Breaking News
Highlights
- Americans Still Embrace Ideals from Declaration of Independence
- GW's House in Philadelphia ... Use of minority labor on restoration project demanded
- Grand Jury Inquiry on Destruction of C.I.A. Tapes
- Iran views hostage-taking as solution to any crisis
- Hunt widens for Iraq's looted treasure
- Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Thomas Jefferson Code
- Rare copy of the US Declaration of Independence found
- FBI says Saddam's weapons bluff aimed at Iran
- Key Hearing Set On Wal-Mart Near Va Battlefield
- FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 "casual conversations" with Saddam Hussein
WEEK OF JUNE 29, 2009
Newly Released Documents Detail Guantanamo Facility's Chaotic Early Years
Statue of Liberty's Crown Opens July 4 for First Time Since Sept. 11 Attacks
Americans Still Embrace Ideals from Declaration of Independence
GW's House in Philadelphia ... Use of minority labor on restoration project demanded
Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Thomas Jefferson Code
University students 'ignorant' of most basic history facts, study shows
Families of 8,000 British troops killed since WWII to be given new Elizabeth Cross medal
Bill of treason from Upper Canada Rebellion found at McMaster University
Russia Abruptly Refuses to Recognize International Law or U.S. Courts in Chabad Papers Suit
Holocaust assets conference pledges action on returning Nazi loot
Military works with Antiquity Authority to save ruins (Israel)
New challenge to theory that Clovis were first people in North America
Vatican to open Apostle Paul's tomb after surprise discovery
Angela Merkel's party backs 'homeland' for Germans expelled by Poland
Ahead of Withdrawal Deadline, Cheney Says He Hopes U.S. Sacrifice Does Not Go to 'Waste'
Supreme Court Won't Hear Sept. 11 Claims Against Saudi Arabia
Space Shuttle and Strange Clouds Key to Mysterious 1908 Explosion
41 Years Later in Chicago, Police and Demonstrators Still Clash, but With Words
Visitors to World War Two-themed weekend banned from wearing Hitler costumes (UK)
Scots fought 'in bright yellow war shirts not Braveheart kilts'
WEEK OF JUNE 22, 2009
Hitler fanatics forced orphans to build new Fatherland in Amazon
Snubbed millionaire's backyard course stumped legends, then disappeared (Chicago)
National Park Service Announces Battlefield Preservation Project Grants for 2009
Lewis and Clark in murder mystery 200 years after their final expedition
Nazi SS officers sentenced to life for Second World War massacre in Italy
Rothschild and Freshfields founders had links to slavery, papers reveal
Doris survey of English Channel seabed finds traces of ancient river
Rep. Bachmann Warns Of Link Between Census, Japanese Internment
For Jackie Kennedy/Bobby Kennedy affair rumors, third time not the charm
USC, Argonne National Lab collaborate on study of ancient artefacts
Nazi Loot Recovery Is Slow, Arbitrary, Claimants’ Groups Say
Britain 'failed' in Iraq by switching to Afghanistan, say Gen Sir Richard Dannatt
Michigan Man, 88, Investigated by Poland for Alleged Nazi War Crimes
88 years old--and confronted with allegation of WW II crimes
Friday, July 3, 2009
Resolution on Stalin riles Russia
Source: BBC (7-3-09)
Russian delegates have walked out of an OSCE session in Vilnius after it voted for a remembrance day for the victims of both Nazism and Stalinism.
The pan-European security and democracy body passed a resolution equating the roles of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in starting World War II.
Moscow's delegation boycotted the vote after failing to have it withdrawn.
AU halts war crimes co-operation
Source: BBC (7-3-09)
The African Union is ending its co-operation with the International Criminal Court after it charged Sudan's president with war crimes.
Omar al-Bashir is accused over alleged atrocities in the Darfur region.
Reports from an AU meeting in Libya said the delegates agreed a statement saying they would not co-operate in the "arrest and surrender" of Mr Bashir.
Three new species of dinosaur found in Australia
Source: Telegraph (UK) (7-3-09)
Australian palaeontologists have discovered three new dinosaur species among fossils at the bottom of a Queensland lake.
The two herbivores and one carnivore, which date back nearly 100m years to the middle of the Cretaceous period, were excavated from the Winton formation in the state's west. They are the first significant dinosaur discovery in Australia since 1981.
All of the dinosaurs have been named after characters in the famous Australian bush poem Waltzing Matilda.
Historian 'posed as a war hero'
Source: BBC (7-3-09)
A military historian who posed as a war hero has been exposed as a fantasist.
Jack Livesey claimed he won the Military Medal while serving in the Parachute Regiment.
However, the Ministry of Defence confirmed Mr Livesey served in the Army Catering Corps for less than three years.
Former veterans told the BBC they were upset by the way he paraded his medals.
Newly Released Documents Detail Guantanamo Facility's Chaotic Early Years
Source: Foxnews (7-2-09)
The documents and memos were turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Newly released Defense Department documents and memos about the first years of operation of the jail at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, portray a chaotic and sometimes violent operation that its own commanders described as dysfunctional.
The documents and memos were turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has sued for release of all materials related to the government's interrogation program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Statue of Liberty's Crown Opens July 4 for First Time Since Sept. 11 Attacks
Source: AP (7-3-09)
Aaron Weisinger, a 26-year-old from Walnut Creek, Calif., was one of the lucky ones. He will be part of the first group of tourists in eight years to climb the 354 steps, 146 of them up a narrow spiral staircase, to stand atop the statue's head and peer from under the spikes of her crown.
Reasons vary for why the crown has been closed for so long, and there are questions about the role terrorism played in that.
In May, the Obama administration announced that the crown would once again welcome visitors, albeit cautiously. Starting Saturday, only 30 people an hour will be allowed into the crown, and they will be brought up in groups of 10, guided by park rangers along the way.
Documents Show Iraqi Dictator's Fears
Source: NYT (7-2-09)
In a series of interrogations before his execution, Saddam Hussein told an F.B.I. agent that on the eve of the 2003 American invasion, Iraq was trapped between United Nations orders to demonstrate that it had disarmed and a fear that appearing too weak would invite attack from its powerful neighbor and foe, Iran.
The ousted Iraqi dictator “was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow U.N. inspectors back into Iraq,” according to a summary of questioning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The inspectors, he feared, “would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq,” he told the F.B.I.
Mr. Hussein told the F.B.I. that if United Nations sanctions against his country had been lifted, Iraq would have sought a security agreement with the United States to protect it from Iran.
Americans Still Embrace Ideals from Declaration of Independence
Source: Rasmussen Reports (7-3-09)
Americans are celebrating the nation's 233rd birthday, and the words of the Declaration of Independence will be heard at countless patriotic ceremonies across the land. The core ideals articulated by those words are still embraced by solid majorities of the American public.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 89% of American adults agree that "we are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Only seven percent (7%) disagree on that founding premise.
Seventy-four percent (74%) agree with the assertion that “all men are created equal” while just 23% disagree.
GW's House in Philadelphia ... Use of minority labor on restoration project demanded
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (7-3-09)
When supporters of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition converge on the site of the future President's House memorial at 4 p.m. today, they will be seeking to redeem the unpaid labor of enslaved forebears by ensuring paid labor in the here and now.
"It would be the height of historical hypocrisy that this would be built without the paid contributions of the sons and daughters of those who were enslaved here and built here in the first place," said Michael Coard, a founder of the coalition.
On July 3 every year since 2002, the coalition has rallied in support of a President's House memorial at Sixth and Market Streets, the spot where Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived and worked during the 1790s and where Washington held at least nine enslaved Africans.
Now, with the $8.5 million construction project roughly a month from breaking ground, according to planners, the question of minority participation has become a key concern for community activists.
"We will raise hell if they don't get the work," said Sacaree Rhodes, an activist and member of Generations Unlimited, a group concerned with the President's House and other sites related to the African American experience. Rhodes has focused on minority participation in the project since virtually the beginning of planning more than six years ago.
Grand Jury Inquiry on Destruction of C.I.A. Tapes
Source: NYT (7-2-09)
Current and former top Central Intelligence Agency officers have appeared before a federal grand jury in Virginia as part of an 18-month investigation into the agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes depicting the brutal interrogations of two Qaeda detainees.
The witnesses recently called by the special prosecutor, former government officials said, include the agency’s top officer in London and Porter J. Goss, who was C.I.A. director when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005.
The grand jury testimony of C.I.A. officers is further evidence that, despite President Obama’s pledge not to punish agency operatives for their role in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, the shadow of the controversial program still looms over the agency’s daily operations.
Iran views hostage-taking as solution to any crisis
Source: Telegraph (UK) (7-3-09)
Iran's announcement that it intends to put two British Embassy employees on trial is nothing more than a return to the hostage-taking tactics of the 1980s that resulted in the abduction of Terry Waite and John McCarthy.
In the thirty years since the ayatollahs seized power in Tehran, taking hostages has become a familiar tactic whenever the Islamic regime feels itself under threat. Mr Waite and Mr McCarthy were among dozens of Westerners kidnapped in Lebanon by Iranian-backed militias to force the US and its allies not to interfere in the country's civil war.
More recently Iran's Revolutionary Guards abducted fifteen British military personnel when they were patrolling international waters between Iraq and Iran in April 2007. At the time British forces in southern Iraq were involved in a fierce battle against Iranian-backed militias.
Prosecutors: Demjanjuk fit for trial
Source: AP (7-3-09)
Doctors have determined that John Demjanjuk is fit to stand trial on charges that he was an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp, prosecutors said Friday.
The doctors said the 89-year-old retired auto worker, recently deported from the United States, can stand trial so long as his time in court does not exceed two 90-minute sessions daily, Munich prosecutors said.
Hunt widens for Iraq's looted treasure
Source: Financial Times (UK) (7-2-09)
In 1901 a group of French archaeologists uncovered a 2,700-year-old Babylonian tablet in what is now Iran. Not only is the Hammurabi codex the first example of a written legal code; it is also the oldest known looted artefact, plundered from ancient Mesopotamia. “The looting of antiquities has been going on for a very long time in Iraq,” says Dr Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University, New York.
Dr Stone and Donny George, former head of the national museum in Baghdad, are at the forefront of an international effort to prevent the trade in stolen antiquities from Iraq. Some 15,000 objects were looted from the Baghdad museum during the 2003 invasion, and these are only a small proportion of the artefacts taken from an estimated 12,000 archaeological sites in Iraq.
The recent interest in heritage tourism in Iraq and other Gulf states has added vigour to the campaign to return stolen pieces. Unfortunately, archaeologists say, it has also whetted the appetite of private collectors in the region, and could provoke a resurgence in the illicit trade.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
What is the Group of Eight?
Source: Telegraph (UK) (7-2-09)
The Group of Eight brings together eight of the world's richest and most powerful countries: the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.
The G8 is not an international organisation like the United Nations or European Union – it has no permanent secretariat or staff.
Instead, it brings together heads of the world's strongest economies at an annual summit for informal discussions of the most pressing global issues with a view to increasing international cooperation. However, none of the agreements reached are binding on individual countries.
The presidency of the G8 rotates between the member states. Italy holds the presidency for 2009, and is therefore responsible for hosting this year's summit, which will be held from July 8-10 in L'Aquila, a mountain city in central Italy which was devastated by an earthquake in early April.
Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Thomas Jefferson Code
Source: WSJ (7-2-09)
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them....
There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.
The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses.
Exhumation of 1812 war hero stirs controversy
Source: The Vancouver Sun (7-2-09)
A controversy has erupted over one of the most famous corpses from the War of 1812.
U.S. general Zebulon Pike was killed when retreating British and Canadian troops intentionally blew up a munitions depot during the American capture of York(present-day Toronto) in April 1813.
His remains were taken by ship across Lake Ontario and buried at a military cemetery in Sackets Harbor, N.Y.
But a subsequent re-burial and lingering confusion over the exact location of the general's grave has prompted Pike family descendants — including math professor David Pike from Newfoundland's Memorial University — to seek the exhumation of some bones to conduct DNA testing.
Job for Indian royal descendant
Source: BBC (7-2-09)
A descendant of India's last Mughal emperor has been rescued from a life of penury in Calcutta by getting a job with the state-run Coal India.
Madhu is the illiterate great-great-granddaughter of emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and has been employed to run errands in Coal India's offices.
A letter of employment will be formally handed over to her by the coal minister at a function in Calcutta next month.
Marie Curie voted greatest female scientist
Source: Telegra ( ) (7-2-09)
Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time.
Marie Curie has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time. Photo: PA
The Polish-born researcher, who discovered radiation therapy could treat cancer, won just over a quarter of the poll (25.1 per cent) - almost twice as much as her nearest rival Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent), the English biophysicist who helped discover the structure of DNA.
Only two modern role models made the top ten - astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell came fourth (4.7 per cent) and Dr Jane Goodall, the world famous primatologist, was tenth (2.7 per cent).
Rare copy of the US Declaration of Independence found
Source: Guardian (UK) (7-2-09)
A rare and extremely valuable copy of the United States Declaration of Independence has been discovered in Britain, it was announced today.
