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This page features brief excerpts of news stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Official: DNA tests confirm IDs of Russian czar's children

Source: AP (4-30-08)

DNA tests carried out by a U.S. laboratory prove that remains exhumed last year belong to two children of Czar Nicholas II, putting to rest questions about what happened to Russia's last royal family, a regional governor said Wednesday.

The bone fragments dug up are those of Crown Prince Alexei and his sister, Maria, whose remains had been missing since the family was murdered in 1918 as Russia descended into civil war, said Eduard Rossel, governor of the Sverdlovsk region.

"We have now found the entire family," he told reporters in Yekaterinburg, the city where the remains were exhumed about 900 miles east of Moscow.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 5:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

India: World War II veterans feel unwanted in their own country

Source: http://www.mynews.in (4-27-08)

They feel ignored, 'unwanted by their own country' and kith and kin. "We do not have money even to buy medicines," one of them said. The war veterans, now in their 80s and 90s, said they were not considered for pension as their service period fell short of the requisite 20 years.

To provide a helping hand to them, the Ex-servicemen Welfare Association has established a 'Sainik Ashram' and the war veterans are staying there now, Col (retd) K B P Pillai, who was instrumental in setting it up, said.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 5:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

From Auschwitz, a Torah as Strong as Its Spirit

Source: NYT (4-30-08)

The back story of how a Torah got from the fetid barracks of Auschwitz to the ark of the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street is one the pastor of the Lutheran church down the street sums up as simply “miraculous.”

It is the story of a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried most of the sacred scroll before the Germans stormed in and later renamed the city Auschwitz. It is the story of Jewish prisoners who sneaked the rest of it — four carefully chosen panels — into the concentration camp.

It is the story of a Polish Catholic priest to whom they entrusted the four panels before their deaths. It is the story of a Maryland rabbi who went looking for it with a metal detector. And it is the story of how a hunch by the rabbi’s 13-year-old son helped lead him to it.

This Torah, more than most, “is such an extraordinary symbol of rebirth,” said Peter J. Rubinstein, the rabbi of Central Synagogue. “As one who has gone to the camps and assimilates into my being the horror of the Holocaust, this gives meaning to Jewish survival.”

On Wednesday, the restored Torah will be rededicated in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which for more than 20 years the congregation of Central Synagogue has observed in conjunction with its neighbor, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 5:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Filipino war veterans deprived of $3.2B in US benefits

Source: http://globalnation.inquirer.net (4-28-08)

Filipino World War II veterans would have received $3.2 billion worth of benefits from the United States had it not been for the Rescission Act of 1946, which effectively dashed promises held out as they fought alongside American troops six decades ago.

“According to the Office of US Veterans Affairs in Washington, the US government saved $3.2 billion by passing the Rescission Act in 1946,” Defense Undersecretary for Veterans Affairs Ernesto Carolina told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Monday.

Carolina said that after the war, more than 400,000 Filipino veterans were applying for benefits from the US government.

Of the figure, more than 240,000 were recognized as legitimate war veterans in the “Missouri List” which was prepared by the administrative unit of the US Armed Forces based in Missouri.

There are now only 18,155 surviving Filipino war veterans, some 6,000 of them living in the United States, according to the Missouri list. Their average age, according to Carolina, is 80 years old and above.

Carolina said that for the Filipino veterans, the fight for an equity bill in the United States was, more than anything, for the restoration of their dignity and due recognition for their role in America’s war against Japan.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Royal Navy admits it may not find Second World War bomb lost on seabed

Source: Mirror (4-29-08)

Royal Navy divers admit they may never find a 1,100lb Second World War bomb which they lost on the seabed.
Experts towed the device two miles offshore after it was washed up on a beach. But they lost its position when a marker buoy broke free and it was moved by tides.
The Navy said: "We're still committed to looking for it.
"But it might get to the stage where we have to see if it comes ashore again."

The German bomb was scooped up eight days ago by a digger driver working on £10million sea defences at Felixstowe, Suffolk.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Czech sales of Nazi memorabilia growing

Source: JTA (4-27-08)

Czech auction Web sites are offering thousands of Nazi-related items that have been growing in popularity.

For instance, Aukro.cz had 1,335 items in its "Germany 1933-1945" section on Wednesday.

"We have recently sold a knife of the National Socialist Motor Corps for 80,000 crowns," or $3,188, auction operator Oto Obdrzalek told the daily newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes Thursday.

Klara Kalibova, from the nongovernmental organization Tolerance and Civic Society, said neo-Nazis are among the buyers of the memorabilia.

"A Hitlerian wing has recently won in the extremist National Resistance movement and its members buy these items to strengthen their identity," Kalibova said, referring to an extreme-right movement.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

When Brits first saw amazing pictures of Britain in color

Source: Daily Mail (4-27-08)

Seeing the world captured in colour is something most of us take for granted.

But at the start of the 20th century, the art of photography was rather more limited - to black and white images, with various shades of grey in between.

It was not until 1907 that autochrome - the process through which colour photographs were first produced - was invented in Paris.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Soldiers' diaries reveal devilish side of First World War angels

Source: Times (UK) (4-26-08)

Nurses inflicted pain upon wounded soldiers in the First World War to a scandalous degree, according to new research.

Military hospitals have traditionally been portrayed as havens run by caring, if overstretched, staff but fresh evidence suggests that the experience of patients was very different.

Diaries written by injured working-class soldiers from the Somme to Gallipoli have revealed how they silently endured brutal treatment by the female military nurses, surgeons, physiotherapists and stretcher-bearers during the Great War.

Surgeons became hated figures depicted in hospital magazines as “Captain Hack” or “Captain Scalpel”. The female physiotherapists were “perpetrators of pain who resembled drill sergeants rather than bedside nurturers”.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bulgaria confirms Cold War border shootings of Germans

Source: http://www.thelocal.de (4-4-08)

Bulgaria confirmed for the first time on Friday that East Germans and others trying to flee the Soviet bloc for the West were killed on its soil during the Cold War.

"We came upon two cases of East German citizens killed while attempting to escape via Bulgaria - one in 1974 and another in 1988," Ekaterina Boncheva, a member of an official committee looking into communist-era secret service archives, told journalists.

Border police officers were rewarded for catching or shooting at people trying to flee the country, according to another committee member Valeri Katsunov.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Congress designates Journey Through Hallowed Ground a historic area

Source: Press Release--http://www.hallowedground.org (4-30-08)

Today, the House of Representatives joined the United States Senate in passing legislation to designate the Journey Through Hallowed Ground a National Heritage Area (JTHG NHA). The legislation, S. 2739, passed the Senate on April 10, 2008, by a vote of 91 to 4 and in the House today by a vote of 291 to 117. This Act of Congress recognizes the unparalleled cultural, historic and scenic resources within the entire JTHG corridor—the region that generally follows the Old Carolina Road (Rt. 15/231) from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania through Maryland, to Monticello in Albemarle County, VA.
This region, known as Where America Happened™, holds more American history than any other region in the country with nine Presidential homes (Ash Lawn-Highland and Oak Hill (Monroe), Kennedy’s Country Home, Camp Hoover, Eisenhower National Historic Site, Montebello (Taylor), Monticello (Jefferson), Montpelier (Madison), Pine Knot (Roosevelt), and Camp David, 73 National Historic Districts, the largest collection of Civil War Battlefields, significant sites from the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, 15 historic Main Street communities, numerous scenic roads, rivers and landscapes.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Petition seeks to remove Denton Confederate statue (TX)

Source: http://www.txcn.com (4-28-08)

While to some the statue of a Confederate soldier that stands before the Denton County Courthouse represents a piece of history, others say they believe it just represents hypocrisy.

That stand has incited two University of North Texas students to start a petition for the removal of the historical landmark, a statue of a Confederate soldier holding his gun to represent the South in the Civil War.

"It's really very frustrating that so many people would look at this and clap," said Aron Duhon, one of the students behind the petition.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

De Beers Finds Shipwreck, Treasure From Columbus Era

Source: Bloomberg News (4-30-08)

De Beers, the world's biggest undersea diamond miner, said its geologists in Namibia found the wreckage of an ancient sailing ship still laden with treasure, including six bronze cannons, thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins and more than 50 elephant tusks.

The wreckage was discovered in the area behind a sea wall used to push back the Atlantic Ocean in order to search for diamonds in Namibia's Sperrgebiet or "Forbidden Zone."

"If the experts' assessments are correct, the shipwreck could date back to the late 1400s or early 1500s, making it a discovery of global significance,'' Namdeb Diamond Corp., a joint venture between De Beers and the Namibian government, said in an e-mailed statement from the capital, Windhoek, today.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gettysburg trip changed perspective of Justice David Souter

Source: AP (4-30-08)

Supreme Court Justice David Souter says it took a trip to the Gettysburg battlefield to change his perspective on handling difficult cases.

In a rare public address yesterday, the justice from New Hampshire admitted that at least one Supreme Court case prompted him to ask, "Why do I have to resolve that case?"

He said he found an answer last year while visiting the Pennsylvania battlefield where the Civil War changed course in 1863. Souter noted that the commander assigned to hold the far end of the Union line, Maine's Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, ordered a bayonet charge in a desperate maneuver that ended a Confederate attack.

Souter says the move was 1 of the turning points of American history. Then, he said he could never again say it is unfair that he has to decide tough cases.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Author: Soviet Politbureau Members, Gorbachev included, signed an “informal death Sentence" on John Paul II

Source: http://canadafreepress.com (4-27-08)

Warsaw, Poland: New, sensational documents concerning the attempt against the late pope, John Paul II, have been revealed in a new book by John O. Kohler, an American journalist and writer. The book, entitled ”It’s About the Pope. Spies in the Vatican”, will be released in Poland on Monday, April 28, 2008 by ZNAK Publishing House, known for its publications about the late pope.

The author unearthed a Kremlin document, which listed Soviet Politbureau members, who had signed an “informal death sentence” on the Polish pope. “Use all available possibilities to prevent a new political trend, initiated by the Polish pope, and
“if necessary - reach to means beyond disinformation and discreditation.” This instruction was given to their subordinates in the KGB by members of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in November of 1979.

"I was shocked, when I found this order. The means “beyond disinformation and discreditation” meant only one thing: an approval to kill the pope”, John O. Kohler told leading Polish weekly “Wprost” (read: vprost) this week, prior to the official launching of his book in Poland.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Islanders want legal right to be 'true lesbians'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-30-08)

Residents of the Greek island of Lesbos launched a legal action yesterday against a homosexual group, insisting that only islanders had the right to call themselves lesbians.

The inhabitants of the island said they were attempting to ban the Greek Gay and Lesbian Union (Olke) from bearing the name "lesbian".

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Survivors angry with reparations group on Holocaust Day

Source: AP (4-29-08)

Israel's official memorial day for the Holocaust, which begins at sundown Wednesday, finds many elderly survivors of the Nazi genocide turning their anger on a group that is meant to help them.

For more than five decades, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany — better known as the Claims Conference — has been the central channel for billions of dollars in restitution and reparations payments from Germany to Jewish victims of the Third Reich.

Sixty-three years after Allied troops freed emaciated prisoners from the Nazi death camps, the group has become the target of increasingly strident criticism. Some survivors charge it with amassing excessive wealth in their name while forgetting the very people it is designed to serve, many of whom are growing old in poverty.

More than anything, critics say far too much money is going to projects like Holocaust museums and broader Jewish causes instead of to making survivors' lives better in the time they have left.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

SS concentration camp doctor named as most wanted Nazi as war criminal hunt continues

Source: Daily Mail (4-30-08)

An SS concentration camp doctor accused of murdering hundreds of prisoners is to be named as the world's most-wanted Nazi war criminal.

Aribert Heim tops the list of 10 suspects, to be published by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, today.

Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and now he is the most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal among hundreds who the Simon Wiesenthal Centre estimates are still free.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Republican congressional candidate defends appearance before Hitler group

Source: Fox News (4-29-08)

A Republican congressional candidate in Indiana is defending himself after speaking to a group that was celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

The Northwest Indiana Times published a photo of candidate Tony Zirkle last week speaking in Chicago to the American National Socialist Workers Party, a neo-Nazi group. He spoke in front of a portrait of Hitler and was flanked by large swastika banners.

Zirkle wrote on his Web site Tuesday that the criticism he’s received is undeserved and claimed he was just trying to “present Jesus to a group the media claims is filled with hate.”

“The liberal media believes that evangelizing Nazis is more evil than suicide bombers, child rapists, drug dealers, murders, torturers and yes even porn-pimps,” he wrote.

The Northwest Indiana Times quoted Zirkle as saying: “I’ll speak before any group that invites me. … I’ve spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta.”

The newspaper wrote that Zirkle has previously stirred controversy by suggesting segregating races into different states.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

World Jewish Congress Shocked About Continued Sale of 'I Love Hitler' T-Shirts on Amazon.Com

Source: Press Release--World Jewish Congress (4-28-08)

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) strongly criticized the continued sale by the leading US online retailer Amazon.com of T-shirts praising Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. I love Hitler shirts for children and women were still being sold on the Amazon.com website as of Thursday, 24 April 2008, 16:00 GMT. In January 2008, Amazon had pledged to remove offensive shirts following an article in the Czech weekly Tyden.

We are shocked and disgusted that Amazon.com is seemingly unwilling to stop the sale of such items, in spite of protests earlier this year. Not only is the slogan in bad taste, but to target children with clothes emblazoned with pro-Nazi slogans is particularly despicable, the WJCs Secretary-General Michael Schneider said. Companies have a responsibility. To make money with items glorifying the Nazis sets a very bad example. A lack of sensibility will ultimately do them serious damage as customers will rightly go and shop elsewhere.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 4:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Eisenhower Advisers Discussed Using Nuclear Weapons in China

Source: WaPo (4-30-08)

Senior Air Force officers proposed using 10-to-15-kiloton nuclear bombs against targets in Communist China in 1958, in the event that Beijing blockaded the Taiwan Strait, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower ruled out that option, according to a newly declassified Pentagon document.

At a Cabinet meeting in mid-August 1958, as the threat of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan was developing, Air Force Gen. Nathan F. Twining, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained "that at the outset American planes would drop 10- to 15-kiloton bombs on selected fields in the vicinity of Amoy," a coastal city on the Taiwan Strait now called Xiamen, according to the documents.

But "the President simply did not accept the contention that nuclear weapons were as conventional as high explosives," according to the now-declassified Air Force history of the Taiwan crisis.

In releasing the official history, William Burr of George Washington University's National Security Archive said Eisenhower's decision forced Air Force leaders to think more seriously about conventional warfare instead of relying on nuclear arms.

Related Links

Air Force Histories Released through Archive Lawsuit Show Cautious Presidents Overruling Air Force Plans for Early Use of Nuclear Weapons (National Security Archive)

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 1:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

New suggestions that FDR's affair with doting Lucy Mercer never ended

Source: Newsweek (5-5-08)

In 1931, when Franklin Roosevelt was considering whether he should, and could, run for the presidency, he called in three physicians to advise on his physical capability. They reported that the man who had contracted polio ten years earlier, losing all movement in his legs, was indeed in good health—and, furthermore, that he had "no symptoms of impotentia coeundi." "In plain English," writes historian Joseph E. Persico, "he could sustain an erection."

It is a significant detail for Persico, given the questions he seeks to answer in his new book, "Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life": Did he have an ongoing relationship with Lucy Mercer (later Rutherfurd)? Was it sexual? Was she the only one? His answers to each are yes, undoubtedly, and no.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 12:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Obama donor received a state grant

Source: LAT (4-27-08)

After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client -- a longtime political supporter.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell's firm that eventually totaled $112,000.

A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 10:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

NARA Clarifies Decision Not to "Harvest" Federal Agency Websites

Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (4-25-08)

On March 27, 2008, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a memorandum, stating that it would not conduct a “harvest” of federal agency websites as they exist at the end of President Bush’s term as they did in 2001 and 2005. In response to concerns expressed by stakeholders, last week the National Archives issued further clarification stating “each agency is now responsible, in coordination with NARA, for determining how to manage its web records, including whether to preserve a periodic snapshot of its entire web page.”...

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thesze Cook Island residents speak with a rural English accent

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-29-08)

Researchers have long been puzzled by the strong rural drawl spoken by the inhabitants of Palmerston Atoll, one of the smallest and most remote of the Cook Islands with a land mass of less than one square mile.

The island is home to 63 people, who are all descended from William Marsters, an English carpenter and barrelmaker who settled there in 1863.

Now linguists have matched their accent to that of their very distant cousins 12,000 miles away in Gloucestershire.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 9:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Spain: Extradition of Isabel Perón to Argentina Is Rejected by Court

Source: NYT (4-29-08)

Spain’s National Court has decided against extraditing the former Argentine president María Estela Martínez de Perón, 77, to Argentina, where she is wanted on charges of human rights abuses during her presidency in the 1970s.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 9:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cheney lawyer claims Congress has no authority over vice-president

Source: Guardian (4-29-08)

The lawyer for US vice-president Dick Cheney claimed today that the Congress lacks any authority to examine his behaviour on the job.

The exception claimed by Cheney's counsel came in response to requests from congressional Democrats that David Addington, the vice-president's chief of staff, testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.

Ruling out voluntary cooperation by Addington, Cheney lawyer Kathryn Wheelbarger said Cheney's conduct is "not within the [congressional] committee's power of inquiry".

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 9:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Leaders Look to Preserve Saratoga Battlefield

Source: WNYT (4-28-08)

Community leaders are rallying to preserve Saratoga Battlefield, because they don't want the land around the Saratoga National Park to become another Gettysburg.

The Saratoga-Washington on the Hudson Partnership's goal is to help draw tourists without making the area look like a typical tourist town.

The group doesn't want visitors to the park to see neon signs and billboards.

Armed with state funding, the partnership has now put its leadership team in place.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dig near McKees Rocks indian burial site assailed (PA)

Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com (4-28-08)

The fate of a 2,300-year-old Indian burial mound in McKees Rocks is drawing renewed attention from a recently formed historical society.

"If this was any other cemetery in this country, what an outrage (there would be)," said Eugene Strong of Derry, a member of the McKees Rocks Historical Society. "We're just trying to see the destruction stop. They're slowly chipping away until there won't be a mound."

The group is upset about borough plans to remove trees, dirt and debris at the base of McKees Rocks Mound and build a fence along the bottom. Strong said artifacts could be lost in the process and the entire mound threatened with a landslide.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gallipoli sub to be left on sea floor

Source: http://news.ninemsn.com.au (4-28-08)

A Turkish-Australian workshop in Istanbul on options for HMAS AE2 has decided not to recommend raising the wreck, which lies in 73 metres of water in the Sea of Marmara after being scuttled in an April 1915 battle.

Underwater surveys found the submarine's hull to be in sound condition and preserved in an environment where corrosion is inhibited by prevailing conditions, AE2 Commemorative Foundation chairman Peter Briggs said.

The two-day workshop, convened by the Turkish Institute of Nautical Archaeology (TINA) and the Submarine Institute of Australia (SIA), resolved to recommend their two governments protect and preserve the AE2 where it rests.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Emperor Nero's gate discovered in Cologne

Source: http://www.expatica.com/de (4-25-08)

The gate, found complete with 11 meters of wall, was a goods-delivery entrance to the Roman town from its river port outside on the Rhine.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nine-year-old boy finds buried treasure (Sweden)

Source: http://www.thelocal.se (4-28-08)

Nine-year-old Alexander Granhof and his grandfather Jens have made what is believed to be the largest ever find in southern Sweden of silver coins from the Middle Ages.

Alexander and his granddad were out exploring the site of the Battle of Lund (1676) when the boy happened on some silver coins coated in verdigris. The buried treasure had likely come to the surface when the field in which they were wandering was recently ploughed.

A day later, archaeologists from the National Heritage Board arrived at the site with metal detectors and were quickly able to find two clay vessels containing more than 7,000 silver coins dating from around 1300 AD.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mortar shell uncovered during Western Wall excavation

Source: Jerusalem Post (4-29-08)

An old Israeli mortar shell used during the 1948 War of Independence was uncovered Tuesday during an archaeological excavation at the Western Wall plaza, police said.

The homemade Davidka mortar, which was found in one piece, was taken by police sappers to an uninhabited site outside the city to be detonated and destroyed, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

The mortar was used during the initial stages of the war sixty years ago.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Giant puzzle exposes Germany's communist secrets

Source: AFP (4-25-08)

It is painstaking work, almost a labour of love, but help is close for the nine people who have spent years sticking together millions of pieces of paper to decipher the workings of East Germany's once-feared Stasi secret police.

Almost two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the actions of the communist government still fascinates and scares Germans. Who worked with them? And why?

Stasi employees started to destroy their secret files as the Berlin Wall fell. Initially they shredded them. But as the machines broke down under the strain, they were forced to tear documents by hand.

The waste was to be pulped or burnt, but "citizen committees" stormed Stasi offices across East Germany, seizing millions of files, along with 15,500 bags of torn-up documents.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Battlefield adds 382 acres on Lookout

Source: http://www.tfponline.com (4-18-08)

At a time when many Civil War battlefields and even national parks are squeezed by outside development, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is growing.

Park officials and the Trust for Public Land received federal support to purchase 382 acres in March to add to the western flank of the Lookout Mountain Battlefield.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 6:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israeli leader: Hitler wasn't believed, we can't make that mistake with Ahmadinejad

Source: Haaretz (4-27-08)

The Commander of the Israel Air Force, Major General Eliezer Shkedi, said in a television interview that "in Nazi Germany, people didn't believe that Hitler meant what he was saying. I suggest that we refrain from repeating that line of reasoning and prepare ourselves for anything."

Shkedi made these remarks in a special interview with "60 Minutes" in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, excerpts of which aired on Channel 2 television Sunday.

Shkedi was asked in the interview about the nature of the threat posed by Iran and the commander answered that "this is a very serious threat, to Israel, but more importantly, to the entire world." He explained that he was referring to "what they [Iran] think of Israel ? the desire to destroy and wipe it off the map."

Shkedi is expected to conclude his term as the IAF commander and retire from the Israel Defense Forces soon, after 33 years of service. A large portion of his service was dedicated to the preparation for a possible mission that was never discussed in public: an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, should international economic sanctions prove to be fruitless.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 5:59 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Own your share of wartime gold from shipwreck (UK)

Source: BBC (4-29-08)

Shipwrecks, gold bullion, and a chance of a share in buried treasure... no, it's not the Caribbean, but Lough Swilly in County Donegal.

The owners of a ship which sank in the lough in 1917 are to sell shares in the 20 gold bars which it is believed are still in the wreck.

The SS Laurentic was a passenger ship but during the First World War it was used by the British government to transport gold to pay for munitions.

The majority of the 43 tons of gold the ship was carrying when it sank have already been recovered, but the remaining bars are estimated to be worth £10m.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 5:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

N.C. county laying claim to Lincoln's birthplace

Source: http://www.fortmilltimes.com (4-28-08)

Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois each lay claim to part of Abraham Lincoln's youth.

Now, a North Carolina county is trying to get in on the act.

A group in Rutherford County, N.C., opened the Bostic (N.C.) Lincoln Center and are petitioning the federal government to run a DNA test of Lincoln's father, Thomas, to see if it matches some of the 16th president's saved genetic material.
Keith Price, president of Bostic Lincoln Center Inc., said Lincoln was born in rural North Carolina, where Price believes Nancy Hanks gave birth to him out of wedlock.

Price is relying on an oral tradition that says Hanks' family, in the late 1700s, traveled from Virginia to North Carolina, where she worked for Abraham Enloe, who some point to as a possible father.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 5:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Land Protected Across From Mount Vernon

Source: http://wjz.com (4-28-08)

The view across the Potomac from George Washington's Mount Vernon estate will remain pristine, as it was more than 200 years ago, thanks in part to a purchase of 63 acres by the National Park Service on the banks of the river.

The purchase, announced Monday, conserves the last major block of shoreline on the Maryland side of the river that can be seen from Mount Vernon, which sits in Virginia just a few miles south of the nation's capital.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 5:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jewish Museum Milwaukee opens Monday

Source: AP (4-28-08)

Paul Strnad and his wife Hedvika desperately wanted to leave Czechoslovakia in 1939, the year Adolf Hitler threatened Jews in his speech to the Nazi Reichstag.

He wrote to his cousin Alvin Strnad in Milwaukee, hoping he could help get his wife a job as a dress designer. He also sent colorful drawings of her designs.

"You may imagine that we have a great interest in leaving Europe as soon as possible because there is no possibility of getting a position in this country," Strnad wrote.

The Strnads eventually were separated. Paul died in the Nazi camp Treblinka and his wife died in Warsaw, Poland, although it is unclear why she was taken there or if she was in a camp.

The letter and drawings as well as numerous other local stories, Jewish traditions and around 200 donated artifacts are featured at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, which opened Monday.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 5:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Searchers think they are closing in on Nazi treasure chest

Source: AP (4-28-08)

Investigators seeking fabled Nazi plunder said Monday that geophysicists have discovered something unusual buried near a town in eastern Germany — possibly remnants of the long-lost Amber Room.

Treasure hunters speculate that remains of the room — along with gold, paintings and other items stolen from a Russian palace outside St. Petersburg during World War II by the invading Nazis — could be buried near the town of Deutschkatharinenberg.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

X-rays uncover 'hidden portrait' of Shakespeare's patron

Source: BBC News (4-29-08)

A rare portrait, believed to be of Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton--Shakespeare's only known patron--has been discovered using X-ray technology. Art historians from Bristol University have found what they believe is a picture of Wriothesley that was painted over in the 16th Century. To the naked eye, it is a portrait of his wife, Elizabeth Vernon, Queen Elizabeth I's maid of honour..

The hidden picture was uncovered when the work was X-rayed in preparation for an exhibition at Montacute House in Somerset, UK. Radiography revealed that underneath the oil portrait was a ghostly male figure whom experts believe is Vernon's husband, Southampton, Shakespeare's only known patron. There are no plans to chip away the portrait of Southampton's wife to uncover him properly.

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 4:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 28, 2008

Swiss Man Safely Uses Leonardo da Vinci Parachute

Source: Fox News (4-28-08)

He conceived of the tank, the machine gun and the helicopter, but few of Leonardo da Vinci's sketched designs have truly been tested.

Except one: The prototypical Renaissance man's famous 1485 design for a rudimentary parachute.

On Saturday, in what appeared to be a first, Swiss adventurer Olivier Vietti-Teppa proved that Leonardo's pyramidal-design parachute could carry the weight of a man all the way to the ground.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Doomed Chernobyl Reactor to Be Buried in Giant Steel Coffin

Source: AP (4-28-08)

Twenty-two years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, work is under way on a colossal new shelter to cover the ruins and deadly radioactive contents of the exploded Soviet-era power plant.

For years, the original iron and concrete shelter that was hastily constructed over the reactor has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse. The new one, an arch of steel, would be big enough to contain the Statue of Liberty.

Once completed, Chernobyl will be safe, said Vince Novak, nuclear safety director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development which manages the $505 million project.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Agreement pending on state purchase of Natural Bridge battlefield (FL)

Source: http://www.tallahassee.com (4-27-08)

The Natural Bridge Battlefield may be endangered, but the cavalry is on the way.

State officials have tentatively agreed to buy 55 privately owned acres of the battlefield — but they must exercise their option by August. If they don't, the Civil War Preservation Trust is interested.

In March, the trust listed Natural Bridge as one of this year's 10 most endangered Civil War battlefields. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit purchases endangered battlefields with private donations and federal grants.

"(Natural Bridge) is such a unique site," said Mary Koik, the trust's deputy director of communications. "If we could get involved, we certainly would."

The Natural Bridge Battlefield is near Woodville. In March 1865, Confederate soldiers, volunteers and cadets from the forerunner of Florida State University repulsed three attacks by Union soldiers, leaving Tallahassee as one of only two Confederate capitals never captured.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Activist: Gettysburg Battlefield visitor center lacks disabled access

Source: http://www.eveningsun.com (4-25-08)

Disabilities-rights activist Marilynn Phillips is prepared to file a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission regarding the newly opened Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center - which she alleges does not "reasonably" accommodate disabled patrons.

Phillips' main gripes are with the center's 500-foot sloped sidewalk from the parking lot to the entrance, the low number of handicap parking spaces, a lack of automatic and power-assist doors and the absence of Braille signage for blind persons and audio tapes for the hearing-disabled.

Phillips - who visited the center Thursday to assess its accessibility - said in an e-mail that the center may technically be "in compliance" with the Americans with Disabilities Act in some, if not all, of those cases.

But, Phillips said, she still plans to file a complaint alleging a lack of "common sense" in the design of the building.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Mein Kampf' could be released in Germany

Source: UPI (4-27-08)

Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," whose publication is barred in Germany, could be released again in the former Nazi leader's nation.

Historians, among other academics, argue that the book ought to be reproduced with editorial annotations before 2015, when it enters the public domain and neo-Nazi groups will be able to publish it freely, Haaretz reported Sunday.

Hitler wrote the first part of the 720-page book in 1923, while in prison for his part in the attempted coup against the Weimar government. The remainder was written after his release.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Row over top cop's Nazi clock (UK)

Source: http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk (4-28-08)

A TOP North Yorkshire police officer has come under fire for keeping a Nazi clock on his office wall.

Deputy Chief Constable, Adam Briggs, pictured, was criticised by MPs and Holocaust historians for keeping the clock in such a prominent position at the force's HQ near Northallerton.

The timepiece was bequeathed to him by his father, who served in the Royal Navy,

Mr Briggs has said that if the force or North Yorkshire Police Authority felt it was causing offence he would remove it immediately.

But he said it had been in his various offices in three different forces for a decade where it had been seen by visitors of all races and faiths.

The clock, in brass with a mahogany case, has a face featuring a Nazi swastika beneath the German eagle.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Demjanjuk, accused Nazi guard, appeals to US Supreme Court

Source: AP (4-27-08)

CLEVELAND—A former autoworker accused of being a Nazi death camp guard has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject an order by the nation's chief immigration judge that he be deported, a newspaper reported Friday.

John Demjanjuk, 88, filed the appeal this week, The Plain Dealer reported on its Web site. The deportation order would send Demjanjuk to Germany, Poland or his native Ukraine.

The Associated Press left a message seeking comment with Demjanjuk's attorney, John Broadley.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Old Bailey's criminal history goes online

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-28-08)

Unseen files from some of the most sensational criminal trials in history are to be made available to the public today.

Transcripts from Old Bailey cases, including Oscar Wilde's trial for gross indecency and the infamous case of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, who killed his wife, form part of 110,000 pages of records made available online, free of charge. The London court's records include details of more than 210,000 criminal trials from 1674 to 1913.

Related Links

When hanging was too good for some

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Battle for Chitral reignites 113 years on (India)

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-28-08)

A family who once ruled a princely state of the Raj want a neglected British monument to be moved 200 miles to their mountain kingdom for safekeeping.

The memorial, standing on a hillock beside the Kabul River outside Nowshera in Pakistan, commemorates one of Britain's most famous military feats - the race to lift the siege of Chitral in 1895.

Daubed with graffiti and defaced by some who are offended by its proximity to a Muslim graveyard, it is in danger of collapsing.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Old Bailey's criminal history goes online

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-28-08)

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

France returns stolen treasures to Burkina Faso: minister

Source: AFP (4-18-08)

France has returned to Burkina Faso a haul of stolen archaeological treasures discovered in a northern French port, the Burkinabe culture minister told AFP Friday.

Filippe Sawadogo said 262 items of "national archaeological and cultural significance" to the landlocked west African nation were returned via the French embassy in Ouagadougou on Wednesday.

He praised the "perspicacity" of French customs officers at the French city of Rouen, on the River Seine, for the seizure in December 2007 of ancient ceramic, stone and bronze materials dating back to 1,300 BC.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Buried Dogs Were Divine "Escorts" for Ancient Americans

Source: National Geographic News (4-23-08)

Hundreds of prehistoric dogs found buried throughout the southwestern United States show that canines played a key role in the spiritual beliefs of ancient Americans, new research suggests.

Throughout the region, dogs have been found buried with jewelry, alongside adults and children, carefully stacked in groups, or in positions that relate to important structures, said Dody Fugate, an assistant curator at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Fugate has conducted an ongoing survey of known dog burials in the area, and the findings suggest that the animals figured more prominently in their owners' lives than simply as pets, she said.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient Settlement Uncovered At Carwood Farm (Scotland)

Source: http://www.hamiltonadvertiser.co.uk (4-24-08)

BIGGAR Archaeology Group have discovered the location of an ancient 5000-6000-year-old settlement site in a ploughed field at Carwood Farm near the town.

After only two days walking ploughed fields to look for evidence of the past, an annual Spring event for the group, the ancient site was located.

Tam Ward, group leader, explained: “Last year we found a few flints at this location, and this time the first thing we noticed on the ground were carbonised hazel nut shells and bits of pottery.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New book on Bill Clinton's post-presidency panned by NYT

Source: Janet Maslin in the NYT (4-28-08)

[Carol Felsenthal's] “Clinton in Exile” represents a largely missed opportunity to evaluate these years in light of its subject’s overall stature. “People who know Clinton say he’s still the smartest guy in the room,” Ms. Felsenthal acknowledges, referring to the diminished state of less fortunate bypass-surgery patients.

