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: Smithsonian.com
8-15-13
The J. Paul Getty Trust has an incredible collection of artwork including art from Monet, van Gogh, Rembrandt, da Vinci and more. Now, nearly 5,000 pieces of art from that collection have been opened up to the public for free use. You can browse the collection here....
Source: AP
8-19-13
CAIRO — As violent clashes roiled Egypt, looters made away with a prized 3,500-year-old limestone statue, ancient beaded jewelry and more than 1,000 other artifacts in the biggest theft to hit an Egyptian museum in living memory.The scale of the looting of the Malawi Museum in the southern Nile River city of Minya laid bare the security vacuum that has taken hold in cities outside Cairo, where police have all but disappeared from the streets. It also exposed how bruised and battered the violence has left Egypt.For days after vandals ransacked the building Wednesday, there were no police or soldiers in sight as groups of teenage boys burned mummies and broke limestone sculptures too heavy for the thieves to carry away. The security situation remained precarious Monday as gunmen atop nearby buildings fired on a police station near the museum....
Source: AP
8-18-13
WASHINGTON — The oil painting of a black Russian man lay quietly for years in a back corner of an antique shop in a dingy walking mall in Moscow.Andy Leddy, a white American working on a U.S. government contract for a refugee program in 1992, a year after the Communist Party lost power, pulled the canvas out and unrolled it.“Why would there be a portrait of a black man in Russia?” Leddy recalls thinking. “They treated people of color horribly here. But look at it. It’s heroic and romantic. It is odd to see a black subject in a heroic pose.”The clerks told him the unsigned painting depicted a man named Patterson who had starred in a classic Russian movie, but that was all they could tell him....
Source: AP
8-20-13
...The scenes are as riveting as any Hollywood war movie. But they are snippets of historical footage from the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, enhanced by modern coloring and sound techniques — and turned into a film.The only purely fictional elements are voiceovers presenting an imagined narrative that stitches together the footage: Two brothers scour the streets of the Polish city tasked with filming the 1944 rebellion of Warsaw residents against their Nazi occupiers, commenting on what they witness, from soup kitchens to scenes of destruction.It makes for a mesmerizing account of the fierce house-to-house fighting against the German army that began on Aug. 1 and ended 63 days later with the insurgents surrendering, following the deaths of some 200,000 rebels and residents. “Warsaw Rising” is cobbled together from black-and-white silent footage of crews that the Polish resistance Home Army sent fanning through the city to chronicle the uprising. Cinematographers hired by the Warsaw Rising Museum added coloration and sound that give a real-life feel, while modern editing techniques provide a polished, fast-paced narrative....
Source: CBS News
8-20-13
August 20, 2013 12:15 PM EDT — For the first time, the CIA is acknowledging that it organized the overthrow of Iran's government in 1953. (CBS News) [CLICK LINK FOR VIDEO]
Source: The Local
8-18-13
Five Picasso murals that survived Anders Behring Breivik's bombing of an Oslo government block in 2011 are now at the heart of a divisive debate in Norway on the buildings' fate.The murals drawn by the Spanish master in the late 1950s and 1960s -- "The Beach", "The Seagull", "Satyr and Faun" and two versions of "The Fishermen" -- risk being removed from the location for which they were conceived if the damaged buildings are torn down.The government is currently mulling whether to demolish the structures or repair them.Picasso's artwork adorns the concrete interiors and exteriors of two of the government buildings erected in central Oslo in the post-war period....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
8-18-13
Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. will comply if the South Korean Supreme Court upholds a ruling ordering it to pay 400 million won (about ¥35 million) to compensate four Koreans who were for forced to work for its predecessors during the war, company sources said Sunday.The Seoul High Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on July 10, marking in the first judgment by a South Korean court ordering a Japanese firm to pay in a case involving postwar reparations.After appealing the ruling, however, NSSMC has apparently changed its mind.“We, as a global company, can’t help but accept (the ruling),” one of the sources said, hinting that failure to comply might lead to seizure of the company’s assets in South Korea....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
