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: International Herald Tribune
December 7, 2008
Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, a Romanian dissident who spent many years in prison during the Communist era and later led the fight to open the files of the Securitate, the feared secret police, died Friday in Bucharest, the capital. He was 80.
His death was reported by Agerpres, the Romanian national news agency, which said that he had been released from a hospital two weeks ago after being treated for liver disease.
"We have lost one of the most powerful voices agai
Source: NYT
December 6, 2008
A series of recent Israeli actions in the mainly Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem have raised tensions there, with Palestinian and Israeli critics contending that they are part of a wider plan to “Judaize” historically charged areas around the Old City.
The actions, ostensibly unconnected, include the demolition of two Arab homes in Silwan, a neighborhood adjacent to the Old City above the ruins of an ancient Jewish site; the start of a controversial infrastructure project there
Source: NYT
December 6, 2008
TAIPEI, Taiwan — After 10 minutes of drum-beating and incense-burning by her assistants, Chang Yin donned a black, spotted robe and a pointed hat. She picked up a fan with her right hand and a silver flask of sorghum liquor with her left.
Then, she sat in a chair before an altar piled with joss sticks, cans of beer, fruit, other snacks and images of deities. The session began. She appeared to slip into a trance.
Ms. Chang is a jitong, a shaman who dispenses advi
Source: NYT
December 6, 2008
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — In the vast, cool basement of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library here, Jennifer Mandel held up a hand-drawn map of the United States from the late 1970s.
A Reagan campaign staff member had colored states with red and blue ink at the start of his first successful run for president.
The map is one of 750,000 pages from that campaign released to the public last week after two years of painstaking work by Ms. Mandel and several other archiv
Source: Politico.com
December 6, 2008
Dialing back his predecessor’s expansive view of the office, Vice President-elect Joe Biden plans on “restoring the Office of the Vice President to its historical role” as adviser to the president and tie-breaker in the Senate, an aide to Biden said Saturday.
The declaration results from an attention-getting article coming from the Las Vegas Sun, which is reporting Sunday in a story by Washington Bureau reporter Lisa Mascaro that the new Congress “will reassert its constitutional i
Source: AP
December 5, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama is making public details and documents of official meetings between his transition team and outside organizations such as interest groups. The policy, outlined in a memo obtained by The Associated Press, goes into effect immediately.
It is retroactive to the Nov. 4 election and covers the transition period until Jan. 20 when Obama is sworn into office as the country's 44th president.
"Every day we meet with organizations who present ide
Source: Bill Ayers in a NYT op ed
December 5, 2008
IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.
Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”
Source: Peter Steinfels in the NYT
December 5, 2008
Last Monday was a 50th anniversary that you have absolutely no reason to know about. Unless, perhaps, you were living in Chicago on Dec. 1, 1958.
Unless, perhaps, you happened to be in that city on Tuesday and were visiting an exhibition on “Catholic Chicago” at the Chicago History Museum when the switchboard of your memory lit up at the words on a wall placard: “Our Lady of the Angels School Fire.”
Or unless, of course, you were among the families and friends of the 92
Source: Politico.com
December 5, 2008
More than 18 publishers have expressed interest in a book that former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is writing in an unusual dual appeal to political and business audiences.
Obama wrote “The Audacity of Hope,” and Plouffe’s book is tentatively titled “The Audacity to Win.”
The Obama campaign was a billion-dollar business, and Plouffe plans to write about the use of technology, grassroots organizing, crisis management, use of the Web, public relations and person
Source: AP
December 5, 2008
A 105-year-old singer whose past as a singer in Nazi Germany has dogged his reputation for decades is back in the spotlight after telling a Dutch television show Adolf Hitler was a"good guy."