But even at its most mean-spirited, the book makes a few stingingly substantial claims. “It is surprising how many people who know and like Bill Clinton come to the same sad conclusion,” Ms. Felsenthal writes: “Monica Lewinsky and impeachment are an implacable part of Clinton’s White House legacy, and all the wondrous works in the years ahead may enhance his reputation as an ex-president but not as a president.” In the words of Don Hewitt, the former “60 Minutes” producer and an outspoken source here, Ms. Lewinsky “did more to change the world than Cleopatra.” And had President Clinton not jeopardized his own position and his party’s chances in the 2000 presidential election so recklessly, “there’s not one kid who has died in Iraq who wouldn’t be alive today.”

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Shh! In British Library Reading Rooms, Flirting and Even Giggling

Source: NYT (4-28-08)

In its old, mustily glorious quarters in the British Museum, the British Library’s main reading room was as exclusive as it was glamorous, a club rich with tradition whose distinguished alumni included Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw.

But in 1998 the library moved to a modern red-brick building on Euston Road, and four years ago it liberalized its admission policy. It opened its new reading rooms not only to writers and academics who depend on material from its singular collection, but also to “anyone who has a relevant research need,” a spokeswoman said.

Which is all fine. But “anyone” includes college undergraduates, and the problem with them, at least in the eyes of the older researchers, is that they tend to behave like the teenagers that many of them are.

They hog the seats.

They gather into clumps of chattering hormonal aimlessness.

They flirt, look one another up in Facebook and make complicated social plans about who will meet whom later in the cafeteria.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Guide helps tourists track down remains of Berlin Wall

Source: AP (4-25-08)

It can be hard to find what remains of the Berlin Wall, a divisive landmark that for 28 years split the German capital and an entire generation.

But history buffs wanting to see the last vestiges of the iconic symbol of east versus west no longer have to consult old maps or seek out guidebooks. A new multimedia guide offers individualized walking tours connecting the key points where the 103-mile-long wall once stood.

The hand-sized minicomputer, commissioned by the city government and to be introduced May 1, is linked to global positioning satellites mapping the wall's former path.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How Hitler invaded the marketing world

Source: http://www.thejc.com (4-27-08)

A long-held taboo on using Nazi imagery to sell products appears to be weakening. Is it just ad-land’s love of shock value — or something bigger?

In a South Korean television commercial, a young woman in a military trenchcoat holds a soldier’s cap bearing a motif of what looks like an eagle gripping a swastika. The voiceover says: “Even Hitler could not take over the East and West at the same time.” The cosmetics manufacturer Coreana was later forced to withdraw this advertisement for its skin serum after complaints from the Israeli embassy in Seoul.

It was not an isolated case. Only last month, a Ukrainian energy company was forced to apologise after it launched a billboard campaign using the image of Adolf Hitler to threaten customers who fail to pay their gas bills on time. Earlier this year, a hotel in Belgrade, Serbia, was slammed by the Anti-Defamation League after featuring an Adolf Hitler-themed suite, which had apparently proved a popular attraction.

Then there was the restaurant in Mumbai, named Hitler’s Cross, which in 2006 caused fury among the Jewish community in India. And last year, in New Zealand, the Hell Pizza chain was forced to take down a billboard featuring Hitler delivering a sieg-heil salute while holding a slice of pizza, after complaints from the Jewish community.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Berlin turnout falls short in vote to save Tempelhof

Source: AP (4-27-08)

Berlin residents wanting to save the city's historic Tempelhof airport from being closed later this year have failed, initial official results showed.

Not enough people cast ballots in a referendum, the city's first, to make it valid.

Preliminary results released by the Berlin state election authority showed that the majority of the 530,231 ballots cast were in favor of keeping the airport open. But they accounted for only 21.7 percent of the 2.4 million eligible voters. One-quarter was needed for the referendum to count.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 6:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

100-Year Mystery: Did 'Lady Bluebeard' Get Away With Murder?

Source: AP (4-27-08)

Asle Helgelien didn't believe Belle Gunness' claims that his brother, missing for months after answering the widow's lonely hearts ad, had left her northern Indiana farm for Chicago or maybe their native Norway.

Suspicious after a bank said his brother, Andrew, had cashed a $3,000 check — a large sum in 1908 — the South Dakota farmer came to LaPorte and discovered his brother's remains in a pit of household waste.

A century later, modern forensic scientists hope to solve once and for all what appears to have been a web of multiple murders, deceit, sex and money orchestrated by a woman dubbed Lady Bluebeard, after the fairy tale character who killed multiple wives and left their bodies in his castle.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 6:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Baghdad museum receives artifacts stolen from Iraq

Source: AP (4-27-08)

Iraq's National Museum on Sunday welcomed the return of more than 700 antiquities stolen during the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion five years ago.

Golden necklaces, daggers, clay statues, pots and other artifacts were displayed briefly during a ceremony attended by Syrian and Iraqi officials. Syrian authorities seized the items from traffickers over the years and handed custody last week to an Iraqi delegation in Damascus.

Mohammad Abbas al-Oreibi, Iraq's acting state minister of tourism and archaeology who led the negotiations with Syria, said he plans to visit Jordan soon to persuade its authorities to turn over more than 150 items.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 6:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

At Columbia, Remembering a Revolution

Source: WaPo (4-27-08)

Forty years ago, they launched a student protest at Columbia University that involved the occupation of five campus buildings, the hostage-taking of a dean, 712 arrests and injuries to scores of students, faculty members and police officers.

Now, they are lawyers, judges, playwrights, poets, professors and ministers. They gathered this weekend back on campus with former classmates to hear memories of those events and occasionally raise a revolutionary fist for old times' sake.

"Strangest reunion I ever saw," said Victoria Benitez, a spokeswoman for the university, which did not sponsor the event.

Some of the most radical are no longer fomenting revolution. Mark Rudd, the student leader who later helped start the Weather Underground and spent seven years as a fugitive, is now retired from a community college in Albuquerque.

The idea for the reunion developed at the prestigious World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where Robert Friedman, editor of the student newspaper in 1968 and now an editor at Bloomberg News, ran into the current Columbia University president.

But many of the student protesters of 1968 see their effort as part of a series of upheavals in American society that prompted deep change. They say the events also shaped their personal and professional decisions, and the people they became.

Related Links

Columbia’s Radicals of 1968 Hold a Bittersweet Reunion (NYT)

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 6:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too

Source: WaPo (4-27-08)

Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases.

Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide.

When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homesteads and into collective farms, special military units requisitioned grain and other food before sealing off parts of the countryside. Without food and unable to escape, millions perished.

Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, became "a vast death camp."

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 6:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Farrakhan's Pennsylvania Admirer

Source: Colbert I. King in the WaPo (4-26-08)

Among all of the top Democrats intimately involved in the Pennsylvania primary, which would you say has had the coziest relationship with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam?

It's not Barack Obama.

The individual who has shared a podium with Farrakhan and has publicly praised the Nation of Islam the loudest is the person most responsible for organizing, mobilizing and delivering the Pennsylvania vote to Hillary Clinton: her close friend and trusted political counselor Ed Rendell.

That Rendell and the Nation of Islam have something going is beyond doubt.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 6:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mein Kampf could be released again in Germany

Source: Haaretz (4-28-08)

Historians and other academics say it is essential to publish the notorious book with editorial annotations and critique before 2015, when it enters the public domain and may be reprinted freely by neo-Nazis.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 1:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Oil painting in Afghanistan predated European art

Source: Physorg (4-28-08)

Oil-based paint likely was used in Afghanistan up to 800 years before it first appeared in European art, a study of cave paintings has found.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

France still torn over the legacy of May 1968

Source: The Age (Australia) (4-28-08)

Four decades on, France is still torn over the legacy of May 1968. That month saw students set up barricades to demand a say in a stifling post-war society, soon joined by downtrodden factory workers and their artist brothers-in-arms.

It was a fast-forward cultural, political and sexual revolution that still fuels passionate debate, with a flood of books, films and nostalgic magazine specials to mark the 40th anniversary next month.

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Scholars run down more clues to a Holocaust mystery: What happened to Wallenberg? (AP Investigation)

Source: AP (4-27-08)

Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of a cattle car.

Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus "passports" that extended Sweden's protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on, dumbfounded.

Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and gentle manner. Recruited and financed by the U.S., he was sent into Hungary to save Jews. He bullied, bluffed and bribed powerful Nazis to prevent the deportation of 20,000 Hungarian Jews to concentration camps, and averted the massacre of 70,000 more people in Budapest's ghetto by threatening to have the Nazi commander hanged as a war criminal.

Then, on Jan. 17, 1945, days after the Soviets moved into Budapest, the 32-year-old Wallenberg and his Hungarian driver, Vilmos Langfelder, drove off under a Russian security escort, and vanished forever.

And because he was a rare flicker of humanity in the man-made hell of the Holocaust, the world has celebrated him ever since. Streets have been named after him and his face has been on postage stamps. And researchers have wrestled with two enduring mysteries: Why was Wallenberg arrested, and did he really die in Soviet custody in 1947?

Researchers have sifted through hundreds of purported sightings of Wallenberg into the 1980s, right down to plotting his movements from cell to cell while in custody. And fresh documents are to become public which might cast light on another puzzle: Whether Wallenberg was connected, directly or indirectly, to a super-secret wartime U.S. intelligence agency known as "the Pond," operating as World War II was drawing to a close and the Soviets were growing increasingly suspicious of Western intentions in eastern Europe...

Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 4:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Remains of WWII airmen identified

Source: AP (4-25-08)

The Pentagon says the remains of 11 U.S. servicemen missing in action from World War II have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial.

The airmen's remains were recovered on the Pacific island of New Guinea.

Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vikings acquitted in 100-year-old murder mystery

Source: Reuters (4-25-08)

Tests of the bones of two Viking
women found in a buried longboat have dispelled
100-year-old suspicions that one was a maid sacrificed
to accompany her queen into the afterlife, experts
said on Friday.

The bones indicated that a broken collarbone on the
younger woman had been healing for several weeks --
meaning the break was not part of a ritual execution
as suspected since the 22-metre (72 ft) long Oseberg
ship was found in 1904.

"We have no reason to think violence was the cause of
death," Per Holck, professor of anatomy at Oslo
University, told Reuters after studying the two women
who died in 834 aged about 80 and 50.

Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 4:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How to Show a Dictator the Door

Source: NYT (4-27-08)

ZIMBABWE’S political crisis lurched on last week as President Robert Mugabe, the strongman who has ruled the California-size country in southern Africa for the past 28 years, refused to release the results of the March 29 elections. In old-fashioned autocratic style, the government’s police began to round up opposition supporters.

The world is losing patience, but Mr. Mugabe is only the latest example of dictators in Africa and elsewhere — some more bloodthirsty than others — who have overstayed their welcome, and whom the West have tried to winkle out of power.

What lessons can be learned from past attempts to oust seemingly immovable oppressors? Do the lessons apply in the case of Zimbabwe? What are the options for dealing with Mr. Mugabe?

This strategy has worked, sort of, before.

In 1997, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now Congo, the very model of an African dictator dirty with corruption as his country collapsed around him, was promised safe passage by his former ally, the United States, and flew to Morocco. (He died of prostate cancer in exile soon after.)

Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 3:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Significant or not? McCain would be the first president born in 1930s

Source: Sam Tanenhaus in the NYT (4-27-08)

MUCH has been made of Senator John McCain’s advancing years. He is, as everyone knows, the oldest candidate in the field, and if things go his way in November he will take office at age 72, which will make him older than any other new president in history. This fact has provoked merriment, most conspicuously on late-night television, where he is often the butt of codger jokes.

Actually, he inhabits a more serious historic role, as the latest — and almost certainly the last — hope for Americans born in the 1930s to send one of their own to the White House. The 1900s, the 1910s, the 1920s and the 1940s have all been represented in the White House. But not the 1930s.

It is the missing decade. A demographic blip? Perhaps. But it might also be that Americans born in the 1930s lack the particular qualities we look for in our national leaders.

Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 3:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 25, 2008

Helping WW II vets get a chance to see the WW II memorial in DC

Source: NBC News Video (4-25-08)

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Columbia Protester, Now a Judge, Returns to Campus

Source: NYT (4-25-08)

Forty years ago, a young radical Columbia Law student named Gus Reichbach became the first student prominently disciplined by Columbia University for his participation in the blockades and protests in 1968.

He is now Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn (in the news most recently for presiding over the DeVecchio trial).

He has traded in his rebel bell bottoms for dapper designer suits, and his flowing hair has started to gray. He was back at Columbia on Wednesday for events commemorating the 40th anniversary of the student protests. (More events are scheduled for this weekend.)

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 5:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Armenians march for genocide recognition

Source: KABC (4-24-08)

Thursday was a very solemn day for Armenians -- it was the 93rd anniversary of what many call the Armenian Genocide, and local streets came to a standstill as thousands of people marched in protest.

A large group of people gathered Thursday afternoon on the street outside the Turkish Consulate building on Wilshire Boulevard to protest.

Earlier Thursday there was a protest rally in Hollywood.

"1915: Never again." That's the message sent loud and clear by thousands of Armenians gathered in Hollywood Thursday, protesting what they say is a denial by the current Turkish government of the Armenian Genocide.

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 5:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Court Sets Deadline for White House Answers on Missing E-mail

Source: National Security Archive (4-24-08)

Responding to the National Security Archive's motion in the pending White House e-mail lawsuit, Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court today ordered the White House to provide "precise information" about the users of the e-mail system from 2003 to 2005 and how many of their hard drives still survive today.

Citing the "lack of precision" in White House statements and its changing story about which backup tapes have been preserved, Magistrate Judge Facciola also ordered the White House to "resolve any ambiguities ... once and for all" and identify the specific dates between March 2003 and October 2003 for which no backup tape exists.

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 4:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Russia: More Babies, Less Oil

Source: http://www.strategypage.com (4-22-08)

Russia is reversing its population decline, which began before the Cold War ended, and accelerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Births were up 14 percent last year (to 1.6 million), over 2006. At its worst, a few years ago, the Russian population was declining 750,000 a year. A growing economy, more health consciousness and more pro-family laws have all contributed to this. Still, it will be another decade or two before the decline will halt. By then, the Russian population will be under 140 million. It went down 200,000 last year, to 142 million. At this rate, it would be under 100 million by 2050. That, however, is being reversed.

Russia will not go to war if Georgia or Ukraine join NATO, but will be unhappy with such a move. This could lead to more troops on the borders. Russia doesn't get it, that neighbors want to join NATO for protection from Russia. Historically, being a neighbor of Russia has not been a good thing.

Russian oil production is declining, after peaking at 9.86 million barrels a day. This came about because, during the re-nationalization of the oil industry over the last decade, there was a sharp drop in money spent on oil exploration. Foreign banks were reluctant to invest the enormous amounts of money needed (about a trillion dollars) when Russia was so blatantly violating property rights. Russia will either have to fund the exploration itself (which will mean less money for other economic expansion projects) or allow foreign investors more control of their Russian investments.

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 3:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Breakthrough in the painstaking efforts to restore 'Cutty Sark'

Source: Independent (UK) (4-25-08)

When flames engulfed the Cutty Sark last May, it looked initially like a fatal blow had been dealt to the £25m restoration of the historic clipper. But yesterday workers reached a "major milestone" in restoring the vessel.

The ship's counter, a major but fragile part of the stern, was lifted by crane from the wreckage to cheers from construction workers. It will now be subjected to electrolysis treatment and repaired before being reattached to the ship.

"We've successfully moved a 15ft, 8-tonne piece of curved iron which has taken weeks to carefully saw off," said Stephen Archer, of the Cutty Sark Trust. "The consequences of getting it wrong could have been huge, but we got it spot on." Richard Doughty, chief executive of the trust, described it as a "major milestone".

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 2:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

McCain's family lineage traces back to Mississippi

Source: http://media.www.thedmonline.com (4-24-08)

While presidential nominee John McCain may be a senator from Arizona, his roots are grounded deeply in Mississippi.

Marvin King, assistant professor of political science, said McCain's heritage will certainly help him win votes in Mississippi.

"Having roots in a state is usually seen as a plus by campaign teams," he said.

Unlike King, John Winburn, assistant professor of political science, said he does not think McCain's Mississippi heritage will affect the amount of votes he receives in the state.

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 2:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

State Supreme Court coming to town to celebrate Lincoln statue dedication (IL)

Source: http://www.register-news.com (4-24-08)

MT. VERNON — As part of a ribbon-cutting celebration commemorating a new sculpture of Abraham Lincoln during his young attorney days, the Illinois Supreme Court will not only be in attendance for the event at the Appellate Courthouse here in September, but it will also hear at least one case prior to the ceremony.

And the judges will meet in the only active courtroom where Lincoln practiced and appeared, according to Mark Hassakis, Mt. Vernon Lincoln Bicentennial Committee Chairman.

“This may be the first of Supreme Court visits [to the Appellate Courthouses],” remarked Hassakis, who added that with discussion of plans to renovate the courthouse in Springfield, the justices may see this as an opportunity to visit all the appellate courthouses in the state. “We’re the first visit,” he said.

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 2:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Grave site found for American humorist George Washington Harris (GA)

Source: http://dadesentinel.com (4-24-08)

Members of writer George Harris’ family including his great, great great-grandson, great great-grandson, and great-grandson, as well as researchers and others were on hand Sunday afternoon for the unveiling of a monument marking his final resting place. Until recently, it was not known where his gravesite was located.

The previously unknown resting place of an influential American writer has been found in Dade County.

This past Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. a large group of people gathered at Brock’s Cemetery on Creek Road to witness the unveiling of a monument to American humorist George Washington Harris.

George Harris was traveling by train on a return trip from Decatur, Ala., to Richmond, Va., when he became ill. It is believed by some that he was poisoned.

Harris died in Knoxville and was returned by his second wife, to whom he had only been married three months, to his children in Trenton where he was laid to rest next to his first wife.

Harris, who was born in Alleghany City, Pa., held many jobs during his lifetime including captain of the Steamboat Knoxville, alderman and postmaster of Knoxville, Tenn.

He began writing for a magazine in New York called “Spirit of the Times” and these stories were combined after the Civil War into a book called “Sut Lovingood. Yarns Spun by a Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool.”

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 2:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nazi items trashed at Holocaust exhibit (NY)

Source: AP (4-25-08)

Vandals pilfered and damaged Nazi related materials at a Suffolk County Community College exhibit about the Holocaust, police said Thursday.

Photographs of a propaganda poster and Adolf Hitler's autobiographical book "Mein Kampf" were damaged, police said.

The exhibit included anti-Semitic propaganda from the Third Reich, including caricatures of Jews, newspaper pages and other materials, political science Prof. Steven Schrier said.

Schrier runs the college's Center on the Holocaust, Diversity & Human Understanding, which maintained the exhibit.

The vandals took some items from a display case Tuesday night and stepped on them or smashed them against a rock, Suffolk County Police Detective Sgt. Robert Reeks said. The vandals targeted materials related to Nazis but left others undisturbed, he said.

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 1:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dinwiddie County battlefield gets a new visitor station (VA)

Source: http://www.progress-index.com (4-15-08)

One hundred and forty three years after the Battle of Five Forks, visitors to the battlefield could soon have a more comprehensive understanding of the conflict.

A new visitor station at Five Forks Battlefield will help tourists gain a better understanding to one of the climatic battles of the Civil War.

The $3 million visitor center complex will nearly double the amount of exhibit space — from 388 square feet in the former gas station currently used to 730 square feet.

Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 1:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Justice Scalia defends Bush v. Gore ruling

Source: Reuters (4-24-08)

Justice Antonin Scalia, in an interview to be shown on Sunday, defended the U.S. Supreme Court ruling's that gave George W. Bush the presidency and said he was not trying to impose his personal views on abortion.

Scalia was interviewed for the CBS News show "60 Minutes," an appearance timed to coincide with the publication on Monday of the book he coauthored, "Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges."

It marked the latest in a series of broadcast interviews this year by the conservative justice who once shunned the media.

The nine-member Supreme Court conducts its deliberations in secret and the justices traditionally won't discuss pending cases in public. The court has the final word on questions of U.S. law and its rulings affect the rights of all Americans.

"I am a law-and-order guy. I mean, I confess to being a social conservative, but it does not affect my views on cases," Scalia said on CBS, which on Thursday released excerpts of the interview.

Scalia repeated his earlier statement that people should "get over" the court's ruling in 2000 that halted Florida's vote recount, giving the presidential election to Republican Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

"I say nonsense," Scalia said, when asked about critics who say the 5-4 ruling was based on politics and not justice. "Get over it. It's so old by now."

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 10:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israel: 60 years of hope and despair

Source: Guardian (4-20-08)

As the anniversary of its independence approaches, Israel remains haunted by conflicts of the past and is split along racial, religious, economic and ideological lines. Terrorist attacks are commonplace. But there is also pride mixed with self-criticism, and a yearning for a fresh start on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cambodians aren't sure trials of Khmer Rouge leaders will be beneficial

Source: New Republic (5-7-08)

An hour's drive from downtown Phnom Penh sits a campus of modern office buildings. The architecture is standard office-park fare, but with fantastic crowns of golden lintels and red tiles--traditional Khmer designs--grafted atop. (The effect is rather like seeing a businessman wearing a papal crown.) The offices were originally constructed for the military, and a sign that reads ROYAL CAMBODIAN ARMED FORCES still hangs on one gate. Elsewhere on the campus, a large bronze statue of a warrior on a pedestal stares down at onlookers, one arm pointing an accusing finger, the other brandishing a club. My guide, an American who works for the United Nations, tells me that it is a traditional Cambodian representation of justice. But, he adds, wrinkling his nose, he doesn't much like it. "It's not what justice should look like," he says. "You know, the lady with the blindfold and the scales."

The question of what, exactly, justice looks like is in the air here because the campus is home to the tribunal that is slated to begin trying five top Khmer Rouge officials within the next few months. Backed by the United Nations, the tribunal represents the first attempt to prosecute leaders of the Khmer Rouge in almost 30 years. After the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 and put a halt to the killing, they held a cursory trial, widely regarded as a sham. In the years that followed, no comprehensive attempt was made to hold surviving Khmer Rouge officials accountable for the estimated 1.5 million people who perished under their rule between 1975 and 1979. History loomed, ominous and inscrutable, and the questions surrounding the Cambodian killings fields, questions that might have been answered through trials, went largely unaddressed. Why had the Khmer Rouge kept such meticulous records--rooms upon rooms of file cabinets containing labeled photos of victims, taken both before and after death? Why were some people killed for offenses as superficial as wearing glasses, while others were not? Why were so many of the guards at the notorious S-21 detention center--responsible for interrogating and torturing tens of thousands--middle-school-aged children?

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says

Source: AP (4-24-08)

Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.

The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence.

"Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 7:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

SF remembers African American exodus

Source: KGO (4-23-08)

This week San Francisco is marking the anniversary of an event most people have never heard of. It was a time when more than half of the city's black population packed-up, picked-up and left town.

It's a little known chapter of San Francisco history that was commemorated at a ceremony with speeches, songs, a drill team and proclamations noting what few outside this crowd might know.

There was a black exodus from the city 150 years ago.

"What's to understand is that this was a protest and it was seen as a protest by the newspapers of the time," said San Francisco historian John Templeton.

Historian John Templeton says many blacks in San Francisco during the 1850'S were entrepreneurs or merchants.

Whatever their status, they were impacted by racism including attempts by the legislature to keep more blacks from coming to California.

After several meetings, more than half the community decided to leave America altogether.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 7:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

What a struggle over the school history curriculum reveals about California

Source: The Economist (4-24-08)

No fewer than seven bills that would alter how history is taught are currently before California's legislature. These bills would encourage or force more lessons about Filipino, African and Latin American cultures, American Indians, the "secret war" in Laos, the deportation of Hispanics in the 1930s, the desegregation of Mexican pupils and the Italian contribution to California. All of which would be added to a curriculum that is already a brisk 5,000-year trot from ancient Egypt to contemporary America.

The bills' chances are dim. Although the Democrats who control both houses of the state legislature almost invariably support such measures, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor, has tended to veto them. Yet the real target of this historical barrage may not be the statute book. Next month a group of academics and bureaucrats will begin holding public hearings on an overhaul of the curriculum framework — the first full one since 2001. California is America's biggest education market. Changes made there tend to find their way into classrooms across the country.

Diane Ravitch, who helped write California's curriculum in the 1980s, complains that every group supports every other group's plea for inclusion, resulting in a consensus for including a huge amount of new material. It all sounds like bad news for poor old Rameses II.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Coffee urn donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Source: Chicago Tribune (4-21-08)

A coffee urn given as a wedding present by Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln has been donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Beginning Monday, the silver-plate coffee urn will be on display at the museum.

The donation was made by a descendant of the groom, a young lawyer named Christopher Columbus Brown.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With U.S.

Source: WaPo (4-24-08)

A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Archaeologists find log road in Annapolis

Source: Baltimore Sun (4-24-08)

Standing over one of the Colonial, brick sidewalks that help define Annapolis, the archaeologists began digging with trowels and shovels.

The team from the University of Maryland carved a 4-foot-long trench along a sidewalk at Fleet and Cornhill streets - two of the oldest in the historic district. Bagging and tagging artifacts along the way, they scraped through the powdered remains of a red brick sidewalk from 1820 and a black layer of wood chips from 1740.

Then they found something far more significant than the shards of pearlware, animal bones and the King George III penny that they uncovered in the layers above: a log street that archaeologists called the oldest remnant yet discovered of the Annapolis settlement.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Alexander the Great's "Crown," Shield Discovered?

Source: National Geographic News (4-23-08)

An ancient Greek tomb thought to have held the body of Alexander the Great's father is actually that of Alexander's half brother, researchers say.

This may mean that some of the artifacts found in the tomb—including a helmet, shield, and silver "crown"—originally belonged to Alexander the Great himself. Alexander's half brother is thought to have claimed these royal trappings after Alexander's death.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Judge dismisses suit over Confederate flag at Texas High school

Source: Dallas Morning News (4-23-08)

A federal judge has dismissed a case by current and former Burleson High School students who were forbidden from carrying purses bearing the Confederate battle flag on campus.

The ruling released Tuesday by Judge David C. Godbey ends the more than year-long lawsuit about the place of Confederate symbols in public life. School district officials said the symbols could be disruptive because of the racial overtones. The defendants and the Southern Legal Resource Center, which represented them, said the school’s decision violated their rights of free express, due process, equal protection and right to express their heritage.

Ashley Thomas and Aubrie McAllum, both juniors at the time, were told by the Burleson High principal in January 2006 that they couldn’t bring the Confederate purses to school. In February 2007, the Southern Legal Resource Center, which has fought similar bans throughout the country, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the girls. Ms. Thomas’ younger sister, then a sophomore at Burleson High, was later added to the lawsuit.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thousands flock to exhumed body of saint Padre Pio

Source: Reuters (4-24-08)

The exhumed body of Padre Pio, a saint considered a miracle worker by his devotees, attracted thousands of pilgrims on Thursday when it went on display 40 years after his death.

Padre Pio is one of the Catholic Church's most popular saints and during his lifetime the Italian monk was said to have had the stigmata, the bleeding wounds of Jesus' crucifixion on his hands and feet.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Western myths about the Islamic world mirrored at auction

Source: International Herald Tribune (4-18-08)

Western politicians who take the longer view sometimes wonder why they get it so wrong with the "Islamic world." They might learn a thing or two by glancing at what happens on the auction scene.

The round of sales that began at Christie's King Street on April 8, went on at Sotheby's April 9 and ended at Christie's South Kensington two days later were enlightening on that score, if not quite as much about the works of art. These belonged to five or six cultures more different from each other than say France was from Germany in Medieval times, or Italy from England in the 18th century. Few serious historians would think of cramming the art of these countries into a single category.

Yet, this is invariably done at auction about the lands where Islam prevails. "Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds," Christie's cover proclaimed over the photograph of a 17th-century ensign from Iran. "Art of the Islamic World," Sotheby's cover intoned on April 9 over a Spanish enameled gold buckle.

Inside the catalogues, the mishmash was beyond description. To say that there was no aesthetic common denominator between the goods on offer would be the understatement of the new century.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A warning signal for the lighthouses of France

Source: International Herald Tribune (4-22-08)

OUESSANT, France: From this farthest edge of France, where the rain comes horizontally off the ocean, there is nothing on the horizon except waves and lighthouses, marking the lines between land and sea, sea and sky.

Built as a technical aid to sailors, their architects often unknown, France's lighthouses have increasingly become a symbol of the nature of the country, of its "patrimoine," or patrimony - a word that in France carries a spiritual quality of patriotism and nationhood.

It was a Frenchman, after all, Augustin-Jean Fresnel, who invented a crystal lens for lighthouses, and another who thought to rest the turning lamps on a pool of mercury, which conducts electricity.

But with time, harsh weather and automation, France's lighthouses are disintegrating.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Highway construction unearths 1860s black homestead (Maryland)

Source: AP (4-24-08)

State highway officials contacted the Rev. Spencer E. Jackson a few weeks ago with astonishing news: They had found the remnants of a homestead that belonged to his great-great-grandmother, a freed slave.

Less than two miles from his church was a remarkably preserved site, full of artifacts that provide clues to 19th-century black life. Eyeglasses, fragments of dolls and an 1860 Abraham Lincoln campaign medallion are among the discoveries that help tell the story of Melinda Jackson, who bought the property in 1869.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Boeing gives $5 million for black history museum

Source: AP (4-24-08)

The Smithsonian yesterday began a push to raise corporate funds for a new museum dedicated to black history, announcing a $5 million gift from Boeing Co.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is scheduled to open in 2015 on the Mall near the Washington Monument. It will be the Smithsonian's 19th museum.

"This is a museum for all of us. ... This is all our history," said Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a Boeing vice president and the granddaughter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. "We have to know this story in order to build a nation that is solidly committed and successful at creating a free society."

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

French officers ordered back to Waterloo

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-24-08)

Almost two hundred years after the Allied armies secured the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, French soldiers have returned to the scene of the Battle of Waterloo to learn from the mistakes of their 19th-century predecessors.

A total of 38 senior officers were ordered to spend a day analysing the errors which put a final end to Napoleon’s rule as Emperor and drew to a close 23 years of war.

Brigadier-General Vincent Desportes ordered strategists from France’s Armed Forces Employment Doctrine Centre to visit the battleground because “you learn more from your failures than from your successes”.

Surveying the battlefield, which is in present-day Belgium, the officers were told that Napolean underestimated The Duke of Wellington, made tactical errors and confused his army.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US, Britain, France protest Libya comment on Nazis

Source: AP (4-23-08)

Envoys from the U.S. and several nations walked out of a U.N. Security Council meeting Wednesday after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps, council diplomats said.

The walkout was a rare protest by diplomats on the U.N.'s most powerful body against one of their own members. Libya is the only Arab representative on the council.

Council members held a closed meeting to discuss the possibility of issuing a press statement following a briefing on the situation in the Middle East. Assistant Secretary-General Angela Kane had reported on the escalation in violence and growing humanitarian plight in Gaza as well as rocket attacks against Israel.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Possible Wright Brothers' Artifact Found

Source: http://www.witntv.com (4-23-08)

A team from East Carolina University is working to authenticate a possible Wright Brothers' artifact found in Kitty Hawk.

A crate that was shipped to "W. Wright, Elizabeth City, North Carolina” at the turn of the century looks like it became the tabletop for the Wright Brothers' kitchen table. That crate resurfaced in March in Kitty Hawk.

Dr. Larry Tise of ECU is a leading Wright Brothers authority. Tise and some of his students from ECU are working to confirm the finding.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Can't find Mormon pioneer Parley Parker Pratt (Arkansas)

Source: http://www.nwanews.com (4-23-08)

The exhumation of Parley Parker Pratt ended Tuesday when archaeologists couldn’t find the Mormon church leader’s remains.

Robert J. Grow, Pratt’s greatgreat-great-grandson, said there were no signs of Pratt, and the digging ended around 4 p.m....

Pratt was an original member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his dying wish was to be buried in Utah.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:09 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Archaeologists question Buffalo reburials (W.Va.)

Source: http://sundaygazettemail.com (4-23-08)

An archeologist on Tuesday criticized Putnam County commissioners for their efforts to return the skeletal remains of about 600 American Indians to West Virginia, saying they had left the scientific community in the dark.

"We have been cut out of the process entirely," said Bob Maslowski, president of the Council for West Virginia Archaeology.

Last month, commissioners received legal control of the skeletal remains, which had been stored at Ohio State University since the mid-1990s.

In the early 1960s, West Virginia's first state archaeologist excavated a site near the present-day Toyota plant in Buffalo. People working on the site eventually found the remains of hundreds of American Indians.

Over the past decade, some people in Putnam County have advocated for the return and reburial of the remains, out of what they say is respect for Indian spirituality. Commissioners intend to rebury the remains at a site near the original excavation.

A 1990 law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) allows federally recognized tribes to reclaim Indian remains and artifacts from museums and universities.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:07 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Court orders US federal jurisdiction over possible 'Griffin' shipwreck

Source: AP (4-23-08)

An appeals court has ruled that the U.S. government should have authority for now over a Lake Michigan shipwreck that could be The Griffin, a 17th century vessel built by the French explorer La Salle.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati reversed a ruling by District Judge Robert Holmes Bell in a dispute between the state of Michigan and the private underwater exploration company that found the wreckage seven years ago.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Groups protest 'lunatic asylum' name

Source: http://sundaygazettemail.com (3-20-08)

West Virginia disability rights groups are fuming after the owners of a pre-Civil War mental hospital in Weston renamed the property the "Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum."

