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: Newsweek
January 2, 2012
In the winter of 1937, the Japanese army stormed Nanjing, then China’s capital, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in what is now known as the Nanjing Massacre. The incident remains the most emotionally wrenching chapter in the history of Sino-Japanese relations. But unlike the Holocaust and other acts of mass violence during World War II, creative attempts to represent the massacre have been few and far between.
Source: BBC News
January 13, 2012
Martin McGuinness has said he was 'disturbed' to learn that documents detailing paramilitary decommissioning are held in a Boston College archive.The deputy first minister made his remarks at the British Irish Summit in Dublin Castle on Friday.Boston College has said that documents in its archive will remain confidential for 30 years.The body which oversaw paramilitary decommissioning in Northern Ireland presented its final report in 2011.The entire process was monitored by the International Independent Commission on Decommissioning (IICD)....
Source: Mother Jones
January 13, 2012
Last February, activists pitched a fit when it was announced that, for the second consecutive year, the gay Republican group GOProud would be a cosponsor of Washington's biggest right-wing confab, the Conservative Political Action Conference....CPAC isn't so discerning about the rest of its cosponsors, though. As Right Wing Watch notes, one of the sponsors at February's conference will be Youth For Western Civilization, a group dedicated to, as the name suggests, preventing the "extinction" of Western Civilization at the hands of multiculturalism. Per its mission statement, the group boasts that, "in spite of the continual assault and hatred it endures from the radical left, we wish to revive the West, rather than see our civilization be sent to the graveyard of history."How does that manifest itself? Among other things, the group is a passionate defender of South Africa's white heritage. A recent blog post featured at the site accuses the African National Congress, the nation's ruling party, of waging a "genocide" against Afrikaners, and pins much of the blame on revered former president Nelson Mandela....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 9, 2012
President Abraham Lincoln is widely portrayed in film and TV delivering speeches in an authoritative, booming voice.The performance of Gregory Peck with his rich bass tones in mini-series The Blue and the Gray, in particular, no doubt helped to cement that perception.But according to one historian, this could not be further from the truth.Leading Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer believes the 16th U.S. President, the man who successfully led his country through the American Civil War with his famous speech, The Gettysburg Address, did so in a 'shrill and high' voice.This would have been in stark contrast to the bass vocals which tended to dominate oratory in the 1850s and also against the artistic licence employed more recently by those who cast Peck and, among others, Sam Waterston as the great man himself....
Source: Examiner
January 12, 2012
About 3,500 years ago, when the Bronze Age was ending in Europe and the Olmec civilization was thriving in Mexico, natives in San Antonio were living off the land using primitive tools, as they had been for thousands of years.Signs of ancient human settlements have been found elsewhere in Texas, some more than 10,000 years old. And now there's evidence that about 1500 B.C. — three millennia before the Spanish Conquest — natives were building structures along the San Antonio River.Last month, workers preparing Mission County Park for construction found evidence of one such building while searching for a previous location of nearby Mission San Jose, which they never located.What they did uncover — and then reburied after preliminary investigation — were remains of a prehistoric hut that burned down but left significant clues....
Source: EurActiv
January 4, 2012
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Estonia rejects accusations that it plans to honour Estonians who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II as "freedom fighters", as reported by various European media, EurActiv has learned.“Estonian government can guarantee, that nobody would be honoured in Estonia for fighting in nazi uniform or belonging to Waffen-SS”, a government spokesperson told Euractiv.Last December, the Delfi news website in Estonia reported that the Defence Ministry wants Parliament to consider a bill that would recognise World War II fighters against Soviet troops as Estonian freedom fighters. Attempts to pass such legislation failed in 2006 and in 2010....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 12, 2012
A medieval fishing village is believed to have been found in the Outer Hebrides after a tip-off from an islander.The site is among potential new historic finds made along the islands’ coasts following information from members of the public.Archaeologists said they were told about the village after bumping into local man JJ MacDonald. The possible fishing station was discovered near Loch Euport, on North Uist.The project team said on Ordnance Survey maps the area is called Havn, the Norse word for harbour.Last year, fishermen, beachcombers, divers and islanders in the Hebrides were asked for information on where archaeologists might find ancient sites along shorelines.The project involves the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), WA Coastal and Marine, Historic Scotland and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council)....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 12, 2012
The newly-discovered diaries of a wealthy country squire show he spent the majority of his time painting scenes of Victorian life rather than working.Solicitor George Cooper's journals are full of incredibly detailed sketches and paintings and give a fascinating insight into Victorian life.But the diaries have also provided a new enlightening picture of the wealthy Somerset landowner - and show he very rarely went to work.Typical entries include descriptions of his favourite pastimes of shooting, fishing, hunting, cycling and cricket, around the town of Wincanton, with regular mentions of dinners with friends....
Source: NYT
January 12, 2012
I’m not throwin’ away my shot.Hey yo, I’m just like my country.I’m young, scrappy and hungry.That verbal fusillade delivered by Lin-Manuel Miranda, playing Alexander Hamilton, began the sensational performance of Mr. Miranda’s project, “The Hamilton Mixtape,” on Wednesday evening at the Allen Room, where it opened the new season of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series....Who would have thought of comparing America’s founding fathers to contemporary rappers? But “The Hamilton Mixtape,” inspired by Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton, finds him furiously quarreling with Thomas Jefferson (Jon Rua), James Madison (James Monroe Iglehart), and Aaron Burr (Utkarsh Ambudkar), in cabinet debates moderated by George Washington (Christopher Jackson)....