The Dutch-born Johan Heesters, who now has Austrian citizenship and is still popular and performing in Germany, was asked by a Dutch journalist what he thought of Hitler."A good guy, that's what he was," he said on the clip shown Thursday on the current affairs show"De Wereld Draait Door" ("The World
Source: FoxNews.com
December 7, 2008
With an eye on the immediate aftermath of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor,
thousands of World War II veterans and other observers are expected on
Sunday to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the devastating Japanese
military raid.
The theme of the event —"Pacific War Memories: The Heroic Response to
Pearl Harbor" — is something of a departure from the past.
Usually, the commemoration focuses on the attack on the USS Arizona, Pearl
Harbor and several other installations on Oah
Source: http://www.dailynews.com
December 6, 2008
The roster of local Pearl Harbor survivors I pulled out of my desk drawer
to call Friday grows shorter every year as the men get into their late 80
s and early 90 s.
Our remaining national treasures are more fragile and important for us to
remember than ever."Bill and Gil went this year, and I'm not doing so hot myself right now,"
says 90-year-old Leon Kolb when I call to tell him I'll be thinking about
him today - the 67 th anniversary of that Day of Infamy: Dec. 7, 1941.
Source: CNN
December 5, 2008
They share a deep sorrow: an idealistic American who tried to protect the
Kurds of Iraq, a Canadian general who refused to follow orders in Rwanda,
a French priest who fought for the soul of Cambodia.
Each one tried to focus the world's attention on the world's most heinous
crime: genocide. Each time, they were shunned, ignored or told it was
someone else's problem.
To understand why, CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the killing
fields of Europe, Africa and Asia for a two
Source: CNN
December 6, 2008
Caroline Kennedy, who spent most of her life looking to steer clear of the
spotlight, is capping off a year of unusually public -- and political --
activity with interest in the Senate seat that would vacated by Secretary
of State-designate Hillary Clinton.
And her interest in that seat could mean the continuation of a Kennedy
legacy in the Senate that began 56 years ago with the election of her
father, John F. Kennedy, as the junior senator from Massachusetts.
Her uncle Edwar
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 6, 2008
George W Bush would not have ordered the invasion of Iraq if the intelligence had shown that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to his former chief adviser and closest confidant.
Karl Rove made the claim as the president's inner circle launched an unofficial "Bush legacy project", with their old boss preparing to leave the White House next month.
The final mission on behalf of President Bush is reportedly being spearheaded by two t
Source: NYT
December 4, 2008
The Khmer Rouge canals have come back to life.
By the time the brutal government of Pol Pot was toppled three decades ago, 1.7 million Cambodians were dead from overwork, starvation and disease, and the country was a ruin.
But the forced labor of millions of Cambodians left behind something useful — or that is how the current government here sees it.
The Khmer Rouge leaders were obsessed with canals, embankments and dams. They presided over hundreds of irri
Source: CNN
November 28, 2008
Modern-day pilgrims to Plimoth Plantation have much curiosity about life in the re-creation of an English village from the 1600s and a Native American homesite. But some of the thousands of people who visit daily to get a glimpse of how the first colonials existed and created the Thanksgiving tradition bring with them misconceptions about the Native people.
Paula Peters, of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, said one of the first things she learned when she started working at Plimoth in M
Source: New York Times
December 7, 2008
It has remained one of World War II’s most enduring mysteries, one that resonated decades later after Sept. 11: Who in Washington knew what and when before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?
Specifically, who heard or saw a transcript of a Tokyo shortwave radio news broadcast that was interrupted by a prearranged coded weather report? The weather bulletin signaled Japanese diplomats around the world to destroy confidential documents and codes because war with the Un
Source: Independent (UK)
December 7, 2008
Ancient techniques pioneered by pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians are about to be pressed into service in Britain and Central America in the most serious commercial attempt yet to reverse global warming.
Trials are to be started in Sussex and Belize early in the new year, backed with venture capital from Silicon Valley, on techniques to take carbon from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil, where it should act as a powerful fertiliser.
The plan is to scale up rapidly in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 7, 2008
Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.
The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.
