Breaking News
Highlights
- Man kidnapped by SS discovers true identity
- Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso admits family used British POWs as slave labour
- Karl Marx staging a comeback in Europe
- 114-year-old U.S. woman, daughter of slaves, to be world's oldest
- Elder Bush says he'd like to see Jeb in the White House
- 'Good old days' under Bokassa?
- Diaries of swashbuckling hero who rescued Robinson Crusoe unearthed
- Analysis: Bush's personality shapes his legacy
- Flawed Holocaust memoir finds new publisher
- Anger at plans for 'official' European history
WEEK OF JANUARY 5, 2009
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso admits family used British POWs as slave labour
Divers trawl for relics where attack launched by U-boat (UK)
114-year-old U.S. woman, daughter of slaves, to be world's oldest
Diaries of swashbuckling hero who rescued Robinson Crusoe unearthed
WEEK OF DECEMBER 29, 2008
Serious prediction by Russian: U.S. will break into six pieces...
Adolf Hitler at the centre of Austria's City of Culture campaign
Nato making same mistakes as Soviet army, says Zamir Kabulov
Diamonds offer 'final proof' that a comet wiped out the mammoth
For inauguration zeal, LBJ '65 may be the precedent for Obama
Cuba unveils Hemingway papers, including notes on WWII sub hunt
New Administration Inspires Hope for Full Access to Statue of Liberty
Bolten and Hadley Reflect on 8 Years with Bush, Decry 'Mythologies' About Cheney
Britain learned of South African nuclear programme from USSR
Britain learned of South African nuclear programme from USSR
Dinosaur fossils found in China are world's largest collection
103 year old who worked on Wall Street in 1929 is still there
Despite Lincoln links, Obama faces fundamentally different challenges
Cuba celebrates the Revolution's 50th anniversary under a shadow
National Archives: How Britain covered up Argentine occupation of Falklands
US judge orders North Korea to pay $65 million to sailors of ship captured in '68
Gonzales defends role in antiterror policies, will publish memoir
Biographer: Robert Burns was democratic, sympathized with French Revolution
Karl Rove claims Bush is one of the presidency's great readers
Burma's Stilwell Road: A backbreaking WWII project is revived
Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, dies aged 81
Reported killed 1940, obituary printed today: Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson
Labour tried to stifle Thatcher's role in women's suffrage celebration
1960s: Cold War cabinet seeks headquarters to withstand nuclear war (UK)
US Cold War Resettlement Program Used for Propaganda, Spying
Dan Rather's $70m lawsuit likely to deal Bush legacy a new blow
DNA from Neanderthals reveals: fair skin, red hair, freckles
2009 stamps to honor Lincoln, Poe, civil rights pioneers--and early TV
National Federation of the Blind Celebrates the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Louis Braille
US-Japanese study finds genes for 1918 'Spanish flu' pandemic
Veterans of '90s U.S. bank bailout see opportunity in current one
23 days and counting until George W Bush leaves the White House
WEEK OF DECEMBER 22, 2008
Disputed Oprah-Endorsed Holocaust Memoir Contradicted By More Witnesses
No Longer in Power, Free To Talk, Neocons Seek To Rewrite History
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Dark memories of Cambodia's killing spree
Source: BBC (12-31-69)
Exactly 30 years ago, a coalition of Cambodian and Vietnamese troops forced Pol Pot and his followers from power - after a four-year reign which left as many as two million people dead.
There was no hero's welcome for the conquering troops. But nor was there a nervous population, fearful about the intentions of the incoming army. Because Phnom Penh was almost completely deserted.
As many as two million Cambodians are thought to have died because of the policies of Pol Pot's government and the actions of Khmer Rouge members.
The current government says the end of that era is a cause for celebration. Prime Minister Hun Sen was among the Cambodian troops who joined Vietnamese forces to oust the Khmer Rouge.
WWII Mexican guest workers rush to meet deadline
Source: azcentral (12-31-69)
After almost 70 years of waiting, some in the Valley are finally on their way to getting money long owed to them by the Mexican government. They are known as braceros, who first came to the U.S. from Mexico as guest workers during World War II to fill the jobs of soldiers off at war. Monday was the deadline for them to process their claims to get this money, and dozens waited until the last minute.
During the bracero program, the U.S. took 10 percent from the workers' paychecks and sent it to Mexico, but the braceros never saw it again. Most of them didn't even know the money was owed to them until a class action lawsuit was filed on their behalf eight years ago. In October, the Mexican government finally agreed on a settlement to return $3,500 to each bracero.
But others weren't so lucky. Ernestina Garcia's father passed away more than 20 years ago, never knowing there was a chance his family would one day be eligible for the money he worked so hard to make. "I think he'll be happy," said Garcia. "He'll be happy he worked so hard in those years."
Looted Troops' Remains to be Reburied
Source: Military (12-31-69)
Toward the end of the Civil War, former slave Thomas Smith joined the 125th United States Colored Troops unit in Butler County, Kentucky.
Within two years of his 1864 enlistment, he was dead at age 23. The surgeon listed the cause as inflammation of the bowels from cholera. He was a private at Fort Craig, N.M., an Army post along the Rio Grande south of Socorro.
Well over a century later, a brown paper grocery bag containing the Buffalo Soldier's skull was handed over to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation archaeologists at a meeting in Peralta, with a Bureau of Land Management agent, a historian and a member of the medical examiner's office.
And come July 28, the remains of more than 60 people who died at Fort Craig will be reburied -- this time with pomp and ceremony -- at the Santa Fe National Cemetery.