Several mental health organization leaders have fired off letters this week to the contractor who now owns the former Weston Hospital.

They say the new name - which was the name of the hospital in the 19th century - is discriminatory and promotes misunderstandings about mental illness.

"It's very derogatory," said Scott Miller, director of the Mountain State Direct Action Center, a disability rights group. "We don't call people lunatics. Asylum is just not the term anymore."

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Copy of Bill of Rights now officially NC's

Source: http://www.newsobserver.com (3-24-08)

A copy of the Bill of Rights stolen from the state Capitol during the Civil War now officially belongs to the people of North Carolina, state Attorney General Roy Cooper said today.

Superior Court Judge Henry W. Hight Jr. issued an order today that ended all remaining claims to the document. Hight declared that North Carolina owns its original copy of the Bill of Rights, Cooper's office said in a news release.

The judgment ended a lengthy legal battle by the state for ownership of the historic document.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 1:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

National Civil War Chaplains Museum open in Lynchburg

Source: http://www.wdbj7.com (3-24-08)

The mission of the National Civil War Chaplains Museum in Lynchburg is to educate the public about the role of chaplains, priests, rabbis and religious organizations in the Civil War.

The museum helps preserve religious artifacts and shows the influence religion had on the lives of political and military personnel.

With a number of paintings and other period artifacts, the Civil War Chaplains Museum has a lot of great things to display just not enough space to display it. The museum is currently housed in a 1,000 square foot room in the Arthur S. DeMoss Building at Liberty University. But plans are in the works to expand into a facility ten-times as a large.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 12:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Curiosity reignites over Lincoln flag

Source: http://www.zwire.com (4-7-08)

Thomas Gourlay reached out and grasped the first thing he touched to cradle the head of a dying man.

The American flag, hastily yanked by the actor and part-time stage manager from a balustrade in a Washington, D.C., theater 143 years ago, would become a cherished family heirloom, passed from generation to generation.

Now the bloodstained relic hangs in a tall glass case tucked in a dim corner of an obscure museum in a tiny Pocono Mountains hamlet, little noted by the world.

How it came here, a national treasure amid the stuffed birds, antique gowns and other eclectic artifacts in the collection of the Pike County Historical Society, is not in dispute.

But can that ruddy stain truly be the blood of Abraham Lincoln?

On the cusp of the bicentennial celebration of the 16th president’s birth in 2009, and with the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War looming in 2011, the keepers of the so-called Lincoln flag are anticipating a new wave of interest, and steeling for a fresh round of scrutiny.

“You can dismantle history anytime you want to, but at some point you have to believe the evidence,” said Lincoln scholar Joseph E. Garrera, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum in Allentown and president of the Lincoln Group of New York.

Today, Garrera is one of the staunchest advocates of the flag’s authenticity. He started out an unabashed skeptic, viewing the flag as a misidentified fraud at best, a preposterous hoax at worst.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 12:54 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Resolution on slavery advanced to Legislature (Nebraska)

Source: AP (4-9-08)

State lawmakers will consider a resolution that expresses regret for slavery, but doesn't issue an apology.

Members of a legislative committee struggled on Wednesday with the language of the resolution that they ultimately advanced to the full Legislature for consideration.

The Judiciary Committee finally decided that expressing "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery was more appropriate than issuing an apology.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 12:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Grounds of Jeff Davis homestead open to the public

Source: http://www.sunherald.com (4-8-08)

BILOXI --Forty visitors showed up for the unannounced soft opening of the grounds of Beauvoir on Monday, and by 10 a.m. this morning there was another dozen waiting to take what the museum staff calls the "disaster tour."
Just the grounds, not the National Landmark 1850s Beauvoir House, is open to the public until the grand reopening of the restored house on the June 3 birthday of Jefferson Davis.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 12:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

City Jeers Suit Over 1861 Debt

Source: Tampa Tribune (4-9-08)

A Tampa woman is more than a century too late in her attempt to be repaid $22 million for a $300 loan her ancestors made to the city during the Civil War, Tampa officials say.

In its legal filings, the city says the delay by Joan Kennedy Biddle and her family in asking for the money is "completely unreasonable, inexcusable and unprecedented." The city filed a motion Tuesday to dismiss the lawsuit.

"We don't even know that the note hadn't been paid," City Attorney David Smith said. "We don't have evidence either way. It's one of the reasons the statute of limitations is a reasonable defense."

Biddle referred calls to attorney James Purdy, who did not return a phone call.

Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 12:50 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Report: Gettysburg battlefield threatened by development

Source: http://www.eveningsun.com (4-10-08)

Look at the figures from one angle, and the majority of land - about 80 percent - within the 6,000-acre boundary of the Gettysburg National Military Park is owned, and therefore protected, by the federal government.

From a different perspective, however, that means one out of every five acres within those same boundaries is considered private property without conservation easements and therefore subject to potential development.

Given the conclusions of a report released Tuesday by the National Parks Conservation Association, preservationists are seeing things from the latter position.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Civil War showpiece restored (PA)

Source: http://www.thetimes-tribune.com (4-13-08)

More than a century ago, thousands of Scrantonians gathered on Courthouse Square to dedicate the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, honoring those who lost their lives in the Civil War.

On Saturday, a crowd again gathered in front of the 104-foot-tall structure, this time for a rededication ceremony following $500,000 in restoration work.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Did John Wilkes Booth shoot a dying man?

Source: Mercury News (4-14-08)

That's the controversial conclusion reached by Palo Alto physician and amateur historian John Sotos, who says that President Abraham Lincoln was suffering from a lethal genetic cancer syndrome when he was shot at Ford's Theatre 143 years ago today.

"Lincoln was a rare man with a rare disease," said Sotos. He has self-published a 300-page book and 400-page database to support his conclusion, based on an exhaustive analysis of Lincoln photographs and historical eyewitness descriptions of the president's health. "This solves a puzzle."...

Last year, while assembling a medical database about the 16th president, Sotos read an unrelated article about thyroid cancer, the deadly and inevitable outcome of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B, or MEN 2B.
Many of the symptoms matched Lincoln's, and at 3:15 a.m., Sotos made a link. The condition, which causes aggressive thyroid cancer, explains Lincoln's lanky build, chronic constipation, hooded eyes, asymmetric jaw and the lumps on his lips, he said. His health was weakening in the months prior to the assassination, Sotos asserts.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Who owns the Naples, NY cannon, anyway?

Source: http://www.mpnnow.com (4-14-08)

The town and the American Legion have formed committees to oversee the restoration of Naples’ pre-Civil War era cannon — each without the other knowing.
Part of the problem may be that it’s no longer clear who owns the historic ordnance.

It all started when Rochester resident Charles Baylis, the director of the American Civil War Artillery Association, approached the Town Board with an estimate for restoring the carriage. The town turned him down.

The town formed its own committee after the board decided not to send the carriage out of state, as Baylis suggested. Instead, they wanted local artisans work on the piece.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Visitors experience rare view of Gettysburg atop seminary's cupola

Source: http://www.eveningsun.com (4-20-08)

The Adams County Historical Society provided tourists in Gettysburg a great opportunity Saturday to tour the [ Lutheran Theological Seminary] cupola, which is closed save for two times of the year.

"Until recently, nobody was allowed to go into the cupola," said Tim Smith, research assistant with the historical society. "The stairway leading up to the cupola was not safe. Our liability was insane."

In fact, the cupola was closed from 1964 to about three years ago when the historical society decided to open it for tours on a limited basis.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cromwell as 'daddy of democracy'?

Source: BBC (4-18-08)

An evil tyrant or the father of democracy?
That's the debate splitting opinion in Coleraine, after a row broke out between local councillors over the legacy of Oliver Cromwell.

During the meeting of the Council's Policy and Resources Committee on Tuesday, the DUP's Samuel Cole said Cromwell was a defender of democracy.

But Sinn Féin councillor Billy Leonard said Cromwell's record in Ireland made him "no father of democracy".
The English leader is notorious in Ireland for massacring thousands of people after the siege of Drogheda in 1649.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Berliners to vote on fate of historic airport

Source: Reuters (4-22-08)

At the age of 7, Mercedes Wild waved excitedly at each U.S. plane that circled over her Berlin home and landed at Tempelhof airport, packed with supplies to feed Berliners during the Soviets' Cold War blockade.

Today, the 67-year-old Wild is fighting against city plans to shut down the giant airport site in the center of Berlin.

After years of debate, Berliners are to vote Sunday on the closing of the Nazi-built complex.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

High School Project on Genocide Was a Portent of Real-Life Events

Source: Samuel G. Freedman in the NYT (4-23-08)

In 1993, when Travis Hofmann was a freshman of 15, he had traveled little beyond the sand hills that surrounded his hometown, Alliance, Neb. He was the son of a railroad engineer, a trumpeter in the high school band, with a part-time job changing the marquee and running the projector at the local movie theater.

In Travis’s class in global geography at Alliance High School, however, the teacher introduced the outside world with the word and concept of genocide. The teacher, Tim Walz, was determined that even in this isolated place, perhaps especially in this isolated place, this county seat of 9,000 that was hours away from any city in any direction, the students should learn how and why a society can descend into mass murder.

Mr. Walz had already taught for a year in China, and he brought the world into his classroom in the form of African thumb pianos and Tibetan singing bowls. For the global geography class, he devised something far more ambitious than what the curriculum easily could have been — the identification and memorization of capitals, mountain ranges and major rivers. It was more ambitious, too, than a unit solely on the Holocaust of the sort many states have required.

“The Holocaust is taught too often purely as a historical event, an anomaly, a moment in time,” Mr. Walz said in a recent interview, recalling his approach. “Students understood what had happened and that it was terrible and that the people who did this were monsters.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 9:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Year's card sent by Anne Frank found, museum says

Source: AP (4-23-08)

A Dutch school director preparing an exhibition on Anne Frank has found a holiday postcard signed by the Jewish teenage diarist, a museum said Wednesday.

The card, sent in 1937, was addressed to one of Frank's best friends, Samme Ledermann, and postmarked from just across the Dutch border in Aachen, Germany, said Maatje Mostard, of the Anne Frank Museum.

Decorated with a clover-covered bell atop a snowy field and wishing "good luck for the new year" in German, the card was signed "Anne Frank" with no other handwritten message.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Do summits succeed?

Source: Times (UK) (4-23-08)

In the public imagination, a “summit” is a meeting between the political leaders of two states, with those between the United States and the Soviet Union seen as the most important. Yet one of the most interesting conclusions of David Reynolds’s compellingly written book is that these “personal” summits do not succeed. In a work of great originality, Reynolds sets out an analytical structure, considers six important summit meetings between 1938 and 1985, and concludes that only one of them had the desired result. The history of the political summit – truly a triumph of hope over experience – arises from the conviction of leaders that if only they can meet face to face with their opposite number, something can be worked out: charm will triumph. And time after time, the result was, at worst, disaster – as at Munich in 1938 – but more frequently the unravelling of hopes. Only one summit, that of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in Geneva in 1985, is seen by Reynolds as a success, thanks to forward planning.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Watergate Revisionism: Fox Journalist Expiates John Mitchell

Source: http://www.observer.com (4-23-08)

“This is not your father’s Watergate,” said James Rosen.

Mr. Rosen, an on-air D.C.-based correspondent for Fox News was speaking to NYTV on Monday afternoon. Next month, Doubleday will publish Mr. Rosen’s first book—a revisionist history of Richard Nixon’s downfall, called The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.

As NYTV’s overcrowded bookshelf can attest, TV newsmen are constantly cranking out books that are heavy on the self-promotion and light on, um, research. Mr. Rosen’s book promises to be neither. It will weigh in at a hefty 600 or so pages, contain 65 pages of footnotes, and will include insight culled from some 250 original interviews. There was no ghostwriter. And in a clear affront to the requirements of the genre, Mr. Rosen’s face doesn’t even appear on the cover.

Mr. Rosen said Strong Man will be the first major biography of John Mitchell, the late U.S. attorney general, who played a pivotal role in the “rise, reign and ruin” of Richard Nixon. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Mr. Mitchell was convicted on a number of charges stemming from his role in the botched break-in and surveillance operation. The nation’s top law enforcement official eventually spent 19 months in prison.

“He never went on the lecture circuit,” said Mr. Rosen. “He never went on the Mike Douglas show. He never testified about Nixon to get a more lenient sentence. He never found God.”

And he never wrote an autobiography. At one point, Mr. Mitchell signed a contract with Simon & Schuster to write a memoir. But according to Mr. Rosen, Mr. Mitchell eventually balked at writing about Watergate and passed away in 1988, leaving the biography unwritten and leaving many details of his life—from the false notion that he commanded John F. Kennedy during World War II to the bogus suggestion that he played hockey for the New York Rangers—shrouded in mystery and misconception.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 4:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Why didn't Weather Underground member Bill Ayers serve time?

Source: Nixon Blog (4-22-08)

If everyone knows that William Ayers and his comrades in the Weather Underground were planning to set bombs to murder innocent people, why didn’t they do time?

Because the investigation against them was muffed thanks to the illegal activities of the Washington Post’s favorite Watergate answer man himself, Mark Felt — aka Deep Throat.

In 1972-73, FBI official Felt and his colleague Edward S. Miller authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of Weather Underground members. When the black bag jobs became public, the federal government decided it couldn’t prosecute the alleged terrorists. Indicted during the Carter Administration, Felt and Miller were tried in 1980 in Washington. Ever the patriot, former President Nixon voluntarily testified on the defendants’ behalf, but they were convicted anyway and pardoned by President Reagan in March 1981.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 3:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

National parks clear trees from original battlefield 'sight lines,' delighting (and appalling) students of history

Source: Christian Science Monitor (4-23-08)

GETTYSBURG, PA. - Even though he spends his time guiding tourists through the nooks and crannies of a Civil War-era house, retired librarian Harry Conay believes that nature can trump history.

He's watched in horror as the National Park Service has tried to make the Gettysburg National Military Park look more like it did on three July days in 1863. Officials are nearly a third of the way through cutting down 576 acres of trees that didn't exist back then.

Another 275 acres will be replanted with trees and orchards that disappeared over the past 15 decades. But it's not enough to please Mr. Conay, who says the battlefield's history is partly told through the healing of the earth. After all, the trees managed to thrive on land ravaged by a deadly struggle between two immense armies.

"During those 140 years, this has become something more than a battlefield lesson," Conay says from behind the gift-shop counter at the historic house where he serves as a guide.

But the trees continue to fall, despite a flurry of protests amid preparations for this month's opening of a $103 million visitors center and museum. And as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches, at least one other battlefield is poised to restore history by chopping down countless trees.

Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Libyan town that churns out terrorists was home to Barbary pirates

Source: Newsweek (4-28-08)

Darnah's militants do have one other thing in common [beside desperate lives]: an almost obsessive devotion to their town's place in history. Greek and Roman ruins, the detritus of occupations in the ancient past, dot the wheat and barley fields along Libya's coastal plain. The United States left its own lasting mark on the town's collective memory during the Barbary Wars of the early 1800s. Darnah became a key battlefield in America's first overseas military expedition, when 500 American Marines and local mercenaries marched across the desert from Egypt to assault the town. (The ensuing Battle of Darnah inspired the "shores of Tripoli" line in the current Marine Hymn.)

But it was another country a century later that seared the ideal of armed resistance into the town's psyche. In 1911, Italy landed warships in Darnah's port, the beginning of a ruthless colonial presence that would last through the Mussolini era until the Axis powers were defeated in World War II. Local resistance to the occupation was strongest in the rocky hills near Darnah, but even there it was ultimately crushed. From its dust, a homegrown tradition of Islamic martyrdom emerged.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 11:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New book claims generational change favors Dems

Source: NYT (4-22-08)

According to the authors of “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics,” change is indeed on its way, and the magnitude of that change will be monumental — a tectonic realignment of the sort that occurs about every four decades, leading to a fundamental shift in policy priorities and voter coalitions.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais also write in this fascinating but not always persuasive volume that the party capturing the White House in 2008 has “a historic opportunity to become the majority party for at least four more decades,” and that the rising generation of Millennials (born between 1982 and 2003) will imprint the coming national discourse with its own temperament and predilections, washing away “the current politics of polarization and ideological deadlock” and putting in its place “a new landscape of collective purpose and national consensus that involves individuals and communities in solving the nation’s problems.”

Mr. Winograd, a former adviser to Al Gore and the co-author of an earlier book called “Taking Control: Politics in the Information Age” (which was reportedly widely read in the Clinton White House), and Mr. Hais, a communications researcher, have relied heavily in this volume on the work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, who in books like “Generations” (1991) and “Millennials Rising” (2000) have articulated a theory of generational change and who are acknowledged in these pages as key inspirations. Much of the methodology and terminology used here comes directly from the writings of Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, as do many of the qualities ascribed to specific generations like the Baby Boomers and the Millennials.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Boston Tea Party is protest template

Source: UPI (4-20-08)

The Boston Tea Party has become more than a moment in history, now representing a template for protests across the nation, a historian says.

Tea Party historical consultant George Quintal Jr. said the event nearly 235 years ago has been mimicked countless times since by protesters in Boston and across the nation, The Boston Globe reported Sunday.

"That's the American way of protest," Quintal said. "We started out protesting with the tea party."

Included among the tea party-inspired protests have been the dumping of federal tax forms by tax opponents or the mass dispersal of leis by angry Hawaiians.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 6:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Earliest Oil Paintings Discovered Behind Destroyed Bamiyan Statues

Source: LiveScience (4-22-08)

Oil paintings have been found in caves behind the two ancient colossal Buddha statues destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, suggesting that Asians — not Europeans — were the first to invent oil painting.

Many people worldwide were in shock when the Taliban destroyed the Buddha statues in the Afghan region of Bamiyan.

Behind those statues are caves decorated with paintings from the fifth to ninth centuries.

New experiments performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) show that the paintings were made of oil, hundreds of years before the technique emerged in Europe. The results are detailed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 5:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Dream Ticket Sounds Good to Many Democrats (Except the Candidates)

Source: NYT (4-22-08)

Imagine President Barack Obama is preparing his first State of the Union message. Would he want Vice President Hillary Rodham Clinton tut-tutting with edits or suggesting how she could write it better? Would he want to hear Second Spouse Bill Clinton wax on and on about favorite lines from his own speeches?

Alternatively, would the poll-obsessed Clintons want to wake up in the White House residence in 2009 and read about Vice President Obama’s sky-high popularity ratings, and how they make her look like his stern old lady?...

“There’s not a chance,” Jon Ausman, an uncommitted superdelegate from Florida, said of a get-together by the two campaigns. “This has turned into a battle of egos, and strong personal animosity has slipped into this. Not to mention, the veep is usually a half-step or step in stature below the presidential candidate, and in both cases neither of them falls into that mold.”

But history has shown that politicians are willing to put aside animosities for the sake of victory. In 1960, John F. Kennedy found his running mate in Lyndon B. Johnson, the sitting Senate majority leader and an unrivaled force in Democratic politics. The ticket seemed unlikely up until the 1960 convention: Johnson’s allies had been critical of Kennedy and his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, and the nominee’s brother Robert F. Kennedy loathed Johnson. But Kennedy decided at the 11th hour that Johnson could help him in the South and among the party’s senior statesmen.

More recently, Ronald Reagan picked George Bush in 1980 and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts chose former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina in 2004, even though the two sets of running mates were not great fits as ideological soul mates or personalities (and in Mr. Kerry’s case, associates say, he would probably have preferred former Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, or Senator John McCain of Arizona, now the presumptive Republican nominee). But Reagan and Mr. Kerry saw their choices as bringing balance and strengths to the ticket — and the first President Bush and Mr. Edwards did not fight their rivals to the convention.

“All of the arguments about how rivals don’t like each other would fall away if either thinks the other could help them win,” said Doris Kearns Goodwin, the biographer of Johnson and other presidents. “And Obama and Clinton do fit in a jigsaw-puzzle way. She brings women, older voters, blue-collar workers, Hispanics, and he brings elites, liberals, the young and the crucially necessary black vote.”

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 5:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Disapproval of Bush breaks record

Source: USA Today (4-21-08)

President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.

The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 4:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Peru: Yale Holding Even More Machu Picchu Artifacts

Source: AP (4-15-08)

Yale University is holding some 40,000 artifacts from the famed Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, a government official heading efforts to return the pieces told the state news agency Andina on Sunday.

Peru's government and Yale University reached an agreement last September to return 4,000 pieces — including mummies, ceramics and bones — that were taken a century ago from what has become one of the world's most famous archaeological sites.

The tally of 40,000 artifacts appeared in a report presented by archaeologists from the National Culture Institute to the Peruvian government earlier this month after taking an inventory at Yale, said Health Minister Hernan Garrido Lecca.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 2:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Polygamist clothing has roots in 19th century and 1950s

Source: AP (4-21-08)

For a society accustomed to the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, the images of the women from the polygamist compound in Texas are almost shocking in their understatement: Ankle-length dresses, makeup-less faces, hauntingly uniform hair.

And while no one would accuse the women of making a fashion statement, the pioneer-style outfits are a rare example of how in an age of overexposure, modesty, too, can give pause.

The puff-sleeved, pastel dresses worn by the women in the sect are a combination of original 19th-century wear and 1950s clothing that was adopted when the church took a conservative turn, according to Janet Bennion, an anthropologist who studies polygamist women.

The dresses are meant to show modesty and conformity: They go down to the ankles and wrists, and are often worn over garments or pants, making sure every possibly provocative inch of skin is covered.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 2:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In Syrian villages, the language of Jesus lives, but fewer and fewer speak it

Source: International Herald Tribune (4-22-08)

Elias Khoury can still remember the days when old people in this cliffside village spoke only Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Back then the village, linked to the capital, Damascus, only by a long and bumpy bus ride over the mountains, was almost entirely Christian, a vestige of an older and more diverse Middle East that existed before the arrival of Islam.

Now Khoury, 65, gray-haired and bedridden, admits ruefully that he has largely forgotten the language he spoke with his own mother.

"It's disappearing," he said in Arabic, sitting with his wife on a bed in the mud-and-straw house where he grew up. "A lot of the Aramaic vocabulary I don't use any more, and I've lost it."

Malula, along with two smaller neighboring villages where Aramaic is also spoken, is still celebrated in Syria as a unique linguistic island. In the Convent of St. Sergius and Bacchus, on a hill above town, young girls recite the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic to tourists, and booklets about the language are on sale at a gift shop in the town center.

But the island has grown smaller over the years, and some local people say they fear it will not last. Once a large population stretching across Syria, Turkey and Iraq, Aramaic-speaking Christians have slowly melted away, some fleeing westward, some converting to Islam.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 2:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

French fury at Nazi pictures of Paris under occupation

Source: Scotsman (4-22-08)

AN EXHIBITION featuring photographs of Paris taken during the Nazi occupation has provoked so much public indignation that the Paris city council has ordered posters advertising the show to be taken down and has even called for the exhibition to be closed altogether.

Entitled Paris Sous l'Occupation (Paris Under the Occupation), the exhibition at the Paris History Library shows 270 colour photographs – part of the only collection of colour images of their kind – taken between 1941 and 1944 by a collaborator, André Zucca, who worked for the Nazi propaganda magazine Signal.

Young women sporting sunglasses smile coquettishly for the camera in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Parisians chat on crowded café terraces and stroll nonchalantly through the streets of the capital as they enjoy the sunshine, while children watch puppet shows and lovers embrace by the Seine.

Critics of the exhibition protest that it portrays a totally unrealistic portrait of Paris under the Nazis, ignoring the reality in which thousands of Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps, many ordinary people went hungry, forced to queue for hours to obtain what little food was available, and Resistance members risked their lives and those of their families to sabotage the Nazi occupiers.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 2:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Philadelphia's old-style political machine

Source: Tom Ferrick in the NYT (4-22-08)

WHEN Philadelphia ward leaders realized the contest for the Democratic nomination for president would extend through the Pennsylvania primary, it set their salivary glands running. It meant they would have an opportunity to extract street money from the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And street money is the manna of Philadelphia ward politics.

Street money is the name for cash given to party committeemen and women who hand out literature and drum up the vote on primary and election days. It comes from the candidates and is dispensed to the party’s 69 ward leaders who, in turn, dole it out to the city’s more than 3,000 committeemen. In Philadelphia, it is a mandatory fee for most Democratic candidates.

Though legal, it has also become a subject for mandatory derision — at least for the Democratic campaigns and those out-of-state political commentators who have been camped out here for the last month. For them, handing out street money, an old political practice that is rarely used elsewhere, is archaic, unsavory or worse....

Philadelphia is a living museum of American history, where the political machine, though it wheezes and gasps, still functions much as it did 100 years ago. Then, a political campaign was a labor-intensive activity. It took legions to spread the good word about candidates, round up voters to go to the polls and assist in their deliberations by handing out sample ballots containing the names of candidates blessed by the party.

Now that patronage is all but gone, how does a party keep those legions on the job 12 to 14 hours come voting day? The answer, according to ward leaders, is street money.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nixon's daughter gives to Obama

Source: AP (4-22-08)

One of President Nixon's daughters, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, apparently supports a Democrat in this year's presidential contest _ Barack Obama.

Eisenhower has contributed the maximum amount allowed during the primary season to Obama's campaign: $2,300. Federal Election Commission records show she gave Obama's campaign $1,000 on Feb. 4, another $1,000 on Feb. 18 and $300 on March 5.

Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 11:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 21, 2008

Obama and the former radicals

Source: LAT (4-18-08)

Evidence linking him to the ex-leaders of the Weather Underground is thin. But a YouTube video is making noise.

Democrats have tried to heal their party's angry passions ever since violent protesters disrupted the Democratic National Convention here in 1968, a shock to America's collective psyche that helped Republican Richard Nixon capture the White House.

But some of the old fault lines were visible again Thursday as Sen. Barack Obama's suddenly defensive presidential campaign sought to distance him from Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, aging academics who planted bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon and other buildings to protest U.S. government policy. They are now widely respected community figures here.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 9:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Clinton Ad Invokes Harry Truman and Osama Bin Laden

Source: WaPo's The Fix (blog) (4-21-08)

Hours after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) began airing an ad in Pennsylvania that subtly questions Sen. Barack Obama's readiness to handle a pending crisis, the Illinois Senator's campaign unveiled an ad of its own that starkly rebuts that charge.

Clinton's ad declares that the presidency is "the toughest job in the world" and asks "Who do you think has what it takes?" It is similar in message to the "3 a.m. telephone call" ad that Clinton's campaign used to great effect shortly before the Texas and Ohio primaries last month.

Obama, as he has done time and again in this campaign when pressed on whether he is ready to lead, falls back on his judgment to oppose the war in Iraq from the start.

"Who made the right judgment about opposing the war and had the courage and character to speak honestly about it?" the narrator of the Obama ad asks.

Then, in a clear shot at Clinton, the narrator adds: "Who in times of challenge will unite us, not use fear and calculation to divide us?"

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 9:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Anzac treasure found in Bendigo

Source: http://www.news.com.au (4-16-08)

A GOLDMINE of Australian military history has been uncovered in Bendigo. The unique material includes hundreds of film negatives more than 90 years old that had been stored in an old biscuit tin in a garage since the end of World War I.

The photos were taken by twice-wounded Jack Grinton, of Bendigo, and include shots from the Somme and Villers-Bretonneux in France, where some of the deadliest fighting took place.

The collection includes the camera used by Sgt Grinton -- against all regulations -- to record his war.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

More Than 9 Million NARA World War II Army Enlistment Records Online

Source: http://www.pr.com (4-4-08)

More than 9 million World War II army enlistment records are now searchable online at WorldVitalRecords.com through a shipment provided by National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), one of the largest archives in the US.

“The National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC, preserves and provides access to billions of genealogical and historical records, photographs, and computerized resources. I am pleased that WorldVitalRecords.com is including these NARA records on its site,” said Kip Sperry, Professor of Family History, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

NARA created the database in 2002 in conjunction with the Bureau of the Census. The World War II Army Enlistment database contains the majority of the Army enlistments during World War II from 1938-1946. "I am very grateful that the government went to such great lengths to track all of the valuable details of each individual's life over time. I am very excited to include that depth of detail for our members at WorldVitalRecords.com," said David Lifferth, President, WorldVitalRecords.com.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

What's happened to the Museum of the Confederacy?

Source: http://www.newsadvance.com (4-20-08)

For more than a century, The Museum of the Confederacy’s home was in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Housed downtown in the White House of the Confederacy, President Jefferson Davis’ home during the war, the museum, the institution has become the repository of all things relating to the Civil War. But its location in Richmond was also a problem, too: the nearby Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center kept growing and growing, literally engulfing the museum’s home.

And as time went on, fewer and fewer visitors made the trek to downtown Richmond to view the world’s premier collection of Civil War memorabilia. Last year, the museum’s board of directors approved a unique plan to take the institution into the 21st century: split up the collection over four sites in the state and create a “distributed museum,” in the jargon of the museum industry.

That was good news for Appomattox, the home of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park where Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Gen. U.S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac in April 1865. Officials soon announced that Appomattox would be the site of one of the four museum, along with Fort Monroe in Tidewater, the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond and the Fredericksburg area.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US honors those who fought in Spanish Civil War

Source: Mercury News (4-20-08)

SAN FRANCISCO—As Spain shrugs off the last cobwebs of Gen. Francisco Franco's fascist regime 70 years after it hatched amid civil war, Americans are also looking back, honoring their own who fought there and the ideals for which they stood.

The faces of some of the approximately 3,000 men and women who broke American isolationism to volunteer in the 1936-1939 Spanish war look out from the translucent onyx squares of a monument recently inaugurated on this city's touristed Embarcadero.

"I wasn't about to watch another country go to hell," said veteran David Smith, 92, recalling that Italy and Germany were already controlled by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler when he left the U.S. to join the Jarama front in 1937.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

25th Anniversary: Victims of 1983 bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut remembered

Source: LAT (4-19-08)

Survivors, relatives and officials gather in Lebanon to honor the 63 killed in the suicide bombing, which ushered in an era of similar attacks.

***

The explosion shook the earth. And it wouldn't be the last one.

Twenty-five years ago Friday, a suicide bomber drove a pickup truck full of explosives into the U.S. Embassy in downtown Beirut, killing 63 people. It heralded the rise in the Middle East of a soon-to-be common tool in the arsenal of radicals: the suicide bomb.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Concentration Camp Hit by Scrap Metal Thieves

Source: Spiegel Online (4-18-08)

Scrap metal thieves are becoming increasingly audacious, with some even stealing from cemeteries and memorials. Now some 1,000 bronze plaques have gone missing from the former concentration camp at Theresienstadt [in the Czech Republic].

Semi-precious metal, as it happens, is everywhere. It can be found on church roofs; copper pipes run through many a house wall; and wiring is almost ubiquitous. Scrap metal thieves, though, have recently discovered a valuable new source of copper: Cemeteries and memorials.

This week, a particularly audacious bandit apparently made off with over 1,000 bronze plaques from the Holocaust memorial Theresienstadt just outside of Prague. The plaques were emblazoned with the names of prisoners who died at the Nazi concentration camp there -- and Czech police said this week that many of them had been discovered at a scrap yard in northern Czech Republic.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Is Stonehenge Roman?

Source: http://www.archaeology.co.uk (date unknown) (4-21-08)

After a gap of some forty four years, Stonehenge is once again being excavated. Admittedly, this time it is only a very small hole, and is only being dug for a fortnight, but it is a very important hole, and on April the 9th, we were invited down to Stonehenge to inspect it. It was a wonderful trip, not least because the weather was perfect. After the heavy snow fall at the weekend the sun decided to shine and since we were allowed inside the circle, I took the opportunity to take hundreds of photographs.

The excavations are being conducted by Geoffrey Wainwright (ex-English Heritage) and Tim Darvill (Bournemouth University), following up their research into the sources of the blue stones in the Prescelly Mountains in Pembrokeshire: but as they are being funded by the BBC TimeWatch programme, they are being carried out with the maximum publicity.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic Philadelphia prison works to restore synagogue

Source: AP (4-17-08)

In the eyes of the law, the worshippers were criminals. But to the rabbi who served them, they were simply Jewish men in search of faith and spiritual guidance.
The synagogue behind the walls of Eastern State Penitentiary was a place for inmates to reflect and, perhaps, seek forgiveness. But after the prison closed in 1971, the room remained forgotten even as work began to preserve other parts of the decaying historical site.

Now, officials at the 179-year-old landmark prison and popular tourist attraction are restoring the synagogue's spare but dignified environs. Decades of neglect had left the consecrated space almost inaccessible due to collapsed stone walls outside; inside, rotted wood benches sat amid several inches of debris from a fallen ceiling.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scavengers looting artifacts in the Alps as snow retreats

Source: Times (UK) (4-17-08)

Prehistoric treasures unearthed in the Alps as melting glaciers recede are under threat from looters who are removing many of them.

Such is the concern for the newly revealed objects - which include weapons, clothing and tools - that a task force of archaeologists, anthropologists, mountain climbers and Alpine rescue teams has been formed in an attempt to salvage them.

Franco Nicolis, an archaeologist from Trento, said: “We must be ready to intervene as if we were dealing with a public calamity.”