The document, which is in perfect condition, is believed to be one of only 200 ever printed and was found amongst files at the National Archives in Richmond.
Stumbled upon by an American antiquarian bookseller carrying out research, the Dunlap print of the declaration was printed on 4 July 1776 and brings the total of known surviving copies worldwide to 26.
The last discovery of a Dunlap print was at a flea market in 1989, and it sold at auction in 2000 for $8.14m (£5m).
Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code
Source: The Wall Street Journal (6-2-09)
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them.
In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."
There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.
What newly released papers reveal about Einstein
Source: Newsweek (7-1-09)
On July 22 the Einstein Papers Project, located at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, will release the 12th volume of letters written or received by Albert Einstein—791 of them—plus transcripts of several notable lectures and interviews the physicist gave, covering the year 1921. It was a momentous 12 months. You might think there are no new revelations to be made about him, but for Einstein groupies the current volume addresses at least one key question: what did Einstein know about an 1887 experiment that discovered that the speed of light is invariant, regardless of the observer's speed or direction of motion—an idea that forms the core of special relativity and that Einstein did not mention when he laid out the theory of special relativity in a 1905 paper?
Called the Michelson-Morley experiment, it disproved the existence of the ether, a substance once thought to carry light waves and form an absolute reference frame for space. ...
The new volume of Einstein papers includes a previously unknown transcript of an address Einstein delivered at the Parker School in Chicago on May 4, 1921. There, he made what Caltech science historian Diana Buchwald, director of the Einstein Papers Project, calls "a most intriguing remark." "On this occasion," she writes in her introduction to the new volume, "and perhaps to please the local audience [the Michelson-Morley experiment was done in nearby Cleveland], Einstein stated that, already as a student, he had come across the Michelson-Morley experiment: 'But when I was a student I saw that experiments of this kind had already been done, in particular by your compatriot, Michelson.'" She notes that the role played by the experiment "in the development of Einstein's thinking on relativity has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Some researchers have even entertained the possibility that in 1905 Einstein had been unaware of the experiment, to which there is no reference in his celebrated paper." The new evidence from his 1921 lecture shows once and for all that he was indeed aware of the Michelson-Morley work.
There is no insinuaton of plagiarism, or even of failure to credit an influential earlier discovery. Instead, the question of what Einstein knew about the speed of light, and when he knew it, has long intrigued historians. For as [Einstein biographer Walter] Isaacson so astutely pointed out, physicists before Einstein questioned the idea of absolute motion, absolute space, and absolute time. Yet it was Einstein who took the ultimate leap, forging that insight into special relativity. In light of the newly discovered transcript, it seems safe to add the invariant speed of light to the list that many physicists knew about, but which only Einstein was able to forge into special relativity.
FBI says Saddam's weapons bluff aimed at Iran
Source: Reuters (7-2-09)
Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader.
"Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction.
He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said.
The FBI reports, released on Wednesday, said Saddam asserted that he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for blocking the return of UN weapons inspectors who were searching for WMD.
Napoleon died of kidney failure: Danish doctor
Source: AFP (7-2-09)
Arne Soerensen, a retired Danish doctor, flips through thousands of pages of notes scribbled over 50 years of research and issues his diagnosis: Napoleon died of a kidney disease.
Soerensen has dedicated his life to studying the French emperor's health to debunk the myth that he was poisoned by his enemies or suffered from stomach cancer.
In the latest twist in a long-running medical saga, Soerensen wrote in a new book "Napoleon's nyrer" (Napoleon's kidneys) published in May claiming that the deposed emperor died at 51 of kidney and urinary problems that afflicted him for many years.
UN begins Bhutto killing inquiry
Source: BBC (7-1-09)
A United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto has formally began.
It is headed by Chile's ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Munoz, and includes a former Indonesian attorney general and a former senior Irish police officer.
The inquiry will last six months and investigate the "facts and circumstances" of Ms Bhutto's death.
The three-member inquiry team will arrive in Pakistan later this month and submit its report to the UN Secretary General in six months, reports say.
Michelangelo signed fresco with self-portrait
Source: Telegraph (UK) (7-2-09)
A painstaking five-year restoration of a massive fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Vatican has revealed what experts believe is a self-portrait of the Renaissance genius.
Restorers claim that a bearded man wearing a blue turban in the Crucifixion of St Peter bears a striking resemblance to portraits and bronze busts of the artist.
The fresco shows the moment at which St Peter was raised on the cross by Roman soldiers, his face showing suffering but also defiance.
It is not the first time the renowned Italian master included his portrait in one of his works.
FBI Interviews: Hussein Lied About WMD Out of Fear of Iran
Source: Foxnews (7-2-09)
Saddam Hussein let the world believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he did not want to appear weak to Iran, according to the Washington Post.
In interviews with the FBI before he was hanged, the former Iraqi president also denounced Usama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said the United States was not Iraq's enemy, the Post reports.
In fact, he claimed, he felt so vulnerable to the threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region," according to declassified accounts of the interviews released on Wednesday and published in the Washington Post
University students 'ignorant' of most basic history facts, study shows
Source: Telegraph (UK) (7-2-09)
Professor Derek Matthews was so surprised to discover that the students in his economics class at Cardiff University had such a poor grasp of British history that he decided to conduct an experiment.
He set five easy questions, which he believed 'every 18-year-old should know', and over three years 284 first-year university students took the test.
The results confirmed his fears. Just one in six knew that the Duke of Wellington led the British army in the Battle of Waterloo, while only 11.5 per cent could name a British Prime Minister from the 19th century.
On average, the students answered just over one in five questions correctly, and those with history A-level only got two in five right.
In a report on the 'death' of school history teaching, Prof Matthews said the levels of ignorance were an "outrage".
Families of 8,000 British troops killed since WWII to be given new Elizabeth Cross medal
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (7-2-09)
The Queen is to honour the families of Britain's war dead with a new award in her name.
Those who have lost loved ones on the frontline or in terrorist attacks will be presented with the Elizabeth Cross.
In a radio message to the armed forces on the British Forces Broadcasting Service the Queen said: 'I greatly hope that the Elizabeth Cross will give further meaning to the nation's debt of gratitude to the families and loved ones of those who have died in the service of our country.'
It is the first military honour granted by a monarch since the Queen's father King George VI created the George Cross for civilian heroism in 1940.
ElBaradei's legacy tied to war in Iraq
Source: Deutsche Welle (7-2-09)
Mohamed ElBaradei's message was clear: "We are not going to say that this is a material breach unless obviously we see a gross violation of the resolution," the Director General of the International Atom Energy Association (IAEA) said at the end of January 2003. He was responding to demands by the administration of US President George W. Bush to find the so called "smoking gun," i.e. proof that Iraq possessed or developed nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
In the same statement, ElBaradei estimated that the IAEA needed four or five months to verify that Iraq did indeed not possess that weapons capability. Less than two months later the military invasion of Iraq began.
While his steadfast opposition to the Iraq war alienated the US, it is perhaps also the one fact that he is known for most by people around the world. "But in the end he couldn't prevent the war, even though he was morally and factually correct", says Goetz Neuneck, Deputy Director of the Hamburg-based Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy. "But can one really demand of any international organisation that it prevents a war that has been decided upon by the world's superpower already half a year before?"
Secrets of Sexual Forced Labour in Nazi Concentration Camps
Source: History Today (6-30-09)
I have vivid memories of a school trip to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, 35 kilometres north of Berlin: the crematories, the so-called ‘Station Z’ built for the extermination of prisoners in 1942, the infirmary... I have no recollection, however, of the camp brothel.
Robert Sommer’s latest book The Concentration Camp Bordello: Sexual Forced Labor in National Socialistic Concentration Camps (Das KZ-Bordell) provides, however, for the first time a comprehensive study of this dark, hushed-up and largely ignored chapter of the history of Nazi Germany. Sommer is a cultural studies scholar based in Berlin. His study will be published in July by Schoningh Verlag, Paderborn. It is the result of a nine-year project based on the study of archives, concentration camp memorial sites and interviews with historical witnesses.
It is often believed that the Nazi regime forbade and fought prostitution. Sommer’s research reveals, however, the existence of brothels in Nazi concentration camps and of a network of state-controlled brothels, which operated across half of Europe, especially after the outbreak of the Second World War. There existed brothels in the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora and Mauthausen.
Amnesty details Gaza 'war crimes'
Source: BBC (7-2-09)
Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says.
Its report also calls rocket attacks by Palestinian militants war crimes and accuses Hamas of endangering civilians.
The Israeli military says its conduct was in line with international law.
Israel has attributed some civilian deaths to "professional mistakes", but has dismissed wider criticism that its attacks were indiscriminate and disproportionate.
Amnesty says some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the 22-day Israeli offensive between 27 December 2008 and 17 January 2009, which agrees broadly with Palestinian figures.
UN begins Bhutto killing inquiry
Source: BBC (7-1-08)
It is headed by Chile's ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Munoz, and includes a former Indonesian attorney general and a former senior Irish police officer.
The inquiry will last six months and investigate the "facts and circumstances" of Ms Bhutto's death.
She was killed in December 2007 as she left a rally of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) supporters in Rawalpindi.
School Built on Cemetery Provides Lesson in History (Spain)
Source: NYT (7-1-09)
TOLEDO, Spain — As this medieval hilltop city baked in the afternoon heat, a group of Jewish leaders gathered beside a freshly dug grave and lowered into it small bundles of flaking, ancient bones. With prayers and a plea for forgiveness for disturbing the peace of more than 100 medieval souls, they laid them to rest in the cool, reddish earth.
The quiet ceremony in late June concluded months of delicate negotiations between Jewish groups and Spanish authorities over the fate of the remains of 103 Spanish Jews whose graves were excavated last year during the construction of a school building in a suburb of this historic city.
The exhumation drew international condemnation from Jewish representatives and became an important battleground in the quest to preserve Jewish cemeteries all around Spain, remnants of a thriving community that made Toledo its capital before being expelled by Spain’s Roman Catholic monarchs in 1492.
Building starts on Warsaw's Jewish history museum
Source: AP (6-30-09)
For the second time in two years, Polish officials began building a new museum of Jewish history in Warsaw on Tuesday that they hope will become a major cultural landmark.
An earlier groundbreaking ceremony for the planned Museum of the History of Polish Jews took place in 2007 in the presence of the Polish president, but bureaucratic obstacles then held up construction.
On Tuesday, museum officials and politicians gathered again at the museum site in the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto. With a hammer, Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and others symbolically removed old bricks from the remains of a previous building on the site.
Key Hearing Set On Wal-Mart Near Va Battlefield
Source: AP (6-30-09)
A July 27 public hearing is scheduled in Orange County on a Wal-Mart Supercenter proposed near the Wilderness Civil War battlefield.
The hearing scheduled by supervisors Tuesday night is the final step before the Board of Supervisors takes up the proposal. Supervisors have final say on the proposed 138,000-square-foot store.
Last week, the Planning Commission voted 5-4 to recommend approval of a special use permit for the store in Locust Grove. Supervisors do not have to heed the recommendation
Khmer Rouge survivor's paintings saved his life
Source: AP (7-1-09)
A survivor of the Khmer Rouge's main prison said Wednesday that his ability to paint larger-than-life images of the regime's late leader, Pol Pot, and portraits of other communist icons helped save his life.
Bou Meng is one of only three living survivors of S-21 prison — all of them apparently spared because of skills deemed useful to the "killing fields" regime of the 1970s.
The artist was put to work painting portraits that glorified Mao Zedong of China and North Korea's Kim Il Sung and another that mocked Ho Chi Minh, the father of Vietnam's communist revolution.
FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 "casual conversations" with Saddam Hussein
Source: National Security Archive (7-1-09)
FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 "casual conversations" with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by U.S. troops in December 2003, according to secret FBI reports released as the result of Freedom of Information Act requests by the National Security Archive and posted today on the Web at www.nsarchive.org.
Saddam denied any connections to the "zealot" Osama bin Laden, cited North Korea as his most likely ally in a crunch, and shared President George W. Bush's hostility towards the "fanatic" Iranian mullahs, according to the FBI records of conversations from February through June 2004 between Saddam and Arabic-speaking agents in his detention cell at Baghdad International Airport.
The former Iraqi leader, when asked about his accomplishments, listed social progress for the people of Iraq, a temporary truce with the Kurds in the early 1970s, the nationalization of Iraq’s oil in 1972, support for the Arab side during the 1973 Middle East war with Israel, and after that, for the remaining 30 years of his rule, simple survival – through a devastating eight year war with Iran that he had launched, and a 12-year sanctions regime imposed on his people after another war that he began. During the interviews he repeatedly contests FBI evidence and the neutrality of his interlocutors – which one of them finds ironic, given the record of peremptory Iraqi justice under Saddam’s governance. He selectively outlines recent Iraqi history and acknowledges some mistakes, including the destruction without U.N. supervision or verification of some of Iraq’s WMD arsenal left over from the 1980s.
During the interviews Saddam refutes some examples of what he views as myths, like his purported use of body doubles. Instead he says that to evade his enemies he never used the telephone and traveled constantly from one dwelling to another (he describes the farm where he was captured in a “spider hole” as the same place where he took refuge after a failed 1959 coup attempt.)
