid collector of erotica. Katya was given an apartment in the Winter Palace of St Petersburg, a secret staircase connecting her rooms with those of the Tsar.

[Alexander II reigned from 1855 until he was assassinated in 1881. He and Katya had a morganatic marriage in 1880. They had four children, one of whom lived until 1959.]

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 10:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Baader-Meinhof gangster released after 25 years in jail

Source: Times (of London) (3-25-07)

Brigitte Mohnhaupt, once a leader of the Baader-Meinhof gang and regarded as the most dangerous and evil woman in Germany, was released today after 25 years in prison for her involvement in some of the radical left-wing group’s most notorious murders.

Mohnhaupt, 57, was released from the Aichach prison in Bavaria and picked up by acquaintances, the prison director, Wolfgang Deuschl, said.

A Stuttgart court last month approved parole for Mohnhaupt, ruling that she could go free after serving the minimum 24 years. Combined with an earlier prison term, she has spent 29 years behind bars.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Greek island antiquities damaged by quake

Source: AFP (3-26-07)

ATHENS -- The archaeological museum of the Greek Ionian Sea island of Cephalonia was closed on Monday after a weekend of seismic activity damaged the building and smashed items, the culture ministry said.

An undersea tremor measuring 5.9 points on the open-ended Richter scale on Sunday toppled a number of exhibits at Argostoli Museum, smashing three of them, the ministry said without offering further details.

The museum building itself sustained minor damage, with cracks appearing in its walls.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How many Iraqis have died? 655,000 -- or less than 10% of that?

Source: BBC News (3-26-07)

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet.

But the [UK] Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the [Lancet] survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust". Another expert agreed the method was "tried and tested".

The Iraq government asks the country's hospitals to report the number of victims of terrorism or military action.

Critics say the system was not started until well after the invasion and requires over-pressed hospital staff not only to report daily, but also to distinguish between victims of terrorism and of crime.

The Lancet medical journal published its peer-reviewed survey last October.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 9:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ukraine town pulls ad campaign featuring Stalin

Source: AP (3-26-07)

KIEV, Ukraine -- An ad campaign featuring billboards and commercials with images of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin exhorting people to pay their bills was pulled on Monday after protests from rights groups and nationalists.

The campaign in the eastern Ukraine town of Donetsk came after utility rates in Ukraine increased markedly last year and people stopped paying their bills.

Irina Taran, a spokeswoman for Donetsk governing council, said dozens of billboards featuring Stalin appeared in the city last week; commercials featuring old film clips of the Soviet leader also appeared. Ukrainian media reported that the mayor's office initiated the ad campaign, then backed down in the face of protests.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 8:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Liberty Bell featured on new 'forever' postage stamp

Source: AP (3-26-07)

WASHINGTON --An image of the Liberty Bell, an icon of American freedom and independence, will adorn the Postal Service's new forever stamp.

The design of the stamp was unveiled Monday at the National Postal Forum, a gathering of companies in the mailing industry.

The forever stamp goes on sale April 12 at 41 cents. The rate for first-class postage rises to 41 cents May 14.

The stamp, which will carry the word "Forever" instead of a price, will remain valid for sending a letter, no matter how much rates go up in the future.

Related Links

USPS press release & photo of stamp

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 7:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Compared with Vietnam War, Americans rushing to honor Iraq War dead

Source: AP (3-26-07)

SAN FRANCISCO -- It took seven years after the fighting had ended for the nation to dedicate the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. This time around, Americans aren't waiting for the shooting to stop.

On beaches and bases, town squares and veterans' clubs, they are building their monuments to America's fallen as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on.

Vietnam, in one way or another, looms large over this impulse to memorialize the war dead in real time. Some are erecting these monuments as anti-war statements against what they regard as another Vietnam; others are doing it to express their gratitude to the troops now, rather than later, as was done with the Vietnam veterans...

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 7:16 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Engineers to help find Homer's Ithaca

Source: AP (3-26-07)

ATHENS -- A geological engineering company said Monday it has agreed to help in an archaeological project to find the island of Ithaca, homeland of Homer's legendary hero Odysseus.

It has long been thought that the island of Ithaki in the Ionian Sea was the island Homer used as a setting for the epic poem "The Odyssey," in which the king Odysseus makes a perilous 10-year journey home from the Trojan War.

But amateur British archaeologist Robert Bittlestone believes the Ithaca of Homer is no longer a separate island but became attached to the island of Kefallonia through rock displacement caused by earthquakes. The theory could explain inconsistencies between Ithaki and Homer's description of Odysseus' island.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 7:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

$27m anti-evolution museum to open soon

Source: Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader (3-26-07)

PETERSBURG, Ky. -- Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah's ark. Some dinosaurs managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That probably was a dinosaur.

Exhibits showing all this and more will be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in Northern Kentucky.

The museum, in Boone County near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, is being built by a non-profit group called Answers in Genesis. It is scheduled to open on Memorial Day...

The museum is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible: The world was created in six, 24-hour days, some time between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Humans appeared on Day 6, and they didn't evolve from anything.

But Eugenie Scott, a former University of Kentucky anthropologist who is director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, said the information provided in the museum "is not even close to standard science."...

Some of the exhibits would be the envy of any natural history museum.

There are, for example, 10,000 minerals from a collection that was donated to the museum, fossil dinosaur eggs from China that Ham says are worth $40,000, and a donated collection of dinosaur toys that has been valued at $50,000.

There also will be an exhibit suggesting that belief in evolution is the root of most of modern society's evils. It shows models of children leaving a church where the minister believes in evolution. Soon the girl is on the phone to Planned Parenthood, while the boy cruises the Internet for pornography sites.

Related Links

A world where lies are true (by Chris Hedges)

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 6:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pope: 'demographic profile' shows Europe soon to 'take its leave from history'

Source: Vatican News Service (3-26-07)

VATICAN CITY -- Europe’s rejection of its traditional Christian identity is leading to its imminent disappearance from the world stage, Pope Benedict XVI said in an address to a congress of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) on March 24.

"[I]n demographic terms, it must unfortunately be noted that Europe seems set on a path that could lead to its exit from history," Pope Benedict XVI stated at the event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome on March 25, 1957, which formed the foundations of today’s European Union.

"It could almost be imagined that the European continent is actually losing faith in its own future," the Pope said. The rejection of Europe’s Christian heritage, seen increasingly in the policies of national leaders, neglects the desires of a majority of the population, he said, undermining efforts to create a uniform European identity.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 6:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Sickening' attack on Bogside history museum

Source: Derry Journal/Derry Today (Northern Ireland) (3-26-07)

The Bloody Sunday Trust have described an attack on the Museum of Free Derry as a "major threat" to its future.

Vandals caused substantial damage to the waterproof covering on the roof of the Bogside museum sometime late on Wednesday night.

A spokesperson for the Trust said..."The damage caused could run into thousands of pounds to repair and, while there is no way that anyone can get into the museum through the roof...rain has been pouring through the holes throughout the night and could have ruined many of the historically priceless artefacts on display."

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 6:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Life Magazine dead again but will put its 10m pictures online

Source: Forbes (3-26-07)

In yet another sign of trouble for the ailing newspaper industry, Time Warner's Time Inc. said Monday that it will shutter Life magazine next month, citing an increasingly tough environment for papers...

Life will continue to have an online presence where Time plans to push ahead with its plans to post the magazine's entire collection of 10 million photographs online by the end of the year.

Life became a magazine icon during its first incarnation as a weekly magazine from 1936 to 1972. Time resuscitated the title in 1978 as a monthly, closing it again in 2000. In October 2004, Life was revived as a weekly newspaper insert.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 4:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Shy collector ... gift stuns the art world

Source: Times (of London) (3-26-07)

A shy spinster who spent her life amassing an extraordinary collection of fine watercolours worth millions of pounds has bequeathed them to the nation.

Dorothy Scharf was so reticent that she relied on her mother, who lived next door, to communicate on her behalf.

The collection of paintings that she built up until her death two years ago has astonished the art world. Eight masterpieces by Turner, along with paintings by Gainsborough and Constable, are among 51 important watercolours that she has left to the world-renowned Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery in London. The donation is the most significant single addition to the Courtauld in more than a quarter of a century.

The works were created between 1750 and 1850, the golden age of British watercolour painting.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 4:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Greek ultras set fire to history book, say it's pro-Turk

Source: Kathimerini (Athens) (3-26-07)

About 30 members of the extreme right-wing group Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn) burned copies of a primary school history book outside Parliament on Saturday because they said its narrative favors the Turks.

Militants yelled anti-Turk slogans and distributed pamphlets urging resistance to closer ties between Greece and Turkey. Riot police eventually broke up the demonstration.

Chryssi Avgi’s protest also coincided with a student march in Athens on Saturday marking Greece’s Independence Day.

Education Minister Marietta Giannakou said yesterday that the book may be modified. The Church of Greece and some Greek parents have criticized the book for glossing over key moments in Greek history.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 4:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Under pressure, Smithsonian head resigns

Source: Washington Post (3-26-07)

Lawrence M. Small, the banker who took over the Smithsonian Institution seven years ago, resigned under pressure, museum officials announced today.

Cristian Samper, a biologist who heads the National Museum of Natural History, was named acting secretary, according to an announcement by Roger Sant, head of the Smithsonian's executive committee.

Small's management of the Smithsonian has been sharply criticized by members of Congress, and his compensation and spending practices have been subjected to scrutiny by the Smithsonian's inspector general.

Related Links

Smithsonian announces Secretary’s resignation (press release)
Washington Post full coverage

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 3:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan PM offers apology on sex slaves

Source: BBC (3-26-07)

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has apologized in parliament for the country's use of women as sex slaves during World War II.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 1:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pay back for slavery, says Archbishop of Canterbury

Source: Telegraph (3-26-07)

Institutions that profited from the slave trade should make amends -- possibly financially, the Archbishop of Canterbury says today.

Following emancipation in 1833, the government of the day compensated all slave owners for loss of property and revenue to the tune of about £20 million.

In a radio interview on BBC Radio 4 today, Dr Rowan Williams suggests that organisations which received compensation in the 1830s were still "living off the historical legacy" and had a responsibility to future generations and that apologising for the "terrible things" done in the past is only a start.

His comments will be seen as a moral challenge to a range of institutions, from the Church of England itself to banks, universities and art galleries, whose fortunes were partly built on slavery.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, yesterday called on the Prime Minister to apologise formally on behalf of Britain for its role in the trade.

Related Links

Blair 'sorry' for UK slavery role
Caribbean remembers end of slave trade
The island of ghosts where slavery is only an echo over the water [Bunce Island, Sierra Leone]

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 3:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Llama dung mites used to chart rise, fall of Incas

Source: Times (of London) (3-26-07)

Mites that eat llama dung are providing scientists with critical new clues to the rise and fall of the Inca empire and the civilisations that preceded it.

The soil invertebrates are allowing researchers to trace the growth and decline of the peoples of the Andes several centuries before the Spanish conquest in 1532 brought written records to the region for the first time.

The evidence gleaned from fossilised mites, preserved in sediments at a lake about 50km (30 miles) from the Inca capital of Cuzco, has shown how the great empire increased in size and complexity in the early 15th century...

The new research suggests that after a period of sharp growth, the Inca civilisation’s power had already started to wane immediately before the arrival of Francisco Pizarro’s conquistadors.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 3:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The war the world forgot

Source: Times (of London) (3-25-07)

They are barely old enough to remember the cold war. Deep in the jungles and mountains of the Philippines, thousands of young communists fight a battle begun by their grandfathers. By Andrew Marshall

Comrade Giegie is getting married. Her wedding will be held in a jungle clearing, which she will enter through an archway of raised assault rifles. The bride and groom will make their vows draped in a red flag bearing the spear and Kalashnikov of the 7,500-strong New People's Army (NPA). Then they will pledge allegiance to the masses, and promise to raise their children as revolutionaries...

Hidden in mountainous Mindanao in the southern Philippines, Giegie's platoon is fighting a rebellion older than most of its members. Her late father was an NPA rebel; her mother is a left-wing activist. Most of the platoon have family members or friends in the NPA; some have been branded from an early age and had no choice but to join.

If the army is diminishing, generation by generation (at its peak it had more than 12,000 members); if its raison d'être seems ever more confused in a post-communist world, Giegie seems unaware.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 3:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Elizabeth I christening gown rediscovered

Source: Times (of London) (3-26-07)

SUDELEY CASTLE, England -- The christening gown worn by the future Queen Elizabeth I nearly 500 years ago has been [re]discovered during a clear-out at a stately home.

The gown was found at Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, recently the setting for Liz Hurley’s wedding. [Story includes photo.]

In the 1880s experts authenticated the garment, worn by Henry VIII’s daughter at her baptism at Greenwich in 1533, but it was then left in a box of textiles and forgotten.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 3:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

James Joyce letters court case settled

Source: BBC News (3-25-07)

A [Stanford] university professor has won the right to quote letters between Irish writer James Joyce and his daughter in a book after settling a court case.

Joyce's estate has agreed not to sue Carol Schloss if her research is only made available in the US.

The Joyce estate said it wanted to "protect the privacy and memory" of Lucia, who was mentally ill. [Lucia died in 1982.]

Ms Schloss's book, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, says she was Joyce's muse in his last novel Finnegan's Wake.

To support her theory, the Stanford University scholar made use of Lucia's medical records, European archives containing records on her life and James Joyce's papers in university collections.

But the estate said she would be infringing its copyright on Joyce's image, and several citations were cut from her book to avoid legal action.

But critics then said Ms Schloss's book was short on documentary evidence, so she sued Joyce's grandson, Stephen James Joyce, and estate trustee Sean Sweeney, accusing them of destroying papers and intimidating academics.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 2:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

British wreck could yield $1bn in treasure

Source: Guardian (3-26-07)

MADRID -- Up to a billion dollars worth of gold and silver on a sunken 17th-century English warship may soon be recovered following an agreement with Spanish authorities.

Professional marine treasure hunters working with the British government have reportedly been given the go-ahead to recover gold and silver pieces from what is thought to be the wreck of the HMS Sussex, which took 560 sailors to a watery grave off Gibraltar in 1694.

Although the Spanish government had given its approval, authorities in the regional government of Andalucia had been blocking progress towards recovering the 10 tonnes of gold and silver believed to have gone down with the vessel. On Friday, however, they gave the go-ahead for the Odyssey Explorer to go after the wreck, El País newspaper reported yesterday.

The American ship, belonging to the Florida-based Odyssey Marine exploration company, has been scanning the sea bed off Gibraltar for almost a decade. The 400 square miles of Mediterranean sea bed have turned up what appear to be dozens of ancient and modern wrecks, including some believed to date back 2,000 years to Phoenician and Roman times.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 2:50 AM | Comments (0) | Top

New English translation of Koran draws criticism

Source: UPI (3-25-07)

CHICAGO -- A U.S. researcher's new translation of a controversial section of the Koran pertaining to women has been met with strong criticism by fundamentalists.

Laleh Bakhtiar, a woman of Iranian-American descent, told the New York Times she has been strongly criticized by Islamists who claim her translation of the word "draba" from the Koran is wholly inaccurate.

The word is used in a section of the Koran that details how a rebellious woman should be treated and most experts have translated the word as "beaten."

Bakhtiar said she discovered during her studies that draba means "to go away," a revelation experts have been quick to strike down. [Her translation, The Sublime Quran, 769 pp., will be published by Kazi Publications, Chicago, March 30.]

Related Links

Verse in Koran on beating wife gets a new translation (NYT/IHT)

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 2:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

40-year mystery of missing 'Thai Silk King' -- and spy? -- Jim Thompson

Source: BBC News (3-26-07)

It was an Easter Sunday on 26 March 1967. At around 3pm that day Jim Thompson, already well known as the "Thai Silk King", walked out of Moonlight Cottage where he was holidaying with friends in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands and was never seen again.

It was not simply Thompson's fame and wealth that guaranteed his disappearance would become one of South East Asia's greatest modern mysteries -- it was his past.

He had spent World War II with the OSS, the US intelligence agency that was the precursor to the CIA.

After the war he settled in Bangkok and in 1948 started the Thai Silk Company...

It made Thompson a millionaire.

But it was also rumoured that Thompson maintained his links with American intelligence.

So when he vanished it was front page news and the theories about his disappearance started to multiply...

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Contentious Caravaggios emerge from the royal storeroom

Source: Independent (3-26-07)

For centuries, two paintings in the Royal Collection lay in the dusty storerooms of Hampton Court after experts dismissed them as worthless imitations of Caravaggio's masterpieces.

The experts were wrong. This week, those works will emerge out of storage where they were obscured by varnish and dirt, to be triumphantly displayed to the public. [A spokeswoman for the Royal Collection said the two Caravaggios would appear in public for the first time since confirmation of their authenticity.]

For The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew andA Boy Peeling Fruit are in fact authentic paintings by the Italian Baroque master.

Art historians spent six years studying the paintings, which are estimated to be worth more than £50m. Finally, they were identified as originals last year. In total there are only 50 surviving canvases by the 17th century artist...

The paintings will form part of The Art of Italy exhibition which opens at the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace on Friday.

The show will be the first of Italian art from the Royal Collection for more than four decades and will bring together 90 paintings and 85 drawings from royal palaces and residences. Among the items on show will be drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo.

Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 at 2:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Plans to revive historic Kenya-Uganda railway a.k.a. 'the Lunatic Express'

Source: Independent (3-26-07)

At 10 o'clock on a hot and humid Kenyan morning, as the sun rises above the Rabai hills that slope down towards the port of Mombasa, Frederick Omondi finds himself peering underneath a train carriage. "It is OK," he says. "It is only a burst pipe."

The Nairobi-Mombasa train left the cool of Kenya's capital 15 hours ago. It was supposed to arrive in Mombasa at 8 o'clock this morning but three breakdowns -- make that four now there is a burst pipe -- have delayed it...

This railway heralded the birth of modern-day Kenya and Uganda. Stretching 657 miles from the humid coastal port of Mombasa, climbing through the desert of eastern Kenya, dipping into the Rift Valley, heading towards Lake Victoria, then turning once more towards Uganda's capital, Kampala, the railway enabled Britain to impose imperial rule across east Africa...

Dismissed by opposition parliamentarians as a "gigantic folly", the railway took six years and £5m to build -- a colossal sum in 1895. More than 600 workers died -- many from malaria, some from attacks by lions.

It was nicknamed the "Lunatic Express" and over the past few decades that name has become pertinent once more. Chronic underinvestment and corruption has left the railway a shadow of its former self...

A new consortium aims to change that. Rift Valley Railways, backed by a South African transport firm, took over the company late last year and plans to return the Lunatic Express to its former glory. They will have a lot of work to do. New track needs to be laid, new engines and carriages introduced, and services need to be improved.

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

Sunday, March 25, 2007

JFK carrier saga finally ends

Source: Navy Times (3-25-07)

NAVAL STATION MAYPORT, Fla. -— And then she was gone.

After nearly 39 years of service, the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy was decommissioned the morning of March 23 at Naval Station Mayport.

"In my judgment, the legacy of this ship is the role she played in winning the Cold War,” said Adm. John B. Nathman, commander of the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command and himself a naval aviator. “This ship sent a powerful message to the Soviet Union and made them quit..."

Nathman recounted how the ship had also fought in Lebanon in 1983 and was the first aircraft carrier to arrive in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Shield and stayed to play a major part in Desert Storm.

Its final combat cruise took JFK again to the Persian Gulf, where its aircraft flew strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and finished up supporting the Marines during their November 2004 fight against insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq.

But the Kennedy will live on not only in the hearts and minds of former skippers and crew, but its in-port cabin, designed by Jacqueline Kennedy and outfitted by her with Kennedy family artifacts.

“It’s a one-of-a-kind captain’s in-port cabin,” said retired Vice Adm. Gerry Hoewing, a former Kennedy skipper who now heads the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation in Pensacola, Fla. "We have just gotten the word that we will be preserving that as an exhibit at the museum in Pensacola."

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

History shows apology can ease pain from misdeeds

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (3-25-07)

State Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway) sparked a fierce public debate this month when he announced that he would introduce a resolution that would ask Georgia to express "contrition" for its role in African-American slavery.

The resolution has been framed as a political issue, but it also raises a moral question that's divided people in countries as diverse as Japan and Australia: Should people apologize for something their ancestors did?

Similar debates are taking place abroad. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ignited an emotional political debate recently when he said his country would not apologize to thousands of Asian women forced to work in army brothels during World War II. Australia's prime minister, John Howard, also sparked criticism when he rebuffed a similar call for his country's treatment of Aborigines. Howard said his generation shouldn't apologize for something their ancestors did.

But Robert Franklin, the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, disputes those arguments.

People routinely accept their connections to their ancestors when it benefits them, he says. People gladly accept prosperity passed down from previous family members.

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 7:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A Hostage Taken, a Ransom Paid (Again)

Source: NYT (3-25-07)

THE words, as always, come easier than the resolve. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman told reporters on Thursday. “We don’t advise others to do so as well.”

He was denouncing the swap Italy made last week with the Taliban: five Taliban prisoners held in Afghan jails for an Italian reporter kidnapped in southern Afghanistan. The trade, officials around the globe warned, was wrong all around: It rewarded terror and encouraged more abductions.

But steely conviction often melts away where hostages are concerned, and not just for Italy, which famously refused to negotiate in 1978 for the life of its kidnapped former prime minister, Aldo Moro, who was then killed by his abductors.

The reason is that kidnapping, as old as war itself, entangles the personal and the political, with real harm possible for hostage and politician alike. Now the problem spots are Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers roam the country along with less-protected reporters, aid workers, diplomats, builders and high-priced private security guards.

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 6:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

For Europe, a Moment to Ponder

Source: NYT (3-25-07)

IT is not easy to think of Spain as Poland. Stroll around this southern city at dusk, beneath the palms, beside the handsome bridges on the Guadalquivir River, past the chic boutiques and the Häagen-Dazs outlet, the Gothic cathedral and the Moorish palace, and it is scarcely Warsaw that comes to mind.

But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It no longer is. We will see the same results in Poland.”

If history is prologue, Mr. Michnik is likely to be right. The European Union, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding treaty this weekend, is more often associated with Brussels bureaucrats setting the maximum curvature of cucumbers than with transformational power. But step by step, stipulation by stipulation, Europe has been remade.

What began in limited fashion in 1957 as a drive to remove tariff barriers and promote commercial exchange has ended by banishing war from Europe, enriching it beyond measure, and producing what Mr. Michnik called “the first revolution that has been absolutely positive.”

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 6:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

EU's greatest triumph: 50 years of peace

Source: Washington Times (3-25-07)

John Bruton, former prime minister of Ireland, has been the European Union ambassador to the United States since November 2004. He spoke last week with reporter David R. Sands at the EU's Washington headquarters about the bloc's past, present and future.

Q. What do you consider the EU's biggest achievement in its first 50 years?

A. It's important to say at the outset that the European Union was conceived as a political project. The founders of the organization attempted to harness closer economic cooperation as a way to reconcile nations that had long been warring with one another. Certainly, other factors contributed to peace and security in Western Europe, including the alliance with the United States, but the EU was always seen as a political force for peace.

I think the biggest recent triumph of the EU has to be the steady process of enlargement. We went from six nations to 10 to 15 to 27 today, and at all stages, this was done with the unanimous support of the existing members. When you consider that each round of expansion means a dilution of power for existing members and a larger sharing of financial resources, that is quite an impressive achievement.

And simply by the fact of its existence, the EU has made historically difficult relationships between neighbors easier to manage -- and not just with France and Germany. My own country, Ireland, has long had an inherently unequal and difficult relationship with Great Britain, but when we both joined the European Union, that all changed. We were equals within the EU, and the British actually found Ireland could be a useful ally in the context of discussions with other EU members. ...

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 6:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Crusty Old Discovery Reveals Early Earth's History

Source: Live Science (3-23-07)

Only in science could the discovery of something old and crusty be exciting.

And researchers are very excited about finding chunks of Earth's outer crust that are 3.8 billion years old. Most stuff that old has been folded back into the planet and lost forever or spat back out after being melted into unrecognizable magma.

The discovery, detailed in today's issue of the journal Science, provides solid evidence that Earth had crustal plates way back then that were banging into each other much as they do today in a process that drives earthquakes and reshapes continents. That activity, and the chemical changes to land, sea and air that accompany it, are thought to have been crucial to the instigation of life on Earth, an event that remains utterly mysterious in terms of timing and method.

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 5:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Crushed grapes at Greek dig show Neolithic winemaking

Source: Discovery News (3-16-07)

Either the ancient Greeks loved grape juice, or they were making wine nearly 6,500 years ago, according to a new study that describes what could be the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes.

If the charred 2,460 grape seeds and 300 empty grape skins were used to make wine, as the researchers suspect, the remains might have belonged to the second oldest known grape wine in the world, edged out only by a residue-covered Iranian wine jug dating to the sixth millennium B.C.

Since the Greeks influenced the Romans, who in turn influenced virtually all of Europe, it is possible that a drink made in a humble, post-framed house in eastern Macedonia influenced much of the world’s wine.

"For the Neolithic or the Bronze Age, we have no evidence for markets and a market economy," lead author Tania Valamoti told Discovery News..."Production was on a household or communal basis."

Valamoti and her team excavated four homes at a Neolithic site called Dikili Tash.

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 3:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Israeli minister quizzed on Holocaust march embezzlement

Source: Times (of London) (3-25-07)

Israel's finance minister is to be questioned this week by police investigating the funding of an annual march at Auschwitz in memory of Holocaust victims.

The police have already interviewed Abraham Hirchson, one of the most senior members of the cabinet, under caution over allegations in the Israeli press that £662,000 was embezzled from Nili, a nonprofit wing of the National Workers Union that he once headed. They talked to him for seven hours last week.

As the investigation has widened, police have been examining a web of American and Israeli charitable foundations controlled by Hirchson, 66. Some are linked to the March of the Living, an annual event in Poland that he founded in 1987, long before he joined the government.

The March of the Living sees several thousand young Jews and dignitaries from America, Europe and Israel walk a mile from the Auschwitz concentration camp to the Birkenau gas chambers in memory of the estimated 1m Jews killed there by the Germans during the second world war.

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

Mao's forgotten son dies

Source: Guardian (3-25-07)

Mao Anqing lived through the most tumultuous era in the history of modern China. But he spent his last years as an unknown recluse.

He was the reclusive, mentally ill son of one of the most powerful and feared figures of the 20th century, and his 84-year life echoed one of the deepest traumas of modern history.

Yesterday a brief notice in the China News Service recorded the death of Mao Anqing, who survived his father to live on into a new China that the dictator would not have recognised.

Mao Zedong's second child, who died on Friday, lived through civil war, the execution of his mother, street life in Shanghai, and a journey to Paris and to Moscow, where he studied under Stalin's surveillance. Eventually he returned to China, where he was largely ignored by his father.

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 2:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Mandela boycotts Bristol's slavery commemoration

Source: Independent (3-25-07)

Nelson Mandela has boycotted plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the Act abolishing the slave trade in Bristol after hearing of bitter divisions within the community and accusations of racism and intolerance.

Mr Mandela had been invited to Bristol, once one of the busiest slave ports in Britain, by the Lord Mayor, councillor Peter Abraham, for a service of remembrance due to take place today.

But South Africa's former president declined the invitation after local black organisations contacted him to say his presence would be seen as condoning an overwhelmingly white city council which is accused of riding roughshod over the wishes of the city's black population.

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 2:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The fallen and the forgotten: the Falklands War, 25 years on

Source: Independent (3-24-07)

Tony McNally is still haunted by the day, 25 years ago, when his missiles malfunctioned and he watched his comrades die aboard the stricken 'Sir Galahad' in the Falklands. Paul Bignell reports
Published: 25 March 2007

Time has passed, but the memories will never fade for Tony McNally. There are "Bogies incoming", Argentine jets in attack formation sweeping across San Carlos Bay. There are the nights spent shivering in trenches, hoping the enemy will not attack. And there are explosions and men screaming in the agonies of death.

Mr McNally, then a gunner in the Royal Artillery, is still consumed by the events of 25 years ago on rain-sodden islands 8,000 miles from Britain. As the anniversary of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands approaches next week, an act that prompted "Maggie's Army" to steam from England to the South Atlantic, Mr McNally lives day and night with the horrors of war. And he is not alone.

Like thousands of British service personnel who have fought in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan, he has battled mental health problems for years...

Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Senate vote to freeze Smithsonian funding increase

Source: AP (3-22-07)

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday approved freezing a proposed $17 million increase in funding for the Smithsonian Institution, citing excessive compensation and spending by its top official.

The budgetary amendment from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was unanimously approved on a voice vote.

The measure is not binding and still must be approved during the House-Senate budget process. But Grassley said it sends a message to Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small, who will earn $915,698 this year in total compensation.

"It signals to the Smithsonian that a champagne lifestyle at taxpayer expense is unacceptable," Grassley said.

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 9:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jamestown, 1607 -- trying to trump Plymouth, 1620?

Source: AP (3-23-07)

JAMESTOWN, Va. —- The first permanent English settlement in North America has more personality than many historic attractions.

Capt. John Smith, the pint-sized adventurer, left a breathless narrative of his exploits.

Commerce took root here, and so did tobacco and slavery.

Then there was the cannibalism.

Still, as the nation prepares to commemorate Jamestown's 400th anniversary in May, many say this swampy outpost on the James River pales in comparison to the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth Rock, though fans of the buckled shoe will have to wait until 2020 to mark Plymouth's fourth century.

New Englanders easily tick off why the Massachusetts settlement trumps Jamestown —- the Thanksgiving feast, the Pilgrims' pure pursuit of religious freedom, and the Mayflower.

Jamestown, on the other hand, "is the creation story from hell," writes historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman in a new book on the settlement, The Jamestown Project. Conflict, disease, horrific killings and starvation —- including a man dining on his pregnant wife —- are all part of the back story of Jamestown, founded in 1607 as a business venture.

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Presidential candidates reveal all before anyone else can

Source: New York Times (3-25-07)

When confronted with the prickly question of whether to disclose their illnesses, Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy divined a simple strategy, historians say. They dissembled. They lied. They covered up or simply kept their mouths shut to keep Americans in the dark.

One can only imagine that those presidents would be rubbing their eyes in disbelief this week.

Not only at the sight of John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat and presidential candidate, telling the nation in a news conference that his wife’s cancer had returned in an incurable form. But also at the slew of other presidential contenders who are dealing with illness in a decidedly 21st-century fashion...

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 9:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Irving at Auschwitz: no gassings here

Source: AP (3-23-07)

ROME -- British historian David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for questioning the Holocaust, visited the Auschwitz death camp and renewed his claim that there was no proof it had gas chambers during an Italian TV program aired Friday.

In the Sky TG24 documentary program "Controcorrente" (Countercurrent), Irving is filmed walking down the remains of railroad tracks in the former death camp in southern Poland as he insists that engineering techniques back his claims that mass gassings by the Nazis during World War II didn't occur there...

Earlier this year, Irving told Sky in an interview that there was no doubt the Nazis killed millions of Jews, but said the killings did not take place at Auschwitz.

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 2:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Apocalypto' showdown in Northridge

Source: AP (3-23-07)

Mel Gibson exchanged angry words with a university professor who challenged the accuracy of his film "Apocalypto" at an on-campus screening.

Gibson was answering questions from the crowd at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night when Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies, accused the actor-director of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie.

Gibson directed an expletive at the woman, who was removed from the crowd.

"In no way was my question aggressive in the way that he responded to it," Estrada said. "These are questions that my peers, my colleagues, ask me every time I make a presentation. These are questions I pose to my students in the classroom."

Gibson's publicist, Alan Nierob, characterized the professor as "a heckler."

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

9/11 remains possibly used to pave roads, court claim says

Source: Reuters (3-24-07)

NEW YORK -- Debris that may have contained bits of bone from victims of the World Trade Center attacks was used to fill potholes and pave city roads, according to court papers filed on Friday.

The charge was made in an affidavit filed in Manhattan federal court in an ongoing case filed in 2005 by family members of those killed in the attacks against the city. They say the city did not do enough to search for remains, denying victims a proper burial.

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 2:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Former PM Nakasone retracts autobiographical passage on war brothels

Source: Times (of London) (3-24-07)

Japan’s most respected elder statesman was forced yesterday to contradict an autobiographical account suggesting that as an officer during the Second World War he forced women to serve as military sex slaves.

Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister, admitted that Japanese forces forced women to serve on “comfort stations”, the euphemism for military brothels. He denied allegations, based on an account he wrote 29 years ago, that he organised brothels as a military logistics officer in the Imperial Navy on Borneo.

“They were civilian engineers, not military people, and they just wanted a place for rest or entertainment,” he told a press conference. “They wanted entertainment such as [the board game] Go or Japanese chess. We simply established facilities where such [diversions] could be offered.”

In a 1978 essay, published in a volume entitled The Eternal Navy, he wrote about his time in the former Dutch East Indies: “Before long some [people] started attacking local women and indulging in gambling. I took great pains to set up a comfort station for such people.”

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 2:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Full of Mormon lore, if not money, 1830s wallet donated to museum

Source: AP (3-23-07)

SALT LAKE CITY -- Russell Martin Harris celebrated his 86th birthday Friday by giving a gift to the Mormon church -- a leather wallet carried by his great-great-grandfather in the 1830s.

That's better than it first sounds. It was that ancestor, Martin Harris, who mortgaged his farm to get the $3,000 needed to print the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon, the central text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Family folklore holds that the soft, caramel-brown wallet carried the cash to the printer, Russell Harris said...

The wallet will now rest in a glass case at the Museum of Church History and Art, near the press used in 1830 to print the Book of Mormon, which Mormons believe chronicles Jesus' dealings with ancient Americans.

Church founder Joseph Smith is said to have dictated a translation of the book from gold plates given to him by an angel. Martin Harris was one of three people besides Smith said to have seen the plates, and he took dictation from Smith.

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 2:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 23, 2007

Looters pillaging Iraq's vast `sea of antiquities'

Source: Chicago Tribune (3-22-07)

Four years after the looting of the Iraqi National Museum during the fall of Baghdad, frustrated antiquities experts say untold thousands of Mesopotamian artifacts have been stolen from other vulnerable historical sites across the nation.

Though the museum is now safe--its doors bricked shut and collections entombed behind welded cellar doors--the country's 12,000 archeological sites are mostly unprotected and the Iraqi government is hard-pressed to stop their plunder....

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 7:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Havana's former grandeur decays and crumbles

Source: Reuters (3-23-07)

HAVANA -- Almost half a century of communist rule has saved Havana's eclectic architecture from the urban developer's bulldozer, but a lack of repair has taken a ruinous toll on its neo-Baroque and Art Deco gems.

Dozens of colonial buildings and beautiful squares in Old Havana have been restored since the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO designated it a world heritage site in 1982. But the rest of the city of 2.2 million people is falling into decay.

"The situation has become critical. There are areas of the city where buildings collapse every few days. The overcrowding is tremendous," said leading Cuban architect Mario Coyula, who fears Havana's architectural beauty is damaged beyond repair.

In teeming, pot-holed Central Havana, poverty coexists with some of the world's finest examples of neo-Baroque and Art Deco architecture built before Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 4:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

London's Independent asks: Should Britain be proud of its role in abolishing slavery?

Source: Independent (3-23-07)

HNN editor's note: This week marks 200 years since Parliament voted to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Following is a portion of the Independent's "Big Question" column.

Should Britain be proud of its role in abolishing slavery?

Yes...

* Slave trading was a highly profitable business, abolished when Britain was embroiled in a war with France

* Abolitionists such as Wilberforce had nothing to gain from the campaign; most were motivated by religion

* Britain's example inspired abolitionists such as John Brown and Abraham Lincoln to end slavery in the US

No...

* Slave trading was a disgusting crime and its whole story is a stain on British history

* We continue to honour slave traders, among them Sir Francis Drake and the 'Grand Old' Duke of York

* Britain ended the trade, but allowed the practice of slave owning to continue in British colonies

Related Links

Saviours of the slaves: the stories behind six stamps that celebrate abolitionists

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Possibly unique painting of Jane Austen to go on sale

Source: Reuters (3-23-07)

LONDON -- What many believe to be the only painting of Jane Austen will be auctioned in New York in April by Christie's, a relation of the English author and owner of the picture said.

But Henry Rice, a "sixth generation descendant" of the writer of classics such as "Emma," "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice," believes the sale of a picture that has divided experts will not be without controversy.

In 1948, a leading Austen scholar dismissed the authenticity of the portrait, saying the style of costume the subject wears does not match the date.

Related Links

Austen 'too ugly' for book cover; 'not much of a looker,' publisher says
'Pride and Prejudice' tops list of books Brits can't live without

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nixon ordered air force to bomb targets said to be off-limits

Source: HNN Staff summary of New Yorker article (3-26-07)

Seymour Hersh reports in this week's New Yorker Magazine that in 1972 President Richard Nixon told National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger he wanted the Air Force to begin the all-out bombing of Surface to Air Missile (SAM) sites in North Vietnam. The rules of engagement previously permitted bombing the sites in response to attack. Nixon can be heard on a newly-released White House tape saying he wanted the SAM sites bombed whether attacks were launched from them or not. When Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird approved the court martial of a general who had informally been told to go after the SAM sites and did so Nixon was livid.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Antique safe cracked; it contained...

Source: UPI (3-23-07)

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- A volunteer safecracker opened a 450-pound, Victorian-era safe in front of Connecticut news crews, but the treasure inside wasn't quite headline-grabbing.

"Like we need this now," laughed Nancy Zorena, president of the Monroe Historical Society, as she held up a slip of paper with the combination to the safe, the Connecticut Post reported.

The safe, discovered behind a Monroe church furnace in December, also contained some newspaper clippings, a poem and four wooden tokens from Missouri.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Texas district built by freed slaves fades away

Source: Reuters (3-23-07)

One of the last surviving communities built by freed slaves after the U.S. Civil War is on the verge of disappearing, despite long efforts to save it.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 2:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Italian vs. British colonialism helps explain Somalia vs. Somaliland difference

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-7-07)

HARGEYSA, Somalia -- When the sun rises over the craggy hills of Hargeysa, it sheds light on a different kind of Somalia.

Ice cream trucks hit the streets. Money changers, unarmed and unguarded, push cash through the market in wheelbarrows. Politicians from three distinct parties get ready for another day of debate, which recently included animated discussion on registering nomadic voters.

