This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: McClatchy
January 3, 2009
George W. Bush was supposed to be a president schooled in consensus building and tough, effective management.
However, the first chief executive with a master's in business administration — from Harvard, no less, and the son of a president known for his foreign-policy expertise — is leaving President-elect Barack Obama a nation that's arguably in the worst shape since Herbert Hoover left Franklin Roosevelt the Great Depression and a world in which fascism was on the march 76 years
Source: McClatchy
January 4, 2009
President George W. Bush's "after-life," as Laura Bush calls the post-presidency, is shaping up to be pretty comfortable, with a Dallas office, staffers, Secret Service protection, a travel budget, medical coverage and a $196,700 annual pension, all at taxpayers' expense.
However, Bush will be the first president not to benefit from one former lifetime benefit: Secret Service protection.
"He'll be the first one to receive it for 10 years," said Malco
Source: BBC
January 6, 2009
While Iraq struggles to return to peaceful normality, the British have been working to restore some of the country's pride in its past - with a museum.
British soldiers withdrew from the palace compound in September 2007. Now, the building itself is deserted, and I have to wait for an Iraqi police colonel to turn up with the key.
In his mind's eye, John Curtis, keeper of the Middle East department at the British Museum, can already see the site transformed into a muse
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 6, 2009
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has admitted for the first time his family's company used prisoners of war as slave labourers during the Second World War.
Taro Aso said new documents showed captured serviceman, including Britons, were forced to work in mines.
The admission yesterday prompted British war veterans to step up demands for compensation and a proper apology.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 6, 2009
A man kidnapped by SS soldiers as a child to be brought up as part of the Aryan 'master race' in Nazi Germany has discovered his true identity.
Folker Heinecke, 67, spent 34 years researching his past before discovering that two soldiers came to his village in the Russian Crimea and kidnapped him under the German Lebensborn - Fount of Life - programme.
He launched his bid to discover his origins after the death of his Nazi foster parents in 1975. "For years the fil
Source: BBC
December 31, 2069
Exactly 30 years ago, a coalition of Cambodian and Vietnamese troops forced Pol Pot and his followers from power - after a four-year reign which left as many as two million people dead.
There was no hero's welcome for the conquering troops. But nor was there a nervous population, fearful about the intentions of the incoming army. Because Phnom Penh was almost completely deserted.
As many as two million Cambodians are thought to have died because of the policies of Pol
Source: azcentral
December 31, 2069
After almost 70 years of waiting, some in the Valley are finally on their way to getting money long owed to them by the Mexican government. They are known as braceros, who first came to the U.S. from Mexico as guest workers during World War II to fill the jobs of soldiers off at war. Monday was the deadline for them to process their claims to get this money, and dozens waited until the last minute.
During the bracero program, the U.S. took 10 percent from the workers' paychecks and
Source: Military
December 31, 2069
Toward the end of the Civil War, former slave Thomas Smith joined the 125th United States Colored Troops unit in Butler County, Kentucky.
Within two years of his 1864 enlistment, he was dead at age 23. The surgeon listed the cause as inflammation of the bowels from cholera. He was a private at Fort Craig, N.M., an Army post along the Rio Grande south of Socorro.
Well over a century later, a brown paper grocery bag containing the Buffalo Soldier's skull was handed over
Source: BBC
December 31, 2069
Cuba has opened up electronic access to thousands of documents belonging to the writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his greatest works on the island.
The archive includes photographs, letters and manuscripts, as well as an unpublished epilogue to Hemingway's novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
"We are talking about 3,194 pages of documents, close to 2,000 plus of documents, some already digitalised," said Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of the Museo Er
Source: AP
January 5, 2009
It could be one of the nation's oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.
Its fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since the
Source: Times (UK)
January 5, 2009
By day they were ordinary civilians — from dentists and clergymen to
gamekeepers and roadmenders – in a Britain gripped by fear of imminent
invasion by Hitler’s blitzkreig troops.
The only clue to their alter egos might have been the pieces of paper in
their pockets – informing any police officer suspicious of their behaviour
“to ask no questions of the bearer but phone this number”.
