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: Politico.com
December 22, 2008
Historian Julian Zelizer calls Vice President Dick Cheney the most influential vice president in history. Lanny Davis agrees with Joe Biden that Cheney was “the most dangerous.” To Grover Norquist, Cheney’s story is a “tragedy.”
To Steven G. Calabresi, the tragedy was the “Borking” of Cheney by his opponents. The nation should be thankful, said business executive Steve Steckler, that Cheney, not Biden, was “manning the tower walls” when the country was attacked on 9/11.
Source: International Herald Tribune
December 24, 2008
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been
unusually talkative in recent weeks, sharing candid thoughts in a string
of exit interviews. But after eight years of a tight partnership that gave
Cheney powerful influence inside the White House, the two are sounding
strikingly different notes as they leave office, especially on one of the
most fundamental issues of their tenure: their aggressive response to the
9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bush defends his decisions as
Source: AFP
December 24, 2008
The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost more than 15 million dollars -- nearly all of its assets -- in the alleged fraud scheme run by Wall Street baron Bernard Madoff, the fund said Wednesday.
"We are writing to inform you that the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity had 15.2 million dollars under management with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities," said the foundation, which aims to combat anti-Semitism, on its website.
"This represented substan
Source: http://murraywaas.crooksandliars.com
December 23, 2008
Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.
Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip rep
Source: Independent (UK)
December 24, 2008
Impoverished by Israel's economic squeeze and persecuted by the Muslim majority, Christians are deserting Bethlehem.
The morning service at the Latin church in Beit Jala was packed, the enthusiastic congregation spanning generations filling the aisles and spilling out of the door, a powerful testimony of belief and faith. But, for many of the worshippers in the suburb of Bethlehem the driving wish was to secure their futures abroad, joining a Christian exodus from the land of the Bi
Source: National Security Archive
December 23, 2008
Amidst a massive bombing campaign over North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon candidly shared their evident satisfaction at the “shock treatment” of American B 52s, according to a declassified transcript of their telephone conversation published for the first time today by the National Security Archive. “They dropped a million pounds of bombs,” Kissinger briefed Nixon. “A million pounds of bombs,” Nixon exclaimed. “Goddamn, that must have been a good strike.” The conversation, secretly
Source: BBC
December 23, 2008
A comet, an eclipse, a supernova, an alignment of planets - was the Star of Bethlehem, said to have led the wise men to the Baby Jesus, a real astronomical event?
Some 2,000 years ago, wise men saw an incredible star shining over the Holy Land. It was their signal to embark on an epic journey to visit the new Messiah. But what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem?
Modern science is unravelling the mystery behind one of the most famous astronomical stories in history. New develop
Source: AP
December 23, 2008
WASHINGTON –- In a gesture of forgiveness for an American considered a hero in Israel, President George W. Bush on Tuesday granted a pardon posthumously to a man who broke the law to supply aircraft to Jews fighting in Israel's 1948 war of independence.
Charles Winters was listed in a batch of 19 pardons and one commutation that Bush issued before leaving for Camp David to spend the holidays. No high-profile lawbreakers were on the list.
In the summer of 1948, Winters,
Source: FoxNews.com
December 24, 2008
Israeli archaeologists said they have unearthed more than 250 gold coins from the seventh century on the edge of Jerusalem's walled Old City.
A British tourist volunteering at the dig discovered the trove on Sunday.
Israel's Antiquities Authority said the Byzantine-period hoard was found in the ruins of a building where a striking 2,000-year-old gold earring from the Roman era was dug up last month.
Source: CNN
December 23, 2008
Anyone can work a simple swindle, but you have to be a special kind of con
man to have your name become synonymous with"fraud." Ponzi pulled it off,
though. After arriving in the U.S. from Italy in 1903, Ponzi knocked
around in a variety of unskilled jobs that usually ended when he got into
trouble for theft or cheating customers.
A few years later, he moved to Canada, where he spent a hitch in prison
for passing a forged check. When he eventually drifted back down to the
U.S., he n
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 23, 2008
Seven hours north of Tokyo by train and bus, Shingo only had garlic
farming to to put it on the map until a scroll was found in 1935 by a
Shinto priest in nearby Ibaraki Prefecture that was identified as Christ's
will and, bizzarely, identified Shingo as his last resting place.