It is all part of a Somali puzzle: how one area of the country, the northwest, also known as Somaliland, can seem so peaceful and functional —- so normal, in fact —- while the rest continues to be such a violent, chaotic mess...

"It all goes back to the Brits," according to Hajji Abdi Waraabe, an 89-year-old member of Somaliland's upper house of Parliament.

When the colonial powers sliced up the Horn of Africa in the 19th century, the British got Somaliland and the Italians got southern Somalia.

While the British relied mostly on clan chiefs to govern, the Italians created an entire Italian-speaking administration and imported thousands of people from Italy to farm bananas, build cathedrals and teach the people how to pour espresso.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sierra Leone draws Americans seeking slave roots

Source: Reuters (3-22-07)

BUNCE ISLAND, Sierra Leone -- The ivy-clad ruins perched on a strip of mud in the Sierra Leone river hide a dark past, but have become an unlikely symbol of hope for many African Americans seeking slave forbears.

As a departure point for thousands of Africans on the perilous crossing to the New World, the once proud castle on Bunce Island is a crumbling monument to the horrors of the Transatlantic slave trade.

"There are probably tens of thousands of African Americans trying to trace their roots to Sierra Leone right now," U.S. professor Joseph Opala of James Madison University told Reuters.

Opala has worked for 30 years on the links between descendants of slaves and their West African origins.

"Sierra Leone is the most frequent result for DNA tests in the U.S.," he said.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

$14.1m to restore chapel made famous -- and popular -- by 'Da Vinci Code'

Source: Times (of London) (3-23-07)

ROSLIN, Scotland -- The medieval chapel which had a starring role in The Da Vinci Code has been awarded a multimillion-pound restoration grant.

The 15th-century Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian has been given £4.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £2.68 million from Historic Scotland. [The total is about $14.1 million.]

Since featuring in Dan Brown’s bestseller and the subsequent film, visitor numbers have increased from 30,000 a year in 2000 to 120,000 in 2006. New visitor facilities are planned.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

How 'Mad' King George's heirs put the Empire together one piece at a time

Source: Telegraph (3-23-07)

Kew Palace slotted an important piece of its royal history back into place yesterday when it unveiled a cabinet of jigsaw maps used to teach King George III's children.

This jigsaw map of Scotland used to teach geography to King George III's children, on show at Kew Palace
This jigsaw map of Scotland is one of many used to teach geography to King George III's children

The mahogany cabinet houses a collection of dissected maps –- precursors of the jigsaw puzzle –- and was a main feature in the nursery at Kew, the King's main home, in the mid-1700s.

It was through assembling the carved wooden pieces that a young George IV and William IV first learned the geography of Europe, the Empire, Africa and the American colonies they believed they would one day head.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In Taiwan, a dispute over legacy of dictator

Source: AP (3-22-07)

TAIPEI -- The white, palacelike Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall with its gleaming, blue-tiled octagonal roof stands out as one of the few examples of classic Chinese architecture in Taiwan's capital, Taipei.

But the legacy of the late Chiang —- who formerly led China's once-dominant Nationalist Party but fled to Taiwan with his followers after his defeat on the mainland by Communist forces —- is under attack by the Taiwanese government, making the massive monument an object of controversy.

The special status of the monument, in an immense downtown park, has been called into question by a government campaign to attack Chiang's legacy.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Reporter remembers founding of EU in 1957

Source: BBC News (3-22-07)

BBC Rome correspondent David Willey covered the signing of the Treaty of Rome as a Reuters trainee. Here he looks back at the Europe of half a century ago.

I was actually there in the huge room frescoed with scenes from ancient Roman battles, when the six frock-coated founders of the Europe of the Six appended their signatures to the Treaty.

Crowded into the room were members of parliament, city authorities and, I seem to remember, a single red-hatted cardinal from the Vatican.

It was a very formal and quite impressive ceremony, which had been assigned to the Reuters office junior to help him cut his reportorial teeth.

There were speeches in Italian, French, German and Dutch -- not a word in English of course, because Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had already decided against joining the nascent European community...

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Egypt evicts neighbors of the pharaohs

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-23-07)

GURNA, Egypt -- The Egyptian authorities have evicted hundreds of peasants from this village in southern Egypt because their mud-brick houses, which have sat atop some of the world's most treasured and ancient tombs for centuries, were leaking sewage onto priceless antiquities.

The families have been resettled in a nearby planned community with running water and telephones. But 80 families are holding out, saying they want more from a government so far reluctant to use brute force.

The Gurna standoff near the famed Valley of the Kings illustrates the challenges facing an authoritarian government...

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:31 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Fears that Mafia is behind collapse of column in Pompeii

Source: Independent (3-23-07)

ROME -- Carabinieri sealed off one of the grandest houses in the ancient city of Pompeii yesterday after a tall column was found smashed into seven pieces. Officials at the site fear that the destruction is a sign that Mafia gangs are trying to intimidate them.

Pompeii is Italy's most popular tourist destination, drawing 2.5 million visitors every year. And the house of Obellio Firmo is one of its most important. The villa's owner was a leading figure in the city's political life: at his funeral - before the fatal eruption of AD 79 - 10kg of incense was burned in his memory, at vast expense.

The column stood in the villa's garden. No one yet knows exactly how or why it toppled over.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:29 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Mies masterwork, deteriorating and in dispute

Source: New York Times (3-23-07)

BRNO, Czech Republic -- From the outside, the Tugendhat House doesn’t look like one of the most important residential buildings of the 20th century: it’s just two white stucco cubes separated by an opening through which a few spiky treetops protrude. But as a tour guide led a group of 10 through this modern home in the Czech Republic’s second-largest city in early March, it was clear that there was much more to the house, the bulk of which is built on the steep hillside that drops away from the street.

Massive terraces wrap around the upper story. Below, a vast living space is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass walls that look out on the garden below, so that even on a rainy day it is bright, almost cheerful. The space is divided only by a semicircular wood wall that creates a dining nook and a free-standing wall of solid onyx that separates the main seating area from a study, and that glows in the afternoon light. Two of the exterior walls even roll down like car windows, letting in the sound of chirping birds...

[But] it is in dire need of restoration.

The house, a World Heritage site, was “fundamental to the development of Modern architecture,” according to Barry Bergdoll, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. But it is also growing increasingly dilapidated, or “wasting away,” as The Prague Post put it in a recent article.

Related Links

Views of Tugendhat House (Google Images)

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:24 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Reading between the lines: deciphering the Archimedes Palimpsest

Source: Mary K. Miller, Smithsonian Magazine (3-1-07)

A thin beam of X-rays scans the writings of the legendary Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes, a hidden text that may be the most important ancient scientific document discovered since the Renaissance. As faint lines emerge on a large computer monitor at Stanford's Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, I can just barely make out the ghostly image of the Greek letter lambda.

As a Webcast producer for the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, I have been documenting this experimental use of one of the most sophisticated tools of modern science, to decipher a 1,000-year-old book made of goatskin. Known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, dubbed Archie for short, it looks terribly fragile. The edges of most of the book's 174 pages are burned, and tears, holes and spots of purple mold dot their surface. The parchment is smaller than I thought it would be, not much larger than a hardback novel.

Related Links

Writer Turned Scientist: Mary K. Miller, author of "Reading Between the Lines," describes becoming a shift supervisor in the lab

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Story of Confederate submarine leads to Europe

Source: AP (3-22-07)

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- The story of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub to sink an enemy warship, is leading back to the Old World as researchers plan to spend weeks trying to discover the roots of four European crewmen.

Scientists also said Thursday they have recovered a second coin from the hand-cranked sub — a silver dime to go along with a $20 gold piece recovered in 2001.

With a mint date of 1841, the dime shows Lady Liberty seated in robes, surrounded by 13 stars. It was found with the remains of a European crewman known only as Lumpkin...

The Hunley and its eight-man crew sank the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on Feb. 17, 1864. The Hunley also sank in the battle. It was raised in 2000 and is now held in a conservation lab. The crewmen's remains were buried in 2004.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 2:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Details of Kosovo war crimes emerge

Source: AP (3-22-07)

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Decomposing corpses were dumped into a trash-filled ditch. Blindfolded and hands bound, three Albanian-Americans were led to its edge and shot in the head, their bodies joining the others.

The details, emerging for the first time at the trial of two former Serbian commandos, shed light on how the regime of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic tried to conceal atrocities against ethnic Albanians in the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

Thousands were killed in the Serbian crackdown against Kosovo separatists in 1998-99. When NATO launched air strikes to stop the carnage, hundreds of bodies of Kosovars were dug up and moved more than 200 miles to three locations in central Serbia, reburied in mass graves to cover up the killings.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 2:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Earliest Ghana nationalists almost forgotten in 50th anniversary

Source: The Statesman (Accra, Ghana) (3-22-07)

Last Friday, at a hotel, thousands of miles away in Bloomsbury, London, Ghana's Minister of Justice, Joe Ghartey said something that perhaps only a classroom of Ghanaians knew.

The young and very promising politician told his audience that Paa Grant, the founder and sponsor of the group that formalised the struggle for independence from 1947, Paa Grant was in fact first to have called for Positive Action, a phrase more associated with the man who did more with other's ideas than the originators could have ever imagined, Kwame Nkrumah.

Paa Grant said in 1947, "The time for negative resistance is over. This is the time for positive action."

As Ghana celebrates its 50th anniversary of Independence, we are now celebrating Positive Change. Yet, the historical reflections have been many; as Nkrumaists take the opportunity to revere their founding father, freedom fighter hero, and Pan-Africanists sing of the progress he brought to the continent.

Yet 50 years since the Independence of Ghana is also 60 years since that freedom ball was fully set in motion...

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study says Smithsonian art museums 'drastically underfunded'

Source: AP (3-21-07)

WASHINGTON -- The Smithsonian Institution's eight art museums are "drastically underfunded" and have "seldom lived up to their names," according to an external review released Wednesday.

The voluntary review by a panel of seven prominent museum directors gives recommendations to strengthen each museum and is similar to an external examination of the Smithsonian's science programs in 2003. The review was adopted by the Smithsonian Board of Regents in January, though it was not released until Wednesday.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 9:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Was Houdini murdered? Family wants exhumation to find out

Source: AP (3-22-07)

NEW YORK -- For all his death-defying stunts, Harry Houdini couldn't escape the Grim Reaper: He died on Halloween 1926, apparently from a punch to the stomach that ruptured his appendix. But rumors that he was murdered have persisted for decades. Eighty-one years after Houdini's death, his great-nephew wants the escape artist's body exhumed to determine if enemies poisoned him for debunking their bogus claims of contact with the dead.

"It needs to be looked at," George Hardeen told The Associated Press. "His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now, maybe it's time to take a second look."

Houdini's family scheduled a news conference for Friday to give details on the plans.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 9:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Stairs to nowhere at Ground Zero: historical obstacle to rebuilding

Source: AP (3-22-07)

NEW YORK -- A prolonged debate over whether to preserve a 175-ton staircase that still stands at the World Trade Center site is threatening construction schedules for new office towers, rebuilding officials said this week.

The staircase, which several people used to escape the debris-filled complex in the moments after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has been named one of the nation's most endangered places by a preservation group. It is the only remnant of the complex that is above street level.

Historians first lobbied to keep the staircase in place, and lately have lobbied to move it intact to a nearby park or plaza while officials prepare the land to build one of three office towers.

The staircase sits on the footprint of a tower proposed by British architect Norman Foster. That building is one of three planned to complement the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower skyscraper.

Related Links

Views of WTC staircase (Google Images)

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 9:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan-China study group to take up Nanjing Massacre; uncertainty about sex slavery issue

Source: Kyodo News (3-22-07)

TOKYO -— Japanese and Chinese academics in a joint history study committee on March 20 agreed to take up contentious issues such as the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and visits by Japanese premiers to Yasukuni Shrine in their future discussions, Japanese panel members said.

But the committee members, during their two-day meeting in Tokyo through March 20, failed to discuss this time whether they will deal with the issue of Japan’s forcing women to provide sex for its soldiers before and during World War II and responsibility for the 1937-1945 Sino-Japanese war, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said.

About 10 experts from each side formed the Japan-China Joint History Research Committee in an effort to narrow the bilateral gaps over the interpretation of history, which has been a source of bilateral diplomatic disputes.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 9:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

50 lawyers urge Auschwitz museum: 'let paintings go'

Source: Press Release -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (3-22-07)

“Let her paintings go!”

That’s the Passover eve appeal issued by fifty prominent attorneys and legal scholars to Polish museum authorities, urging the return of seven paintings that California artist Dina Babbitt was forced to paint in Auschwitz in 1943.

Mrs. Babbitt, 83, was forced by the infamous Nazi war criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele, to paint portraits of Gypsy prisoners on whom he was performing sadistic medical experiments. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, in Poland, later acquired seven of the paintings from a private source but has refused to return them to Mrs. Babbitt. Museum officials have suggested that they regard Mengele as the legal owner of the paintings.

The petition says it is “shocking and offensive” to suggest that the paintings belong to Mengele, since “a war criminal does not deserve to enjoy the fruits of his crimes ... If this matter goes to court, we are horrified at the thought that the director of a museum dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust might take the stand in defense of the right of a Nazi war criminal or his heirs to claim paintings that were created because of his war crimes.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 8:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New book derides stereotypes of cave women

Source: Laura Miller at Salon.com (3-21-07)

"The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory," by J.M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer and Jake Page, promises to lay out everything the most current research has established about archaic women, and the truth is that it's pretty thin gruel. The authors can point out some embarrassing mistakes made by past experts and suggest some intriguing alternative interpretations of various facts and artifacts, but even so there's a lot of padding and extraneous material in this book's 300 pages.

The truth is that we can prove very, very little about how prehistoric people organized their social groups, especially when it comes to sex roles. We have bones, some tools and the remains of dwellings and other structures, but these can't tell us for sure who brought home the bacon or wore the pants, to use two inappropriately modern figures of speech. Sometimes these finds can't even tell us for sure who was who; one of the unsettling revelations in "The Invisible Sex" is that Lucy -- the famous Australopithecus afarensis whose 3.3 million-year-old fossilized remains were discovered in 1974 by archaeologists in a remote valley of the Awash River in Ethiopia, could possibly be a Luke instead. The leader of the expedition who found "her" says that the identification of the remains as female is not much more than an educated -- and possibly biased -- guess, based on the relative smallness of the bones.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 8:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient town at end of Great Wall to get $258m makeover

Source: AP (3-22-07)

BEIJING -- A $258 million restoration project is planned for an ancient town where the Great Wall meets the sea, state media reported Thursday.

The project will transform Shanhaiguan, built in 1381 during the Ming Dynasty as a strategic military post to help defend Beijing, the Xinhua News Agency said...

Xinhua said the district has already spent $93 million restoring watchtowers, gates and five memorial arches on the wall in Shanhaiguan.

China in recent years has begun restoring parts of the wall as well as trying to rein in commercial development on and around it.

The government said in October it would use remote-sensing satellites and other high technology to check the wall's length, now estimated at 3,000 to 4,000 miles.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient Pompeii column tumbles

Source: AP (3-22-07)

A huge column in the garden of an ancient Roman villa at Pompeii was toppled in what officials said Wednesday was an act of vandalism.

"This isn't a simple act of vandalism, which, while bad enough, could be explained by ignorance," superintendent Giovanni Guzzo said, calling it "an act of intimidation."

Spokeswoman Francesca de Lucia said the force needed to topple the large column, which broke into at least five pieces, suggested that the perpetrators were trying to make a statement.

Authorities were investigating possible motives for vandalism, including disgruntled employees, but had not ruled out an accidental cause despite the effort needed to make the column fall, she said.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Chicago museum to return Maori bones to New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand News (3-23-07)

The bones of 14 Maori housed in an American museum are to be returned to New Zealand.

Dr John Terrell, curator of Chicago's Pacific Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, said it had been considering returning the bones for the past two or three years, but only made the final decision on Monday.

He told Prime Minister Helen Clark of the decision when she visited the museum on Thursday as part of a week-long trip to the United States.

Dr Terrell said a request by Wellington's Te Papa museum to return the bones was genuine and sincere. Further discussions would be held with Te Papa.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Great tragedy, small town: how history sometimes remembers

Source: AP (3-22-07)

NEW LONDON, Tex. -- The world's greatest tragedies always have given way to stories of hope, heartache, despair and determination to overcome. The London School explosion that happened 70 years ago is no different.

Walter Cronkite, one of the 20th Century's most well-known reporters, called March 18, 1937, the "day a generation died." It is an apt description of the loss of nearly three-fifths of that school's students and teachers.

"We weren't allowed to talk about it. We were not allowed to talk about it at all," said Joan Barton, 77, who was a second-grader when leaking gas ignited 13 minutes before school was to close for a three-day weekend...

The screams perhaps seemed endless that night as parents, reporters, oil field workers and anyone who could help descended on the town of New London.

The explosion is considered the third deadliest tragedy in Texas history, ranking behind the Galveston hurricane of 1900 and the Texas City disaster. While no exact count may ever be determined, 298 students, teachers and others are believed to have died...

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

Virginia to fund Museum of the Confederacy

Source: Washington Times (3-22-07)

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine says he will approve a $400,000 amendment that would fund the cash-strapped Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, ending its recent struggle to secure state assistance.

The cash infusion will help cover the museum's 2007-08 general operating budget, which includes staffing. The annual price tag to run the museum is estimated at $2.1 million.

Museum officials hope that a combination of budget cuts and emergency fundraising efforts will help them stay in the black for the fiscal year that ends in June.

"We're really happy that the state is helping us out," said Megan Miller, the museum's director of communications.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

USS John F. Kennedy unlikely to be turned into a museum

Source: Boston Globe Editorial (3-21-07)

PEOPLE WAITED in a milelong line to see the USS John F. Kennedy when it docked for a weekend at the North Jetty in South Boston earlier this month. The 82,000-ton aircraft carrier, soon to be decommissioned, had barely departed before cries went up to bring it back permanently as a floating museum.

The idea is intriguing, but no one should be planning a nautical outing anytime soon. The Navy doesn't abide hasty reuses for its decommissioned warships. And it doesn't appear to be nostalgic in choosing between mothballing a ship and placing it on so-called "donation hold" status -- in which the ship is available for acquisition by a nonprofit organization but can still be brought back to service in an emergency. Nothing less than a superb business plan is likely to get the attention of the secretary of the Navy, warn those who keep such museums afloat.

Of the five US aircraft carriers now operating as museums, the USS Midway Museum in San Diego is the gold standard. Roughly 800,000 visitors board the ship each year, according to Midway's marketing director, Scott McGaugh. The action doesn't stop when the sun goes down. Corporate parties, conventioneer dinners, and dances take place on the flight deck some 200 nights each year. Councilor Stephen Murphy of Boston sensed the spectacular tourism potential of a carrier when he raised the banner for berthing the USS Kennedy in Boston for good. But the gulf between idea and implementation is vast.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

South Korea to build No Gun Ri massacre memorial

Source: AP (3-22-07)

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea said Thursday it would build a park in memory of victims of the U.S. Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at the village of No Gun Ri.

The park will be built at the scene of the 1950 attack during the Korean War, said Choi Jeong-pil, an official with a government commission on the shootings...

The No Gun Ri killings were documented in a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by The Associated Press in 1999, which prompted a 16-month Pentagon inquiry.

The Pentagon concluded in 2001 that the No Gun Ri shootings were "an unfortunate tragedy" -- "not a deliberate killing."...

Estimates vary on the number of dead at No Gun Ri, 100 miles southeast of Seoul. U.S. soldiers' estimates ranged from under 100 to "hundreds" dead. Korean survivors say about 400, mostly women and children, were killed. Hundreds more refugees were killed in later, similar episodes, survivors say.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 4:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Outside experts to oversee Guatemala civil war archives

Source: AP (3-21-07)

GUATEMALA CITY -- A newly created international council of experts will oversee and protect extensive police archives exposing atrocities committed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, a top human rights official said Wednesday.

The official, Sergio Morales, said the so-called International Consultative Council will include archive specialists from Argentina, Uruguay and the U.S., including Kate Doyle of the Washington-based National Security Archive, a private, nonpartisan research group.

"We want the archive to last so that anyone with interest in knowing what happened to their families can come in the future and investigate," Morales said.

The archives are closed to the public while experts restore and catalog all the materials, many of which have been damaged by water or time. So far, they have restored only 2.1 million documents, 2.5 percent of the total number of archives detailing 105 years of police activity in Guatemala.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 3:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Like Congressional Research Service reports? Sorry.

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (3-22-07)

In what is being characterized by subordinates as an act of
"managerial dementia," the Director of the Congressional
Research Service this week prohibited all public distribution of
CRS products without prior approval from senior agency
officials.

"I have concluded that prior approval should now be required at
the division or office level before products are distributed to
members of the public," wrote CRS Director Daniel P. Mullohan in
a memo to all CRS staff. "This policy is effective
immediately."

While CRS has long refused (with Congressional concurrence) to
make its electronic database of reports available to the public
online, it has still been possible for members of the press,
other researchers, and other government officials to request
specific reports from the congressional support agency.

But now, "to avoid inconsistencies and to increase
accountability, CRS policy requires prior approval at the
division level before products can be disseminated to
non-congressionals," Director Mullohan wrote.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 2:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Killing and segregated plaque divide Georgia town

Source: NYT (3-18-07)

BUTLER, Ga. -- The cool, busy lobby of the Taylor County courthouse features a bulletin board, a Dr Pepper vending machine and two framed rosters honoring local veterans of World War II. It is easy to spot the slight difference in wording that justifies displaying two plaques instead of one.

This list says “Whites,” and that list says “Colored.”

County officials explain that the segregated plaques continue to hang because state law says no publicly owned memorial dedicated to veterans of the United States — or of the Confederate States of America — shall be relocated, removed, concealed, et cetera, et cetera.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 1:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Queen to visit Virginia May 3-4: Jamestown 400 and restored Capitol in Richmond

Source: AP (3-21-07)

NORFOLK, Va. -- Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip will visit Virginia May 3-4 to help commemorate the founding of Jamestown 400 years ago...

They also will attend the Kentucky Derby on May 5, then spend time in Washington May 6-8...She also is expected to visit Virginia's current Capitol, in Richmond.

As two years and $99 million in renovations to the state's seat of government Thomas Jefferson designed 200 years ago near completion, a new urgency has taken hold amid whisperings of a major state visit...

The trip will be the queen's fourth state visit to the U.S. During her first visit, she went to Jamestown in October of 1957, the year of Jamestown's 350th anniversary...

The site of the settlers' original fort —- long thought to have eroded into the James River —- was discovered in the mid-1990s and archaeologists since have unearthed more than a million artifacts.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 2:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

It is Chopin's piano, and another one is too

Source: AP (3-21-07)

LONDON -- A French-made piano that Frederic Chopin brought to London late in his life has been identified in a collection in England, the owner of the instrument said Wednesday.

The piano built by the Paris company of Camille Pleyel, Chopin's favored piano-maker, is in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, an assemblage of antique keyboard instruments housed in an 18th century house southwest of London, Alec Cobbe said.

He said the connection was established a year ago by leading Chopin scholar Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger of the Geneva Conservatoire, but it wasn't publicly disclosed until this week by the Sunday Times newspaper...

Chopin had three pianos in his flat in London -- the Pleyel and instruments by the English maker John Broadwood and the French maker Erard. A different Broadwood piano, made in 1847 and used by Chopin for three recitals in London, is also in the Cobbe collection.

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

Pinochet-era victims exhumed in Chile, some for second time

Source: AP (3-21-07)

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Authorities on Tuesday began exhuming the remains of dozens of victims of repression under the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in a renewed effort to determine their identities.

The remains of 13 people were unearthed with help from three foreign experts on the first day of exhumations ordered by Judge Carlos Gajardo. Some of the remains are being uncovered for a second time after the coroner's office acknowledged last year that the misidentified remains of some victims were handed to the wrong relatives...

Forensic bungling during the first exhumation forced families to relive their grief and outraged the nation. The coroner's office said 48 of the 126 bodies exhumed from the cemetery since 1991 were misidentified. In 67 other cases, officials were either not able to identify the bodies or had doubts about the identities. Only 11 bodies were identified correctly.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 2:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

On display, note that launched Falklands war

Source: Telegraph (3-22-07)

It is curt, undiplomatic and written on a slightly crumpled piece of paper -- but it marked the beginnings of three of the most dramatic months in recent British history.

The note, dictated over the radio and ordering a group of Argentinians to leave the remote island of South Georgia at once, has now gone on show for the first time [at the National Army Museum in central London].

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the delivery of the note by Rex Hunt, the Governor of the Falkland Islands, to the leader of 50 men claiming to be scrap metal merchants who had raised the Argentinian flag and claimed South Georgia for their nation...

South Georgia was recaptured on April 25, 1982, by the British fleet. Argentina surrendered the Falklands on June 14, 1982.

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 2:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

All hail Winchcomeshire, England's lost county

Source: Independent (3-22-07)

During Liz Hurley's glamorous wedding to Arun Nayar this month, the small Cotswolds town of Winchcombe teemed with the world's media.

This spring, the 5,000 residents of this corner of Gloucestershire have another celebration to mark, though it is unlikely to attract a single red-top reporter or autograph hunter.

When the bells ring out in Winchcombe this May, they will be marking the anniversary of a long-forgotten municipal oddity.

One thousand years ago, the county of Winchombeshire began its short life under the ill-named Ethelred the Unready. Alas, just a decade later, in 1017, the county was abolished by the invading Dane King Cnut and absorbed into Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.

Its contribution to history would have remained lost in time but for a small band of the town's residents...

Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 2:14 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Debate on protecting historical statues and markers stirs emotions in Texas House

Source: AP (3-21-07)

AUSTIN -- Slave ownership and Confederate figures spilled into a tense debate on the [Texas] House floor Wednesday over a bill aiming to safeguard historical markers against possible removal or renaming.

Emotions over the bill, which its author ultimately pulled after two hours of debate, peaked when two lawmakers were separated during a spat over how the bill even made it to the House floor.

Under the bill, statues of figures like Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee or buildings named after figures such as civil rights activist Cesar Chavez that are on state land could only be removed or renamed with approval from the Legislature, Texas Historical Commission or state preservation board. Current state law only protects monuments of Texans honored for military service.

But proposed amendments that called to possibly deny that protection to Confederate figures or, more specifically, members of the Ku Klux Klan, led to intense and emotional debates on the floor.

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

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Wanted: antique-safe cracker

Source: AP (3-21-07)

MONROE, Conn. --Two antique iron chests recently discovered on Monroe Historical Society property are safeguarding their secrets a bit too well.

The 300-pound safes, discovered behind a furnace in an old farmhouse owned by the society, might hold treasures that help shed light on the 184-year-old town's rich history.

Or, they could be empty.

But it'll remain a mystery until the historical society finds someone who can coax open the old locks, the combinations for which seem to be lost to the ages...

Now, they are putting out a call for a skilled volunteer locksmith capable of opening the Victorian-era safes without damaging them or their contents.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 8:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dig begins in Philadelphia for Presidents' House memorial

Source: UPI (3-21-07)

PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia officials began what the mayor called "digging for the truth" for the memorial to the first presidential home and the slaves who lived there.

While completion of the $5.2-million memorial to the house shared by Presidents George Washington and John Adams when Philadelphia was the nation's capital is months away, Wednesday's groundbreaking starts three to six weeks of archaeological research, the first ever done on that section of Independence Mall, the Philadelphia Inquirer said.

"We're digging for the truth about the start of this country and the great tragedy of slavery, which affects everything we do in this country today," Philly Mayor John Street told a crowd at the corner of Sixth and Market streets on Independence Mall.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 8:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Masterpieces adorn EU's 50th anniversary

Source: UPI (3-21-07)

ROME -- A collection of Europe's most representative artworks will be on display in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome.

The treaty established the forerunner of the European Community, now part of the European Union.

The exhibition of works from the Stone Age to the 20th century is at Rome's Palazzo Quirinale, the official residence of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, who asked the 27 European Union heads of state to each lend a "masterpiece that is emblematic of their history," ANSA said Wednesday.

The exhibit includes masters such as Turner, Titian, Velasquez and van Dyck. The earliest work is a Maltese Neolithic statue of a "Fat Lady," symbolizing motherhood and fertility, dating back to 3300-2500 BC.

Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus contributed Byzantine works of art, while Italy and Germany lent paintings by Renaissance greats Titian and Durer, respectively...

The exhibit runs from Saturday through May 20.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 8:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China-Japan history project ends

Source: UPI (3-21-07)

TOKYO -- A study of the history of relations between China and Japan has ended because of different ideas on how to approach the project, a report says.

Japanese participants in the study said Tuesday the joint project was ending because both nations were unable to reconcile their positions on how to approach the study of international relations in Asia, the Japan Times reported.

Time constraints also played a significant part in the decision, involved historians said.

"We have never thought of (co-writing a single history) given the time frame. It's impossible," University of Tokyo professor Shinichi Kitaoka said.

The head of Japan's team added that historians from both nations will now write their own versions of past events and compare versions once completed.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 8:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bill to expand Idaho's Japanese internment camp site

Source: Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News (3-21-07)

JEROME, Idaho -- More than 60 years ago, 13,000 Americans of Japanese descent were kept behind barbed wire at the Minidoka Relocation Camp during World War II.

Today, just 73 acres of the original camp make up the Minidoka Internment National Monument east of Jerome and north of Eden.

On Monday, Idaho Senators Larry Craig and Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson introduced legislation that would expand the site, according to a press release from the leaders...

The legislation authorizes the expansion of the monument by 128 acres, including Herrmann Farm. It also authorizes an 8-acre site in Bainbridge Island, Wash., as part of the site. [The Bainbridge Island Japanese American Monument Act passed the House by 419-0 in February.]

The island site was the nation's first internment camp, and the first stop for many people who were then shipped to other camps, like Minidoka.

Related Links

Organizers break ground for WWII internment camp memorial in Fresno County
Time running out for internment apology

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 8:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scotland's 300-year itch

Source: Boston Globe (3-20-07)

EDINBURGH -- On A winter’s day in 1707, this old, stone town saw the Scottish Parliament sign itself and the independence of Scotland out of existence by voting for a treaty of union with England that created Great Britain. Today, 300 years later, polls suggest that Scots who would undo all that seem poised for a significant victory in a restored Scottish Parliament during elections in May.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 6:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jewish museum set to open in former Nazi stronghold of Munich

Source: AP (3-21-07)

MUNICH -- Just blocks from where Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered the destruction of Munich's main synagogue on Kristallnacht, the city is opening an $18-million museum dedicated to the heritage and future of its growing Jewish community.

The cube-shaped museum by Saarbruecken architects Wandel Hoefer Lorck is part of the new complex in the central Jakobsplatz square that also houses a new synagogue and community centre.

It's a sign of the revitalization of Munich's community, which now numbers 9,200 members, the second-largest in Germany after Berlin's... The synagogue opened last November, on the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass when the Nazis attacked Jewish homes and businesses. International Jewish representatives attended and 1,500 police sealed off the route of a procession of Torah scrolls.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 6:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Chronicling America' debuts with decade of historic newspapers from six states and D.C.

Source: PR Newswire (3-21-07)

WASHINGTON -- The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress today announced that "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers" is debuting online with more than 226,000 pages of public domain newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia, and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910.

The text of the newspapers is fully searchable, and search terms can be limited to a particular state, a specific newspaper, by year or years of publication and even by months. The new site is available at http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica

"Chronicling America" is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP)...a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress...

Ultimately, over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922. Also on the Web site, an accompanying national newspaper directory of bibliographic and holdings information directs users to newspaper titles in all types of formats. The information in the directory was created through an earlier NEH initiative, the United States Newspaper Program.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 6:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Repairs slowed on Hemingway's Cuban hideaway

Source: AP (3-21-07)

HAVANA -- Work to restore Ernest Hemingway's Cuban hideaway probably won't be finished until the end of 2009, held up in part by efforts to build a garage to house the author's long-lost Chevy convertible, museum officials say.

Hemingway lived at Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, on Havana's southeastern outskirts from 1939 to 1960. He wrote "The Old Man and the Sea" and children's fables at the home, which he shared with nearly 60 cats and at least 10 dogs.

Following his suicide in 1961, Hemingway's widow turned the property over to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and it became a museum the next year. But time and tropical elements have ravaged the eggshell-colored home and the documents inside, which include the never-published epilogue of "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 6:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New accusation in running of Smithsonian

Source: NYT (3-21-07)

The former inspector general of the Smithsonian Institution says Lawrence M. Small, the institution’s top official, tried to head off an audit of the organization’s business ventures division.

In a telephone interview yesterday, the former official, Debra S. Ritt, said Mr. Small called her in April 2006, soon after she announced plans for the audit, to say that “he did not think it was a good use of our resources, and that we were being manipulated by disgruntled employees.”

Ms. Ritt said she found his call to be “very unusual, because he urged me instead to investigate the Smithsonian’s construction spending.”

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 6:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Slavery abolitionists pioneered protest movements and modern campaigning

Source: BBC News (3-20-07)

If you have ever signed a petition, worn a charity wristband or taken part in a demonstration you owe something to Thomas Clarkson.

The preacher's son from Cambridgeshire is one of the great unsung heroes of the fight to abolish slavery and the slave trade.

But what is even less well known is the extent to which Clarkson and his fellow abolitionists set the template for all future protest movements.

Every modern campaigning technique -- from celebrity endorsement to political lobbying and consumer boycotts -- was pioneered by the abolitionists more than 200 years ago.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 5:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Save the 'burbs too, says English Heritage

Source: Telegraph (3-20-07)

Councils should work harder to preserve the character of the suburbs, where more than eight out of 10 people live, English Heritage said yesterday.

The Government's conservation advisers said special historical and architectural character was at risk of being eroded by insensitive developments, such as "garden grabbing" to build blocks of flats.

Other threats include plastic windows, inappropriately designed extensions and the conversion of front gardens to car parking.
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The Greater London Assembly estimates that two thirds of the capital's front gardens have been converted for parking, reducing wildlife habitat and increasing water run-off.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 5:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Descendants throw new light on Gandhi's life and death

Source: AFP (3-20-07)

NEW DELHI -- One paints a dispassionate view of the man better known as Mahatma Gandhi, the other stirs controversy about his murder. Both are fuelling renewed interest in the humble father of modern India.

Two newly-released chronicles of Gandhi's life and death, written by his descendants, have sold more than 10,000 copies each in nearly a month since they were launched. In India, a non-fiction book can become a bestseller with more than 7,000 copies sold.

Publishers said the sales proved Gandhi's legacy was relevant 59 years after his death and provided evidence of renewed interest that was sparked last year by a blockbuster comedy movie in which the leader plays mentor to gangsters.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 5:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust survivors awarded $300m in insurance claims case

Source: AP (3-20-07)

WASHINGTON -- More than $300 million in previously unpaid insurance claims were awarded to 48,000 Holocaust survivors for harm they suffered during World War II, an international commission said Tuesday. The International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims concluded its claims and appeals process after a worldwide outreach campaign began in 1998 to ensure that insurance companies fulfilled their obligations. Its review was able to match those survivors submitting claims with more than 70 European insurance companies and businesses.

Related Links

German is charged with denying Holocaust
German police cadets bored with Holocaust speech

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 5:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hard-up museum turns to 'Brontë industry' for funds

Source: Independent (3-21-07)

Their surname was one that Patrick Brontë, the father of the trio of literary sisters, in effect made up. But it proved so evocative of stories of passion and a wild Yorkshire landscape that it has since been adopted to brand everything from spring water to poultry-processing.

But now the cash-strapped Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire, has decided that it too should be entitled to some of the money being made from the business of trading in the family's name.

To that end, Richard Wilcocks, the chairman of the Brontë Society, has written to three dozen companies trading under the title to seek support for the running of the house where the family lived.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 5:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Napoleon running for seat in parliament

Source: Telegraph (3-21-07)

At 6ft 5ins, Charles Napoleon would have towered over his diminutive ancestor, Napoleon Bonaparte.

And the 56-year-old pretender to France's imperial throne has embraced a brand of politics that is decidedly out of character for a Bonaparte.

While both Napoleon I and Napoleon III seized power by force and held imperial courts in Fontainebleau's royal chateau, today His Imperial Highness Charles Napoleon -- or "Napoleon VII" -- plans to recapture this dynastic town through the ballot box.

"In my family elected politics was considered dirty," said the Prince Imperial. "But I love contact with people."

Mr Napoleon -- great-great-grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jerome, King of Westphalia -- is standing for parliament in Fontainebleau and environs. A pro-European, he's campaigning under the centrist banner of presidential candidate François Bayrou.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 4:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Harvard to return historic bells to Moscow monastery

Source: AP (3-21-07)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Eighteen massive brass bells rescued from a Moscow monastery nearly 80 years ago during a Soviet-era crackdown on religion and donated to Harvard University are being returned to Russia...

In return, Harvard will receive 18 replicas, which are being cast at a foundry in Russia...

The bells, which have rung in the towers at Lowell House and Harvard Business School's Baker Library for decades, were cast in the 18th and 19th centuries and are decorated with etchings of Jesus Christ and Mary, saints and angels.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Smithsonian board criticized in lack of spending oversight

Source: Baltimore Sun (3-21-07)

Since the Smithsonian Institution was created by Congress in 1846, top lawmakers have held seats on its board, along with the chief justice and the vice president of the United States.

Now, after an audit found questionable spending by the Smithsonian's chief, watchdogs are wondering who's paying attention.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 1:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Latching onto L.A. Times op-ed, Limbaugh sings "Barack, The Magic Negro"

Source: Media Matters (3-20-07)

On the March 19 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Rush Limbaugh highlighted a March 19 Los Angeles Times op-ed that described Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as "running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination -- the "Magic Negro" -- a term used by critics of pop culture to describe certain benevolent African-American characters.

Limbaugh stated: "The term 'Magic Negro' has been thrown into the political presidential race in the mix for 2008. And the term 'Magic Negro,' as applied to Barack Obama has been done by an L.A. Times columnist, David Ehrenstein."

Limbaugh later asserted: "I'm going to keep referring to him as that because I want to make a bet that by the end of this week I will own that term," adding, "If I refer to Obama the rest of the day as the 'Magic Negro,' there will be a number of people in the drive-by media and on left-wing blogs who will credit me for coming up with it and ignore the L.A. Times did it, simply because they can't be critical of the L.A. Times, but they can, obviously, be critical of talk radio."