But new details have now emerged of the highly secretive role played by a
“resistance” army of f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2069
A 300-year-old journal of a British explorer who saved the real-life Robinson Crusoe and defeated pirates of the Caribbean has been discovered.
The extremely rare account chronicles a three-year round-the world voyage of the swashbuckling privateer Capt Woodes Rogers, who made a fortune pillaging from pirate ships and Spanish galleons.
It is thought only a hundred copies of his book, A Cruising Voyage Around the World, were printed seven years after Rogers completed
Source: Britannica Blog
January 5, 2009
Who’s benefiting from the current economic meltdown?
Karl Marx! Call him the “comeback kid” of the current economic crisis.
His works are selling in record numbers across Germany; publishers cannot reissue his works especially (Das Kapital) fast enough to keep up with the demand, as German universities have made him a prime topic of study in an attempt to understand the crisis affecting capitalist economies.
As this video explains, German scholars are quic
Source: Reuters
January 5, 2009
NEW YORK -- U.S. first lady Laura Bush has agreed to publish her memoirs with Scribner, the publisher said on Monday, giving the normally soft-spoken former librarian a chance to offer her views on the Bush presidency.
The book is expected to be published in 2010, said Scribner, an imprint of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, itself part of CBS Corp.
Scribner said it would offer "an intimate account of Laura Bush's life experiences, including eight years in th
Source: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk
January 9, 2009
AS DAWN broke more than 90 years ago over the North Sea a U-boat captain
gleefully ordered the destruction of the Scarborough fishing fleet.
Long after his daring attack in 1916 which sent a dozen trawlers to the
bottom of the North Sea, Karl Von Georg recalled:"What a massacre of
ships that was!"We steered back and forth firing at full speed with the bow gun. One
after another the ships hit at the water line, listed and plunged, until
all had vanished from the surface of the sea,
Source: CNN
January 3, 2009
Gertrude Baines, a 114-year-old California resident, will likely be
crowned the world's oldest woman, according to the organization that keeps
track of such honors.
The previous oldest woman was Maria de Jesus, who died this week in
Portugal at age 115, Guinness World Records said.
Baines -- born to former slaves in a small town south of Atlanta, Georgia,
in 1894 -- now lives in a Los Angeles nursing home.
Baines appeared cheerful and talkative when the Los Angeles Times
Source: International Herald Tribune
January 4, 2009
On Fox News, the former President George H.W. Bush seemed to catch an
interviewer, Chris Wallace, by surprise when he said that he would like to
see another Bush occupy the Oval Office.
He said that he thought that his son Jeb, the former governor of Florida,
should consider seeking the seat that Senator Mel Martinez of that state
will vacate in 2010.
He then added,"I'd like to see him run for president some day."
The former president, who is 84, had just been talking ab
Source: BBC
January 2, 2009
For more than three decades his name has been synonymous with the worst
excesses of the sort of dictators who have bedevilled post-colonial
Africa.
History largely remembers Jean Bedel Bokassa - or Emperor Bokassa I as he
crowned himself in 1977 - as one of the continent's most colourful yet
bloodthirsty monsters.
He was a demagogue as ruthless as Mobutu and more flamboyant than Amin.
When Bokassa was overthrown in 1979, jubilant crowds vented their hatred
on a giant st
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 4, 2009
British, Afghan and coalition forces battled the Taliban at close
quarters, knee-deep in mud, over Christmas in fierce trench battles
reminiscent of the First World War, it has emerged.
The offensive in Afghanistan's central Helmand province involved more than
1,500 troops and was one of the largest operations mounted by Royal
Marines since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Ministry of Defence (MoD)
said.
It was fought over 18 days around the town of Nad-e-Ali to capture four
Source: AP
January 3, 2009
WASHINGTON –- President George W. Bush will be judged on what he did. He will also be remembered for what he's like: a fast-moving, phrase-mangling Texan who stays upbeat even though his country is not.
For eight years, the nation has been led by a guy who relaxes by clearing brush in scorching heat and taking breakneck bike rides through the woods. He dishes out nicknames to world leaders, and even gave the German chancellor an impromptu, perhaps unwelcome, neck rub. He's annoyed w