The scroll is on display in the"Village of Christ Legend Museum," which
closes in the tourist off-season between October and April, and is the
basis of a very different take on the incredible tale.
Acco
Source: CNN
December 23, 2008
The U.S. Army says it will honor the"heroism and sacrifice" of 350 U.S.
soldiers who were held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The decision by the Army effectively reverses decades of silence about
what the soldiers endured in the final months of the war in 1945 at Berga
an der Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald where soldiers were beaten,
starved, killed and forced to work in tunnels to hide German equipment.
More than 100 U.S. soldiers died in the camp or on a for
Source: Chicago Tribune
December 23, 2008
By their count, Mary and Chuck Schantag of the P.O.W. Network have exposed
close to 1,900 impostors since 1998, when they began to check POW claims.
They say they have exposed another 2,000 men who claimed they were in
elite units.
"It's taken over our lives," said Mary Schantag."We check reports of
phonies when we get up in the morning and before we get to bed at night."
Their motivation is simple."The lies are changing history. It's wrong. It
causes the real heroes to be groupe
Source: http://www.calcuttanews
December 23, 2008
Villagers in Arunachal Pradesh have stumbled upon a World War II
camp-cum-observation post used by American forces, close to a graveyard
where over 1,000 soldiers of the Allied Forces are buried, officials said
Tuesday.
A government spokesman said villagers discovered the post, spread over
about 500 square metres, near Wintong village in Changlang district, about
600 km east of state capital Itanagar.
'The area was probably used as a monitoring and observation camp by
America
Source: AFP
December 22, 2008
Men significantly outnumbered women in the"out-of-Africa" migration some
60,000 years ago that eventually populated the rest of the world,
according to a new study.
Africa is known to be the cradle of human evolution, and recent studies
show that the peoples today inhabiting other continents originate from a
relatively small band of Homo sapiens sapiens who moved through the Near
East, into Europe and beyond some 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.
But until now no one had figured ou
Source: International Herald Tribune
December 23, 2008
More than 160 prominent writers, scholars and human rights advocates
outside mainland China have signed an open letter to President Hu Jintao
asking him to release a well-known intellectual who was detained earlier
this month. The letter was posted on the Internet on Tuesday.
The letter to Hu indicates that the case of Liu Xiaobo, the intellectual,
is quickly turning into the latest human rights cause célèbre in China and
could further embarrass the Communist Party at a time when Chi
Source: Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment
December 23, 2008
A team of biologists at Lebanese American University estimates that 1 in 17 persons around the Mediterranean carries genetic markers distinctive to the ancient Phoenician people who resided in what is now Lebanon. The Phoenicians spread out in a trade diaspora two millennia ago, establishing colonies from Spain to Cyprus. The team also found that one third of Lebanese have the markers for Phoenician descent, and that these are spread evenly through the population, among both Christians and Musli
Source: CNN
December 22, 2008
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s biggest
mistake of the presidential campaign: not enough time with the media, the
Alaska governor said in an interview published Monday.
“The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this:
the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via
media,” she told Human Events.
“I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I
did were not necessarily those I wo
Source: MSNBC
December 17, 2008
Police seize 2,600-year-old artifacts after man tries to sell them.
A farmer working his land south of Rome dug up hundreds of artifacts from
a 2,600-year-old sanctuary, but ran afoul of police when he tried to sell
the ancient hoard, officials said Wednesday.
After spotting fragments of pottery in soil dug up by the farmer,
authorities searched his home last month and seized more than 500
artifacts, including perfume vials, cups and miniature vases used as
votive objects.
Source: AP
December 19, 2008
_ William "520 Percent" Miller of Brooklyn, N.Y., claimed in 1899 he had inside information on stocks and promised interest of 10 percent a week. He defrauded investors out of $1 million.
_ Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant in Boston, ran a bogus investment scheme in 1919-20 involving postal currency. As many as 20,000 people invested $8 million to $10 million. He spent time in prison before being deported in 1934.
_ Lou Pearlman, the mastermind behind the B
