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: http://www.knoxnews.com
November 26, 2008
JEFFERSON CITY — Capt. E.J. Cannon fell to an enemy’s bullet within sight of the home he hadn’t seen in two years.
Today he’d barely be able to find the place where his men fought.
Years of development have almost obliterated every trace of the running battle Cannon, an officer of the Union Army’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry, and more than 8,000 other Union and Confederate soldiers fought four days after Christmas 1863 near the community then known as Mossy Creek.
Source: Tom Engelhardt at tomdispatch.com
December 1, 2008
If you want to catch something of the fears and hopes of Americans right now, go to News.Google.com and try searching for a few words. For instance, put in"FDR" -- the well-known initials of the man who was president four times and took America through the Great Depression and all but the last months of World War II -- and endless screens of references pop up.
The Nationand
Source: ABC News
December 1, 2008
Looking back on his eight years in the White House, President George W. Bush pinpointed incorrect intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as "biggest regret of all the presidency."
President reflects on the camaraderie in his administration.
"I think I was unprepared for war," Bush told ABC News' Charlie Gibson in an interview airing today on "World News."
"In other words, I didn't campai
Source: AP
December 1, 2008
TOKYO — A Japanese general who was fired as head of the air force for suggesting Japan deserves credit, not blame, for its World War II actions stood by his claim Monday.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Toshio Tamogami was dismissed a month ago for writing an essay that said Asia benefited from imperial Japan's activities before and during the war.
Tamogami defended that position Monday, saying Japan has been unjustly subjected to what he called "the history
Source: LAT
November 30, 2008
Everybody knows how President-elect Barack Obama's amazing campaign money machine was dominated by several million regular folks sending in hard-earned amounts under $200, a real sign of his broadbased grassroots support.
Except, it turns out, that's not really true.
In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%. Obviously, this is unacceptable to current popular
Source: AP
November 29, 2008
Among the many challenges Michelle Obama will face as first lady, the biggest may be defining the job.
And therein lies the problem: Her newest high-profile job isn't a job, per se.
America's Founding Fathers made no provision for the first lady in the Constitution, and no formal or official description exists. The first lady is neither elected nor appointed, but comes along with the president, for better or worse.
Nor is she paid for all that's required of
Source: AP
November 29, 2008
In the years after World War II, Americans packed up their young families and Army surplus camping gear and headed into the national forests to hunt, fish, and hike. Going to the woods was part of what it meant to be an American.
Today, however, visits to the national forests are off 13 percent.
Top officials at the U.S. Forest Service blame it on circumstances outside their control — rising gas prices, the popularity of video games and the Internet, and an increasingl
Source: Jerusalem Post
November 27, 2008
Archbishop of Lublin, Josef Zycinski, said this week ahead of a visit to Israel that there was a "new era" of Polish openness to Jews and defended controversial Holocaust-era Pope Pius XII as a "pragmatist."
"I would say that the situation has changed in free Poland," said the archbishop in a telephone interview from Lublin.
"In the late 1970s it was impossible to have access to the parts of Auschwitz that showed the enormity of the Je
Source: BBC
November 28, 2008
Around a dozen people are crammed onto the bridge by the River Spree, pointing their cameras through the fence, determined to catch a glimpse of the huge building site where the Palace of the Republic once stood.
"It's a disgrace that they're tearing down the Palace of the Republic, it's an expression of political superiority after the reunification of Germany," one old man said.
"They're destroying a powerful symbol of Berlin's history," he added.
Source: AP
November 29, 2008
Anne Frank's status as a symbol of the Holocaust has overshadowed the reality of a girl eager to discover the world around her, a close childhood friend said.
Jacqueline van Maarsen said that while the use of Frank's name to fight anti-Semitism had been very effective, it inadvertently made her larger-than-life.
"Anne as a little girl was lost," Van Maarsen said during an interview in Budapest where she was presenting the Hungarian version of her book "My
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 28, 2008
Allan "Chirpy" Campbell claims the bank gained permission to use the image of celebrated indigenous author and inventor David Unaipon from a woman who was posing as his daughter, and did not obtain authorisation from a genuine family member.