Hemingway archive opens in Cuba
Source: BBC (12-31-69)
Cuba has opened up electronic access to thousands of documents belonging to the writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his greatest works on the island.
The archive includes photographs, letters and manuscripts, as well as an unpublished epilogue to Hemingway's novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
"We are talking about 3,194 pages of documents, close to 2,000 plus of documents, some already digitalised," said Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of the Museo Ernest Hemingway in Havana.
Ms Alfono said the archive would "shed light on the Cuban period of Hemingway, which was very important and not well known by his biographers".
Man kidnapped by SS discovers true identity
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-6-09)
A man kidnapped by SS soldiers as a child to be brought up as part of the Aryan 'master race' in Nazi Germany has discovered his true identity.
Folker Heinecke, 67, spent 34 years researching his past before discovering that two soldiers came to his village in the Russian Crimea and kidnapped him under the German Lebensborn - Fount of Life - programme.
He launched his bid to discover his origins after the death of his Nazi foster parents in 1975. "For years the files were closed or I got fragments of information," he said. "After 20 years I found out that I was in the Lebensborn programme but had no idea where I came from."
Mr Heinecke, whose book The Quest is being made into a documentary, is adamant that this will not be his fate. "I do not want to die unhappily like so many Lebensborn children," he said. "Just to stand at the grave of my real mother - that will be enough."
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso admits family used British POWs as slave labour
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-6-09)
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has admitted for the first time his family's company used prisoners of war as slave labourers during the Second World War.
Taro Aso said new documents showed captured serviceman, including Britons, were forced to work in mines.
The admission yesterday prompted British war veterans to step up demands for compensation and a proper apology.
Monday, January 5, 2009
CSI Hunley: Historic Sub's Fate a Cold Case File
Source: AP (1-5-09)
It could be one of the nation's oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.
Its fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since the Hunley was raised back in 2000. But the submarine has been agonizingly slow surrendering her secrets.
Secret army of ‘scallywags’ to sabotage German occupation
Source: Times (UK) (1-5-09)
By day they were ordinary civilians — from dentists and clergymen to gamekeepers and roadmenders – in a Britain gripped by fear of imminent invasion by Hitler’s blitzkreig troops.
The only clue to their alter egos might have been the pieces of paper in their pockets – informing any police officer suspicious of their behaviour “to ask no questions of the bearer but phone this number”.
But new details have now emerged of the highly secretive role played by a “resistance” army of fit young men and women chosen as would-be saboteurs and spies in the event of a German landing.
In the dark days of 1940, the unit grew to about 6,000 members, who knew little of each other and operated in small guerrilla groups. Recruited to disrupt a German occupation force – including roles such as blowing up tanks, lorry parks and communications – the teams prepared by carrying out covert missions, known as “scallywagging”, at night.
Karl Marx staging a comeback in Europe
Source: Britannica Blog (1-5-09)
Who’s benefiting from the current economic meltdown?
Karl Marx! Call him the “comeback kid” of the current economic crisis.
His works are selling in record numbers across Germany; publishers cannot reissue his works especially (Das Kapital) fast enough to keep up with the demand, as German universities have made him a prime topic of study in an attempt to understand the crisis affecting capitalist economies.
As this video explains, German scholars are quick to argue that this surge of interest in Karl Marx and Marxist theory does not signal a resurgence of Marxism, but Germany’s left-wing, socialist parties disagree and hope to “capitalize” on the situation in the next federal elections.
Laura Bush agrees to publish memoir with Scribner
Source: Reuters (1-5-09)
NEW YORK -- U.S. first lady Laura Bush has agreed to publish her memoirs with Scribner, the publisher said on Monday, giving the normally soft-spoken former librarian a chance to offer her views on the Bush presidency.
The book is expected to be published in 2010, said Scribner, an imprint of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, itself part of CBS Corp.
Scribner said it would offer "an intimate account of Laura Bush's life experiences, including eight years in the White House."
The publisher did not reveal terms of the deal, though publishing experts have said she could command a multimillion dollar advance.
Divers trawl for relics where attack launched by U-boat (UK)
Source: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk (1-9-09)
AS DAWN broke more than 90 years ago over the North Sea a U-boat captain gleefully ordered the destruction of the Scarborough fishing fleet.
Long after his daring attack in 1916 which sent a dozen trawlers to the bottom of the North Sea, Karl Von Georg recalled: "What a massacre of ships that was!
"We steered back and forth firing at full speed with the bow gun. One after another the ships hit at the water line, listed and plunged, until all had vanished from the surface of the sea, save the one on which the survivors were crowded."
It could have been a lot worse – and Von Georg, of U57, has gone down in history as a humanitarian who saved more than 120 lives, making sure they were all transferred to a boat to carry them home.
Now divers from Scarborough Sub Aqua Club have discovered the resting places of at least six of the trawlers, recovering three bells, and this year they will be trying to find yet more.
114-year-old U.S. woman, daughter of slaves, to be world's oldest
Source: CNN (1-3-09)
Gertrude Baines, a 114-year-old California resident, will likely be crowned the world's oldest woman, according to the organization that keeps track of such honors.
The previous oldest woman was Maria de Jesus, who died this week in Portugal at age 115, Guinness World Records said.
Baines -- born to former slaves in a small town south of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1894 -- now lives in a Los Angeles nursing home.
Baines appeared cheerful and talkative when the Los Angeles Times interviewed her in November as she cast her vote for Barack Obama for president, whom she said she supported because "he's for the colored people."
"I'm glad we're getting a colored man in there," she said.