Staffer at SEC Had Warned Of Madoff
Source: WaPo (7-2-09)
An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff's financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation.
Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show. Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud.
But with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue pursuing Madoff, according to documents and two people familiar with the investigation, and her team soon concluded its work on the probe.
Myanmar fossil may shed light on evolution
Source: AP (7-1-09)
Fossils recently discovered in Myanmar could prove that the common ancestors of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, rather than Africa, researchers contend in a study released Wednesday.
However, other scientists said that the finding, while significant, won't end the debate over the origin of anthropoids — the primate grouping that includes ancient species as well as modern humans.
The pieces of 38 million-year-old jawbones and teeth found near Bagan in central Myanmar in 2005 show typical characteristics of primates, said Dr. Chris Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and a member of the team that found the fossils.
"Glorious" Ancient Chamber Found in Israel
Source: National Geographic (6-30-09)
Inside a newly discovered underground chamber, Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal points to an unseen carving that he suspects may be a Zodiac sign that dates back to the Roman period around the first century A.D.
The largest human-made cave in Israel, the 1-acre (0.4-hectare) space in the Jordan Valley is thought to have begun as a quarry. In subsequent centuries it may have served as a monastery and a hideout for persecuted Christians or the Roman army, Zertal said.
Opportunity knocks, again, in the Andes
Source: http://www.livinginperu.com (7-1-09)
The last time global warming came to the Andes it produced the Inca Empire. A team of English and U.S. scientists has analyzed pollen, seeds and isotopes in core samples taken from the deep mud of a small lake not far from Machu Picchu and their report says that "the success of the Inca was underpinned by a period of warming that lasted more than four centuries."
The four centuries coincided directly with the rise of this startling, hyper-productive culture that at its zenith was bigger than the Ming Dynasty China and the Ottoman Empire, the two most powerful contemporaries of the Inca.
"This period of increased temperatures," the scientists say, "allowed the Inca and their predecessors to expand, from AD 1150 onwards, their agricultural zones by moving up the mountains to build a massive system of terraces fed frequently by glacial water, as well as planting trees to reduce erosion and increase soil fertility.
Oldest canoe finds its way home
Source: Star.com (7-1-09)
Returned from Ireland after more than 180 years, Maliseet birchbark boat inspires rebirth of craft
A culturally significant First Nation's artifact that has languished in Ireland for more than 180 years has returned to Canada, completing a circle of tradition for those on the New Brunswick reserves where it originated.
The "Grandfather Akwiten canoe," believed to be the oldest birchbark canoe in the world, was built by Maliseet craftsmen in the early 1820s before it was taken to Ireland around 1825 by Lieut. Stepney St. George, who was serving with British forces.
Bill of treason from Upper Canada Rebellion found at McMaster University
Source: Canadian Press (6-30-09)
A team at McMaster University has uncovered a historical glimpse of Canadiana - a bill of treason connected to the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.
Written on parchment and dated March 1838, the bill was filed against William Rogers, a yeoman living in or near Albion, York Township, Upper Canada.
The uprising was led by William Lyon Mackenzie, a Scottish-Canadian journalist, reformer and politician who was also the first mayor of Toronto.
He rallied 400 rebels, including many farmers from the Toronto area, to fight as Crown reserves or in support of the Anglican Church against the allocation of land to wealthy owners in the government.
Russia Abruptly Refuses to Recognize International Law or U.S. Courts in Chabad Papers Suit
Source: Edwin Black at the TheCuttingEdgeNews.com (7-1-09)
“Russia is showing its contempt and disdain for international law, the American judicial system, and basic principles of fairness and justice,” said Nathan Lewin, attorney for the world-wide Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
The remark was in response to Russia’s surprise announcement, filed with the federal court in Washington, D.C. in recent days. In an epic legal and diplomatic contest that dates back to the World War I, Russia is defiantly refusing to release some 381 spiritual manuscripts, 12,000 rare books and 25,000 handwritten archival documents plundered from East Europe from the charismatic Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch movement. The collection handed down from generation to generation constitutes “the central wisdom, comprehension and knowledge” of the Chabad movement. Without those documents, Chabad is without its spiritual soul, it says. Indeed, the word “Chabad” itself is an acronym for the Hebrew words for “central wisdom, comprehension and knowledge.”
Deadlocked in litigation for years, and international pressure for decades, Russian authorities, declared this week that the Putin government would not “further participate” in the case. This was done as legal scholars predicted the courts would grant the Chabad movement a stunning victory in its epic effort to reclaim its papers. Chabad’s legal team is headed by the Washington law firm of Lewin and Lewin, LLP. Known for championing Jewish causes— Nathan Lewin and Alyza Lewin -- sometimes called “attorneys for the Tribe,” worked together with attorneys from Howrey LLP and Bingham McCutchen LLP to obtain a rare federal court decision earlier this year commanding Moscow to preserve the books and documents and instructing Russia to provide the Court with a written description of the steps it is taking to preserve the books and manuscripts. A court-ordered handover seemed imminent according to legal scholars watching the case....
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Was Turin Shroud faked by Leonardo da Vinci?
Source: Telegraph (UK) (7-1-09)
The Turin Shroud was faked by Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci using pioneering photographic techniques and a sculpture of his own head, a television documentary claims.
The artefact has been regarded by generations of believers as the face of the crucified Jesus who was wrapped in it, but carbon-dating by scientists points to its creation in the Middle Ages.
American artist Lillian Schwartz, a graphic consultant at the School of Visual Arts in New York who came to prominence in the 1980s when she matched the face of the Mona Lisa to a Leonardo self-portrait, used computer scans to show that the face on the Shroud has the same dimensions to that of da Vinci.
“It matched. I'm excited about this,” she said. “There is no doubt in my mind that the proportions that Leonardo wrote about were used in creating this Shroud's face.”
From FDR to Obama, a Fight for Health Care
Source: AP (7-1-09)
As Congress takes on President Obama's call for overhauling health care, the desire for change will be tested _ by the expense, by politics, by resistance from doctors and private insurers, and by the general fear by some of "socialized medicine." The terms of the debate are as old as the debate itself.
Since Franklin Roosevelt considered national health care in the 1930s, virtually every president has sought to expand or universalize medical coverage. Public support has been as consistent as the countering arguments: It costs too much, it doesn't have the votes, it will ruin the free market system.
Presidents sympathetic to health care for all, from Roosevelt and Harry Truman to John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, have either failed to get it passed, or never even tried. Meanwhile, presidents otherwise deeply suspicious of government programs _ Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, the second President Bush _ have successfully backed expansion.
The political history of health care in the United States, the only developed country without universal care, is equally simple and unpredictable.
"For people who know the boring details of health care, the debate is really deja vu all over again, although I'm not sure the general public picks up on all the echoes from previous debates," says James A. Morone, co-author of "The Heart of Power," a newly released history of health care and the presidency.
How German History Shapes Obama-Merkel Rift
Source: CBS News blog (6-26-09)
Despite the president's claim at a joint appearance this afternoon that "I like Chancellor Merkel a lot," President Barack Obama and Germany's Angela Merkel are widely believed to have a somewhat frosty relationship. The biggest perceived rift between the two? How best to respond to the global financial crisis.
Mr. Obama, of course, has pushed through a massive stimulus package and pressed for greater government spending worldwide to end the recession. Merkel, who helms the largest economy in Europe, has resisted such spending; her government has passed only a pair of small stimulus packages in response to the economic crisis.
One reason for the two leaders' different philosophies is ideological: Merkel is a center-right politician who has argued against bank bailouts in Europe. But German history is also a factor. Under the German parliamentary governmental system known as the Weimar Republic, Germans faced hyperinflation in the 1920s that destroyed savings and drove many people into poverty. Here's one (fictionalized) account of what it was like:
The price increases began to be dizzying. Menus in cafes could not be revised quickly enough. A student at Freiburg University ordered a cup of coffee at a cafe. The price on the menu was 5,000 Marks. He had two cups. When the bill came, it was for 14,000 Marks. "If you want to save money," he was told, "and you want two cups of coffee, you should order them both at the same time."The Weimar Republic stayed in power in Germany for another decade, but the period of hyperinflation is considered a significant factor in the emergence of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – the Nazis.
Two bursts of human innovation in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age may be linked to population growth and early migration off the continent
Source: American Scientist (7-1-09)
Even by archaeological standards, Blombos Cave is a modestly sized shelter. Yet artifacts recovered from just 13 cubic meters of deposit inside transformed our understanding of when our species developed behavioral attributes we associate with “modern” humans. From this cramped hole in a sandstone cliff on the Southern Cape coast of South Africa, Christopher Henshilwood and his colleagues unearthed evidence of symbolic expression, in the form of abstract designs (carved ochre bars) and personal ornaments (shell beads) at least 70,000 years old. That is more than 35,000 years before anything comparable emerged in Europe.
When these discoveries were first announced earlier this decade, they stood out as extraordinary and provocative—at odds with the prevailing wisdom about the time and place of emergence of symbolic behavior, a trait unique to Homo sapiens . Our modern anatomical features can be traced back almost 200,000 years, based on fossilized remains found in Ethiopia, but the making of the modern mind apparently lagged behind by more than 100,000 years. The remarkable finds at Blombos raised several intriguing questions. What triggered this watershed event in human prehistory? How geographically widespread was it? Did it occur simultaneously elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa? And what role, if any, did such innovations play in the first steps of the worldwide dispersal of our species?
Important clues come from the stone toolkit that accompanied the crosshatched ochres and deliberately perforated shells at Blombos. Stone tools commonly are the most ubiquitous items at archaeological sites because they survive longer than animal or plant remains. Archaeologists pay close attention to their method of manufacture and how they might have been used. Although much less heralded than engraved ochre and shell beads, the Middle Stone Age deposits at Blombos contained an important assemblage of stone tools known as Still Bay points. These finely shaped lanceolate, or narrow, points are flaked on both sides and probably formed spearhead parts. Discovered in 1866 by Sir Langham Dale near Cape Town, they were among the first type of stone tool described in South Africa. A. J. H. Goodwin, the father of South African archaeology, was the first to appreciate the technological sophistication of this stone-tool industry.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Supremes change race ruling in key case before the Court
Source: NYT (6-29-09)
Judge Sotomayor, famously, was one of three judges on an appellate panel who applied their federal circuit’s settled precedent to rule in New Haven’s favor. Like that decision or hate it, cheer Monday’s ruling or deplore it, one thing that is clear from reading the Supreme Court’s 89 pages of opinions in the case is that Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues played by the old rules, and the court changed them. Although “Sotomayor Reversed” was a frequent headline on the posts that spread quickly across the Web, it was actually the Supreme Court itself that shifted course.
To understand the nature of the shift requires a bit of history. Congress enacted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the statute at issue in the Ricci case, with a simple command to employers: thou shalt not discriminate on the basis of race or other protected characteristics, including sex and religion. But the simple proved to be complicated. An employer of blue-collar workers in North Carolina, Duke Power, required a high school diploma of all job applicants, a requirement that screened out 88 percent of black men in that region at that time.
In a 1971 decision, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a test that was “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation” could violate Title VII even without proof that the discrimination was intentional. Congress eventually amended Title VII to codify that decision, Griggs v. Duke Power. The rule was clear: if a job requirement produced a “disparate impact,” the employer had the burden of showing that the requirement was actually necessary.
Federal agencies, in turn, stepped forward to define the statistical disparity that prompted the further inquiry. Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “four-fifths rule,” a test that one racial group passed at less than 80 percent the rate of another group would place an employer in presumptive violation of Title VII.
The early Supreme Court decision and later Congressional ratification represented a highly visible social settlement in the employment discrimination area. But beginning in the 1990s, changes in the Supreme Court’s membership and outlook began to unravel not only the legal structure, but also the philosophic one that had kept the settlement intact.
Amateur Historian Is on a Quest to Locate Lost Events
Source: NYT (6-29-09)
On Avenue of the Americas, there is a block where the first cellphone call was completed in 1973; on West 125th Street, where the old Blumstein’s department store stood, nothing marks the place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in 1958.
Then there is the spot on Fifth Avenue where Winston Churchill, crossing against the light, was struck by a car in 1931 and nearly killed....
Andrew Carroll, 39, an amateur historian, is embarking this week on a 50-state journey to uncover, memorialize and preserve these and other sites where history happened serendipitously, and which, for one reason or another, have been relegated to anonymity.
“It’s sort of a reverse scavenger hunt,” he said. “Trying to find things that aren’t there.”
Holocaust assets conference pledges action on returning Nazi loot
Source: Deutsche Welle (6-30-09)
Forty-six countries have vowed to increase efforts to return art and property stolen from Jews during the Holocaust. Delegates are to sign a non-binding declaration in the Czech Republic on Tuesday.
"A major accomplishment" was how Stuart Eizenstat, head of the American delegation to the Prague Holocaust Assets Conference, described the outcome of the five-day event.
Military works with Antiquity Authority to save ruins (Israel)
Source: Jerusalem Post (6-29-09)
As the fourth annual week devoted to the cooperation of the IDF and the Israel Antiquities Authority in preserving the country's environment and antiquities gets into full gear, archeologists and IDF officials are hailing the progress made on the issue over the past few years.