"They jacked this woman up and proclaimed that she is the daughter of my uncle, and when we found out they blocked us and they chucked all the barricades there," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 24, 2008
It was hailed as an archeological discovery of global importance showing, among other things, the oldest representation of Christ on the cross and proof that ancient Egyptian influences had survived deep in Roman Spain.
For traditional Basques the pictures, symbols and words found scraped onto pieces of third century pottery dug up near the town of Nanclares, in northern Spain, included miraculous evidence that their unique language of Euskara was far older than ever thought. Eighte
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 29, 2008
The items are being offered by a British seller via a controversial US-based website, in an enterprise which has been described by the family of one victim as "against common decency".
Adam Walsh, a shop assistant from Beckenham, south-east London, is asking £500 for a poem handwritten and illustrated by Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, which dates from 1981, the year of his arrest. He is serving life for murdering 13 women between 1975 and 1980.
Another item
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 28, 2008
A market town's 400-year-old Christmas custom of firing muskets into the sky has been banned because of fears the noise will scare children.
Wimborne council in Dorset has told the town's Militia, which re-enacts traditions dating back to the 17th century, that it can no longer fire muskets over the Christmas tree.
The council said the noise of the blank shots would be too loud for children and would keep families away from the annual event to mark the switching on of t
Source: AP
November 28, 2008
For the first time, federal legislation has set aside the day after Thanksgiving — for this year only — to honor the contributions American Indians have made to the United States.
Frank Suniga, a descendent of Mescalero Apache Indians who lives in Oregon, said he and others began pushing in 2001 for a national day that recognizes tribal heritage.
Suniga, 79, proposed his idea to a cultural committee that is part of the Portland-based Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. Th
Source: NYT
November 27, 2008
Corn, beans and squash — the “three sisters” of Native American agricultural tradition — will appear on the nation’s one-dollar coins next year, in a design to be announced Friday by the United States Mint.
By the dictates of an act that Congress passed last year, the reverse side of the gold-colored Sacagawea dollars will bear a new design each year starting in 2009, as part of a thematic series showing Native American contributions to the history and development of the United Stat
Source: NYT
November 27, 2008
As they have for 50 years, Americans here packed St. Paul’s Cathedral on Thursday for an annual Thanksgiving service that, as evocatively as any event on the calendar, nurtures the home thoughts from abroad that are a staple of expatriate life....
For the 220,000 Americans living in Britain, the annual gathering at St. Paul’s, Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, provides an opportunity to celebrate the two nations that are the pillars of their lives. A centerpiece of the occasion e
Source: NYT
November 27, 2008
For sale: a vast tunnel complex in central London. Former tenants include Britain’s secret service, the famous hot line between America and the Soviet Union during the cold war and 400 tons of government documents. The asking price is $7.4 million.
After years of lying unused beneath the traffic-jammed streets of the city, the tunnel complex — one mile of underground corridors and adjacent rooms — is now for sale by the BT Group, Britain’s largest phone company. BT hopes the site’s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 28, 2008
Dutch-born singer and actor Johannes Heesters, 104, began a lawsuit yesterday in a bid to force author and documentary film maker Volker Kuhn to withdraw claims that he sang for guards at Dachau in 1941.
Mr Heesters, who rose to fame in Germany in the Third Reich, says he was ordered by the Nazis to attend the camp in an attempt to deceive the public about what was really going on inside.
But the entertainer, thought to be the world's oldest performing actor, denied eve
Source: Times (UK)
November 28, 2008
The daughter of General Franco has revealed that her father feared being kidnapped by Adolf Hitler in an effort to force Spain into the Second World War.
Carmen Franco Polo, 82, said her father nominated three substitutes to assume power should the Nazi leader abduct him when they met at a conference in 1940.
Ms Polo spoke publicly for the first time about life with El Caudillo in her book, Franco, My Father, which is published today in Spain.
The sole d