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 12:30 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Stone Age massacre revealed in British tombs

Source: National Geographic News (3-16-07)

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 12:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Anti-smoking group demands Slavery Museum return tobacco company donation

Source: Fox News (3-20-07)

An anti-smoking group called on the U.S. National Slavery Museum to return a donation from tobacco giant Philip Morris USA, saying the company targets children "for another form of slavery."

Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, sent a letter to the museum's executive director, Vonita Foster, last week. Myers said the association with the nation's largest cigarette manufacturer would counter the museum's goal of educating children.

"This is indeed a laudable goal, but by taking receipt of this donation, the museum is joining forces with a company that continues to target children for another form of slavery," Myers wrote.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 12:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Slave descendant proud to be part of plantation

Source: Tennessean (2-18-07)

Luvenia Butler doesn't have photographs of her ancestors — among them cooks and masons — who lived as slaves at the Belle Meade Plantation some 150 years ago. But, she says laughing, she sees them every time she visits the premises. In her case, that's pretty often.

Butler is one of the newest members of the board of directors at the plantation — the very place where her great-grandmother Jenny White once lived in bondage.

"I've always been taught it's important to learn about the past, but you also don't want to live in the past," said Butler, who works for the state Health Department.

She is one of three African-Americans on the museum's 30-plus-member board.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Museum of Contraception and Abortion Opens to Controversy

Source: http://www.dw-world.de (3-18-07)

A unique kind museum opened in Vienna this week. Everything inside revolves around contraception and abortions, and the museum attempts to go beyond any other collection in any other nation.

The initiator of this museum is Christian Fiala, a doctor who has directed a clinic for abortions and family planning in Vienna for the past 10 years. Fiala is seen as a missionary for women’s health and is the chairman of the International Association of Abortion and Contraception Specialists.

Displayed in two rooms are items Fiala has collected over the decades.

The first room is devoted to contraception, and it displays the wide variety of items used over the centuries to prevent pregnancies. The first birth-control pill is displayed next to ancient condoms made of pig bladders. In the doorway to the second room, pregnancy tests, which were developed in the 1960s, are hanging.

This leads into the abortion room. Up until about 1900, abortions were so dangerous that it was safer for women to carry the child to term and then kill it after it was born. Visitors can even listen to recordings of abortion providers discussing how up until 30 years ago it was still a life-threatening procedure.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Post-communist young have choice -- and stress

Source: Reuters (3-20-07)

When Vladka Soudkova was nursing her baby in the autumn of 1989, she hoped the upheaval across central Europe she was watching on her television screen would bring freedom and choice to her tiny daughter.

She has not been disappointed.

Eighteen this year, Kristyna has opportunities that Vladka and her computer technician husband, Tomas, could only dream of and the chance to travel and study wherever she likes.

"My husband went out to demonstrate and I sat at home watching the exciting events unfold," said Vladka, now a 45-year-old office worker in the Czech capital of Prague.

"That's when we started to hope that our daughters would live in the freedom that we didn't have. Now we can say our wishes and hopes have been fulfilled."

But with that freedom and choice have also come insecurity, a race for material possessions and, for young people, a degree of uncertainty over the future that their parents did not know.

Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Deal in works to keep dairies from park honoring black settlers

Source: AP (3-20-07)

VISALIA, Calif. -- Tulare County supervisors approved a permit Tuesday to build a pair of mammoth dairies next to a state historic park devoted to black settlers, but a deal was in the works to keep the farms far from the monument to a freed slave.

The plan to put more than 12,000 cows within two miles of Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park pitted Sam Etchegaray against environmentalists and park supporters who said the dairies would be an offensive neighbor, bringing stink, flies and pollution to the black utopia founded in 1908 by the former Army chaplain...

"A modern dairy is very different," said Supervisor Steve Worthley. "If I thought for one moment that the proposed projects would be injurious to the state park, I would be the first one to deny the approval."...

Despite finally gaining the permit approval Tuesday, Etchegaray is now considering selling the land or development rights to the Trust for Public Land, said his attorney, David Albers. He first sought the dairy permits eight years ago...

The proposed deal with the Trust for Public Land likely would give the land over to the state parks agency, said Roy Stearns, a spokesman for the state Department of Parks, which also has sought to create a buffer zone.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 9:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sierra Leone removes British names from streets

Source: BBC (3-20-07)

As the UK marks 200 years since it abolished the slave trade, Sierra Leone has decided to purge its capital, Freetown, of streets named after the British and replace them with the names of Africans who fought in the abolition movement.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Georgia governor skeptical about slavery apology

Source: AP (3-19-07)

ATLANTA -- Georgia's governor sounded skeptical Monday about issuing a public apology for slavery, an idea that got a boost last week with the support of a Republican leader.

"Repentance comes from the heart," Gov. Sonny Perdue said Monday. "I'm not sure about public apologies on behalf of other people as far as the motivation for them."

A resolution acknowledging and apologizing for Georgia's role in the slave trade had been expected Monday but now could come later in the week. Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who presides over the state Senate, said he's working on the proposal. A resolution, as opposed to a bill, would not require Perdue's approval.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 3:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Mankind 'a threat to rivers of civilisation'

Source: Times (of London) (3-20-07)

Mighty rivers that inspired religions, civilisations and explorers are among the ten most threatened in the world.

Rivers such as the Nile, the Indus and the Ganges are dying because of stresses put on them by mankind, the [World Wildlife Federation] says in a report published today.

Each of the ten river systems identified in the report is beset by man-made problems, including water being siphoned off, dams destroying ecosystems and pollution. They flow across six continents and the damage threatens the lives of people and wildlife, the WWF says.

The ten most endangered river basins are said to be the Danube, Yangtze, Rio Grande, Salween, Nile, Indus, Ganges, Plata, Mekong and Murray-Darling. About 41 per cent of the world’s population live in threatened river systems, and of the 10,000 species of freshwater animals and plants at least 20 per cent are already extinct.

Related Links

WWF 10 Rivers report (PDF)

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 3:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

L.A. school fires teachers, cancels program on Emmett Till as too graphic

Source: AP (3-19-07)

LOS ANGELES -- Administrators at a Los Angeles charter school fired two teachers after canceling a planned Black History Month presentation honoring Emmett Till, the slain black teenager whose death was pivotal in the civil rights movement.

Seventh-graders at Celerity Nascent Charter School had planned to read a poem based on the book, "A Wreath for Emmett Till," and lay flowers in a circle during the February program.

But school officials said the 14-year-old's story was too graphic for an assembly that included kindergartners and replaced it with a reading on the civil rights struggle as a whole, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

"Our whole goal is how do we get these kids to not look at all of the bad things that could happen to them and instead focus on the process of how do we become the next surgeon or the next politician," said Celerity co-founder and Executive Director Vielka McFarlane. "We don't want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we've made."

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Door of no return' opens up Ghana's slave past

Source: Reuters (3-19-07)

ELMINA, Ghana -- For many, it was their last glimpse of Africa.

Pushed through the "door of no return", millions of Africans were shipped from places like this whitewashed fort in Elmina, Ghana, to a life of slavery in Brazil, the Caribbean and America...

As Britain marks the bicentenary of its abolition of the slave trade on March 25, Ghanaians are still coming to terms with slavery's impact on their country's development and the role Africans played in the capture and sale of fellow Africans.

The view from Elmina, built by the Portuguese in 1482 and later held by the Dutch and the British, is picturesque with fishing boats bobbing in the sea off a white sand beach lined with palm trees.

But Elmina has a brutal history -- shared with other slave forts on West Africa's coast, ports in Western Europe and what was then known as the New World, the Americas -- in a triangular trade that fueled Europe's colonial empires.

Related Links

Valerie Amos, leader of Britain’s House of Lords, talks about the shameful story of her country’s slave trade: 'I feel the weight of that history'

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Iron Lady' movie planned, will focus on Falklands war

Source: UPI (3-19-07)

LONDON -- A screenplay has been commissioned for a movie about Margaret Thatcher, the strong-willed conservative former prime minister of Britain.

Brian Fillis has been hired to develop the screenplay, which is expected to key on Thatcher's decision to take Britain to war against Argentina over the Falklands in 1982 at a time when her popularity was at its lowest, Daily Variety said Monday...

The film project about Britain's so-called "Iron Lady" is being pursued by Pathe, the company that helped produce "The Queen," in conjunction with the BBC and independent producer Damian Jones, best known for "The History Boys."

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Armenia, Turkey wait while U.S. considers recognizing genocide

Source: World Politics Watch (3-19-07)

YEREVAN, Armenia -- Inside the tomb-like confines of the Armenian genocide museum, a haunting narrative of images and words unfolds. A list is posted at tour's end of Western nations that have officially recognized the tragedy, minus one major endorsement: the United States.

U.S. lawmakers have recently introduced non-binding resolutions that would declare up to 1.5 million Armenians victims of genocide at the hands of Turkish forces almost a century ago. Support is reported to be strong enough in the House to pass the measure if it goes to a vote; the Senate introduced a similar resolution last Wednesday with 21 co-sponsors.

Historians and analysts here say recognition from Washington is long overdue since evidence validating the case for genocide is "clear-cut, more than factual, and very obvious." But Turkey's priority status as a vital strategic ally in a troublesome region stands in the way.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Greece pressuring France in battle for Elgin Marbles

Source: Telegraph (3-20-07)

PARIS -- Greece is putting pressure on the Louvre museum in its long-running campaign to retrieve the Elgin marbles from Britain.

The Greeks have refused to lend the French an ancient sculpture for an exhibition because, they say, it is too fragile to be moved from Athens.

But Louvre sources believe the bronze artwork is being used as a bargaining chip to pressure the museum into joining Greek calls for the Elgin marbles -- taken from Greece in the nineteenth century and now in the British Museum -- to be returned to Athens.

The Louvre opened its first exhibition dedicated to ancient Greek sculpture yesterday without Praxitelis' sculpture The Ephebe of Marathon.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Mary Queen of Scots' ring lost but survives on canvas

Source: UPI (3-19-07)

LONDON -- Four watercolors going on exhibit in London this week are all that remain of a gold and enamel ring that once graced the hand of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The paintings are part of a Society of Antiquaries exhibition at the British Antique Dealers' Association Fine Antiques and Fine Art Fair, The Independent said Monday. It is the first time the paintings are being display in London since they were presented to the society two centuries ago...

Mary Queen of Scots, executed by her cousin, Elizabeth I, probably gave the ring to away in an attempt to win support for her controversial marriage to her cousin, Lord Darnley, experts say. The ring may have been lost in a fire at Scone Palace in the 1940s when much of the collection was evacuated.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The last 'proper bus' or 'bashed-up old relic'?

Source: BBC News (3-20-07)

Over 50 years since they appeared on London's streets, the Routemasters are still running -- but not everyone is delighted.

The veteran vehicle with its curvy design and its open platform has been called "the last bus to be a proper bus".

Many Londoners remember fondly how they used to hop on and off them and pull the string to ring the bell.

But a Disability Rights Commission spokesman says it is "a bashed-up old relic from a bygone age" and the fact that it is still running on two central London heritage routes is "a disappointment".

A programme of repurchase and refurbishment -- begun after the election of Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2000 -- stopped in 2003-4, and the last full-scale route -- the 159 -- withdrew its Routemasters in December 2005.

What remained was the heritage routes - though only in the hours from 0930 to 1800 and only on the central part of two routes, the 9 (Albert Hall to Aldwych) and 15 (Tower of London to Trafalgar Square).

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:14 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Portuguese beat Captain Cook to Australia 250 years before, historian says

Source: Telegraph (3-20-07)

The image of Captain Cook stepping onto the shores of Botany Bay has been a staple of British history books for generations but now it seems the explorer may have been beaten to Australia by the Portuguese, who arrived 250 years earlier.

A new appraisal of 16th century maps offers evidence that a small Portuguese fleet charted much of Australia's coast as early as 1522.

It has long been known that Cook was preceded by Dutch navigators, whose ships were wrecked on the coast of western Australia as they made for their colony of Batavia -- present day Jakarta - in the 1600s.

The Portuguese thesis was put forward Monday by historian and journalist, Peter Trickett, in his book Beyond Capricorn. It describes how Portuguese adventurers secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand 250 years before Captain Cook.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Communist Party USA archives go to NYU

Source: New York Times (3-20-07)

The songwriter, labor organizer and folk hero Joe Hill has been the subject of poems, songs, an opera, books and movies. His will, written in verse the night before a Utah firing squad executed him in 1915 and later put to music, became part of the labor movement’s soundtrack. Now the original copy of that penciled will is among the unexpected historical gems unearthed from a vast collection of papers and photographs never before seen publicly that the Communist Party USA has donated to New York University.

The cache contains decades of party history including founding documents, secret code words, stacks of personal letters, smuggled directives from Moscow, Lenin buttons, photographs and stern commands about how good party members should behave (no charity work, for instance, to distract them from their revolutionary duties).

By offering such an inside view, the archives have the potential to revise assumptions on both the left and the right about one of the most contentious subjects in American history, in addition to filling out the story of progressive politics, the labor movement and the civil rights struggles.

Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 2:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, March 19, 2007

3-star chefs to prepare feast at the Pyramids, last of the 7 Wonders

Source: AP (3-19-07)

BANGKOK, Thailand -- From the creators of the $25,000 dinner, there's another pricey gourmet feast on the horizon.

Wealthy foodies can mark their calendars for Dec. 12, 2008, when top chefs from around the world will be flown to Egypt to cook a dinner in front of the ancient Pyramids of Giza, organizer Deepak Ohri said Monday...

Some 500 tickets will be sold for the dinner to be cooked by 30 3-star Michelin chefs...

A kitchen half a mile long will be set up against the backdrop of the pyramids with equipment and the best ingredients jetted in from around the world...

Just how close diners will be to the pyramids depends upon the Egyptian government and the U.N.'s cultural body UNESCO, since the pyramids are a World Heritage site.

Talks are under way with authorities, Ohri said, noting that organizers are "considering" giving profits from the dinner to an organization or charity that deals with conserving the Seven Wonders of the World. The pyramids are the only surviving structure from the traditional list of architectural marvels.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 8:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Home of Jefferson's girlfriend explored

Source: AP (3-19-07)

GLOUCESTER, Va. — The excavation of a hidden chamber at the former home of Thomas Jefferson's girlfriend has not turned up any love letters — yet.

''We still have about 2 feet further down to dig,'' said archaeologist Thane Harpole, who is leading the project along with fellow archaeologist David Brown.

Fairfield Plantation was the Gloucester County home of Rebecca Burwell, who was 16 when she met College of William and Mary student Thomas Jefferson. The house was built in 1694 for Lewis Burwell II, patriarch of one of colonial Virginia's largest and most politically influential families.

Harpole and Brown say excavation of the hidden chamber in the home's cellar has turned up several artifacts, but nothing related to the romance between Rebecca and the man who would become the author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation's third president.

The archaeologists have no idea why the hidden chamber was built, but early indications are that it was used in more recent times as a giant junk drawer.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sudan archeologists working fast before land is flooded

Source: AFP (3-18-07)

Sudan's archaeology is finally stepping out of Egypt's shadow as teams work against the clock to rescue an entire swathe of Nile Valley heritage from the rising waters of a Chinese-built dam.

"The paradox is that, yes, an entire area is being wiped off the map but thanks to the rescue project, Sudanese archaeology is being put on the map," said Sudan's antiquities chief Salah Ahmed.

The Merowe dam is a controversial hydro-electric project -- one of the largest in Africa -- being erected on the Nile's fourth cataract and due to start flooding the valley over more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) within months.

Archaeologists admit that an incalculable amount of information will be forever lost.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mystery slave found in portrait

Source: BBC (3-19-07)

Conservators at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum are a step closer to solving a 250-year-old mystery.

They have been working on an 18th Century portrait to uncover a black servant who some experts believed was deliberately painted out.

The portrait of tobacco merchant John Glassford and his family was painted in the 1760s by Archibald McLauchlan.

The wealthy Glaswegian's black servant was included in the picture as an indicator of his wealth and status....

For many years, it was thought the family had painted the figure out, embarassed by their connections with the slave trade.

But a senior conservator, Polly Smith, believed the figure simply faded with time and her team eventually hope to uncover the man's identity.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Grand Canyon Skywalk: marvel or tourist trap?

Source: ABC News (3-18-07)

Four thousand feet below the canyon rim, the Colorado River continues to slowly eat away at rock formations that created this vast and awe-inspiring canyon.

But this is not the Grand Canyon tourists have come to know and love. This is Grand Canyon West, 90 miles downstream from Grand Canyon National Park, on land owned by the Hualapai Indian Tribe.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 4:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Clinton library sitting on Hillary documents?

Source: Newsday (3-19-07)

The museum's 138-million-page presidential archive could play an important role in determining how Hillary Rodham Clinton's controversial White House past will affect her attempt to reclaim 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

"I haven't received any documents or even a note indicating that they're searching the records," said Jeff Gerth, a former New York Times reporter who requested a wide range of the first lady's files for an unauthorized Clinton biography he's working on.

With the 2008 election looming, researchers are eager to unearth undisclosed details from eight years marked by controversy, scandal and high-wire politics.

The Clintons' longtime personal lawyer, Bruce Lindsey, who helped defend the couple in the 1990s, has veto power over the release of the most sensitive documents. Attempts to contact Lindsey weren't successful.

Among the documents requested: almost all of Hillary Clinton's files as first lady, eight years' worth of her daily White House schedules, office diaries, day planners and telephone logs, according to a list of Freedom of Information Act requests obtained by Newsday.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 3:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dispose of records generated by US government CFOs?

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (3-19-07)

A proposed "General Records Schedule" (GRS) that would authorize the disposal and destruction of various CFO records is "fundamentally flawed," wrote one Archives analyst last year.

"I really cannot say anything positive about this proposed GRS," wrote another analyst, in internal comments. "It is flawed, troubling, and misleading." It is "unimplementable" and "will lead to the destruction of permanent records."

"This proposal is ill-considered, ill-conceived, and should be terminated with extreme prejudice," said a third.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 3:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

On Iwo Jima's beach, war dead are remembered

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-18-07)

IWO JIMA, Japan -- A breeze carried the scent of salt off sun-speckled waves, and a pod of whales spouted playfully near shore, but it was a prayer of mourning that Yoshitaka Shindo directed toward the sand and surf that stretched before him.

This was Invasion Beach, where 62 years ago 61,000 American marines poured onto this remote volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean, in one of the bloodiest and final campaigns of World War II. It was Shindo's grandfather, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who commanded the badly outnumbered Japanese defenders, most of whom fought to the death.

The blasted concrete bunkers and splintered, rusting machine guns that still litter the island testify to the ferocity of the battle of Iwo Jima, recreated in two recent movies by director Clint Eastwood. Now it is a Japanese airbase that is usually off-limits to civilians, though once a year a joint American- Japanese ceremony is held to mark the battle. Shindo said that he came to pay respects to his grandfather, whose remains have never been found.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:24 AM | Comments (0) | Top

And now, the Hermitage announces a branch location -- in Italy

Source: Times (of London) (3-19-07)

FERRARA, Italy -- The Hermitage in St Petersburg, struggling to display or even catalogue its vast collection of art treasures, is to establish a satellite branch in Italy as its “window on the West”.

The treasures will be housed in the 14th-century Castello Estense, the “jewel” at the heart of Ferrara. A palazzo and park will also be restored to provide a residential study centre for Italian and Russian art experts.

“The Hermitage has three million items and even the Russians don’t know exactly what they’ve got,” said Gaetano Sateriale, the Mayor of Ferrara. “When I went to St Petersburg recently I was stunned to see whole rooms of Etruscan antiquities, far more than Italy itself has. They need our cataloguing skills.”

The move to set up Hermitage Italy confirms a trend, with some of the world’s great museums opening profitable branches abroad.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Assessing the losses to Iraq's heritage

Source: AFP (3-15-07)

CAIRO -- Archaeology in Iraq these days, explains the new caretaker of the country's 5,000-year-old heritage, is less about making new discoveries than finding out what has already been stolen.

"We need a government that takes responsibility for protecting the monuments of all Iraqis," antiquities director Abbas Ali al-Hussainy told AFP in an interview during a recent visit to Cairo.

"Right now we need to take measures to figure out where the sites are and know the extent of the damage and looting at each one," said the slight, bespectacled man.

The pillaging of the Iraqi National Museum in the immediate aftermath of Baghdad's fall in April 2003 shocked the world.

But while many of those antiquities have since been recovered, looting has taken off in the archaeological sites scattered around the perilous countryside.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Across the U.S., a wave of contrition about slavery

Source: Los Angeles Times (3-19-07)

ATLANTA —- More than 140 years after slavery was abolished, Congress and a growing number of elected officials in states and cities are wrestling with whether to formally apologize.

The movement began in the former Confederate capital, Richmond, Va., with state legislators last month unanimously passing a resolution expressing "profound regret" over Virginia's role in slavery and the Jim Crow era.

Now, lawmakers in Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Missouri, Massachusetts and Vermont are considering similar measures that would express regret, apologize or create commemorative days.
The wave of contrition has spread to cities too...

There is wide agreement that such apologies would be largely symbolic political gestures, but there appears to be little consensus on what exactly they would mean.

Some believe official legislative remorse could be cathartic to the nation, showing that it is mature enough to confront its past. But others accuse lawmakers of picking an easy battle: Apologizing for blatant historical wrongs such as slavery, they say, only detracts from addressing present-day injustices.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pakistan's ancient ruins fast disappearing

Source: Reuters (3-18-07)

LAHORE, Pakistan -- Many Pakistani archaeological sites from its thousands of years of rich history are crumbling away as officials tussle over who should look after them.

A cradle of ancient civilizations and crossroads of Greek, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim cultures, Pakistan has a treasure-trove of ruins but many are being built over, pilfered by art thieves and villagers or succumbing to the elements.

The federal government's archaeology department has control over most of the country's main sites but provincial officials argue they should be in charge of looking after their ruins.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The stuff of history, Iraq War's statistics are elusive

Source: Washington Post (3-19-07)

The U.S. war in Iraq enters its fifth year today. That, and 3,197 U.S. military deaths reported by the Pentagon as of 10 a.m. Friday, are among the few numerical certainties in a conflict characterized from the start by confusion and misuse of key data.

In the fog of modern counterinsurgency warfare, statistics have replaced conquered territory as measures of success. Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once dismissed questions about the level of combat-ready Iraqi troops by saying that numbers are only numbers and "misleading" as to the truth, but the Bush administration has supplied a steady stream of them...

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 5:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pol Pot's comrades, seeking forgiveness, are now Christian soldiers

Source: Times (of London) (3-19-07)

PAILIN, Cambodia -- Ten minutes’ bumpy drive from the border with Thailand, past a strip of gaudy casinos and brothels in a landscape of denuded hillsides, is a place where travellers fear to stop.

Throughout Cambodia the border town of Pailin is known —- apart from its gemstones —- as the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge, from where its remnants fought the Government until 1998.

The reputation is enough to send most travellers rushing through to the capital, Phnom Penh, eight hours drive away. Locals say that about 70 per cent of the area’s older men were fighters and that nearly all families have links to the regime blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million of their compatriots between 1975 and 1979.

Among them are men guilty of the worst crimes of the 20th century. Yet in the past four years many who are now law-abiding farmers and traders have renounced their former leader Pol Pot as a servant of Satan; travellers today are likely to suffer nothing worse than a fervent attempt to bring them to the Lord.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 2:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tragic story of Mussolini's wife made into film

Source: Guardian (3-19-07)

A film is to be made about a woman whom Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, tried to airbrush out of history.

Ida Dalser and her son by Mussolini both died in mental institutions after she tried unsuccessfully to force the dictator to recognise their marriage and his son, also named Benito. "Not Even Nero or Caligula would have done what you have done," she once wrote to him.

The story has considerable current relevance because of efforts by the Italian right to rehabilitate the dictator and portray him as a good family man and an essentially harmless, if occasionally misguided, authoritarian...

Although it was known Mussolini had had a relationship with Ida Dalser before the first world war, the evidence for a marriage and the existence of their son was only brought to light in 2001 by a local historian in northern Italy...

In 1926, she was arrested and committed to a mental hospital. The rest of her life was a nightmare of escapes, re-arrests and attempts to trace her son, who had been adopted by the former Fascist police chief of Sopramonte. Ida Dalser died of a "brain haemorrhage" in 1937 at a Venetian institution. Her son died five years later, also in an institution, near Milan.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 2:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Smithsonian documents chief's expenses; 'Dom Perignon' lifestyle, says senator

Source: Washington Post (3-19-07)

Internal Smithsonian documents offer a glimpse into what one senator called the "Dom Perignon" lifestyle of the taxpayer-supported institution's chief official, who turned in a $15,000 receipt for the replacement of French doors at his home and spent $48,000 for two chairs, a conference table and upholstery for his office suite.

Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small's spending has been the subject of intense public scrutiny after The Washington Post published details last month from a confidential inspector general's report delving into his $2 million in housing and office expenses over the past six years....

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 2:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

China begins rebuilding 'world's largest arts and history museum'

Source: Xinhua/ChinaView (3-17-07)

BEIJING -- China commenced a nearly two-year-long enlargement project of the National Museum at the heart of its capital on Saturday.

The National Museum, standing to the east of the Tian'anmen Square in central Beijing, used to be one of the ten celebrated constructions after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949...

According to the project plan, south, north and west wings of the existing buildings will be repaired and reinforced. New buildings will be constructed eastwards...

The National Museum with new buildings will be completed in 2009 and it will cover a land space of 70,000 square meters [750,000 square feet] and 40.3 meters [132 feet] high.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 1:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Colombia to restore birthplace of Nobel author

Source: AP (3-17-07)

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia celebrated the 80th birthday of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez on March 6 with a vow to rebuild the author's childhood home in the banana-producing town of Aracataca and convert it into a museum.

The government pledged $500,000 to reconstruct the home where the author drew inspiration for his trademark magical realism literary style.

According to his 2003 autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, it was on the patio of his thatch-roofed childhood home that the young Garcia Marquez eavesdropped on his grandmother and aunts, whose stories of ghosts visiting in the night and opera-singing parrots would later pepper much of his literature, including his award-winning One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 1:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Butte wants its historic cannon; Fort Sill won't surrender it

Source: AP (3-17-07)

BUTTE, Mont. -- A cannon used in the country's bloodiest war in now at the center of another fight...

Norman DeNeal of Butte wants a Civil War cannon that spent nearly 60 years in the Columbia Gardens returned to [Butte], but an artillery museum at Fort Sill, Okla., won't release the artifact...

In 1903, the cannon was given to Lincoln Post No. 2, a Civil War veterans group, at the behest of copper king and former U.S. Sen. William A. Clark...Clark owned the Columbia Gardens until his death in 1925 when ownership of the park went to the Anaconda Co., DeNeal said. The Anaconda Co. donated the cannon to the museum at Fort Sill on March 7, 1960, when Butte's Civil War veterans were deceased.

DeNeal believes the cannon didn't belong to the company..."There's nothing that says the government can take this back," he said.

The U.S. Army sees it differently. Kelley said military artifacts such as cannons will always belong to the government...

The cannon was built for coastline defense and was used on Angel Island near San Francisco. During the Civil War, the Union Army put the cannon on a barge that patrolled the Mississippi River, DeNeal said.

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 1:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

South Korea: Japan must 'face up to history'

Source: AP (3-18-07)

SEOUL -- South Korea urged Japan to "face up to history" and expressed official regret on Saturday, a day after Tokyo insisted there was no evidence its military or government forced women to work in World War II military brothels.

Japan's Cabinet said in a formal statement Friday that it could not find any proof that the military or government agencies coerced so-called "comfort women" into sexual slavery during the war, repeating a similar claim by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The formal declaration was seen as a slap in the face of Asian nations already outraged over Abe's remarks.

South Korea denounced Japan's declaration as "an attempt to downplay its past wrongdoing and gloss over historical truth."

"We think it is very regrettable," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We hope Japan will face up to history and accept sincere advice from the international community."

Related Links

News analysis: Abe sticks to comments on 'comfort women' (L.A. Times)

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 1:39 AM | Comments (0) | Top

National Trust announces 'Dozen Distinctive Destinations'

Source: AP (3-18-07)

WASHINGTON -- The National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2007 list of a "Dozen Distinctive Destinations" ranges from the town where Monticello is located to Hillsborough, N.C., cited in part as the home of a 1949 NASCAR speedway.

The organization recognizes 12 places each year for their dedication to historic preservation and recommends them as vacation destinations.

While New Orleans was not on the list of 12, the National Trust also commended the city for "exemplary achievement in heritage tourism."

[The dozen are Charlottesville, Va.; Chatham, Mass.; Chestertown, Md.; Durango, Colo.; Ellensburg, Wash.; Hillsborough, N.C.; Little Rock, Ark.; Mineral Point, Wis.; Morgantown, W.Va.; Providence, R.I.; West Hollywood, Calif.; and Woodstock, Ill.]

Related Links

Dozen Distinctive Destinations, 2007 (NTHP)

Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 1:31 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Revellers 'unaware of St Patrick'

Source: BBC (3-16-07)

Almost two-thirds of people celebrating St Patrick's Day have no idea who the priest was, a survey claims.
Guinness sales rise dramatically every year on 17 March as people across the world mark the event.

But its true meaning has been forgotten - or never learnt - by many, according to the Manchester Irish Festival.

Organisers quizzed 2,000 people taking part in its festival parade but only 40% knew of the Christian missionary, who is the patron saint of Ireland....

Folklore tells how the priest, who was eventually elevated to the post of bishop, drove snakes out of Ireland.

The story is thought to symbolise his role in the conversion of the population to Christianity.

St Patrick is traditionally associated with the Shamrock plant, which he used to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 9:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient mashed grapes found in Greece

Source: Discovery News (3-16-07)

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 9:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

British port of Liverpool confronts its evil past

Source: AP (3-18-07)

Beatles lovers who seek out Penny Lane imagine it as that magical place "in my ears and in my eyes, there beneath the blue suburban skies." But it has a sinister undertone that still reverberates.

The street in Liverpool, hometown of the Fab Four, is named after James Penny, a slave trader and investor in 11 voyages that took 500 to 600 captives at a time to the New World.

Penny was among the many who enriched themselves and their city on human trafficking until the slave trade was abolished 200 years ago. Their ships carried millions of human beings from west Africa to the plantations of the Americas in a triangular trade that also brought profitable cargoes of sugar, tobacco and rum to England.

Liverpool’s rise, says local historian Ray Costello, is summed up in the carving on a bank facade: two black children supporting Liverpool as Neptune.

"What it really means is that this bank was founded on the slave trade," Costello said.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 8:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saving history in New Orleans

Source: http://www.news-record.com (3-12-07)

They're toiling 8 to 5, trying to rescue history. Occasionally, occupants of cars yell hostile words about the strangers in their midst.

Still, the angry are the exception.

Most New Orleans residents tolerate the presence of two UNCG professors and 12 graduate students in history and interior architecture.

They're devoting their spring break to helping rescue historic buildings damaged by Hurricane Katrina or years of neglect.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 8:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

When should the Civil War sesquicentennial be commemorated? Pennsylvania, for one, considers

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (3-18-07)

Using Web sites and pod casts as teaching tools was one of the ideas discussed at a meeting yesterday to start planning Pennsylvania's 150th, or "sesquicentennial," commemoration of the Civil War...

[Sen. John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center President Andrew] led the discussion that looked at how and when events from the Civil War era should be remembered.

The 100th commemoration of the War Between the States gave short shrift to such topics as slavery and the role of women, he said. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission is making sure those subjects get the coverage this time, he said.

A weekend storm kept Linda Shopes, the commission's director for "Telling Pennsylvania's Civil War Stories," in Harrisburg. She sent a statement, however, outlining the four key themes of the state's "New Narratives" project. They are "Slavery and Freedom," "The War's Impact on Local Communities," "Women and the Home Front" and "Commemoration and Memory."

Topics discussed yesterday included when commemorative activities should begin. While the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, S.C., on April 12, 1861, its roots and causes went back many years.

Sam Black, curator of the Heinz Center's African-American collection, argued for an event as early as 2008, which marks the 200th anniversary of U.S. abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. [Britain is marking that anniversary in 2007.]

Others proposed 2009, which will mark the 150th anniversary of John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry. Mr. Brown and a small group of abolitionists attacked a U.S. arsenal in what is now West Virginia, seeking to spark and arm a slave rebellion. Mr. Brown was captured by federal troops led by Robert E. Lee, convicted of treason and hanged.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 8:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Afghanistan's house of history restored

Source: David Piper, Fox News (3-18-07)

It’s just one of many bomb-damaged villas on the outskirts of Kabul. But it is, perhaps, the most important building in Afghanistan, as it houses the rich history of this war-torn country. The museum in Kabul houses what’s left of the artifacts that have survived the fighting...

Afghan and Italian experts have painstakingly put back together hundreds of priceless statues, carvings and other artifacts that had been damaged or even smashed to pieces by thieves and the Taliban...

I learned later that many of the statues had been found in pieces in the storeroom of the museum, which had been ransacked many times but still gave up such priceless artifacts when the experts managed to work their way through the debris.

Others had been left in pieces in the grounds of the museum...

This past weekend 1,400 artifacts protected from looters and the Taliban in far-off Switzerland have been returned to the Kabul museum.

News reports say one of the first items to be placed in the museum was a small Buddah statue from Bamiyan, where the Taliban had blown up the giant statues.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 8:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tragedy fades if not kept vivid (NYC)

Source: NYT (3-18-07)

In a city this vast, a handful of terrible events acquire the power of parable and mark neighborhoods for decades. The 1964 death of Kitty Genovese, a lone woman tracked and stabbed by a killer on a leafy Kew Gardens street while her neighbors averted their eyes and failed to call the police, became a national symbol of urban anomie. In Bensonhurst in 1989, 16-year-old Yusef Hawkins was shot and killed for the mistake of being black in a white neighborhood. In death he came to personify a city’s undigested racial rage and a black community’s search for justice.

Who knows where a murderous rampage in Greenwich Village or a fire that killed 10 people, 9 of them children, from two Malian families might stand in the dark annals of a city’s history?

“One of a great city’s functions is to serve as a repository of memory,” said Francis Morrone, a historian and lecturer on the culture of the city. “We need to be a place that preserves not just happy times and grand buildings, but those memories that affect us on the deepest level.”

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 7:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Do you know where that art has been?

Source: NYT (3-18-07)

... Some of the world’s most prestigious museums have been sullied by accusations of acquiring artwork that was believed to have once been looted or stolen. The J. Paul Getty Museum of Art in Los Angeles agreed to return to Italy nearly two dozen artworks whose provenance was in dispute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York returned to Italy the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old vessel for mixing water and wine that the Italian government said had been looted by tomb raiders.

As the provenance of antiquities and artworks is questioned, so is the provenance of dealers themselves.

The new wariness of collectors, both public and private, to buy or exhibit works that do not have the most rigorously documented history jeopardizes the business of even the most established dealers.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 7:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

DeLay in memoir disparages Gingrich

Source: NYT (3-18-07)

Mr. DeLay [in his new memoir, “No Retreat, No Surrender” ] credits Mr. Gingrich as having a gift for politics, but the tensions between the two were no secret. He is dismissive of Mr. Gingrich’s tenure as speaker after he led the effort to break the 40-year Democratic grip on the House.

Mr. DeLay, who defeated Mr. Gingrich’s choice for party whip, calls Mr. Gingrich an “ineffective speaker of the House.” “He knew nothing about running meetings and nothing about driving an agenda,” he writes. “Newt wanted to turn the ship of state on a dime. Nearly every other day he had a new agenda, a new direction he wanted us to take. It was impossible to follow him.”

The comments have drawn the attention of Mr. Gingrich, who is considering a presidential bid. In an interview, Mr. Gingrich listed a series of accomplishments during his reign in the House, including the first tax cuts in 16 years, welfare changes, institutional improvements, a balanced budget, increased intelligence spending and the holding of a majority after the ousting of the entrenched Democrats.

“What I would say is take that list of accomplishments, and you can then ask Mr. DeLay what the comparable accomplishments were after I left,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 7:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hagel and McCain: Different Vietnam Wars

Source: NYT (3-18-07)

Senator Chuck Hagel spent 13 months as a lowly grunt in the Mekong Delta in the deadliest period of the Vietnam War. He saw the horror of war from the bottom up — men sheared in half by explosives, half-decapitated by sniper fire, bleeding to death in the gloomy swelter of the jungle. Thirty years later, he came to believe he had been used.

Senator John McCain was shot down 3,500 feet above Hanoi on a bombing run one month into his tour. He spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war; he was held in solitary confinement, tortured, beaten until he could not stand. An admiral’s son and a Navy pilot, he came to believe, like many pilots, that the war had been winnable, if only it had been fought right.

Memories of Vietnam haunt the public debate on the war in Iraq. They also lurk in the private thoughts of a generation in Congress — men like Senators Hagel and McCain, who lived through the earlier war, vote on the current one and, despite their shared past, now disagree profoundly on what the United States should do next.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 7:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

U.S. Holocaust survivors join lawsuit against French rail over transport links to Nazi death camps

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (3-18-07)

Ernest Hirsch was a scared 9-year-old in a French children's home the last time he heard from his mother...

Shortly after Hirsch got that letter, his parents were forced onto a train headed for death. When they arrived at Auschwitz, "they were marched directly to the gas chambers and killed," he said.

Hirsch, 75, is one of more than 100 Americans who have joined a groundbreaking legal action here against the French railway Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer (SNCF), which transported thousands of Jews during World War II to transit hubs on their way to their deaths. It's the same state-owned train system that now carries commuters to their jobs. Some 76,000 Jews in France were transported to Nazi death camps; only 2,500 of them survived.

In a first-of-its-kind ruling last summer, 62 years after the war ended, an administrative tribunal in Toulouse, France, fined the SNCF and the French republic $80,000 for their role in transporting a Jewish family. The railway is appealing. [The Toulouse finding is the first such ruling against the French republic or one of its agencies.]

The case could be one of the last significant legal actions on behalf of Holocaust survivors, many of whom have already died of old age...

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 7:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Honour for another anti-slavery crusader

Source: Independent (3-17-07)

The tomb of the father of the abolitionist movement is to be given listed status in recognition of his pivotal role in outlawing the slave trade.

Granville Sharp, who campaigned tirelessly to see slavery abolished, is to have his tomb protected after David Lammy, the Culture minister, ruled that it was of "special historical interest."