Elder Bush says he'd like to see Jeb in the White House
Source: International Herald Tribune (1-4-09)
On Fox News, the former President George H.W. Bush seemed to catch an interviewer, Chris Wallace, by surprise when he said that he would like to see another Bush occupy the Oval Office.
He said that he thought that his son Jeb, the former governor of Florida, should consider seeking the seat that Senator Mel Martinez of that state will vacate in 2010.
He then added, "I'd like to see him run for president some day."
The former president, who is 84, had just been talking about what he considered the many unfair attacks on his son George. Indeed, on NBC, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, refused Sunday to retract his assessment that the younger Bush was "the worst president we've ever had."
'Good old days' under Bokassa?
Source: BBC (1-2-09)
For more than three decades his name has been synonymous with the worst excesses of the sort of dictators who have bedevilled post-colonial Africa.
History largely remembers Jean Bedel Bokassa - or Emperor Bokassa I as he crowned himself in 1977 - as one of the continent's most colourful yet bloodthirsty monsters.
He was a demagogue as ruthless as Mobutu and more flamboyant than Amin.
When Bokassa was overthrown in 1979, jubilant crowds vented their hatred on a giant statue of the tyrant who for almost 14 years ran the Central African Republic (or the Central African Empire as Bokassa had renamed it) like a modern-day Nero.
But for Jean Serge Bokassa - one of the emperor's several dozen children - history and the mob have got it wrong.
He argues that his father was "a patriot" who served his country well and who has been smeared by those who wanted to topple him.
Afghanistan battle like First World War
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-4-09)
British, Afghan and coalition forces battled the Taliban at close quarters, knee-deep in mud, over Christmas in fierce trench battles reminiscent of the First World War, it has emerged.
The offensive in Afghanistan's central Helmand province involved more than 1,500 troops and was one of the largest operations mounted by Royal Marines since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
It was fought over 18 days around the town of Nad-e-Ali to capture four key Taliban strongholds.
Diaries of swashbuckling hero who rescued Robinson Crusoe unearthed
Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-31-69)
A 300-year-old journal of a British explorer who saved the real-life Robinson Crusoe and defeated pirates of the Caribbean has been discovered.
The extremely rare account chronicles a three-year round-the world voyage of the swashbuckling privateer Capt Woodes Rogers, who made a fortune pillaging from pirate ships and Spanish galleons.
It is thought only a hundred copies of his book, A Cruising Voyage Around the World, were printed seven years after Rogers completed his odyssey. One was recently found in a loft in Bristol, where Rogers' was based, and is expected to fetch £3,000 when it is auctioned on January 21st.
Stonehenge was 'giant concert venue'
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-4-09)
The monument has baffled archaeologists who have argued for decades over the stone circle's 5,000-year history but academic Rupert Till believes he has solved the riddle by suggesting it may have been used for ancient raves.
Mr Till, an expert in acoustics and music technology at Huddersfield University, West Yorks., believes the standing stones had the ideal acoustics to amplify a "repetitive trance rhythm".
The original Stonehenge probably had a "very pleasant, almost concert-like acoustic" that our ancestors slowly perfected over many generations
Because Stonehenge itself is partially collapsed, Dr Till, from York, North Yorks., used a computer model to conduct experiments in sound.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Second World War veteran reunited with crash landing plane
Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-31-69)
A Second World War RAF veteran has been reunited with the plane he was shot down in over enemy lines in 1942.
George Shepherd, 91, had a close call when the Handley Page Hampden torpedo bomber was shot down by German fighters in 1942.
He avoided serious injury and managed to escape. He went on the run for 32 hours before being captured by German forces, and was eventually put in a prisoner of war camp in Poland. He was later forced on the Nazi death march before being rescued by the allies in Germany.
The wreckage of the twin-engined plane, which had been providing air support for Allied fleets taking supplies to Russia, was eventually recovered by the Russians and put in storage.
Now the plane, one of just two believed to have survived, is being restored at the RAF Museum in Cosford, Shropshire.
He said of being reunited with the plane, registration number P1344: "I did not know it until now that the Russians had found my plane and salvaged it. When I was invited to see it, it brought back so many memories."
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Analysis: Bush's personality shapes his legacy
Source: AP (1-3-09)
WASHINGTON –- President George W. Bush will be judged on what he did. He will also be remembered for what he's like: a fast-moving, phrase-mangling Texan who stays upbeat even though his country is not.
For eight years, the nation has been led by a guy who relaxes by clearing brush in scorching heat and taking breakneck bike rides through the woods. He dishes out nicknames to world leaders, and even gave the German chancellor an impromptu, perhaps unwelcome, neck rub. He's annoyed when kept waiting and sticks relentlessly to routine. He stays optimistic in even the most dire circumstances, but readily tears up in public. He has little use for looking within himself, and only lately has done much looking back.
Bush's style and temperament are as much his legacy as his decisions. Policy shapes lives, but personality creates indelible memories — positive and negative.
Call it distinctly Bush...
Flawed Holocaust memoir finds new publisher
Within days of the Penguin Group's decision to cancel the publication of Herman Rosenblat's Holocaust memoir, York House Press, a small publishing house, has announced it will print the book, minus the fictionalized apple stories. Below is the publisher's announcement.
Related Links
Deborah Lipstadt: Apples Over the Fence: A New Publisher for the Book
Serious prediction by Russian: U.S. will break into six pieces...