This year's program, which began on Sunday and will end on Thursday, July 2, includes a series of lectures - attended by all the commanders involved in the joint effort - with the last day to focus primarily on current archeological issues.
In the past, the IDF mainly contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) only when it had run across - or over - one of the many ancient ruins scattered throughout the country. It was not until the past few years that the two were able to focus on preemptive actions aimed at avoiding damage to archeological sites, said Yoram Haimi, an archeologist from the IAA who specializes in Israel's southern regions.
Mesopotamian vase sheds light on Germany's artefacts trade
Source: Deutsche Welle (6-30-09)
A legal dispute surrounding an antique golden vase being held in a museum vault in Mainz shines light on the surprisingly important role Germany plays in the often shady world of antiques trading.
The case sounds more like an esoteric crime novel than a simple legal tussle, involving as it does archaeologists, rare-coin dealers, customs officials, and the Iraqi embassy in Berlin.
At its heart is a golden vase just six centimeters high that may or may not have its origins in ancient Mesopotamia.
The vase is currently being held by Michael Mueller-Karpe, an archaeologist at the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz, Germany. Three years ago he was charged with providing the court with an expert opinion on the provenance of the object, which is at the center of a lawsuit over fencing illegally trafficked goods.
New challenge to theory that Clovis were first people in North America
Source: http://www.thestate.com (6-28-09)
HILTON HEAD — An archaeologist who’s been digging at the Topper Site in Allendale County for 11 years is uncovering new evidence that could rewrite America’s history.
University of South Carolina archaeologist Albert Goodyear found artifacts at this rock quarry site near the Savannah River that indicate humans lived here 37,000 years before the Clovis people. History books say the Clovis were the first Americans and arrived here 13,000 years ago by walking across a land bridge from Asia.
Goodyear’s discovery could prove otherwise.
His findings are controversial, opening scientific minds to the possibility of an even earlier pre-Clovis occupation of America.
Missing Moon-Landing Videotapes May Have Been Found
Source: Fox News (6-30-09)
Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA may have found the long-lost original Apollo 11 videotapes.
If true, as Britain's Sunday Express reports, the high-quality tapes may give us a whole new view of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's lunar strolls.
Back on July 20, 1969, the raw video feed from the moon was beamed to the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in southeastern Australia, and then compressed and sent to Mission Control in Houston.
Because of technical issues, NASA's images couldn't be fed directly to the TV networks.
Instead, the grayish, blotchy images Americans saw on their TV sets were the result of a regular TV camera pointed at the huge wall monitor in Houston — a copy of a copy, in effect. (Australians saw slightly different footage.)
Madrid strips Franco of honorary titles
Source: Reuters (6-29-09)
Madrid's city hall Monday stripped former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco of his title as honorary mayor and adopted son of the capital, 33 years after his death began the transition to democracy.
Councilors of all political colors unanimously voted to remove the titles, as well as medals Madrid conferred on the right-wing general, a spokesman for the council said.
"The capital of Spain is now clean of support for dictators," left-wing Councilor Milagros Hernandez, was quoted as saying on the website of TV news channel CNN+.
An ancient settlement dating back to before the time when Alexander the Great's armies swept across Afghanistan could be bulldozed and dynamited for a new road
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-29-09)
French archaeologists said they had been forced to stand in front of earthmovers to prevent Korean contractors building a road through a historic gorge.
Excavations show people have lived at Cheshm-e-Shafa since at least the fourth century BC, when the area was ruled by a Persian dynasty eventually swept away by the Greek invaders.
The French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA), said it had been told engineers would use dynamite to put the road through the gorge.
Afghanistan is in desperate need of infrastructure, but its rich archaeological heritage has been ravaged by three decades of war and plunder.
UK economy shrank at fastest rate in 50 years
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-30-09)
The British recession was much more severe than first thought in the first three months of the year, with the economy suffering its sharpest quarterly contraction in more than 50 years, official figures showed on Tuesday.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the economy actually shrank by 2.4pc in the first quarter compared with the final three months of 2008, much more sharply than its first estimate of 1.9pc.
ONS records show that the last time the British economy contracted by more than 2.4pc was in the second quarter of 1958 when gross domestic product fell by 2.6pc and Harold Macmillan was in Downing Street.
Pagans, partygoers greet solstice at Stonehenge
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News (6-29-09)
Pagans and partygoers drummed, danced or gyrated in hula hoops to stay awake through the night, around 36,500 people greeted the summer solstice at the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge (Wiltshire, England). Despite fears of trouble because of the record-sized crowd, police said the annual party at the mysterious monument was mostly peaceful.
W. Va. Has Unfinished Civil War Business
Source: CBS News (6-30-09)
State Still Has About 4,000 Unclaimed Medals, Struck in 1866; Available to Descendants of Vets.
The medals are all that remain of an order for 26,000 medals for veterans that the state placed just after the war, Division of Culture and History historian Greg Carroll said. While several states struck medals after the war, West Virginia is one of the few that has any left.
Each of the remaining medals bears the name of a veteran and his military unit. Most are for an honorable discharge. Some are for soldier's who died from disease or wounds.
Northern grove for Jurassic tree ( Australia)
Source: BBC (6-30-09)
A tree which had been thought to have died out two million years ago is being grown in the north west Highlands.
The grove at Inverewe Garden is claimed to be the most northerly planting of Wollemi Pine.
Owners the National Trust for Scotland said the tree, which dates from Jurassic times, could survive for up to 1,000 years.
Oldest human settlement in Aegean unearthed
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News (6-29-09)
The ruins of the oldest human settlement in the Aegean found so far have been unearthed in archaeological excavations by a team of Greek, Italian and American archaeologists on the island of Limnos (Greece), headed by Thessaloniki Aristotle University (AUTH) professor of Prehistoric Archaeology Nikos Efstratiou.
The excavation began in early June and the finds brought to light so far, mainly stone tools of a high quality, are from the Epipaleolithic Period approximately 14,000 years ago. The finds indicate a settlement of hunters, food-collectors and fishermen of the 12th millennium BCE. Until now, it was believed that the oldest human presence in the Aegean had been located in the Archipelagos of the so-called Cyclops Cave on the rocky islet Yioura, north of the island of Alonissos, and at the Maroula site on Kythnos island, dating to circa 8,000 (8th millennium) BCE.
Vatican to open Apostle Paul's tomb after surprise discovery
Source: Deutsche Welle (6-29-09)
The human remains in an ancient Roman tomb may belong to Saint Paul, Pope Benedict XVI revealed in a surprise announcement. Now the Vatican wants to open the sarcophagus and conduct further tests.
The marble coffin in Rome's St. Paul's Basilica has never been opened, but, according to tests conducted thus far, the tomb contains pieces of human bone that have been dated to the time of Saint Paul.
Pope Benedict shared the findings Sunday at a service outside the church marking the end of the Vatican's Pauline year in honor of the apostle.
Angela Merkel's party backs 'homeland' for Germans expelled by Poland
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-29-09)
The party of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that its countrymen expelled by Poland after the Second World War have a ‘right to a homeland’ and said the deportations should be condemned under international law.
Wartime animosity between Poland and Germany could resurface after a new election manifesto published by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) pledged to promote the cause of those expelled.
In 1945 millions of ethnic Germans were forced from their homes after a redrawing of the border resulted in their lands becoming part of Poland.
Immortalizing New York’s Forgotten Sites
Source: New York Times (6-30-09)
Forlornly unidentified and altogether forgotten, these sites have been literally lost to history. On Avenue of the Americas, there is a block where the first cellphone call was completed in 1973; on West 125th Street, where the old Blumstein’s department store stood, nothing marks the place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in 1958. Then there is the spot on Fifth Avenue where Winston Churchill, crossing against the light, was struck by a car in 1931 and nearly killed.
Andrew Carroll, a 39-year-old amateur historian, is embarking this week on a 50-state journey to uncover, memorialize and preserve these and other sites where history happened serendipitously, and which, for one reason or another, have been relegated to anonymity.
Second Khmer Rouge victim talks
Source: BBC (6-30-09)
The second of three living survivors from the Tuol Sleng detention centre run by the Khmer Rouge has told a Cambodia tribunal how he was tortured.
Former mechanic Chum Mey, 63, told the United Nations-backed war crimes court that his toenails were torn out and he was subjected to electric shocks.
He said he was tortured repeatedly for 12 days and nights.
Chum Mey told the tribunal he had been working at a sewing machine factory in 1978 when he was brought to Tuol Sleng to be tortured on suspicion of espionage.
Antiques Roadshow finds $1 million Chinese jade
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-30-09)
A woman who inherited a collection of Chinese carved jade from her father has scored the first $1 million (£600,000) appraisal from experts on the US television programme "Antiques Roadshow," the producers said on Monday.
In a record for the show, four pieces of Chinese carved jade and celadon from the Qianlong era (1736-1795), including a large bowl made for the Emperor, were given a conservative auction estimate of up to $1.07 million.
The previous highest appraisal on the show was a 1937 painting by Clyfford Still, the American Abstract Expressionist artist, which was found in Palm Springs, California, in 2008. The painting had been given a retail estimate of $500,000.
Bus Rider Finds 19th Century Checks, Tools
Source: AP (6-30-09)
Some 19th century checks and old rusty tools were left months ago at a bus stop in Longmont, and police say no one has come forward to claim them.
The Regional Transportation District turned over the unusual items to police in March after a rider said she found them at a bus stop in Longmont.
The items include handwritten checks from 1884 mounted on mat boards, as if they'd been on display.
Aide: John Edwards begged him to claim baby
Source: NYT (6-30-09)
The book proposal from a man who was one of former Sen. John Edwards' closest aides claims that Edwards promised him to "take care of you for life" in return for falsely claiming he was the father of the baby carried by Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter.
The aide, Andrew Young, sold his book proposal to St. Martin's Press for an undisclosed price late last week. In his proposal, Young quotes Edwards, a Democrat who was his party's vice-presidential nominee in 2004 and ran for president last year, as begging him to confess to fathering Hunter's baby.
"'You know how much I love you,' Edwards said. 'You know I'd walk off a cliff for you, and I know you'd walk off a cliff for me,'" Young wrote in the book proposal. "'I will never forget this. And I will always be there for you.'" The proposal was shared with The New York Times by a book publishing industry executive. Portions of it were reported over the weekend by The Daily News of New York.
Nazi Stealth Jet Could Have Won War for Hitler
Source: Foxnews (Click here to see a picture.) (6-30-09)
Meet the "wonder weapon" that could have won the war for Hitler.
Called the Horten 229, the radical "flying wing" fighter-bomber looked and acted a lot like the U.S. Air Force's current B-2 — right down to the "stealth" radar-evading characteristics.
Fortunately for the world, the Ho 229 wasn't put into mass production before Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945.
But American researchers boxed up and shipped home the prototypes and partially-built planes that existed — and now the same company that builds the B-2 has rebuilt one.
Northrop Grumman Corp. spent its own time and money using the original German blueprints to replicate the wood-and-steel-tube bomber, right down to its unique metallic glue and paint, at its facility in El Segundo, Calif.
In a Coup in Honduras, Ghosts of Past U.S. Policies
Source: NYT (6-29-09)
The crisis in Honduras, where members of the country’s military abruptly awakened President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday and forced him out of the country in his bedclothes, is pitting Mr. Obama against the ghosts of past American foreign policy in Latin America.
The United States has a history of backing rival political factions and instigating coups in the region, and administration officials have found themselves on the defensive in recent days, dismissing repeated allegations by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela that the C.I.A. may have had a hand in the president’s removal.
Obama administration officials said that they were surprised by the coup on Sunday. But they also said that they had been working for several weeks to try to head off a political crisis in Honduras as the confrontation between Mr. Zelaya and the military over his efforts to lift presidential term limits escalated.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Ukraine wary of KGB terror files
Source: BBC (6-29-09)
Ukraine is opening up part of its old KGB archive, declassifying hundreds of thousands of documents spanning the entire Soviet period.
But the move to expose Soviet-era abuses is dividing Ukrainians, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Kiev.
Mr Viatrovych and his team are helping people to find out what happened to relatives and loved ones, often decades after they disappeared.
But the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), now in charge of the files, is declassifying them selectively.
Americans seek their African roots
Source: BBC (6-29-09)
First it was Oprah Winfrey's wistful reach for the continent, now other prominent African Americans are finding their roots.
Since then thousands of other African Americans have followed suit, many of them household names in the US.
Comedian Chris Rock discovered that he was descended from the Udeme people of northern Cameroon.
DNA testing has also resulted in some African Americans being bestowed with honorary African titles.
Skeleton reveals violent life and death of medieval knight
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-26-09)
A 620-year-old skeleton discovered under the floor of Stirling Castle has shed new light on the violent life of a medieval knight.
Archaeologists believe that bones found in an ancient chapel on the site are those of an English knight named Robert Morley who died in a tournament there in 1388.
Radio carbon dating has confirmed that the skeleton is from that period, and detailed analysis suggests that he was in his mid-20s, was heavily muscled and had suffered several serious wounds in earlier contests.