The decision comes on the eve of the bicentenary of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, which will be marked by a service at Westminster Abbey and events throughout the UK.

Sharp -- whose efforts to emancipate slaves will, along with William Wilbeforce, be commemorated in a stamp -- wrote more than 60 books about the mistreatment of slaves.

The civil servant and lawyer travelled around the country collecting evidence of the abuse of slaves, including their mistreatment on slave ships...

"Wilberforce played a big part in Parliament but the importance of Granville Sharp in the abolitionist movement is often underplayed. He was one of the earliest, most dedicated and most radical opponents of slavery," said Dr John Gilmore, associate professor at Warwick University.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 2:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Cleaning up the past in northeast Asia

Source: New York Times (3-18-07)

BEIJING -- FOR more than three years, the grinding, often exasperating negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program have been about taking the bomb away from Kim Jong-il. As if that were not complicated enough, the agenda is now becoming more ambitious. One new goal could be loosely described as cleaning up the 20th century...

History can be omnipresent or repressed in northeast Asia, but nearly everyone agrees it is festering and unresolved. Historic resentments and nationalist anger are volatile and easily inflamed...

[Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and chief American envoy] has often cast the disarmament talks as part of a larger, holistic effort to address the full range of conflicts in the region.

“We are dealing not only with denuclearization, but we are dealing with some of the problems in the region, some of the problems in the region caused by the region’s difficult history,” Mr. Hill said at one news conference during last month’s negotiations in Beijing. “This type of ambitious undertaking hasn’t been tried before.”

“Difficult history” is a gracious description. On some days, World War II seems ongoing...

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Italian archivists gather forgotten music of Holocaust

Source: AP (3-18-07)

ROME -- A waltz. A tango. A piece of jazz. But they weren't composed in Vienna, Buenos Aires or New Orleans. Scribbled on diaries, loose pages or even toilet paper, these are the notes left behind by people who lived and died in the prisons and concentration camps of World War II.

Italian researchers hope thousands of nearly forgotten works will find new life as they assemble a library of music composed or played in those dark places between 1933 and 1945.

"We are trying to right a great wrong: These musicians were hoping for a musical life for themselves, and they would have had it if their destiny had been different," said Italian musician Francesco Lotoro.

He has been collecting originals, copies and recordings of everything from operas composed in the depth of the Nazi death machine to jazz pieces written in Japanese POW camps in Asian jungles.

The library, set to open in September at Rome's Third University, will offer scholars a repertoire of 4,000 papers and 13,000 microfiches including music sheets, letters, drawings and photos.

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 2:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Important in 1314, maybe, but Scottish hill could be flattened now

Source: UPI (3-18-07)

STIRLING, Scotland -- A hill that, tradition has it, played a big role in Scotland's victory over the English at Bannockburn may be lost to quarrying.

Robert the Bruce's servants or gillies supposedly hid behind Gillies Hill during the battle. When they emerged, the English thought they were reinforcements and retreated.

Now, the Cambusbarron Local Council warns that stone quarrying could take most of the hill down. Its profile has been altered by the removal of rock in the past century.

Bruce defeated English King Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314, making himself king of Scotland...Fiona MacDonald, a lecturer in history at the University of Stirling, said the gillies' emergence appears to have been the turning point of the battle.

"It was the final straw for the English and chaos ensued," she said. "Whatever was left of the English army fled. This was the moment when Edward II was persuaded to leave the field."

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 2:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Regal blood flows through the veins of many Irishmen

Source: ABC (3-17-07)

On St. Patrick's Day, everyone feels a little bit Irish. Officially, 34 million Americans can trace some of their ancestry to Ireland. But did you know how many can claim royal Irish blood? Well, using DNA tests, scientists at Trinity College in Dublin discovered some very regal results.

With its ancient castles and folklore, many in Ireland had long claimed royal descent. Never from an English king, of course. That would be cultural sacrilege. But rather, many traced their line back to a 5th-century Irish ruler named, dauntingly, Niall of the Nine Hostages.

"You get that feeling just being here," said Brendan Rohan, a resident of Donegal, Ireland, the historical home of King Niall. "Something in the land, something in the air and something in the bones of the people has a connection."

Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 at 2:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Irena's list: Holocaust heroine's untold story

Source: Independent (3-16-07)

This week, a 97-year-old Polish woman was finally honoured for saving thousands of Jewish children from extermination in Nazi death camps. Claire Soares tells her extraordinary tale.

Behind the doors of a Polish nursing home sits a woman who might be described as the female Oskar Schindler. She didn't have his industrial machinery or his financial might, but the one-time health worker rescued twice as many Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust. Nearly 2,500 children were saved from Warsaw's Ghetto and an almost certain death in the concentration camps -- all thanks to Irena Sendlerowa.

Ms Sendlerowa, now 97, smuggled Jewish babies and children out in sacks, through sewer pipes and even hidden under stretchers in ambulances. They were then farmed out to non-Jewish foster families where they were given false identities and taught to speak Polish and rattle off Christian prayers so they could fool prying Gestapo officers...

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

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Bison once again roam below the Rockies

Source: AP (3-17-07)

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. -- After an absence of more than a century, wild bison were returned to Colorado's Front Range on Saturday in full view of Denver's skyline.

Sixteen buffalo from the National Bison Range in northwestern Montana were released in an enclosed 1,400-acre section of a wildlife refuge that formerly was the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where nerve gas and other chemical weapons were manufactured...

The 17,000-acre arsenal is being cleaned up and transformed from a chemical weapons and pesticide manufacturing center into the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 5:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hundreds of Afghan artifacts return to Kabul from Swiss safekeeping

Source: AP (3-17-07)

KABUL, Afghanistan -- More than 1,400 artifacts -- protected from looters and the Taliban since 1999 at a museum-in-exile in Switzerland -- were returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan on Saturday.

The collection, which includes a piece from a foundation stone that was "touched by Alexander the Great" and several items thousands of years old, was assembled in Switzerland by Afghans who wanted to save their cultural heritage after decades of war.

The oldest artifact dates back 3,500 years, and the collection spans "countless" empires to which Afghanistan once belonged, said Paul Bucherer, director of the Afghanistan Museum in the northwestern Swiss town of Bubendorf. The Swiss museum, which received about 50,000 visitors since opening in 2000, is now closed.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 5:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China's few Manchu speakers struggle to save language

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-17-07)

SANJIAZI, China -- Seated cross-legged in her farmhouse on the kang, a brick sleeping platform warmed by a fire below, Meng Shujing lifted her chin and sang a lullaby in Manchu, softly but clearly...

Meng is one of 18 residents of this isolated village in northeastern China, all older than 80, who, according to Chinese linguists and historians, are the last native speakers of Manchu.

Descendants of seminomadic tribesmen who conquered China in the 17th century, they are the last living link to a language that for more than two and a half centuries was the official voice of the Qing Dynasty, the final imperial house to rule from Beijing and one of the richest and most powerful empires the world has known.

With the passing of these villagers, Manchu will also die, experts say. All that will be left will be millions of documents and files in Chinese and foreign archives, along with inscriptions on monuments and important buildings in China, unintelligible to all but a handful of specialists.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 3:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Black artist's Confederate flag hanging from gallows ignites controversy

Source: AP (3-17-07)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Confederate flag hanging from a noose on a 13-foot (4-meter) gallows will remain on display despite protests from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who call it an affront to Southern heritage.

"The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag" by black artist John Sims is "offensive, objectionable and tasteless," Robert Hurst, commander of the local camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Friday.

But the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science said it stands by Sims' work, part of a larger exhibit called "AfroProvocations," because it wants to inspire dialogue.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 3:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Irish preservationists angry over removal of ancient earth structures

Source: Belfast (Ireland) Telegraph (3-17-07)

The group lobbying for the re-routing out of the M3 motorway is hitting out at the removal of a series of ancient underground buildings from the site in the past week.

A team of archaeologists removed the souterrains this week, which date back to the early Christian era. ['Souterrain is a name given by archaeologists to a type of underground structure associated with the Atlantic Iron Age. Regional names include fogous and Pictish houses and they appear to have been brought northwards from Gaul during the late Iron age.'--Wikipedia]

The National Roads Authority says historical buildings like this were relatively common in Ireland.

Siobhan Rice of the TaraWatch lobby group says she is heartbroken over the works.

"We have asked time and time again that independent archaeologists be allowed to inspect these sites -- and to no avail. All of our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. I don't think it would happen in any other country in Europe -- it's an absolute disgrace," she said.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 3:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

FBI file said to link Bobby Kennedy to Monroe's death

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (3-17-07)

For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario.

Bobby Kennedy's affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of -- and perhaps even a participant in -- a plan "to induce" her suicide.

The detailed three-page report implicates the Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, Monroe's psychiatrist, staff and her publicist in the plot...

The document, hidden among thousands of pages released under freedom-of-information laws last October, was received by the FBI on October 19, 1964 -- two years after her death -- and titled simply "ROBERT F KENNEDY"

. It was compiled by an unnamed former special agent working for the then Democrat governor of California, Pat Brown, and forwarded to Washington by Curtis Lynum, then head of the San Francisco FBI...

Related Links

FBI file 'Marilyn Monroe Cross References, 66 pages'

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 4:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

'Killing fields' trials step closer as tribunal rules agreed

Source: Reuters (3-17-07)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders moved a big step closer on Friday as international and Cambodian judges said they had finally agreed on the rules of the tribunal.

"The review committee discussed in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreements, although some fine tuning remains to be done," they said in a statement at the end of 10 days of talks.

Disagreements which had held up the start of the tribunal, set up last year by Cambodia and the United Nations, ranged from admissibility of evidence and witness protection to the height of the judges' chairs.

The statement gave few details of what the agreement entailed, but it appeared to have ended what diplomats said was the threat of the U.N. side to walk away from trials expected to take three years and cost $53 million.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 4:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Washington jury, on stage, deadlocks on judging Hamlet's insanity defense

Source: Washington Post (3-17-07)

Poetic justice is not so easily meted out, as a distinguished gaggle of lawyers and psychiatrists found out when gathered on Thursday night to consider the sanity of Hamlet.

After two hours of mock-trial arguments at the Kennedy Center -- presided over by no less a jurist than Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy -- a jury of Washingtonians deliberated over whether Hamlet was in his right mind when he stabbed Polonius to death. In elegant tribute to Shakespeare's enigmatic masterpiece, the jurors deadlocked, 6 to 6.

Sitting on the Eisenhower Theater stage under a towering portrait of Shakespeare, Kennedy told Joshua Drew, the young actor playing the sullen defendant, that the verdict "leaves us no choice but to remand you to the pages of our literary heritage."

With that, the exercise -- applying modern legal and psychological standards to a character who must qualify as the most tirelessly scrutinized in Western literature -- was complete. "The Trial of Hamlet," the brainchild of Justice Kennedy and the Shakespeare Theatre Company, proved to be a diverting showcase for some incisive analytical thinkers.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 4:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Maryland Senate latest to express 'profound regret' for slavery

Source: Washington Post (3-17-07)

The Maryland Senate agreed to express "profound regret" for the state's role in the slave trade with unanimous approval of a resolution that acknowledges the responsibility the state had in maintaining "the institution of slavery and its attendant evils."...

The Maryland resolution, which appears likely to win approval in the House as well, says slavery "fostered a climate of oppression" not just for slaves and their descendants but for other people of color who moved to Maryland after slavery was abolished and has "afflicted the citizens of this state down to the present."

Sen. Nathaniel Exum (D-Prince George's), whose great-grandfather was a slave, sponsored the Maryland legislation, hoping to empower African Americans. Exum has tried unsuccessfully for years to get legislation passed.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 4:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

L.A. museum reverses decision on sale of ancient Indian sculpture

Source: Los Angeles Times (3-17-07)

An ancient Indian sculpture quietly consigned for sale in a New York gallery by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be returned to the museum, LACMA Director Michael Govan said, as the museum reconsiders policies on the perpetually controversial issue of such "de-accessions."

"I'm very conservative on de-accessioning," Govan said in a telephone interview Thursday. "LACMA's existing policies are standard. You may see those policies change in the future — you will probably see them get tighter — but that will take serious consultation with curators and members of the board."

Govan said the turnabout on the Indian work came in response to questions about the propriety of the sale raised earlier this week by retired LACMA curator Pratapaditya Pal, a leading scholar of Indian art.

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 4:07 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan's latest sex slave statement could fuel furore; U.S. envoy says, 'The events speak for themselves"

Source: Reuters (3-16-07)

TOKYO -- A diplomatic furore over Japan's wartime brothels looked unlikely to fade after Tokyo said on Friday a 14-year-old study had found no evidence the government or military officials had kidnapped women to act as prostitutes.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's latest statement -- which was issued in response to an opposition lawmaker's query and which also reiterated that Japan stood by a 1993 apology -- came as the U.S. ambassador to Japan said he believed the women were forced to act as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War Two.

"I take the word of the women that testified," U.S. envoy Thomas Schieffer told a group of journalists. Three former sex slaves testified to U.S. Congress last month.

"I think that they were coerced to engage in prostitution ... That means they were raped by Japanese military at that point in time," he added. "I think that happened and I think it was a regrettable, terrible thing that it happened.

"I think the events speak for themselves."

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 4:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 16, 2007

Chopin's own grand piano discovered in Surrey country house

Source: Times (of London) (3-17-07)

Musicians have always sought to replicate the divine sounds that Frédéric Chopin made on the piano at the height of his powers. Now they have a chance to do exactly that, after the discovery of the composer’s own grand piano, which he brought to England in 1848 for the last great concert tour of his life.

Chopin’s French-made piano disappeared into obscurity after his death, but more than 150 years later it has been tracked down to an English country house.

Two decades ago Alec Cobbe, a collector of antique keyboard instruments, purchased the Pleyel piano for just £2,000. However, it was not until this year that the instrument was revealed to be Chopin’s own beloved instrument, after a remarkable piece of detective work by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, one of the foremost Chopin scholars.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

1.8m pound Gaelic opera on 1930 evacuation of Outer Hebridean isles to tour Europe

Source: Times (of London) (3-10-07)

They were known to sailors as "the isles at the edge of the world" but, more than 75 years after the last inhabitants were evacuated, the story of St Kilda is being taken this June to four European countries in a £1.8 million Gaelic opera.

The language may be spoken by only 1.2 per cent of the population in Scotland, but this has not stopped the producers of St Kilda: A European Opera from seeking, in local-language productions, to introduce its sounds and rhythms to audiences in France, Germany, Belgium and Austria. Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, will host an all-Gaelic version.

The opera is being funded by grants, including £600,000 from the European Commission. Critics felt that the money could have been better spent supporting the language at grassroots level.

The 82-minute opera, to start and end with a live satellite broadcast of Gaelic singing on St Kilda, will be set against a video backdrop of dancers gyrating on ropes suspended from the cliffs.

[St Kilda is located west of the Outer Hebrides. It was evacuated in 1930, bequeathed to the National Trust of Scotland in 1957, and became one of Scotland's four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2005.]

Related Links

St Kilda (National Trust of Scotland)
St Kilda (Scottish government nomination as World Heritage Site; PDF)

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 9:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Exhibit considers Nazis' deadly promotion of eugenics

Source: AP (3-11-07)

PITTSBURGH -- Adolf Hitler used the theory of eugenics in his quest to create a master race, legitimizing the murder of thousands deemed unfit for the German race and culminating in the genocide of 6 million Jews.

But the idea behind eugenics —- improving a population's health through genetics — was hardly unique to Germany, as shown by a traveling exhibit developed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and on display at The Andy Warhol Museum.

"Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" uses 200 photographs, videotaped survivor stories and several dozen artifacts to trace eugenics' development as a perversion of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to its Nazi justification for genocide.

The exhibit also looks at eugenics in other countries, including Norway, Spain, Brazil, Japan and the United States, where nearly 300 "eugenic sterilizations" were done at Mendocino State Hospital between 1909 and 1935.

Perhaps most chilling is how seemingly easy its noble-sounding goal was twisted. After all, who could argue against improving health? It was Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics from Greek, meaning "good birth," in 1883.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Harvey Milk sculpture planned for S.F. City Hall

Source: AP (3-9-07)

SAN FRANCISCO -- A bronze bust of the first openly gay man to hold a prominent elected office in the United States is going up in City Hall, more than 28 years after he was assassinated.

Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 and shot to death a year later, along with Mayor George Moscone, by fellow supervisor Dan White. White was convicted of manslaughter, and served a little more than three years in prison before committing suicide.

The bronze sculpture will sit atop a stone base inscribed with a quote from one of his most famous speeches.

Related Links

Photo of DFH Sculptors Group model

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 9:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Will Istanbul ever have a city history museum?

Source: Turkish Daily News (Ankara) (3-10-07)

ISTANBUL -- The Darphane-i Amire Building, which was given in 1995 to the History Foundation (Tarih Vakfı) for 49 years with the aim of founding an Istanbul city museum, was sealed due to risk of collapse.

The building has been a subject of dispute between the History Foundation and Culture Ministry. Based on a report from last year citing the building was seriously damaged, orders were given for the building to be evacuated by Feb. 22...

History Foundation Chairman of the Board Halim Bulutoğlu says...that the building was creaky and full of dirt when it was given to them, but that they restored it, preparing it for the Habitat Summit in a short period of 10 months...

Saying that Istanbul's history does not begin with the Ottomans, he adds the city's whole history dating back to the pre-Eastern Roman Empire will be exhibited in the museum...

Drawing attention to the fact that ghettos have formed in Istanbul, Bulutoğlu blames groups that do not understand or listen to each other for the recent troubling events. He believes that the problem grows every day and that it fuels micro-nationalism...

Bulutoğlu says it is very concerning that an important subject such as the city museum has become an issue of dispute. He emphasizes that they plan to realize the museum with an understanding free from all prejudices and political opinions, basing it entirely on scientific foundations...

Contacted for his opinion on this subject, Topkapı Palace Museum Director İlber Ortaylı says the History Foundation has been occupying the building for the past 10 years without having accomplished anything toward founding the city museum. He points out the fact that the building is under an increasing risk of collapse.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 9:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Forbidden City to host British history exhibition

Source: Xinhua/ChinaView (3-8-07)

BEIJING -- The Forbidden City -- once off-limits to ordinary citizens and foreigners - [is hosting] a British history exhibition...

The exhibition named "Britain Meets the World 1714-1830" [is being] held at the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, in Beijing...to June 10.

The exhibition will explore Britain's engagement with the world during the Georgian period when the nation was emerging as an international power.

The three-month exhibition will showcase 111 artifacts from the British Museum, including paintings by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, many of which have never been exhibited outside of the British islands.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

British tombs reveal Stone Age massacre

Source: National Geographic News (3-16-07)

Gruesome evidence found in ancient burial chambers reveals a period of violence and instability in Stone Age Britain, according to archaeologists.

Signs of bloody massacres and fractured societies are emerging from research that used new dating techniques to age prehistoric skeletons and burial sites in southern England.

The sites include Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire, where the remains of 14 people show evidence of an ancient massacre, according to a team led by the U.K. government body English Heritage.

Eleven of the skeletons were of adult males, at least three of whom were likely killed by arrows, the team reported. One man still had the tip of a flint arrowhead embedded in his pelvic bone...

Analysis using radiocarbon dating and other archaeological clues placed the age of all the bones at around 3570 B.C., some 800 years before Stonehenge was built in the same region.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 8:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UC linguist dates St. Patrick half-century earlier

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (3-16-07)

Scholars differ on much about the life of St. Patrick, but they tend to agree that his mission of walking the Emerald Isle to spread the gospel of Christ fits squarely into the 5th century A.D.

But now comes a challenge from a Patrick sleuth at UC Berkeley, Daniel Melia, a professor of rhetoric and Celtic studies -- and incidentally a former "Jeopardy" champion who won a quarter of a million dollars and a silver Corvette he still drives.

Melia has studied linguistic details of Patrick's writings and is prepared to argue that the Christian priest who evangelized most of what is now Ireland lived from the late 4th to early 5th centuries -- 50 years earlier than the dates generally agreed upon by Patrick scholars.

The argument poses no threat to Patrick's sainthood, which is based on myths layered on by later generations.

And there's no risk to the secular feast day of March 17, which historians maintain is the date Patrick passed on after his rugged life of proselytizing among Britain's pagan Celts. That date, Melia says, is legendary as well and may have been set long ago to mark a spring folk festival...

His [formal paper] is scheduled in July when he presents his findings to the XIIIth International Congress of Celtic Studies in Bonn, Germany.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 8:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Georgia slavery apology likely -- and so is 'Confederate History Month'

Source: AP (3-16-07)

ATLANTA -- Georgia's top Republican state senator said Friday he expects that the state will follow Virginia's lead and apologize for its role in slavery.

State Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson said he has been meeting with prominent black leaders in Georgia to craft a strategy and believed something could pass before the legislative session concludes in mid-April...

Johnson has been meeting with [state Rep. Al] Williams, D-Midway, Rep. Tyrone Brooks, D-Atlanta and state Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, all prominent black leaders...

Johnson said the issue in Georgia is tied together with a separate Senate bill which cleared committee this week that would permanently designate April Confederate History and Heritage Month in Georgia.

Some black leaders had said they were offended that the Republican-led state Legislature would push that bill without an apology for the slavery that was a part of the era.

Brooks and Thurmond said they expected the apology would be combined with the Confederate History proposal.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 8:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Groups in Brazil Aim to Call Military Torturers to Account

Source: NYT (3-16-07)

Frustrated by their own government’s timidity but encouraged by recent court rulings in Argentina and Chile, Brazilian human rights groups are seeking to overturn an amnesty for human rights abuses that went into effect in 1979, when a right-wing military dictatorship ruled this nation.

A family of five jailed earlier in the 1970s has filed a civil action against Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who was then the commander of Center for Operations for Internal Defense here. A judge has agreed to hear the complaint, the first time that a Brazilian military officer has been formally called to account for the torture of political prisoners during the dictatorship.

“This has a lot to do with historical context, and not just in Brazil,” said Cecilia Coimbra, a leader of the human rights group Torture Never Again. “Other countries have advanced a lot further, both in terms of punishing those responsible for abuses and opening their archives. And since our government still insists on sitting on the wall, we have to take the offensive ourselves.”

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 7:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Oliver North and Smithsonian at war again

Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History (3-16-07)

This week, the Smithsonian Institution and conservative commentator and Fox News personality Oliver North were once again at odds over his use of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center to film a documentary.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 5:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient perfume factory found on Cyprus

Source: UPI (3-16-07)

ROME -- Archaeologists exploring Cyprus, said to be home to Venus, the goddess of love, have stumbled upon the world's oldest known perfume factory.

A display of the prehistoric scents and 60 objects from the Cyprus discovery can be seen at Rome's Capitoline Museums, ANSA reported. The distilling equipment is believed to be 4,000 years old.

"We were astonished at how big the place was ... Perfumes must have been produced on an industrial scale. No wonder the island got its reputation for possessing the skills of Aphrodite," said National Research Council archaeologist Maria Rosa Belgiorno, using the Greek name for Venus, ANSA reported.

Perfumes are displayed in alabaster vials found in 2003 and are made of olive oil, pine, coriander, laurel, bergamot, parsley and bitter almonds, ANSA said.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 3:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Youths probed for daubing swastikas on sheep

Source: Reuters (3-16-07)

BERLIN -- German police said on Thursday they were investigating four youths for spraying sheep with swastikas, the cross-like symbol used by the Nazis.

The youths, between the ages of 15 and 18, painted swastikas on several sheep out of a herd of around 30 near the northwestern town of Etzenborn, police said.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 3:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Iraq's Cultural Curators Defy Sectarian Unrest

Source: NPR (3-16-07)

Cultural life in Iraq is reeling after years of attacks linked to the violence that has gripped the country since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Although much has been lost with the targeting of cultural icons and institutions, people interested in books, music and art are still finding ways to breathe life into Iraq's intellectual community.

The most visible recent attack was a bombing this month at the booksellers market on al-Mutanabi street in Baghdad.

After four years of conflict, it is the familiar litany of tragedy in Iraq.

But against all odds, an institution that collects books and documents is being rebuilt just down the road. It's the Iraq National Library and Archive.

The library is literally rising from the ashes and being turned into something that goes far beyond what it was before.

Saad Eskander is the head of the National Library. When he took it over in late 2003 it had been looted and burned, a few plastic chairs were all that remained.

Now it's a spotless hive of activity which he's proud to show off. One room is filled with state-of-the-art computer systems....

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 2:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

NYT TimesSelect To Be Free For College Students, Faculty

Source: Staci Kramer at http://www.paidcontent.org (3-12-07)

In January ‘06, NYT.com began offering its premium TimesSelect for half price to academics. It seemed like a pretty good deal at the time, yet when I did the math last August, the academic subscriptions accounted for less than 2 percent of the paying subs—about 3,800 total then. Now the site is taking a new approach: TimesSelect will be free to registered college students and faculty with an .edu email address. Current students subs will get pro-rated refunds.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 2:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Georgia lawmakers ok Confederate History Month

Source: WSBTV (Atlanta) (3-16-07)

The NAACP is bristling over efforts by lawmakers to create a Confederate history month in Georgia, while giving short shrift to a proposal that the state apologize for slavery and the Jim Crow laws of segregation.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 12:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German Holocaust Denier Imprisoned for Inciting Racial Hatred

Source: Deustche Welle (3-16-07)

A German court sentenced Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf to two and a half years in prison for inciting racial hatred in publications and Web sites which "systematically" called into question the Nazi genocide.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Science trumping tourism in China's "Valley of Kings"

Source: Yahoo News (3-14-07)

A heated debate over whether to excavate one of the 28 imperial tombs dotting the outskirts of China's ancient capital of Xian has resurfaced with a respected economist weighing in on the advantages to the nation of opening the royal grave.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Archives intern sold Civil War items on eBay, prosecutors say

Source: AP (3-16-07)

PHILADELPHIA -- An intern with the National Archives stole about 165 Civil War documents —- including the War Department's announcement of President Lincoln's death —- and sold most of them on eBay, prosecutors charged Thursday.

Denning McTague, who runs a Web site that sells rare books, worked at a National Archives and Records Administration site in Philadelphia last summer, prosecutors said.

McTague, 40, of Philadelphia, has helped officials recover most of the missing items and plans to plead guilty, his lawyer said.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:28 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Japanese court dismisses slave labor suit

Source: UPI (3-16-07)

TOKYO -- The Tokyo High Court has ruled that Chinese nationals brought to Japan for slave labor have waited too long to seek compensation.

The court reversed a lower court ruling that the plaintiffs were entitled to damages, Kyodo News Service said. While acknowledging that laborers forced to work in Japan were wronged, the court rejected the claim for 25 million yen ($215,000) for each plaintiff from the government and Riinko Corp.

The suit was brought by six former Chinese laborers and the survivors of 22 others who have died.

The high court said there was a 20-year deadline for making a claim. At the time it expired, Japan and China had no diplomatic relations, which only resumed in 1972.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Communities from Florence to Nashville battle to keep art treasures from leaving

Source: Christian Science Monitor (3-16-07)

Florence is a city known for its art –- and often, for its art feuds. So it was no surprise to many in the Tuscan city that last Monday, Italian Sen. Paolo Amato chained himself to the entrance of the Uffizi museum.

Senator Amato, a vocal proponent of keeping one of Florence's most precious paintings within Florence, was protesting the museum's plan to loan Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, "The Annunciation," to Japan. He was ultimately unsuccessful.

The protest marked a low point in a battle that has long roiled Europe's art circles: Can a city lay claim to a piece of art? Or does art belong to individual collectors and galleries? The Florence fiasco is all too familiar to the United States art community, which is increasingly ensnared in its own fights over ownership...

On Sunday, Tennessee's attorney general will probably close America's most recent bout – an uproar over Fisk University's intention to sell two of its most prized paintings, Georgia O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building" and Marsden Hartley's "Painting No. 3."

The Nashville school argues it has little choice but to sell the pair, together worth more than $10 million. Operating costs are slowly depleting Fisk's endowment –- even the gallery that normally displays the pieces is closed due to a leaky roof. The university hopes the proceeds from the sale can repair the gallery and aid the school financially.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Online rebellion forces China censors to back down on banned history, social issue books

Source: Times (of London) (3-16-07)

BEIJING -- A wave of online outrage has forced Chinese censors into an unprecedented decision to allow eight banned books to remain on the shelves.

The books, which touch on long-taboo historical and social issues, remained on sale yesterday, even in official bookstores despite an official ban, with penalties —- including fines —- imposed on the publishing houses, which have been told not to print more copies...

Demand has been high. At the respected All Sages bookshop in Beijing, Cang Sang, by Xiao Jian, which tells the tale of a man from the 1911 fall of the last emperor to the Great Leap Forward in 1958, sold out this week.

Publication on the internet of a second letter by the renowned author, Zhang Yihe, will only add to the authorities’ woes.

Officials at the General Administration of Press and Publication —- effectively China’s office of censorship —- were stunned when news of their unannounced ban provoked a furious response from bloggers. The censorship office and the way it introduced the ban secretly came in for criticism.

Zhang, who spent ten years in jail during the Cultural Revolution,...urged the National People’s Congress to look into the prohibition of Performers’ Pasts, an apparently innocuous book on the lives of Peking opera singers, along with the seven other publications.

This is the third of Zhang’s three books to have been banned. She won fame in 2004 for a memoir about her father who embraced Mao Zedong’s revolution only to be purged in the 1957 AntiRightist Campaign, along with about 500,000 rightists or liberals. Her father and four others are the only rightists never to have been rehabilitated by the ruling Communist Party.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

A cathedral of the steam age being restored to glory

Source: Telegraph (3-16-07)

On time, and within budget, one of the greatest monuments to the ambition of the Victorian railways is being restored to its full glory. And, when it is complete, Eurostar trains will be able to travel through southern England at the same high speeds they reach on the continent. It is possible that the rest of the world, reading of the soaring cost of the London Olympics and the interminable delays to the opening of Wembley stadium, thinks Britain doesn't have much of a knack these days for grands projets -- the great engineering triumphs about which the French are so keen to boast. Happily, a walk around the interior of St Pancras station, where 2,000 hard hats are preparing for the start of Eurostar services this November, suggests otherwise. Here, under the great arch of the Victorian engine shed, is where we finally get to join the network of high speed rail lines that Europe has enjoyed for decades.

Related Links

St Pancras -- a dying Victorian gem rises again (video)

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Braziers found in Iron Age temple in Iran

Source: UPI (3-15-07)

QOM, Iran -- A fourth brazier has been discovered at a 3,000-year-old temple in Iran.

Archaeologists say the brazier is smaller than the previous finds at the temple at Qoli Darvish Hill in Qom, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. They said they believe it was used to keep a fire going for the larger braziers.

All four were in a central room with a platform for making religious offerings, said Siamak Sarlak, head of the excavation team.

Qoli Darvish appears to have been a sizable city in the Iranian Iron Age 3,300 years ago. But most of the hill was destroyed by construction before it could be examined by archaeologists.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Curator and husband looted Hermitage museum

Source: AP (3-16-07)

The husband of a late curator of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg was convicted yesterday of the theft of art objects and sentenced to five years in prison.

Nikolai Zavadsky was also ordered to pay 7.3 million roubles (£144,450) in compensation.

The museum announced last July that 221 pieces including jewellery, religious icons, silverware and enamelled objects worth about £2.4m had been stolen.

Zavadsky's wife, Larisa, died suddenly during an inventory last year and Zavadsky confessed they were involved in the thefts.

Police so far have recovered more than 30 items.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Interpol seeks Iranians over 1994 Buenos Aires blast

Source: AP (3-16-07)

Interpol said yesterday it is to issue requests for the arrest of five prominent Iranians and a Lebanese militant sought in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires in which 85 people died.

However, it turned down Argentina's request for help in the arrests of three other Iranians, including the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The six people sought include former Iranian intelligence chief Ali Fallahijan and a Lebanese militant, Imad Moughnieh.

Iran has denied involvement in the bombing and said it would oppose any attempt to detain Iranian citizens.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

German anti-Nazi protesters win right to display swastika

Source: Telegraph (3-16-07)

Anti-Nazi groups in Germany yesterday won the right to display the swastika after the country's highest court overturned the conviction of an activist who sold items that mocked the symbol.

Juergen Kamm was fined 3,600 euros by a lower court in Stuttgart in September for "selling unconstitutional symbols" of crossed-out swastikas on T-shirts, lighters and stickers through his mail order company Nix Gut (Nothing Good), in breach of a law prohibiting its use except in specific educational and artistic contexts.

But the federal court of justice in Karlsruhe, western Germany, found that Mr Kamm had committed no crime because the items "clearly and unambiguously" carried an anti-Nazi message and did not "did not go against the spirit of the law".

Judge Walter Winkler rejected claims that the ruling could be exploited by far-Right groups to wear a form of the symbol.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 4:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Indonesia bans dozens of revisionist history textbooks; could 'cause public disorder'

Source: Jakarta Post (via UCLA Asia Institute) (3-15-07)

"What do you know about the G30S (September 30th movement)?" The Jakarta Post asked an 11th grader at state elementary school No. 3 in Setiabudi, South Jakarta, on Tuesday.

"Oh, you mean the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party)?" asked Baby Zahwa, who had just finished her history exam.

"Hmm, the G30S," the Post replied.

"Yes, the PKI," Baby insisted, launching into an explanation most probably rote learned from her history textbook.

History textbooks have always referred to the movement as the G30S/PKI. No questions asked.

Or at least that was the logic the Attorney General's Office applied when it decided to ban dozens of history books written by prominent historians that no longer insist that the GS03 was a rebellious movement that sought to replace Sukarno's government with a Communist one.

Following months of investigation, Junior Attorney General for Intelligence Affairs Muchtar Arifin told reporters last week that his office had banned, as of March 5, the textbooks, which have been used in schools and universities since 2004.

The books not only failed to state the facts but challenged some "accepted truths", which could create public disorder, the Supreme Court announced...

Its latest decision to ban 13 books released by a number of publishing houses, and any other textbooks that express the same views, is based on a 1963 decree and a 1969 law on published materials that could cause public disorder.

Related Links

The future is history (Jakarta Post editorial)

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 3:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Stories of slavery to 'challenge and surprise' visitors

Source: Independent (3-16-07)

This year's bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire was an opportunity to commemorate the millions of slaves who died and renew efforts to help the trafficked people of today, David Lammy, the Culture minister, said yesterday.

He welcomed the diversity of events and exhibitions across Britain marking the anniversary as a chance to tell the stories of all those involved in, and affected by, the "evil trade". "Our national museums and galleries are the underpinning of our Britishness and they hold the stories that make up who we are as a nation. The events of 2007 provide the perfect way in which to take these stories to new audiences," Mr Lammy said.

Mr Lammy was speaking at the National Portrait Gallery, which will launch a new trail tomorrow that traces the history of the slave trade through the pictures on its walls.

Caroline Bressey, a historian who has advised the project, said the trail began in the Tudor gallery with the story of a black trumpeter in the court of Henry VIII and then highlighted how Queen Elizabeth I proclaimed there were too many black people in Britain and ordered their expulsion...

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 3:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Iran: '300' insults culture of nations

Source: IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency) (3-13-07)

TEHRAN -- Government spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Elham said Tuesday that the movie called `300' insults the culture of world countries.

The statement was made in response to the question raised about the anti-Iran movie dubbed `300'.

The government spokesman referred to the movie as part of the extensive cultural aggression aiming to degenerate cultures of world states.

Elham noted that the Iranian nation and those involved in cultural activities will respond to such a cultural aggression...

The movie has fabricated the history with depicting a war between Iran and Greece, whereas, no Greek king dared to stand up to the Persian Empire or the Emperor Xerxes.

Though Sparta's King Leonidas cherished such a dream, but, he lost his head and Iranian fighters threw his head before Emperor Xerxes's feet and told him that he had attempted a suicide attack to Persian Army.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 3:36 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Poland to mark Pustkow, little-known Nazi concentration camp

Source: AP (3-15-07)

WARSAW -- Authorities are working on plans to mark a little-known Nazi concentration camp and nearby military installation.

The Pustkow labor camp, where 15,000 inmates died, was dismantled before the end of the war, and local official Andrzej Regula said Thursday it needs to be recognized before its existence is forgotten with the passage of time.

"If 15,000 people were killed here, the world should know about this," Regula said in a telephone interview from the area, about 180 miles south of Warsaw. "Everyone knows about Auschwitz because it was left there, but Pustkow was taken apart and no one knows about it."

Current ideas include a museum or reconstructing some of the camp's barracks, Regula said.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 2:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Modern technology reveals baby mummy's past

Source: AP (3-16-07)

ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- The baby mummy had a European mom, and likely came from a wealthy family. But where he lived and why he died —- and at such a young age —- remain a mystery. The mummy, exhibited for the first time Thursday at the St. Louis Science Center, has been the year-long focus of an international team of investigators. The museum said it may be the most extensive research project ever undertaken on a child mummy...

A small snippet of the mummy's wrapping tested for carbon dating suggested the child had lived between 30 B.C. and 130 A.D., in Egypt's Roman period around the time of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

Three-dimensional images from CT scans of the child's bones, skull, teeth and body cavity suggested the child lived to be seven or eight months...One of the most interesting finds was a series of amulets or charms in the boy's body cavity and in the wrapping, suggesting his family was well-off...

Washington University geneticist Anne Bowcock said she feared the DNA would have undergone chemical changes or been "contaminated" by those who handled the corpse. But that wasn't a problem...Tests showed the boy's mother was European. She plans more tests to determine his father's ancestry.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pastor says Jamestown guides can't say 'Christian'

Source: WorldNetDaily (Medford, Ore.) (3-15-07)

Tour guides at the American birthplace of Jamestown, Va., are being prevented from explaining Christian history and are under orders to refer to items such as the Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer only as "religious" in nature.

That according to California pastor and researcher Todd DuBord [of Lake Almanor Community Church] who says he was stunned on a recent tour of the historic town when "our guide responded to our inquiry by saying that she was 'unable to speak about the plaques. We are only allowed to say they are religious plaques.'"...

When the issue arose, DuBord's group was in the heart of the community which had been established in 1607 –- 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Mass. –- to make money for the Virginia Company and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ on orders from the newly crowned King James I.

"While the tour guides at the Jamestown Settlement and Museum were cordial and informative on many points, we were all caught off guard by their unwillingness (yes, unwillingness) to discuss Jamestown's religious roots. As one of the tour guides was leading us through the very heart of the replica of the community, the Anglican Church, we asked if she could speak about the significance of the three religious plaques on the wall in the front of the church: the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed (the same are in the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg)," said DuBord, of Lake Almanor Community Church...