Source: Washington Post (1-3-09)
For seriously predicting that the United States will break into six parts in June or July of 2010, Igor Panarin has suddenly become a Russian state-media celebrity. Hardly a day goes by without another interview or two for the KGB-trained, Kremlin-backed senior analyst. The clamor in Russia for his ideas is growing, he says.
Panarin's disintegration divination comes complete with a map. In it, Alaska goes to Russia. Hawaii goes to Japan or China. "The California Republic" -- the West from Utah and Arizona to the Pacific -- goes to China. "The Texas Republic" -- the South from New Mexico to Florida -- goes to Mexico. "Atlantic America" -- the Northeast from Tennessee and South Carolina up to Maine -- joins the European Union. And "The Central North-American Republic" -- the Plains from Ohio to Montana -- goes to Canada.
Few Americans paid any attention to his novel views until this week, when the Wall Street Journal trumpeted them on Page 1. Within hours, the U.S. media began the counterattack...
"The man knows nothing at all about American regional differences," wrote Justin Fox, Time's business and economics columnist.
Historians protest Wal-Mart near Civil War battlefield
Source: AP (1-2-09)
LOCUST GROVE, Va. —- Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site.
A who's who of historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield.
"The Wilderness is an indelible part of our history, its very ground hallowed by the American blood spilled there, and it cannot be moved," said the letter from 253 scholars and others.
Wal-Mart and its supporters point out that the 138,000-square-foot store would be right behind a bank and a small strip mall, a full mile from entrance to the site of the 1864 clash that left thousands dead and hastened the war's end...
Grant's Union troops were headed to Richmond on May 4, 1864, when they confronted Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of the Wilderness involved more than 100,000 Union troops and 61,000 Confederates. The fighting, according to National Park Service estimates, left more than 4,000 dead and 20,000 wounded.
German Soldier Clad Student Fatally Shot By Police
Source: AP (1-2-09)
A college student dressed in a vintage German military uniform who was fatally shot by police on New Year's Day was a harmless, eccentric history buff
Miles Murphy, a University of Washington senior, was shot several times at his apartment early Thursday after police said he pointed a rifle affixed with a bayonet at officers and refused orders to drop the weapon.
Seattle police had converged on Murphy's apartment after receiving complaints that several men were firing rifle and shotgun rounds into the air. Murphy emerged from inside and pointed what was later identified as a World War II Kar 98 German infantry rifle at the officers, police said.
Anger at plans for 'official' European history
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-2-09)
Plans to create a museum celebrating the "common historical memory" of the European Union have run into controversy over attempts to agree an account of key events including Second World War.
MEPs have given the green light to a multi-million pound state-of-the-art "House of European History" to be opened in Brussels by 2014.
The project to "promote an awareness of European identity" is the brainchild of Hans-Gert Poettering, President of the European Parliament and a Federalist German Christian Democrat.
"I should like to create a locus for history and for the future where the concept of the European idea can continue to grow," he said.
Adolf Hitler at the centre of Austria's City of Culture campaign
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-2-09)
Adolf Hitler is one of the last names you would expect to be deployed in a tourism marketing campaign.
But the Fuehrer has been given centre stage by the next European City of Culture.
Liverpool naturally highlighted its connections to the Beatles, its most famous sons, when it became City of Culture in 2008.
But the Austrian city of Linz, with no lederhosen version of the Fab Four to exploit, has instead decided to showcase the works of the architect of the Third Reich.
The Nazi leader spent nine years of his childhood in the city which he loved so much he intended to make it the location for a magnificent five star Adolf Hitler Hotel. He had also proposed building a 162-metre high bell tower in Linz to house the remains of his parents.
UK: Savers facing accounts with no interest
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-2-09)
Millions of savers are braced for zero per cent accounts within days as the Bank of England is poised to cut interest rates to the lowest level in its 315-year history.
Experts have warned the return on savings could plumb new depths with the Bank expected to take unprecedented steps to regain control over the economy.
They widely believe the Bank will reduce borrowing costs to below their 2 per cent level - and possibly all the way down to 1 per cent - in its first meeting of the year next week.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Nato making same mistakes as Soviet army, says Zamir Kabulov
Source: Times (UK) (1-3-09)
The Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, once told his British counterpart that Nato was making all the same mistakes that the Soviet army did in the country in the 1980s.
When Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, asked if Mr Kabulov would explain what those mistakes were, the reply was a quick and simple “No!”. It was a joke, but, like most Russian ones, it was rooted in an uncomfortable truth.
“The Soviet Union tried to bring socialism to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, you are trying to do the same with democracy,” Mr Kabulov, who served in Kabul in the 1980s, told The Times.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan 29 years ago it, too, wanted to overthrow a hostile government and install a more compliant regime. Nine years and 15,000 lives later, the mighty Red Army retreated, worn down by a relentless Islamist insurgency, in a defeat that precipitated the Soviet collapse two years later.
Ruslan Aushev, now 54 and head of Russia's War Veterans' Committee, served twice with a combat regiment in Afghanistan and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. “We have to ask what the Afghans want,” he told The Times. “What have the people of Afghanistan received from the coalition? They lived very poorly before and they still live poorly, but sometimes they also get bombed by mistake.”
Diamonds offer 'final proof' that a comet wiped out the mammoth
Source: Times (UK) (1-3-09)
Sure, 2008 was bad. But for Americans it was nowhere near as bad as 11,000BC – according to research published in Science magazine yesterday.
At about that time, say scientists, a massive comet struck the atmosphere somewhere above North America, broke into pieces and rained down fire and death – wiping out the early Palaeo-Americans, also known as Clovis people, and making creatures such as the woolly mammoth, mastodon, short-faced bear, sabre-toothed cat, ground sloth and giant armadillo extinct. Not to forget the American camel and the American lion.