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Nile revealing its secrets

Source: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg (4-17-08)

Artefacts immersed in the Nile at Aswan and a 19th-Dynasty funerary collection in Luxor are the most recent discoveries in Egypt, as Nevine El-Aref reports.

***

It is surely in the quiet and relaxing city of Aswan that the Nile is at its most beautiful. The river flows through an amber desert, past granite rocks and round emerald islands smothered in palm groves and tropical plants. This peaceful scene, however, was disturbed last week by archaeologists shouting and yelling at one another from their moored yacht while they carried out the delicate task of hoisting a decorative object from the bed of the river where it had lain for more than 2,500 years.

It was one of several newly-found artefacts that sank beneath the ripples of the shifting Nile off the shore beside the Old Cataract Hotel, across the river from the legendary Elephantine Island where relics remain of stone temples dating from various eras in the history of ancient Egypt, along with the Roman Nilometre.

"Look what our young Egyptian archaeologist- divers have found on the Nile bed," Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly. "The Nile is revealing its secrets. The four-month-long underwater survey is finally yielding its fruits."

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A teardrop-shaped island in NY Harbor due for a makeover

Source: AP (4-20-08)

It's a priceless piece of real estate largely unknown to New York's 8 million inhabitants. From its shore, visitors can see the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Situated in the middle of New York Harbor, just a half mile from lower Manhattan, Governors Island is about to undergo an extensive makeover that would turn much of it into lush parkland.

A consortium of five design companies was chosen in December to transform the teardrop-shaped island, turning the flat southern end into a park with manmade hills and a shoreline promenade.

Improvements also are in store for the northern half, a historic district with graceful 18th and 19th century houses, a defunct 9-hole golf course and a former Army parade ground.

Sold by its original Dutch settlers to the British in 1708, the 172-acre island later became an American military base for 202 years — home to soldiers, Confederate prisoners of war and the Coast Guard, yet off limits to civilians.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Turkish site a Neolithic 'supernova'

Source: Washington Times (4-21-08)

As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, as a member of the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important: a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable.

"This place is a supernova," said Mr. Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of the Syrian border.

"Within a minute of first seeing it, I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."

Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian Plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe, his workplace since 1994, are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New law could allow heiress to the throne (UK)

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-21-08)

The law that forces the daughter of a monarch to make way for her younger brother in the succession could be abolished under new equality legislation.

Ministers want to give women equal rights to succeed the throne, ending the rule of primogeniture set down under the provisions of the 1701 Act of Settlement.

The change would not affect the current line of succession, but would mean that if Prince William had a daughter and then a son, his daughter would become Queen.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Feds invest in Salem history

Source: Statesman Journal (4-8-08)

Downtown Salem's history will come alive for residents and visitors under a new program featuring a series of historical markers and a revamped walking tour, city officials said.

A $70,000 federal parks grant announced Monday will help fund the program, for which the city will install as many as 50 markers on downtown buildings and sites detailing their historical significance for passers-by.

"I believe that folks think, 'Oh, these are beautiful old buildings, how nice they're still around,' but they don't realize Salem grew from its downtown and a lot of the city's roots are there," said Salem resident Hazel Patton, who helped put together the successful grant application.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 6:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Scientists discover drops of truth in medieval belief in urine

Source: Times (UK) (4-21-08)

Medieval physicians believed that they could diagnose disease by holding up a flask of the patient’s urine to the light and squinting at it. According to scientists at Imperial College London, they could have been on to something.

A team there has completed the first worldwide study of the metabolites (breakdown products) that are found in urine, reflecting the diet, inheritance and the lifestyle of the people from whom it came. They call such studies “metabolomics” by analogy with genomics, which looks at all the genes that make up the human species, and proteomics, which does the same for proteins.

The study used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to compare racial and national groups by the composition of their urine. From Japan, Beijing, Corpus Christi, Belfast and West Bromwich, urine differs in subtle ways that could provide a powerful new way of linking diet and health.The metabolites they found come from microbes in the gut, from diet and from the metabolism of the host.

Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 2:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, April 20, 2008

In pictures: Rome marks 'anniversary'

Source: BBC (4-20-08)

Rome took a step back in time on Sunday as the city marked the anniversary of its legendary foundation.

[Click on the SOURCE link to view pics.]

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 9:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Vast right-wing conspiracy' leader's paper backs Clinton

Source: AP (4-20-08)

Could it be the "vast right wing conspiracy" is having second thoughts? Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Sunday by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose owner and publisher, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, personally funded many of the investigations that led to President Clinton's impeachment in 1998.

It was one of a handful of endorsements the New York senator has received from Pennsylvania newspapers before the state's primary Tuesday. Most of the state's major papers have endorsed Barack Obama.

In its endorsement, Tribune-Review editors said Obama is too inexperienced to be president and that his recent comments about bitter voters living in small towns showed a lack of respect for middle-class values.

"In sharp contrast, Clinton is far more experienced in government — as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right," the paper said. "She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder."

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 5:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The agency that invented the Internet turns 50

Source: Time (4-19-08)

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, that secretive band of Pentagon geeks that searches obsessively for the next big thing in the technology of warfare, is 50 years old. To celebrate, DARPA invited Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Defense Secretary well aware of the Agency's capabilities, to help blow out the candles. "This agency brought forth the Saturn 5 rocket, surveillance satellites, the Internet, stealth technology, guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles, night vision and the body armor that's in use today," Cheney told 1,700 DARPA workers and friends who gathered at a Washington hotel to mark the occasion. "Thank heaven for DARPA."

Created in the panicky wake of the Soviets' launching of Sputnik, the world's first satellite, DARPA's mission, Cheney said, is "to make sure that America is never again caught off guard." So, the Agency does the basic research that may be decades away from battlefield applications. It doesn't develop new weapons, as much as it pioneers the technologies that will make tomorrow's weapons better.

So what's hot at DARPA right now? Bugs. The creepy, crawly flying kind. The Agency's Microsystems Technology Office is hard at work on HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), raising real insects filled with electronic circuitry, which could be guided using GPS technology to specific targets via electrical impulses sent to their muscles. These half-bug, half-chip creations - DARPA calls them "insect cyborgs" - would be ideal for surveillance missions, the agency says in a brief description on its website.

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 5:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Titanic ticket belonging to last US survivor auctioned

Source: AP (4-19-08)

A ticket for the Titanic's ill-fated voyage that belonged to the last survivor with memories of the disaster sold to a collector from the United States at a British auction Saturday.

Lillian Asplund, who died in 2006 at the age of 99, was 5 years old when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank during its maiden voyage from England to New York. Her father and three siblings were among the 1,500 people who died.

She was the last American survivor of the disaster and the last with memories of it. Others had been too young at the time of the sinking to recall their experience.

Asplund's ticket sold for $65,772 auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said.

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 5:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A Spy's Motivation: For Love of Another Country

Source: NYT (4-20-08)

A new study by a Defense Department contractor shows that divided loyalty, usually on the part of naturalized Americans with roots in a foreign land, has become the dominant motive [for spying against the US, a historic shift].

From 1947 to 1990, the study found, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans charged with spying were acting solely or primarily out of patriotic, as opposed to ideological, loyalty to a foreign country. Since 1990, according to the study’s author, Katherine L. Herbig, divided loyalty has been the sole or primary motive in about half of all cases.

“Dual loyalty is a problem we haven’t seen on such a scale since the Revolution,” when many colonists swore allegiance to the British king, said Joel F. Brenner, the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence.

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 4:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jenna Bush Is Getting Married, Not in the White House

Source: NYT (4-20-08)

THE bluebonnets are beginning to bloom here on the central Texas prairie, just in time for Jenna Bush’s wedding on May 10 at her parents’ 1,600-acre ranch. The kitschy tourist shops on Main Street, hoping for an influx of visitors, have ordered commemorative coffee mugs featuring Ms. Bush and her fiancé, Henry Hager — a fresh addition to the Luvya Dubya bumper stickers, Western White House coasters and President Bush bobble-head dolls....

The May issue of Vogue, on the stands last Wednesday, features a splashy interview with Ms. Bush. It discloses that the outdoor wedding is called for 7:30 p.m., so that the bride, in a “very structured” organza Oscar de la Renta gown, and her 14 attendants (not bridesmaids) in pastel chiffon Lela Rose dresses, won’t wilt in the Texas heat. Ms. Bush’s twin sister, Barbara, will be the lone bridesmaid. Of the 200 guests, more than half are family.

Tuesday morning, “Today” show viewers will get a prewedding tour of the ranch by Laura Bush, who will also guest-host the show from its New York studio. Jenna Bush will drop in for — you guessed it — a book discussion, with no doubt a little wedding chatter thrown in.

But press coverage of the Big Day? Forget it. The White House says it will release a photograph. Sally McDonough, Laura Bush’s press secretary, calls the ceremony a “private family event.”

Privacy, though, is not what official Washington — or many in unofficial America — yearns for in the wedding of a presidential daughter, even the daughter of a president as unpopular as George W. Bush. By decamping to sleepy Crawford, population 705, the Bushes are foregoing a grand American tradition — the White House wedding — and with it, political benefit and risk.

Nine children of American presidents have married in the White House; the only president to wed there was Grover Cleveland in 1886. Historically, such affairs have been feel-good occasions for the country and the commander in chief, casting presidents in the sympathetic role of father. But with Americans losing their homes to foreclosure and soldiers dying in Iraq, some wonder if a lavish White House wedding might not have played well.

Posted on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Senate Historian: Coconut Road Amendment Unprecedented

Source: TPM Cafe (4-17-08)

So the Senate has voted to require the Justice Department to investigate how Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) earmark came to be changed after the bill passed both houses of Congress. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who was pushing a competing solution (an eight-member bicameral committee), says that sets "the troubling and bizarre precedent of turning the Attorney General into the de facto Senate and House Parliamentarian."

And indeed, it does seem to be a first. Associate Senate Historian Donald A. Ritchie said that he couldn't think of a prior occasion when the Senate had asked the Department to investigate a member of the House.

And Coburn's solution didn't have a clear precedent either, he said: while the Senate and the House have formed bicameral committees numerous times in the past to investigate scandals involving lawmakers from both houses, he couldn't think of an instance where one house formed a committee to investigate a member solely of another house. "For the most part, most of the time, each house takes care of its own."

Posted on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 2:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

When bananas ruled the world

Source: Salon (4-19-08)

Intrigue. Power. Corruption. Death. Sex. The history of oil has nothing on that of the yellow fruit.

***

On a trip to Honduras, journalist Dan Koeppel caught the banana bug. Researching an article for Popular Science about attempts to breed a disease-resistant banana, the American journalist wandered the grounds of the old Chiquita compound, amid the fading colonial mansions and golf course, where he stumbled upon the cheery yellow fruit's unsavory past.

"I went out for drinks at the old country club, and this old-timer turns to me and goes, 'In this room, governments were overthrown.' It was like something out of a movie," Koeppel says.

Flipping through an old Chiquita guest book, Koeppel saw the scrawled names of United States senators, scientists, CIA agents and Honduran presidents. "Everybody was in there," he says. Browsing through the research facility's library, the journalist paged through a chipper recipe book featuring the Chiquita banana girl, who was shown topless, as she always was, giving instructions on how to prepare such delicacies as "banana coconut rolls." "I found these strange Chiquita cookbooks a hundred yards away from where massacres were planned," he says.

For generations, the banana has been embraced and celebrated in pop culture: "Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today!" But it took muscle and outright carnage to turn this fragile tropical treat into the most popular fruit in the United States. The banana is "the yin and yang of American culture and blood," Koeppel says. The fruit became his obsession and the subject of his book, "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World."

Posted on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 2:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israel at 60: A vibrant nation still in search of itself

Source: AP (4-19-08)

The story of Israel at 60 is the tale of a little town named Sderot whose children play indoors because of Palestinian rockets, of a world-class tech industry that pioneered Wi-Fi and instant messaging, of a nation filled with pride and fierce patriotism, yet living in fear of annihilation from abroad and of a demographic time bomb at home.

Six decades after fighting six Arab armies to realize the ancient dream of a Jewish return to Zion, Israel is still searching for its identity and place in the world, lacking recognized borders and a way of sharing the land with its Arab inhabitants, the Palestinians.

This existential struggle plays itself out every day in the Holy Land, whether in the furious construction of Israeli homes on disputed territory, or the touch-and-go attempts to make peace with moderate Palestinians while clashing daily with the militants in the Gaza Strip.

Posted on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 1:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Judge orders US deep-sea firm to reveal shipwreck info in fight with Spain over $500M booty

Source: AP (4-18-08)

A federal judge has denied a bid by Florida deep-sea explorers to keep secret the details of a 19th-century shipwreck that has yielded $500 million in treasure, a ruling the Spanish government applauded Friday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo threw out Odyssey Marine Exploration's request Thursday to keep information including the identity of the ship sealed as the company argues with Spain over ownership of the 17 tons of silver coins and other artifacts retrieved last year.
The company followed with a news release announcing that the shipwreck was likely the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes y las Animas, a Spanish galleon that sank in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Portugal in 1804. The announcement confirmed what was already widely believed in Spain and elsewhere.

Posted on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 1:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 18, 2008

NY tower plans found in rubbish

Source: BBC (4-18-08)

A homeless man has found confidential blueprints for New York's new Freedom Tower dumped in a city rubbish bin.

Mike Fleming handed the documents - marked "Secure Document - Confidential" in to the New York Post newspaper.

The Freedom Tower is being built at Ground Zero, to replace the World Trade Centre towers destroyed on 9/11.

A spokeswoman apologised for the security breach and said that anyone found responsible would be liable for "serious disciplinary action".

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 11:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Proximity to New Madrid fault means Louisville homes, businesses should be insured for earthquakes

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/ (4-18-08)

Though Louisville has never been the epicenter of an earthquake, that doesn't mean those living in the area should ignore the possibility of a big one coming and causing major damage to homes and businesses.

That's the message delivered by emergency-planning professionals and those selling insurance in the state.

Instead, they say, buying earthquake coverage should be something that is considered when purchasing property insurance because Louisville is situated near the New Madrid fault, which roughly follows the Mississippi River and borders Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Three powerful earthquakes shook the region near New Madrid, Mo., in the winter of 1811-12, causing landslides and disrupting river commerce but no major quakes have been felt since.

Related Links

New Theory Helps Explain 19th Century's Puzzling Earthquakes in Central U.S.

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 10:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How Much Do You Know About The History Of The U.S. Tax System?

Source: Fox News (4-17-08)

This week, the television show "Jeopardy!" featured a category titled "April 15th," filled with fun facts about the dire day. Let's see how much you know about U.S. tax history.

What was the first tax imposed upon the American Colonies? How did the U.S. pay the debts generated by the American Revolution? a) Property taxes, based on acreage and improvements; b) excise taxes on liquor, tobacco, sugar, auctions; c) head taxes, levied on each person in household and servants and slaves; d) travel taxes, fees to enter and exit the country; e) All of the above. Why was the first personal income tax assessed in the U.S.? Which amendment to the Constitution made income taxes permanent? What was the range of the first tax rates or brackets? When was a Social Security tax first imposed? What problem was it intended to solve? When did income tax withholding become a permanent part of our lives? Why is illegal income taxed, right along with legal income? When was the Internal Revenue Service formed? What is the Internal Revenue Service's mission statement?

The answers

1. What was the first tax imposed upon the American Colonies? Answer, according to the Treasury Department: "The Stamp Act in 1765. England's need for revenues to pay for its wars against France led it to impose a series of taxes on the American colonies. In 1765, the English Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which was the first tax imposed directly on the American colonies, and then Parliament imposed a tax on tea."...

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 6:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hillary Clinton On Southern Working Class Whites In 1995: "Screw 'Em"

Source: Huffington Post News Story (4-16-08)

During the past week, Sen. Hillary Clinton has presented herself as a working class populist, the politician in touch with small town sentiments, compared to the elitism of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

But a telling anecdote from her husband's administration shows Hillary Clinton's attitudes about the "lunch-bucket Democrats" are not exactly pristine.

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

The statement -- which author Benjamin Barber witnessed and wrote about in his book, "The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House" -- was prompted by another speaker raising the difficulties of reaching "Reagan Democrats." It stands in stark contrast to the attitude the New York Democrat has recently taken on the campaign trail, in which she has presented herself as the one candidate who understands the working-class needs.

"I don't think [Obama] really gets it that people are looking for a president who stands up for you and not looks down on you," she said this week.

But those who were at the event say the 1995 episode fits into her larger viewpoint. As Harry Boyte, the director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Democracy and Citizenship who was at the retreat, told The Huffington Post: "[Hillary Clinton] sees herself as the champion of the oppressed, but there is always a kind of good guy versus bad guy mentality. The comment before that was that 'the Reagan Democrats are our enemies and they weren't on our side,' and she was agreeing with that comment. She said we should write them off: screw them."

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Arizona: Plan targets anti-Western lessons

Source: Arizona Republic (4-17-08)

Arizona public schools would be barred from any teachings considered counter to democracy or Western civilization under a proposal endorsed Wednesday by a legislative panel.

Additionally, the measure would prohibit students of the state's universities and community colleges from forming groups based in whole or part on the race of their members, such as the Black Business Students Association at Arizona State University or Native Americans United at Northern Arizona University. Those groups would be forbidden from operating on campus.

The brainchild of Rep. Russell Pearce, the measure appeared as an amendment to Senate Bill 1108, which originally would have made minor changes to the state's Homeland Security advisory councils. The House Appropriations Committee approved the new proposal on a 9-6 vote.

Pearce, a Mesa Republican, said his target isn't diversity instruction, but schools that use taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate students in what he characterized as anti-American or seditious thinking. The measure is at least partially a response to a controversy surrounding an ethnic-studies program in the Tucson Unified School District, which critics have said is unpatriotic and teaches revolution.

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:15 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Curators of Bush Library at SMU can learn from history of LBJ museum

Source: Dallas Morning News (4-16-08)

Looking back almost 40 years, the director of Texas' first presidential library says he should have been tougher on Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Harry Middleton, 86, said he and fellow staffers in the 1971 opening of the LBJ museum at the University of Texas at Austin were too close to the former president to give a highly critical account of the controversies that defined his tenure – especially the Vietnam War.

It wasn't until 1982, when historians and other outside experts helped redesign the museum, that it fully explored how the war split the country.

"We really wanted to do a good job, but we also surely wanted to make sure it was OK with him," he said.

The second effort, made after LBJ died, was more objective than the first, Mr. Middleton said, convincing him that an advisory panel should have been used at the start.

The evolution of the LBJ library frames the task ahead for curators of the President Bush library at SMU in Dallas as they shape the legacy of another wartime president about to leave office with low approval ratings.

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 3:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Egypt's Colossi of Memnon to be reunited with their twins

Source: AFP (4-17-08)

Towering like sentries above the necropolis of Ancient Thebes in southern Egypt, the world-famous Colossi of Memnon will see their number double from two to four from next year.

The painstaking work of 12 archaeologists and hundreds of workers is about to redefine the way visitors see and understand this mysterious site that has cast its spell over travellers for more than 2,000 years.

"It will be sensational, that's for sure!" Hourig Sourouzian, the project's enthusiastic director, enthused to AFP.

Next year two giant statues of the pharaoh Amenhotep III will begin to rise again, just a hundred metres (328 feet) behind his two existing colossi that mark the entrance to the temple.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 8:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution drafts go online

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-17-08)

The first drafts of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which have never before been seen in public, are being published online for the first time today.

For decades one of the most important collections of primary materials in the history of science was available only to scholars at Cambridge University Library, which had been given the 90,000 papers and images by the Darwin family in 1942.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pitt's niece claimed to have 'found a cure for the plague'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-17-08)

An eccentric aristocrat who deserted English society to travel the world believed she had found a cure for the plague, letters show.

Lady Hester Stanhope, the niece of the Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, claimed to have cured a 12-year-old boy with a mysterious remedy called "serpent stone".

The ingredients are not described, but it is thought to have been a homemade concoction.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Obama: A Man at Home in the World

Source: Newsweek (4-21-08)

He was just a college kid, vagabonding around the world. But Barack Obama says the weeks he spent traveling through Pakistan in 1981 shaped the views that he still holds today—and that he would bring into the White House. Obama remembers most vividly the desperation and hopelessness—"essentially a feudal life"—he witnessed in the countryside surrounding Karachi, a city that is today a hotbed of jihadist activity. At the tender age of 20, Obama suggested, he was already beginning to understand more about what ailed Muslim societies—what generated terrorism and fratricidal conflicts—than George W. Bush or John McCain do today. "Both as a consequence of living in Indonesia and traveling in Pakistan, having friends in college who were Muslim, I was very clear about the history of Shia-Sunni antagonism"—which is one reason why, as an Illinois state senator 21 years later, he opposed the war in Iraq, Obama told NEWSWEEK last week. "This notion that somehow we were going to be able to create a functioning democracy and reconcile century-old conflicts, I always thought was a bunch of happy talk from this administration."

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Popes didn't always have a personal following

Source: George Weigel in Newsweek (4-21-08)

The influence and magnetism of the modern papacy are, in fact, surprises. When Leo XIII was elected in 1878—the first pope in 1,100 years not to control substantial territory as an internationally recognized sovereign—many thought the papacy an impotent anachronism. Leo, however, created the modern papacy as an office of moral persuasion. John Paul II, elected precisely 100 years after Leo, turned the papal bully pulpit into something to be reckoned with in the world. John Paul was one of the key figures in the collapse of European communism; he also played a significant role in democratic transitions in Latin America and East Asia, while defending the universality of human rights and challenging the intolerant secularism of European high culture.

That many Catholics feel a deep personal connection to the pope is another relatively new, and in some respects surprising, phenomenon.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historian questions claims that knife belonged to Crazy Horse

Source: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com (4-17-08)

A Native American historian and descendant of the Crazy Horse family, says he questions the authenticity of a knife and beaded sheath said to have been carried by Crazy Horse that will be on the auction block Saturday at a gallery in New Braunfels, Texas.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Did Thomas Aquinas actually wonder how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Nope.

Source: Brandon Watson at the blog Siris, quoting from an article by Lawrence Kraus. (4-16-08)

"THOMAS AQUINAS may never have actually wondered how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but his tortured musings about metaphysical issues associated with the non-corporeality of angels (and the related issue of whether there is excrement in heaven) stretched the limits of reasonable rational inquiry so far that later scholars invented the phrase to mock him."

The angels-on-pins parody is due in great measure to Isaac D'Israeli...

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The April 16 Archive: Remembering the Virginia Tech Tragedy

Source: http://www.april16archive.org/ (4-16-08)

The April 16 Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of the Virginia Tech tragedy of April 16, 2007. The archive is hosted on the Virginia Tech campus, and is curated by students, faculty, and staff. We welcome contributions from the greater Virginia Tech community and anyone who wants to share and reflect on these events. We are all Virginia Tech.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 7:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The pope has offended some followers of other faiths but may be mending fences

Source: Justin Ewers in US News & World Report (4-17-08)

[Pope] Benedict is the head of a church that has been grappling for decades with how it should treat other religions. After the reforms of the 1960s, the Vatican moved, at least rhetorically, into a much more liberal era, recognizing publicly that all religions represented some form of fundamental truth, seeming to leave some of its more conservative theology behind. John Paul II, for one, carried this rhetoric into his papacy, meeting not just with Jewish and Muslim leaders but with members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well, while writing and speaking about the activity of the "spirit" beyond the confines of the church itself and implying that other religions, too, might offer a path to some form of salvation.

Benedict seems to want to clarify this position, experts say, and to re-emphasize the primacy of the Catholic Church, and Jesus Christ, among faiths. He took his most visible step in this direction in 2000 when, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican organization tasked with safeguarding church doctrine, he oversaw the release of a church document, Dominus Iesus, that sought to restate the church's theological position. The document acknowledged that the "Church of Christ" was present in other Christian churches but insisted, in spite of John Paul's friendly words, that the Catholic Church was the only one where it existed in its fullest form. A theological line was drawn in the sand: "If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace," the document said, "it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation."

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 6:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Benedict XVI's clothing may show more than his fashion sense

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (4-16-08)

[A]s important as Benedict's words will be in introducing the pope to an American audience that knows little about him, it may be just as important to check out what he's wearing. The pope's choice of liturgical vestments and other papal accouterments speak volumes not only about his personal tastes but also about his vision of the church's future, and its past.

With increasing regularity, Benedict has been reintroducing elaborate lace garments and monarchical regalia that have not been seen around Rome in decades, even centuries. He has celebrated Mass using the wide cope (a cape so ample it is held up by two attendants) and high miter of Pius IX, a 19th-century pope known for his dim views of the modern world, and on Ash Wednesday he wore a chasuble modeled on one worn by Paul V, a Borghese pope of the 17th century remembered for censuring Galileo.

On Good Friday he donned a "fiddleback" vestment dating to the Counter-Reformation era of the 16th century, and he has used a tall gilded papal throne not seen in years. And that's not to mention the ermine-trimmed red velvet mozzetta, a shoulder cape, or the matching camauro, a Santa Claus-like cap that art students will recognize from Renaissance portraiture.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 5:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Effort to Rework Arizona's 9/11 Memorial Fails

Source: NYT (4-17-08)

An effort to substantially alter Arizona’s official Sept. 11 memorial has failed, ending months of rancorous debate over statements on it that some deemed unpatriotic or irrelevant to the attacks seven years ago.

The memorial, “Moving Memories,” is a large open-air concrete disc topped by an elevated ring of stainless steel with 54 phrases laser cut into it. Like other monuments to Sept. 11, it provoked arguments over the meaning of the attacks and how to commemorate them, something the artists who designed it said was the point.

The memorial, they said, is meant to evoke the varied, shifting and sometimes conflicting emotions engendered by the Sept. 11 attacks. As the sun moves overhead, light pours through the etchings and projects the phrases on the ground, fuzzy at first, then clear, then gone again.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 5:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

60s Radicals Become Issue in Campaign of 2008

Source: NYT (4-17-08)

On March 6, 1970, a bomb explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village town house, killing three members of the radical Weather Underground and driving other members of the group even deeper into hiding. On Wednesday night, those events emerged as the focus of a sharp exchange between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama at their debate in Philadelphia.

Mr. Obama was asked by a moderator, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, about his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former Weather Underground leader who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the early 1970s, the Weathermen, who took their name from a line in a Bob Dylan song, claimed responsibility for bombing the Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department Building and banks, courthouses and police stations.

Mr. Ayers is married to Bernardine Dohrn, another Weather Underground figure. Both were indicted in 1970 for inciting to riot and conspiracy to bomb government buildings, but charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

Related Links

Fact check: Obama and former radical (NYT)

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 5:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

CIA archives to go to National Archives

Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (4-17-08)

A memorandum of understanding signed this month by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Archivist is expected to enable the transfer of many permanently valuable historical CIA records that are 50 years old or older to the custody of the National Archives (NARA), officials of both agencies said today.

Up to now, "we haven't had a framework" for such transfers, said Joe Lambert, the new CIA chief information officer. And so, with few exceptions, "we haven't transferred anything [to the Archives] in the past." (Exceptions include certain CIA records related to the JFK assassination, Nazi war crimes, and a few other topics, as well as translations of foreign news reports.)

The new memorandum "lays the groundwork for routine transfer of CIA records" to the National Archives once they become 50 years old, said Assistant Archivist Michael J. Kurtz. "This will institutionalize the process."

The memorandum itself does not seem very promising. It imposes a number of binding requirements on NARA officials, including referral to CIA of any request for records that have not already been approved for public release. No binding requirements are imposed on CIA, beyond an open-ended commitment to "review" any such requests.

But Allen Weinstein, the Archivist of the United States, said the memorandum would pave the way for regular transfers of CIA records to the Archives, and would ultimately result in improved public access to those records.

"Access is a multi-step process," said Gary M. Stern, General Counsel at the National Archives. "Getting the records into the Archives is the first step."

Having "listened carefully to the words and the music, I was convinced that this [agreement] would serve the public interest," said Dr. Weinstein. "I wouldn't have signed it otherwise."

The memorandum's words, at least, can be found here.

CIA is expected to provide to NARA an index of records subject to transfer in the next few weeks, with actual transfers to follow sometime thereafter.

A March 2000 National Archives evaluation of "Records Management in the Central Intelligence Agency" provided some detailed insight into the subject.

At that time, NARA held that "CIA retention of permanent files for 50 years is no longer appropriate" and should be reduced to something closer to 30 years. But by default and inaction, 50 year retention of records by CIA has now become the goal that the agencies are striving for.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 4:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Photographic image in auction may be from 1790s

Source: NYT (4-17-08)

The phone call was routine, the kind often made before big auctions. Sotheby’s was preparing to sell a striking rust-brown image of a leaf on paper, long thought to have been made by William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography. So the auction house contacted a Baltimore historian considered to be the world’s leading Talbot expert and asked if he could grace the sale’s catalog with any interesting scholarly details about the print — known as a photogenic drawing, a crude precursor to the photograph.
“I got back to them and said, ‘Well, the first thing I would say is that this was not made by Talbot,’ ” the historian, Larry J. Schaaf, recalled in a recent interview.

“That was not what they were expecting to hear, to say the least.”

In the weeks since Dr. Schaaf’s surprising pronouncement was made public, “The Leaf,” originally thought to have been made around 1839 or later, has become the talk of the photo-historical world. The speculation about its origins became so intense that Sotheby’s and the print’s owners decided earlier this month to postpone its auction, so that researchers could begin delving into whether the image may be, in fact, one of the oldest photographic images in existence, dating to the 1790s.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 3:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Museum Offers the Official Line on Tibet

Source: NYT (4-17-08)

BEIJING — Not far from National Stadium, the city’s mammoth, just-finished Olympic arena, another construction project is still facing an Olympic deadline. The building, sheathed in a green construction tent, will house Beijing’s first museum exclusively dedicated to Tibet.

Inside, curators will display antiquities, dynastic records and reproductions to demonstrate China’s dominion over Tibet as far back as the 13th century. Many experts question China’s historical claims, but few clouds of doubt are likely to darken the museum. Even the Dalai Lama is being edited out of the narrative.

“He will not appear after 1959,” said Lian Xiangmin, a Chinese scholar involved in the museum, referring to the year the Tibetan spiritual leader fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. “This is a Tibet museum, and we don’t recognize him as part of Tibet anymore.”

History is often interpreted to meet the political objectives of whichever government is doing the interpreting. The historical relationship between Tibet and China is replete with claims, disputes and caveats. But the ruling Communist Party does not hesitate to eliminate any uncertainty and use history as a political tool to validate its hold on Tibet.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Katyn Victims Memorial Day in Poland

Source: http://www.polskieradio.pl (4-13-08)

Poland today marks the 65th anniversary of the disclosure by the Nazis of the Katyn massacre in which over 20,000 Polish officers were murdered by the Soviets.

The main commemorations will take place in Warsaw. At noon, Sunday, before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, an official change of the guard and a military parade will take place.

The Katyn Victims Memorial Day was established in 2007.

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 3:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Did FDR have melanoma? Did it kill him?

Source: Email from Dr. Steve Lomazow (4-17-08)

[Dr. Lomazow, Assistant Professor of Neurology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is working on a book about FDR's health problems. Click here for his blog.]

Based on new and original research, my article, co-authored with leading dermatopathologist, A. Bernard Ackerman, entitled “An Inquiry Into the Pigmented Lesion Above the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Left Eyebrow” has just been released in the April 2008 issue of the highly respected peer-reviewed journal Archives of Dermatology, re-igniting the long-standing debate over Roosevelt’s health. While the article does not unequivocally state that the President had Melanoma, a highly malignant skin tumor with potentially fatal consequences, it presents photographic evidence of an expanding and evolving lesion felt by Doctor Ackerman to closely resemble it based on criteria commonly employed by present-day dermatologists. The article also discusses the rapid disappearance of the lesion, inconsistent with either of the diagnostic possibilities, the other being a benign process, Solar Lentigo, attributable to excessive exposure to the sun.

The possibility that our thirty-second President had Melanoma was first raised in the historical literature by Hugh L’Etang in his 1970 book “The Pathology of Leadership,” evoking a prompt response by one of FDR’s personal physicians, cardiologist Howard G. Bruenn in Annals of Medicine, with the consent, cooperation and active participation of the Roosevelt family and historian James MacGregor Burns, presenting previously unrevealed evidence of the President’s severe cardiovascular disease and stating in the accompanying editorial:

Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 1:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Neanderthals speak for first time in 50,000 years

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-16-08)

Neanderthals have spoken out for the first time since they were wiped out or outcompeted by our ancestors tens of millennia ago.

It may only sound like one small burp, but for scientists the Neanderthal "E" sound marks a 50,000 year step back in time.

Prof Robert McCarthy, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has used Neanderthal vocal tracts reconstructed from fossils to simulate the voice with a synthesizer, reports NewScientist.com.

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In a forlorn stretch of desert, a tirelessly inquisitive Frenchman confidently builds his History of Humanity

Source: LAT (4-16-08)

FELICITY, CALIF. -- A stiff wind blows grit across Jacques-Andre Istel's latest and greatest undertaking, a History of Humanity etched on hundreds of granite panels a few turns of a tumbleweed from the Arizona border. ...

"You've got to admit, that's interesting," Istel says.

He doesn't mean himself. Istel is talking about his History of Humanity, eight horizontal monuments spread out like spokes of a wheel between the church and the pyramid. When completed, it will serve as a Cliffs Notes of life on Earth: 416 kitchen-counter-size granite panels etched with words, timelines and drawings.