A letter from Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine noted the tour guides have "no restrictions in regards to commenting on religious items or history," however they may not "be as familiar with questions outside of the routine tour..."

[DuBord's] concerns are being raised just as the area is marking the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the settlers. The same removal of Christianity from history is taking place with many of those events, also, where officials have even banned the use of the word "celebration" because contemporary leaders of Native American tribes consider the settlement an "invasion."...

Related Links

'National Treasure' (Todd DuBord, account of 'Christian heritage tour' in 2006)

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 2:32 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Georgia 'Confederate History Month' bill advances

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (3-15-07)

A bill that would permanently establish April as Confederate History and Heritage month in Georgia sailed through a Senate committee on Thursday without any opposition.

Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga), the sponsor of Senate Bill 283, told the Senate Rules Committee that the proposal would help promote tourism in the state and preserve an important part of the state and nation's history.

"I'm not doing this for controversial reasons, but to commemorate a struggle that happened," said Mullis, whose hometown was the site of a major Civil War battle in 1863.

Mullis said he has been working on the bill for several months — long before some black lawmakers and the state NAACP last week called on the Legislature and Gov. Sonny Perdue to apologize for the state's role in slavery.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 9:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Copy of 1st printed English atlas sold for $1.2m

Source: Independent (3-16-07)

A rare copy of the first printed atlas of England and Wales sold for £669,600 [about $1.2 million] at auction yesterday.

The atlas was completed in 1579 -- but printing was delayed until 1590 to prevent the Spanish getting information about the English coastline. It is a landmark in Elizabethan cartography, mapping England and Wales in their entirety for the first time. It was created by a surveyor called Christopher Saxton, who was born in Dunningley, West Yorkshire.

The atlas is bound with a rare set of five maps by the Italian cartographer, Giovanni Battista Boazio. They illustrate Sir Francis Drake's expedition to the West Indies and America between 1585 and 1586, and include a view of St Augustine, in Florida, which is the earliest printed plan of any city in the US.

The auction at Sotheby's was part of the sale of the library of the Earls of Macclesfield. The identity of the purchaser of the Elizabethan atlas was not revealed by the auction house yesterday.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 9:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Military collection of Enola Gay's bombardier given to N.C. museum

Source: AP (3-15-07)

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The military collection of the man who pulled a lever dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is coming to the North Carolina Museum of History.

Colonel Thomas W. Ferebee scrupulously saved souvenirs of his military service, including notes written on August 6, 1945 —- the day the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay during World War II.

The museum has acquired maps, Ferebee's dress uniform, desk nameplate, reunion pins and mugs and paperwork documenting his 30-year-career in the Air Force, The News & Observer reported Thursday.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 9:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Episcopal church to celebrate 400th anniversary in America

Source: Weekly Standard (3-8-07)

On May 17, 1607, English settlers landed on Jamestown Island in Virginia and created what would be the first permanent British colony. An Anglican clergyman led them in prayers of thanksgiving and in constructing the first permanent Protestant church in the Western hemisphere.

In two months, the 400th anniversary of this event will be celebrated. The Episcopal Church, as the spiritual descendants of the original Jamestown colony, is participating, although perhaps with some hesitation. Fifteen years ago, the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus's voyage to America was marred by controversy, with groups such as the National Council of Churches denouncing the celebration of "genocide" against the native peoples of America.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 8:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How the Ides of March became more than a calendar term

Source: National Geographic News (3-12-07)

Julius Caesar's bloody assassination on March 15, 44 B.C., forever marked March 15, or the Ides of March, as a day of infamy. It has fascinated scholars and writers ever since.

For ancient Romans living before that event, however, an ides was merely one of several common calendar terms [calends, nones, ides] used to mark monthly lunar events. The ides simply marked the appearance of the full moon.

But the Ides of March assumed a whole new identity after the events of 44 B.C. The phrase came to represent a specific day of abrupt change that set off a ripple of repercussions throughout Roman society and beyond.

Josiah Osgood, an assistant professor of classics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said: "You can read in Cicero's letters from the months after the Ides of March. … He even says, 'The Ides changed everything.'"...

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 7:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lafitte's treasure -- or something golden -- being unearthed in Florida

Source: National Geographic News (3-15-07)

FOWLER'S BLUFF, Fla. -- Treasure hunters digging on a remote bluff overlooking Florida's Suwannee River claim they have found tantalizing evidence that pirate gold might be at the bottom of a muddy, 13-foot (4-meter) hole.

"We've found mahogany wood samples, flecks of gold, and gold all over the diver's dive suit [after diving in the hole]," said Tommy Todd, a St. Petersburg landscaper who owns the property being excavated.

Workers drilling at the site said they also found a sheet of gold wrapped around the drill bit when they withdrew it. Todd was not immediately able to show evidence of these finds.

"We know there's something down there," he said.

Todd and his partners, whom he declined to name, may be closing in on a treasure that -- according to local lore -- was buried in the area some 200 years ago by Jean Lafitte.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 6:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Headless 3,000-year-old bodies found in Vanuatu may hold answer on Pacific migration

Source: Live Science (3-15-07)

Archaeologists working on the Pacific islands of Vanuatu have found the region's oldest cemetery, and it's filled with a slew of headless bodies.

The peculiar 3,000-year-old skeletons belong to the Lapita people, the earliest known inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. Their DNA could shed light on how the many remote island specks surrounding Vanuatu were colonized, the researchers say.

"Both Vanuatu and Western Polynesia were first settled by the Lapita culture but their populations are somewhat different genetically and this has not yet been explained," said dig leader Matthew Spriggs, an archaeologist with the Australian National University...

A total of 70 headless bodies, along with seven skulls and some rare pots, have been found at the site in Vanuatu over several dig seasons. The work was led by Spriggs, Stuart Bedford of the Australian National University and Ralph Regenvanu of the Vanuatu National Museum.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 6:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Museum may add to collection: old houses

Source: New York Times (3-15-07)

LOS ANGELES -— Shortly after moving here last year to take over as director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan started looking at houses — not as a place for him to live but as potential museum pieces.

His idea —- one that has rarely, if ever, been tried on a large scale by a major museum —- is to collect significant pieces of midcentury residential architecture, including houses by Rudolf M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright, and to treat them as both museum objects and as residences for curators.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 4:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Climate change ended capital of Cambodian empire

Source: Age (Australia) (3-14-07)

Climate change was one of the key factors in the abandonment of Cambodia's ancient city of Angkor, Australian archaeologists said today.

The centuries-old city, home to more than 700,000 people and capital of the Khmer empire from about 900AD, was mysteriously abandoned about 500 years ago.

It has long been believed the Khmers deserted the city after a Thai army ransacked it, but University of Sydney archaeologists working the site say a water crisis was the real reason it was left to crumble.

"It now appears the city was abandoned during the transition from the medieval warm period to the little ice age," Associate Professor of Archaeology Roland Fletcher said in a statement released by the university.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 4:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

1M archived pages removed post-9/11

Source: AP (3-15-07)

More than 1 million pages of historical government documents — a stack taller than the U.S. Capitol — have been removed from public view since the September 2001 terror attacks, according to records obtained by the Associated Press. Some of the papers are more than a century old.
In some cases, entire file boxes were removed without significant review because the government's central record-keeping agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, did not have time for a more thorough audit.

"We just felt we couldn't take the time and didn't always have the expertise," said Steve Tilley, who oversaw the program. Archives officials are still screening records, but the number of files pulled recently has declined dramatically, he said.

[Some documents were over 100 years old.]

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 3:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Open government bills adopted by House

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (3-15-07)

The House of Representatives yesterday adopted a slate of open government bills by large, veto-proof majorities in the face of sharp opposition from the Bush White House.

"Today, Congress took an important step towards restoring openness and transparency in government," said Rep. Henry Waxman, who expeditiously moved the bills through his Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Over the past six years, the Bush Administration has done everything it can to operate in secret, to avoid public scrutiny, and to limit congressional oversight," Rep. Waxman said. "I am pleased that Congress is reversing this course by passing four critically important good government bills with strong bipartisan support."

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 3:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New questions about Ward Churchill

Source: Rocky Mountain News (3-12-07)

Did University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill see secret Canadian government files about child abuse in Indian boarding schools?
Highly unlikely, says a Canadian researcher who reviewed the files and cited them in his 1999 book about the history of the infamous boarding schools.

So how did references to those documents end up in Churchill's 2004 book on the schools?

"Unless he got himself into one of those black suits that Tom Cruise used in that movie and snuck himself into the Department of Indian Affairs at midnight, he's not seen the documents," said John S. Milloy, a professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

This is not the first time Churchill has been accused of stealing facts from someone else's research.

Churchill's dismissal was recommended last year after a faculty investigation revealed plagiarism and fabrication of facts in his previous works. His case is on appeal before a faculty grievance panel.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 1:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China lawmaker pitches 'Humiliation Day'

Source: Las Vegas Sun (3-15-07)

A lawmaker in China has called for a national "Humiliation Day" on Sept. 18 to mark the start of Japan's 1931 invasion and remind the Chinese public of foreign attacks, state media reported Thursday.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 1:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The "history war" in Northeast Asia

Source: Salon (3-15-07)

While there may not be armies massing near the Yalu River at present, in the context of ancient Northeast Asian history, a border war is being fought, a conflict in which archaeologists are the infantry and ancient inscriptions on stone monuments the ammunition. The "history war" between China and Korea has been raging for at least a decade, and the skating incident is just one of the most recent skirmishes. Fronts in this war include government-sponsored research institutions, televised soap operas, UNESCO World Heritage Sites and even Wikipedia, where ferocious "edit wars" replicate in the virtual world the nationalist tensions of the embodied world in perfect syncopation.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 1:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan, China to continue joint history study

Source: AHN (3-15-07)

Next week, Japanese and Chinese historians are scheduled to gather for the second round of a joint history study that will also touch on war-related issues. The new round of talks comes amidst worldwide anger over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's claim that there was no evidence of Asian women being forced into Japanese military brothels during WWII.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 1:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

French resistance hero Aubrac dies

Source: ABC (3-15-07)

Lucie Aubrac, a hero of the French Resistance who helped free her husband from the Gestapo and whose dramatic life story became a hit film, has died. She was 94.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 1:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

House overturns Bush order on papers secrecy

Source: Reuters (3-15-07)

WASHINGTON -- Brushing aside a veto threat, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep their papers secret indefinitely.

The measure, which drew bipartisan support and passed by a veto-busting 333-93 margin, was among White House-opposed bills the House passed that would widen access to government information and protect government whistleblowers...

The presidential papers bill nullifies a November 2001 order, criticized by historians, in which Bush allowed the White House or a former president to block release of a former president's papers and put the onus on researchers to show a "specific need" for many types of records.

Among beneficiaries of the Bush order was Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, a former vice president and president.

The order gave former vice presidents the right to stop the release of their papers through an executive privilege that previously only presidents could use. And it extended to deceased presidents' designees rights to keep their papers secret indefinitely.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

U.N. asks Israel halt excavation near Al-Aqsa

Source: UPI (3-14-07)

PARIS -- The United Nations wants Israel to stop work on access to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City and consult with Muslim religious authorities.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said Wednesday while Israeli archaeological work for an access pathway in Jerusalem's Old City does not threaten the Al-Aqsa Mosque and complies with professional standards, an expert's report said it would like I excavations stopped for meetings on a final plan with the Muslim authorities and other parties concerned.

The report, drafted by a technical mission sent by UNESCO amid international concerns over the excavation, said Israel "should be asked to stop immediately" since work already undertaken was deemed sufficient to assess structural conditions for the pathway to the Mughrabi Gate after a partial collapse in 2004 due to heavy rain and snow.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Art historians excited about finding large medieval mural under whitewash

Source: Independent (3-15-07)

PARIS -- An immense treasure trove of medieval wall paintings, concealed by whitewash for 300 years, has been found in a small church in south-eastern France.

Experts believe that up to 600 square metres of the upper walls of the nave of the church in Vif, near Grenoble, are decorated with frescoes painted in the last part of the 14th century.

Only small sections of the paintings have been uncovered so far, but restorers and art historians are convinced that the whitewash -- or greywash -- at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste church conceals one of the largest, most complete and best-preserved medieval murals in Europe.

"From the jigsaw pieces we have uncovered, we believe that this must be a continuous work covering two walls," said Séverine Haberer, who led the exploratory restoration work. "What we have found so far is richly coloured and unusually well-preserved. It is a very exciting discovery."

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:40 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Taiwan students form Nazi association, say they want to restore Confucianism, other values

Source: Telegraph (3-15-07)

BEIJING -- A group of students [in] Taiwan has caused uproar by founding an avowedly Nazi organisation and boasting that it is inspired by Adolf Hitler.

The National Socialism Association was set up by Lahn Chao, a master's student from the National Chengchi University in the capital, Taipei, and 19 others.

Its website is a call to arms to rejuvenate the island's politics, end democracy and retake mainland China for the nationalist cause, and bears a symbol in black, red and white loosely based on the swastika flag...

Mr Chao, who is studying political science, said he was not hostile to Jews but was interested in fostering nationalism and was in favour of limits on the numbers of foreign workers coming to Taiwan.

"I think we have to work hard to restore traditional Chinese values like Confucianism," he said.

"We want to study Hitler's good points, not study his massacres," said another founder member, Yue Shu-ya.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

First English paintings of American Indians shown for first time in 50 years

Source: Telegraph (3-15-07)

One of Britain's greatest secret treasures -- a collection of the first English paintings of North America -- go on public display at the British Museum today for the first time in almost 50 years. The watercolours, painted in 1585 during an unsuccessful mission to establish England's first colony in America, are so fragile and sensitive to light that they can only be shown once a generation. Painted just 20 years after the death of Michelangelo and more than 30 years before the Mayflower sailed, the survival of the 70 watercolours -- almost certainly shown to Elizabeth I and handled by her -- is little short of miraculous. Not only did they survive a perilous transatlantic return journey but a fire in the 19th century, and then they were left in water for three weeks. The naive pictures were painted by John White, a gentleman and amateur artist at the court of Elizabeth, who was sent on several expeditions by Sir Walter Raleigh to help establish a colony in Virginia -- now North Carolina -- and to record the lives of the people and the flora and fauna that he found. Instead of the wild savages that Europeans had expected, White's pictures of the Algonquin Indians show a sophisticated and settled society with villages, stockades, cultivated fields and jewellery.

Related Links

In pictures: First English paintings of American Indians (7 slides)
'A New World' (exhibition website)

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Will urban growth trample old Saigon's colonial charm?

Source: Christian Science Monitor (3-15-07)

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- Paris has the Eiffel Tower. New York has the Empire State Building. Both are symbols of global cities, recognizable currency of power and prestige.

Now the master builders of Vietnam's commercial showcase are racing to put their stamp on tomorrow's skyline. Glass and steel buildings are already sprouting across the city and by 2009, a 68-story skyscraper, designed to invoke the lotus flower and the ao dai worn by Vietnamese women, promises to be this city's Sears Tower.

But in a city struggling to update its creaking infrastructure and keep its historical core intact, critics say the breakneck speed of expansion could spell a slow death for the unique character of a city once known as the Pearl of the Orient.

Government planners say they want to maintain the essence of the graceful colonial city laid out by French architects in the 19th century. So far, 108 historic buildings have been listed for preservation, and plans are afoot to build a new financial district apart from the old city to satisfy demand for office space.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Don't upset Turkey by discussing Armenian genocide, Israeli lawmakers decide

Source: UPI (3-14-07)

TEL AVIV -- Fears that discussing the Armenian genocide would disrupt Israel's relations with Turkey led lawmakers to drop the issue Wednesday.

Voting 15 to 12, the Israeli legislature rejected a call by Knesset Member Haim Oron of the dovish opposition Meretz Party to discuss the massacre that next month will mark its 80th anniversary. Ottoman Turks have killed almost 1.5 million Armenians and deported more than 500,000 others then, Oron noted...

However Haaretz noted that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni wanted the motion killed because they feared a crisis with Turkey...

Health Minister Yaakov Ben-Yizri, who spoke on Livni's behalf, said Israel understands the Armenians' sensitivity, each side tried to proves its case, and Israel hopes they could have an open dialogue to heal wounds...

Turkish Daily News noted that in the past month Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Chief of the General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit and a Turkish parliamentary delegation met U.S. Congressmen and administration officials to prevent a decision recognizing the Armenian massacre as genocide.

They argued such a decision would be a psychological victory for the Armenians, and a cause for claiming compensation and territory.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

As Georgia slavery apology simmers, bill touts Confederate history

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (3-15-07)

A week after civil rights groups called on the General Assembly and Gov. Sonny Perdue to apologize for slavery, a key Senate committee will consider a bill today that would designate April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga) is the main sponsor of Senate Bill 283, which would encourage Georgians each April to honor the Confederacy, its history, soldiers and the people who "contributed to the cause of Southern Independence."

The bill also encourages the Georgia Civil War Commission to develop a curriculum to teach Georgia's Confederate history in elementary and high schools, as well as colleges and universities...

Sen. Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta), an African-American, said the timing of the proposal is particularly flawed.

"I think that in light of the conversation we've been having about Georgia accepting responsibility for its history as it relates to slavery, this is not appropriate," Reed said. "If we're not going to address that issue in a candid way, I find it inappropriate to be passing a measure such as this."

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:12 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Leeds U. accused of censoring 'Hitler's legacy' speech on Islamic anti-Semitism

Source: Times (of London) (3-15-07)

The University of Leeds was accused of infringing free speech last night when it cancelled a lecture on “Islamic anti-Semitism” by a German academic.

Matthias Köntzel arrived at the university yesterday morning to begin a three-day programme of lectures and seminars, but was told that it had been called off on “security grounds”.

Dr Köntzel, a political scientist who has lectured around the world on the antiSemitic ideology of Islamist groups, told The Times there were concerns that he would be attacked. He said that he was “outraged” that his meetings had been cancelled and had yet to receive an explanation.

The university, which acted after complaints from Muslim students, denied that it was interfering with the academic freedom of Dr Köntzel, and said that proper arrangements for stewarding the meeting had not been made.

The lecture, entitled “Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic anti-Semitism in the Middle East”, was organised by the university’s German department and publicised three weeks ago. A large attendance had been expected.

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Peers reject all Lords reform plans

Source: BBC News (3-14-07)

Peers have rejected plans for a fully elected House of Lords -- setting them on a clear collision course with MPs.

Last week MPs voted in favour of 80% or all members of a reformed second chamber being elected in the future.

But a crowded House of Lords instead voted to keep a fully appointed house, voting down other options for reform.

Votes are not binding but the division between MPs and peers suggests any attempt to draw up a reform bill will meet months of parliamentary gridlock.

About 500 peers, including former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, showed up for the vote on Wednesday, crowding the red leather benches and leaving some crouching on the steps of the throne.

Peers backed plans to remain as a fully appointed house by 361 votes to 121 -- a majority of 240.

Related Links

Analysis: resistance can slow down Lords change -– but ultimately it’s futile

Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 2:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Turkish historians trying to access pre-1923 archive in Boston

Source: Turkish Weekly (Ankara) (3-15-07)

The Turkish Historical Society (TTK) reportedly wants to finance the opening up of the Tashnak Archives in Boston to Turkish historians.

The president of the TTK, Professor Yusuf Halaçoğlu, said that until now his organization has been denied access to the Tashnak Archives on the basis of claims that the documents "are not classified and categorized."...

The TTK has obtained access to documents pertaining to Ottoman Armenians in the archives of a number of countries, including Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, France and England. Two central archives to which the TTK has not been able to obtain access are the Tashnak Archives in Boston, which contains pre-1923 documents concerning the Armenians, and the Patriarchate Archives in Jerusalem.

These archives, he maintains, contain crucial documentation about the Armenians. Halaçoğlu also maintains that despite the fact that a few well-known defenders of the Armenian genocide have been given access to the Tashnak Archives, there has never been a Turkish historian or researcher allowed to use this resource.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 10:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

No pardon likely for Admiral Byng -- or Anne Boleyn, Joan of Arc...

Source: Guardian (3-15-07)

The memorial in a Bedfordshire church bristles with outrage: "To the perpetual Disgrace of Public Justice," it claims of the man it commemorates, Admiral John Byng, executed on the quarterdeck of his ship 250 years ago yesterday for failing to engage the French in battle with sufficient enthusiasm.

He was, it adds, "a Martyr to Political Persecution...when Bravery and Loyalty were Insufficient Securities for the Life and Honour of a Naval Officer."

Or, as Voltaire put it more coolly and cynically in his contemporary novel Candide: "In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."

Last night, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said Byng could not receive the sort of pardon that ministers granted last year to men shot at dawn during the first world war -- basically because there is no one alive who remembers him.

The MoD said there had been specific reasons for the first world war victims to be pardoned: "There are people alive who knew them. There was a feeling that a wrong had been done. It was a personal matter rather than something lost in the mist of time." The Byng episode, the spokesman said, was accepted past history and a pardon would set a precedent. Who next? Anne Boleyn or Joan of Arc?...

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 9:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Louvre's jars contain Ramses II's organs. Not.

Source: AFP (3-14-07)

PARIS -- One of the star exhibits at the Louvre's egyptology wing, a collection of four jars said to have contained the embalmed organs of Egypt's greatest pharoah, Rameses II, have a sadly less glamorous vintage.

The beautiful turquoise-blue earthenware pots, emblazoned with Rameses' name in hieroglyphs and with incantions to the gods Mut and Amon, are genuine.

But the belief that they held Rameses' preserved innards to help ease the pharoah into the afterlife is false, French investigators say.

Writing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by chemist Jacques Connan of the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg carried out molecular tests and carbon-dating on two samples of residue scraped from two jars.

Chromatography and mass spectrometry showed that one of the samples was an unguent, or scented oil, made from pine oil and animal fat [dating 128-228 years later]...The other sample, an orange-yellow compound, was found to comprise pure vegetable resin and was used for embalming [but dated some 900 years after Ramses died in 1213 BC]...

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 7:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Italy convicts Argentines in absentia of '70s 'dirty war' deaths

Source: AP (3-14-07)

ROME -- Five former members of Argentina's military were convicted Wednesday of murdering three Italians during the 1970s "dirty war" in the South American country.

A Rome court sentenced the men to life imprisonment, which is Italy's stiffest punishment. But all were tried in absentia, and it wasn't clear Argentina would hand them over...

Four are under arrest in Argentina and face prosecution by federal courts there in connection with deaths and disappearances dating to the 1976-83 military dictatorship. Officials say [Jorge Raul] Vildoza, a former navy captain, remains a fugitive.

During the dictatorship, at least 9,000 Argentines vanished -- and presumably were killed -- as the government rounded up leftist and other anti-government activists. Human rights groups put the figure at 30,000.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 6:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkey welcomes U.S. military students of WWI history

Source: Turkish Daily News (3-14-07)

ANKARA, Turkey -- Future commanders of the U.S. military have been touring the monumental Turkish War of Independence battle fields in order to learn about the war strategies of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on the ground.

The group made up of 15 students from the U.S. Military Academy West Point and six from the U.S. Naval Academy was joined by four Turkish students from the Ankara Land Forces War Academy. Guided by a number of Turkish and American professors, they have altogether studied history, particularly the Dardanelles Campaign in 1915 and saw the grounds where Atatürk fought.

"We are soldiers and we study the history of war and are very interested in these battles because we can learn a lot about how the war was fought," Maj. Daniel Barnard told the Turkish Daily News late on Monday.

Despite unimaginable losses, the Dardanelles Campaign or Gallipoli was a turning point in Turkish history that enabled the Turks to define themselves as a nation with a distinct identity. After the Dardanelles Campaign, Atatürk emerged not only as a leader who fought off foreign armies, but also as a leader who created an army that fought for independence, eventually giving birth to the Republic of Turkey in 1923, with Atatürk as president.

Related Links

Turkey starts week of activities to commemorate Gallipoli Campaign
Renovation project for historic Gallipoli Peninsula

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 6:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Whaling: American roots of Japanese obsession

Source: NYT (3-14-07)

Why does Japan insist on whaling?...

Historically, fishermen in coastal towns, like Taiji in southwestern Japan, hunted whales in nearby waters. But things changed after the Commodore Perry’s so-called Black Ships forced an isolationist Japan to open up in the 1850s. Back then, the United States used whale oil lamps, and part of Perry’s mission to Japan was to secure the rights of American whalers in the Pacific.

As whaling became knotted with Japan’s traumatic opening to the world and its subsequent drive to modernize, the Japanese adopted American and Norwegian whaling vessels and techniques. Some coastal towns were transformed into whaling stations, including Ayukawa, when the Toyo Whaling Company started operating here in 1906.

More Japanese, in turn, began eating whale, especially in western Japan. But it was after World War II, when a devastated Japan had few resources, that the American occupation authorities urged that whale meat be offered in classroom lunches nationwide as a cheap source of protein. For the first time, under America’s influence, whale meat became part of Japanese everyday life.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 5:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bandits run off with statues, church roofs: it's pricey metal

Source: Reuters (3-14-07)

The headless body of a Ukrainian poet, night-time raids on railway depots and the theft of priceless works of art. The ingredients of a Cold War thriller?

No, they are the latest victims of a global crime spree targeting metal sculptures, copper cables and even playground slides, as thieves take advantage of soaring metals prices to make a fast buck...

Thefts of metal are not a new phenomenon. The lead roofs of English churches and monasteries were plundered by Henry VIII in the 16th Century and are still a popular target for thieves.

Ecclesiastical Insurance which insures 97 percent of Church of England churches said it paid out 750,000 pounds ($1.45 million) against thefts of church metals -- mostly lead -- in 2006, from virtually nothing in 2005.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 5:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

High-tech undersea search for the first Americans

Source: Christian Science Monitor (3-14-07)

MYSTIC, Conn. -- Inside a darkened room, oceanographer Robert Ballard stares at an array of flat-screen monitors. The monitor to his left shows a crew of scientists aboard the submarine support vessel Carolyn Chouest in the Gulf of Mexico. On a monitor to his right, a roomful of Rhode Island high school students are intently focused on something unseen. And directly ahead, a large plasma TV plays live footage of what's holding everyone's attention: the ocean floor some 115 miles off the Texas coast...

Today, Ballard and his team are seeking submerged evidence of the first Americans. Any proof of past human habitation in this area of former coastline could sink a long-dominant – and many say hopelessly eroded – hypothesis about who the first Americans were, how they got here, and when they arrived.

"It's a great story in human history," says Kevin McBride, a professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, who is involved in the project. "And as usual, it's a more complicated story than people think."

With the help of the US Navy's only research submarine, NR-1, Ballard's team is mapping the area to determine where early Americans might have lived when the Gulf's underwater hills sat at shoreline. At the height of the last ice age, sea levels were nearly 400 feet lower than they are today. The team's voyage began March 4, along a series of rises called the Flower Garden Banks. Scientists think the area, now filled with colorful sponges and abundant sea life, was a thriving coastal estuary 19,000 years ago – and prime real estate for human habitation...

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 5:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Poland honors woman who saved 2,500 Jews

Source: AP (3-14-07)

WARSAW -- A 97-year-old woman credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust was honored by parliament Wednesday at a ceremony during which Poland's president said she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Irena Sendler, who lives in a nursing home in Warsaw, was too frail to attend the special session in which members of the Senate unanimously approved a resolution honoring her and the Polish underground Council for Assisting Jews...

Sendler was cited for organizing the "rescue of the most defenseless victims of the Nazi ideology —- the Jewish children."...

Sendler led about 20 [mostly Roman Catholic] helpers who smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to safety between 1940 and 1943, placing them in Polish families, convents or orphanages.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 3:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Italian researchers revive music from WWII concentration camps

Source: IHT (3-14-07)

Scribbled on diaries, loose pages or even toilet paper, they are the notes left behind by Jews swept away in the Holocaust, prisoners of war and interned civilians who struggled to survive in the concentration camps of World War II.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 3:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Poland to implement law screening for communist spies

Source: IHT (3-14-07)

A new law enters force in Poland on Thursday that requires up to 700,000 people in public positions in this country of 38 million — including journalists and teachers — to be screened for Soviet-era collaboration.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 3:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Coin not Godless but Presidentless

Source: AP (3-14-07)

DENVER -- Mary and Ray Smith can't make heads or tails of a new presidential dollar coin they found last week [in two rolls they bought]. It doesn't have either. A week after the revelation that some of the coins slipped out of the U.S. Mint without "In God We Trust" stamped on the edge, the Smiths said Tuesday they found one with nothing stamped on either flat side.

It does have "In God We Trust" on the edge. What's missing is the image of George Washington on the front and the Statue of Liberty on the back. Instead, the Smiths' coin is just smooth, shiny metal... [Image online here.]

Mint spokesman Michael White said officials had not confirmed the Smiths' find. But Ron Guth, a coin authenticator with Professional Coin Grading Service of Newport Beach, Calif., said after examining it he is certain the coin is authentic.

"It's really pretty rare," Guth said. "It somehow slipped through several steps and inspections."

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 4:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkey charges another prof with insulting Ataturk legacy

Source: AP (3-14-07)

ANKARA, Turkey -- A prosecutor on Tuesday filed charges against a political science professor for allegedly insulting the legacy of the revered founder of modern Turkey.

Atilla Yayla's university has already suspended him amid allegations that he criticized Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whose portrait hang in all government offices and his ideas are still the republic's most sacred principles 68 years after his death.

Prosecutor Ahmet Guven on Tuesday filed charges against Yayla for "insulting the legacy of Ataturk." Yayla could receive up to three years in prison if tried and convicted. No trial date was set yet...

Yayla said in his Nov. 18 speech that the era of one-party rule under Ataturk, from 1925 to 1945, was not as progressive as the official ideology would have Turks believe but was "regressive in some respects." He also criticized the statues and pictures of Ataturk, saying Europeans would be baffled to see the portraits of just one man on the walls.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 4:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Group of historians from Croatia to Turkey try to encourage Balkan reconciliation

Source: Christian Science Monitor (3-14-07)

ATHENS -- The year was 1453. Ottoman troops under Sultan Mehmed II captured the Byzantine city of Constantinople –- present-day Istanbul –- and changed the region forever.

Ask a Greek student of history, and you'll likely hear of the event as the tragic fall of a great Christian city. Ask a Turk, and you'll probably hear of the glorious conquest for a rising Muslim empire.

In this still-fragile region, history is often served up as a nationalistic tale that highlights the wrongs perpetrated by others. Now a group of historians from across the region is trying to change the way the past is taught in southeast Europe –- from Croatia to Turkey –- in an effort to encourage reconciliation rather than division.

"History plays an important role in shaping national identity," said Christina Koulouri, the editor of a series of new history textbooks and a professor of history at the University of the Peloponnese in Greece. "We want to change history teaching because we are concerned about the joint future of the Balkans and we think mutual understanding can be promoted through better history teaching."

More than 60 scholars and teachers from around the Balkans have joined to create a new series of history books that tackle some of the most controversial periods in the region. The books, which are being translated into 10 regional languages, present history from various perspectives and excerpt historical documents to challenge interpretations of key events like the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 4:07 AM | Comments (0) | Top

So now we know what Anne Boleyn looked like

Source: Times (of London) (3-14-07)

Only one of Henry VIII’s wives had no life portrait taken, and she is the most famous of them all, Anne Boleyn...

Now, 30 years after a [c. 1530] Holbein portrait in the Royal Collection was demoted to the status of an unknown lady from the court of Henry VIII, new research has reinstated it as a contemporary depiction of the king’s second wife... [Image online here.]

Academics have now traced the inscription to Boleyn’s contemporary, Sir John Cheke, who began his career at the court under her patronage, before becoming secretary to Edward VI. A document of about 1590 notes that Sir John inscribed numerous Holbeins for the King, helping to identify faces of royals and courtiers.

Bendor Grosvenor of Philip Mould Historical Portraits, London], who carried out the research with David Starkey, the Tudor historian, said: “Cheke was one of the bright brains of the Tudor court. He would have known most of Holbein’s sitters, if not on personal terms, then at least visually...It seems inconceivable that he would get Anne’s identification wrong.”...

The drawing appears to be a most unqueenly portrait, as the sitter is wearing a nightgown. Mr Grosvenor said: “Only a woman of the highest rank would have taken such a liberty in court circles.” The chin also seems swollen, which fits descriptions of her face.

The drawing forms part of an exhibition of Tudor portraits at Philip Mould Historical Portraits. Lost Faces runs until Sunday, with the research published in the catalogue. The Royal Collection accepted that the portrait was of Boleyn.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 4:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Iranians denounce hit movie '300'

Source: Telegraph (3-14-07)

A Hollywood film depicting a battle between the Persian empire and a Greek army was denounced by Iran yesterday as "hostile" and an example of "cultural and psychological warfare".

The film, 300, about the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, has made about $70 million in America in its first three days of release. It was attacked for its depiction of Persians as ruthless but dumb imperialists, who were repeatedly outsmarted by a smaller "western" force. The Persian king, Xerxes, was shown as effeminate.

Four MPs urged the Iranian foreign minister, and the Islamic guidance minister, to ask other Muslim countries not to show the film, the official ISNA news agency said.

A government spokesman branded it an insult against Iran, where the first Persian empire emerged to become the world's most powerful in the sixth century BC.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 3:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Key survivor of '81 El Mozote massacre dies

Source: Washington Post (3-14-07)

Rufina Amaya, the woman who was often identified as the last, or only, survivor of the massacre at the village of El Mozote, died last week. She was not, strictly speaking, the only survivor of that monstrous event, but she appears to have been the only one who emerged with her wits about her, a clear memory of what took place, and the will to describe how hundreds of people, including her husband and four of her children, were systematically butchered on Dec. 11, 1981, in an impoverished corner of El Salvador...

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 3:39 AM | Comments (0) | Top

South Africa's ex-freedom fighters confront their demons

Source: AFP (3-13-07)

DERBY, South Africa -- Amid the majestic beauty of South Africa's Magaliesberg mountain range, veterans of the battle against whites-only rule are trying to banish demons that still haunt them.

Matlapeng lodge, the setting for an 'eco-therapy' session involving around a dozen ex-combattants, translates from Xhosa as the "Place of Stone", but tears flow freely and deep-seated fears are revealed by the former warriors.

"It's a cleansing process. You'll all change in a way," said Gavin Robertson, a psychologist with the National Peace Accord Trust, whose brief is to help heal a society which was so badly scarred during the apartheid years.

While much of Africa has been blighted by civil conflict in the last few decades, the NPAT initiative is the first of its kind on the continent.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 3:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Native Hawaiians want (more) recognition

Source: USA Today (3-7-07)

HONOLULU, Hawaii —- A violent road-rage altercation between Native Hawaiians and a white couple near Pearl Harbor two weeks ago is provoking questions about whether Hawaii's harmonious "aloha spirit" is real or just a greeting for tourists.

The Feb. 19 attack, in which a Hawaiian father and son were arrested and charged with beating a soldier and his wife unconscious, was unusual here for its brutality. It sparked a public debate over race relations that is filling blogs and newspaper websites with impassioned comments along stark ethnic lines.

These divisive exchanges come as the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress are being asked to tackle another inflammatory racial issue in a state where no race is a majority: special benefits for Native Hawaiians, ranging from preference at an elite private school to free houses on government land. One side says the long-established perks compensate Hawaiians for past wrongs and preserve their valuable culture for the islands. The other side says the benefits discriminate against other racial groups.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 3:28 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Former official gets around ban on book critical of Blair

Source: Independent (UK) (3-12-07)

Tony Blair's first envoy to Iraq, banned from publishing his own book on the crisis there, has used a roundabout route to make sharp criticism of the British and American governments for failing to study history before invading the country in 2003.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, a former ambassador to the United Nations, says American politicians ignored the lessons of British disasters, failed to delegate proper authority to commanders on the ground and lacked imagination in their leadership.

He has run into official Foreign Office objections to his own book, The Cost of War, but makes trenchant observations in his introduction to a reissue of the book Tigris Gunboats by Wilfred Nunn.

It is a history of the 1914-17 expedition to capture Baghdad by a British expeditionary force for which Nunn led the naval contingent.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 1:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Philistines, but Less and Less Philistine

Source: NYT (3-13-07)

Archaeologists have applied more polish to the long-tarnished reputation of the Philistines.

In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in biblical chapter and verse and rendered their name a synonym for boorish, uncultured people.

Archaeologists have now found that not only were Philistines cultured, they were also literate when they arrived, presumably from the region of the Aegean Sea, and settled the coast of ancient Palestine around 1200 B. C.

Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 12:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

An American history-focused school

Source: Press Release--Gilder Lehrman (3-13-07)

Students at four Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) will have the opportunity to improve their academic performance and college preparedness through a unique academic enrichment program based on American history. Funded by a $975,000, five-year grant from the Cargill Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History program aims to accelerate learning for participating students.

According to the executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the program leverages the story-laden appeal of American history to help captivate, galvanize and reinforce student interest in reading, writing, research, analysis, public speaking and advanced technology skills.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 8:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Han Dynasty nostalgia in China

Source: Report by Mary Kay Magistad, The World (PRI & BBC News) (3-13-07)

China is on the rise. And that's fueled nationalistic pride at home. It's also fueled a new pastime among some young Chinese. They've taken to strolling in the park in Han Dynasty-style clothing. The Han Dynasty lasted from about 200 BC to 220 AD. Some romanticize it as a time of superior morals, values, and philosophy. They say China today would do well to learn from it...

On a blustery, cold and wet Sunday afternoon – a couple dozen people, most in their 20s and early 30s, gather outside the gate of a Beijing park. Some come dressed in Han Dynasty-style robes and sashes. Others pick out costumes from a battered blue suitcase, brought along by organizer Feng Maofang. She’s a former marketing executive, who now devotes herself full-time to promoting Han culture:

“We want to use these costumes as a symbol to make people think about the richness and wisdom of ancient Chinese culture. Why is it that Japan and Korea still cherish their traditional costumes and culture, while ours have disappeared? I hope the young generation will take back what we have lost and forgotten. This is our aim.”

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 7:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Persepolis, other Iranian sites attacked by algae, not 1991 Kuwait oil fires

Source: UPI (3-13-07)

BOLOGNA, Italy -- Italian researchers have determined blue-green algae, not smoke from oil well fires, caused discoloration of some Iranian archaeological treasures.