Ancient settlement could be bulldozed
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-26-09)
An ancient settlement dating back to before the time when Alexander the Great's armies swept across Afghanistan could be bulldozed and dynamited for a new road.
French archaeologists said they had been forced to stand in front of earthmovers to prevent Korean contractors building a road through a historic gorge.
Excavations show people have lived at Cheshm-e-Shafa since at least the fourth century BC, when the area was ruled by a Persian dynasty eventually swept away by the Greek invaders.
Franco dined like a king as Spain starved
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-29-09)
Spanish dictator General Franco enjoyed lavish three course meals despite severe food shortages in the months after the country's civil war.
As Spaniards struggled to survive on daily rations of potatoes and beans in the months following the 1936-1939 conflict, he dined on stuffed hake and medallions of veal.
The collection of menus were discovered among papers belonging to a former Civil Guard officer, Carlos Palacios Miguel, who in the autumn of 1936 when Franco led his military uprising against Spain's Second Republic was appointed as the Generalissimo's personal stenographer.
He remained close to Franco's side throughout the ensuing conflict and became a member of dictator's household staff at El Pardo, according to a weekend report in the national newspaper Publico.
Ahead of Withdrawal Deadline, Cheney Says He Hopes U.S. Sacrifice Does Not Go to 'Waste'
Source: Foxnews (6-29-09)
Former Vice President Dick Cheney tells The Washington Times' America's Morning News radio show that he supports Gen. Ray Odierno, top commander in Iraq, but that insurgents could be waiting in the wings to launch more attacks.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said he hopes the U.S. military's sacrifice in Iraq does not go to "waste" as a deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraqi cities looms.
About 130,000 U.S. troops still remain in Iraq, but Odierno said that the military has already fallen back to let the Iraqis take the lead in running security for their country.
Chilling echo of 1979 seizure
Source: Times Online (UK) (5-29-09)
We are not yet approaching the level of the events of November 1979 when Iranian students overran the US Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. But the seizing of high-level local staff at the British Embassy gives this crisis its own flavour: in the 1979 Islamic Revolution the Iranians who worked at the US Embassy were left alone.
Today the defunct US Embassy in Tehran houses a detachment of Revolutionary Guards and an anti-American museum. It is the scene of ritual and desultory anti-US protests on every November 4, the anniversary of its seizure. The sprawling compound was stormed after the US agreed to admit the Shah for medical treatment for cancer. Tehran, which suspected that the US was conspiring to restore him to power, saw this as a hostile act.
The seizure was a devastating blow for moderates in the provisional revolutionary government. Ayatollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Revolution, endorsed the takeover more for reasons of domestic than foreign policy: it cemented the revolution for him and his radical supporters who did not share the moderates’ hopes of a liberal democracy and accommodation with the West.
Lynndie England Still Haunted by Abu Ghraib Scandal
Source: AP (6-29-09)
More than two years since leaving her prison cell, the woman who became the grinning face of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal spends most of her days confined to the four walls of her home.
Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn't landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.
England hopes a biography released this month and a book tour starting in July will help rehabilitate an image indelibly associated with the plight of the mistreated prisoners.
Supreme Court Won't Hear Sept. 11 Claims Against Saudi Arabia
Source: Foxnews (6-29-09)
A lawsuit against Saudi Arabia filed by survivors and families members of those killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has ended as the Supreme Court announced Monday it will not hear additional arguments from the victims who were trying to revive their case.
The case against Saudi Arabia and five of its princes was already tossed out by two lower courts. More than 6,000 people joined the suit, claiming the Saudis were directly responsible for allowing the flow of money to Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda that was necessary to bankroll the terror attacks.
The Obama Administration urged the Court not to take the case. Solicitor General Elena Kagan argued the lower courts were right in their assessment that federal law protects the Saudi government and its princes are immune from lawsuits.
Pope: Basilica bones belong to apostle St. Paul
Source: CNN (6-29-09)
Scientific tests prove bones housed in the Basilica of St. Paul in Rome are those of the apostle St. Paul himself, according to Pope Benedict XVI.
The tomb also holds "traces of a precious linen cloth, purple in color and laminated with pure gold, and a blue colored textile with linen filaments," the pope said.
The tests were carried out by inserting a probe into a small opening in the sarcophagus, "which had not been opened for many centuries," the pontiff said. The probe "also revealed the presence of grains of red incense and traces of protein and limestone."
NYT transcribes some of the new Nixon tapes
Source: NYT (6-27-09)
Nearly 35 years after President Richard M. Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, the Nixon Presidential Library last week released more than 150 hours of secret Oval Office recordings covering January and February of 1973. While much of the attention to the newly disclosed material focused on Mr. Nixon’s expressing his prejudices and discussing the cease-fire in Vietnam, other conversations offer a glimpse of his thinking about presidential decision making and the exercise of power. There is also a reflection on prospects for democracy in the developing world — a reminder that during the cold war, the United States did not shrink from supporting repressive allies. Excerpts, as transcribed by The New York Times from tapes with poor audio quality, follow....
Repression 101--when does it work?
Source: NYT (6-27-09)
The history of repression to save regimes — or at least their leaders — is long. And every case is different: Some regimes are brittle in the face of popular pressure while others are supple in adapting to it; some can use nationalism as their trump card, while for others, it is an Achilles’ heel. And if some regimes are simple tyrannies, the structure of Iran’s political system is especially complex and opaque.
Still, a common thread is clear: It is the security services on which the regime’s fate ultimately hinges. If they decide their best interests lie with the powers that they have protected, and that have protected them, they will stick it out. If they decide they are more likely to prosper under new leadership, power can collapse at the speed of a show trial.
There are a lot of gradations along that scale.
Twenty years ago this month, many inside and outside of China who witnessed Tiananmen Square confidently predicted the beginning of the end for the Communist Party. They were wrong. Two decades later the party itself has changed radically enough — tossing aside its revolutionary ideology and replacing it with a social compact built on stupendous annual economic growth — that it remains secure, with its grip on power as solid as ever....
Reach back a bit further in history, though, to the Solidarity uprisings in Poland in the early 1980s, and the lesson is different. There, at first, repression also worked. The security forces, part of the Warsaw Pact, were called on to enforce martial law and remained loyal to a government firmly in the Soviet Union’s orbit. But over a decade’s time the regime’s hold on power — and on the soldiers’ loyalties — eroded as union workers, intellectuals, a pope and eventually even the security forces lost all confidence in a government that they viewed as illegitimate.
Part of the reason the regime proved vulnerable was that Poles themselves saw it as a foreign implant. So when the Soviet Union began to fall apart, the security forces recognized that their own patron was heading for the rocks. They made a strategic (some might say survival) decision to back whatever government the people chose.
That was the beginning of a swift end. But the model doesn’t really fit Iran. The mullahs may be many things — fundamentalist, intolerant, even vote fixers — but their trump card is that they are Iranian to core, and that their own revolution 30 years ago ejected an autocrat whose chief supporter abroad was the United States.
Space Shuttle and Strange Clouds Key to Mysterious 1908 Explosion
Source: http://www.space.com (6-29-09)
Ever since something generated a huge explosion over Siberia in 1908, flattening an area as big as a large city, scientists have been trying to figure out what caused it.
Among the enduring mysteries: Following the explosion, the night skies shone brightly for several nights across Europe all the way to London, 3,000 miles away.
While there are some wild theories about the Tunguska event -- involving a UFO or black hole or a bizarre death ray -- astronomers have long known the culprit was either a comet or an asteroid. Based on the lack of a crater, scientists say the object did not smack into the ground, but rather exploded above the surface, the damage being done by the resulting shock wave.
But which type of space rock was it?
New evidence from an unlikely source -- water vapor in the exhaust plumes of space shuttles launched a century later -- points to a comet.
German court upholds ban on words with Nazi link
Source: Reuters (6-26-09)
Germany's highest court has upheld a ban on three words appearing in sequence because of their link to a former anthem of the Nazi party.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe rejected on Thursday an appeal by a member of a far-right party who was fined 1,750 euros ($2,400) for wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "die Fahnen hoch."
This literally translates as "the flags on high." The court said the words, which appeared as the final part of an eight-word slogan on the shirt, were too similar to the opening line of the Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel song.
This opens with "die Fahne hoch," referring to a single flag. Public displays of Nazi symbols are banned in Germany.
Ex-POWs battle memory of labor camp
Source: Daily Record (6-21-09)
It took decades before [Myron] Swack, 83, of Independence, told his wife and family about months spent at a slave labor camp called Berga an der Elster — a story that involved 350 American soldiers, but which received only limited attention until recently.
Many of the Americans ended up at Berga either because they were Jewish or because the Germans thought they were. They lived on small bits of bread and thin turnip soup, working in mine shafts where rock dust ripped their lungs. They say they saw friends beaten or worked to death.
The Army has been honoring the 22 living Berga survivors this month after their story received some national attention last year. Some attended a ceremony in Florida while others, such as Swack, have been honored by nearby military bases. Picatinny Arsenal officials presented Swack with a Bronze Star at his home last week.
End of the culture wars?
Source: NYT (6-27-09)
True, David Letterman’s awkward joke about a daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska prompted denunciations of the “media elite” (though it also boosted Mr. Letterman’s ratings).
But the admissions of extramarital adventures by two Republican stalwarts, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina on Wednesday and Senator John Ensign of Nevada the week before, did not help their party’s cause and stood in dim contrast to President Obama’s recent success in co-opting parts of the conservatives’ cultural agenda — whether voicing his opposition to gay marriage, or delivering Father’s Day homilies on parenting.
Still another instance of what may be an emerging politics of accommodation, with both parties seeing the benefits of the center, came earlier this month when Mr. Obama announced his selection of Jim Leach, a former congressman, to head the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mr. Leach’s credentials are impressive: degrees from Princeton and Johns Hopkins; a recent stint as interim director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
The forgotten evolutionist
Source: AP (6-29-09)
SANTUBONG, Malaysia – As he trudges past chest-high ferns and butterflies the size of saucers, George Beccaloni scours a jungle hilltop overlooking the South China Sea for signs of a long-forgotten Victorian-era scientist.
He finds what he's looking for: an abandoned, two-story guest house, its doors missing and ceiling caved in.
"Excellent. This is the actual spot," he yells.
It is on this site, in a long-gone thatched hut, that Alfred Russel Wallace is believed to have spent weeks in 1855 writing a seminal paper on the theory of evolution. Yet he is largely unknown outside scientific circles today, overshadowed by Charles Darwin, whom most people credit as the father of a theory that explains the origins of life through how plants and animals evolve.
Now, in the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, a growing number of academics and amateur historians are rediscovering Wallace. Their efforts are raising debate over exactly what Wallace contributed to the theory of evolution, and what role, if any, the spiritual world plays in certain aspects of natural selection.
41 Years Later in Chicago, Police and Demonstrators Still Clash, but With Words
Source: NYT (6-28-09)
CHICAGO — They arrived at the police union hall looking older, grayer, wider. At least one bore a cane.
It seemed an unlikely reunion: a gathering, 41 years later, of the police officers who clashed with demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in this city, leaving behind an image Chicago has tried to shed ever since.
“People ask me, ‘What is there to celebrate about all of this?’ ” said Tom Keevers, one of the former officers, long gone from the force but with lasting memories of the 12-hour shifts he worked during those tense days in August 1968. “My answer is that I feel fine about what happened.”
For some, there was no grand meaning to the meeting here on Friday, just some retired friends sharing pizza and beer and war stories on a warm summer evening. But for other retired officers, this was a chance at last to correct history, at least quietly, among one another, about all that happened during the convention, about the tales of police answering the provocations of Vietnam War protesters with billy clubs, about the damning conclusions of a commission back then that the police had acted with “unrestrained and indiscriminate” violence.
A new high tech edge to Poland's Jewish heritage
Source: AFP (6-28-09)
The Holocaust nearly obliterated a millennium of Jewish life in Poland but a new website aims to bring it back in cyberspace by piecing together scraps of memories on life before the Nazis.
The "Virtual Shtetl" web portal was launched this month by the creators of a much-awaited Museum of the History of Polish Jews, to get a head start online before the museum is scheduled to open its doors in 2011.
In both Polish and English, the site is built on Web 2.0 technology allowing users from around the globe to contribute information and eye-witness testimony.
Ancient Philippine boat re-created for odyssey
Source: AP (6-28-09)
- Adventurers who conquered Mount Everest successfully launched a replica of an ancient Philippine boat Saturday that they will use to sail around Southeast Asia and possibly to Africa to promote Filipino pride and unity.
The replica of the balangay — a wooden-hulled boat used in the archipelago about 1,700 years ago — was built in 44 days by native Badjao boat-builders from the southernmost Philippine province of Tawi Tawi using traditional skills handed down through the generations.
About 300 spectators counted down to the launch, cheering and applauding as the bow hit the water in Manila Bay.
Russia won't participate in Jewish documents suit
Source: AP (6-26-09)
Russia told a U.S. court on Friday that judges have no authority to tell the country how to handle sacred Jewish documents held in its state library that were seized by the Nazi and Soviet armies.