"How do you treat our galaxy?" Istel asks, pointing to a panel describing the Milky Way. He doesn't wait for an answer. "This one's interesting. . . ." And he is off to the next panel, another subject meticulously researched and condensed.

The Greek philosophers. Early music. Buddhism. The Han Dynasty. Early timekeeping. Ireland's golden age of scholarship. The evolution of math. Our sun. The night.

"Isn't that amazing?"

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

One lawmaker has budget solution: Plunder Florida's treasure

Source: AP (4-11-08)

With the state desperate for cash to balance its budget, one lawmaker has come up with a solution worthy of Blackbeard or Captain Kidd.
Rep. Juan Zapata wants to plunder Florida's booty.

One of the world's largest publicly owned collections of Spanish treasure - doubloons and other coins, some gold and silver ingots and chains - belongs to the state.

"We have some interesting goodies in the closet," said the Miami Republican. "Why not have an interesting garage sale, put them out there and see what we can get for them?"

How much the state could reap, though, is uncertain, as lawmakers struggle with a budget that is $5 billion smaller than the previous one.

One expert says Florida's 1,600 gold and 22,000 silver coins are worth at least $17 million, but state officials say the collection is priceless.

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Prosecutor charges alleged Nazi-era 'hitman' with murder

Source: AP (4-16-08)

A German prosecutor has filed murder charges against an 86-year-old former member of the Waffen SS for alleged Nazi-era killings in the Netherlands.

Dortmund prosecutor Ulrich Maass said Wednesday he has charged Heinrich Boere with three counts of murder for the 1944 slayings of Dutch civilians.

Boere was part of a Waffen SS death squad composed mostly of Dutch volunteers tasked with killing compatriots in reprisal for attacks by the anti-Nazi resistance.

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Ex-leader recalls Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Source: AP (4-15-08)

Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw ghetto by a handful of scrappy, poorly armed Jews against the Nazi army, becomes emotional when he speaks of the fighters he led.

"I remember them all — boys and girls — 220 altogether, not too many to remember their faces, their names," says the 89-year-old doctor, who still works in a Lodz hospital. Edelman will lay a wreath in their honor at the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto on Saturday, the 65th anniversary of the uprising.

The Nazis walled off the ghetto in November 1940, cramming 400,000 Jews from across Poland into a 760-acre section of the capital in inhuman conditions. On April 19, 1943, German troops started to liquidate the ghetto by sending tens of thousands of its residents to death camps.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 11:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Story of Barack Obama's Mother

Source: Amanda Ripley in Time Mag profile (4-9-08)

Each of us lives a life of contradictory truths. We are not one thing or another. Barack Obama's mother was at least a dozen things. S. Ann Soetoro was a teen mother who later got a Ph.D. in anthropology; a white woman from the Midwest who was more comfortable in Indonesia; a natural-born mother obsessed with her work; a romantic pragmatist, if such a thing is possible.

"When I think about my mother," Obama told me recently, "I think that there was a certain combination of being very grounded in who she was, what she believed in. But also a certain recklessness. I think she was always searching for something. She wasn't comfortable seeing her life confined to a certain box."

Obama's mother was a dreamer. She made risky bets that paid off only some of the time, choices that her children had to live with. She fell in love—twice—with fellow students from distant countries she knew nothing about. Both marriages failed, and she leaned on her parents and friends to help raise her two children.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

NYT Editorial acknowledges HNN Bush poll

Source: NYT Editorial (4-14-08)

The nonprofit History News Network is reporting that in an informal survey of 109 historians, 98.2 percent considered President George W. Bush’s presidency to be a failure, while 1.8 percent called it a success.

On the question of whether he is the worst president in history, there was greater difference of opinion: 61 percent said he was, while others disagreed or are withholding their opinions. (The survey also made clear that James Buchanan has some work to do rehabilitating his whole catapulted-the-nation-into-Civil-War reputation.)

We take most unscientific surveys with a large grain of salt, and this certainly falls into that category. On the other hand, we like the idea of historians starting to think about the George W. Bush presidency, and how it fits into larger patterns of American history.

We’d be interested in knowing more about the 1.8 percent of historians who regard this presidency as a success.

Given the disastrous Iraq War, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the economy hurtling toward recession, the huge budget deficits, the plummeting dollar — to name just a few problems — these historians sound a lot like the 20 percent of dentists who don’t recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 10:36 PM | Comments (1) | Top

John McCain returned from Vietnam determined to lead

Source: LAT (4-14-08)

THE POST-POW YEARS: FIRST OF TWO PARTS -- When John McCain limped home from a Hanoi prison camp in 1973 with a badly injured knee that he could not bend, Navy doctors gave him the bad news: His 15-year career as a jet pilot was over. He would never fly again.

But McCain surprised his doctors by making a dramatic comeback. With a ferocious determination to fly again and a tough physical therapy regimen, he got his wings back and not long after was awarded command of the Navy's largest aviation squadron, VA-174, at Cecil Field in Florida. Blue-chip connections in the Nixon administration helped.

These days, when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is asked about his qualifications to lead and manage, he points to his command of that squadron as proof he has the right stuff to be president.

"I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy, not for profit, but for patriotism," McCain said at a candidate forum in New Hampshire. "I'm proud of that record of leadership."

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 4:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

150th anniversary of black exodus from California

Source: Press Release--John William Templeton (4-15-08)

SAN FRANCISCO -- On April 14, 1858, hundreds of African-Americans gathered in Zion Methodist Episcopal Church here to respond to a backlash against their activism against slavery. Although the almost 5,000 blacks had accumulated $2 million in property during the Gold Rush, they did not have the right to vote or to testify in court; their children could not attend the best public schools and they lived in fear of being returned to slavery under the fugitive slave act. They decided their only alternative to persecution in the United States was to move to another country.

Within a week, the first of what would eventually be 800 persons, 20 percent of California's total black population, left for Victoria, British Columbia, where they prospered financially and took prominent roles in the local and provincial government.

A 150th anniversary commemoration of that exodus, led by Mifflin W. Gibbs and other Underground Railroad operatives, takes place in San Francico April 20-25 with a memorial service, a ceremonial launching from Fisherman's Wharf and a scholar's forum.

It occurs against the backdrop of another large outmigration of African-Americans from the Golden State --this time 216,000 leaving California in the past six years.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:55 PM | Comments (1) | Top

VA Gov. Kaine Wants $5M for Civil War Sites

Source: WaPo (4-15-08)

Virginia's governor is proposing to spend $5 million to preserve several sites where armies of the North and South clashed nearly 150 years ago, including such renowned battlefields as Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Cold Harbor.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's proposal would provide funding over the next two years for the endangered Civil War sites.

Kaine (D) included the request Monday among his amendments to the two-year budget that the General Assembly approved last month. In Virginia, the governor proposes the budget and the General Assembly adopts its own version before the governor gets a final chance to make changes. Legislators will consider Kaine's requests next week during a one-day session.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pre-Islamic icons symbolize Iran's confused present

Source: LAT (4-15-08)

Fascination with the pre- Islamic has run in trends since the 1979 revolution. Religious leaders first tried to blot out a past embraced by the man they overthrew, Mohammed Reza Shah. But they soon realized the appeal of Persian identity and now occasionally co-opt the past for tourism and national pride.

Unemployment, high inflation, political oppression and a distrust many Iranians have for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have stoked reflections on bygone centuries. And those who can afford it decorate their homes with nods to ancient Persian style: carved columns, mythical horses and visages of kings.

"It's a psychological reaction to the Islamic regime," said Naser Shahbazi, a drama teacher and bookseller, who sat in a shop of cracked bindings and dust. "Many Iranians hate the regime, but they're scared. The pre-Islamic motif is the least dangerous way to express yourself. . . ."

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Stalin's space monkeys

Source: Independent (UK) (4-15-08)

It looks like a neglected zoo. But the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy has its own macabre chapter in the history of the Soviet Union....

But the years of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, then the Georgian-Abkhaz war, took a heavy toll on the centre. Most of its scientists left to set up a new centre in Russia, along with most of the monkeys that were not killed. What is left today is a disturbing shadow of the institute's former glory....

Legend has it that the institute, which opened in 1927, was born of a secret Soviet plan to create a man-ape hybrid that would become a Soviet superman and propel the Soviet Union ahead of the West. The Soviet elite, goes the apocryphal tale that has appeared widely in Russian media, wanted to create a prototype worker that would be inhumanly strong and mentally dulled, to carry out the gruelling work of industrialising the vast expanses of newly Sovietised territory.

Scientists at the institute today admit that these experiments did go on at the institute, though they deny it was part of any overarching plan for the creation of a new race. The tests were performed by Ilya Ivanov, an eminent Russian biologist who had also collaborated with the Pasteur Institute in Paris. About the turn of the century he had perfected the technique of artificially inseminating mares, and had also produced cross-breeds between various different species. Then, Europe was alive with ideas of eugenics, and the Soviets were out to prove once and for all that Darwinism had superseded religion.

"Professor Ivanov started these experiments in Africa and continued them here in Sukhumi," says Vladimir Barkaya, who started at the institute in 1961 and is now scientific director. "He took sperm from human males and injected it into female chimpanzees, although nothing came of it." Professor Barkaya denies monkey sperm was used on human females, although letters were apparently received by the institution by people of both sexes offering to participate in the experiments.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Baroness Loses Appeal In Nazi-Era Art Case

Source: http://www.thebostonchannel.com (4-15-08)

A German baroness living in Providence is appealing a court decision forcing her to give a portrait auctioned by the Nazis to the estate of a late Jewish art dealer.

An attorney for Maria-Luise Bissonnette filed the arguments Monday with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Among other points, Bissonnette's attorney said the estate of Max Stern may have waited too long before seeking the return of the oil painting "Girl from the Sabine Mountains."

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Israel's Peres pays homage to victims at Nazi death camp

Source: AFP (4-14-08)

Israel's Polish-born President Shimon Peres on Monday remembered the hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered by occupying Nazi Germans during World War II at Poland's Treblinka death camp.
Peres and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski lit candles at the memorial to the 800,000 people murdered at Treblinka, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of the capital Warsaw.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

British pub tradition in trouble?

Source: International Herald Tribune (4-14-08)

Dr. Johnson declared a tavern seat "the throne of human felicity." The Frenchman Hilaire Belloc, who spent his life in England, said: "When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves. For you will have lost the last of England."...

Some say the pub is in crisis. A few years ago, The Guardian reported that for the first time since the Norman Conquest fewer than half the villages of England have a pub. Chains of horrendous corporate-owned "vertical drinking establishments" — giant Identikit bars — threaten the real pubs, and the real pubs are mostly owned by equally horrendous "pubcos," companies invented to dodge laws against brewing monopolies. Yet somehow real ale, championed by Camra (the Campaign for Real Ale), and real pubs do survive.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Churches crumble in France, and a country asks how it can save them

Source: AP (4-13-08)

Mayor Jean-Pierre Leger was married and baptized his children at Saint-Pierre-aux-Liens church in this village in western France. Not without sadness, he is now planning to bulldoze the 19th century building.

The dilemma of what to do with churches that have fallen out of favor  and into disrepair  is facing towns and villages across France and other European countries. Some communities have dynamited churches deemed too expensive to maintain. Others have taken a less radical approach, selling them as housing.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German advertiser breaks Hitler taboo

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-15-08)

A hat company has broken a German taboo by advertising its products using an image of Adolf Hitler.

The campaign for the Hut Weber company places the iconic hair and moustache of the Nazi leader next to a bowler-hatted sketch of Charlie Chaplin, star of The Great Dictator, with the caption in English: "It's the hat."

Created by the Serviceplan agency, the advertisement is groundbreaking because the taboo of using Hitler in any other context but a historical one would have been unthinkable until now.

The advertisement has generated controversy although many young people writing in internet forums have expressed their approval.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Smithsonian Official Resigned In Wake of Ethics Probe

Source: WaPo (4-15-08)

The head of the Smithsonian Latino Center resigned in February after an internal investigation found that she violated a variety of rules and ethics policies by abusing her expense account, trying to steer a contract to a friend and soliciting free tickets for fashion shows, concerts and music award ceremonies, according to records released yesterday by the Smithsonian.

Pilar O'Leary, who was hired in 2005 by then-Secretary Lawrence M. Small to be the institution's key representative on Latino affairs, billed the Smithsonian "extravagant" and "lavish travel expenses," and used her expense account on personal purchases such as outings to a spa and hotel gift shops, the Smithsonian inspector general found.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 2:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Rumsfeld memoir to be published in 2010

Source: AP (4-14-08)

Donald H. Rumsfeld, the powerful defense secretary and architect of the Iraq War who left office two years ago as he faced ever-rising criticism, is working on a memoir to be published by Penguin Group (USA) in 2010.

"This will be a story that will span my lifetime," Rumsfeld, 75, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday from his office in Washington, D.C. "It will be something that I will try hard to have be very fair and honest and useful. I hope it adds to people's information about these times"

Books by such former Bush administration officials as treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and CIA director George Tenet have come out, but Rumsfeld's take is closer. A longtime friend and close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld was among the most influential defense secretaries ever and the most visible and controversial since Robert McNamara in the 1960s.

Rumsfeld met with several publishers and received "big bids" for his book, according to a publishing official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations. But Rumsfeld decided to accept no advance, only money for expenses. Any profits will be donated to a foundation he established recently to fund such projects as grants for "promising young individuals" interested in public service.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 1:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Weak Rivets, a Possible Key to Titanic’s Doom?

Source: NYT (4-15-08)

Researchers have discovered that the builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday.

The builder’s own archives, two scientists say, harbor evidence of a deadly mix of low quality rivets and lofty ambition as the builder labored to construct the three biggest ships in the world at once — the Titanic and two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.

For a decade, the scientists have argued that the storied liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the ship’s builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. More than 1,500 people died.

When the safety of the rivets was first questioned 10 years ago, the builder ignored the accusation and said it did not have an archivist who could address the issue.

Now, historians say new evidence uncovered in the archive of the builder, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, settles the argument and finally solves the riddle of one of the most famous sinkings of all time. The company says the findings are deeply flawed.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 1:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 14, 2008

Bust of "Hidden" Roman Emperor Found

Source: National Geographic News (4-14-08)

He supposedly preferred to remain behind the scenes, but after 1,800 years one of Rome's most reclusive emperors has been thrust into the limelight.

A statue of Lucius Verus, who ruled ancient Rome alongside his more famous adopted brother Marcus Aurelius, was recently recovered among a cache of looted artifacts, Italian officials say.

Investigators found the intricately carved marble head in a boathouse near Rome, saying the find was particularly significant because Lucius was reluctant to pose for official portraits. Only four other depictions of Lucius are known to exist, experts said.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Giant Statue of Ancient Egypt Queen Found

Source: National Geographic News (3-31-08)

Archaeologists have uncovered a pristinely preserved statue of a powerful Egyptian queen at the sprawling mortuary temple of Amenhotep III on Luxor's West Bank.

A joint European-Egyptian team found the 12-foot-tall (3.6-meter-tall) quartzite figure attached to the broken-off leg of a much larger colossus of Amenhotep III, who ruled from about 1390 to 1350 B.C.

Experts say the newfound statue is of Queen Tiye—Amenhotep III's favorite wife and the most influential woman of his 38-year reign—bolstering theories that female royalty were gaining in prominence and influence during the time period.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mixtec Indian Cremations Found; Show Elite Ate Dog

Source: National Geographic (4-9-08)

An ancient burial site in Mexico contains evidence that Mixtec Indians conducted funerary rituals involving cremation as far back as 3,000 years ago.

The find represents the earliest known hints that Mixtecs used this burial practice, which was later reserved for Mixtec kings and Aztec emperors, according to researchers who excavated the site.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hunt is on for t major outpost for free blacks and fugitive slaves in Florida

Source: AP (4-13-08)

Gen. Andrew Jackson's early 19th century hunt for Angola ended with the Florida settlement's destruction. Documentarian Vickie Oldham is now trying to find remains of the town, the Southeast's last major outpost for free blacks and fugitive slaves.

Since 2002, Oldham has worked to bring the story of Angola to life. A former television reporter in Sarasota, she has recruited historians, archaeologists and educators to produce a documentary, Web site and educational materials about Angola.

But its exact location in the Tampa Bay area remains elusive -- although some promising clues have recently been uncovered.

Historians say finding Angola would give new insight into Florida's role as a safe haven for runaway slaves. It would also highlight the state's violent transition into a bastion of bondage.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Boer War black camps uncovered

Source: http://www.int.iol.co.za (4-12-08)

Beneath the surface of the dry, red sand covering a farm just outside Kimberley, the remains of an untold story have been uncovered, revealing the establishment of a black Boer War concentration camp, dating back more than 100 years.

About 1 200 refugees were moved from locations in Jacobsdal, Boshof and Petrusburg to a farm 30km outside Kimberley in the then Orange Free State, after the British forces had occupied the towns.

Local archaeologists had been searching in vain for the location of the camp for several years, when a Kimberley farmer stumbled on a leg of a potjie pot and some broken glass on his farm, miles away from anywhere, in late 2001.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gettysburg: With Its New (but Old-Fashioned) Visitor Center and A Plan to Restore Sightlines, the Battlefield Honors Its Past

Source: WaPo (4-14-08)

With the opening today of a new, $103 million visitor center at Gettysburg National Military Park, Cemetery Ridge is undergoing the most radical change to its look and feel in a generation. The new visitor center, hidden in a hollow behind the ridge, has made both the old visitor center and the Cyclorama Building -- designed by the renowned architect Richard Neutra in the 1960s -- obsolete. And so, in an effort to return the battlefield to its original state, the National Park Service is about to tear down both structures, which have for decades sat squarely in the middle of the Union lines.

These changes are part of a rehabilitation project that has produced dramatic changes on the battlefield. In the early 1990s, power lines that ran along the Emmitsburg Road -- one of several historic roads that converge at Gettysburg -- were buried underground. In 2000, a hulking observation tower -- a tourist trap that offered paying visitors the chance to survey the battlefield from on high -- was demolished. And today, the Park Service continues to remove trees and build fences, in an effort to re-create the original sightlines of the 1863 battle.

It's not just physical changes. Exhibits and films at the new museum are focused on the context of the war, the issue of slavery, the economic challenges faced by North and South -- a shift in emphasis that is happening throughout the National Park Service's Civil War sites.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Virginia: Rules sought on ordnance from Civil War

Source: http://www.inrich.com (3-29-08)

The Civil War ended more than 140 years ago, but there is still ordnance to be unearthed, said Bob Wilcox an amateur historian from Powhatan County.

And the thought, he said, is chilling, especially in light of the February explosion that killed Sam White, who ran a business in which he cleaned and disarmed Civil War-era military ordnance at his Chesterfield County home.

The explosion scattered Civil War shell shrapnel throughout the neighborhood.

The incident prompted Wilcox to encouraged Powhatan officials to develop some type of regulation that would address the handling of such items when they are discovered.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Could famed national parks be developed from within?

Source: http://fredericksburg.com (4-9-08)

Private land within the boundaries of some of the nation's most beloved national parks is under growing pressure to be developed or sold.

And, according to a new report by an independent parks watchdog group, other sites--including Fredericksburg-area Civil War battlefields--are looking for funds to acquire important acreage as federal budget cuts have dried up available money.

In its "America's Heritage for Sale" report released yesterday, the National Parks Conservation Association says of the 391 sites in the National Park System, a significant and growing number face some development threat to wildlife habitat or the preservation of cultural areas.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Franco 'collaborated with Nazis' to prove Canary Islands were home to Aryan race

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-14-08)

Spanish archaeologists collaborated with the Nazis in their attempts to prove the theory of Aryan supremacy and justify their claims of racial superiority over the Jews, according to a new book.

Spain wanted to promote the idea that the Aryan race could be traced to the Canary Islands, amid claims they were all that remained of the lost continent of Atlantis.

Scientists from the Ahnenerbe, an institute set up by Heinrich Himmler and funded by the SS, planned to travel to the Atlantic islands to carry out research but were forced to postpone the project when war broke out in September 1939.

They appointed archaeologist Julio Martinez Santa Olalla, a friend of the dictator General Franciso Franco, to conduct investigations on their behalf.

The extent of the collaboration between Franco’s archaeologists and those in Nazi Germany has been revealed in a new book by Francisco Gracia Alonso, professor of history at the University of Barcelona.

Prof Gracia reveals the close relationship between Santa Olalla and the Ahnenerbe, which was founded to investigate "the science of ancient intellectual history".

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Restaurant honours mass murderer (Australia)

Source: Sunday Herald Sun (4-13-08)

AN acclaimed Melbourne restaurant has sparked multi-ethnic outrage for paying homage to a fascist warlord and mass murderer.

The plush Katarina Zrinski restaurant attached to Footscray's Croatian Club has been branded "disgusting" for its celebration of genocidal World War II Croatian leader Ante Pavelic.

Pavelic, who historians say was responsible for the deaths of up to 500,000 Jews, Serbs, Muslims and gypsies, has been described as the Heinrich Himmler of the Croatian nation.

The popular restaurant during the week displayed a big portrait of Pavelic on its wall and T-shirts depicting Pavelic for sale at the bar.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Polish lawmakers honor memory of 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising fighters

Source: AP (4-11-08)

Polish lawmakers honored the memory of the more than 200 young Jewish fighters Friday who led the Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi soldiers in 1943.

In its resolution, the lower house of Poland's parliament said the ghetto fighters were defending human dignity. Lawmakers paid homage to "all the victims and heroes of the uprising, whose sacrifice merits the highest admiration, respect and memory."

Poland will hold national observances of the 65th anniversary of the event April 15 with international dignitaries, including Israeli President Shimon Peres and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff scheduled to attend.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

For English churches, lead thieves destroy a rich heritage

Source: International Herald Tribune (4-3-08)

Thieves peeled long strips of lead from the roof of St. Michael and All Angels, until a barking dog sent them fleeing from this tiny Leicestershire village. But by then, they had left a hole of about 100 square feet in the top of the 800-year-old church.

For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe, including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst of an accelerating crime wave that some experts call the most concerted assault on churches since the religious conflicts of the Reformation. Only instead of doctrinal differences, the motivation is the near-record price that lead - the stuff many old church roofs are made of - is fetching on commodity markets.

"The local parish church has become a victim of international demand for metals," said Chris Pitt, a spokesman for Ecclesiastical, a company that specializes in insuring religious buildings and other heritage sites in Britain.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust train overcomes Berlin station ban

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-14-08)

Thousands of Germans have queued for hours to see a mobile exhibition on the Holocaust that was barred from Berlin's central station.

Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company, refused to allow the "Train of Remembrance", which documents deportations by rail during the Second World War, to use the station and instead shunted it to the east of the capital.

Thousands still queued for up to four hours. "These masses demonstrate that they are ready to confront this painful chapter of German history," said Hans Minow, an exhibition spokesman.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mexico's black history is little-known

Source: LAT (4-13-08)

In Mexico, the story of the country's black population has been largely ignored in favor of an ideology that declares that all Mexicans are "mixed race." But it's the mixture of indigenous and European heritage that most Mexicans embrace; the African legacy is overlooked.

"They are saying we are all the same and therefore there is no reason to distinguish yourself," said Padre Glyn Jemmott, a Roman Catholic priest from Trinidad and Tobago who has had a parish of a dozen Costa Chican pueblos since 1984.

"What they are not saying is that in ordinary life in Mexico, lighter-skinned Mexicans are accepted and have first place," he said.

Jemmott, a co-founder of Mexico Negro, an organization that seeks to promote cultural pride and political strength in the coastal pueblos, said many Costa Chicans often don't fully understand what it means to be black in Mexico until they leave their region.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Descendants of "witch" want ancestor exonerated

Source: NYT (4-13-08)

In 1662, the colonists of Hartford accused 39-year-old Mary Sanford of witchcraft. Based on evidence — drinking wine and dancing around a bonfire — the court pronounced her guilty “for not having the feare of God before thyne eyes.” Sanford was hanged, leaving behind five children and a shaken husband who was later acquitted of similar charges.

More than three centuries later, Sanford’s descendants, 14-year-old Addie Avery and her mother, Debra, of New Milford, Conn., have petitioned the State Legislature to exonerate their distant grandmother and 10 other people executed for witchcraft. The fight has taught them something, perhaps more than they wanted to know, about the mob mentality.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pre-Clovis Breakthrough

Source: http://www.archaeology.org (4-3-08)

An unlikely source of information is helping to settle one of the most contentious debates in American archaeology: Who were the first people to colonize the Americas and when did they do it? Were they the mammoth-hunting Clovis people who lived 13,000 years ago, or some earlier group who archaeologists are just beginning to understand? A recent discovery in the Oregon desert announced in the April 4 edition of Science may end the debate once and for all. ARCHAEOLOGY contributing editor Andrew Curry visited Oregon's Paisley Caves in January to find out more.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

DNA sheds light on Minoans

Source: http://www.ekathimerini.com (4-3-08)

Crete’s fabled Minoan civilization was built by people from Anatolia, according to a new study by Greek and foreign scientists that disputes an earlier theory that said the Minoans’ forefathers had come from Africa.

The new study – a collaboration by experts in Greece, the USA, Canada, Russia and Turkey – drew its conclusions from the DNA analysis of 193 men from Crete and another 171 from former neolithic colonies in central and northern Greece.

The results show that the country’s neolithic population came to Greece by sea from Anatolia – modern-day Iran, Iraq and Syria – and not from Africa as maintained by US scholar Martin Bernal.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Aboriginal site among Australia's oldest

Source: ABC Science (4-8-08)

Aboriginal tools found in Western Australia and dating back 35,000 years are surprisingly sophisticated and varied, archaeologists say.

And they believe the site may yet reveal artefacts up to 45,000 years old, making it older than the internationally famous Mungo Man site found in New South Wales.

Archaeologists hired by one of the traditional owners in the Pilbara region, the Martidja Banyjima people, uncovered the ancient tools at a rock overhang on the site of the A$1 billion Hope Downs iron ore mine.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Discovery? Mini-Stonehenge in UK

Source: Manchester Evening News (4-9-08)

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed a "mini-Stonehenge"... on the moors of Rochdale.

The two nearby sites - an oval made up of collapsed slabs, and a 30-metre circle of rounded stones - are believed to be ancient burial sites dating back as far as 5,000 years.

They were spotted by archaeologist Stuart Mendelsohn during a walk on the hills in December and could now become a major tourist attraction.

"I suppose you could describe it as Rochdale's version of Stonehenge," said Mr Mendelson, 52, who is based in Sweden but originally from Middleton. "It would have been a sacred site and what we've found so far I feel will be the tip of the iceberg.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient Burial Cave Discovered (Philippines)

Source: Arab News (4-11-08)

An ancient burial cave was discovered in the Philippine island of Mindanao, south of Manila, and officials have sealed the site to prevent looting of artifacts, many of them jars made from clay.

It was not immediately known whether there are other treasures in the cave which was accidentally discovered by quarry diggers yesterday in Maitum town in Sarangani province.

The latest discovery in the village of Pinol was near another ancient burial site discovered in 1991 where burial jars, shaped in different human forms, had been recovered inside Ayub cave.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:21 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Jewish remains dug up in Belarus

Source: AP (4-12-08)

Workers rebuilding a sports stadium on the site of an 18th century Jewish cemetery in Belarus say they have no choice but to consign the bones to city dumps.

"It's impossible to pack an entire cemetery into sacks," said worker Mikhail Gubets, adding that he stopped counting the skulls when the number went over 100.

But critics say it's part of a pattern of callous indifference toward Belarus' Jewish heritage that was prevalent when the country was a Soviet republic and hasn't changed.

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic U.S. trove goes digital--Library of Congress

Source: CNET (4-11-08)

Just in time for cherry blossom season in Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress on Saturday plans to open a new exhibit, called the Library of Congress Experience, at its historic Thomas Jefferson Building--and online at a new Web site, MyLOC.gov.

At about two dozen touch-screen kiosks sprinkled throughout otherwise analog exhibits, visitors will be able to zoom in on pages from historic bibles, "flip" through books from Thomas Jefferson's vast library, learn about the ornate artwork that adorns the Library's Great Hall, and view how founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution morphed from draft to draft. (The dead-tree counterparts are on view, too, in dimly lit, protective cases.)

To be sure, interactive museum exhibits are nothing new, and the LOC has already crossed over into the digital world with efforts like uploading vintage photographs to Flickr. But Librarian of Congress James Billington told reporters this week that this exhibit is "unlike anything the Library of Congress has undertaken in the past," allowing visitors to see "stunning detail up close that we've only had a general idea of before."

Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Long Memories May Ensnare a Dictator (Surinam)

Source: NYT (4-13-08)

Running into Desi Bouterse is not easy to do. He does not frequent this capital’s outdoor cafes. He keeps to his riverfront villa. He grants few interviews.

Still, he is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in this tiny former Dutch colony on South America’s northeast shoulder, and in his story is a lesson — perhaps — for the rest of the continent in the virtues, and downsides, of patience.

Suriname’s 470,000 people know Mr. Bouterse well. At 62, he is a former military dictator, a fugitive from Interpol, convicted in absentia in the Netherlands in 1999 on cocaine-trafficking charges. With immunity from extradition, he is also a member of Suriname’s Parliament and a leader of Suriname’s largest political party.

But these days, Suriname’s courts are finally staring hard at the bloody start of his political career. He is in the opening phases of a trial in the killings of 15 opponents of his regime on Dec. 8, 1982.

Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 11:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

From Welfare Shift in 1996, a Reminder for Clinton

Source: NYT (4-11-08)

In the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Despite howls of protest from some liberals, he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance.

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton supported her husband’s decision, drawing the wrath of old friends from her days as an advocate for poor children. Some accused the Clintons of throwing vulnerable families to the winds in pursuit of centrist votes as Mr. Clinton headed into the final stages of his re-election campaign.

Despite the criticism and anxiety from the left, the legislation came to be viewed as one of Mr. Clinton’s signature achievements. It won broad bipartisan praise, with some Democrats relieved that it took a politically difficult issue off the table for them, and many liberals came to accept if not embrace it.

Mrs. Clinton’s opponent in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama, said in an interview that the welfare overhaul had been greatly beneficial in eliminating a divisive force in American politics.

Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 11:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Milton Friedman: A Fresh Look at the Apostle of Free Markets

Source: NYT (4-13-08)

Joblessness is growing. Millions of homes are sliding into foreclosure. The financial system continues to choke on the toxic leftovers of the mortgage crisis. The downward spiral of the economy is challenging a notion that has underpinned American economic policy for a quarter-century — the idea that prosperity springs from markets left free of government interference.

The modern-day godfather of that credo was Milton Friedman, who attributed the worst economic unraveling in American history to regulators, declaring in a 1976 essay that “the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement.”

Five years later, Ronald Reagan entered the White House, elevating Mr. Friedman’s laissez-faire ideals into a veritable set of commandments. Taxes were cut, regulations slashed and public industries sold into private hands, all in the name of clearing government from the path to riches. As the economy expanded and inflation abated, Mr. Friedman played the role of chief evangelist in the mission to let loose the animal instincts of the market.

But with market forces now seemingly gone feral, disenchantment with regulation has given way to demands for fresh oversight, placing Mr. Friedman’s intellectual legacy under fresh scrutiny.

Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 11:32 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Pastor Wright blasts founding fathers over slavery

Source: Fox News (4-13-08)

Rev. Jeremiah Wright told a congregation in Norfolk, Va., on Sunday that reporters sneaked into a private funeral service a day before, in which he blasted America’s founding fathers for slavery and white supremacy and received standing ovations for attacking FOX News for covering his anti-American sermons.

Barack Obama’s retiring pastor delivered a sermon at Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church, where his late uncle had been the pastor, about overcoming trouble. The public appearance was his first since news broke that the Democratic presidential candidate’s pastor frequently rails on the United States.

“Some troubles that come up in your life come up out of nowhere,” Wright said. At the end of the two-hour-plus service, about two dozen ministers gathered around Wright and his daughter to pray for them. One of the ministers asked God to give Wright courage as “the world tries to demonize him.”

Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 9:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 11, 2008

Nazi-hunters turn historian

Source: Reuters (4-10-08)

Germany's chief Nazi prosecutor is now more likely to be consoling the grandchild of a war criminal than chasing Adolf Hitler's murderous henchmen.

More than 60 years after World War Two ended, Nazi hunters are running out of targets and increasingly becoming historians who shine a harsh light on dark family secrets. "It's hard to keep prosecutors here," said Kurt Schrimm, who leads Germany's department for prosecuting Nazi war crimes. "I tell them when they start that the prospects of prosecution are slim. The suspects are getting older. It's more about finding out and explaining what happened."

For many Germans, the search for Nazis in their family ends in the small western town of Ludwigsburg.

Hundreds of thousands of index cards fill the cellar of the former prison. Each card carries a name and often a list of war-crime prosecutions. A librarian leafs through the indexes, looking for names put forward by callers researching family members they may have never known.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 8:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Archaeologists warn ancient Greek theatres crumbling

Source: Reuters (4-10-08)

Ancient open-air theatres across Greece are crumbling due to neglect and need swift government intervention to rescue them, archaeologists said on Thursday.

Greece, where Classical drama was born in the 5th century BC, boasts scores of theatres that form a key part of the country's classical cultural heritage. But while about 30 are in a state to host cultural events, 76 are in need of urgent repair, they said.