The scientists say black deposits soiling and discoloring monuments at some important Iranian archaeological sites did not result from smoke produced by oil well fires in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, as had been claimed.

Alessandra Bonazza and colleagues from Italy's National Research Council said Iranian authorities claimed that Persepolis, the Tomb of Cyrus and other cultural treasures in southern provinces had been severely damaged by smoke from the fires ignited by Iraqi forces after their 1990 invasion of Kuwait...

In the new study, researchers used varying laboratory techniques to analyze samples from the monuments. They concluded the discoloration results from crusts of blue-green algae, an organism that often grows naturally on damp rocks and leaves a black residue when dry.

The findings [are to be published in]the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 4:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study says sprawl threatens Civil War battlefields

Source: AP (3-13-07)

WASHINGTON -- Plans for a casino just outside Gettysburg were shot down last year, but the site of the Civil War's bloodiest battle is threatened by spreading home construction, a preservation group says.

While Gettysburg's new nemesis is housing, a site in Alabama's Mobile Bay is suffering from neglect and a lack of state funding, and vast tracts of land stretching from Virginia to Pennsylvania are at risk from a planned major power line, the Civil War Preservation Trust said in its annual inventory of endangered battlefields.

"Tens of thousands of valiant young Americans still lie entombed in those fields," former U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, who backed federal spending on Civil War land preservation, told reporters Tuesday. "It is truly hallowed ground."

In addition to sites in Pennsylvania, Alabama and Virginia, the report names Civil War locations in jeopardy in Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Janet Reno secret testimony on leaks released

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (3-12-07)

The steps by which the Justice Department conducts
investigations of unauthorized disclosures of classified
information ("leaks") were described by then-Attorney General
Janet Reno in 2000 testimony before a closed hearing of the
Senate Intelligence Committee.

At a moment when some, such as Senator Jon Kyl, are proposing to
enact new statutory penalties against leaks, it is noteworthy
that the Attorney General concluded that such penalties are
unnecessary.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 2:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Canadian veterans escalate war museum protest

Source: Toronto Globe and Mail (3-13-07)

The Royal Canadian Legion is renewing calls for a boycott of the Canadian War Museum and is asking the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs to intervene in a dispute over a controversial panel of text about the devastation of the Allied bombing campaign in the Second World War.

"Basically we don't want people going to the War Museum. We find that the panel is insensitive," said Bob Butt, a Legion spokesman in Ottawa. "The people who were actually on the [bombing] mission find it extremely insensitive and feel like criminals when they go in there."

The president of the Canadian War Museum decided last week to leave the text on a single informational panel unchanged after consulting with four military historians. A red vertical banner, it is found toward the end of the larger exhibit on the Second World War and argues there is a controversy over the bombing of German civilians and devastation of the country.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 5:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Russian display of looted German treasures fails to end row over ownership

Source: Guardian (3-13-07)

MOSCOW -- Berlin lay in smouldering ruins. Hitler had been dead for four weeks. The Soviet Union was the undisputed master of eastern Europe. Working in great secrecy, some Red Army soldiers embarked on a delicate mission: to spirit back home unique cultural treasures belonging to the vanquished Germans.

In June 1945, three chests holding 1,538 gold and silver items were loaded on to a Moscow-bound plane. For more than half a century German experts had little clue as to whether the gold necklaces and eagle brooches dating from the 5th to 8th centuries still existed or had been lost in the second world war.

Today, however, the Merovingian-era pieces emerge spectacularly from their dingy hiding place. Moscow's Pushkin State Museum for Fine Arts is exhibiting the treasures, last seen in Berlin in 1939...

Yesterday Germany's culture minister, Bernd Neumann, hailed the exhibition as "sensational", saying it offered a blueprint as to how seemingly intractable cultural disputes could be resolved. Germany still [wants] the items back, [but] Russia's culture minister, Alexander Sokolov, [swept] aside the ownership question...[and] there seems little chance the items will ever find their way back to Germany. In 1998, Russia's state duma passed a law asserting the country's right to hang on to anything seized by Stalin's Soviets from the Germans.

Yesterday, experts said that despite the dispute over ownership, the treasures -- including exquisite scabbards decorated with minute gold beading, dainty multi-coloured glass necklaces, engraved spearheads, gold goblets, jewelled bird-shaped brooches, and an intriguing bronze buckle of a wolf terrifying a man -- offered a rare portrait of early medieval Europe.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 5:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Gold Star Mothers hoped to fade into history, but new wars have brought new members

Source: Los Angeles Times (3-13-07)

WASHINGTON —- The house is so quiet you can hear the clocks tick, except on those weekends when the mothers come in from around the country. Then the clocks are drowned out by all the chatter as everyone takes turns in the kitchen...

This brick four-story home in the chic Dupont Circle neighborhood is the clubhouse for a sorority no woman wants to join: The only qualification for membership is to lose a child in military service.

For a while, it looked as though the American Gold Star Mothers, which has tended to grieving women for eight decades, was on the brink of extinction. Enrollment pushed to 30,000 by two world wars had shrunk to 900-plus, most of them little old ladies in their trademark white suits and two-cornered garrison caps.

The thinning of the ranks wasn't a bad thing, or so thought Betty Jean Pulliam, the group's 81-year-old president. Years of peacetime had reduced the number of sons and daughters killed in action...

But the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have killed more than 3,500 U.S. soldiers, sailors and Marines, creating a wave of newly qualified Gold Star candidates. Now, the women who sent their sons to Korea, Vietnam and other battlefields —- most well into their 80s —- feel a renewed sense of duty to keep on, sustaining the memories of their lost children and consoling a new generation of bereft mothers.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 5:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

For what it's worth, lords say their house has functioned pretty well for centuries

Source: New York Times (3-13-07)

LONDON -— Faced with the unpleasant prospect of actually having to run for office, members of the House of Lords declared Monday that their chamber had functioned pretty well without elections for hundreds of years and that there was no need to rush into anything now.

“It is, by definition, not elected,” said Lord Irvine of Lairg, speaking of the House of Lords, “but I do not accept the conclusion that it is illegitimate.”

He was taking part in one of the strangest debates in the Lords’ history, held in response to the House of Commons’s support last week of a plan to end government appointments to the House of Lords and to make it an all-elected body...

“The House of Lords is good at the job it does, and the country knows it,” Baroness Boothroyd said. “The future of our Parliament is at risk if we upset the balance between the two houses that has served this country well.”

They came by the dozens to the debate, the old, the less old, some leaning on canes, some looking half-asleep on the red leather benches, a small gaggle to the side wearing the flowing black-and-white robes of Church of England bishops. In all, more than 120 peers signed up to speak, in a debate that went late into the night and is to resume Tuesday.

The House of Lords now has 731 members, a majority chosen for life by the government of the day. On Wednesday, the peers are to vote on seven options for change, ranging from a fully appointed house to a fully elected house. Under an eighth plan, proposed by Lord Trefgarne, things would remain as they are.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 5:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Britain forced Argentina into invading Falklands, says family of former dictator

Source: Telegraph (3-13-07)

BUENOS AIRES -- Britain forced Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, the members of General Leopoldo Galtieri's family said yesterday in their first interview since the 1982 conflict.

The widow and children of Argentina's former military ruler claimed that the war was engineered by Britain to avoid negotiations that could have led to the loss of sovereignty over the islands.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph in the Buenos Aires apartment where Galtieri lived with his wife Lucia until his death in 2003, his son Carlos said: "I am convinced the English wanted the conflict to happen. They had realised they were going to have to negotiate (under the aegis of the United Nations). So what did they do? They made Argentina look like an aggressor."

A UN resolution was passed in 1965 asserting that the Falklands constituted a colony and calling on Britain and Argentina to negotiate. But the 1982 conflict extinguished all hopes of negotiations.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 3:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The truth behind famous literary feud

Source: Times (of London) (3-13-07)

MADRID -- It is possibly the most famous literary feud of modern times: Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel prize-winning author, and Mario Vargas Llosa, his fellow giant of Latin American literature, have refused to talk to each other for three decades.

Once great friends, the two writers have steadfastly refused to talk about the reasons behind their spectacular bust-up, and so have their wives.

Now two pictures have appeared in which a youthful García Márquez shows off a black eye, and the photographer who took them has shed light on the origins of the feud. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it involves a woman...

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 3:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Millennium Dome curse could yet be lifted by the golden touch of King Tut

Source: Times (of London) (3-13-07)

The curse of Tutankhamun is about to be visited on one of Britain’s most cursed buildings — the Millennium Dome. More than 130 treasures from the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king, including the gold crown that adorned his head, will go on display in the Dome from November, 35 years after many were last in the country. The artefacts attracted a record 1.7 million visitors to the British Museum then, ushering in the age of the museum blockbuster, and organisers hope that the forthcoming exhibition —- the largest collection of Tutankhamun treasures assembled in the West —- will be the Dome’s saviour. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs comes to London after a four-city tour of the United States [Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, and, currently, Philadelphia], where “Tutmania” drew more than three million visitors, setting records in each host city.

Related Links

King Tut fever: Exhibit in Philadelphia is last of four stops on U.S. tour of nearly 130 ancient Egyptian artifacts

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 3:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Free market champion Adam Smith on new currency note (UK)

Source: BBC News (3-13-07)

A new £20 note featuring a portrait of Scottish economist Adam Smith comes into circulation on Tuesday.

The note includes a range of enhanced security measures designed to prevent counterfeiting, such as a wider holographic strip and microlettering.

The new image of Smith will mark the first time a Scotsman has appeared on a Bank of England note. [An image of Smith already appears on Scottish £50 notes.]

Current £20 notes, featuring English composer Edward Elgar, will be phased out over the coming months...

The Bank of England said introducing the new £20 note would be a major undertaking, as the denomination is by far the most common in circulation.

Related Links

Photo: Adam Smith banknote
What you should know about Adam Smith

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 3:05 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Did a Brit design Sydney's beloved 'Coathanger'?

Source: Times (of London) (3-13-07)

SYDNEY -- A long-dead Englishman threatens to spoil lavish celebrations planned for Sunday, when Sydney celebrates the 75th anniversary of Australia’s greatest engineering achievement —- the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Final preparations are under way for a mass walk across the “Coathanger”, a fly-past and a sail-past by a flotilla of historic vessels. But an English engineering company has put forward strong evidence that the Australian long credited with designing the bridge, John Bradfield, did not produce the final design.

Hyder Consulting, a British engineering company that absorbed the bridge’s original building firm, says that an Englishman, Ralph Freeman, was responsible and that he should be recognised.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 2:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

A modern child -- but born 160,000 years ago

Source: Telegraph (3-13-07)

A child of eight who died 160,000 years ago in Morocco is today revealed to be the oldest human to grow up and develop in a modern way.

Genetic evidence suggests that between 200,000 and 160,000 years ago modern humans -- Homo sapiens -- evolved in east Africa and then spread over the world, displacing all other humans, such as the Neanderthals.

Today, Dr Tanya Smith tells of what she says are the remains of the oldest human, from a cave in Jebel Irhoud, 60 miles west of Marrakech, that had a long childhood...

What was unknown, Dr Smith told the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, was when, and in which group, the modern human condition of a long childhood evolved.

This is a crucial question because prolonged childhood is unique to humans. It is related to our large brains, which need time to grow, and the time required for learning.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 2:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Hope of pardon for Admiral Byng, shot on his quarterdeck

Source: Telegraph (3-13-07)

Exactly 250 years after Admiral John Byng was executed for failing to "do his utmost" to save Minorca for the British before the Seven Years' War, the prospect of a formal pardon may be at hand.

Descendants of the admiral have written to the Ministry of Defence to demand that their "wronged" ancestor receives the same treatment as the 306 First World War soldiers shot at dawn who were pardoned last year...

But the gesture was not extended to Viscount Torrington, a descendant of Byng who feels that his ancestor was dealt an injustice. Byng was shot on the quarterdeck of his flagship in 1757, after failing to retake Minorca for the British before the Seven Years' War -- a conflict that signalled Britain's emergence as the dominant colonial power.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 2:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wife's diary, now online, shows how Darwin evolved

Source: Telegraph (3-13-07)

On the day that Charles Darwin married his first cousin and sweetheart Emma Wedgwood, she recorded the event in diary with customary common sense, writing simply: "Came to town." The day after, on Jan 30, 1839, the new Mrs Darwin records only that she bought an armchair.

But within the prosaic details of Emma Darwin's 60 pocket books lie the hidden secrets of six decades of family life.

They shed new light on the man who convinced scientists to believe in evolution and have now been published online for the first time...[at] www.darwin-online.org.uk

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 2:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In 1971 letter Speer admitted knowing of Holocaust plan

Source: Guardian (3-13-07)

BERLIN -- A newly discovered letter by Adolf Hitler's architect and armaments minister Albert Speer offers proof that he knew about the plans to exterminate the Jews, despite his repeated claims to the contrary.

Writing in 1971 to Hélène Jeanty, the widow of a Belgian resistance leader, Speer admitted that he had been at a conference where Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, had unveiled plans to exterminate the Jews in what is known as the Posen speech. Speer's insistence that he had left before the end of the meeting, and had therefore known nothing about the Holocaust, probably spared him from execution after the Nuremberg trials at the end of the second world war...

In the letter to Jeanty, written on December 23 1971, Speer wrote: "There is no doubt -- I was present as Himmler announced on October 6, 1943 that all Jews would be killed". He continued: "Who would believe me that I suppressed this, that it would have been easier to have written all of this in my memoirs?"

Speer, who died in London in 1981, denied knowing about the Holocaust in his best-selling 1969 book, Inside the Third Reich...

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 2:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Australia PM tells Japan: no 'quibbling' on WWII sex slaves

Source: The Age (Melbourne, Australia) (3-13-07)

Prime Minister John Howard has set himself on a collision course with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, by declaring there should be no "quibbling" over the degree of coercion used to force thousands of women to act as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II.

On the eve of their talks in Tokyo today, Mr Howard has made it clear he will not tolerate an attempt by Japan to rewrite history. He is expected to raise the issue with Mr Abe this afternoon.

Mr Abe enraged surviving so-called "comfort women" two weeks ago when — after the US Congress called on Japan to accept historical responsibility for the sex slave practice — he suggested there was no evidence to prove that the Japanese Government or army had coerced women to work in brothels...

Mr Abe tried to quell the controversy last Sunday by reiterating his support for the 1993 Kono statement of apology.

Mr Howard yesterday welcomed the reaffirmation of the 1993 statement, but rejected any attempt to parse definitions.

"There can be no quibbling about what happened … Any suggestion there was not coercion is completely repudiated by me and it has been completely repudiated by other Allied countries," he said.

Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 2:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, March 12, 2007

EPA: we cleaned up the toxics. Pomos: you disturbed our history.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (3-12-07)

CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. -- For decades, young members of the Elem Pomo tribe have broken out in skin rashes and elders have suffered kidney failure.

The Elem Pomos' 50-acre reservation [in Lake County, north of San Francisco] is adjacent to the Sulphur Bank Mine, one of the nation's most polluted sites, and some Pomos believe the tribe's health problems may be related to the federal government's use of the mine's toxic tailings to build reservation roads and house foundation pads 37 years ago.

Last year, after more than a decade of regulatory delays, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cleaned the contaminated soil and rock from the reservation and stabilized the mine site.

Yet many of the tribe's 300-plus members are dissatisfied with the $20 million cleanup project, saying the EPA's excavations may have damaged archaeological sites in violation of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act.

The cleanup removed thousands of cubic yards of toxic waste, improved roads and water systems, provided five new homes and significantly reduced pollution from the mine site. But tribe members say the EPA ignored their demands to modify the work plan, exacerbating the archaeological damage.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

171-year-old Alamo losing test of time to elements and man

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (3-11-07)

Wind, rain and the reverent touches of 2.5 million annual visitors are taking their toll on the Alamo's limestone walls, slowly eroding the landmark where one of the most important battles for Texas independence took place 171 years ago today.

It's nothing at least $1 million in research and repairs couldn't begin to fix, caretakers said.

Yet, that estimate is "probably a small amount compared to what really needs to be done to adequately handle the site," said Texas Historical Commission Executive Director Larry Oaks on Monday.

"This is one where Texans just flat would not give up," Oaks said.

The Daughters of the Republic of Texas, who have safeguarded the shrine since 1902, are preparing the Alamo's first master plan for upgrades since 1979. Daughters of the Republic officials said they can mitigate the destructive forces of nature and man if they can raise large sums for preservation. They also want to enhance the visitor experience at the hallowed site.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 7:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Columnist discovers his ancestors included slaveowners, too

Source: Mark Brown in the Chicago Sun-Times (3-7-07)

When I was a kid, I thought that anything that happened before I was born was ancient history. It didn't matter if it was five years before I was born or 500 years. The year 1955 was the cutoff point. Events before then might be interesting but couldn't possibly have any real-world connection to my life, or so I thought.

As I get older, my time perspective keeps changing. Despite the passage of all those additional years, I now feel closer than ever to the events of World War II -- Hitler's extermination of six million Jews and our dropping of the atomic bomb now looming frighteningly large in life's rear-view mirror.

Even the Civil War stopped seeming so far in the past after I visited Gettysburg a few years back and saw the photos from the 75th anniversary reunion of the famous battle, held in 1938 and attended by 1,918 Civil War veterans, many of whom were pictured participating in a re-enactment of Pickett's Charge.

I guess that's why I'm not so quick to shrug off the discovery that my ancestors owned slaves as something that happened "a long time ago," just because it was more than a century before my birth.

If you missed Sunday's column, I told the story of learning from my mom last week that some of my forebears were slaveowners.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 7:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Was there really a Molly Pitcher?

Source: Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, N.J.) (3-11-07)

A rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike near Exit 8A in Middlesex County is named Molly Pitcher, but did she really exist?

Historical interpreter Stacy Roth of Burlington City answered that question in a re-creation of Molly's life based on historical research, story-telling, imagination and what she calls "plausible conjecture."

Roth sorted fact from fiction during "Over Here, Molly Pitcher," a Women's History Month event last week in Westampton at Peachfield Plantation, a colonial farmhouse operated by the New Jersey chapter of the Colonial Dames.

Based on recent research by historians and authors, Roth believes Molly was probably Mary Hays McCauley, a Revolutionary War camp follower and heroine who assisted her husband's artillery unit at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778.

Roth sang a Revolutionary War song to her audience of 20.

"Good day, to ya," Roth said, using Hays' Irish brogue.

She involved her audience in a simulated artillery crew and canon firing.

Roth was dressed as Molly in layers of clothing with long skirts, petticoats, an overcoat and hat carrying a water canteen, a pack and a rolled wool blanket over one shoulder.

She dispelled myths Molly's artilleryman husband was killed at Monmouth and she took over his canon position or that the water she carried was in pitchers.

"It was more likely she filled their canteens with water, but how would Molly Canteen sound?" she jokes....

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 7:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Masada will not fall again - or will it?

Source: Jerusalem Post (3-8-07)

A section of the ancient walls of Masada, one of the country's most poignant symbols of survival, is in danger of collapse as a result of a heavy downpour that drenched the desert site three years ago, the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority said Thursday.

The fortress, built as a palace by Herod the Great, who was King of Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, is situated atop an isolated rock cliff at the western end of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea, and was the site of the last stand of a group of Jews rebelling against Roman rule nearly 2,000 years ago.

Masada is used as a swearing-in site for some IDF combat units, who pledge that "Masada shall not fall again."

Several hundred meters of the 1,400-meter wall are in need of urgent repair as a result of the freak December 2003 winter storm, Masada Park director Eitan Campbell said.

"There is a growing danger that parts of the wall will collapse if they are not fixed," Campbell told The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 7:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK archives board the bandwidth bandwagon

Source: Guardian Newsblog (3-12-07)

By 2020 the British Library reckons that 90% of books and research papers will be available in some kind of electronic format. Only 10% will be available in hard copy only.

Such stats makes some giddy with enthusiasm about the brave new digital world. Information will be so much more accessible and we can do away with filing all those dusty bits of paper, the theory goes. But others aren't so sure.

Family historians, for example, are concerned that we're in danger of wiping out our collective memory by over-relying on emails and other transient electronic formats.

And the head of National Archives says we are facing a crisis in record keeping unless we get to grips with the switch from a paper world to a digital one...

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 6:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Italian senator chains himself to Florence museum

Source: AP (3-12-07)

FLORENCE -- An Italian senator chained himself to a column near the gates of the Uffizi museum Monday to protest the loan of Leonardo da Vinci's "Annunciation" for a show at Japan's National Museum in Tokyo...

In protesting the loan, Sen. Paolo Amato said it exposes a priceless masterpiece to unnecessary risk and belittles its significance by using it in a commercial event.

Inside the museum, the 6 1/2-foot-by-3-foot painting was being bundled in three protective crates filled with shock-absorbers and high-tech sensors to monitor humidity, temperatures and stress levels in preparation for departure Tuesday.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 6:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study: short legs made human predecessors better fighters

Source: Live Science (3-12-07)

Our ape-like predecessors kept their stout figures for 2 million years because having short legs ironically gave them the upper-hand in male-male combat for access to mates, finds a new study.

Living from 4 million to 2 million years ago, early hominins in the genus Australopithecus are considered immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo, and had heights of around 3 feet 9 inches for females and 4 feet 6 inches for males.

Until now, the squat physiques of australopiths and other human predecessors were considered an adaptation for climbing in tree canopies. Like surfing or any other sport that requires balance, having a lower center of mass boosts stability and, in turn, success at the activity.

"The old argument was that [apes] retained short legs to help them climb trees that still were an important part of their habitat," said the study author David Carrier, a biologist at the University of Utah. "My argument is that they retained short legs because short legs helped them fight."

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 6:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Circles in Indiana woods suggest pre-historic site

Source: Star-Press (Muncie, Ind.) (3-12-07)

MUNCIE, Ind. -- The Delaware County Office of Geographic Information System stumbled onto what scientists believe to be a well-preserved earthwork built by pre-historic, Woodland Indians.

The site, only 150 feet from Ind. 32 between Muncie and Yorktown, recently came to the attention of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which plans to widen that segment of the highway to four or five lanes.

"It's absolutely critical we keep this one," said Don Cochran, director of archaeological research at Ball State University. "This is one we don't know anything about."

With the exception of Mounds State Park, most of the 300-plus known mounds and enclosures built by the Hopewell-Adena people around 2,000 years ago in East Central Indiana have been completely or partially destroyed by agriculture, development and artifact hunters.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 6:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hitler's German citizenship may be revoked

Source: UPI (3-12-07)

Six decades after his death, the most notorious German of all times, Adolf Hitler, may be stripped of his German citizenship.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 12:41 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Hmong history finds a home in Minnesota

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune (3-11-07)

Tucked away amid basement boxes and bookshelves in a handsome St. Paul house is a treasure trove that scholars say is rapidly becoming the world's largest repository of Hmong books, artifacts, photographs and recordings. There's a valuable qeej, a traditional Hmong instrument that looks like a wooden trombone and sounds like an accordion. There's a book written by a Chinese emperor in 1810, exploring the history of the oppressed people known in China as the Miao.

There are chipped plates from which refugees ate rice at the Ban Vinai camp in Thailand before immigrating to Minnesota. And there are even napkins and a water bottle retrieved from the 2002 victory party after Mee Moua was elected to the Minnesota Senate, becoming the nation's first Hmong-American legislator.

Welcome to the Hmong Nationality Archives...

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 3:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Scientists rule out one path for historical research: time travel

Source: Live Science (3-11-07)

Great fiction, impossible science

The urge to hug a departed loved one again or prevent atrocities are among the compelling reasons that keep the notion of time travel alive in the minds of many.

While the idea makes for great fiction, some scientists now say traveling to the past is impossible.

There are a handful of scenarios that theorists have suggested for how one might travel to the past, said Brian Greene, author of the bestseller, “The Elegant Universe” and a physicist at Columbia University.“And almost all of them, if you look at them closely, brush up right at the edge of physics as we understand it. Most of us think that almost all of them can be ruled out.”...

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 3:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

After decades in dark, remnants of lives stolen by Nazis finally to be seen

Source: Guardian (3-12-07)

BAD AROLSEN, Germany -- Cornelis Brouwenstijn was forced to surrender his black leather wallet when he entered Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany in 1944. Inside it the 22-year-old, a handsome blond Dutch Jew, had tucked his passport, ration cards, some curly-edged photographs of family and friends and a love poem typed on two sides of an onion-skin page: "Ode to a Girl", whose "skin is clear as glass".

Brouwenstijn's now crumbling wallet is one of hundreds stored in brown envelopes marked "effects" at the Red Cross International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, central Germany. Other envelopes contain everyday objects such as a bronze powder press, whose pale pink contents briefly cloud the air when opened, a tiny lipstick embossed with the words "kiss proof", and a white rosary.

These trinkets and bits of paper are, in thousands of cases, the only remnants of lives that ended, as Brouwenstijn's did, at the hands of the Nazis, the envelopes protecting their memories.

Before the end of this year, the fragmented stories of 17.5 million individuals held in concentration and slave labour camps during the second world war are due to be revealed to historians and academics for the first time.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 3:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Big names, big bucks for Jamestown's big 400th

Source: Washington Post (3-12-07)

Every half-century or so, Virginia throws a party to commemorate the arrival of English colonists on its shores. This year comes a biggie: the 400th anniversary. The whole world's invited, and the guest list is especially long and prestigious.

Even the queen of the mother country plans to cross the Atlantic to help mark the occasion.

Already, the cost of activities surrounding the bash is upward of $200 million. The trick has been how to celebrate something long buried under a mound of dirt: Jamestown. But major archaeological discoveries in recent years have helped Virginia piece together the outlines of the original settlement and how the colonists managed to survive.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 2:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Lighthouses obsolete but tug on heartstrings and purse strings

Source: Los Angeles Times (3-12-07)

ALCATRAZ ISLAND, Calif. —- For 150 years the lighthouse beacon here has alerted sailors to San Francisco's rocky, fog-shrouded coast. It beamed from the island when it housed a Civil War-era fort, a military prison, a maximum-security penitentiary and a national park.

Today, the public is free to roam the island's artillery batteries, prison cells and guardhouses —- virtually every building on the 22-acre island except its most recognizable structure, the towering lighthouse. The oldest on the West Coast, it has been under lock and key since 1854.

But that may change. The National Park Service is considering taking over five landmark Bay Area lighthouses from the U.S. Coast Guard and opening what aficionados call "American castles" to the public.

"Lighthouses punctuate our seascape," said Bob Trapani Jr., executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation. "They strike a lot of emotional chords in a broad group of people. The sound, the night at light, that twinkle of light; if you grow up with that memory, it doesn't go away. Lighthouses are part of a romantic era, from a simpler time."

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 2:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Moral legacy of Nazi resister takes root in Germany and abroad

Source: Christian Science Monitor (3-12-07)

BERLIN -- As Germany's long, often-praised reconciliation with its Nazi past digs deeper, it brings forward characters such as Christian Nazi resister Helmuth James von Moltke.

On his centenary anniversary Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised him as a symbol of "European courage" and for having a vision of a democratic Europe far ahead of its time.

Mr. Von Moltke, descendant of one of Germany's greatest military generals, was executed in 1945 for collaborating against Hitler, partly as the guiding spirit of the Kreisau Circle, a collection of German intellectuals, theologians, and aristocrats committed to ending Hitler's rule and rebuilding Germany.

His commemoration signifies Germany's persistent efforts to face its Nazi past, an effort now praised as a model of reconciliation...

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 2:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Secrecy rises: Washington gives public less and less

Source: USA Today (3-12-07)

Back in 1989, as a young graduate student at the University of Southern California researching a masters thesis, William Aceves asked the government for information about its "freedom of navigation" program involving international waters and air space.

The seemingly benign request, made under a 1966 law designed to let people find out what their government is doing, languished for years.

Just last month, Aceves, now a full professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego, got another batch of partially blacked-out papers, a staggering 18 years after his first request.

Aceves is among dozens of people whose requests for information have lingered in limbo at various agencies for more than a decade, according to a new audit by the National Security Archive, a public watchdog group. Thousands of requests take years. Many more take months.

The law says they are supposed to be processed within 20 days...

Related Links

Sidebar: What's behind the closed doors?

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 2:50 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Churchill article well-known, not representative of his views, some historians say

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-11-07)

LONDON -- An article from 1937 under the name of Winston Churchill that blamed Jews for their own persecution has ruffled a long-held view among Britons of their wartime leader's pro-Jewish sentiments.

Some experts on the history of British Jews dismissed the article, saying its existence has been well-known and it had never been published because Churchill rejected the views of the ghost-writer who composed it...Accounts of the article were reported Sunday in several British newspapers, triggering a modest debate over the extent to which it broke new ground in explaining Churchill's feelings about Jews...

Geoffrey Alderman, a British historian who is a columnist for The Jewish Chronicle in London, said in an interview Sunday that "we have known about this for some time" because the article appears in a collection of Churchill's writings compiled by Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, that was published in the 1980s.

Alderman added: "It does not challenge" the prevailing view of Churchill as supportive of the Jews. "I think it's a flash in the pan."

But [historian Richard] Toye said Churchill had sought to publish the article in 1937 in Britain and the United States. Churchill "was apparently happy to put his name to this article in 1937" and was "happy to endorse sentiments contained in articles that were written for him," Toye said.

Gilbert said Churchill had refused to permit the article to be published. He identified the ghost-writer as Adam Marshall Diston, a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. It was not clear why Churchill commissioned him to write an article in his name. Both Toye and Gilbert are planning to publish new books about Churchill in the next few weeks or months.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 2:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

New techniques change views on first farmers in Early Neolithic Britain

Source: Times (of London) (3-12-07)

Life for the first people to settle down to farm in Britain was far more violent than previously supposed, research suggests.

Far from a peaceful expansion into empty and fertile lands, the transformation from hunter-gatherer to farming society was riven with conflict and change. New techniques have allowed archaeologists to pinpoint ages of Early Neolithic, long-barrow burial mounds more accurately, forcing them to revise virtually every assumption about Britain’s first farmers.

Early Neolithic society, dating about 3,900BC to 3,300BC, was much more diverse than previously realised, with differences between rites and beliefs noticeable in communities only a few miles from each other...

Four of the barrows assessed by the new dating were contemporaneous yet were all shut up in different ways, suggesting much more diverse beliefs during the era of how “ghosts and spirits” should be treated...

The new findings suggest that rather than commemorating long-dead tribal chieftains or heroes, the people were keeping alive memories of their friends and families.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 2:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

A little late, Germans planning to yank Hitler's citizenship

Source: Times (of London) (3-12-07)

BERLIN -- Adolf Hitler should be stripped of German citizenship, according to MPs from the state that awarded it to him 75 years ago, aiding his rise to power.

The MPs hope such a move will bring redemption for the city of Braunschweig which, they claim, has been wrongly blamed for appointing Hitler as a civil servant on February 26, 1932. The appointment made Hitler, who was born in Austria, a German national, meaning he could run in the presidential election a few weeks later.

The city “keeps getting labelled as the place that helped Hitler get his German citizenship”, said Isolde Saalmann, a local MP. “But the city was Social Democrat at the time.” It was the state of Braunschweig, which was a Nazi stronghold and which was replaced by Lower Saxony after the war, that had turned Hitler into a German, she said. “That should be clarified. This is in no way intended as a way to belittle history by saying ‘see, he wasn’t a German’,” said Ms Saalmann. “That would never be my intention as a Social Democrat.”...

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 1:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Hamas ban on folktales reversed, but not before 1500 copies are destroyed

Source: CBC (Canada) (3-11-07)

The Hamas education minister has reversed an order to remove and destroy copies of an anthology of Palestinian folk tales in school libraries because it contains a few references to sexual body parts.

Nasser Shaer said Saturday that he had not been informed of the ban, which was implemented earlier this week.

"I have decided to correct the illegal measures that were taken regarding disposing the book," Shaer told the Associated Press.

Some 1,500 copies of Speak Bird, Speak Again had already been destroyed, sparking outrage among writers, academics and others who protested the move as a form of censorship...

The 400-page anthology, first published in English in 1989, is narrated by Palestinian women. It was put together by Sharif Kanaana, a novelist and professor at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank and Ibrahim Muhawi, a teacher of Arabic literature.

It wasn't published in Arabic until 2001, and that's when the Palestinian Culture Ministry requested copies to be distributed in schools.

Kanaana said two of the 45 tales contain colloquial Arabic words that refer to body parts.

Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 at 1:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Voters Accept Divorced Candidates, but They Have Limits

Source: NYT (3-11-07)

ALREADY in this pre-presidential year, the question is out and about: How judgmental will the public be of candidates, how demanding of idealized personal lives and vintage family values?

It’s old news that divorce is no longer disqualifying for a candidate, hasn’t been since 1980, when the country elected Ronald Reagan, the divorced and remarried family-values candidate. As national divorce rates skyrocketed, divorce lost its wounding political impact. The end.

Or was it?

“I think people no longer have a unitary idea that divorce inevitably disqualifies you, but they still look at the dynamics,” said Stephanie Coontz, of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “They are more disapproving of dishonest dynamics, by how someone handled his marriages, divorces, kids.”

And now one of those kids has spoken up — Andrew Giuliani, Rudolph W. Giuliani’s son. In a recent wince-inducing interview with The Times, Andrew, 21, said that he had been estranged from his father since Mr. Giuliani’s bitter divorce from his mother, Donna Hanover, and his subsequent marriage to Judith Nathan. Andrew, and his sister, Caroline, 17, are expected to be absent from their father’s campaign.

A problem? No, said David Garth, a political consultant who advised Mr. Giuliani when he ran for mayor. “The more trouble the country is in, the more you tend to overlook some of the personal things you may have looked at before,” he said.

That is one theory: The voting public, practiced survivors of Bill Clinton’s transgressions and former Senator Gary Hart’s career-wrecking dalliance with a young woman not his wife, is less likely to dismiss a candidate because of personal foibles today, especially if worried about war and security....

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Whose Art Is It?

Source: Newsweek (3-12-07)

American museums are returning some of the world's great antiquities to their original homes. Should they? A new debate over who owns the past is underway.

In 1972, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art paid a record-smashing $1 million for an ancient Greek vase known as the Euphronios Krater. It was worth every penny. The krater—a 12-gallon pot for mixing wine and water—was one of only two dozen surviving examples by the great painter Euphronios, and it even had his signature. Thomas Hoving, then the Met's director, was so smitten by its classic beauty he called it "positively the finest work of art I've ever seen." (Take that, Michelangelo.) But the 2,500-year-old krater did have one major flaw. It was stolen—dug up by looters from an Etruscan tomb near Rome and smuggled out of Italy just months before it was sold, an inconvenient truth the Met finally copped to last year. When the museum debuts its lavish new Greek and Roman galleries next month, its most notable antiquity will be left in a side gallery. Next year the Met is sending it back to Italy for good.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 6:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Photos of past presidents in Latin America

Source: Newsweek (3-11-07)

Newsweek has prepared a slide show featuring pictures of past presidents in Latin America.

[Scroll to Bush in Latin America.]

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 6:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

South Korea Reviews Its Dark Past, but the Pace Is Slow

Source: NYT (3-11-07)

Former political prisoners are coming forward with accounts of witch hunts and torture that can sound unreal to young South Koreans today. Large-scale antigovernment demonstrations, tear gas and firebombs have long since receded from the streets. North Korea stirs more sympathy for its economic plight than it does fear.

The Korea of three decades ago was a very different place.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 6:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mayan priests to purify ancient site after Bush visit

Source: AP (3-9-07)

GUATEMALA CITY —- Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites -- which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles -- would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 5:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

USS New Orleans commissioned in namesake city

Source: AP (3-10-07)

NEW ORLEANS -- With the boom of cannons, the Navy commissioned the USS New Orleans before thousands of onlookers Saturday, marking the first time since at least World War II a Navy ship has been built and commissioned in its namesake city...

The $1.3 billion USS New Orleans is a transport ship that can embark a landing force of up to 800 Marines. It is the fourth ship to bear the New Orleans name. The last one was an amphibious assault vessel that served during the Vietnam War and in Operation Desert Storm. It was decommissioned in 1997 and is slated to be sunk for gunnery practice.

It took about five years to build this ship, including a months-long interruption in construction due to Hurricane Katrina. The work was completed Monday.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 5:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan PM still trying damage control over WWIIsex slaves

Source: Reuters (3-10-07)

TOKYO -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sought on Sunday to contain fallout from his remarks about women forced to act as wartime sex slaves for Japanese soldiers as the furor threatened to cloud summits with Chinese and U.S. leaders.

Abe sparked outrage abroad when he said in February there was no evidence that Japan's government or army had forced the mostly Asian women to work in military brothels during World War Two.

Abe has endorsed a 1993 government apology to the "comfort women", as they are euphemistically known in Japan, but has also said Tokyo would not apologize again even if U.S. lawmakers adopted a resolution calling for a new and unambiguous apology.

On Sunday, Abe repeated that the 1993 apology remained in effect. "We have stated our heartfelt apologies to the 'comfort women' at the time who suffered greatly and were injured in their hearts," Abe said in an interview with NHK television. "I want to say that that sentiment has not changed at all."

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 5:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pope to restore mass in Latin, giving it pride of place over vernacular mass

Source: Sunday Times (of London) (3-11-07)

MILAN -- Pope Benedict XVI plans to bring back the celebration of mass in Latin, overriding a rare show of protest from senior cardinals.

With a papal decree said to be imminent, Catholic publishers in Rome are preparing new editions of the Latin missal. They have sent proofs to Vatican authorities for approval, the Rome newspaper La Repubblica reported yesterday.

Vatican sources said Benedict, who is fluent in Latin, is considering publication of a papal “motu proprio” (literally, on his own initiative), which does not require the approval of church bodies. This would enable Benedict to ignore opposition from several cardinals.

The decree would officially declare the Latin, or Tridentine, mass an “extraordinary universal rite”, and the vernacular mass, with which most Catholics are familiar, an “ordinary universal rite”.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 5:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Should Caravaggio be renamed Merisi of Milan?

Source: Telegraph (3-11-07)

CARAVAGGIO, Italy -- Each year, the sleepy northern Italian town of Caravaggio throws a week-long festival to honour its most famous citizen, the fiery Renaissance artist who took his home town's name.

This year, however, the celebrations are likely to be muted. An art historian in Milan has discovered that Michelangelo Merisi -- the artist's original name -- was not born in Caravaggio. He was born in Milan, on September 29, 1571, and baptised at the church of Santa Maria della Passarella.