Although this theory first emerged a year ago and has been hotly debated ever since, the authors of the Science article present compelling evidence to support it – in the form of nanodiamonds.
These, which are so small they are barely visible even under the most advanced microscopes, have been found embedded in 13,000-year-old sediment in North America and Europe. The only plausible explanation for this, say the authors, is a planetary catastrophe of the sort that bade farewell to the dinosaurs about 65 million years earlier.
Germans Disappointed by Reunification, New Poll Shows
Source: Deutsche Welle (1-2-09)
Almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, most Germans are disappointed at what the country has achieved since reunification, a new survey shows.
The survey carried out by Forsa for the Friday edition of the Berliner Zeitung daily found that the majority of the 1,000 Germans polled were dejected by the developments of the last two decades in the country.
"The euphoria that dominated after the fall of the Berlin Wall has largely disappeared," Forsa chief Manfred Guellner told news agency AFP.
Only 46 percent of Germans in the former communist east said their personal situation had improved. That number was as high as 71 percent in 1989.
Berlin Refugee Camp Closes After 55 Years
Source: Deutsche Welle (1-2-09)
For many, the Marienfelde Refugee Center in Berlin was a first stop-off point, a place where people could prepare for a new life in the West after turning their backs on Communist Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
But the refugee center, which served as a temporary home for close to two million people during its busy 55-year history, closed its doors for good on Wednesday, Dec. 31.
Refugee arrivals from eastern Europe have dwindled to a trickle in recent years, negating the usefulness of such a facility.
The Marienfelde camp was set up in 1953 and operated first by US, British and French allied officials and later by West Berlin authorities.
Descartes skull to be moved to his school
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-2-09)
The skull of philosopher René Descartes is to be moved from Paris to the school where he studied as a boy.
Prytanée military school near the north-western town of La Flèche has asked for the remains to be put on display in its adjoining church.
The institution believes the skull’s current home in the capital’s Musée de l’Homme – between busts of prehistoric man and retired footballer Lilian Thuram – is inappropriate.
Descartes’s body has been picked apart ever since he died in 1650. His fingers were taken for posterity, his bones for jewellery and his head for financial gain.
For inauguration zeal, LBJ '65 may be the precedent for Obama
Source: Boston Globe (1-2-08)
The 1.2 million spectators who mobbed [Lyndon] Johnson's inauguration - still a record - are remembered today as little more than a trivia question and a crowd-control model. But as Barack Obama prepares to be sworn in Jan. 20 on Abraham Lincoln's Bible to inherit Franklin D. Roosevelt's economy - while facing inevitable comparisons to John F. Kennedy's style and Ronald Reagan's rhetoric - the 1965 event has begun to look like its own precedent: The only inaugural to compare to this one for sheer enthusiasm and participation by often-disaffected citizens.
Then, as now, triumphant Democrats - especially African-Americans who played crucial roles in both sweeping victories - came to Washington both to welcome a new president and to enshrine a new coalition many of them imagined could permanently realign American politics.
"It was an extraordinary moment for liberals: They had what they believed was a mandate for pretty sweeping change," said Thomas J. Sugrue, a University of Pennsylvania historian and author of "Sweet Land of Liberty," about northern civil-rights activism. "The expectation of an extraordinary presidency played into Johnson's hubris."
In political terms, Johnson's inauguration was anticlimactic. He had assumed office on a Dallas tarmac in November 1963 following Kennedy's assassination, and within months signed the Civil Rights Act, effectively abolishing Jim Crow laws and ending legal discrimination. In 1964, Johnson was elected to a full term with the largest share of the popular vote in modern history. Early the following January, he delivered a State of the Union address laying out his ambitious "Great Society" agenda.
"People viewed the federal government as a positive force in American society," said Randall B. Woods, a University of Arkansas historian and the author of the biography "LBJ: Architect of American Ambition." "That election and this election served as bookends to a long period of conservatism and distrust of the federal government."...
Wearing a dinner jacket in place of his predecessors' white tie and tails, Johnson was reportedly the first president since George Washington to dance at his own inauguration. At one ball, he changed partners nine times in 13 minutes - and elsewhere he sought out a black couple on the dance floor. A photo of the encounter - Lady Bird dancing with a White House aide, Hobart Taylor, and Johnson dancing with the aide's wife, Lynette - appeared quickly in Jet magazine.
When, after visiting all five inaugural balls, the first couple retired for the night, Johnson offered a word of caution to his fellow partiers. "Don't stay up late," the president said, according to one biographer. "We're on our way to the Great Society."
Raul Castro says Cuba revolution faces years of struggle
Source: Reuters (1-2-08)
Cuba's revolution is stronger than ever but faces "incessant struggle" against the threat of the United States, President Raul Castro said on Thursday in a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the uprising that its leader, Fidel Castro, was too ill to attend.
Raul Castro spoke proudly of the 1959 revolution that transformed the Caribbean island into a communist state 90 miles (145 km) from U.S. shores, but he warned the country must not let down its guard.
"The enemy will never cease to be aggressive, treacherous and dominant," he said. "It is time to reflect on the future, on the next 50 years when we shall continue to struggle incessantly ... I'm not trying to scare anyone, this is the truth."
Iolaire disaster recalled on isle
Source: BBC (1-1-09)
The 90th anniversary of the wrecking of a ship carrying hundreds of sailors home following the end of World War I has been marked on the Western Isles.