8-18-13
ARCHAEOLOGISTS are planning a major dig to uncover one of the lost Kingdoms of the ancient Picts, the tribe of legendary warriors whose empire stretched from Fife to the Moray Firth before they mysteriously vanished from history.Until recently historians had believed that Fortriu - one of the most powerful Kingdoms of the “painted people” - had been based in Perthshire.But recent research has now placed the Pictish stronghold much further north to the Moray Firth area.And it was revealed today that a team of archaeologists from Aberdeen University are to embark on a series of excavations on the Tarbat peninsula in Ross-shire where archaeologists have already uncovered evidence of the only Pictish monastic settlement found in Scotland to date....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
8-18-13
IF IT weren’t for the history, Branxton Hill in north Northumberland would be an ordinary patch of farmland essentially indistinguishable from a thousand other northern English fields. But there is history – and tragedy – aplenty here. As the clouds part, the land is washed with sunshine, the barley whispers in the breeze and you remember that the fate of a nation was once decided on these quiet and ordinary fields. For this is Flodden.Five hundred years ago this place was a charnel house; on these fields were piled high the bodies of the Scottish dead. All very gallant; all very dead. Ten thousand of them, it is reckoned, though it is hard to be precise about these matters half a millennium later. At any rate, Scottish corpses outnumbered their English counterparts two to one. Among them King James IV himself, his natural son, the bishop of St Andrews, and no fewer than 13 earls. All of them lying cold in the clay.For centuries Flodden was the yin to Bannockburn’s yang. To recall one was to implicitly recall the other. They balanced one another perfectly; one a triumph the other a disaster. But no more, I think. The 700th anniversary of Bannockburn next year will be loudly celebrated; the 500th anniversary of Flodden next month will be recalled with barely a whisper....
Source: The Art Newspaper
8-15-13
The Henrician and Cromwellian iconoclasms destroyed most British medieval religious art, making any survivals very precious. The theft last month of two panels from the rood screen in the church of Holy Trinity, Torbryan, Devon, is, therefore, a major tragedy for the art world.The stolen panels show St Victor of Marseilles and St Margaret of Antioch. The thieves also damaged a neighbouring panel of a female saint.The oak rood, otherwise intact, was constructed and painted between 1460 and 1470, and the artistry is of a very high quality. The church is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), a national charity that aims to protect historic churches at risk....
Source: Talking Points Memo
8-16-13
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The CIA is acknowledging the existence of Area 51 in newly declassified documents.George Washington University’s National Security Archive obtained a CIA history of the U-2 spy plane program through a public records request and released it Thursday.National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson reviewed the history in 2002, but all mentions of Area 51 had been redacted....
Source: Al Jazeera
8-15-13
Bangkok, Thailand - After a deluge of incidents, Thailand is currently in discussions to re-work its national curriculum to include Holocaust education.Thailand has recently witnessed a shop in a mall in Bangkok selling Nazi clothes and accessories, parading students in Chiang Mai performing the "Sieg Heil" Nazi salutes wearing SS uniforms, the discovery of a fried chicken restaurant called "Hitler" and a mural apparently lionising Hitler displayed on the campus of one of Thailand's oldest and most respected schools, Chulalongkorn University (CU).Thailand's association with Nazi imagery is not new. Chetana Nagavajara, a professor of German literature at Silapakorn University, said the Hitler mural at CU "could have happened at any institution".Decades ago, a "Nazi bar" was set up in a popular Bangkok entertainment district, with waiters dressed up as SS officers and saluting customers. Former Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj lashed out at the practice in Siam Rath, a tabloid newspaper, and the bar was shut down soon after....
Source: USA Today
8-15-13
Russell Simmons is apologizing after coming under fire for a video that appeared on his new All Def Digital YouTube channel.The "Harriet Tubman Sex Tape" depicts an actress portraying the famous abolitionist having sex with her "Massa" in order to allow her to run the Underground Railroad. The video has since been taken down. Simmons issued an apology on Globalgrind.com in which he says he was contacted by his "buddies" at the NAACP asking for removal of the video....