Source: BBC News
January 12, 2012
It was a decade of drama - miner's strikes, the Falklands war, IRA terrorism and the discovery of Aids.But life on a more domestic level in the 1980s will be opened up for further study this summer.First hand accounts, written by volunteers, of their daily lives and views were collected throughout the decade as part of the Mass Observation Archive.The ambitious project, which ran from the 1930s to 1950s and then from the 1980s onwards, recorded personal details about life in Britain, through diaries and observations....
Source: NYT
January 12, 2012
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Thursday that it would place the body of Kim Jong-il on permanent display in a Pyongyang mausoleum and install his statues, portraits and memorial towers across the country.Mr. Kim, who died on Dec. 17 at age 69, is the second North Korean leader whose embalmed body will be on public display. His father, the North’s founding president, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, was embalmed with the help of Russian experts and is in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang.Mr. Kim’s body will be on display there too, the Politburo of the ruling Workers’ Party said on Thursday in a report carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. There was no indication of how much the impoverished North Korean government planned to spend on the memorials.
Source: LA Times
January 12, 2012
REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Two years have passed since a ferocious earthquake leveled much of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed about a quarter-million people. It was, as The Times put it, "one of modern times' worst natural disasters," striking "one of modern times' poorest nations."Today there is progress, including the election and seating of a new government, the clearing of much rubble, the rebuilding of some housing and other infrastructure, the expansion of access to healthcare.
Source: WaPo
January 12, 2012
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley will be in clear view for the first time in nearly 150 years once a truss weighing more than eight tons surrounding it is removed in South Carolina.The work is scheduled for Thursday at a conservation lab in North Charleston....
Source: AP
January 12, 2012
The Czech government agreed Wednesday to pay billions of dollars in compensation to churches for property seized by the former Communist government. The deal threatened to topple the coalition government earlier this week after a junior partner voiced anger at the thought of huge sums being paid to churches in the middle of the European debt crisis....
Source: NYT
January 11, 2012
CAMBRIDGE, England — For scale, they were no match for the Great Pyramids of Giza or the Panama Canal. The labor took months rather than years and a work force of barely 100 men. As for materials, there were none, beyond what the captured Royal Air Force fliers who built them could scavenge, scrounge or improvise.But by the measures of ingenuity, courage and persistence, the tunnels built almost 70 years ago in sandy scrubland near the small town of Zagan, 130 miles southeast of Berlin in what was then Hitler’s Germany and is today western Poland, were a legendary feat of engineering, although on a miniature scale.
Source: BBC News
January 11, 2012
Five thousand Irish soldiers who swapped uniforms to fight for the British against Hitler went on to suffer years of persecution.One of them, 92-year-old Phil Farrington, took part in the D-Day landings and helped liberate the German death camp at Bergen-Belsen - but he wears his medals in secret....He was one of about 5,000 Irish soldiers who deserted their own neutral army to join the war against fascism and who were brutally punished on their return home as a result.They were formally dismissed from the Irish army, stripped of all pay and pension rights, and prevented from finding work by being banned for seven years from any employment paid for by state or government funds...."They didn't understand why we did what we did. A lot of Irish people wanted Germany to win the war - they were dead up against the British."It was only 20 years since Ireland had won its independence after many years of rule from London, and the Irish list of grievances against Britain was long - as Gerald Morgan, long-time professor of history at Trinity College, Dublin, explains....
Source: BBC News
January 11, 2012
The Charles Dickens Museum in central London has defended its decision to close for a revamp during the 200th anniversary year of the author's birth.The author's former home will shut on 10 April, also ahead of the Olympic Games when many tourist attractions are expecting boosted visitor numbers.The museum has been awarded a Heritage Lottery grant of £2m.Museum manager Shannon Hermes said the money was only available for a limited time and they had to seize the chance....
Source: BBC News
January 11, 2012
A grenade which sparked an emergency when it was handed to a police officer dated from World War II, the Army has said.Residents in Dura Street, Dundee, were told to stay indoors and the road closed after the device was passed to an officer on Tuesday afternoon.Army bomb disposal experts were called in and took the badly-corroded grenade away to destroy it elsewhere.It had been dug up several years ago by a man in the local area, police said....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 12, 2012
A POW wiling away the war in a German prison camp delivered a defiant message insulting Hitler through the apparently innocuous skill of embroidery.Major Alexis Casdagli, who was taken prisoner in 1941, had turned to embroidery as a way of protecting his sanity against the tedium of POW life but he also found it provided a means of covert resistance.An innocent looking tapestry stitched by the officer in December 1941 bears the rather bland text stating the name and location of its creator and the date. But in a border surrounding the text Major Casdagli also stitched a series of dots and dashes, which in Morse code spelt out "God Save the King" and "---- Hitler"....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2011
The wartime diary of Private Ross Taylor, a British prisoner of war whose daily jottings never exceeded 140 characters, is to be broadcast on Twitter.Private Taylor, a driver in the Royal Army Service Corps, kept a meticulous daily diary thoughout 1940 as he was captured at Albert during the Battle for France and held at Stalag VIIIB in Poland.His meticulous entries in the leather AA drivers' journal, a gift from his girlfriend Florence, detail spending New Year's Day in a drill hall in Chesterfield, being trapped in an ambush and the tortuous march 200-mile march into Germany.He recorded watching German fighter planes massacre columns of French refugees, and how starvation rations, forced labour and dysentry pushed him to the brink of death.Chris Ayres, his grandson, realised each entry was no more than the length of an update on the Twitter microblogging site....