About 300 people gathered at a memorial on Lewis dedicated to the Iolaire disaster in which 205 of the 280 passengers died.
The yacht was wrecked on a reef called the Beasts of Holm off Lewis in the early hours of 1 January 1919.
Vatican divorces from Italian law
Source: BBC (1-2-09)
The Vatican City State, the world's smallest sovereign state, has decided to divorce itself from Italian law.
Vatican legal experts say there are too many laws in Italian civil and criminal codes, and that they frequently conflict with Church principles.
With effect from New Year's Day, the Pope has decided that the Vatican will no longer automatically adopt laws passed by the Italian parliament.
Franco heirs ordered to open his summer retreat to public
Source: Guardian (UK) (1-2-09)
MADRID -- After a two-year battle with the government, heirs of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco have been ordered to open his flamboyant summer estate to the public.
The regional government of Galicia this week declared the late 19th-century property in the northern town of Sada a cultural heritage site...
The move is the most recent step in Spain's belated quest to come to terms with the legacy of its civil war and the Franco dictatorship. The last triumphant equestrian statute of the dictator was removed from public view last month - more than 30 years after his death...
The neomedieval estate was officially given as an "offering" by the city of La Coruña to the Generalissimo -- "founder of the new empire", according to the effusive gift-giving decree -- amid the nationalistic furor of the civil war. But the money to pay for this gift came from taxpayers and forced donations by residents of the La Coruña region, where Franco was born.
Cuba unveils Hemingway papers, including notes on WWII sub hunt
Source: Times (of London) (1-2-09)
Unpublished texts by Ernest Hemingway about the hunt for German U-boats off the Cuban coast during the Second World War are part of an important collection of the writer’s works to be released next week.
While serving on a ship tracking Nazi submarines in the Gulf of Mexico, Hemingway wrote in code about his exploits.
The notes are among 3,000 letters and other writings by the Nobel laureate to be made accessible online from Monday by curators at the writer’s former residence in Cuba, where he lived from 1939 to 1961.
Scholars and fans hoping to read some unpublished fragments of stories may be disappointed as curators at the Finca VigÍa museum in Havana say that there are not known to be any new literary texts in the collection. Among the array of documents, though, they may find clues to some previously unexplained chapters in Hemingway’s colourful life.
New Administration Inspires Hope for Full Access to Statue of Liberty
Source: Washington Post (1-2-09)
NEW YORK -- For more than a hundred years, generations of New Yorkers, as well as tourists to the city, have made the trek up the spiral staircase to the crown of the Statue of Liberty, to peer through the small windows at the unparalleled view of New York Harbor.
But that iconic experience ended with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. All the national parks were briefly closed, but Liberty Island, the statue's home, remained shut for several months. When the island was reopened to visitors, in December 2001, the statue remained off-limits.
It was not until August 2004 that the statue's pedestal was opened to the public -- but the National Park Service, which controls Lady Liberty, kept the statue itself closed. The Park Service cited not security concerns but health and safety: The narrow, double-helix staircase was treacherous, officials said; the statue's interior could get stifling hot in the summer; and some visitors suffered from exhaustion, panic attacks and claustrophobia after climbing the 162 steps from the top of the pedestal to her crown...
But closing the statue after the terrorist attacks, for whatever reason, has carried enormous symbolism, particularly for New York political leaders who have been demanding that Lady Liberty be fully reopened to the public.
Obamas checking in to hotel steeped in D.C. history
Source: CNN (1-1-09)
The hotel that will be home to President-elect Barack Obama and his family for the next couple of weeks offers one of Washington's best views of their future home, the White House, and a past linked with political movers and shakers.
The Obamas will be moving into the Hay-Adams hotel this weekend, aides say. They're doing this in part so that the family's daughters, Sasha and Malia, can begin school when classes reconvene after winter break.
They had hoped to move earlier into nearby Blair House, which president-elects traditionally occupy five days before moving into the White House. But the Bush administration said the house, which is used as a guest house for visiting dignitaries, already had events scheduled there and guests who could not be displaced.
The Obamas will move into Blair House on January 15.
According to its Web site, the Hay-Adams takes its name from past residents of the site -- one of whom had close ties with Obama's favorite U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln.
Sons’ love for missing dad plumbs the ocean’s depths
Source: MSNBC (1-1-09)
After more than 65 years, brothers find his sunken World War II submarine.
Longing can chart a better course than MapQuest. After more than 60 years, the Abele brothers have finally found their father.
Lt. Cmdr. Jim Abele commanded the USS Grunion, a submarine that disappeared off the coast of Alaska during World War II. Seven years ago his sons made a deal with their hearts, not their heads, and went looking for him.
It cost them a bundle. "If this were an official Navy project, I would guess that the taxpayers would be paying about 10 times what we're paying," John Abele chuckled.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Bolten and Hadley Reflect on 8 Years with Bush, Decry 'Mythologies' About Cheney
Source: Washington Post (1-2-09)
White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley remember conferring with President Bush during the darkest days of the Iraq war, in 2005 and 2006, when violence was out of control. In daily 7 a.m. meetings in the Oval Office, Bush reviewed "blue sheets" detailing incidents involving U.S. soldiers; he would circle the casualty figures and press his top aides for details about the deaths.
"It was pretty grim news," Hadley recalled last week. For him, however, the sessions underscored the president's focus. "This notion that somehow the president didn't know what was going on, information was withheld from him in some way, he didn't have a picture of what was going on: He got that picture" -- Hadley smacked his palms together for emphasis -- "at 7 o'clock every morning."