"Ancient theatres need to be constantly preserved, some need to be restored, but what they mostly need is to be used," classical archaeology professor, Petros Themelis told Reuters.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 8:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Skull returns to final rest place (UK)

Source: BBC (4-11-08)

A rare 2,000-year-old Roman skull has been returned to the cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales where it was discovered by divers in 1996.

Archaeologists were called in after cave divers unearthed human bones in what is believed to be one of the most important cave discoveries ever made.

The skull dates to the 2nd Century and is that of a local woman in her 50s.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 8:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bejeweled Anglo-Saxon Burial Suggests Cult

Source: Discovery News (4-11-08)

In seventh century England, a woman's jewelry-draped body was laid out on a specially constructed bed and buried in a grave that formed the center of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, according to British archaeologists who recently excavated the site in Yorkshire.

Her jewelry, which included a large shield-shaped pendant, the layout and location of the cemetery as well as excavated weaponry, such as knives and a fine langseax (a single-edged Anglo-Saxon sword), lead the scientists to believe she might have been a member of royalty who led a pagan cult at a time when Christianity was just starting to take root in the region.

"I believe it is a cult because of the arrangement of graves, the short period of the cemetery's use and the bed burial and burial mound that is almost in the center of the very regular cemetery," archaeologist Stephen Sherlock, who directed the project, told Discovery News.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 8:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Russia opens monument to space dog Laika

Source: AP (4-11-08)

Russian officials on Friday unveiled a monument to Laika, a dog whose flight to space more than 50 years ago paved the way for human space missions.

The small monument is near a military research facility in Moscow that prepared Laika's flight to space on Nov. 3, 1957. It features a dog standing on top of a rocket.

Little was known about the impact of space flight on living things at the time Laika's mission was launched. Some believed they would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so Soviet space engineers viewed dogs' flights as a necessary precursor to human missions.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Island levelled by British to be whole again

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-11-08)

An island used as a naval base by the Germans in both world wars and flattened by the British Army is to rise again from the sea as a German tourist paradise.

Heligoland, a tiny North Sea island 40 miles off the German coast, was the target of reputedly the largest single non-nuclear explosion in history, when Britain detonated 6,800 tons of left-over ordnance there in 1947.

The aim was to shatter its reinforced submarine base and tunnel network, and end a colourful military history that stretched back centuries.

Instead, the explosion flattened a huge swathe of the island on one side of a cliff face that has become a celebrated tourist spot.

Now, a German investor wants to expand the area levelled by the "British bang" and link it to a nearby sandy islet known as Dune. Arne Weber, a businessman from Hamburg, said that the reclamation project would see Heligoland made whole again for the first time in 300 years.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Serb prisoners 'were stripped of their organs in Kosovo war'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-11-08)

Serb prisoners had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war, according to allegations in a new book by the world's best known war crimes prosecutor.

Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, said investigators found a house suspected of being a laboratory for the illegal trade.

A senior adviser to Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's prime minister and a leading member of the Kosovo Liberation Army which is accused of benefiting from the trade, yesterday denied the allegations.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Clues to the Mystery of a Writer Pilot Who Disappeared

Source: NYT (4-11-08)

After the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the demise of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on a reconnaissance mission in World War II has long ranked as one of aviation’s great mysteries. Now, thanks to the tenacity and luck of a two amateur archaeologists, the final pieces of the puzzle seem to have been filled in.

The story that emerged about the disappearance of Saint-Exupéry, the French aviator, author and émigré from Vichy France, proved to contain several narratives, a complexity that would likely have pleased the author of several adventure books on flying and the charming tale “The Little Prince,” about a little interstellar traveler, which was also a profound statement of faith.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Ghosts of Casa Grande

Source: Tim Egan in the NYT (4-9-08)

COOLIDGE, Ariz. — A pair of Brits, a Vietnam vet, a sullen teen and a dozen or so retirees gathered under the Sonoran Desert sun to try to decipher some of the clues left behind by people who lived here nearly 1,000 years ago.

Who were these Hohokam people who thrived in a compact urban village built around a Great House? They knew astronomy and irrigation and how to construct a four-story building with little more than mud. They played sports on their ball courts, fermented wine from cactus fruit and made sure their walls faced the four cardinal points of the compass.

Casa Grande was the nation’s first archaeological preserve, an earth-colored fortress of wonder set aside in 1892. For years, visitors flocked to this desert monument, as much a part of the culture of our land as anything built by bewigged colonists in Massachusetts. But like most other units of the national park system, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument has been a lonely place of late. Last year, only 76,854 people came here — the lowest number of visitors in 47 years. Over the last decade, the number of people who come to Casa Grande has declined by 50 percent.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vermont Towns Try to Find Their Roads Less Traveled

Source: NYT (4-11-08)

In the slow-paced towns of Vermont, musty archive vaults are getting a curious amount of foot traffic this year.

With magnifying glasses to decode old handwriting and tissues for dust-induced sneezing, citizen volunteers are poring over record books with a common, increasingly urgent purpose: finding evidence of every road ever legally created in their towns, including many that are now impassable and all but unobservable.

The point is to comply with a 2006 state law that gives Vermont’s cities and towns until early next year to identify all their “ancient roads.” At that point, they can add the elusive roads to official town maps, ensuring that they remain public, or turn them over to owners of adjoining land.

Unlike many other states, where towns automatically forfeit rights to roads that go unused for years, Vermont requires that they remain public until formally discontinued. That has brought fights between towns and landowners whose property abuts or even intersects ancient roads, with the towns eager to preserve public access for outdoor pursuits and the owners seeking clear titles and privacy.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Re-Created Library Speaks Volumes About Jefferson

Source: WaPo (4-11-08)

In Thomas Jefferson's day, the books he lovingly collected were almost as famous as he was.

Leather-bound tomes on topics as varied as whist, beekeeping and philosophy were gathered from across Europe and colonial America, then brought to Monticello to help fulfill Jefferson's vow to amass the whole of human knowledge. They eventually became the foundation for the Library of Congress, although two-thirds were lost in a fire in 1851.

For the past decade, a small group of rare book experts has sought to re-create Jefferson's library, scouring antiquarian book collections on two continents to acquire thousands of volumes. The entire collection of more than 6,000 volumes -- some originals and some replacements -- will go on display tomorrow at the Library of Congress, looking much as it would have 200 years ago.

Posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Man regains sight lost in the blitz

Source: History Today (4-9-08)

A man who lost his sight in the Blitz has had a successful operation to restore his vision. 87-year-old John Gray was blinded in his right eye during a Luftwaffe raid on Clydeside in March 1941. A firewatcher during air raids, he was the only survivor of a direct hit on the building he was in. He stated: ‘We just heard some glass shattering and that was the last thing I heard until I came too in the Victoria Infirmary with my leg stretched out in plaster and a big bandage on my head.’ Over six decades later, surgeons at Glasgow's Southern General operated on the damaged lens after Macular Degeneration in his left eye meant he would go completely blind. Three months after recovering from the operation, Mr Gray said: ‘I couldn't be more pleased. I've got vision and I can read to a certain extent.’

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 7:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

107 year old WW I vet allowed burial at Arlington

Source: AP (4-10-08)

Friends of the last living American-born veteran of World War I have persuaded federal officials to allow the 107-year-old to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery when he dies.

Frank Woodruff Buckles, who met with President Bush in Washington, D.C., last month, had been eligible for cremation and placement in a columbarium at Arlington, but daughter Susannah Flanagan said Thursday that he preferred a burial.

To be buried underground, Buckles would have had to meet a variety of criteria, including earning one of five medals, such as a Purple Heart. Buckles never saw combat.

After Flanagan first raised the issue with her father last year, friends took up the cause, privately calling and e-mailing the Pentagon, the White House and others in the federal government for an exception.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:53 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Roman soldier's gift found (UK)

Source: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk (4-10-08)

HE was many miles from home - a Roman soldier posted to Manchester, perhaps feeling cold and lonely, longing for loved ones left behind.

He was called Aelius Victor. And now after 2,000 years an altar he built to keep a promise to the goddesses he prayed to has been unearthed in the middle of the city.

The altar - described by experts as being in 'fantastic' condition - was discovered during an archaeological dig at a site on Greater Jackson Street earmarked for development.

Aelius Victor had dedicated it to two minor goddesses.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gettysburg map creator's kin fight plans to scrap it

Source: Baltimore Sun (3-24-08)

Two days after the last shots of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War were fired here, a 16-year-old neighborhood boy named John H. Rosensteel walked onto the battlefield to help bury the dead.

There he found the body of a Confederate soldier, a boy about his own age, and picked up a rifle lying near him. The rifle was the first item in what would become the largest private collection of Gettysburg relics, as well as a family legacy.

Since that day in July 1863, Rosensteel's descendants have acquired and preserved tens of thousands of battle artifacts and shared them with the public. One family member built a museum along the Union battle line in 1921 to house them. Another created the building's famous electric map, which has educated generations of visitors about the Gettysburg battle by using colored lights to depict troop movements.

Now the museum - which the family sold to the National Park Service decades ago - is about to be razed. A new $103 million museum and visitor's center will open nearly a mile away on the edge of the Union battle lines next month. The old site will be restored to the way it looked in 1863 - a quiet spot amid rolling fields.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Park proposed for Civil War's 'Valley Forge'

Source: http://fredericksburg.com (3-26-08)

Central Stafford County needs a public park, historians and preservationists say, but not of the usual kind.

This one, set atop ridges overlooking Accokeek Creek, would feature the most significant remaining set of unprotected Civil War forts and camps in the northern part of Virginia.

That's what they recommended yesterday to area officials meeting at the University of Mary Washington's graduate-studies center in Hartwood.

County Administrator Anthony Romanello convened the ad-hoc group, which included Stafford supervisors, archaeologists, historians, planners, private citizens, and officials from the public utility that runs the regional landfill where the historic sites are located.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush emotional, again, as he talks about overcoming his drink problem

Source: Independent (UK) (4-10-08)

The intensely private George Bush had another emotional moment yesterday when he discussed how he overcame his drinking problems through religion.

In his final year in office, the deeply unpopular President has been increasingly prone to public outbursts of emotion, something rarely seen in such a famously disciplined politician.

On Tuesday, he wept openly during a memorial service for a Navy Seal who died in Iraq, the tears streaming down his face as the moment overcame him.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cathedral bans popular hymn Jerusalem

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-10-08)

Jerusalem, one of the country's best-loved hymns and the favourite of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has been banned from services at one of Britain's foremost churches.

The verses, which were written by William Blake more than two centuries ago, cannot be sung by choirs or congregations at Southwark Cathedral because the words do not praise God and are too nationalistic, according to senior clergy.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK historic bridges in danger from drivers using GPS

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-10-08)

Britain's historic bridges, buildings and roads are under threat from drivers blithely following satellite navigation directions, a conservation society warned yesterday.

Among those which have been damaged by traffic driving down unsuitable roads is a 200-year-old bridge in Oxfordshire, a 300-year-old cottage in Greater Manchester and Pevensey Castle in East Sussex, according to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

Phillip Venning, the society's secretary, said the cost of repairing some of the damage to the buildings had run into thousands of pounds.

"Blind reliance on satellite navigation is fast becoming a serious issue for old buildings as motorists are directed to use ancient lanes and narrow country roads that might have posed a problem for horse-drawn carriages," he said.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Honorary Degrees awarded to Japanese Americans Who Were Expelled in 1942

Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed (4-10-08)

The University of Oregon awarded honorary degrees on Sunday to 20 Japanese-Americans who were expelled during World War II. The university's president called the ceremony a step in redressing a "tragic legacy."

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 5:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

ABC News: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'

Source: ABC News (4-9-08)

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

Posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 12:07 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Experts Work To Preserve Tequesta Indian Artifact

Source: http://cbs4.com (4-8-08)

South Florida archeologists are busy in Southwest Miami-Dade working to preserve ancient artifacts found in an area once inhabited by Tequesta Indians.

Robert Carr, Executive Director of the Archeological and Historical Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that specializes in preserving historically significant sites, told CBS4's Ileana Varela experts have known about the site for about three decades but the decision to excavate it and save the artifacts came when Miami-Dade County decided to widen the road next to the site.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 5:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Breakthrough' at Stonehenge dig

Source: BBC (4-9-08)

Archaeologists carrying out an excavation at Stonehenge say they have broken through to a layer that may finally explain why the site was built.

The team has reached sockets that once held bluestones - smaller stones, most now missing or uprooted, which formed the site's original structure.

The researchers believe that the bluestones could reveal that Stonehenge was once a place of healing.

The dig is the first to take place at Stonehenge for more than 40 years.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 5:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

60 Years After Israel’s Founding, Many Are Not in the Mood for a Party

Source: NYT (4-9-08)

When the government of Israel budgeted about $28 million to observe the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state, it was probably hoping that its fractious citizens would set aside their troubles and come together in an outpouring of national pride.

Instead, a month before Independence Day, Israelis are wrangling over how extravagantly the country should celebrate, and at what cost.

Many acknowledge the state’s outstanding achievements, pointing to the absorption of immigrants, the high-tech boom and Israel’s very survival against unfavorable odds.

But the decade seems to be ending in an uncharacteristically somber mood, with more and more Israelis evincing deep-seated disillusionment with their leadership and the way the country is run.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Air Force histories reveal secret CIA role in Laos and plan to possibly use nukes in 1959 crisis

Source: National Security Archive (4-9-08)

Previously secret U.S. Air Force official histories of the Vietnam war published today by the National Security Archive disclose for the first time that Central Intelligence Agency contract employees had a direct role in combat air attacks when they flew Laotian government aircraft on strike missions and that the Air Force actively considered nuclear weapons options during the 1959 Laos crisis.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 4:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Missing Iraq antiquities haunt experts

Source: LAT (4-9-08)

Five years ago this week, looters ransacked the Iraqi National Museum, stealing centuries-old artifacts that celebrated Iraq's role as the cradle of civilization. Some headlines at the time exaggerated the size of the damage, erroneously reporting 170,000 items missing. Investigators later discovered that some important artifacts, including gold jewelry from Nimrud, had been hidden at Iraq's Central Bank since the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Today, investigators say that about 15,000 pieces were either stolen in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 or went unaccounted for in the months and years before the conflict began. About half have been recovered. But the impact of the thefts -- amulets, Assyrian ivories, sculpture heads, ritual vessels and cylinder seals -- is still being felt in art circles and black markets throughout the world.

"The numbers can't tell the whole story," said U.S. Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a New York assistant district attorney who has made the hunt for antiquities his specialty. "These things remind us of our common beginnings."

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 4:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Town hopes Nietzsche’s grave can halt coal mine

Source: http://www.thelocal.de (4-7-08)

The people of Röcken are looking to late German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to save them. The eastern German town has for 108 years been the proud resting place of Nietzsche and it has now turned his grave into its strongest argument to halt a coal mining project that would wipe it off the map.

“Nietzsche is our only hope,” says Dorothee Berthold, who heads an association founded to spare the town of 600 people the fate of several others along a brown coal deposit stretching south of Leipzig. Last October, all 59 residents of nearby Heuersdorf were forced to pack up and leave after exhausting all legal means to stop excavations by US-owned mining house Mibrag.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 3:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Holocaust survivors: German rail restrictions 'undignified'

Source: http://www.thelocal.de (4-7-08)

German state railway operator Deutsche Bahn has outraged Holocaust survivor groups by refusing to allow a traveling train exhibition into Berlin's main station.

The International Auschwitz Committee, founded by concentration camp survivors, expressed outrage at Deutsche Bahn's decision in a statement on Monday. Closing important stations to the exhibit is "incomprehensible and unacceptable."

Organizers of "Train of commemoration," which is supported by several grass-roots initiatives, has rejected Deutsche Bahn's suggestions for alternative stations, insisting that the exhibit should be held at the Berlin central station to draw more visitors.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 3:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Mass grave from Thirty Years' War found in Bavaria

Source: http://www.thelocal.de (4-7-08)

Construction workers have discovered a mass grave from the Thirty Years' War while laying a pipeline in the German state of Bavaria.

The 50 skeletons were probably French soldiers who died during a battle near Alerheim on August 3, 1645, the Bavarian State Office for Historical Preservation (BlfD) said on Monday in Munich.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 3:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Germans shun space race legacy

Source: http://www.sciam.com (4-7-08)

Few Germans know the global space race started on a remote and sandy island off the Baltic coast, an unremarkable place with wide open skies and a carpet of pine trees.

But it was at the Peenemuende testing site in 1942 that a team of engineers under Wernher von Braun laid the foundations for sending man to the moon and the Cold War missile race. They were testing the world's first long-range ballistic missiles for the Nazis.

Germans don't celebrate the site because of the moral ambiguity at the heart of one of the last century's most significant technological breakthroughs....

In many countries, the site would be a focus for national celebration but Peenemuende's sober Historical Technical Information Centre battles even to secure public funding.

"In Germany, we cannot have the same attitude towards our technical history as in Britain or the United States because of the historical associations," said Muehldorfer-Vogt, pointing to a fierce row over a school name to illustrate his point.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 3:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pictures of feared Hitler henchman to be sold after almost 60 years in British home

Source: Daily Mail (4-2-08)

An extraordinary insight into the private life of one of Hitler's most feared henchmen has come to light after more than 60 years hidden in a British home.
Viktor Lutze was a key figure in the Nazi leader's rise to power and served as chief of staff of the reviled SA - more commonly known as the brownshirts.

Yet intimate pictures seized from his house by Allied forces cast him in the unlikely role of a family man who enjoyed day trips and games of table-tennis.

Almost 100 private photographs once treasured by the one-eyed thug reveal the wealthy and care-free existence he was able to enjoy away from the Fuhrer.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 3:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New antislavery law may be wrongheaded

Source: International Herald Tribune (4-9-08)

Here's an arresting allegation: More slaves are now imported (though the current word for this is trafficked) into the United States annually than were imported in an average year during the American colonial era.

That is one of the talking points used lately by the author of an arresting new book on global slavery, "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery," by E. Benjamin Skinner.

In fact, of course, at the height of the legal slave trade in the 19th century, many more African slaves were "trafficked" to the United States than are arriving now, but globally there may be more people in slavery than ever. Still, it comes as a shock to read Skinner's accounts of the people - the U.S. State Department estimates 600,000 to 800,000 brought across international borders each year - forced to work around the world under threat of violence for no pay.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

High School Student Raises Questions About Textbook Bias

Source: AP (4-8-08)

Talk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded.

They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level Advanced Placement courses used in high schools.

Matthew LaClair of Kearny, N.J., recently brought his concerns to the attention of the Center for Inquiry, am Amherst, N.Y., think tank that promotes science and which has issued a scathing report about the textbook.

"I just realized from my own knowledge that some of this stuff in the book is just plain wrong," said LaClair, who is using the book as part of an AP government class at Kearny High School.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 2:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush is depicted as foul-mouthed frat boy in new Oliver Stone movie

Source: Independent (UK) (4-9-08)

Oliver Stone's new film,W, portrays George Bush as a foul-mouthed, dried-out drunk with a baseball obsession and a difficult relationship with his father.

Filming is expected to begin any day in Louisiana. The movie should be in cinemas before Mr Bush leaves office next January.

Stone says the film won't be an anti-Bush polemic. Rather, as he told Daily Variety, it will be "a fair, true portrait of the man that asks the question: how did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"

An early script describes Mr Bush as a party animal living in the shadow of his esteemed father before he uses religion to turn his life around. He finds a new purpose in life – which is to achieve the presidency ahead of his brother Jeb, who was being groomed for high office by his father.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 2:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Catholic Church Reveals Extent of Forced Labor

Source: Deutsche Welle (8-4-08)

The Catholic Church has issued a list of 5,900 people who were forced by the Nazis to work as gardeners, grave-diggers and hospital orderlies at Catholic facilities in Germany during World War II.
The German church has already paid 1.5 million euros ($2.4 million) in compensation to 587 survivors since their ordeal was made public several years ago.

During the Nazi era, huge numbers of Eastern Europeans were forced to do factory or farm work at low pay, replacing millions of men conscripted into Hitler's army. Employers that are still in existence today have contributed to compensation trusts.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 2:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

"Library of Congress Experience" Debuts April 12

Source: Press Release--Library of Congress (3-27-08)

The Library of Congress–the largest library in the world and the oldest U.S. federal cultural institution–on Saturday, April 12, debuts an immersive, new "Library of Congress Experience," offering visitors unique historical and cultural treasures brought to life through cutting-edge interactive technology and a companion Web site.
The experience comprises a series of new ongoing exhibitions, dozens of interactive kiosks, an inspiring multimedia "overture" on the collections and programs of the Library, and a continuing online educational experience at the upcoming Web site myLOC.gov. All exhibits are free and open to the public.
Detailed information on the Experience can be found at a new microsite, www.loc.gov/experience/.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

If the Obama/Clinton fight goes on, it's bad for Dems right?

Source: Newsweek (4-14-08)

Conventional wisdom says that the longer the Democrats fight over their party's presidential nominee, the greater the chance of a GOP victory in the fall. But an analysis of the races since 1968 shows that in many contests, at least one of the nominations wasn't decided until June; one was fought until August. So is the CW right? Check out our examination of electoral history for the answer. Hint: Bill Clinton's 1992 experience was an anomaly.

Posted on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Oratory is not enough. It often takes a national crisis to persuade Americans to make sacrifices

Source: Evan Thomas & Pat Wingert in Newsweek (4-14-08)

It's a good bet that whoever wins in November will be greener than George W. Bush. The next president is likely to launch the nation on the path toward reducing dangerous CO2 emissions. But any legislation emerging from Congress will probably be no more than a directional signal, a declaration of intent or a down payment—a start, but at best a modest beginning. To go further, to truly tackle the greenhouse effect, will require the one thing from voters that few politicians dare to ask for and fewer achieve: massive public sacrifice.

It takes a very great leader to extract sacrifice from the voters who elected him (or her). Almost always, there is some precipitating event, some calamity, that enables a call to arms. War presidents have seized on provocations (Fort Sumter or Pearl Harbor) or hyped or made up one (the sinking of the Maine, the attacks on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin). During the early days of the cold war, Harry Truman managed to persuade Congress to pay for the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe by exaggerating the Soviet threat to invade the West. (Sometimes, said his Secretary of State Dean Acheson, it is necessary to make things "clearer than the truth.") Advocates of invading Iraq managed to confuse voters into believing that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved with the 9/11 attacks.

But what event will suffice to wake up voters to global warming? Al Gore and his PowerPoint presentations and affecting movie raised the consciousness of opinion makers and many citizens. But scary movies are not enough to make ordinary taxpayers willing to pay higher taxes for fuel, drive much smaller cars and otherwise watch their energy consumption (though Europeans seem to be able to do all the above). If we wait until the water starts lapping over Manhattan to really do something to affect climate change, it will be too late.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 9:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

50 greatest political moments

Source: http://www.politico.com (4-8-08)

At Politico, we love politics for some of the same reasons people love sports: the endless human drama.

Unlike a lot of people, of course, we don’t have the freedom — or, truth be told, the desire — to root for one side or the other to win. But we do have a clear preference for great characters and for watching how they react during moments of high pressure.

It was in this spirit that we sat down to ponder the 50 greatest political moments of the past 50 years.

Like all lists, ours is pretty random. We could have easily come up with other choices — and indeed, we left dozens on the cutting room floor....

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 9:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

67 bodies secretly exhumed from historic NM graveyard

Source: AP (4-8-08)

Working in secret, federal archaeologists have dug up the remains of dozens of soldiers and children near a Civil War-era fort after an informant tipped them off about widespread grave-looting.

The exhumations, conducted from August to October, removed 67 skeletons from the parched desert soil around Fort Craig — 39 men, two women and 26 infants and children, according to two federal archaeologists who helped with the dig.

They also found scores of empty graves and determined 20 had been looted.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saxon criminals?

Source: Oxford Mail (4-6-08)

Archaeologists now believe a dozen skeletons discovered in a mass grave in the centre of Oxford may have belonged to executed criminals from Saxon times.

A team of three archaeologists have been digging in the quadrangle of St John's College in Blackhall Road, off St Giles, for nearly two weeks since the discovery was made.

The bones of 12 or 13 bodies have gradually been uncovered after a body part was discovered 80cm below ground level by diggers excavating the plot before a new quadrangle is built.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Russian-American research team examines origins of whaling culture

Source: http://www.uaf.edu (4-2-08)

Recent findings by a Russian-American research team suggest that prehistoric cultures were hunting whales at least 3,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than was previously known.

University of Alaska Museum of the North archaeology curator Daniel Odess presented the team's findings at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia last week.

"The importance of whaling in arctic prehistory is clear. Prehistoric settlements were situated and defended so that people could hunt whales," says Odess. "Yet, as important as whaling is, we know very little about how, where and when it began."

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bay could reveal Viking secrets (Scotland)

Source: BBC (4-8-08)

A bay in the far north of Scotland is to be searched by archaeologists in the hope of uncovering Viking artefacts.
Items have been found at opposite ends of Dunnet Bay in Caithness, but the links area have not been thoroughly investigated before.

Test pits will be dug and soil samples analysed by a new, community-owned archaeological research centre.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Illinois Style: Much still to be learned about Cahokia Mounds

Source: AP (4-6-08)

It's so much a part of the landscape that metro-east residents often don't even notice it, except when a visiting relative notices: 'Look, there's the mound.'

Rising from what once was an endless grass sea parted by the Mississippi River, Monks Mound isn't even named after the Native American Indians who built it centuries ago, but the Trappist monks who lived there for only five years in the 19th century.

No one knows what the long-vanished people who built the mounds called themselves, much less what they named their terraced mound. Archaeologists call them the Mississippians, and their lives continue to be a mystery whose clues are buried in the mounds scattered throughout the metro-east and far beyond.

During the last three decades, the main part of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site _ what once was 'downtown' for the largest prehistoric settlement on the continent _ has been dubbed a World Heritage Site and turned into a tourist attraction and center for prehistoric research.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vanished: A Pueblo Mystery

Source: NYT (4-8-08)

For five days in late February, Dr. Ware, the director of the Amerind Foundation, an archaeological research center in Dragoon, Ariz., was host to 15 colleagues as they confronted the most vexing and persistent question in Southwestern archaeology: Why, in the late 13th century, did thousands of Anasazi abandon Kayenta, Mesa Verde and the other magnificent settlements of the Colorado Plateau and move south into Arizona and New Mexico?

Scientists once thought the answer lay in impersonal factors like the onset of a great drought or a little ice age. But as evidence accumulates, those explanations have come to seem too pat — and slavishly deterministic. Like people today, the Anasazi (or Ancient Puebloans, as they are increasingly called) were presumably complex beings with the ability to make decisions, good and bad, about how to react to a changing environment. They were not pawns but players in the game.

Looking beyond climate change, some archaeologists are studying the effects of warfare and the increasing complexity of Anasazi society. They are looking deeper into ancient artifacts and finding hints of an ideological struggle, clues to what was going through the Anasazi mind.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Remains of more 9/11 victims identified

Source: AP (4-7-08)

NEW YORK - The city has identified the remains of four more victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, including one man whose DNA was found beneath a service road that was initially paved over, officials said Monday.

Ronald Keith Milstein's remains were found beneath the road that was built to carry cleanup and construction trucks in and out of the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the city medical examiner's office said. Milstein of Queens was 54 when he was killed.

More than 400 human bone pieces have been recovered from beneath the road, which has become known as "Haul Road" because of the hauling of debris.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UN expert stands by Nazi comments

Source: BBC (4-8-08)

The next UN investigator into Israeli conduct in the occupied territories has stood by comments comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Richard Falk said he believed that up to now Israel had been successful in avoiding the criticism that it was due.

Professor Falk is scheduled to take up his post for the UN Human Rights Council later in the year.
But Israel wants his mandate changed to probe Palestinian actions as well.

Professor Falk said he drew the comparison between the treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi record of collective atrocity, because of what he described as the massive Israeli punishment directed at the entire population of Gaza.

He said he understood that it was a provocative thing to say, but at the time, last summer, he had wanted to shake the American public from its torpor.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

'Hoodies' were the scourge of Medieval London

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-8-08)

They are the symbol of today's disaffected youth but a historian has revealed that the hoodie-wearing yob is not just a modern problem.

Professor Robert Bartlett, who is an expert on the Middle Ages, said hooded tops were also the garment of choice for 12th-century juvenile delinquents.

The teenage apprentice boys of London were lawless, violent and the scourge of the capital.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Omagh bomb relatives launch civil case (Northern Ireland)

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-8-08)

Relatives of those killed in the Omagh bombing have become the first victims of terrorism to sue the people they blame for the "massacre of the innocents".

Six families who lost loved ones or suffered injury in the worst single atrocity of Northern Ireland's Troubles launched a £14 million civil case against five dissident republicans.

It came almost 10 years after a Real IRA car bomb killed 29 people, including the mother of unborn twins, devastating the market town in Co Tyrone and injuring hundreds.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 7:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Survivor recalls horrors of Cambodia genocide

Source: CNN (4-7-08)

A recently disclosed memo gave U.S. interrogators the ability to use harsh methods -- what many call "torture" -- to extract information from terrorist suspects after 9/11. Around the world, critics saw it as another blow to American prestige and moral authority.

The 2003 document also invokes wartime powers to protect interrogators who violate the Geneva Conventions, for example, by the use of waterboarding -- when a prisoner is made to think he is drowning.

Half a world away, the divisive debate over whether waterboarding constitutes torture comes into sharp relief at the infamous S-21, Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

This is where the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge imprisoned and brutalized its enemies from 1975 to 1979. I visited the once secret S-21, now a museum, with Van Nath, a former inmate. He remembers being brought here blindfolded and terrified:

"I thought that was the end of my life," he told me. "In my room people kept dying, one or two every day."

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 7:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Swedes find Viking-era Arab coins

Source: BBC (4-4-08)

Swedish archaeologists have discovered a rare hoard of Viking-age silver Arab coins near Stockholm's Arlanda airport.

About 470 coins were found on 1 April at an early Iron Age burial site. They date from the 7th to 9th Century, when Viking traders travelled widely.

There has been no similar find in that part of Sweden since the 1880s.

Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 7:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 7, 2008

Day on Campaign Trail to Remember Dr. King

Source: NYT (4-5-08)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a cabinet-level poverty czar and Senator John McCain said he was wrong to have voted a quarter century ago against a federal holiday in memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as both presidential candidates converged here on Friday to appeal to black voters on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination.

Senator Barack Obama, who polls show is the overwhelming choice for president so far among African-American primary voters, spent his day hopscotching around Indiana, North Dakota and Montana, although Dr. King’s life and legacy were the subject of an emotional speech he delivered to a racially mixed crowd at a forum at a high school in Fort Wayne, Ind.

From the Memphis church where Dr. King delivered his last sermon the evening before he was assassinated by James Earl Ray, Mrs. Clinton gave her support to an idea long advocated by the King family: a cabinet position that she said would be “solely and fully devoted to ending poverty as we know it, that will focus the attention of our nation on this issue and never let it go.”

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 6:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

So Obama Can't Bowl, So What?

Source: NYT (4-6-08)

Is it even possible for a grown man to bowl a 37?...

Like presidents and would-be presidents who have come before, Mr. Obama had sought to assure voters he was just like them by attempting to play a game. Beginning with William Howard Taft, who was a comically bad golfer, and continuing through George W. Bush, who bruised his face after falling off his mountain bike, presidents and candidates have risked all self-respect in the relentless pursuit of sport. Along the way, they usually reveal something about their character.

Lyndon B. Johnson tried golf, reluctantly, after an aide persuaded him that he could use the links as a place to buttonhole recalcitrant senators. L.B.J. said, “One lesson you’d better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never get out on a golf course and beat the president.” Heeding that advice was nearly impossible, however, because L.B.J. routinely blasted 300 shots per round.

Jimmy Carter went fishing one evening in 1979. The Associated Press told it this way: “A ‘killer rabbit’ attacked President Carter on a recent trip to Plains, Ga., penetrating Secret Service security and forcing the chief executive to beat back the beast with a canoe paddle. The rabbit, which the president later guessed was fleeing in panic from some predator, actually swam toward a canoe from which Carter was fishing in a pond. It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared, and making straight for the president.”

Mr. Carter escaped uninjured, but the same could not be said for his reputation. Two months after surviving the killer rabbit, the president made what came to be known as his “malaise speech,” in which he spoke about Americans’ “crisis of confidence.” A connection between those two events was never proved.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 6:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Battle rages over Revolutionary War museum at Valley Forge

Source: AP (4-7-08)

After years of debate, a plan is finally in place to build an American Revolution museum complex on private land within Valley Forge National Historical Park. But opponents are taking another stand against the ambitious — they say too ambitious and commercialized — project.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 5:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New book tells the story of Chalabi ... the man who brought you the Iraq War

Source: Aram Roston at the website of MSNBC (He's the author of the new book, The Man Who Pushed America to War) (4-7-08)

His inner circle called him The Doctor, because of his Ph.D in mathematics. Some of his operatives called him Our Big Brother. The Central Intelligence Agency called him by a code name — which intelligence sources reveal as Pulsar One. Whatever you call him, Ahmad Abdul Hadi Chalabi, a shrewd Iraqi Arab from a family of Shiite bankers, literally changed the world. The United States, which he referred to so respectfully as a “strategic ally,” had sponsored him, flown him and his people to Iraq, even toppled Saddam Hussein for him, as he would boast. The Iraq War has many critics and some fierce defenders, but many insiders on both sides of the debate agree on this: without Chalabi there would have been no war.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 3:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

40 years later questions about James Earl Ray linger

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (4-4-08)

He called himself Galt — Eric Starvo Galt.