The documents are at the center of a lawsuit brought by members of Chabad-Lubavitch, which follows the teachings of Eastern European rabbis and emphasizes the study of the Torah. The group is suing Russia in U.S. court to recover thousands of manuscripts, prayers, lectures and philosophical discourses by leading rabbis dating back to the 18th century.
The case is being handled by the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, Royce Lamberth, who in January ordered Russia to preserve the documents over Chabad's fears they are not being properly cared for and could be sold on the black market.
Study finds widening generation gap in US
Source: AP (6-29-09)
From cell phones and texting to religion and manners, younger and older Americans see the world differently, creating the largest generation gap since the tumultuous years of the 1960s and the culture clashes over Vietnam, civil rights and women's liberation.
A new study released Monday by the Pew Research Center found Americans of different ages increasingly at odds over a range of social and technological issues. It also highlights a widening age divide after last November's election, when 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Democrat Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio.
Trabant parade remembers the first crack in Berlin Wall
Source: Independent (UK) (6-29-09)
A procession of restored Trabant cars streamed through a replica of a metal gate this weekend, commemorating the place and time, 20 years ago, when Hungary and Austria opened the first breach in the Iron Curtain and, in former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's words, "took the first brick out of the Berlin Wall".
In the summer of 1989, this rural area was one of the most tense places in the world, as central Europeans tested the will of Mikhail Gorbachev's Kremlin to preserve the Soviet empire.
Britain 'knows little about Bible'
Source: Independent (UK) (6-29-09)
The public is widely ignorant of the stories and people who provide the basis of Christianity, a survey has found, despite 75 per cent of respondents owning a copy of the Bible.
The National Biblical Literacy Survey found that as few as 10 per cent of people understood the main characters in the Bible and their relevance.
Figures such as Abraham and Joseph were a source of puzzlement and it was rare to find anyone who could name the Ten Commandments.
Many stories considered to be central to the Christian message were a mystery to most. As few as 7 per cent of respondents knew the story of Whitsun and only 15 per cent were familiar with the stories associated with Advent.
St John's College Durham in Durham carried out the survey and released preliminary findings yesterday. The full report is expected to be published in July.
Westminster Abbey to get its crowning glory, at last
Source: Independent (UK) (6-29-09)
Ever since Benedictine monks first made their home at Westminster AD 960, Britain's most famous abbey has been an architectural playground.
Monarchs and architects, including Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor and Sir George Gilbert Scott, have commissioned and built towers, turrets and chapels in a variety of styles.
More than a 1,000 years on, the Abbey authorities are to launch a public consultation on plans to change the the building once again – with the addition of a 21st century "corona", or crown, to sit on top of the roof at an estimated cost of £10m.
Iraqis to mark US street exit with holiday
Source: Observer (UK) (6-28-09)
Iraq has declared tomorrow a national holiday and is planning festivals to mark the end of the US presence on the streets of its towns and cities, more than six years after Saddam Hussein was ousted.
The much-anticipated milestone has been hailed as a return to sovereignty by Iraqi officials, who have maintained sometimes difficult relations with the US military throughout the years of occupation.
But the celebratory mood has angered some senior US officials and military commanders, who believe intensive training efforts with Iraqi forces have been forsaken, along with combat operations that have cost at least several thousand American lives since the fall of Baghdad.
SAS parachuted in to Baghdad
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-26-09)
Special Forces made a series of night jumps on the outskirts of Baghdad in a campaign against insurgent leaders and bomb-making factories, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
The operations - which can only now be disclosed - played a significant role in removing "high value targets'' and reducing the ability of insurgents to make roadside bombs.
On at least a dozen occasions, SAS soldiers using highly-manoeuvrable parachutes jumped from the back of a Hercules aircraft at medium altitude. After steering for several miles, they landed close to insurgent strongholds.
Is this the earliest image of St Paul? 'Sensational' 1,600-year-old icon of saint found in a Roman tomb
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (6-29-09)
This faded face, with a pointed beard and furrowed brow, is believed to be the oldest image in existence of St Paul the Apostle.
Vatican archaeologists uncovered the fresco in a catacomb beneath Rome with the help of a laser, which cleared away centuries of grime, clay and limestone.
The image was created in the 4th century, according to Barbara Mazzei, the director of work at the catacomb.
'It was easy to see that it was Saint Paul because the style matched the iconography that we know existed at around the 4th Century - that is the thin face and the dark beard,' she said.
'It is a sensational discovery and is of tremendous significance.'
Visitors to World War Two-themed weekend banned from wearing Hitler costumes (UK)
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (6-28-09)
Visitors to a railway attraction's Second World War-themed weekend were banned from dressing up as Hitler or SS officers.
They were invited to don 1940s-style clothes, both British and German, for Severn Valley Railway's re-enactment yesterday and today.
But the Swastika, Nazi uniforms and Hitler impersonations were barred from the popular tourist draw in Worcestershire because organisers feared they would cause offence.
Americans seek their African roots
Source: BBC (6-29-09)
In 2005 Oprah Winfrey underwent DNA testing in an effort to determine the genetic make-up of her body's cells.
The popular American talk show host wanted to know where her ancestors, taken as slaves to the United States, had come from.
Famous genes
Since then thousands of other African Americans have followed suit, many of them household names in the US.
Comedian Chris Rock discovered that he was descended from the Udeme people of northern Cameroon.
LeVar Burton, an actor who played the slave Kunta Kinte in the TV drama Roots, linked himself up genetically with the Hausa in Nigeria.
Civil rights leader Andrew Young traced his lineage to the Mende people of Sierra Leone and is also believed to be a distant relative of one of the leaders of the 1839 Amistad slave ship mutiny.
DNA testing has also resulted in some African Americans being bestowed with honorary African titles.
The Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, who portrayed the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, was made an honorary chief of Igboland in south-eastern Nigeria.
He was given the title of Nwannedinambar of Nkwerre which means "brother in a foreign land", during a visit to Nigeria in April.
Getting results
There are more than two dozen genealogy organisations in the US selling genetic ancestry tests but African Ancestry is the only black-owned firm.
It is also the first to cater specifically to African Americans. Of the half a million Americans who have purchased DNA tests, around 35,000 of them are African American.
Khmer Rouge survivor testifies
Source: BBC (6-29-09)
Van Nath described how hunger had driven him to eat insects, and said he had also eaten the food beside corpses of starved fellow prisoners.
He was appearing at the trial of the man who ran the prison, Comrade Duch.
About 15,000 people were detained at Tuol Sleng in the late 1970s, but only seven are thought to have survived.
Climate Change Bill May Be Election Issue
Source: NYT (6-27-09)
As Democrats strained to win over crucial holdouts on the way to narrow, party-line approval of global warming legislation, they were dogged by a critical question: Has the political climate changed since 1993?
Veteran members of both parties vividly remember when many House Democrats, in the early months of the Clinton administration, reluctantly backed a proposed B.T.U. tax — a new levy on each unit of energy consumed — only to see it ignored by the Senate and seized as a campaign issue by Republicans, who took control of the House the next year.
“A lot of Democrat members got burnt on that vote,” warned Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, who called the climate change measure the defining vote of this, the 111th, Congress.
Marriage Stands Up for Itself
Source: NYT (6-26-09)
The speculation over the future of the marriage of Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor, after his recently disclosed affair is likely to die off well before the family’s pain. So, too, will the unsolicited lectures — about his hypocrisy, about her obligations, about the dire state of marriage in general.
Yet if recent research is any guide, the marriage itself has a chance to outlast all of it, the public leer and the private sting, by many years....
A comparison of 10-year divorce rates among college-educated men married in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s shows that divorce is becoming less common, said Dr. Stevenson, the Wharton researcher. Among men who married in the 1970s, for example, about 23 percent had divorced by the 10th year of marriage. Among similar men married in the 1980s, about 20 percent had divorced by the 10th year. Men married in the 1990s are doing even better — with a 10-year divorce rate of 16 percent.
Scots fought 'in bright yellow war shirts not Braveheart kilts'
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-28-09)
Medieval Scottish soldiers fought wearing bright yellow war shirts dyed in horse urine rather than the tartan plaid depicted in the film Braveheart, according to new research.
Historian Fergus Cannan states that the Scots armies who fought in battles like Bannockburn, and Flodden Field would have looked very different to the way they have traditionally been depicted.
Instead of kilts, he said they wore saffron-coloured tunics called "leine croich" and used a range of ingredients to get the boldest possible colours.
Howard Hughes and the atomic bomb
Source: LAT (6-28-09)
At the center of a desolate valley in the middle of Nevada, more than a dozen miles from the nearest paved road, one of the few signs of human activity is a rusty steel well casing that juts oddly out of the desert floor.
Nobody lives here, but it has a name: the Central Nevada Test Area. It was once a hub of scientific activity. Today, it is an abandoned outpost of the Cold War.
In the lore of the nuclear arms race, the Central Nevada Test Area has occupied a special place of mystery. Only one test was ever conducted there, and even for aficionados, the reasons have never been entirely clear.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Rome catacomb reveals "oldest" image of St Paul
Source: Reuters (6-28-09)
Vatican archaeologists using laser technology have discovered what they believe is the oldest image in existence of St Paul the Apostle, dating from the late 4th century, on the walls of catacomb beneath Rome.
Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, revealing the find on Sunday, published a picture of a frescoed image of the face of a man with a pointed black beard on a red background, inside a bright yellow halo. The high forehead is furrowed.
Inside France's 25,000-year-old Pech Merle cave, hand stencils surround the famed "Spotted Horses" mural.
Source: National Geographic (6-16-09)
For about as long as humans have created works of art, they've also left behind handprints. People began stenciling, painting, or chipping imprints of their hands onto rock walls at least 30,000 years ago.
Until recently, most scientists assumed these prehistoric handprints were male. But "even a superficial examination of published photos suggested to me that there were lots of female hands there," Pennsylvania State University archaeologist Dean Snow said of European cave art.
By measuring and analyzing the Pech Merle hand stencils, Snow found that many were indeed female--including those pictured here.
Hitler fanatics forced orphans to build new Fatherland in Amazon
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (6-27-09)
Bricks marked with swastikas on a crumbling building in Brazil have helped historians trace an astonishing plan by Adolf Hitler for a Nazi empire in South America.
They have also found some of the young men who were kept as slaves by German settlers and local Nazi supporters.
They were known as ‘ Nummernmenschen’ – the number people – as the dehumanisation practised in the concentration camps was exported.
It had long been known that fleeing Nazis moved into remote regions of South America after the war. But the story of the slaves began years earlier.
40 Years After Stonewall Riots, a rebel remembers
Source: AP (6-27-09)
Raymond Castro was a regular at The Stonewall Inn in 1969, finding it a haven from a world where gay men and women could be arrested for kissing or holding hands in public. Inside the bar, where plywood covered the windows, warning lights served as a signal for couples to stop dancing.
When police raided the bar in the past for selling liquor without a license, patrons normally submitted to arrest or dispersed quietly. But on June 28, Castro recalled, people fought back.
As officers tried to throw him in a police wagon, Castro used the vehicle as a spring to push back, knocking them to the ground.
"They literally carried me into the ... wagon and threw me in there," recalled Castro, now 67. "It must've been the motivation of the crowd that inspired me to resist. Or maybe at that point enough was enough."
Snubbed millionaire's backyard course stumped legends, then disappeared (Chicago)
Source: Chicago Tribune (6-26-09)
Duffers and history buffs alike will get to follow in the footsteps of Bobby Jones and Bob Hope this weekend as they retrace a vanished golf course considered one of the best in the country in its day.
The beautifully manicured fairways of Mill Road Farm, built in the 1920s, were replaced by subdivisions after World War II. Last winter 30 Lake Forest College students used original plats and satellite images to flag about 10 holes.
"What we found more than greens and tees were bunkers," said Holly Swyers, an anthropology professor who led the expedition. "A lot of the bunkers were still there, overgrown but clearly in the same shape that they were on the map."
The course was the brainchild of Albert Lasker, head of Lord & Thomas, a now-defunct Chicago ad agency that was among the largest in the U.S. Lasker rubbed elbows with celebrities, helped launch commercial radio and bought a stake in the Chicago Cubs, according to the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society, which is hosting the tour Saturday as part of an exhibit on local golf history.
Evidence of the oldest settlements found in Maryland?
Source: http://www.hometownannapolis.com (6-26-09)
Who would think a series of dark spots in the ground and a tiny clay pot could generate such excitement?
The dark smudges in the earth, deemed to be posts supporting Native American wigwams, found by county archaeologists this spring could be the oldest structures yet discovered in Maryland.
Carbon dating has determined the settlement along the Patuxent River near Jug Bay dates from A.D. 1290 and 1300.
Models of Earliest (Camel-Pulled) Vehicles Found
Source: Discovery.com (6-26-09)
Some of the world's first farmers may have sped around in two-wheeled carts pulled by camels and bulls, suggests a new analysis on tiny models of these carts that date to 6,000-5,000 years ago.
The cart models, which may have been ritual objects or children's toys, were found at Altyndepe, a Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement in Western Central Asia near Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Together with other finds, the cart models provide a history of how wheeled transportation first emerged in the area and later developed.