Few officials have had a closer view of the Bush presidency over the past eight years than Bolten and Hadley, who are among the handful of senior staffers who entered the White House with Bush in 2001 and will exit with him on Jan. 20...
Last week, in lengthy interviews in the spacious chief of staff's office in the West Wing, Bolten and Hadley reflected on their White House years and painted an affectionate portrait of the president. As two of the top officials who have had to defend controversial administration policies for the duration of the Bush presidency, they voiced frustration over their inability to improve Bush's popularity and to counter the administration's image of arrogance. But in a wide-ranging conversation lasting more than two hours, the two men also rebutted what they consider common misconceptions of the George W. Bush era, such as the president's alleged insulation from bad news and the view that Vice President Cheney wielded unbridled behind-the-scenes power.
"One of the mythologies," Hadley said, "is that it was the vice president that somehow was pulling the strings on foreign policy in the first term and made it very ideologically driven and that somehow in the second term, the vice president's influence is in decline and, therefore, somehow the real Bush has come forward, and we have a more pragmatic foreign policy."
"That's just hooey -- it's just hooey," the ever-polite Hadley concluded, with the strongest language he would muster for print...
'Still too early' to tell fate of Punic tombs (Malta)
Source: Times of Malta (12-31-08)
The fate of ancient rock-cut tombs found earlier this month on the site of the planned new St James Hospital is still uncertain as investigations into the discovery are still at an early stage, the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage said.
The tombs were discovered during excavation works for the new hospital ....
Eight tombs have been found and are estimated to date back to the Punic age, a span of time which lasted between roughly 600 BC and 1000 AD.
China and Vietnam settle border dispute
Source: International Herald Tribune (1-1-09)
Vietnam and China have completed the demarcation of their long-disputed land border in what they hailed as an event of "great historic significance" 30 years after their brief but bloody border war, state media reported Thursday.
The two countries signed a land border agreement in 1999, but it took them nine years to demarcate the 1,350-kilometer, or 840-mile, frontier.
The Vietnam News Agency reported that the two countries issued a joint statement, at the conclusion of four days of meetings, in which the border demarcation was announced as "an event of great historic significance in Vietnam-China relations."
Fifty years later, Cubans still are fleeing the revolution
Source: International Herald Tribune (1-1-09)
Four months after they appeared in the waters between Havana and Miami, the four dead men remain nameless. At a morgue in the Florida Keys, they lie on stretchers stacked like bunk beds, their bodies chewed by sharks, their faces too putrified to be recognized.
The police suspect they were Cuban rafters. Nilda García thinks one of them might be her son - and the thought makes her weep. Fourteen years after she left Cuba on her own makeshift boat, she finds herself wondering once again: When will it end?
"How many mothers are going through this?" García said in an interview at her daughter's apartment here as she awaited DNA results on the bodies. "How many more are crying for their losses? How many young people have drowned in this sea? How many?"
Fifty years ago on Thursday, many Cubans cheered when Fidel Castro seized power in Havana, and even now, the revolution attracts many fans - as evidenced by a Canadian tour agency advertising trips "to celebrate five decades of resilience."
But the bodies speak to a different legacy. Here in South Florida, where roughly 850,000 Cubans have settled over the years, repeated waves of painful exile and family separation define the Castro era.
At 50, Cuba's revolution showing its age
Source: CNN (1-1-09)
Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, when Fidel Castro and a group of guerrillas toppled a longstanding U.S.-backed dictator.
But January 1, 1959, was a long time ago. In Cuba today, when people refer to "the revolution," they often mean the country's aging, established government.
After so many years, people's hopes for the revolution's future are hardly revolutionary.
"I hope that it continues to move forward, because this country needs development. We're really behind," said a student who did not give his name.
Britain learned of South African nuclear programme from USSR
Source: Telegraph (UK) (1-1-08)
Britain learned that apartheid South Africa was preparing to test an atomic bomb only after being alerted by the Russians.
Previously secret papers released at the National Archives show how James Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was informed in August 1977 of a secret test site in the Kalahari Desert in a personal letter from Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president.
A Soviet spy satellite had discovered the site at Vastrap, in a remote area south of South Africa's border with Botswana, a week earlier. Two 750-foot shafts had been drilled in preparation for underground explosions. The Americans appear to have possessed similar satellite imagery but failed to inform their closest ally until after the Brezhnev letter.
Wall Street's Final '08 Toll: $6.9 Trillion Wiped Out
Source: WaPo (1-1-09)
After months of tortuous trading, Wall Street rang out its worst year since the Great Depression yesterday, leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer.
It hardly mattered that the market finished the last day of the year with a modest gain.
The losses in 2008 were so broad and deep that every sector in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index took a double-digit hit, and the financial sector lost more than half of its value. The Dow Jones industrial average, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, and the S&P, a broader index watched by market professionals, were down 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively, their deepest losses since the 1930s. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index was down 41 percent, its worst year since the exchange was created in 1971.
Time Mag.: The Top 10 Everything of 2008
Source: Time Magazine (1-1-09)
Top 10 Campaign Gaffes
Top 10 Campaign Video Moments
Top 10 Crime Stories
Top 10 Editorial Cartoons
Top 10 Election Photos
Top 10 Green Ideas
Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
Top 10 Oddball News Stories
Top 10 Open Mike Moments
Top 10 Outrageous Earmarks
Top 10 Photos
Top 10 Political Lines
Top 10 Religion Stories
Top 10 Scientific Discoveries
Top 10 Underreported Stories
Satellites unearthing ancient Egyptian ruins
Source: CNN (12-23-08)
Archaeologists believe they have unearthed only a small fraction of Egypt's ancient ruins, but they're making new discoveries with help from high-tech allies -- satellites that peer into the past from the distance of space.