He drove in from Alabama on the weekend of March 23, 1968, and paid $10.50 for a week's rent in a seedy rooming house on 14th Street near Peachtree, in Atlanta's hippie district.

Three weeks later, FBI agents discovered he had left something behind in his hurriedly vacated room: a map of Atlanta with the locations of a particular church, office and home circled in pencil. A thumbprint on the map linked the stranger to fingerprints found on items dropped outside another seedy rooming house in Memphis, including a rifle.

Eric Galt, the FBI announced, was the alias of an escaped prisoner named James Earl Ray, and he was wanted for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

Forty years ago today, a single sniper shot ended King's life in Memphis. It could have happened in Atlanta. Investigators believed that Ray had followed King for 2 1/2 weeks, from California to Alabama to Georgia, where he settled into Midtown, then a transitional neighborhood light-years away from the high-rent, high-rise district of today.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Battle site protectors prevail (KY)

Source: http://www.kentucky.com (4-4-08)

By a 4-1 vote Thursday night, the Perryville City Council rejected a proposed subdivision that would have been near Kentucky's largest Civil War battlefield. "I'm relieved," said Sherry Robinson, a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who had spoken against the proposal. "Right now, we're ecstatic." Marion "Pete" Coyle Jr., the landowner who had wanted to develop a portion of his farm on U.S. 150 just west of downtown Perryville, had little comment after the vote. "I'm upset right now," Coyle said as he left City Hall.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Charleston's Civil War legacy lies hidden, for now

Source: http://www.wvgazette.com (4-6-08)

Standing outside the First Bank of Charleston, it's hard to picture exactly where Col. Joseph Andrew Jackson Lightburn dug in his log breastworks and aimed his cannons across the Elk and Kanawha rivers to slow the advancing Confederate army.

"My guess is it was over there, in the bank's parking lot," says John Bullock, an engineer, member of the Charleston Land Trust and, on this day, amateur historian and Civil War buff. After walking around a bit, Bullock decides the fortifications might have been placed a block or two away.

Though Bullock has a map, hand-drawn by a participant of the Sept. 13, 1862, Battle of Charleston, it's no match for the grid of city streets that overlays the West Side 146 years later. The map shows several rivers and streams and one road (Point Pleasant & Charleston Road, now Washington Street). Small symbols indicate gun placements, a handful of homes and graveyards.

But the crude map is not to scale, leaving modern-day observers to make educated guesses. Where was that cornfield near downtown - at the site of Charleston Town Center or a bit farther east?
Since he first learned a couple of years ago that Charleston was the site of a Civil War battle, Bullock has been on a mission to not only educate others but to create a lasting reminder - perhaps in the form of a historical trail.

Virginia markets its history well, he says. "It's hard to drive in Virginia without seeing one of those brown signs that indicate a federal or historical site." Why not bring some of those brown signs to Charleston?

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Confederate Plates Bill Going No Where (FL)

Source: http://www.firstcoastnews.com (3-31-08)

There are more than 100 specialty license plates in Florida, and now they want another. However, this one may be controversial.

Representative Don Brown of DuFuniak Springs proposed a bill that creates a license plate displaying the Confederate Heritage Flag.

The bill has no co-sponsors and is considered “dead” because no committees have taken the bill up for debate.

Representative Brown admitted he thought it would stir controversy.

“It is not about racism, it’s not about slavery, it is about an acknowledgement that many of these people’s families have documented that they had friends and family or family who lost their lives fighting for a cause they believed in,” said Brown.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:37 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Civil War Buffs Work to Restore Fort Lincoln's Earthen Walls

Source: http://www.wtopnews.com (4-5-08)

SCOTLAND, Md. (AP) - Civil war buffs are headed to St. Mary's County this morning to work on restoring the last remaining earthen walls of Fort Lincoln.

Fort Lincoln was the site of Hammond Hospital, built by the Union Army after General George McClellan's unsuccessful campaign to capture Richmond. The site later became a prison for Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

April brings mystery tribute to grave site

Source: http://fredericksburg.com (4-7-08)

Raleigh, NC: Each April, a stranger creeps into Oakwood Cemetery and drapes a single gravestone with a black sash.

He lights a candle in tribute to a doomed Confederate hanged for firing a last-ditch shot at Raleigh's Yankee occupiers.

Chuck Gooch has spent 21 years as the cemetery's superintendent and hasn't any idea who leaves the sash on the tomb of the soldier known only as Lt. Walsh. "We usually leave it up until it starts looking bad or the wind takes it down," he said.

After 20 years, the soldier's secret admirer remains a small-time legend among history buffs who like to guess at his identity. The guessing begins anew each April 13, the death date of the hotheaded Texan with no known first name.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

$103M museum-visitor center to help orient visitors to Gettysburg

Source: AP (4-7-08)

Without an itinerary, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the vastness of Gettysburg’s battlefield — a 6,000-acre expanse dotted with nearly 1,400 memorials and monuments to North America’s bloodiest battle.

Park officials are hoping that a $103 million museum and visitor center scheduled to open April 14 will give visitors a better starting point for exploring the site where Union armies beat back Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s assault on northern territory, and where Abraham Lincoln delivered his most famous speech.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Cities to declare Confederate History Month next week

Source: http://www.shreveporttimes.com (4-6-08)

Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover and Bossier City Mayor Lorenz Walker will declare Confederate History Month in the two cities next week, repeating a similar declaration from last year.

Shreveport was the prize sought by Union President Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 Red River Campaign that culminated in the back-to-back battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. In June 1865, Shreveport was the last capital city of the Confederate States to surrender to Union forces, carving a unique spot in the city's history.

It also was the city to which Confederate President Jefferson Davis was headed when he was captured by Union forces, and the last place on land where the Confederate flag waved, he penned in his memoirs.

Scott Solice, a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, said he wonders why Shreveport and the rest of northwest Louisiana have not begun to plan ways to capture tourist dollars with this heritage for the approaching sesquicentennial of the Civil War, which will be observed nationally from 2011-15. Civil War centennial events from 1961-65 drew tourists globally to most Southern states and a few Union states, such as Pennsylvania and Vermont.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

‘Confederate Heritage Month’ Tries to Ignore Historical Injustice

Source: Andrew Wagner in The Breeze, James Madison University's student newspaper (4-7-08)

[Andrew Wagner is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wis.]

Should anyone cherish a society in which 40 percent of the population was once enslaved? A society in which the proportion of slaves to freedmen was one to 25? That, after all, was the reality of life in the Confederate States of America.

Of course, the answer to this question is a personal one. However, when governments start getting involved in answering this question, the situation rapidly gets out of hand....

So far this year, two states — Mississippi and Georgia — have signed and sealed proclamations declaring April to be a month for Confederate remembrance.

Mississippi’s proclamation approaches the issue in a relatively neutral manner. Their document proclaims a Confederate Memorial Day when “we recognize all those who served in the Confederacy” that gives Americans the opportunity “to reflect upon our nation’s past” and “gain insight from our mistakes and successes.”

All in all, the document isn’t very controversial. While my personal insight from looking at the history of the Confederacy is that it should be cursed rather than remembered, everyone’s entitled to a different personal opinion.

Whereas Mississippi takes an appropriately subdued approach to the topic, Georgia’s proclamation makes a mockery of history and the reality of life in the Confederacy. Georgia’s Confederate History Month proclamation asserts “Georgia has long cherished her Confederate history.” This alone isn’t too alarming, although I question why anyone would want to publicly announce how much they cherish a slave society.

But the most disturbing part comes immediately thereafter. Here, the proclamation claims to recognize the “many African Americans both free and slave who saw action in the Confederate Armed Forces” as well as those who “participated in the manufacture of products for the war effort.”

The net effect of this language immensely confuses the issues surrounding the Confederacy. In this rendition of history, it almost sounds as if blacks and whites all banded together to fight for states’ rights and liberty. Considering that only 1.5 percent of the Confederacy’s population was free blacks, I somehow doubt this was the case.

I bet the slaves who were forced to work in the war industries had a much different perspective on what was going on there. Furthermore, I suspect the many slaves who worked in the cotton plantations that helped fund the Southern war effort didn’t have a particularly positive view of their situation either. In fact, I suspect they were much more likely to curse what they were doing than to cherish it.

The idea that white and black southerners willingly joined together to fight northerners simply isn’t supported by the available evidence. What little joint fighting and effort that occurred is insignificant, especially given that the South did not create a program to offer slaves freedom in return for fighting until the last few months of the war. It’s clear to me that on this subject the state of Georgia is fundamentally wrong. Under the guise of remembering the tragedy of the Civil War, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has affixed his signature to a document that obscures and molds history into a parody of itself.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:25 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Listed protection for Cold War bunker (UK)

Source: http://www.huntspost.co.uk (3-10-08)

A COLD War bunker, designed to withstand a direct hit by a nuclear bomb and built less than 20 years ago, has received one of the highest categories of listing in English Heritage's register of buildings of architectural and historic importance.

But the 17th century riverside inn, the Pike and Eel in Needingworth, has been de-listed because of the quality and size of 20th century additions.

The "Magic Mountain", as the former US Air Force avionics building at RAF Alconbury is known to planners, was one of the last of a number of hardened structures designed to protect U2 and TR-1 spy planes at the base.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

U.S. soldier returns to My Lai

Source: AP (3-15-08)

Lawrence Colburn returned to My Lai and found hope at the site of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War.

On the 40th anniversary of the massacre of up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers, the former helicopter gunner was reunited Saturday with a young man he rescued from rampaging U.S. soldiers.

On March 16, 1968, Colburn found 8-year-old Do Ba clinging to his mother's corpse in a ditch full of blood and the bodies of more than 100 people who had been mowed down. Nearly all the victims were unarmed women, children and elderly.

"Today I see Do Ba with a wife and a baby," said Colburn, a member of a three-man U.S. Army helicopter crew that landed in the midst of the massacre and intervened to stop the killing. "He's transformed himself from being a broken, lonely man. Now he's complete. He's a perfect example of the human spirit, of the will to survive."

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Web Site Offers Vietnam War Records

Source: AP (3-26-08)

The National Archives is joining with a Web site to make historical records of tens of thousands of deceased Vietnam War veterans available electronically for the first time.

The interactive site — http://www.footnote.com — is a Web re-creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. The site allows access to thousands of pages of casualty records and agency photos. People can search by name, hometown, birthdate, tour date, or dozens of other categories.

Such information now is typically found only at National Archives locations, including the headquarters in College Park, Md., and by poring through files organized by topic. That makes searches a hit-or-miss proposition with long odds of finding relevant information, the agency said.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Unique Tribute to War Photojournalists at Newseum

Source: AP (4-4-08)

Nearly four decades after their deaths, four combat photographers received a museum burial Thursday as family, friends and former colleagues recalled how the men gave their lives to show the world "Vietnam as they saw it."

A UH-1 Huey helicopter carrying the four photographers was shot down over a steep mountainside in southern Laos on Feb. 10, 1971. Human remains were recovered years later, in 1998, along with camera parts, film, broken watches and bits of wreckage.

The remains have been interred at the foot of the Newseum's soaring glass memorial dedicated to fallen journalists. A small silver plaque was inscribed with the names of the four: Larry Burrows, 44, of Life magazine; Henri Huet, 43, of The Associated Press; Kent Potter, 23, of United Press International, and Keisaburo Shimamoto, 34, a freelancer working for Newsweek.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Using GPS historians find exact location of Revolutionary War battle (North Carolina)

Source: http://www.thetimesnews.com (3-31-08)

The first breaths of a Revolutionary War turning point were breathed in Alamance County, claim local historians who say they've pinpointed the exact location of the Battle of Clapp's Mill.

At a tour of local battle sites Saturday, Jeff Bright and Stewart Dunaway unveiled their estimation of events at Clapp's Mill which led to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Using GPS technology and topographical map overlays, Bright and Dunaway located the spot, just off the banks of Beaver Creek, now submerged in Lake Mackintosh, where the battle's namesake mill operated.

"I'm not a historian. I'm a sociologist by trade but I'm proud of my history and Alamance County and I want this land to be preserved," Bright said, leading a tour just beyond Lake Mackintosh Park and Marina and a stone's throw from the Guilford County Line. "I had friends growing up who played here. We found all kinds of things around this site: horseshoes, musket balls and a button with ‘London 1765' on it."

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

ANZAC Tradition Honoured in NZ Post Stamps

Source: Scoop.com (4-2-08)

The many New Zealanders who lost their lives fighting on foreign fields are being remembered and honoured in New Zealand Post’s latest Stamp Issue; The ANZAC Series – Stories of Nationhood.

While the acronym ANZAC - Australia and New Zealand Army Corps - is now synonymous in New Zealand and Australia with service people who have served as peacekeepers in international hotspots and supported allied forces in international conflicts, it originated from those soldiers who were brought together on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915.

There, on beaches and hills where almost 3,000 New Zealanders and over 8,000 Australians made the ultimate sacrifice, the ANZAC tradition was forged. It remains to this day an intensely shared emotional experience. The pride those soldiers took in the name and the comradeship that developed has endured, where today the ANZAC tradition forms an important part of what it is to be a New Zealander.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Anti-Semitism group protests Nazi-themed cosmetics ad in South Korea

Source: AP (4-4-08)

A leading anti-Semitism watchdog group called Friday for a South Korean cosmetics company to halt an ad campaign with Nazi references.

The Coreana Cosmetics Co. television ad for a skin lotion shows a young woman in a short skirt and military-style trench coat, holding a soldier's cap that appears to have the swastika-gripping eagle Nazi insignia. Background noises of an explosion and crowds cheering in response to a man's unintelligible speech are heard.

A version shown in previews and posted on the Web contained the slogan: "Even Hitler didn't have the East and West."

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement that it sent a letter to company leaders calling for the ad campaign to be withdrawn.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:58 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German foreign minister suggests joint German-Polish historical exhibition

Source: AP (4-5-08)

Germany's foreign minister has suggested that Germany and Poland could organize an exhibition that would examine "the whole spectrum" of the two neighbors' history.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier suggested in an article for Saturday's edition of the Polish daily Dziennik that the show could mark the 40th anniversary in 2010 of a groundbreaking visit to Poland by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.

Brandt dropped to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto monument in a dramatic show of humility over Nazi Germany's actions in the war and the Holocaust.

"Why don't we ask German and Polish historians on this occasion to conceive a major exhibition that can be shown prominently in Warsaw and Berlin?" Steinmeier wrote in the piece, which his ministry released before his departure Sunday on a visit to Poland.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Muslim graves desecrated in French WW1 cemetery

Source: Reuters (4-6-08)

Vandals desecrated 148 graves in the Muslim section of a military cemetery in northern France, hanging a pig's head on one of the headstones, police said on Sunday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the attack "a hateful act" and around 100 police were sent to the Notre-Dame de Lorette cemetery near Arras to hunt for clues.

State prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi said the vandals struck overnight, daubing insults on the graves.

"They directly referred to Islam and there were also insults directed at the justice minister," Valensi said, referring to Rachida Dati, whose parents came from North Africa.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Appian Way, the queen of Roman roads, is under threat

Source: International Herald Tribune (4-6-08)

ROME: In ancient times the Appian Way, which links Rome to the southern city of Brindisi, was known as the regina viarum, the queen of the roads. But these days its crown appears to be tarnished by chronic traffic congestion, vandalism and, some of its guardians grumble, illegal development.

"Look at this!" bristled Rita Paris, the Italian state archaeological official responsible for the Appian Way, peering through a weathered bamboo screen lining the road while bumpily maneuvering her car through a patch of uneven ancient stones. "You can bet that it was once a canopy that was walled in and transformed into a home."

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

William Caxton's prayer book saved by National Trust

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-7-08)

The earliest-known printed book bearing the stamp of William Caxton, the father of British printing, has been saved for the nation by the National Trust at a cost of almost £500,000.

The book, dated 1487 and printed in Latin, is the only surviving example of the earliest edition of the Sarum Missal, the most commonly used rite for celebrating Mass in pre-Reformation Britain.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Act repeal could make Franz Herzog von Bayern new King of England and Scotland

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-7-08)

Gordon Brown is considering repealing the 1701 Act of Settlement as a way of healing a historic injustice by ending the prohibition against Catholics taking the throne.

But doing so would have the unforeseen consequence of making a 74-year-old German aristocrat the new King of England and Scotland.

Without the Act, Franz Herzog von Bayern, the current Duke of Bavaria, would be the rightful heir to the British Crown under the Stuart line.

The bachelor, who lives alone in the vast Nymphenberg Palace in Munich, is the blood descendant of the 17th-century King Charles I.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Margaret Thatcher 'would win election today'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-7-08)

Margaret Thatcher at her peak would sweep to power in a general election held today, according to an opinion poll for The Daily Telegraph.

The YouGov survey emphatically confirms the enduring political appeal of the country's first woman prime minister, who left office undefeated 18 years ago.

Baroness Thatcher comfortably surpassed Tony Blair when people were asked who they would pick to lead the country at the height of their powers if they had the choice. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, trailed far behind both - but was still ahead of Gordon Brown.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient stone tools found on Australia mine site

Source: Reuters (4-7-08)

A large cache of stone tools estimated to be up to 35,000 years old has been discovered on the site of one of Australia's largest iron ore mines, sparking calls on Monday for the site's preservation.

Archaeologists uncovered the tools on the site of the A$1 billion ($920 million) Hope Downs iron ore mine, about 310 kilometres (192 miles) south of Port Hedland, in western Australia's ore-rich Pilbara region.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Possible Nazi Theme of Grand Prix Boss's Orgy Draws Calls to Quit (London)

Source: NYT (4-7-08)

Few scandals in recent years have provoked as much anger and dismay across Europe as the saga of Max Mosley, the overseer of grand prix motor racing who made tabloid news last weekend in a front-page exposé and accompanying Web video showing him in a sadomasochistic orgy with five supposed prostitutes in a London sex “dungeon.”

But beyond the licentiousness of the episode, it was the suggestion of Nazi undertones in the role-playing during the session in a basement in London’s fashionable Chelsea district that led to demands for Mr. Mosley’s resignation as president of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de l’Automobile. Known as the F.I.A., it is the international governing body of motor sports, and has presided over the expansion of Formula One racing into one of the world’s richest sports.

Family history has added to the notoriety: Mr. Mosley, 67, is the younger son of Britain’s 1930s fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, and the society beauty Diana Mitford, whose secret wedding in Berlin in October 1936 was held at the home of the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and included Hitler as a guest of honor.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

14 Street NW, 1968: Where the riots began in Washington DC

Source: WaPo (4-6-08)

T he intersection where it all began that catastrophic night, the once-ragged corner of 14th and U streets, is now a crossroads at the center of Washington affluence.

Seventh Street is a neon-lit pathway lined with boutiques, taverns, restaurants serving fusion cuisine and a world-class convention center.

On H Street, east of Union Station, condos sell for more than $1 million, and new nightclubs throb with the young and hip.

Forty years ago, the conditions on Seventh Street NW, 14th Street NW and H Street NE -- three corridors at the core of Washington's cultural and economic soul -- were beyond desperate.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Historic Building in Quebec City Nearly Destroyed in Fire, Collapses

Source: AP (4-5-08)

One of Quebec's most historic buildings was caught up in a massive fire and collapsed late Friday. No injuries were reported, police said.

Witnesses said there was a fire followed by an explosion at the Quebec City Armory, which was built in 1884 and houses the Voltigeurs, a Canadian Forces reserve unit and the oldest French infantry regiment in the country.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:29 PM | Comments (0) | Top

DNA tests may solve mystery of Anastasia

Source: AP (4-3-08)

Answers to the mystery of what befell the heirs of the last czar of Russia nearly a century ago may rest behind locked laboratory doors in Moscow and New England.

DNA test results to be announced within months on bone fragments found in Russia last year could prove that none of Czar Nicholas II's family escaped execution in the Bolshevik Revolution — not even Anastasia, the teenage princess whose identity various women have claimed over the decades.

Evgeny Rogaev, who heads a genetic research team working in Moscow and at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, is not immune to the effect his work could have on how his fellow Russian citizens view that turbulent chapter in their history.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The other civil rights leaders

Source: Memphis Magazine (4-1-08)

The civil rights struggle in Memphis during the late 1960s is usually defined by two names: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the world-famous practitioner of nonviolent protests, and Henry Loeb, the stubborn mayor who opposed him during the sanitation workers' strike.

But many others — men and women, white and black — played key roles in the battle for human dignity. Some worked behind the scenes; others stood at King's side. For the first time in our magazine's long history, we tracked down ten of the most important figures from that tumultuous period. Here, in their own words, they tell what it was like in those dark days leading up to the death of King, and where they were when they heard the awful news.

Forty years have passed, but their words and memories remain as strong
and relevant as they were during 1968. While most of us are merely passive readers of history, these brave men and women actually helped change it. They are the true pioneers of the civil rights movement in America.

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 4, 2008

Answers due on WWII mystery (Australian sub disaster)

Source: AP (4-4-08)

A remote-controlled submarine scouring the shipwrecked remains of an Australian warship has revealed new clues to a World War II battle that cost more than 700 lives. But the mystery persists: What caused Australia's worst maritime tragedy?

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 2:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bush library searches for Web site name

Source: Dallas Morning News (3-31-08)

While President Bush's advisers were taking offers on an ideal spot for his library and museum, they probably should have paid more attention to the virtual real-estate market.

Officials finally settled on Southern Methodist University in Dallas to house the $250 million complex.

But online, some of the very best addresses are gone — snapped up for a mere fistful of dollars by squatters who have no connection to the library yet hope to make fun of the president, protect him or simply cash in on his name.

At one time, the Bush Library Foundation owned the easiest Web site to remember: www.GeorgeWBushLibrary.com.

But whether on purpose or because of an oversight — foundation spokesman Taylor Griffin wasn't sure — it lost that domain name last year. Illuminati Karate, a Web company in Raleigh, N.C., picked it up for less than $10.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:49 PM | Comments (1) | Top

April 7th is Not the 75th Anniversary of the End of National Prohibition

Source: PRweb (4-3-08)

Bob Skilnik, author of "Beer & Food: An American History" (ISBN 0977808610, Jefferson Press, Hardcover, $24.95), argues that industry embellishments and poor research have distorted the true date of Repeal on December 5, 1933, which signified the revocation of the 18th Amendment and the enactment of the 21st Amendment and brought back the manufacture and sale of all alcoholic beverages.

"Congressional events leading up to April 7, 1933 allowed only the resumption of sales for legal beer with an alcoholic strength of no more than 3.2% alcohol by volume (abv), weak by today's standards. Congress had earlier passed the so-called Cullen-Harrison Bill which redefined what constituted a legally 'intoxicating' beverage. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the bill on March 23, 1933. The bill's passage took the teeth out of the bite of the Volstead Act of 1919 and raised the Prohibition-era legal limit of alcoholic drinks from .05% abv to 3.2% abv."

"Bringing breweries back online on April 7, 1933 in states whose legislatures agreed to go 'wet' again gave a tremendous shot in the arm of an economy in the throes of the Depression. In just forty-eight hours, $25,000,000 had been pumped into various beer-related trades as diverse as bottling manufacturers to the sawdust wholesalers whose product lay strewn on the floors of saloons. For the first day of nationwide beer sales, it was estimated that the federal tax for beer brought in $7,500,000 to the United States Treasury."

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

At least 1 teen in Confederate monument defacing to admit charges (Alabama)

Source: AP (4-3-08)

A lawyer for one of three white teens accused of defacing a Confederate monument at the state Capitol says his client will admit to the vandalism, which he says was done as a statement against slavery.

The three males, who were all 17 at the time of the crime, are scheduled to go to trial in juvenile court on April 10. They were charged with first-degree criminal mischief and their names have not been released because of their age.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

For 50 Years This Has Been the Symbol Of Peace. Far Out

Source: WaPo (4-4-08)

The peace symbol -- three simple lines within a circle -- turns 50 today. It's had a colorful and often turbulent life, which is odd considering that it's supposed to symbolize, you know, peace.

Unveiled at a British ban-the-bomb rally on April 4, 1958, the peace symbol's peak of potency was in the 1960s, when it was the emblem of the anti-Vietnam War movement and all things groovily counterculture. (Said its late creator, British graphic designer Gerald Holtom: "I drew myself . . . a man in despair . . . put a circle around it to represent the world.") The symbol has marched in service of many causes over the years: civil rights, women's rights, environmentalism, gay rights, anti-apartheid, the nuclear-freeze movement and the latter-day antiwar crowd.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:14 PM | Comments (1) | Top

The retreat MLK visited for prayer & discussion

Source: NYT (4-4-08)

ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. — In the hour between sunset and nightfall, the view from this slate-blue cabin consists of a steadily darkening palette. The salt marsh silvers into stone gray, the grassy hummocks ash away into soft black. A blue heron, perhaps feeling conspicuously colorful, flies away.

The scene was intended to soothe the sore eyes of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But as evidence of just how much he needed the kind of solace it offered, Dr. King died before the cabin was finished. He was assassinated 40 years ago on Friday.

The cabin is part of the Penn Center, founded in 1862 as one of the country’s first schools for freed slaves and used more than 100 years later by Dr. King as a retreat center for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Decade on and still no report on Bloody Sunday (UK)

Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk (4-3-08)

Ten years to the day after Lord Saville opened his investigation into Bloody Sunday, families today remained in the dark as to when the report would be published.

A spokeswoman for the inquiry - which probed the deaths of 13 men in the Bogside on January 30, 1972 and another man who died later - told the Telegraph that the report was "not imminent".

On the tenth anniversary of the inquiry's start, with unionists again attacking the mounting costs, the families said they were still waiting for answers.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Pioneering British engineer also first to use Portland cement, it turns out

Source: http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk (4-3-08)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel is often credited as being the first man to master many of the engineering innovations that fuelled Britain’s industrial revolution. Now, it seems, Portland cement can be added to the list.

Archaeologists working on the site of Brunel’s Great Western Dockyard development next to Brunel’s ss Great Britain, have discovered what is thought to be the first ever substantial use of Portland cement in the construction of a major building.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

After 1,500 years as a ruin, gladiators' stadium to be restored

Source: Independent (UK) (4-3-08)

The strip's last big show was in AD549. Then the Barbarians arrived and laid it to waste, and for the next millenium and a half it was no more than a very large allotment with a fancy name.

But now, after the centuries of neglect and years of debate and campaigning, Circus Maximus is finally to get some attention. Beginning on 20 June, the city's archeological authorities are to begin a careful and respectful restoration.

Eugenio La Rocca, Superintendent of Rome and lecturere in archeology at Rome's Sapienza University, said: "We are trying to realise the old dreams that Rome has maintained from the 19th century up to the present. We will do our best to restore this site, which was of the utmost importance in our history.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Moravian College plans to dismantle Colonial root cellars to build dorm

Source: http://www.mcall.com (4-3-08)

Moravian College has decided to buck the recommendation of state historians and dismantle recently discovered root cellars, which may be as old as Bethlehem, to make way for a $25 million dormitory and classroom building.

The root cellars are in the middle of a footprint for the new building that is scheduled to open next year on the Priscilla Payne Hurd Campus.

''We're committed to honoring and documenting history, but at the same time, we are also committed to safe, affordable and quality housing for students,'' college spokesman Michael Wilson said.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Remains of largest telescope in the world found in Cambridge

Source: http://www.huliq.com (4-3-08)

An archaeological dig in Cambridge has uncovered surprising ancient remains and the foundations of the world’s largest telescope of the late Victorian era.

Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit, recently working at the site of the new Kavli Institute for Cosmology in the grounds of the University’s observatory in west Cambridge, have unearthed an extraordinary series of deposits.

The Observatory hill-top has long been known as both a location of early settlement and, in Medieval times, as Gritrow, a hamlet specialising in gravel quarrying. Accordingly, the site was peppered with oblong pits characteristic of small-scale quarrying, themselves dated to the 16-18th centuries.

However, within their fills were also found significant quantities of Iron Age and Early Roman pottery, indicating that the early settlement had been destroyed and redeposited by the quarrying.

Moreover, appearing like some sort of giant bull’s-eye, cut down through the quarries was the 13m diameter, brick-and-concrete ring foundation (with an enormous plinth in its centre) of the Newell Telescope.

Erected on the site in 1891, and having a 25” lens, in its day this was the largest telescope in the world. It stood there until 1955 when its mechanism was moved to Athens.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

UK museum seeks cash to keep a rare astrolabe in public hands

Source: Nature News (4-2-08)

The fate of a fourteenth-century pocket calculator is hanging in the balance between museum ownership and private sale.

The device is a brass astrolabe quadrant that opens a new window on the mathematical and astronomical literacy of the Middle Ages, experts say. It can tell the time from the position of the Sun, calculate the heights of tall objects, and work out the date of Easter.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Aztecs devised sophisticated arithmetic system

Source: Reuters (4-3-08)

Using written symbols such as hearts, arrows and hands, the ancient Aztecs maintained an arithmetic system that was far more complex than previously understood, scientists said on Thursday.

The Aztecs, an empire in central Mexico toppled by Spanish invaders in 1519, has long been recognized for its sophistication in architecture, engineering, astronomy and other fields. And the new research confirms arithmetic can be added to the list.

The researchers examined hundreds of drawings in two manuscripts dating back to between 1540 and 1544 that were used to document agricultural properties by the Aztec people in the city-state of Tepetlaoztoc, near modern Mexico City.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

If King had lived, what now?

Source: AP (4-3-08)

The preacher in him would have continued speaking out against injustice, war and maybe even pop culture. He would likely not have run for president. He probably would have endured more harassment from J. Edgar Hoover.

Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?

For his children, however, the speculation is more personal. They know their lives would have turned out differently had they had their beloved father to guide and teach them.

Instead, history moves on, remaking the world in myriad ways. The nation has grappled with issues of race and inequity without the benefit of King's evolving wisdom. A generation has come of age celebrating him in a national holiday, like other figures of the frozen past.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Fossilized feces upends timeline of human's arrival in North America

Source: Boston Globe (4-3-08)

Fossilized excrement found in an Oregon cave has given scientists the hardest evidence to date that humans roamed the New World at least 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.

The prehistoric poop, deposited in a cave some 14,300 years ago, contains DNA from the forebears of modern-day Native Americans, according to the research.

The discovery reported today by the journal Science added fresh weight to emerging theories that Stone Age people from Asia somehow bypassed ice sheets sealing off North America before 11,000 BC. Nearly all scholars agree that humans were present by then, but until recently few archaeologists accepted that an earlier arrival was even possible because of the formidable ice barriers.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tourists 'stripping ancient Rome bare'

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-3-08)

Rome's ancient monuments are so poorly guarded that tourists are taking away mementos of their visit to the Eternal City with impunity.

Archaeologists said yesterday that Trajan's Forum, in the heart of the city's classical ruins, had been stripped of all the fragments of statues and shards of amphorae that adorned the site until recently.

To highlight the problem, a reporter from Il Messaggero newspaper carried away large boxes full of ancient artefacts during the daytime without being challenged.

An archaeologist working at the site, who asked not to be named, said: "Everything has been taken from Trajan's Forum. The close-circuit television cameras are pointless, and the gates are practically non-existent. Even a child could climb over them.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:46 PM | Comments (0) | Top

In Test, Few Students Are Proficient Writers (US)

Source: NYT (4-3-08)

About one-third of America’s eighth-grade students, and about one in four high school seniors, are proficient writers, according to results of a nationwide test released on Thursday.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sister remembers 'horrible moment' King was killed

Source: CNN (4-3-08)

Christine King Farris was sewing an Easter dress for her daughter in their Atlanta home one rainy April evening when the nightly news was interrupted by a special report.

The newscaster announced that Farris' younger brother, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Another update came minutes later: King was in critical condition.

"It was a horrible moment," Farris said of that night in 1968. "I tried to call my sister-in-law; the lines were busy. I tried to call my parents; the lines were busy. I couldn't get anybody."

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Collector Sues Intrepid Museum Over War Photos

Source: AP (4-3-08)

A history enthusiast has sued the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, claiming it lost several of his World War II-era photographs, including the shot of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

The man, Rodney Hilton Brown, says the photos were part of the World War II memorabilia that he lent to the museum, which is sited on a retired aircraft carrier usually docked in the Hudson River, initially in 1995 and again in 2005.

Mr. Brown, a mortgage broker who collects historical artifacts as a hobby, said that at least 8 of 52 pictures were missing when the museum returned his collection to his vacation home in Fairhaven, Mass., in November 2006.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Britain releases records on female WWII spy who posed as cosmetics saleswoman

Source: AP (4-1-08)

The secrets of a female spy who posed as a cosmetics saleswoman during World War II and helped lead the resistance inside Nazi-occupied France have been unsealed.

Pearl Cornioley outfoxed the Nazis by, among other tricks, concealing secret messages in the hem of her skirt and helping airmen escape to safety, according to records unsealed at Britain's National Archives on Monday. The release follows Cornioley's death on Feb. 24.