The revelation has shocked the town's 15,000 inhabitants. In one main street, a public notice board displays a selection of newspaper articles about the discovery. Two old ladies stood nearby digesting the news.

The mayor, Giuseppe Prevedini, has decided not to give up his town's only claim to fame without a fight. After all, there is the income from the two million tourists who visit every year to consider.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 5:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Verona has Romeo & Juliet's balcony, Rome has -- the bridge of lovers' padlocks

Source: Telegraph (3-10-07)

ROMe -- A teenage fad to attach padlocks to Rome's oldest bridge as a sign of unbreakable love has caused a political ruckus and triggered a mysterious theft.

Every week, hundreds of teenage couples visit the Ponte Milvio and testify to their everlasting love by writing their names on a padlock and clipping it to a chain wrapped around two of the bridge's lampposts. They then throw the keys into the Tiber.

The fad was immortalised last year in I Want You, a romantic novel by Federico Moccia, which has just been turned into a film.

However, the lampposts are now so overburdened that some opposition members of the local council tabled a motion to remove the padlocks and clean up the bridge.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 5:04 AM | Comments (0) | Top

FBI hunts last of the (elderly white male) lynchers

Source: Observer (3-11-07)

When the mutilated bodies of Henry Dee and Charles Moore were dragged up from the waters of the Mississippi in 1964, they were tied to the engine block of a Jeep. The Ku Klux Klansmen who killed the black teenagers had intended their bodies never to be found.

In the Fifties and Sixties, black men, women and children were often killed with impunity by southern whites who believed they would get away with murder. But they were wrong in the case of Dee and Moore, who were both 19.

Next month, James Seale, 71, will go on trial in Mississippi for their murders. He is unlikely to be the last elderly white man to face such a trial for crimes some might deem old history and others would call horrifically delayed justice. In a dramatic new official move to come to terms with the past, the FBI is re-examining almost 100 unsolved murder cases from the civil rights era. It will look at brutal slayings and lynchings that happened across the American South before 1968, when the region was in turmoil as blacks campaigned for the right to vote...

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 5:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

What will happen to items not digitized?

Source: New York Times (3-11-07)

SALINAS, Calif. -- The National Steinbeck Center, at the top of Main Street in this farming community, exhibits an array of artifacts from John Steinbeck's life and works...Downstairs, in a climate-controlled vault, is the original manuscript of "The Pearl," his novella published in 1947...

Steinbeck aficionados wishing to examine the manuscript of "The Pearl"...have to travel here -— after making an appointment with a part-time archivist, who is in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

The center takes great care to preserve these relics of Steinbeck, a Nobel laureate, yet it has no plans to take the collection a step further, to adapt to a digital age...

These Steinbeck artifacts are not the only important pieces of history that are at risk of disappearing or being ignored in the digital age. As more museums and archives become digital domains, and as electronic resources become the main tool for gathering information, items left behind in nondigital form, scholars and archivists say, are in danger of disappearing from the collective cultural memory, potentially leaving our historical fabric riddled with holes.

"There's an illusion being created that all the world's knowledge is on the Web, but we haven't begun to glimpse what is out there in local archives and libraries," said Edward L. Ayers, a historian and dean of the college and graduate school of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia. "Material that is not digitized risks being neglected as it would not have been in the past, virtually lost to the great majority of potential users."...

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 4:55 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Historians clash over Churchill 'anti-Semitism'; Gilbert says article written by ghostwriter

Source: Observer (3-11-07)

Winston Churchill's views on anti-Semitism were at the centre of a row last night after Cambridge University claimed to have discovered a 70-year-old document in which the future Prime Minister wrote that Jews may 'have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer', inviting terms of abuse such as 'Hebrew bloodsucker'.

Dr Richard Toye, a Cambridge historian, said he chanced on a typed article, written by Churchill in 1937 but unpublished, among proofs and press cuttings at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. The university issued a press release trumpeting, 'Uncovered: The "lost" paper Churchill kept from publication,' and promoting a book by Toye which is to be published later this month. [Dr Toye's book, 'Lloyd George & Churchill: Rivals for Greatness' will be published by Macmillan on March 16.]

But when The Observer contacted Sir Martin Gilbert, the eminent historian and Churchill biographer, the implication of anti-Semitism began to unravel. Gilbert, who also has a book out this summer, said the article was not written by Churchill at all, but rather his ghost writer, Adam Marshall Diston. He added that Churchill's instructions for the article were different in both tone and content from what Diston eventually wrote, and pointed out that Diston was a supporter of Oswald Mosley, the notorious fascist and anti-Semite. Churchill had stopped its publication in a newspaper.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 9:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Churchill's unpublished 1937 article: Jews 'partly responsible' for their troubles

Source: AFP (3-11-07)

LONDON -- The Second World War prime minister Winston Churchill argued that Jews were "partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer" in an article publicised for the first time Sunday.

Churchill made the claim in [a never-published] article entitled "How The Jews Can Combat Persecution" written in 1937, three years before he started leading the country.

He outlined a new wave of anti-Semitism sweeping across Europe and the United States, which was followed by the deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust under the German Nazi regime.

"It would be easy to ascribe it to the wickedness of the persecutors, but that does not fit all the facts," the article read...

"For it may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution -- that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer."

The article adds: "The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is 'different'."...

Elsewhere, Churchill praised Jews as "sober, industrious, law-abiding" and urged Britons to stand up for the race against persecution.

"There is no virtue in a tame acquiescence in evil. To protest against cruelty and wrong, and to strive to end them, is the mark of a man," he wrote.

The article was discovered by Cambridge University historian Richard Toye in the university's archive of Churchill's papers.

Related Links

Uncovered: The 'lost' paper Churchill kept from publication (U.Cambridge press release, 3/9/07)
Reaction: 142 comments (and counting) at Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv)

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 9:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Henry Knox finally gets his due

Source: Boston Globe (3-8-07)

In Colonial Boston, Henry Knox's bookstore on Cornhill Street was a fashionable gathering place for British Army officers and members of the town's Tory elite.

Knox developed an interest in the science and tactics of artillery that he furthered by reading the books he imported from England and carried in his store.

That knowledge would shortly be turned against his customers in the military surprise that led to the events celebrated on Evacuation Day, March 17.

In the early days of the American Revolution, Knox joined the Colonial artillery and convinced General George Washington that he could haul cannons from recently captured Fort Ticonderoga overland to Boston.

Under cover of darkness on the night of March 4, 1776, the cannons were mounted on Dorchester Heights in South Boston, bringing the British garrison and fleet within range of their fire. Within two weeks, the British evacuation of Boston was underway.

Knox, the bookseller-turned-artilleryman, will be the focus of this year's Evacuation Day celebrations in Boston, sponsored by a coalition of community groups.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bowing to Sikh Request, California Wants Textbook Change

Source: NYT (3-10-07)

The picture on Page 95 of “An Age of Voyages: 1350-1600,” a seventh-grade history book used in California schools since last fall, had been unremarkable to state education officials: a stiff 19th-century portrait of a man with a trimmed beard holding a few beads and wearing a crown.

But for Sikhs, that image of Guru Nanak (1469-1538), their religion’s founder, is anathema to everything they believe about the prophet, a simple man who preached to the poor and certainly, they say, never wore a crown.

So, after months of lobbying by Sikhs, the California Board of Education voted unanimously on Thursday to ask the book’s publisher to remove the portrait from future printings, and to provide a sticker with another image or text to place over the portrait in existing copies.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 6:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Swiss Convict Turk for Denying Armenian Genocide

Source: NYT (3-10-07)

A prominent Turkish politician was convicted Friday of breaching Swiss antiracism laws by saying that the early 20th-century killing of Armenians could not be described as genocide.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry reacted swiftly to the decision, saying in a statement that it was saddened by the Swiss court’s ruling to punish the politician, Dogu Perincek, leader of the Turkish Workers’ Party, and to ignore “his freedom of expression.”

Mr. Perincek was ordered to pay a fine of $2,450; an additional penalty of $7,360 was suspended.

He was charged with breaking Swiss law by denying during a visit to Switzerland in 2005 that the World War I era killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide. He has since repeated his statements, including at his trial this week.

In Turkey it is a crime to use the word genocide to describe the killings.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 6:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'My salmon fishing rights date to 1613' -- 'Ha! ours date to 1609'

Source: Independent (3-10-07)

It could be shrugged off as an argument over fish, but in fact it is a classic dispute over ancient rights and local pleasures, over privileges and prerogatives, which stretches back centuries into the Celtic mist.

A few unemployed southern Irish anglers are taking on a scion of Britain's high nobility in the person of the 12th Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish, friend of the Prince of Wales and inheritor of fabulous wealth. And some prize salmon are at stake.

The resonances echo down the centuries: James I makes an appearance in the legal dispute, as does Magna Carta, Henry VIII and Sir Walter Raleigh. So, in more modern times, do Fred Astaire and Tiger Woods.

The origins of the tussle go back a long, long way. It centres on properties and rights that the Devonshires have held for 400 years or so. Among many other assets the family owns Lismore castle in Waterford and fishing rights on the river Blackwater in Cork...

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 6:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German Bishops Compare Palestinians to Jews in Warsaw Ghetto

Source: NYT (3-10-07)

A pilgrimage to Israel by 27 Roman Catholic bishops from Germany last week was meant to be a historic symbol of reconciliation between Jews and German Catholics.

Instead, after two bishops drew a link between the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, it has become a fresh source of recrimination.

Jewish groups in Germany and Israel’s ambassador to Germany condemned their comments, which were reported in newspapers here, saying they were demagogic and “verging on anti-Semitism.”

“If one uses terms like Warsaw Ghetto or racism in connection with Israeli or Palestinian politics, then one has forgotten everything, or learned nothing,” the Israeli ambassador, Shimon Stein, said in a statement this week.

The Warsaw Ghetto, established by the Nazis in 1940, was used as a holding pen for Polish Jews before they were sent to concentration camps. It has come to epitomize the barbarity of the Holocaust.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 6:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

While Serbia still copes with his ruinous rule, diehards mark year since Milosevic died

Source: AP (3-10-07)

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Admirers of late president Slobodan Milosevic marked the first anniversary of his death with wreaths and speeches on Saturday, even as Serbia continues to grapple with consequences of his ruinous rule.

Officials of the formerly Milosevic-led Socialist Party gathered at his grave in the eastern town of Pozarevac, praising the man who led Serbia through several wars and ended up facing the U.N. war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague...

He died [March 11, 2006] just weeks before an expected end of his trial for alleged war crimes, including genocide...

As Milosevic's unrepentant supporters glorified the ex-president, [current President Boris] Tadic was busy dealing with one of the effects of his rule -- attending U.N.-mediated talks in Vienna, Austria, with the representatives of ethnic Albanian separatists from Kosovo, the southern province whose secession Milosevic tried to prevent with brutal force.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 5:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

One sainthood exam for John Paul II ends, Vatican study to begin

Source: AP (3-10-07)

VATICAN CITY -- The Rome diocese has wrapped up its examination of Pope John Paul II's virtues and life, an important step in the Catholic Church's process that could lead to sainthood for the late pontiff.

Rome Cardinal Camillo Ruini said Saturday he had been informed that completion of work by the diocese on the cause for beatification and sainthood will be marked with a ceremony in St. John's Lateran Basilica on April 2 in the capital. The date is the second anniversary of John Paul's death...

Now the Vatican must take up its own examination of the same characteristics, a process which can take years.

Shortly after John Paul's death, with faithful clamoring for quick canonization, Pope Benedict XVI, the pontiff's successor, waived the customary five-year waiting period to open the case for possible sainthood.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Anne Frank's chestnut tree to be cut down

Source: BBC News (3-10-07)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The old chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands is to be cut down.

Amsterdam city council said the diseased tree behind the building in which the Jewish Frank family took refuge has been attacked by a fungus.

But after protests by environmental groups and the Anne Frank Museum, a cutting of the tree will be replanted.

The chestnut tree is listed as a monument and is at least 150 years old.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 5:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

At Indian History Congress: minister says India sliding into neo-imperialism

Source: The Hindu (Chennai, India) (3-11-07)

FEROKE, Kerala, India -- [Kerala] Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan has said that India is sliding into the grip of neo-imperialism because of the economic and cultural regime that globalisation has brought about.

Inaugurating the 67th Session of the Indian History Congress at Farook College here on Saturday, Mr. Achuthanandan said the celebration this year of the 150th anniversary of the revolt of 1857 had a special significance in the prevailing situation in India because it gave the people an occasion to express the country's opposition to neo-imperialism. 'The dissemination of the anti-colonial message of the revolt has contemporary significance,' he said and called upon the historians participating in the conference to 'celebrate the year of the great revolt.'

The Chief Minister said he had noticed that history as a discipline had been in turmoil during the last few years. 'The information that I have gathered is both alarming and encouraging. Alarming because it is reported that there has been an attempt to subvert secular historical writing and supplant it with communal interpretation. Attempts were made to rewrite textbooks on communal lines and to use institutions like the Indian Council for Historical Research for propagating communal interpretation. Manuscripts of well-known historians were suppressed and Hinduised and mythified history was propagated...I highly appreciate the consistent and courageous fight put up by the members of the Indian History Congress against this nefarious move,' Mr. Achuthanandan said.

Earlier, J.V. Naik, Professor of History, took over as General President of the Indian History Congress. Historian Irfan Habib proposed his name for the post. Calicut University Vice-Chancellor Anwar Jahan Zuberi released a souvenir brought out to mark the 67th session of the IHC, which is the fourth to be held in Kerala and the first to be held under the auspices of a college. Hundreds of delegates from all over India and neighbouring countries are attending the three-day conference, which would see around 600 papers on Ancient India, Medieval Indian, Modern India, Countries Other Than India and Archaeology being presented.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 5:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Canadian war museum resists vets' demand to revise statement on WWII strategic bombing campaign

Source: Ottawa (Ont.) Citizen (3-10-07)

The Canadian War Museum, refusing to bow any further to demands from several veterans' organizations, has announced it will not change a controversial display that raises questions about the morality and military value of the Allied bombing campaign in Germany during the Second World War.

The decision quickly prompted the Royal Canadian Legion to renew calls for a public boycott of the museum and to ask a Senate committee on veterans affairs to "investigate the matter" -- ensuring a new round of debate in the long-running dispute over the Allies' aerial bombardment of wartime Germany.

A single panel at the heart of the conflict...[reads,] "Mass bomber raids against Germany resulted in vast destruction and heavy loss of life," the disputed panel reads. "The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead, and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."

The decision not to alter the panel -- which some Canadian veterans have charged depicts them as "war criminals" -- follows the submission of separate reports on the controversy by four of Canada's leading historians: McGill University's Desmond Morton, Margaret MacMillan of the University of Toronto, the University of Calgary's David Bercuson and Serge Bernier, head of history and heritage at the Department of National Defence.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 5:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Two jets seized from air museums dismantled

Source: San Bernardino (Calif.) Sun (3-10-07)

CHINO, Calif. -- Federal agents dismantled two F-14 Tomcat fighter jets Thursday afternoon at Chino Airport, leaving only metal skeletons on the tarmac.

It was unclear if a third jet seized from a Chino museum two days earlier had been moved or stripped.

The former military aircraft were taken from the Yanks Air Museum and the Planes of Fame Museum after a 17-month investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Defense Criminal Investigation Service and the Naval Criminal Investigation Service...

According to an ICE news release, the government agencies had determined that the three aircraft from the Chino museums, as well as a fourth one in Victorville, could have contained sensitive military equipment that should have been removed before they were transferred to private parties.

In the late 1990s, the aircraft were decommissioned at the Naval Air Station at Point Mugu, then moved to a scrap metal company.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 5:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

U.Dayton building used as WWII code-breaking lab to be demolished

Source: AP (3-9-07)

DAYTON, Ohio -- A building used as a top-secret code-breaking lab for the United States during World War II will be demolished, the University of Dayton announced Friday.

From 1942 to 1945, the Navy used the building as a lab for designing and building sophisticated code-breaking machines, including the NCR Bombe, credited with helping crack German U-boat codes.

The university, which owns the property, said a study showed the building had lost its historical integrity because it had been extensively remodeled and is not eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 5:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Egypt: no more foreign history studies at international schools

Source: Al Wafd (via MEMRI--Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC) (3-9-07)

Egyptian Education and Culture Ministry official Dr. Radha Abu Sari'a announced that it had been decided to eliminate foreign history studies in international and foreign schools in Egypt. He said that starting with the next school year, the only history taught would be Egyptian history, in Arabic.

The change is aimed at preserving Egypt's cultural identity and preventing a recurrence of incidents such as that in which a schoolbook claimed that the Jews had built the pyramids.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 4:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pakistan and India should write joint history manual, say two historic European rivals

Source: Daily Times (Lahore, Pakistan) (3-10-07)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan and India should follow in France and Germany’s footsteps and compile a joint history manual of their culture and war memories to improve bilateral relations, said German Ambassador Guntar Mulack while addressing the launch ceremony of the first ever ‘Franco-German history manual’ at the Alliance Francaise.

Mulack said that Germany and France had different cultures, languages and traditions, with a history of wars, and yet they had managed to make a joint history manual. “With similar cultures, Pakistan and India can easily follow their example, as human relations remain strong despite wars,” he said, adding that both Germany and France displayed reconciliation and friendship by making the manual.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 3:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sundown Towns ... Still?

Source: Fox affiliate in St. Louis (Video) (2-21-07)

A beautiful sunset was often the sign for African-Americans to get out of town. That was the rule in hundreds of towns in Illinois and Missouri. The author of a recent book called 'Sundown Towns' claims in some rare cases, it may still be the unwritten rule. FOX 2’s Chris Hayes visited one of those towns near the Missouri/Illinois border, a place called Anna. He discovered the name itself suggests African-Americans are not welcomed.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 12:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Kentucky Town Re-Examines Its Racial History

Source: NPR (3-10-07)

David Slone arrived in the small Kentucky town of Corbin in 2005, seeking a haven after Hurricane Katrina ripped through his hometown of Biloxi, Miss.

He was in a shelter in Gulfport, Miss., and saw a flier left by the Corbin church offering to house displaced families.

Slone didn't know until he arrived that he would be one of only a few blacks living in Corbin, a town still trying to come to terms with a troubled racial history.

In 1919, more than 200 black men worked in Corbin, expanding the railroad yard and paving streets.

But racial violence and labor strife were rampant across the country as soldiers streamed home from World War I.

In what came to be known as Red Summer, white mobs shot and lynched dozens of blacks in more than two dozen locales from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta....

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Greek Cypriots finish demolishing symbolic wall

Source: Times (of London) (3-10-07)

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Greek Cypriots today finished demolishing a wall that has for decades split Europe's last divided capital in two, in a dramatic move which officials hope may kick-start reconciliation moves.

The move to demolish the wall on Ledra Street, which runs through the heart of Nicosia, started under cover of darkness last night, and was not publicised earlier in the day. It followed the Turkish Cypriot dismantling of a disputed elevated walkway in January, which was at the centre of a dispute with the Greek Cypriots over the opening of a new crossing point...

The 13-foot high concrete wall was seen as the strongest symbol of the Mediterranean island's 32-year-old partition into a Green Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north.

The spot is a bizarre time warp of long abandoned, bullet-pocked and crumbling buildings, some of them once elegant stone-built mansions whose only inhabitants today are stray cats and rats...

Communication between Greek and Turkish Cypriots was heavily restricted until 2003, when the Turkish Cypriot authorities unexpectedly opened several checkpoints along the island’s 185km long dividing line.

Ledra Street has been blocked since 1964. The wall was put up after intercommunal violence flared in 1963, just three years after Cyprus secured independence from Britain.

Related Links

Nicosia demolition is just the beginning

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 3:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Roman settlement found next to prehistoric Britain's 'devil's hill'

Source: Telegraph (3-10-07)

Evidence of a Roman sacred site has been discovered [in Wiltshire] at the foot of a man-made hill created thousands of years before the Romans arrived in Britain, it was announced yesterday.

English Heritage called the uncovering of the settlement a "startling discovery", and all the more so because it lies next to 5,000-year-old Silbury hill, which at 130ft is Europe's largest man-made prehistoric monument.

The original purpose and use of the Neolithic hill, which took an estimated 20 million man hours to make, still mystifies archaeologists.

Yesterday's disclosure indicates that a Roman community was equally taken with the Wiltshire hill and established a sacred settlement in its shadow, some 3,000 years after it was created.

The discovery of a settlement the size of 24 football pitches is "quite unexpected" said Dr Amanda Chadburn, an English Heritage archaeologist and team leader.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 3:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 9, 2007

A fight for America's heritage on rim of Grand Canyon

Source: Independent (3-9-07)

For the Hualapai tribe, the construction of a skywalk over the Grand Canyon is a way of exploiting the site's tourism revenue. But other Native Americans accuse them of greed...

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 5:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

On anniversary of battle of ironclads, USS Monitor center opens in Virginia

Source: AP (3-9-07)

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- Exactly 145 years after the USS Monitor faced the Confederate ship CSS Virginia in the first clash of ironclads, a $30 million center dedicated to the Union vessel opened Friday.

The Monitor Center, a new wing of The Mariners' Museum, houses more than 1,200 artifacts from the Civil War ship and an interactive exhibition on both armored vessels...

The Monitor, a new design, and the Virginia, built atop the burned-out hull of the Union steam frigate Merrimack, fought to a draw on March 9, 1862, near where the museum now stands. The battle made wooden warships obsolete...

Galleries tell how the ironclads were built and feature efforts to recover artifacts from the deteriorating wreckage of the Monitor, which sank, upside down, during a storm 16 miles off North Carolina's coast on Dec. 31, 1862. Sixteen men died...

Outside, visitors can stroll the deck of a 170-foot, full-scale exterior model of the Monitor.

Related Links

A celebrity warship gets a hall of fame to call its own (NYT review; 'Something seems off kilter about the entire scale: why this kind of attention and expense?')

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 5:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK: jewels in the crown to be protected, but who will pay heritage price?

Source: Guardian (3-9-07)

A national register is to be created to protect England's precious historic sites, bringing together everything from Stonehenge to Blenheim, from Canterbury cathedral to the wreck of the Hanover, an 18th century treasure ship breaking up on the seabed off Cornwall.

The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell...promised to beef up protection for World Heritage sites: Britain's range from the Tower of London to the old iron and coal works at Blaenavon in south Wales, but the honour which flags them up as among the world's most important brings no statutory protection.

The white paper includes the promise of "buffer zones" to protect the perimeters of some World Heritage sites from unsympathetic development...

English Heritage, the conservation quango which will take over responsibility for listing from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport -- in the past it has only recommended listings -- warmly welcomed the reforms...

Conservation groups cautiously welcomed the white paper, but were quick to warn more money will be needed to make it work...The National Trust welcomed the single register but also expressed concern over resources...

Conservation groups welcomed the government's acceptance of their passionate argument for new interim protection during the consultation process, to prevent owners flattening a building as soon as they learn of potential designation.

Related Links

Government reviews UK's heritage protection system (UKTV History)
Heritage Protection for the 21st Century -- White Paper (with links to several documents)
Contest to name Britain’s best-loved historic site

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 5:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nation Magazine features archives for students' use

Source: Email from the Nation to subscribers (3-9-07)

Four years ago, The Nation launched a Classroom Education Program as a way to encourage a healthy diversity of opinion by offering massively marked-down short-term subscriptions for students. One part of that program offers teaching aids and archival resources to educators which have been so popular that we're now making special history packs available to all students of history, whether you're in a classroom or not, at very reasonable rates.

Nation editors have combed the magazine's archives to collect and compile insightful articles that bring back to life the real stories behind the historic episodes that have shaped the American experience. As twenty-first century Nation readers know from our prescient coverage of the Iraq War, the story started well before the invasion and occupation that four years later threatens to inflame the entire region.

Now you can travel back and read The Nation's reporting on The Roots of the Vietnam War, beginning with an article we published in 1947. Or learn about the civil rights movement as it was unfolding during The Montgomery Bus Boycott--years before Rosa Parks inspired the "Miracle in Alabama." Interested in the ongoing battle between evolution and creationism in schools? Go back to The Scopes Trial and read The Nation's coverage of the historic "Monkey Trial," including a piece by H. L. Mencken, one of the country's most legendary journalists. There are also packs on Sacco and Vanzetti, President Kennedy's assassination, Watergate, the Spanish-American War and much more.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Harrisburg to sell $8m collection intended for Old West museum

Source: AP (3-8-07)

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Thousands of American Indian and Western artifacts purchased by the city government will be sold at a four-day auction scheduled for October, officials said Thursday.

Mayor Stephen R. Reed spent about $8 million in nontax city money to assemble the collection -— including Annie Oakley's coat, a card table from Wyatt Earp's saloon and the gun that killed Jesse James —- for an Old West museum he wanted to have built in Harrisburg. [WHP-TV reported the items are being sold "to help fill a hole in the city's budget."]

Mayoral spokesman Randy King said the city will retain the collection's most valuable items and put them on display in Harrisburg's National Civil War Museum.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Captain Smith, the tides are shifting on the James River

Source: New York Times (3-2-07)

JAMESTOWN, Va. —- At the banks of the James River here, not far from where an archaeological dig has found pottery shards and remains of settlers from 400 years ago, a proud Capt. John Smith faces the waters and the setting sun. A wooden stockade extends near the shoreline — the water has moved inland over the centuries — showing where his frail fort once stood. But Smith stands heroically tall, his bronze cape seeming to ripple in the brisk winter winds. Even the inscription proclaims his importance: “Governor of Virginia, 1608.”

Governor? Virginia? At the time Jamestown consisted of a paltry isolated settlement of several dozen souls, with disease, starvation and battles with local Indian tribes regularly claiming almost as many lives as Virginia Company could send in delayed relief ships from England, the funds raised from wary investors. But the Smith statue does give an accurate sense of the scale of the leadership, strategic thinking, ruthlessness and courage Smith demonstrated during the brief period (not even two years) he led that first English colony in the Americas...

But now, two months before the 400th anniversary festivities begin , the monumental hardly matters anymore, and neither, it seems, does John Smith. Other kinds of commemoration have been prepared. It isn’t that Jamestown is being treated as less important...

But a different understanding is made explicit here in the two historical museums and outdoor facilities devoted to the Jamestown theme...

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Google Earth urged to remove 'Mount Hitler' name

Source: Reuters (3-9-07)

BERLIN -- The mayor of a small town in Germany on Thursday called on Google Earth to delete a reference to a nearby "Mount Hitler" from its geographic image service, saying it was misleading.

Andreas Wiedemann, mayor of Bad Toelz, south of Munich, said the peak near the Bavarian town had been known as Mount Hitler for a short time during the Third Reich but had been given back its original name of Heigelkopf after World War Two.

Google Earth users who call up a map of the area are given both names for the 1,205-meter (3,950 feet) mountain.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkey lifts ban on YouTube if it removes Ataturk insult

Source: AP (3-9-07)

ISTANBUL -- Turkey lifted its ban on YouTube Friday, an official for the country's largest telecommunications firm said, two days after a court ordered the Web site blocked because of videos that allegedly insulted the founder of modern Turkey.

Ahter Kutadgu, head of corporate communications for Turk Telekom, told the Anatolia news agency his company had been notified of a court decision to lift the ban...

The Istanbul court that ordered the site blocked on Wednesday had said it would lift the ban as soon as it ascertained that videos insulting Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, were removed.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Swiss court convicts Turkish politician for Armenian genocide denial

Source: AP (3-7-07)

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- A prominent Turkish politician was convicted Friday of breaching Swiss anti-racism laws by saying that the early 20th-century killing of Armenians could not be described as genocide. The Turkish foreign ministry reacted swiftly to the decision, saying in a statement that it was saddened by the Swiss court's ruling to punish Dogu Perincek, leader of the Turkish Workers' Party, and to ignore "his freedom of expression."

Perincek was ordered to pay a fine of $2,450 and was given a suspended penalty of $7,360.

Perincek was charged with breaking Swiss law by denying during a visit to Switzerland in 2005 that the World War I-era killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide. He has since repeated his claim, including at his trial earlier this week.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Orchestra to sell its Stradivari, Guarneri instruments -- to gain stability

Source: AP (3-9-07)

NEWARK, N.J. -- The financially struggling New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is selling its prized collection of "Golden Age" string instruments, four years after acquiring them for $17 million from a benefactor who wound up in jail.

The NJSO had hoped the 30 violins, violas and cellos made by such Italian makers as Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu would place it among the world's top orchestras.

But orchestra officials said the debt from the 2003 purchase hasn't been relieved by ticket sales or donations.

With demand for such instruments high, the orchestra expects to make a profit that would provide financial security, orchestra president and CEO Andre Gremillet said in Friday's editions of The Star-Ledger of Newark.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tsar Nicholas' Russo-Baltique car company revived with $1.3m model

Source: AFP (3-9-07)

GENEVA (-- The flowing, elegant lines and even the name of the Russo-Baltique Impression appearing at the Geneva Motor Show on Thursday for the first time mark a distinct shift in gear for Russia's ramshackle old motor industry.

So does the price tag: more than 1.0 million euros (1.3 million dollars).

To add to the complete break from the aura of cheap Ladas and Volgas produced under communism, the grandiose new coupe by young Russian industrial designer Ivan Shishkin unashamedly harks back to the elitist luxury of the tsars...

"You need to have an extravagant shape to attract attention," he said, casting an eye over his striking handcrafted blend of contemporary and 1930s design, space age carbon fibre and precious wood. [Photos
here.]

Shishkin's 30 employees honed the aerodynamic shape of the four-seat, 5.50-metre (18 feet) long coupe over the past two years. Each production model is expected to take 12 to 18 months of painstaking craftship.

The brand name Russo-Baltique revives a company that was founded on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Riga 100 years ago, when Latvia was part of the Russian Empire.

It was an offshoot of one of the largest industrial conglomerates and became the "official supplier of His Highness the Emperor's court."

Tsar Nicholas II bought two of the company's tourers, which were winning prestigious rallies at the time...

However, the Bolshevik Revolution put paid to such extravagance and the car company was closed down in 1919.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Excerpts from Hirohito's diary reveal desire to visit post-conquest South Pacific, doubts about China war

Source: AP (3-9-07)

TOKYO -- Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Emperor Hirohito told aides he hoped to visit the South Pacific after the war, when the entire region would be Japanese territory, according to a newly released journal. He also said, however, he did not want Japan to go to war with China.

Hirohito [who reigned 1926-89] made the South Seas comment on Christmas Day 1941 -- just weeks after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Pacific War, according to the journal kept by his chamberlain. Excerpts of the journal were published in the monthly Bungeishunju magazine on Saturday...

According to Bungeishunju, the 600-page journal was kept by Hirohito's main aide, Kuraji Ogura, and covered the period from May 1939 to June 1945...

In October 1940, he seemed angry over the situation on the Chinese front, saying Japan had underestimated China's strength. "I did not want to see this war with China begin," he said.

"China is stronger than expected. Everybody made mistakes in war projections," he said...

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 3:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Politics, history help explain stream of apologies for slavery

Source: AP (3-8-07)

America is once again struggling to atone for slavery and its aftermath.

In a nation with an unquenchable need to analyze its racial past, there is now a fresh flow of contrition from public officials for the many wrongs of U.S. history. ...

Why are public officials making amends now?

Because revelations about the past are pushing some people to think about race in America in new ways. Plus, echoes of racial bias remain all too obvious, and politicians may be grasping for new ways to show concern.

Generations after the civil rights movement began, blacks generally remain poorer, less educated and more likely to be in prison than whites.

Many historians, political scientists and public policy experts argue that this is rooted in blacks' unhealed wounds from slavery, combined with widespread tactics during the century or so that followed to keep blacks from equal education, jobs and housing.

“This country is built on their (blacks') backs, so when you talk about some of the ills that we face now in society, I'm sure that some of it's got to trace back to that,” said Maryland Sen. Nathaniel Exum, sponsor of his state's resolution, which will likely be voted on this month.

Sometimes a here-and-now incident casts a long shadow.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 5:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Georgia schools may offer approved courses on Bible as 'literature and history'

Source: AP (3-9-07)

ATLANTA -- Georgia is poised to introduce two literature classes on the Bible in public schools next year, a move some critics say would make the southern state the first in the U.S. to take an explicit stance endorsing —- and funding —- biblical teachings.

The Bible already is incorporated into some classes in Georgia and other states, but some critics say the board's move, which makes the Bible the classes' main text, treads into dangerous turf. The U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion is often interpreted as implying a separation of church and state.

On a list of classes approved Thursday by the Georgia Board of Education are Literature and History of the Old Testament Era, and Literature and History of the New Testament Era. The classes, approved last year by the Legislature, will not be required, and the state's 180 school systems can decide for themselves whether to offer them.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 4:43 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Earlier Vesuvius eruption eclipses destruction of Pompeii

Source: NPR Morning Edition (with audio) (3-8-07)

The Italian city of Pompeii is one of the best-known reminders of how deadly volcanoes can be. Mt. Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. buried the city, entombing many of the dead in casts of hardened ash that remain today. Now, scientists say the destruction was even worse in an earlier incident -- a deadly day 4,000 years ago.

A group of scientists digging northwest of Vesuvius near Naples has found evidence that an enormous eruption during the Bronze Age covered the land almost 15 miles away from the volcano in hot ash and dust. The findings appear in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One village was practically petrified in ash, with utensils and pottery still intact. The scientists also found 4,000-year-old footprints of people and animals running away from the destruction.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Getty group will study Aphrodite for year, then return it to Italy

Source: Bloomberg (3-8-07)

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is forming a scholarly group to study the origin of a disputed ancient statue known as "Aphrodite" that the Italian Ministry of Culture has claimed.

The Getty, the world's richest art institution, said in November that it was willing to transfer ownership of the "Cult Statue of a Goddess" to Italy after the sculpture is examined for as long as a year. The museum said today in a statement that it invited a group of scientists, archaeologists and art historians to a workshop on May 9 to begin a study of the statue's origin.

The group will analyze "small amounts of pollen and soil that were removed from the statue during its cleaning at the time of acquisition, as well as additional stone analysis to supplement the research," the museum said.

The 7-foot-tall Greek statue was made about 425-400 B.C. in southern Italy or Sicily. The limestone and marble sculpture, with traces of pigment, depicts the Greek goddess of love in flowing robes with her right arm extended. The Getty bought the statue in 1988 for an undisclosed price, museum spokeswoman Julie Jaskol said.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Quicker than expected, nations move to open Nazi archives

Source: AP (3-9-07)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Moving more quickly than expected, the 11-nation body overseeing a long-secret archive of Nazi war records set procedures in motion Thursday to open millions of files on concentration camps and their victims before the end of the year.

Member nations made the decision knowing that within a year 10 percent of all Holocaust survivors now living may be dead, one American archive director said.

The governing commission of the International Tracing Service, the storehouse of an estimated 30 million to 50 million pages documenting the Holocaust, concluded a two-day meeting with a set of recommendations for copying and transferring files to Holocaust institutions for use by survivors, victims' relatives and scholars.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

US returns 38 stolen antiquities to Pakistani museum

Source: Daily Times (Lahore, Pakistan) (3-9-07)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- US Ambassador Ryan C Crocker on Thursday handed over 38 Gandhara antiques, which were smuggled to US two years ago, to the Ministry of Culture. American Department of Customs has discovered these smuggled antiques...

...He praised the smuggled antiques like sculptures of Buddha in meditation in 1st and 2nd centuries and some artefacts of 3rd and 4th centuries.

He said US security agencies were tracing the smugglers, adding bilateral cooperation was needed to discourage the phenomenon of smuggling...

“UNESCO is to make a strong network against smuggling to save heritage of nations,” he said. He said the smuggled antiques belonged to the era of Buddha that gave a message of peace. He said the theft of antiques was a major threat and that the government would allocate a ‘huge budget’ to preserve the national heritage. The antiques, that were returned recently, have been showcased in the Islamabad Museum.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Gadget to help in getting around ancient Greece

Source: AP (3-8-07)

ATHENS -- If you have ever wandered around a dusty Greek archaeological site in midsummer, clueless about what you are seeing or where you are going, help is finally at hand. Greece's Culture Ministry on Thursday unveiled a hand-held gadget for visitors that offers high-resolution video, detailed diagrams of sites such as ancient temples, position indicators, and imagery along with stereo sound.

The battery-powered, touchscreen devices are about the size and weight of a personal stereo — weighing just 270 grams, or 9.5 ounces. Instructions come in four languages —- Greek, English, German and French.

The units will be available at 15 sites around the country including the Acropolis and National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Thessaloniki's archaeological and Byzantine museums, Delphi, Rhodes, Olympia, Mycenae, Vergina, Epidaurus and Knossos in Crete.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Argentine ex-president ordered detained for 'dirty war' abuses

Source: AP (3-8-07)

BUENOS AIRES -- A federal judge Thursday ordered former de facto president Reynaldo Bignone arrested in connection with human rights abuses stemming from Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship, local media reported...

The Todo Noticias network and two local news agencies cited unidentified court officials as saying Bignone, 78, was to be held at a military base outside Buenos Aires ahead of a court appearance.

The Diarios y Noticias news agency, also citing an unidentified court official, said the judge ordered Bignone's arrest amid an investigation into killings and abuses when the army was suspected of operating clandestine detention centers in Buenos Aires.

Bignone was the last of four de facto military presidents before the dictatorship gave way to democracy in 1983. He governed from mid-1982 until December 1983, when elected president Raul Alfonsin took power.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

One conspiracy theory laid to rest: 'The Big Bopper' died in plane crash

Source: AP (3-7-07)

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson suffered massive fractures and likely died immediately in the 1959 plane crash that also killed early rock 'n' rollers Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, a forensic anthropologist said Tuesday after exhuming the body.

The performer's son, Jay Richardson, hired Dr. Bill Bass, a well-known forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, to look at the remains in Beaumont, Texas.

There have been rumors a gun might have been fired on board the plane and that the Big Bopper might have survived the crash and died trying to get help.

Bass took X-rays of the body and found nothing Tuesday to support those theories.

"There was no indication of foul play," Bass said in a telephone interview from Beaumont. "There are fractures from head to toe. Massive fractures. ... (He) died immediately. He didn't crawl away. He didn't walk away from the plane."

The rock 'n' roll stars' plane crashed after taking off from Mason City, Iowa, on February 3, 1959 -- a tragedy memorialized as "the day the music died" in Don McLean's song "American Pie."