"Everyone's becoming more aware of this technology and what it can do," said Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist who heads the Laboratory for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "There is so much to learn."
Images from space have been around for decades. Yet only in the past decade or so has the resolution of images from commercial satellites sharpened enough to be of much use to archaeologists. Today, scientists can use them to locate ruins -- some no bigger than a small living room -- in some of the most remote and forbidding places on the planet.
Nazi E-boat saved by military enthusiast
Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-31-08)
The last Nazi E-boat, which took part in an infamous raid during the Second World War, has been saved by a British military enthusiast [who paid 1 pound for it].
Schnellboot-130, once the fastest vessel in the world, helped attack an Allied convoy off Slapton Sands, in Devon, in a battle in which nearly 1,000 Allied soldiers were killed.
On the night of April 27, 1944, the boat was one of nine German vessels patrolling the English Channel when they stumbled upon Operation Tiger, which was the rehearsal for the D-Day landings.
Britain learned of South African nuclear programme from USSR
Source: Telegraph (UK) (12-31-09)
Previously secret papers released at the National Archives show how James Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was informed in August 1977 of a secret test site in the Kalahari Desert in a personal letter from Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president.
A Soviet spy satellite had discovered the site at Vastrap, in a remote area south of South Africa's border with Botswana, a week earlier. Two 750-foot shafts had been drilled in preparation for underground explosions. The Americans appear to have possessed similar satellite imagery but failed to inform their closest ally until after the Brezhnev letter.
In his letter of 8 August, the Soviet leader said he wanted to draw Callaghan's attention to a matter of "very great importance". Citing "available information", he went on to identify the Kalahari site and called on the British to exert pressure on Pretoria to cancel its clandestine programme.
Paul Hofmann, author and foe of Nazis, dies at 96
Source: International Herald Tribune (1-1-09)
Paul Hofmann, a Viennese who resisted the rise of Nazism in his homeland, acted as an informer for the Allies while serving on the staff of the German commandants of occupied Rome during World War II and later became a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and a prolific author of travel books, died Tuesday in Rome. He was 96.
His death was announced by his son Alexander Hofmann-Lord.
A diminutive, dapper man who spoke German, Italian, French and English fluently and several other languages more than passably, Hofmann had a broad grasp of history and diplomatic affairs and an often playful curiosity.
Helen Suzman, anti-apartheid leader, dies at 91
Source: International Herald Tribune (1-1-09)
Helen Suzman, the internationally prominent anti-apartheid campaigner who befriended the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and offered an often lonely voice for change among South Africa's white minority, has died, South Africa's SAPA news agency reported on Thursday. She was 91.
Suzman was for many years among the most venerated of white campaigners urging an end to the injustices of racial rule. But, while she challenged apartheid, her views on the creation of a new society fell well short of demands advanced by more radical black campaigners for such measures as economic sanctions to pressure the country's white rulers toward reform.
A diminutive, spry and elegant politician, Suzman became her country's longest-serving legislator, pressing for changes from the benches of the whites-only Parliament for 36 years before she retired from the assembly in 1989 and later created a pro-democracy foundation named after her.
Rebuilding Berlin Palace May Become a Grand Blunder
Source: NYT (1-1-09)
BERLIN — A hole has appeared in the center of town here. The symbolism is impossible to miss.
Berlin’s plan is to erect a fake Baroque palace, a copy of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss that once stood where that hole is, the site culminating the great avenue called Unter den Linden, at whose other end is the Brandenburg Gate. In December a little-known Italian architect, Franco Stella, won what passed for the building’s competition, which required a design faithfully reproducing three of the four original facades and much of the interior courtyard, leaving the fourth to the designer’s imagination.
Few serious architects bothered to apply.
The idea has been years in the making, but exactly what’s supposed to go inside this new Schloss still remains vague...
The saga of the Schloss, a cultural misadventure from the start, captures Berlin in a nutshell, as a city forever missing the point of itself. The original Stadtschloss, partly damaged during the war, was ripped down in 1950 by the Communist East Germans as a loathed emblem of Prussian militarism and imperial power. They replaced it in the mid-’70s with the Palace of the Republic, a bronzed glass-and-steel behemoth, the last remains of which were torn down, at eye-popping cost, during this past summer and fall...
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Senate Rejections Are Rare
Source: CQ (12-30-08)
Theodore G. Bilbo, a virulent white supremacist accused of intimidating black voters and corrupt campaign practices, was the last man denied a seat in the U.S. Senate, after the voters of Mississippi elected him to a third term in 1946.
According to the Senate historian’s office, Bilbo is one of just four appointed or clearly elected would-be senators who were not seated by the Senate since the April 8, 1913, ratification of the 17th amendment guaranteed the direct election of senators and provided for appointments to vacancies. (Others have had to wait for full recognition while contested elections were settled.)
The prospect of a fifth person joining that ignominious club loomed Tuesday when embattled Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich named Roland W. Burris to succeed President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate, setting the stage for a high-stakes battle with his party’s leaders in Washington.
Senate Democrats led by Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada say they will refuse to seat Burris, a former state comptroller and attorney general, because Blagojevich faces federal corruption charges that include allegiations he tried to auction off the Senate seat. Burris’ name did not figure in any of those allegations.
Related Links
Blocking Blago: Senate has Plan B for 90-day delay