Source: Toronto Globe and Mail
8-11-13
Down the muddy monsoon-soaked path and through the towering red brick Delhi Gate of Lahore’s fabled walled city, there is an ambitious project to turn back decades of neglect and unchecked commercialization and save the city’s remaining treasures.The area is abuzz with labourers digging up the roads. Already, workers for the conservation project have demolished a cloth market and a line of shops that was built against a 17th-century mosque, damaging its facade and structure.For a city more than 1,000 years old, a powerful conservation effort of this kind – backed by political will, money and restoration expertise is critical....
Source: The Oregonian
8-14-13
MANZANITA -- Somewhere off the coast of Manzanita rest the bones of a galleon from the Philippines, wrecked on the rocks around 1700 as it left Manila laden with goods destined for Mexico.That's the legend told here for centuries, but the saga isn't just empty words. For as long as the tale's circulated, Native Americans, settlers and even modern-day beachcombers have found the beeswax and porcelain to prove it.Now, a volunteer group of students, archaeologists and historians calling themselves the Beeswax Wreck Research Project is hoping to get one step closer to finding the ship when they set out to sea later this month with equipment that may zero in on the galleon's location....
Source: ArtDaily
8-15-13
BEIJING (AFP).- As a teenager radicalised by China's Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongbing denounced his mother to the authorities. Two months later a firing squad shot her dead.Now after more than 40 years of mounting guilt, Zhang has ruffled the silence that cloaks China's decade of turmoil with a public confession.Such rare apologies have been welcomed as a potential gateway to the collective soul-searching that could bring healing -- but is blocked by a ruling Communist Party whose critics say is unwilling to confront its own responsibility."Back then everyone was swept up and you couldn't escape even if you wanted to. Any kindness or beauty in me was thoroughly, irretrievably 'formatted'," Zhang told the Beijing News last week."I hope that from my self-reflection other people can understand what the situation was like at that time."...
Source: NYT
8-14-13
BRUSSELS — Paintings worth tens of millions of dollars that were stolen last October from an art museum in the Netherlands have not been burned, and a Romanian gang behind the theft wants to cut an unspecified deal with the authorities so the artwork can be returned, lawyers for the defendants said on Tuesday as they went on trial in Romania.“Our clients want to tell where the paintings are, but they want to make a deal,” one of the lawyers, Radu Catalin Dancu, told reporters in Bucharest after a judge ordered the trial adjourned until next month. “We cannot say anything more than that.”
Source: Asahi Shimbum
8-14-13
AURORA, Illinois--At the age of 92, Kenneth Udstad felt a sense of guilt for his actions of nearly 70 years ago.Now, the U.S. veteran of World War II wants to return the items he took from dead Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilian homes on the Northern Mariana Islands of Saipan and Tinian.Udstad served in the 4th Marine Division and was in charge of supplying ammunition and fuel for tanks. In the summer of 1944, he landed on Saipan for heavy fighting against the Imperial Japanese Army and Japanese civilians rounded up for the battle....
Source: Asahi Shimbum
8-14-13
Maps of Japanese cities that were devastated by Allied air raids during World War II are currently on display at the National Archives of Japan in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.Covering 131 municipalities stretching from northern Hokkaido to southern Kagoshima Prefecture, most of the maps are being shown to the public for the first time.The maps were completed in December 1945 to provide information to military personnel, as well as civilian workers for the military, on their way home from overseas battlefields. Records show the maps were displayed in ships bringing back demobilized soldiers to Japan, according to officials....
Source: Asahi Shimbum
8-14-13
To prevent relations with China and South Korea from further deteriorating, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided not to visit Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15, the date marking the end of World War II, sources said.Instead, Abe will make a personal monetary offering in his position as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to the shrine, which memorializes Japan’s war dead along with 14 Class-A war criminals, according to the sources.Abe has been forced into a delicate balancing act concerning Yasukuni Shrine.The prime minister has been repeatedly asked about his plans for Aug. 15. His usual reply has been: “Because the very question of whether I visit the shrine will by itself become a political and diplomatic issue, I will not say whether or not I will visit.”...