"Horsepower" is a common term today, but the ancients had bull-power, followed by camel-power, researcher Lyubov Kircho explained to Discovery News.
National Park Service Announces Battlefield Preservation Project Grants for 2009
Source: Media Newswire (6-26-09)
Today, the National Park Service announced the award of 33 grants totaling $1,360,000 to assist in the preservation and protection of America's significant battlefield lands. This year's grants provide funding at endangered battlefields from the King Philip's War (1675-1676), Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Second Seminole War, Mexican-American War, Civil War, World War II and various Indian Wars.
We’ll soon find Cleopatra, Dominican archaeologist says
Source: http://www.dominicantoday.com (6-26-09)
SANTO DOMINGO.- The attorney-turned-archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, who’s proud to proclaim that her work is part of a larger effort by a Dominican-Egyptian team, today said that her search for Cleopatra’s tomb continues and is convinced she’ll soon find it.
She said her search in the region, kilometers west of the ancient port city of Alexandria, has lasted four years in 4 to 5-month periods, and in addition to the Egyptian queen, expects to find at her side the mummified body 50 of her lover, Marc Antony. “Important evidence of a royal tomb was found and I affirm that it’s the tomb of Cleopatra and Marc Anthony.
Martinez also affirms that given the scope and sheer numbers of tombs, her team has found Egypt’s largest cemetery. “It’s the largest cemetery found in Egypt, with its artifacts, a series of 40 to 45 tombs cut into the bedrock 35 meters deep, with tunnels and passageways.”
Family Buries Man Killed Decades Ago In Korean War
Source: WFSB (6-26-09)
An unusual military funeral was held in Plainville on Friday as family and friends gathered to say goodbye to a man who was killed in the Korean War.
From the 21-gun salute to the lone bugler, it was like any other funeral with full military honors. The only difference was that the funeral came nearly 60 years late.
Sgt. 1st Class Lincoln "Cliff" May was killed while fighting in Korea in 1950. His unidentified remains came back to the U.S. in 1993 and were recently identified with the help of a DNA sample taken from his nephew, who said the Army deserves the credit.
"They didn't give up when we did," said Clifford Block, May's nephew. "It's been 58 years, and it's just been a great, great thing that they didn't forget about my uncle."
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Red Cross marks battle anniversary
Source: BBC (6-27-09)
The Red Cross is marking the 150th anniversary of the battle which inspired Henri Dunant to found the world's best known humanitarian movement.
At the end of June 1859, the armies of France and Sardinia, led by Napoleon III, confronted the Austrians at Solferino in northern Italy.
The Red Cross is marking the 150th anniversary of the battle which inspired Henri Dunant to found the world's best known humanitarian movement.
At the end of June 1859, the armies of France and Sardinia, led by Napoleon III, confronted the Austrians at Solferino in northern Italy.
Bosnia echoes to alarming rhetoric
Source: BBC (6-27-09)
At the end of the Bosnian Civil War, it was agreed that the country would remain a single nation.
However, the Serbs were granted their own officially-recognised region, known as the Republika Srpska.
The Republika Srpska parliament has issued a declaration, insisting that it has the right to make its own rules in certain key areas, like immigration and customs.
Chinese urge activist's release
Source: BBC (6-26-09)
Dozens of prominent Chinese academics have signed a petition calling for the release of veteran political activist Liu Xiaobo.
They say his arrest shows that no one in China has the right to publicly express their opinions.
Mr Liu was formally arrested on Tuesday - more than six months after he was detained by the authorities.
He has been charged with inciting subversion by spreading rumours and defaming the government.
Lewis and Clark in murder mystery 200 years after their final expedition
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-27-09)
Meriwether Lewis, one half of the Lewis and Clark explorer duo who first reached the Pacific by land, may have been murdered, say descendants who want his body exhumed.
Now, as the 200th anniversary of his death approaches, his descendants have mounted a fresh push to have his body exhumed and the cold case reopened, believing that modern forensic procedures could settle the mystery.
An often melancholy character, his death was noted as a suicide and, despite his status, his body was buried hastily and without ceremony nearby. A monument subsequently erected in 1848 paid homage to his courage and "scrupulous fidelity to the truth" - a quality that his descendants say they are now also upholding as they seek to settle speculation as to what really happened that night at the inn.
Members of the monument committee who viewed Lewis's remains in 1848 concluded it was "more probable that he died at the hands of an assassin" and in 1996, a Tennessee coroner's hearing recommended a full forensic study of the bones. But the federal government has held out against granting the necessary permit.
English Heritage reveals most haunted sites
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-27-09)
From riderless horses disappearing through castle walls mischievous spirits apparently barging into visitors, English Heritage has compiled a new survey of "hauntings" and unexplained events recorded at its sites.
One medieval palace is even said to be haunted by a former member of staff.
Many of the events involve staff and visitors seeing mysterious figures, while others involve complaints that people were pinched or pushed, when there was nobody standing near them. Some reports involve items being moved around sites.
Similar accounts of visitors complaining about being barged into, pinched or even slapped while there is apparently no-one around them have been made at Portland Castle, in Dorset, and Scarborough Castle, in Yorkshire, which, according to legend, is haunted by the ghost of Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II.
Laura Bush speaks out on Burma
Source: CNN (6-27-09)
Former First Lady Laura Bush — who has kept a low profile since her husband's administration came to an end — is speaking out on a cause she championed while in the White House: the ongoing situation in Burma.
In a Washington Post op-ed set to be published in the paper's Sunday edition, Bush draws parallels between the events in Iran and Burma (Myanmar), and urges the United Nations to press the ruling regime there to end human rights abuses.
In her op-ed, Bush also says the ruling regime has forced tens of thousands of child soldiers into its army, closed churches and mosques, and imprisoned comedians and bloggers who take aim at the government.
Nazi SS officers sentenced to life for Second World War massacre in Italy
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-27-09)
Nine former members of the Nazi SS were sentenced to life in prison for a series of massacres during the Second World War by an Italian court, according to news reports.
The court also ordered Germany to pay damages to some of the families of the hundreds of victims, the ANSA news agency reported.
The nine suspects, aged between 84 and 90 were tried in absentia and found guilty of the murders of more than 350 civilians in the summer of 1944.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Game Changer in Retailing, Bar Code Is 35
Source: NYT (6-25-09)
The black and white bars designed in the 1970s to read prices and track inventory are now scanned more than 10 billion times a day.
Civil War re-enactor pleads guilty, must take gun course
Source: Virginia-Pilot (6-25-09)
A 30-year-old Civil War re-enactor pleaded guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor charge of reckless handling of a firearm in regard to a shooting in September while filming a battle scene.
Joshua Silva of Norfolk must complete a gun safety course and pay $1,200 in restitution before his scheduled return to court Sept. 16. If he completes those requirements, the charges will be dismissed, Commonwealth's Attorney Wayne Farmer said.
Silva was a walk-on in the Civil War documentary "Overland Campaign Web Series Project." He carried a replica of a 19th-century .45-caliber pistol with live ammunition. When he fired the gun, the bullet struck Thomas R. Lord Sr. of Suffolk. Lord was flown from Heritage Park on Courthouse Highway to a Norfolk hospital.
Lord was portraying a Union soldier; Silva was on the side of the South. The shooting happened during one of the scenes that involved a volley of shots between the two armies.
Farmer said officials believe Silva did not know the gun was loaded.
Communists turn to Stalin to fight crisis
Source: Reuters (6-24-09)
Russian communists have put up giant billboards of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a southern city, promoting his tough methods as the best remedy for the world economic crisis.
Stalin killed millions of people during his 30 year rule until his death in 1953, but many in recession-hit Russia have grown nostalgic for his strong leadership, and he was voted the third most popular historical figure in a nationwide poll.
"Everybody knows that under Stalin our country achieved the highest rate of economic growth and development in other spheres, and the great victory (over Nazi Germany)," Sergei Rudakov, a senior Communist party official in the town of Voronezh, told Reuters by telephone.
Treaty of Versailles: 90 years old this weekend
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-26-09)
The Treaty of Versailles between Germany and the victorious Entente powers was signed 90 years ago this weekend. Can the details of the settlement at the end of a war almost now beyond living memory still have any relevance for us?
Without the events of 11/9 (the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989) and 9/11 (the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001), it might have been easier to suggest that the results of the Paris Peace Conference and the subsequent gatherings that formally concluded the First World War had indeed faded into the background.
Even then, however, the widely held view that Versailles, and the other treaties signed in palaces in the Parisian suburbs in 1919 and 1920, held a key responsibility for the outbreak of a new major war in 1939 and hence for its consequences, might still have offered important reasons for reconsidering their negotiation and results. But there are more compelling contemporary reasons. When Woodrow Wilson came to Paris, the first American president in office to travel to Europe, liberal intellectuals like John Maynard Keynes or Harold Nicolson expected him to use America's overwhelming economic, financial and industrial muscle, backed by a growing military presence, to enforce the ideals he had articulated in his 1918 speeches, most famously the Fourteen Points. He disappointed them, but Richard Nixon still chose his portrait to hang in the White House Cabinet Room, and George Bush Senior and Junior, as well as Bill Clinton, invoked Wilsonian ideals about the role of democracy in creating peace to justify the use of military force. As Henry Kissinger acknowledged "Whenever America has faced the task of constructing a new world order, it has returned in one way or another to Woodrow Wilson's precepts".
RI embarrassed by its slavery-connected name
Source: AP (6-25-09)
The country's smallest state has the longest official name: "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."
A push to drop "Providence Plantations" from that name advanced farther than ever on Thursday when House lawmakers voted 70-3 to let residents decide whether their home should simply be called the "State of Rhode Island." It's an encouraging sign for those who believe the formal name conjures up images of slavery, while opponents argue it's an unnecessary rewriting of history that ignores Rhode Island's tradition of religious liberty and tolerance.
The bill permitting a statewide referendum on the issue next year now heads to the state Senate.
"It's high time for us to recognize that slavery happened on plantations in Rhode Island and decide that we don't want that chapter of our history to be a proud part of our name," said Rep. Joseph Almeida, an African-American lawmaker who sponsored the bill.
Rothschild and Freshfields founders had links to slavery, papers reveal
Source: Financial Times (UK) (6-26-09)
Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.
Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.
Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.
Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.
JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.
Summit addresses Nazi-looted art
Source: BBC (6-26-09)
The five-day conference in the Czech capital will also aim to increase Holocaust awareness and education.
The Nazis stole an estimated 650,000 religious items and works of art from European Jews during World War II.
While much of the art been returned, a great deal remains in museums and private collections.
Obama condemned for acting like Bush
Source: Independent (UK) (6-26-09)
Relations between the US and Iran over the protests deteriorated sharply yesterday when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama of behaving like his predecessor, George W Bush, and declared there was no point in talking to Washington unless the US President apologised.
The American response to the crackdown on the protests had been initially low-key and Britain, rather than the "Great Satan", had been the focus of anger for Iran's rulers.
But Mr Obama has hardened his position saying he was "appalled and outraged" by the suppression of dissent. He also dismissed Tehran's claims that outsiders orchestrated the disturbances. The State Department has withdrawn invitations to Iranian diplomats to the Independence Day celebrations on 4 July.
President Ahmadinejad said yesterday that "Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things... our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously Bush used to say."
Doris survey of English Channel seabed finds traces of ancient river
Source: Times (UK) (6-26-09)
An ancient river channel, shipwrecks and giant underwater gravel dunes are among previously unknown features discovered during the most detailed survey to date of the Channel seabed.
The survey, covering 500 square miles off the Dorset coast, is being carried out in advance of the 2012 Olympics. Sailing events will take place off Weymouth and Portland, and organisers are anxious to avoid any unpleasant surprises, such as uncharted rocks, that have holed small boats in the past.
The £300,000 project has already led to the redrawing of marine charts in use for nearly 75 years. It will also enable marine conservationists to record the variety of habitats in the area.
Britain considered chemical attack on Tokyo in 1944
Source: Times (UK) (6-26-09)
British officials considered attacking Tokyo with poison gas in 1944, more than a year before the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.
Documents made public today include a memorandum written by a government academic entitled Attack on Tokyo with Gas Bombs. His report was coupled with a note from the Ministry of Supply, dated May 22, 1944.
It said: “In his report on his discussions in America Major-General Goldnoy suggested that it might be worthwhile attempting to assess the probable effects of a C.W. [chemical weapons] bombing attack on Tokyo.” A two-page analysis of such an attack was written by Professor D. Brunt, based on information and photographs of the Japanese capital provided by the director of military intelligence at the War Office. He listed two gas options — phosgene and mustard gas — and considered incendiary bombs as well.
UK braced for mustard gas attacks in 1943
Source: Times (UK) (6-26-09)
As scientists devised methods to use chemical warfare against Britain’s enemies, other officials were preparing for a chemical attack.
The documents from the National Archives show how the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Home Security held demonstrations to show civilians what to do to decontaminate their food in the event of a mustard gas bombing.
Cheese, tinned food, potatoes, flour, tea and meat were used in 15 seminars in Newcastle, Leeds, Nottingham, London, Winchester, Torquay, Cardiff and other centres.