The records shed light on a woman who quickly adapted to life as an agent but never forgot about her family in Britain, requesting in handwritten notes that officials in London send her mother and sisters timely birthday and Christmas presents.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Night Washington Burned Black

Source: The Root (webzine published by Henry Louis Gates for the WaPo) (4-2-08)

D.C. had its riot at last. For years, Negroes in the capital had watched as Watts, Detroit, Newark -- even Rochester, New York -- exploded in racial outrage. And though it shared the frustrations expressed in cities elsewhere, black Washington had held calm, either because its second-class citizens were intimidated by proximity to such concentrated power, or because they were too comfortable in the middle-class advantages of federal jobs.

All the way down 7th Street that night, we witnessed a righteous chaos. It was grief and lifelong frustration released in a burning, destructive fury. We saw poor people tearing up their own neighborhoods; targeting stores, but mindless of apartments above them; breaking windows and burning shops along the commercial strip long known its for exploitative merchandising. Jewelers, haberdashers and merchants of cheap furniture routinely sold at high prices to captive shoppers, often charged ruinous credit rates.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Behind Coretta's Veil: Black Women and the Burdens of Loss

Source: The Root (webzine published by Henry Louis Gates for the WaPo) (4-2-08)

Forty years later there are two particularly poignant and enduring images associated with Dr. King's assassination. The first is the circle of men surrounding Martin's body on that Memphis balcony as they point in the direction of the shooter. The second is Coretta Scott King's mournful and resolute face beneath her widow's black veil.

Both images capture the radicalizing power of Dr. King's murder. Together they reveal how responses to racial terrorism are often gendered. Many black men are like TheRoot.com contributor Professor Michael Dawson, who found his authentic political voice emerging from the ashes of his beloved, burning city in the aftermath of King's death. Like the men on the balcony, they became the vocal and visible leaders of the continuing movements against injustice.

Many black women swallow their pain, gird their loins and persist against impossible odds when the men they love are destroyed. They are like Medgar's Myrlie, Malcolm's Betty, and Martin's Coretta. Much less visible and vocal, these women become the symbols of strength and endurance in the aftermath of men's murders.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

How developing nations translated King's message

Source: The Root (webzine published by Henry Louis Gates for the WaPo) (4-4-08)

When masses of dispossessed black people descended on the National Mall during the March on Washington to demand equal rights in the world's most powerful country, King's "I Have a Dream" speech gave disenfranchised people abroad reason to persist in their own battles against injustices at home. He made them believe that fairer political systems where within reach whether their oppressors where white, black, or brown.

King recognized that by speaking to a larger audience he was putting the U.S. on the hook by putting its racial hypocrisy on the world stage. He also knew he could influence events in other countries, where political leaders might look to follow America's lead, or masses of people might follow the lead of black American civil rights activists. He used moral persuasion at both ends.

"Something is happening in our world," King said on April 3, 1968 in Memphis, the night before he was gunned down. "The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: 'We want to be free.' "

Today streets are named for King in Bonn, Germany, (Martin Luther King Strasse) in Nantes, France (Rue Martin Luther King), in Cambridgeshire, England (Martin Luther King Close ), in Calcutta, India (Martin Luther King Sarani), in Port-au-Prince Haiti (Avenue Martin Luther King), and in Mexico, Brazil, and countless other countries.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 12:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

US Holocaust Memorial Museum mapping genocide threats

Source: Press Release (4-4-08)

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today launched World is Witness, a new initiative that opens a window into the lives of people affected by genocide and its long-term consequences.

A project of the Museum's Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative that documents and maps threats of genocide and related crimes against humanity, World is Witness brings together testimonies, photographs, videos, and other first-hand data in Google Earth, situating eyewitness accounts in their geographic location. World is Witness can be found in Google Earth's Global Awareness folder under the heading, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, or at the Museum's Web site, www.ushmm.org/maps/.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 11:55 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The enduring legacy of Martin Luther King (as recalled by his son)

Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk (3-4-08)

Martin Luther King III was just 10 years old when his father was shot on the balcony outside room 306, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, on 4 April, 1968. Now 50 years old, he remembers the day vividly.

"My siblings and I were watching the evening news at home in Atlanta and we heard 'Dr Martin Luther King Jr has been shot,'" says King III, who will lead a march tomorrow to that motel, now home to the National Civil Rights Museum.

"We ran to our mother's room, and she was preparing to leave because she had already had a call to say my father had been shot and she should get to Memphis as quickly as possible. She didn't know how bad the injury was."

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The fourth estate gets a new home

Source: Politico (4-3-08)

Since the public supposedly can’t stand the media, and newspaper circulation keeps dropping, it seems an inauspicious moment to open a $450 million museum dedicated to the news.

However, that’s what happens next week, when the Newseum unlocks its doors along Pennsylvania Avenue, the tourist-friendly strip linking the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

But with journalism being about ideas, not artifacts, how does the Newseum justify a $20 admission fee to inform visitors about the news — especially when most Washington museums charge nothing?

For Charles Overby, the Newseum’s chief executive, the purpose is not to create a shrine glorifying journalists or replicating a reporter’s DNA on white walls. No, he’s trying to provide visitors with a memorable — and informative — experience.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Auto president Max Mosley has escalated the "sick Nazi orgy" row

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-3-08)

FIA president Max Mosley has escalated the "sick Nazi orgy" row threatening to engulf Formula One by alluding to the links between BMW and Mercedes and Adolf Hitler's regime in a response to criticism from carmakers.

Mosley, 67, who has come under fire following revelations in the News of the World at the weekend, issued a swift response to earlier statements this morning from four car manufacturers that refers to the history of the two German companies, "particularly before and during the Second World War".

Forgetting the boundaries: Max Mosley has done the unthinkable and mentioned the War
Mosley, who has already sent a letter to FIA members apologising for any embarrassment caused by the reports, and said he would be taking legal action against the publication, took little time in replying.

He said: "Given the history of BMW and Mercedes Benz, particularly before and during the Second World War, I fully understand why they would wish to strongly distance themselves from what they rightly describe as the disgraceful content of these publications.

Posted on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 1:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, April 3, 2008

NBC story on MLK's last days features color footage

Source: NBC News (4-3-08)

Related Links

Jeff Cohen: This NBC report leaves out the media's attacks on MLK in the last year of his life

Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Royal Mint reveals new coin designs (UK)

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-2-08)

The Royal Mint has unveiled the biggest changes to Britain's coinage in 40 years to a chorus of disapproval.

Historians, designers, and MPs have criticised the changes which show elements of the Queen's coat of arms on the reverse of seven coins from the penny to the pound.

In pictures: The designs which will feature on the reverse of seven British coins
The six designs on the 1p through to the 50p coins can be pieced together to form a complete image of the royal coat of arms.

The £1 coin features the complete Royal shield. The design, chosen after a nationwide competition, is designed to underline the Government's commitment to the Union.

Related Links

Richard Falkiner: After 300 years, Britannia rules no more

Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 10:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Listed buildings to be renamed 'registered heritage asset' (UK)

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-2-08)

The term "listed building" is to be scrapped, in England at least.

Those who live in or own one of the 370,000 properties protected for their historical or archaeological merit will have to get used to living in a "registered heritage asset."

The changes are proposed in the draft Heritage Bill which will also enable landscapes, for example Capability Brown parkland or farmed landscapes in national parks, to be registered as "heritage assets" for the first time.

Though it has survived for 40 years, the term "listing" is to be abolished in the interests of simplifying a system that currently has listed buildings and scheduled ancient monuments.

Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 10:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lincoln's letter sets record at auction

Source: AP (4-3-08)

Abraham Lincoln's heartfelt letter to youngsters who asked him to free America's "little slave children" was sold at auction Thursday for $3.4 million.

The 1864 letter set a record for a Lincoln manuscript, as well as for any presidential and American manuscript, Sotheby's said.

It was purchased by an anonymous American private collector bidding by telephone.

Lincoln's hand-penned reply was contained in a letter to a woman who had mailed the children's petition from Concord, Mass.

Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 10:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Why Don't More Colleges Teach Military History?

Source: Justin Ewers in US News & World Report (4-3-08)

Five years into the war in Iraq, military history seems to be experiencing a golden age. Hollywood has been cranking out war movies. Publishers have been lining bookstore shelves with new battle tomes, which consumers are eagerly lapping up. Even the critics have been enjoying themselves. Two of the last five Pulitzer Prizes in history were awarded to books about the American military. Four of the five Oscar nominees for best documentary this year were about warfare. Business, for military historians, is good.

Except, strangely enough, in academia. On college campuses, historians who study military institutions and the practice of war are watching their classrooms overflow and their books climb bestseller lists—but many say they are still struggling, as they have been for years, to win the respect of their fellow scholars. John Lynn, a professor of history at the University of Illinois, first described this paradox in a 1997 essay called "The Embattled Future of Academic Military History." The field, he wrote, with its emphasis on predominantly male co mbatants and its decidedly nontheoretical subject matter, "has always been something of a pariah in U.S. universities." For years, military historians have been accused by their colleagues of being, by turns, right wing, morally suspect, or, as Lynn puts it, "just plain dumb." Scholars who study D-Day or the Battle of Thermopylae may sell books and fill lecture halls, but they don't have much success with hiring committees.

Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 7:21 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Medieval game gets sport status

Source: BBC (3-31-08)

A medieval game that is almost exclusively played in the South East has been recognised as a sport.
The Sports Council agreed that Stoolball, which is played by up to 4,000 people in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire, met its criteria.
A round willow bat and wickets made of wooden boards on stakes are used to play the game which has links to the development of cricket.
The National Stoolball Association hopes its profile will now be raised.

Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Two Guns Used in RFK Assassination, Experts Say

Source: ABC News (3-27-08)

Two forensic scientists have added their names to the list of people who don't believe Sirhan Sirhan acted alone when he shot Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Kennedy was gunned down on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. A gunman identified as Sirhan Sirhan was wrestled to the ground and later convicted as the man solely responsible for Kennedy's murder.

But doubts lingered and conspiracy theories took root that perhaps others were involved in Kennedy's death.

In their new book, "An Open and Shut Case," Robert Joling and Philip Van Praag say that after analyzing audio recordings of the assassination they concluded that at least 13 shots were fired. But the handgun Sirhan used only had the capacity to fire eight shots.

The critical piece of evidence, they say, is an audiotape recorded by a journalist who was traveling with Kennedy.

Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

New Lidice education centre offers detailed catalogue of Nazi horrors

Source: http://www.radio.cz (4-1-08)

The Lidice museum, which stands on the site of the Czech village that was infamously razed to the ground by the Nazis in 1942, opened a new education centre on Monday. Among other things, this facility will give visitors and scholars access to a detailed historical archive of material about what is considered to be one of the most notorious Nazi atrocities of the Second World War.

The burning village of LidiceThe German massacre of the Czech village of Lidice in retaliation for the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich during WWII still resonates around the world today as a byword for cold-hearted Nazi brutality.

On the morning of 10 June 1942, Nazi troops stormed into Lidice and forcefully removed the villagers from their homes. All the men over 15 years of age were lined up against a wall and shot while the women and children were transported to concentration camps. 173 people died that day and 167 more subsequently perished in German detention facilities. The village itself was completely razed to the ground, with the Nazis even digging up the graves of the local cemetery before levelling it.

Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 9:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Yale Builds Digital Archive Of Soviet Dictator's Life

Source: Hartford Courant (4-2-08)

Russian movie director Sergei Eisenstein was in Mexico in the early 1930s, making his first American, socialist-backed film, when he seriously miscalculated his relationship with Joseph Stalin.

Eisentein, who was working on the film with U.S. novelist and social activist Upton Sinclair, ignored a telegram from Stalin saying that his prolonged absence from the USSR was unacceptable and that he should return immediately.

When that didn't occur, Stalin's security officials in Mexico kidnapped a producer working on the film.

"Sinclair wrote to Stalin asking to save the life of the captured film producer," said Jonathan Brent, the man behind Yale University's online archive for Stalin. "Stalin received the request and could have handed it to a subordinate, but he didn't. Instead he wrote back to Sinclair himself.

"The note essentially said: 'The matter has been put in the hands of the security services and they have disposed of it.'" Eisenstein's producer was never seen again.

It is documents like the dispatch to Sinclair that distinguish Yale's Stalin archive.

Earlier this year, the Andrew W. Mellon foundation gave Brent — the editorial director of Yale University Press' "Annals of Communism Project" — a $1.3-million grant to develop a digital documentary edition of Stalin's entire personal archive, encompassing some 40,000 files.

Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 9:24 PM | Comments (0) | Top

History stood between Ireland and its future

Source: Globalist (3-31-08)

Over the past twenty years, Ireland has undergone a massive transformation — both economically and socially. Llewellyn King explains in his essay how the only thing that stood between Ireland and its future was its bitter history and how that is slowly changing to give way to a new future.

Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 8:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Young pharaoh played with marbles

Source: http://www.int.iol.co.za (4-1-08)

Egypt's renowned pharaoh Tutankhamun most likely played marble games, Leiden University in the Netherlands said in a statement on Tuesday.

Pieter Lus, a student at Leiden's Egyptology department, recently discovered what he said was a unique papyrus manuscript at a Cairo market.

The painting shows children playing with marbles. One of them is most likely young Tutankhamun, who became Egypt's ruler as a 9-year-old.

"We already knew that marble games originated in Egypt," said Lus who found the manuscript containing several paintings at a stall selling antique books in Cairo.

"But we did not know the game was already played during the time of Tutankhamun."

Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Reporter recalls 'eerie' but calm night with King's widow, children

Source: CNN (4-2-08)

Editor's note: Former Associated Press reporter Kathryn Johnson is writing a memoir titled "Let Kathryn In," which includes stories about the civil rights movement.

***

It was eerie. Just hours after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, I was in his home with his widow and eldest child, watching TV coverage of his death in awed silence.

I felt a strong sense of unreality, being inside the home of the world-renowned civil rights leader at the end of his life. This was because during 18 years as a reporter for The Associated Press, I had been there early in King's courageous crusade that eventually led to his untimely death.

How I ended up at the King home on the night of April 4, 1968, began about an hour earlier when I first heard the terrible news on a car radio.

I was with a date in Atlanta, driving through a springtime rainstorm to see a movie, when the bulletin broke. My date immediately turned his car around in the direction of the King home.

During the short drive through the hard rain we were both silent, stunned and locked in our own memories of King.

Posted on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 7:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

National Press Club Releases '100 Key Dates in NPC History'

Source: PRnewswire (3-30-08)

From a meeting at the storied bar of the Willard Hotel, through speeches from presidents and other world leaders, to battles over the admission of women and blacks, the National Press Club has been a Washington institution since its founding in 1908.

Beginning March 31, the Club will celebrate its 100 years of history with events that culminate with a gala on April 5.

The NPC compiled an array of historic moments in the Club's life to assist reporters and editors working on articles related to the Club during its Centennial.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Montpelier claims it's turned the corner

Source: Montpelier Press Release (4-1-08)

Since 2003 scores of skilled craftsmen and artisans from across the country have diligently worked at James Madison’s Montpelier to return the last unrestored home of a founding father to the American people.

Now in its final stretch, the $24 million restoration project is garnering the attention of history buffs and preservationists alike. Year-to-date figures show visitation to the Madison home is more than 50 percent over 2007. Since January, more than 6,500 tourists have visited the Montpelier estate located in the rolling foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 9:04 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Carrying Primary Scars Into the General Election

Source: NYT (4-1-08)

President Jimmy Carter and Senator Edward M. Kennedy had been sharp adversaries with a bad history, and in the 1980 presidential campaign they let it bleed into a bitter nomination fight. The Carter administration challenged Mr. Kennedy’s patriotism and refused to debate, while Mr. Kennedy dragged out their fight for nine months, all the way to the Democratic convention. A weakened Mr. Carter prevailed and won the nomination, but he went on to lose in November.

Convention fights often spell ruin for a party. The 1980 experience for Democrats — as well as a fight in 1968, and one in 1976 for Republicans — all suggest that a bruising primary carried through the summer can contribute to defeat in November.

Today, nervous Democrats are worried that history will repeat itself as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lags in delegates and the popular vote, has refused to concede the nomination to Senator Barack Obama. Despite the increasing rancor of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton says she is staying in until the voting is over.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 8:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Lack of resources leaves ancient sites unprotected in Iraq

Source: http://www.azzaman.com (3-27-08)

The government has reduced allocations earmarked for the Antiquities Department and currently hundreds of significant sites are without proper protection, said Ali Kadhem.

Kadhem is a senior antiquities official in southern Iraq where most valuable Mesopotamian treasures are situated.

He is currently in charge of antiquities in the southern Province of Nasiriya, the birth place of the Sumerian civilization, which flourished there some 5,000 years ago.

The government has earmarked 300 million Iraqi dinars (approx. 2.5 million dollars) for the protection of ancient sites across the country.

Kadhem says the money is insufficient since there are more than 10,000 archaeologically significant sites in Iraq...

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 8:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Critical test for NYC preservationists

Source: NYT (4-1-08)

The passionate battles surrounding the birth of New York’s preservation movement nearly a half-century ago seem like distant memories now. For some New Yorkers the main threat to architecture in the city is no longer the demolition of its great landmarks, but a trite nostalgia that disdains the new.

Well, think again. Over the last few years the growing clout of developers has gradually chipped away at the city’s resolve to protect its architectural legacy. The agency most responsible for defending that legacy, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, has sometimes been accused of putting developers’ interests above the well-being of the city’s inhabitants.

A proposal before the commission to tear down several buildings in the Greenwich Village Historic District is shaping up as a crucial test of whether those critics are right. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Tuesday morning, and New Yorkers would do well to follow the proceedings if they care about the city’s future.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 8:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

What now for the 100-year-old TA? (UK)

Source: BBC (4-1-08)

As the Territorial Army turns 100, what is its modern role and who would join now you can expect to be sent to war?

Nearly 15,000 Territorials have served alongside the regular Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. The TA is being relied upon more heavily than at anytime since World War II.

The TA now runs the only field hospital in Afghanistan and provides about 10% of British forces. Since 2003, seven TA soldiers have been killed.

Yet despite the need for TA soldiers, recruitment is falling and reserve forces are at their lowest level since the TA was founded 100 years ago.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 8:05 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Bin Laden Took Part in 1986 Arms Deal, Book Says

Source: WaPo (4-1-08)

Osama bin Laden flew to London in 1986 to help negotiate the purchase of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles to be used by Arab fighters then battling the Soviet military in Afghanistan, according to a new book on the bin Laden family.

Bin Laden and his half brother, Salem, met several times with the contacts at the luxury Dorchester hotel in London, according to "The Bin Ladens," by journalist Steve Coll. "Don't do any jokes with my brother," Salem is said to have told the others. "He's very religious."

The deal for Russian SA-7 missiles was arranged via "contacts" with the German arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch, through an associate of Salem bin Laden, the book says. It suggests that payment for the weapons was made by the government of Saudi Arabia and that the weapons eventually were purchased in South America.

At the time of the weapons shipments, both the U.S. and Saudi governments were supporting Afghan and Arab forces resisting the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. But while the Reagan administration supplied Stinger missiles to the Afghans, the book says that the Afghans did not want the Americans providing such weaponry directly to Arab groups that had joined the fight, including forces organized by Osama bin Laden.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 8:02 PM | Comments (0) | Top

FBI tracked King's every move

Source: CNN (3-31-08)

FBI wiretaps have "given us the most powerful and persuasive source of all for seeing how utterly selfless Martin Luther King was," as a civil rights leader, according to a leading civil rights scholar.

"You see him being intensely self-critical. King really and truly believed that he was there to be of service to others. This was not a man with any egomaniacal joy of being a famous person, or being a leader," said Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar David Garrow in a recent interview with CNN.

Hoping to prove the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was under the influence of Communists, the FBI kept the civil rights leader under constant surveillance.

The agency's hidden tape recorders turned up almost nothing about communism.

But they did reveal embarrassing details about King's sex life -- details the FBI was able to use against him.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 8:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wartime exploits of British agent with million franc bounty on her head

Source: Telegraph (UK) (4-1-08)

The daring wartime exploits of a female British secret agent, who was such a thorn in the German side that they placed a one million franc bounty on her head, are disclosed in secret papers released today.

Pearl Cornioley, who was then known as Cécile Pearl Witherington, became one of the most illustrious members of the Special Operations Executive - set up to foster resistance to the Germans across Europe during the Second World War - after being parachuted into occupied France.

Taking control of 1,500 resistance fighters, she led a number of daring attacks on the Germans and boasted of capturing 18,000 enemy troops.

Documents released by the National Archive at Kew chart her career from raw recruit to the end of the war. She was dropped into France in September 1943, at the age of 29, to act as a courier of coded messages in the Loire.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Peru necklace is oldest gold object in Americas

Source: BBC (4-1-08)

A necklace found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru is the oldest known gold object made in the Americas, archaeologists say.

Radiocarbon dating puts its origin at about 4,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers occupied the area.

The researchers say it appears to have been fashioned from gold nuggets.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 7:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Hunting was just final straw for mammoth, study finds

Source: World Science (3-31-08)

Does the human species have mammoth blood on its hands?

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 7:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Finland: Rock art from 5,000 years ago

Source: http://www.6d.fi (3-31-08)

Rock paintings created during the Stone Age can still be seen today in dozens of sites around Finland. These awe-inspiring artworks are like windows into the ancient past, revealing tantalising glimpses of long lost cultures.

FINLAND’S rock paintings mainly consist of brownish-red figures and markings painted onto steep granite walls, often overlooking waterways. Scenes feature people, boats, elk, fish and mysterious partly human figures that may be linked to shamanistic beliefs, as well as more abstract shapes and patterns whose meanings will probably remain forever lost in the mists of time.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Archaeologists dig deep to find origins of Stonehenge

Source: AFP (3-31-08)

A major excavation at Britain's prehistoric Stonehenge standing stones started Monday as archaeologists try to work out exactly when and why the first boulders were placed at the site.

Experts are focusing on the Double Bluestone Circle, which is located inside the iconic giant pillars on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, southwest England.

The circle, thought to date from around 2,550 BC, consists of stones which came from the Preseli Hills in west Wales -- 250 kilometres (155 miles) away.

One of the academics leading the excavation, Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University, said the question of why they had been brought so far had niggled academics and travellers for more than a thousand years.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Siberian, Native American Languages Linked -- A First

Source: National Geographic (3-26-08)

A fast-dying language in remote central Siberia shares a mother tongue with dozens of Native American languages spoken thousands of miles away, new research confirms.

The finding may allow linguists to weigh in on how the Americas were first settled, according to Edward Vajda, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Since at least 1923 researchers have suggested a connection exists between Asian and North American languages—but this is the first time a link has been demonstrated with established standards, said Vajda, who has studied the relationship for more than 15 years.

Previous researchers had provided lists of similar-sounding and look-alike words, but their methods were unscientific. Such similarities, Vajda noted, are likely to be dismissed as coincidence even if they represent genuine evidence.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:42 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Ancient skeletons found on 2012 site of London Olympics

Source: Reuters (3-27-08)

Archaeologists working at the construction site for London's 2012 Olympic Park have uncovered prehistoric skeletons on the site of the Aquatics Centre.

Four skeletons were found in graves around an area thought to be an Iron Age settlement, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) said on Thursday.

Museum of London archaeologists have carried out extensive investigations at the site in Stratford, east London, which will house the main permanent venues for the Games.

Other finds include Iron Age cooking pots, a Roman coin, Roman river walls, World War II gun emplacements and a complete 19th-century boat used for hunting wild fowl on the River Lea.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Survivor calls for closure on Centaur shipwreck (Australia)

Source: Australian (3-29-08)

TWO or three times a month, Martin Pash relives the horror of the worst atrocity in Australian waters during World War II.

The 85-year-old retired truck driver tosses and turns in bed at his home in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe and endures frightful nightmares recalling the sinking of the Australian hospital ship Centaur, which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off the southern Queensland coast on May 14, 1943.

Mr Pash, who was a 20-year-old steward on the Centaur when a torpedo slammed into the bow of the ship about 75km east of Brisbane, told The Weekend Australian: "I see the flames again, and I see the ship going down."

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

German Luftwaffe pilot returns to Bath to apologise for wartime bombing

Source: Daily Mail (3-28-08)

A decorated German Luftwaffe pilot is to return to the city he bombed during World War Two to make a public apology.

Bomber pilot Willi Schludecker demolished dozens of Georgian buildings in Bath, Somerset, in April 1942 in his Dornier 217E-4.

Now 87 years-old and in failing health, his dying wish is to make amends with the city which lost 400 residents in the raid.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vienna State Opera comes to terms with its purge of Jews 70 years ago

Source: AP (3-31-08)

A famed conductor, a lowly laundress, singers, dancers, musicians. Jews, part Jews, or married to Jews, they were all a valued part of Vienna's opera family — until the Nazis came.

First to go was ballet teacher Risa Dirtl.

She was a 14-year veteran of the Vienna State Opera. But her husband was Jewish — and so she was purged just three days after Austrians thronged a huge central square in their capital 70 years ago to accord a delirious welcome to Adolf Hitler.

"The directorate is obliged to inform you that you are relieved of your duties as ballet school teacher, effective immediately. Heil Hitler!" says Dirtl's yellowed notice note dated March 16, 1938.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Congress Passes First Ever Resolution on Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries

Source: http://www.justiceforjews.com (4-1-08)

In what may be the beginning of a dramatic shift in United States policy, the U.S. Congress passed House Resolution 185, which grants first-time-ever recognition to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Prior to the adoption of H.Res.185, all Resolutions on Middle East refugees referred only to Palestinians. This Resolution affirms that the U.S. government will now recognize that all victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict must be treated equally. It further urges that the President and U.S. officials participating in Middle East discussions to ensure that any reference to Palestinian refugees must: "also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries."

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 4:47 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Clay tablet holds clue to asteroid mystery

Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-31-08)

British scientists have deciphered a mysterious ancient clay tablet and believe they have solved a riddle over a giant asteroid impact more than 5,000 years ago.

Geologists have long puzzled over the shape of the land close to the town of Köfels in the Austrian Alps, but were unable to prove it had been caused by an asteroid.

Now researchers say their translation of symbols on a star map from an ancient civilisation includes notes on a mile-wide asteroid that later hit Earth - which could have caused tens of thousands of deaths.

The circular clay tablet was discovered 150 years ago by Sir Austen Henry Layard, a leading Victorian archaeologist, in the remains of the royal palace at Nineveh, capital of ancient Assyria, in what is now Iraq.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 4:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Vatican: Islam Surpasses Roman Catholicism as World's Largest Religion

Source: AP (3-30-08)

Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.

He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population -- a stable percentage -- while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 4:07 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father

Source: WaPo (3-30-08)

Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.

The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonathan Alter reported that she had been struck by the extraordinary way in which "history replays itself" and by how "two generations of two families -- separated by distance, culture and wealth -- can intersect in strange and wonderful ways."

It is a touching story -- but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton acknowledged yesterday that the senator from Illinois had erred in crediting the Kennedy family with a role in his father's arrival in the United States. He said the Kennedy involvement in the Kenya student program apparently "started 48 years ago, not 49 years ago as Obama has mistakenly suggested in the past."

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

On the quest to identify John Does, dead and buried

Source: AP (3-30-08)

Their faces seem to float from Todd Matthews' computer -- morgue photographs, artist sketches, forensic reconstructions -- thousands of dead eyes staring from endless Web sites as though crying out for recognition. John and Jane and Baby "Does" whose nameless bodies have never been identified.

His wife, Lori, complains that Matthews, a 37-year-old auto parts supplier, spends more time with the dead than he does with the living, including his two sons, Dillan, 16, and Devin, 6.

You need a hobby, she says, or a goal.

I have a goal, he replies, though he describes it as a "calling."

He wants to give "Does" back their names.

His obsession began two decades ago, when Lori told him about the unidentified young woman wrapped in canvas whose body her father had stumbled on in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1968. She had reddish-brown hair and a gap-toothed smile. And no one knew her name.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Oceanic Northwest Passage lures British explorers

Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-30-08)

The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled, and treacherous, sea routes in the world. Many sailors have perished in its freezing Arctic waters after their ships became encased in ice.

Now, as climate change takes hold, British explorers are trying to become the first to sail through the Northwest Passage from east to west, relying solely on wind and oars.

The expedition will demonstrate the advance of climate change, which scientists say is thawing out the Northwest Passage for longer periods each summer.

This has raised the possibility that the route could become an important shipping channel, in a move that would revolutionise trade by offering a short cut between western Europe and the Far East.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:52 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Neanderthals Wore Make-up and Liked to Chat

Source: ABC News (3-27-08)

Could Neanderthals speak? The answer may depend on whether they used make-up.

Francesco d'Errico, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, France, has found crafted lumps of pigment – essentially crayons – left behind by Neanderthals across Europe.

He says that Neanderthals, who most likely had pale skin, used these dark pigments to mark their own as well as animal skins. And, since body art is a form of communication, this implies that the Neanderthals could speak, d'Errico says.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Study shows life was tough for ancient Egyptians

Source: Reuters (3-28-08)

New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found.

Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt's old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.

Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt between 1379 and 1362 BC, built and lived in Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt for 15 years. The city was largely abandoned shortly after his death and the ascendance of the famous boy king Tutankhamen to the throne.

Studies on the remains of ordinary ancient Egyptians in a cemetery in Tell el-Amarna showed that many of them suffered from anemia, fractured bones, stunted growth and high juvenile mortality rates, according to professors Barry Kemp and Gerome Rose, who led the research.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Gray's Anatomy celebrates 150th anniversary

Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-31-08)

As a newly qualified doctor in September 1939, Nowell Peach was looking forward to a career in surgery. He was waiting to begin his anatomical studies and the course was set to start on September 4, 1939.

When war was declared the day before, the anatomy course was postponed. Young Dr Peach, then 26, enlisted as a medical officer with the RAF Volunteer Reserve.

Yet although he would spend the next six years in uniform, and three-and-a-half of those years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, he still managed to complete his anatomy studies - thanks to a remarkable book.

Celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, Gray's Anatomy is probably the world's best-known medical book.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Yorktown Battlefield once a golf course

Source: http://www.vagazette.com (4-1-08)

Few people may know that the site of the Siege at Yorktown was once home to an 18-hole golf course.

According to Mike Litterst, prior to the founding of the Colonial National Historical Park the area encompassing the Yorktown Battlefield was part of the Yorktown Country Club. An area between siege lines was developed into an 18-hole golf course called Riverview Golf Course. A second golf course, known as The Lakeview, was planned but never built.

Litterst explained that the course opened in the early 1920s.

But funding dried up, and the stock market crash and ensuing Depression didnt help [with the development of the golf course and country club], he said. A resort building was under construction at the time.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:26 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Okinawa Suicides: Japanese Court Rejects Defamation Lawsuit Against Nobel Laureate

Source: NYT (3-29-08)

A Japanese court rejected a defamation lawsuit on Friday against Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature, agreeing with his depiction of involvement by the Japanese military in the mass suicides of civilians in Okinawa toward the end of World War II.

In a closely watched ruling, the Osaka District Court threw out a $200,000 damage suit that was filed by a 91-year-old war veteran and another veteran’s surviving relatives, who said there was no evidence of the military’s involvement in the suicides.

The plaintiffs had also sought to block further printing of Mr. Oe’s 1970 book of essays, “Okinawa Notes,” in which he wrote that Japanese soldiers had told Okinawans they would be raped, tortured and murdered by the advancing American troops and coerced them into killing themselves instead of surrendering.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monticello: Atop a Hallowed Mountain, Small Steps Toward Healing

Source: Dan Barry in the NYT (3-30-08)

The members of the 2:20 tour follow their guide up the front steps of Monticello, past those iconic white pillars and into the domed building’s aura of wonder. The wooden floor creaks like the knees of an aged host rising from his seat to explain a few things.

The guide speaks in present tense of the home’s most famous occupant — Mr. Jefferson, as he is often referred to around here — while leading the tour into the family sitting room, where his daughter Martha supervised the slaves who worked as household servants.

And there it is again, the great American complication: Mr. Jefferson, who rocked civilization with passionate words about inalienable rights for all, also owned hundreds of slaves.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Edison ...Wasn’t He the Guy Who Invented Everything?

Source: NYT (3-30-08)

Invention may be mothered by necessity. But determining the father can require a paternity test.

Take the sound recording. Researchers said last week that they had discovered a recording of a human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman two decades before Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph.

An unusual case of innovation misconception? Hardly.

The reality is that the “Aha” moments of industrial creation are preceded by critical moments far less heralded. Behind and beside every big-name inventor are typically lots of others whom history forgot, or never knew. And it’s unusual that an innovation is created in a vacuum (including the vacuum, which itself claims several progenitors).

“It’s rare that you’ve got a major breakthrough that wasn’t developed by multiple people at about the same time,” said Mark Lemley, professor of intellectual property at Stanford Law School.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 3:16 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Memphis sanitation worker remembers strike of '68, King's assassination

Source: Chicago Tribune (3-31-08)

Elmore Nickelberry has guided his grumbling garbage truck down Memphis' alleyways and avenues for 54 years, picking up not just trash, but a remarkable life story along the way.

March marks 40 years since Memphis and its sanitation workers took center stage in the nation's civil rights struggles. While time has tempered this city's downtown district — gone are the protests, curfews and bloodshed of '68 — the memories of that period live on within Nickelberry.

"This is where they threw gas on us," the 76-year-old points out as the truck passes the Clayborn Temple, where Martin Luther King Jr. led a thousand mostly African-American striking sanitation workers on a march.

Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 2:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

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