Related Links

Did Buddy Holly Commit Murder On 'The Day the Music Died'?

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic Top Gun aircraft seized from US museums in paranoia raids

Source: Times (of London) (3-9-07)

WASHINGTON -- Federal US agents have seized disabled F14 fighter jets from museums in California because of fears that parts would be sold to Iran.

The raids reflect the nervousness that is driving policy towards the Islamic republic at a time when the US has stationed two aircraft carriers in the Gulf and is alleging that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are aiding attacks on its soldiers in Iraq. One European diplomat described the raids as evidence of American paranoia.

The F14 Tomcat fighters, made famous by the film Top Gun,had been sawn in half and welded together before being sold by the Ventura naval base as scrap metal in 2005 for as little as $2,000 (£1,000) apiece. Three ended up in museums at Chino Airport, while a fourth was acquired as a prop by producers of the TV show JAG.

Although there is no evidence that the aircraft had been plundered for parts, US customs conducted a 17-month operation to stop any components from entering the black market. Iran’s ageing squadron of F14s dates to before the 1979 Revolution and Tehran has become increasingly desperate to find spare parts despite a US arms embargo against it.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:07 AM | Comments (0) | Top

House of Lords: an ignoble history

Source: Independent (3-9-07)

An entirely elected House of Lords? Oliver Cromwell's boys would have heartily approved. Almost exactly 358 years ago, in March 1649, a Cromwell-dominated House of Commons voted to abolish the Lords altogether. "The House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England," MPs declared. A week later Charles I was executed.

It was not the first row and it won't be the last. From intrigue and conspiracy to sleaze, cronies and cash for peerages, over the course of nearly a thousand years, the House of Lords has seen it all. Lesbians have abseiled joyfully into the chamber. Lord Lucan has disappeared. The seventh Earl of Cardigan abandoned the niceties of gentlemanly debate to lead the Charge of the Light Brigade.

When my Lords Spiritual (the religious lot) and my Lords Temporal (the others) sink into the soft, upholstered, red leather of their grandiose chamber, they can look back to nearly 1,000 of a history which is, in every sense of the word, rich.

Today, most of the Lords and Ladies who sit each afternoon in the chamber are members of the great and the good, former public servants, lawyers, judges, bishops and business figures or former MPs appointed for life for their long public or political service. But throughout history membership has been conferred for political services rendered to monarchs through the ages, or even sold for hard cash...

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sen. Brownback wants apology to Indians, Rep. Cohen apology for slavery

Source: Washington Times (3-8-07)

Sen. Sam Brownback wants Congress to apologize to American Indians for the egregious federal actions committed against them, while a freshman House member wants the same courtesy extended to black Americans.

Mr. Brownback said he has introduced the legislation in the 108th and 109th Congresses, the bill being passed out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs both times, but he has never been able to get the bill to the floor.

"The arguments against the bill are always that there were atrocities committed on both sides and that apologies lead to financial remedies, but this bill doesn't deal with that, and it is specific to federal actions, not what happened in some town or village during the Western expansion," Mr. Brownback said...

"We want to do a congressional delegation trip to Sand Creek, Colorado, to raise awareness of the atrocities that have been committed," Mr. Brownback said. Sand Creek was the site of an 1864 massacre of an encampment of Cheyenne women, children and elderly at the hands of 700 state militia...

Freshman Rep. Steve Cohen, Tennessee Democrat, has introduced a House resolution of apology for slavery and the 100 years of Jim Crow policy after the post-Civil War Reconstruction...

Mr. Cohen said he was inspired by President Clinton's sentiments of apology 10 years ago. "When Virginia did it last month with bipartisan, unanimous support, that gave me a sense that this could be done," he said.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 2:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

L.A. Opera begins multi-year program of works Nazis termed 'degenerate'

Source: Los Angeles Times (3-9-07)

For his first season as music director of Los Angeles Opera, James Conlon...put together [on Wednesday night] a special introduction to what he plans as the company's multi-year look at operas by composers the Nazis considered "degenerate" artists and wanted silenced. That project is called "Recovered Voices," and it is a passion for Conlon...

On a human-interest level, the semi-staged program couldn't help but fascinate. It included excerpts from works by Viktor Ullmann and Erwin Schulhoff, both of whom died in concentration camps. Erich Korngold, who was represented by two arias from "The Dead City," came to Hollywood and became the father of the symphonic soundtrack in the 1930s.

Ernst Krenek, composer of the jazz opera "Johnny Tunes Up," ended up in Palm Springs, a respected if neglected experimental electronic and 12-tone composer. Alexander Zemlinsky, whose hourlong one-act "A Florentine Tragedy" concluded the evening, didn't long survive his escape from occupied Vienna and died in New York in 1942.

History has in recent years warmed to Wednesday's persecuted composers...

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 1:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

In Europe's last divided capital, a wall comes down

Source: AP (3-8-07)

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Greek Cypriots early Friday demolished a wall along the boundary that splits Europe's last divided capital, Nicosia.

"Tonight, we demolished a checkpoint on our side," Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos said from Brussels. "Now we will see whether Turkey's troops will withdraw so that the passage will be opened or not."...

Earlier this year, Turkish Cypriots dismantled a footbridge in the area, angering Greek Cypriots and frustrating plans for a new crossing in the heart of the island capital...

Cyprus has been divided between a Greek Cypriot south, representing the internationally recognized government, and a Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkey invaded following an abortive Athens-backed coup. The Turkish north is only recognized by Turkey.

Posted on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 1:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Norway's 'Lebensborn' children go to court over years of prejudice

Source: AP (3-8-07)

STRASBOURG, France -- They claim they were locked up in mental homes and denied education, the victims of a monstrous Nazi scheme and decades of public prejudice.

Now a group of Norwegian "war children", born as part of a German plan to create a genetically pure race, are taking their case to the European court of human rights, demanding compensation and recognition of their suffering from the government in Oslo.

Up to 12,000 children with a Norwegian mother and a German father were born in Norway during the second world war under the Lebensborn -- Fountain of Life -- scheme, first introduced by SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1935 to propagate Aryan children. Outside Germany, Norway was the jewel of the programme.

A group of 154 Norwegians, along with four Swedes and a German, have turned to the European court of human rights, arguing that the Norwegian government's inaction to protect them violated their civil liberties. "We want it to be recognised that the government of Norway violated the rights of these people, and we are asking for financial damages," said Randi Hagen Spydevold, a lawyer for the group.

Norwegian courts have ruled that the government cannot be held responsible for failing to sufficiently protect the Lebensborn children before 1953, when Norway signed the European convention on human rights.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 10:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Skyscrapers to be banned in Britain's world heritage sites

Source: Independent (3-9-07)

Developers seeking to build skyscrapers in Britain's world heritage sites will be banned under proposals published yesterday in the Government's long-awaited White Paper on heritage protection.

The document gives Britain's 27 world heritage sites the same protection as national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and proposes buffer zones around them. Measures enacted have the potential to thwart high-rise building plans supported by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and other development across the country.

The heritage sites had little previous protection, and the UN heritage body Unesco has voiced fears for those in Edinburgh, London and Oxford. The Government wants to make it easier for projects on such sites to be "called in" to inquiries.

Heritage organisations offered a lukewarm response, accusing the Government of placing some of Britain's most precious buildings at risk by failing to guarantee how they were to be funded.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German bishops attacked for Israeli-Nazi gibe

Source: AFP (3-8-07)

JERUSALEM -- German bishops were criticised for comparing the plight of Palestinians to that of Jews during the Second World War. The bishops accused Israel of racism and said that the occupied West Bank had similarities to the Warsaw ghetto. “It is infuriating,” Gregor Maria Hanke, the Bishop of Eichstätt, said during a visit to the region.

Avner Shalev, the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, said that the comments showed a “woeful ignorance of history”. “These unwarranted and offensive comparisons serve to diminish the memory of victims of the Holocaust and mollify the consciences of those who seek to lessen European responsibility for Nazi crimes,” Mr Shalev said in a letter to Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who led the visit. The bishops’ statements were also criticised by the Israeli Ambassador in Berlin and the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 10:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Celebrating Women's History Month

Source: Elisabeth Grant in the AHA blog (3-5-07)

March is Women’s History Month, and for the occasion the Library of Congress is honoring a variety of women from U.S. history on their Women’s History Month site. The site contains an abundance of resources on influential women as well as links to related web sites, like the American Memory site on women, the Women at War project, and more. The Women’s History Month site gives visitors access to images of women in a range of situations: fighting for suffrage, living through the Depression, acting as First Lady. There are also audio and video files available to allow visitors to hear these women speak for themselves. And teachers will find a link to the LOC’s learning page for “ready-to-use lesson plans” on women’s history, and other classroom resources. Visit the Women’s History Month web site and see how the Library of Congress is celebrating “the wisdom and tenacity of women throughout U.S. History.”

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 9:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

City's oldest house? Ho hum. Tear it down.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (3-8-07)

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The city of Palo Alto has agreed to issue a demolition permit for the city's oldest home after losing a nine-year legal tussle.

Preservation groups and city officials had sought to maintain the 160-year-old Juana Briones House, built by one of California's early settlers, which is to be leveled and could make way for a luxury home.

After a trial court and appeals court both ruled that the city's heritage ordinance was unenforceable, Planning Director Steve Emslie issued a letter Wednesday to property owners Jaim Nulman and Avelyn Welczer saying they "should immediately be granted a demolition permit pursuant to their original application."

Before demolition begins, the owners have agreed to allow the Juana Briones Historical Foundation to have an architect and photographer survey the property and home.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 8:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

SMU faculty split on Bush think tank

Source: Dallas Morning News (3-8-07)

The faculty senate of Southern Methodist University split down the middle Wednesday on whether the campus should consider dissociating from a partisan institute that would be part of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

The senate voted 13-13 on the resolution, which called on SMU to consider two options: reject any affiliation with the institute, to the point of not allowing it on campus; or make the institute nonpartisan and bring it under SMU's control. Three senators abstained; the measure failed to pass, because it lacked a majority vote.

About 40 senators and other faculty members attended the meeting, which was closed to the press.

The divided vote echoes the larger debate on campus over the Bush library, with most discord focused on its accompanying public-policy institute. As proposed by a library selection committee, the institute would report to a Bush foundation, not SMU.

"There is a genuine division in the faculty," said Professor David Freidel, who wants SMU to oversee the institute but could not vote because he's not a senator.

He said that on one side are professors who want more clarity on the role of the institute, with many fearing it would bring partisan politics to campus. On the other side, he said, are those who worry that the continued debate could make SMU lose the library, damaging the university's reputation and ability to raise money....

Also Wednesday, SMU filed a court motion to keep documents related to its library bid under wraps. The university is being sued by lawyer Gary Vodicka over the University Gardens condos, which SMU might use for part of the Bush library....

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 8:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Black legislators urge Georgia slavery apology

Source: AP (3-8-07)

ATLANTA -- Black legislative leaders said Thursday they will propose that Georgia apologize for the state's role in slavery and segregation-era laws.

"It is time for Georgia, as one of the major stake-holders in slavery, as one of the major players in lynchings, to say it's sorry," said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, a Democrat. "Sorry for the fact that it was involved in slave trade, sorry for the fact that it was involved in Jim Crow laws."

The measure comes on the heels of a Virginia resolution, passed unanimously in February, expressing regret over slavery.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 2:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Denial Reopens Wounds of Japan's Ex-Sex Slaves

Source: NYT (3-8-07)

SYDNEY, Australia, March 7 — Wu Hsiu-mei said she was 23 and working as a maid in a hotel in 1940 when her Taiwanese boss handed her over to Japanese officers. She and some 15 other women were sent to Guangdong Province in southern China to become sex slaves.

Inside a hotel there was a so-called comfort station, managed by a Taiwanese but serving only the Japanese military, Ms. Wu said. Forced to have sex with more than 20 Japanese a day for almost a year, she said, she had multiple abortions and became sterile.

The long festering issue of Japan’s war-era sex slaves gained new prominence last week when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied the military’s role in coercing the women into servitude. The denial by Mr. Abe, Japan’s first prime minister born after the war, drew official protests from China, Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines, some of the countries from which the sex slaves were taken....

According to historians, the military established the stations to boost morale among its troops, but also to prevent rapes of local women and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among soldiers.

Japan’s deep fear of rampaging soldiers also led it to establish brothels with Japanese prostitutes across Japan for American soldiers during the first months of the postwar occupation, a fact that complicates American involvement in the current debate.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In video war between Turkey and Greece, Turkish court bans YouTube for Ataturk insult

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-7-07)

PARIS -- A court in Turkey on Wednesday ordered blockage of all access to YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, over a video deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

The ban followed a week of what the media in Turkey dubbed a "virtual war" of videos between Greeks and Turks on YouTube and came as governments around the world —- including France — grappled with the freewheeling content now readily posted on the Internet.

The ban also coincides with a Turkish struggle to prove its human rights credentials to the European Union.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 4:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Benedict tried to stop Bob Dylan from playing for John Paul II

Source: Telegraph (3-8-07)

The Pope tried to stop Bob Dylan playing for the late John Paul II because he feared the musician was a "prophet" whose beliefs were at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.

In a new book of memoirs about his predecessor, Pope Benedict recalls the events of the World Eucharist Congress at Bologna in 1997, a gathering of 300,000 young Catholic pilgrims who were to be exposed to the singer's iconoclastic songs and their "completely different" message.

Pope Benedict wrote: "The Pope appeared tired, exhausted. At that very moment the stars arrived, Bob Dylan and others whose names I do not remember.

''They had a completely different message from the one which the Pope had.

"There was reason to be sceptical -- I was, and in some ways I still am -- over whether it was really right to allow this type of 'prophet' to appear."

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 4:20 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Roosevelt's 'day of infamy' speech enters sound archive

Source: AP (3-8-07)

WASHINGTON -- An eclectic collection of 25 recordings deemed among the most culturally important to the US were selected on Tuesday for preservation in a special sound archive, the National Recording Registry. Among recordings are: president Franklin D Roosevelt's December 8 1941 address to Congress to obtain a declaration of war against Japan the day after the Pearl Harbor attack; the Rolling Stones' most famous songs -- (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction; and Paul Simon's Graceland. Each year the Librarian of Congress chooses from recordings nominated by the public and a panel of experts.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 4:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Historians fight Bush on access to papers

Source: New York Times (3-8-07)

In December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Malta and, in the words of a Soviet spokesman, “buried the cold war at the bottom of the Mediterranean.”

The Russian transcript of that momentous summit was published in Moscow in 1993. Fourteen years later American historians are still waiting for their own government to release a transcript.

Now lawmakers and scholars are hoping to pry open the gateway to such archival documents by lifting what they say has been a major obstacle to historical research: a directive issued by the current Bush White House in 2001 that has severely slowed or prevented the release of important presidential papers...

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 4:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tiny island is feudal remnant

Source: Los Angeles Times (3-8-07)

SARK, Channel Islands — Here, on an island that might be called Camelot, the winds of democracy have blown in like the waft from a landfill.

This 3-mile-long stretch of granite crags, flowered meadows, neat cottages and well-behaved Guernsey cows 80 miles off Britain's coast in the English Channel is the last feudal outpost in Europe...

Sark has remained pretty much the same for 442 years, since Queen Elizabeth I declared it a noble fiefdom...

Landownership is divided among 40 "tenants." They are the descendants or successors of the 40 men with muskets recruited by the original seigneur, the ruling lord commissioned to defend the isle against pirates and buccaneers. Government administration is by fiat, with the island administrator, judge, constable and clerk appointed by the current seigneur, a 79-year-old former aeronautical engineer whose family has governed Sark since 1852.

But that was all in place long before the 21st century arrived on the gut-churning, twice-a-day ferry from Guernsey; before it was decreed that, in a modern Europe whose members are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, it's just not on to have feudal lords, and not on to have seats in the island's parliament bequeathed across generations to eldest sons, and not on to refuse to adopt divorce laws because you don't like them...

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 4:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Some of 1st Presidential dollar coins lack edge inscriptions

Source: AP (3-7-07)

PHILADELPHIA -- An unknown number of new George Washington dollar coins were mistakenly struck without their edge inscriptions, including "In God We Trust," and made it past inspectors and into circulation, the U.S. Mint said Wednesday.

The properly struck dollar coins, bearing the likeness of George Washington, are inscribed along the edge with "In God We Trust," "E Pluribus Unum" and the year and mint mark. They went into circulation Feb. 15.

The mint struck 300 million of the coins, which are golden in color and slightly larger and thicker than a quarter...

Bailey said it was unknown how many coins didn't have the inscriptions. Ron Guth, president of Professional Coin Grading Service, one of the world's largest coin authentication companies, said he believes that at least 50,000 error coins were put in circulation.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 10:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nazi archive being readied for scholars--but...

Source: AP (3-7-07)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The director of a long-secret archive of Nazi records said Wednesday that preparations for allowing scholars access are moving faster than expected and the entire collection will be ready for research within a year.

But unless the 11 governing nations overcome legal hurdles, it could take years before the documents are actually released.

The United States is leading a campaign to hasten ratification of an agreement reached last year to unlock the massive storehouse kept at Bad Arolsen, Germany, to researchers.

U.S. officials said a majority of the countries were likely to complete procedures within two months. But under existing arrangements, all 11 must endorse the agreement before it can be implemented, and some require approval from their parliaments.

The governing commission of the International Tracing Service, the arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross that runs the archive, began a two-day meeting Wednesday to review the legal status.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 10:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Japan PM eyes new probe into sex slaves in war, sources say

Source: Kyodo News (3-8-07)

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may order a reinvestigation into the wartime sex slaves -- a move that could lead to a revision of Tokyo's 1993 statement admitting the military's involvement in running frontline brothels across Asia for Imperial Japanese Army soldiers during the 1930s and 1940s, government and ruling bloc sources said Wednesday.

Abe, who last week unleashed a storm of criticism by claiming there is no evidence that the wartime army "coerced" women in Japanese-occupied territories into sexual slavery, thinks the state needs to look again at whether there was coercion by the Japanese military because "new documents and testimonies have emerged" in the 14 years since then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued the apology statement, one ruling coalition lawmaker said...

One idea being floated is for Abe to commission historians and other experts to again look at the "relevant facts," the sources said.

Related Links

Yesterday: Japan stands by but won't expand on sex slaves apology (Sydney Morning Herald)
Sex slaves of Japanese again endure old pain (International Herald Tribune)

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 9:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Czech volunteers create history trail through old Prague cemetery

Source: Radio Prague (3-6-07)

Prague's Olsanske cemetery is by far the largest graveyard in the city. It is the final resting place of over a million people, including many of the leading figures of the Czech national revival and scholars and artists. You can also find there the graves of Czech legionaries from the First World War, as well as Commonwealth and Russian soldiers who lost their lives on Czechoslovak territory during the Second World War.

However, this burial ground is often the target of vandals and some of oldest parts of Olsanske cemetery are in very bad repair. Among the greenery, sandstone tombs, a couple of centuries old, are nearly falling apart, their roofs caved in. Some of them have their doorways bricked up to stop unwanted guests from using them as toilets or places to sleep...

But in the oldest part of the cemetery, the view is a little more optimistic. The eye is attracted by small white tablets scattered among the graves with photos and texts paying tribute to some of the long departed. That's the work of Roman Catholic priest Milos Szabo and his parishioners from the nearby district of Zizkov.

"I had this idea that a history trail could lead through the graveyard with signs telling the visitor which notable people are buried here. Anyone would be able to find the particular grave and pay their respects to the dead. Or for example, professional groups, such as mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers could find their great predecessors. Or teachers could tell their pupils about famous writers."

The first dead were buried in Olsany in 1680 during a plague. A chapel, now outside the cemetery, commemorates the epidemic. In 1787, Emperor Joseph II made Olsany the central cemetery for Prague. Located outside the city walls, it was a safer burial place than the old graveyards in an already overcrowded city.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 6:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Museum plan to sell off old stuff draws opposition

Source: AP (3-6-07)

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Albright-Knox Art Gallery's planned sale of 200 mostly older works to strengthen its buying power for newer pieces will be either one of the most important steps the gallery ever undertakes, or a giant misstep, depending on whom you ask.

Headed for the Sotheby's auction block beginning later this month are Chinese ceramics dating to the 13th century B.C., Indian and Southeast Asian works from the second to 11th century, American Indian earthenware, and old master paintings and antiquities. The most famous is a classical bronze statue, "Artemis and the Stag," circa first century B.C. to first century A.D., valued at $5 million to $7 million.

The works have been little displayed and fall outside of the museum's mission as a premier modern and contemporary gallery, say Albright-Knox leaders, who will use the $15 million or more expected from the sale to fortify an acquisitions fund targeting works by artists of the day.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 6:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Berkeley recovers Lawrence's Nobel medal; suspect arrested

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (3-7-07)

BERKELEY -- A UC Berkeley biology student was arrested today on suspicion of stealing the first Nobel Prize the university ever received from the Lawrence Hall of Science, campus police said.

Ian Michael Sanchez, 22, a senior who worked at the hands-on science museum, was taken into custody today and booked on suspicion of felony grand theft for allegedly stealing the 23-karat gold medal worth $4,200, UC Berkeley police said.

The prize, awarded to the late physicist Ernest O. Lawrence for his invention of the cyclotron, had been in a publicly accessible, locked display case at the namesake Lawrence Hall of Science, located in the hills above the campus.

The Nobel was also the first ever given to a professor at a public university, according to UC Berkeley...

Lawrence was the first UC Berkeley faculty member to win a Nobel Prize, awarded to him in 1939 for physics. He later became a major figure in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, and the science museum -- dedicated to educating schoolchildren -- all bear his name.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 6:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Did sunken ship frustrate Napoleon's ambitions in Mediterranean?

Source: Live Science (3-7-07)

A ship that was deliberately sunk might have blocked Napoleon from entering a Middle Eastern port on his quest to conquer the British Empire in Egypt and India, and sent the future emperor retreating back to France.

A new study of the ship's excavated cargo will help marine archaeologists analyze the role of sunken ship and reconstruct the 61-day battle between the British and Napoleon's army at the entry to the Israeli city Akko, known then as Acre, more than 200 years ago.

Over the past 40 years, notable marine archaeologists have examined the wreck, yet no one has come to any agreement as to why the 30-meter-long ship entered the shallow waters of the harbor.

"The origin of the wreck and its place in the maritime history of Akko remain a mystery," said Debbie Cvikel from the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies and the Department Of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. "One of the possibilities is that She was scuttled by [Royal Navy officer] Sidney Smith in 1799, in order to block the harbor against Napoleon Bonaparte."

A map drawn by a British soldier in 1799 depicts the British navy in combat with Napoleon's ships. In the illustration, a symbol of a sunken ship marks the exact location of the wreck.

Cvikel and colleagues have found the wreck well-preserved, including lead shots and cannon balls [image]. The angle and precise spot of one cannon ball lodged into the bottom of the hull appears to have been shot on purpose.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 6:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turk goes on trial in Switzerland for denying Armenian genocide

Source: Reuters (3-6-07)

GENEVA -- A Turkish politician went on trial Tuesday in Switzerland for denying that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I amounted to genocide. Dogu Perincek, head of the Turkish Workers' Party, called the Armenian genocide "an international lie" during a speech in the Swiss city of Lausanne in July 2005. The state prosecutor has called for a six month prison term for violating a 1995 Swiss law that bans denying, belittling or justifying any genocide. The maximum penalty is three years. Perincek told the Lausanne criminal court that there had been no genocide against Armenians, but there had been "reciprocal massacres," according to Swiss Radio.

Related Links

Documentary denying Armenian Genocide being shot in Turkey

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 5:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Commons votes to toss hereditary Lords from House of Lords

Source: AP (3-7-07)

LONDON (-- Legislators took an unprecedented step Wednesday toward ending an age-old tradition of allowing Britain's non-elected elite to hold political power, backing proposals for an entirely elected House of Lords.

House of Commons lawmakers voted 337-224 in favor of developing laws to elect all members of Parliament's upper chamber -- potentially one of the most significant constitutional changes in British history.

The move, which requires new legislation, would bring the previously unelected upper house in line with similar institutions, such as the U.S. Senate.

Jack Straw, leader of the Commons, said the vote was a historic step forward and would meet with others to discuss how to proceed.

Lawmakers in both the Commons and Lords will hold future votes on the plan when the laws are proposed, which cannot happen before the next parliamentary session beginning in October.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Updating the Seven Wonders of the World

Source: International Herald Tribune (3-6-07)

Six of the Seven Wonders of the World have long since gone with the wind. The Giza pyramids of Egypt are the sole survivor — and now they are threatened by modern Cairo's rapidly spreading urban sprawl.

But the reliability of the original Seven Wonders list, drawn up by the architect Philon of Byzantium in about 200 B.C., was suspect anyway. Did the hanging gardens of Babylon ever exist? The Tower of Babel? The Colossus of Rhodes? No traces remain.

Philon kept within his known world — the Mediterranean basin — so manmade constructions like the Great Wall of China and Angkor Wat in Cambodia never made the grade.

Today our world is so loaded with wonders that, uncomfortable with the gaping lacunas in Philon's legacy, a Swiss-Canadian filmmaker, Bernard Weber, is conducting a popular vote on the Internet to update the list. He says his project is the world's first global ballot on any subject.

Weber has spent the past six years drumming up interest and is now in the home stretch. On July 7 (that's 07/07/07) he will announce results of the vote for the world's favorite "New Seven Wonders" at a ceremony in Lisbon. His stated aim is to celebrate and protect the greatest man-made monuments on the planet.

Not everyone thinks this makes sense, notably the Egyptians, who bristle at what they see as a challenge to the international standing of the pyramids. A few weeks ago the country's culture minister, Faruq Hosni, denounced the competition as "absurd," and Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said he stands by the ancient listing. "It's ridiculous. They don't need to be put to a vote," he said.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 3:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Other Somalia: why so peaceful?

Source: NYT (3-7-07)

It’s all part of a Somali puzzle: how one area of the country, the northwest, also known as Somaliland, can seem so peaceful and functional — so normal, in fact — while the rest continues to be such a violent, chaotic mess.

This tale of two Somalias is especially striking now, as thousands of African Union peacekeepers prepare to rescue Mogadishu, the nation’s bloodstained capital, from itself. The internationally backed transitional government that seized Mogadishu in late December with Ethiopia’s help says it cannot survive without foreign aid and foreign peacekeepers to quell clan fighting and an escalating insurgency....

So, what happened?

“It all goes back to the Brits,” according to Hajji Abdi Waraabe, an 89-year-old member of Somaliland’s upper house of Parliament.

When the colonial powers sliced up the Horn of Africa in the 19th century, the British got Somaliland and the Italians got Somalia. While the British relied mostly on clan chiefs to govern, the Italians created an entire Italian-speaking administration and imported thousands of people from Italy to farm bananas, build cathedrals and teach the people how to pour espresso.

One result was that Mogadishu, along the southern coast, became a major commercial hub and one of the most beautiful cities in Africa, but its traditional systems of authority were weakened. That is partly why, many Somalia analysts say, warlords were able to outmuscle clan elders and dominate Mogadishu in the vacuum that formed after the central government fell.

The British, on the other hand, never invested much in Somaliland, leaving it poor and dusty but with its traditions more or less intact. The two territories were granted independence in 1960 and quickly merged to form the Somali Republic, but it was never a happy marriage. By the 1980s, the Somali National Movement, a northern rebel group, was blowing up government posts....

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

China, Japan to jointly study history to mitigate disputes

Source: Zee News (India) (3-7-07)

BEIJING -- China and Japan, holding divergent views about history, will jointly study the subject in an attempt to improve ties strained over the past, especially Japanese occupation of China during World War II.

China hopes the first-ever joint effort between the two countries on history can proceed well, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

China and Japan have each appointed a 10-member team to conduct the research.

"I hope the experts from the two countries can do the study on the basis of principles of the three political documents and face history in a correct manner," Qin said.

Related Links

China Stresses Ties With Japan Despite Sex Slavery Issue

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 4:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Fight over old black self-help community in CA

Source: New York Times (3-7-07)

ALLENSWORTH, Calif. —- It is an unlikely place for a utopia: this cracked-earth landscape of two-lane roads in the Central Valley, so remote that the lilting staccato of freight trains can be heard from miles away.

Yet it was here, nearly a century ago, that Allen Allensworth, an escaped slave from Kentucky who became the nation’s highest-ranking black Army officer at the time, forged an idealistic community dedicated to Booker T. Washington’s principles of self-help and self-determination. In 1908 he established Allensworth Colony, which flourished for a fleeting moment in the California heat and dust.

About 220 miles southeast of San Francisco, the colony drew pilgrims like Cornelius Pope, now 77, who recalls his sense of revelation upon entering the two-room schoolhouse, where everyone was black and photographs of Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington hung on the walls. As the child of migrant cotton pickers, Mr. Pope had lived in cow barns and tents with dirt floors...

Now the site of Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, with its array of board-and-batten buildings restored and rebuilt, California’s first planned black community continues to exert a powerful pull, especially among former residents like Mr. Pope, who helped champion the park’s creation in the 1970s.

So the prospect of a giant dairy with over 16,000 cows and waste lagoons planned near the park’s periphery has elicited a wave of emotion among those protective of its history, including several former residents and black R.V. clubs that gather regularly to speak about the park to the nearly 10,000 tourists drawn here each year.

“You can relocate cattle,” said Nettie Morrison, the mayor of the adjoining hamlet named for the colony. “You can’t relocate history.”

Related Links

Col. Allensworth's Utopia (slide show)

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 2:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Black Cherokees to challenge ouster from tribe

Source: Reuters (3-6-07)

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Black Cherokee Indians said on Tuesday they will challenge a weekend vote to kick them out of the tribe that once owned their ancestors as slaves.

They threatened legal action to overturn the vote on Saturday in which 77 percent of those who cast ballots said they should no longer be Cherokees...

The vote would remove from tribal rolls 2,800 people who were mostly "freedmen," or descendants of slaves owned by the tribe before the U.S. Civil War brought their freedom.

They were adopted into the tribe under a 1866 treaty with the United States, but there has long been controversy among Cherokees about whether they belonged.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 1:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Italian expedition to retrace Marco Polo's journey

Source: UPI (3-7-07)

PERUGIA, Italy -- An Italian expedition plans to retrace the route that Marco Polo took to China, using the same type of horses on the Silk Road.

"We'll face the same kind of challenges our illustrious predecessor did, traveling over extremely varied terrain: plains, valleys, high mountain tracks and deserts," Piero Lapiana, the expedition's leader, told the Italian news agency ANSA.

Veterinarians from Perugia University will be in the group to study how the horses perform. They will be prepared at the university to handle the rough conditions they can expect in Asia.

The horses to be used are of the "maremmana" breed, which are believed to be similar to the pack horses Marco Polo used.

Marco Polo's father and brother actually made the rough journey to the court of Kublai Khan in 1266. He joined them on a second trip in 1271.

The expedition is expected to take about 15 months.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 1:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Provenance of new Met antiquities questioned

Source: Radar Online (3-6-07)

Just weeks before the April opening of a new Greek and Roman antiquities exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum, the author of a new tell-all has discovered that some of the prize pieces set for display in the new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court may have been pillaged from Greece and Italy and smuggled over borders.

The potential scandal, unearthed by Michael Gross during research for his forthcoming book about New York's storied art mecca, is already raising hackles among museum insiders. Spurred on by the wealth of her late husband Levy (the Oppenheimer mutual fund kingpin), influential museum trustee White hopes to deed her collection to the Met free from the rising din that her treasured objects were stolen. But Gross reveals that several of the artifacts may have to be repatriated to Greece and Italy.

Though White declined to talk to Gross, the author did speak to former artifact smuggler Michel van Rijn, who says that the Met is in "frantic" negotiations with the countries in question over whether the items of "questionable provenance" must be returned. Until then, preparations for the gala opening of the new gallery on April 20 are proceeding apace. The Met did not return calls and e-mails for comment.

Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 1:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

The Untaxed Rich, Found and Then Lost

Source: NYT (3-4-07)

FALSE advertising is part of the problem, and it’s right there in the name: alternative minimum tax.

“Minimum,” when the tax was conceived, meant that even the wealthiest Americans, with their buffet of deductions, loopholes and shelters, would still pay some income tax.

“Alternative,” added to the name of the tax 21 years ago, suggests a choice, but it’s not much of one for one in four taxpayers this year who must pay using this calculation unless Congress comes up with a different “alternative” when it takes up the matter this week.

What happened between 1969, when the minimum tax was born, and today, when it has few champions — and many people scratching their heads? And how could it be that a tax aimed squarely at rich investors who paid no income tax now hits middle-class families?

The ’69 version of the tax was more or less what it set out to be, right or wrong. And that was a remedy to the disclosure by the Johnson administration that 155 rich families some of whom made millions in 1966 had not paid any taxes — taxes that for other Americans were rising to pay for the Vietnam War. If deductions like the ones for owning oil wells and leasing rail cars had whittled some tax bills down to nothing, these rich earners would be required to pay something.

But in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan and both parties on Capitol Hill agreed to a major change in the tax system, the law was subtly changed to aim at a wholly different set of deductions, the ones that everyone gets, like the personal exemption, state and local taxes, the standard deduction, certain expenses like union dues and even some medical costs for the seriously ill. At the same time it removed and revised some of the exotic investment deductions. A law for untaxed rich investors was refocused on families who own their homes in high tax states....

Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 10:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Have oil reserves peaked? Think again.

Source: NYT (3-5-07)

The Kern River oil field, discovered in 1899, was revived when Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels....

In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 3.3 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced. More recently, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultant, estimated that the total base of recoverable oil was 4.8 trillion barrels. That higher estimate — which Cambridge Energy says is likely to grow — reflects how new technology can tap into more resources.

“It’s the fifth time to my count that we’ve gone through a period when it seemed the end of oil was near and people were talking about the exhaustion of resources,” said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, who cited similar concerns in the 1880s, after both world wars and in the 1970s. “Back then we were going to fly off the oil mountain. Instead we had a boom and oil went to $10 instead of $100.”

Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 10:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

59 things that would have stayed secret

Source: Times (UK) (3-5-07)

What they didn't want you to know: A list of intriguing facts disinterred by the [UK] Freedom of Information Act.

*Ministers and MPs were claiming thousands of pounds on taxis as part of £5.9m in expenses for travel

*The Thatcher Government concocted a plan to search for the Loch Ness monster using a team of dolphins

*Foreign diplomats – who have diplomatic immunity – were accused of rapes, sexual assaults, child abuse and murders while working in Britain

*The Government agreed a £1.5m bailout of one of the most troubled schools in its flagship city academies programme ten days before the 2005 general election

*People charged with certain criminal offences in Warwickshire are 30 per cent more likely to be convicted than those in Bedfordshire. The figures showed huge variations in performance of the Crown Prosecution Service

*Politicians are spending £2.2bn a year of taxpayers’ money on private management consultants

*Ted Heath was once offered concert work by Idi Amin of Uganda. The eccentric dictator made his offer in a 1977 telegram ....

Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 9:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Could 650,000 Iraqis really have died because of the invasion?

Source: Times (of London) (3-5-07)

The statistics made headlines all over the world when they were published in The Lancet in October last year. More than 650,000 Iraqis –- one in 40 of the population – had died as a result of the American-led invasion in 2003. The vast majority of these “excess” deaths (deaths over and above what would have been expected in the absence of the occupation) were violent. The victims, both civilians and combatants, had fallen prey to airstrikes, car bombs and gunfire.

Body counts in conflict zones are assumed to be ballpark – hospitals, record offices and mortuaries rarely operate smoothly in war –- but this was ten times any other estimate. Iraq Body Count, an antiwar web-based charity that monitors news sources, put the civilian death toll for the same period at just under 50,000, broadly similar to that estimated by the United Nations Development Agency.

The implication of the Lancet study, which involved Iraqi doctors knocking on doors and asking residents about recent deaths in the household, was that Iraqis were being killed on an horrific scale. The controversy has deepened rather than evaporated. Several academics have tried to find out how the Lancet study was conducted; none regards their queries as having been addressed satisfactorily. Researchers contacted by The Times talk of unreturned e-mails or phone calls, or of being sent information that raises fresh doubts.

Iraq Body Count says there is “considerable cause for scepticism” and has complained that its figures had been misleadingly cited in the The Lancet as supporting evidence.

Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 7:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Korea plans history texts that critique Japan, China claims

Source: Yonhap News (Seoul, South Korea) (3-7-07)

SEOUL -- South Korea plans to introduce history textbooks that include chapters rebutting historical claims by its neighboring countries, officials said Tuesday.

The Education Ministry officials said they will adopt textbooks that refute such historical assertions as Japan's denial of wartime sex slavery and China's claim over South Korea's ancient kingdoms.

Japan has been slammed for refusing to apologize for its exploitation of about 200,000 "comfort women" in army brothels during World War II after taking them from neighboring nations including South Korea and the Philippines. It has also maintained that Dokdo, a set of islets in South Korea's East Sea, belongs to Tokyo.

China has been increasingly involved in a historical row with South Korea over its five-year project aimed at laying claim to Korea's ancient kingdom of Koguryo and its successor. The Koguryo kingdom controlled the upper part of the Korean Peninsula and most of northeastern China from 37 B.C. to A.D. 668.

Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 6:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

World donates $2.3 million for restoration of Vietnam's old imperial city

Source: VNA (Vietnam News Agency) (3-7-07)

International organisations have provided US $2.3 million and 400 cubic metres of iron wood for repairs and restoration of the historical relics in the former imperial city of Hue since its system of temples and palaces were recognised as World Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO in 1993...

Under a project to preserve and promote the value of Hue’s historical relics during the 1996-2010 period, more than VND 266 billion (roughly US $16.62 million) has been spent on restoring the monuments. As a result these monuments are no longer dilapidated and their value can be fully appreciated.

Phung Phu, director of the Centre for Preservation of Historical relics in Hue, said that of more than 100 of over 300 projects in and around Hue have been restored, upgraded and preserved. Many of them, including the Ngo Mon Gate (Noon-time Gate), the Thai Hoa Palace (the Palace of Supreme Peace), the The To Temple, Dien Tho Palace, Hien Lam pavilion, Tomb of Gia Long, Sung An, Minh Lau and Bi Dinh shrines, Tomb of Minh Mang, Ngo Mon Square, Thien Mu Pagoda), An Dinh Palace, and gates of Hue Citadel, have opened for visitors.

Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 6:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

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