Black-and-white photographs from 1943 show crowds of cheerful-looking women and men attending the sessions, given by chemical weapons specialists and representatives from the food ministry. The food was put in a “gas chamber” and exposed to mustard gas for two hours. Officials in gas masks can be seen administering the poison as local people watched.
WWII poison darts secret emerges
Source: BBC (6-26-09)
Lethal clouds of tiny poisoned darts were to be tipped with mustard gas to kill enemy troops without damaging nearby buildings or equipment.
The file has been released by the National Archives.
Test results were inconclusive and although the scientists remained enthusiastic, the project was shelved.
The concept was developed between 1941 and 1945 at the Porton Down research base in Wiltshire.
John Birch Society still around after all these years
Source: NYT (6-25-09)
The John Birch Society.
For some, that name means nothing. Or it sparks flashbacks to the 1960s, when the John Birch Society was synonymous with seeing red here, there and everywhere. Maybe you displayed a Birch bumper sticker on your car; maybe you enjoyed the Chad Mitchell Trio song mocking the Birch obsession with communism:
You cannot trust your neighbor or even next of kin
If mommy is a commie then you gotta turn her in.
Yet for others, the John Birch Society is urgently relevant to the matters of today, in its support of secure borders and limited government, its distrust of the Federal Reserve and the United Nations, and its belief in a conspiracy to merge Mexico, Canada and the United States.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Rep. Bachmann Warns Of Link Between Census, Japanese Internment
Source: TPM (Liberal blog) (6-25-09)
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is taking her refusal to fully fill out her Census form, which is a crime punishable by a $5,000 fine, to a whole new level: Invoking the memory of the Japanese internment during World War II, and the evil role that the Census played in it!
During an interview this morning on Fox News, Bachmann mostly focused on the danger of her personal information falling into the hands of the dreaded menace ACORN. But at one point, she made a very interesting appeal to history:
"Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps," said Bachmann. "I'm not saying that that's what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps."
At this point even Megyn Kelly, who had been gladly dishing out the anti-ACORN talk along with Bachmann, had to take a step back and raise the point that the Japanese internment was a long time ago and we haven't had such abuses since then.
For some context on how this fits into Bachmann's overall worldview, keep in mind that she's previously warned of the threat of "re-education camps" where young people would be indoctrinated into the government's official philosophy.
For Jackie Kennedy/Bobby Kennedy affair rumors, third time not the charm
Source: New York Daily News (6-25-09)
C. David Heymann is alleging - for the third time - that Jacqueline and Bobby Kennedy had an affair, and once again, other Kennedy biographers are slamming the author's claim.
In his new book, "Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story" (available on July 14 from Simon & Schuster's Atria Books), Heymann interviews several on-the-record witnesses who say that the in-laws had a sexual relationship after JFK's assassination in 1963.
David Talbot, author of "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years," refused to even comment on Heymann's tome because he doesn't believe the writer is a credible source on the Kennedy family.
Archaeological dig finds unveiled
Source: BBC (6-25-09)
The results of a significant archaeological dig have been unveiled in County Down.
Neolithic and Bronze Age remains were found at Loughbrickland when work began on new roads four years ago.
They included evidence of three Neolithic houses dating back over 6,000 year and a Bronze Age burial site.
Information boards have now been erected at the site. It is not yet known where the artefacts will be stored on a permanent basis.
Campaign for soldiers shot at dawn
Source: BBC (6-25-09)
On Saturday, more than 90 years after being shot for desertion, Pte James Smith's name will finally be added to Bolton's roll of honour to soldiers killed in World War I.
It is one of many events taking place across the UK to mark the first Armed Forces Day, which has replaced Veterans' Day.
The long-awaited recognition for Pte Smith, known as Jimmy, comes after a campaign by his great, great nephew Charles Sandbach.
In 2006 the government formally pardoned 306 British soldiers executed for military offences other than murder or mutiny.
Khmer Rouge judge sees failures
Source: BBC (6-25-09)
The international prosecutor at the Khmer Rouge tribunal has warned that the process is failing to make a connection with the Cambodian people.
Robert Petit said he was also concerned about political interference at the special courts.
The Canadian official has just announced his resignation after three years of leading the prosecution of former Khmer Rouge leaders.
He said his resignation was not connected to problems at the tribunal.
Cross-stitch recreation of Sistine Chapel ceiling
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-25-09)
A needle-worker has created a jaw-dropping vision of the Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling in simple cross-stitch.
Using a British concept by cross-stitch 'guru' Dave Peters, called Xstitch Professional, Canadian Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts, 44, who lives in San Francisco, California, spent at least one hour a day for eight years with the work on her lap.
Over the following decade and by committing a total of 3,572 hours, which the IT management consultant and her house-husband Aaron Roberts, 45, clinically timed on a stopwatch, her vision became a reality.
As is the method with cross-stitching Mrs Lopianowski-Roberts had to pre-design an outline for each 'fresco' on her main canvas and then fill in all of the 45 sections with colour and detail by stitching.
Woman's Skeleton Found at Bottom of Prehistoric Well
Source: AP (6-24-09)
Archeologists have discovered a water well in Cyprus that was built as long as 10,500 years ago, and the skeleton of a young woman at the bottom of it, an official said Wednesday.
Pavlos Flourentzos, the nation's top antiquities official, said the 16-foot (5-meter) deep cylindrical shaft was found last month at a construction site in Kissonerga, a village near the Mediterranean island nation's southwestern coast.
After the well dried up it apparently was used to dispose trash, and the items found in it included the poorly preserved skeleton of the young woman, animal bone fragments, worked flints, stone beads and pendants from the island's early Neolithic period, Flourentzos said.
World's oldest instrument dates to 35,000 years ago
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-24-09)
The world's oldest instrument has been found in a German cave, suggesting humans were piping tunes from bone and ivory flutes more than 35,000 years ago, new research has shown.
Scientists discovered remains of the instruments in a German cave once populated by some of the first modern humans to settle in Europe after leaving Africa.
The finds suggest that our oldest ancestors in Europe had a well-established musical tradition.
The most significant discovery was a complete flute made from a griffon vulture bone.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Recalling Frederick Douglass in the Age of Obama
Source: Bay State Banner (6-24-09)
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass spoke to a majority white audience in Rochester, N.Y. The great orator and abolitionist had been asked to deliver an address commemorating the Declaration of Independence, following a formal reading of the document that day.
What followed was a fiery speech, considered by some to be Douglass’ greatest, titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” In it, he expressed the unique disconnect from the notion of American independence that he felt as a former slave, as well as his determination to achieve such freedom for African Americas in the United States.
Douglass’ words still resonate 157 years later. That much was proven during a recent reading of the speech that brought elected officials and citizens from across the state — including New Bedford, the site of Douglass’ former home — to Boston Common to consider the historical importance of the address in an America perhaps unimaginable to Douglass: one led by a black president.
“This event is a chance to talk about what Douglass’ July 5th speech means today, in a post-Obama world,” said David Harris, managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, which sponsored the June 2 event with Community Change Inc. and Mass Humanities.
The reading continued a recent increase of attention on Douglass in the Commonwealth. Back in February, Gov. Deval Patrick issued a proclamation establishing in Massachusetts days to honor both Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, who were longtime friends and leaders in the abolition and women’s suffrage movements.
Facedown Burials Widely Used to Humiliate the Dead
Source: National Geographic (6-23-09)
Burying the dead facedown in ancient times didn't mean RIP, according to new research that says the practice was both deliberate and widespread.
Experts have assumed such burials were either unusual or accidental.
But the first global study on the facedown burials suggests that it was a custom used across societies to disrespect or humiliate the dead.
Lead study author Caroline Arcini of Sweden's National Heritage Board detected a common thread in the burials she studied: "That society sanctioned this apparently negative treatment of the dead," she said.
Archeologists mum about find (Vancouver, BC)
Source: http://www.canada.com (6-24-09)
Fear of relic-hunting thieves mean artifact site has to be kept under wraps to protect priceless historic artifacts
Archeologists are keeping quiet about First Nations artifacts they've uncovered on Vancouver Island for fear that relic-hunting thieves will swipe the priceless items before work is complete.
Snuneymuxw First Nation archeologist Lorraine Littlefield said she wants the community to learn about the interesting find that's been uncovered, but is worried publicity will lure pot hunters to the site, who steal and possibly sell such relics.
USC, Argonne National Lab collaborate on study of ancient artefacts
Source: rhttp://www.sciencecentric.com (6-24-09)
USC's first pilgrims to a temple of high-energy physics will be seeking answers to worldly questions about ancient commerce.
Archaeologist Lynn Swartz Dodd of USC College and her students are taking trade artefacts from Egypt to the Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source, home of the most powerful X-rays in the country.
The group may be the first from USC to secure precious 'beam time' at the celebrated particle accelerator, according to Gene Bickers, vice provost for undergraduate programs. The researchers will spend a week in July at the sprawling complex near Chicago.
By peering past the corroded metal on the artefacts' surfaces and deep into their cores, Dodd and her team hope to discover the makeup and structure of the finds, which range from a series of bronze axes and swords to exquisitely forged miniature bronze-gold figurines of unknown age.
The answers may help tell the story of ancient Mediterranean trading life, which largely revolved around palatial centres.
Sewage work uncovers ancient site (UK)
Source: BBC (6-24-09)
The discovery of stones that are thought to date back to the Bronze Age have halted a multi-million pound sewage treatment project in Cornwall.
South West Water has stopped work while Cornwall Council's archaeologists investigate the site at Trevalga, which lies between Boscastle and Tintagel.
The stones encircle a dark circular stain in the ground and are thought to denote the location of a round house.
Archaeologists believe the site could date back to about 1500BC.
Nazi Loot Recovery Is Slow, Arbitrary, Claimants’ Groups Say
Source: Bloomberg News (6-24-09)
Governments have failed to live up to commitments to track down and return looted art to Nazi victims and their heirs, claimants’ representatives said before an international meeting on Holocaust-era assets.
The June 26-30 conference in Prague, attended by delegates from some 50 countries, will review how far nations put into action a non-binding 1998 agreement, known as the Washington principles. Delegates also aim to agree a new declaration on stolen art. Groups representing Jewish victims of theft and their heirs say there are still thousands of looted objects languishing in museums.
Under the Washington principles, 44 governments agreed to identify stolen art in museums’ collections, publicize the results and encourage pre-war owners and their heirs to make claims. They also promised to strive for “a just and fair solution” with the victims.
Russia, Hungary, France, Italy, Spain and some Scandinavian countries are among those which have failed to make good on commitments, Webber said.
Britain 'failed' in Iraq by switching to Afghanistan, say Gen Sir Richard Dannatt
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-24-09)
Britain has "failed" in Iraq by not having enough troops and by switching resources to Afghanistan before the mission was finished in Basra, General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army, has said.
Gen Dannatt said deploying a substantial force to Helmand in 2006 left the military without the troops for any potential 'surge' in Basra as the city descended into near anarchy and under the control of rogue militias.
He admitted that "in truth, we failed to maintain the force levels required particularly towards the later end of the campaign, by which time we were already committed to a new operation in Afghanistan."
Gen Dannatt, who will retire in August, said one of the key lessons from Iraq was the need to achieve a "decisive effect" early on but this was lost without enough manpower on the ground.
Pissarro painting looted by Nazis withdrawn from auction
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-24-09)
A 1.5 million pound painting by Camille Pissarro which was looted by the Nazis has been withdrawn from auction at the last minute because of infighting between the descendants of its original Jewish owners.
Le Quai Malaquais et l'Institut, which features a view of the Seine from the French impressionist's hotel room on the third floor of the Hotel du Quai Voltaire, was due to be auctioned by Christie's in London on Tuesday.
But lawyers representing various scions of the Fischer family, which founded the German publishing house Fischer Verlag, were unable to reach an agreement about the painting's rightful owner and it was withdrawn from sale, according to The Times.
First Europeans were cannibals with taste for children
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-24-09)
Early Europeans were cannibals with a particular taste for the flesh of children, archaeologists have claimed.
The claim has come after bones of the ancestors of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens who first settled in Europe around 800,000 years ago were unearthed in the Atapuerca caves in northern Spain.
A study of the prehistoric remains has revealed that human flesh formed part of the diet of early man and children and adolescents in particular were regularly killed and eaten.
The remains discovered in the caves "appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting" and eaten by humans, he explained.
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo formally arrested
Source: Timees Online (UK) (6-24-09)
China’s most prominent dissident has been arrested formally after more than six months in detention at a secret location near Beijing on charges that could bring a lengthy prison term.
Liu Xiaobo had been held virtually incommunicado under “residential surveillance”, being allowed only two visits from his wife, since he was taken from his Beijing home on December 8 – a day before publication of a document that he co-authored calling for democracy in China.
State media said: "Liu has been engaged in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumours and defaming of the Government, aimed at subversion of the State and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years." The arrest was made by the Beijing Public Security Bureau yesterday.
Mexico Vows to Continue Search for Mysterious 'Lost' Island
Source: AP (6-24-09)
Mexico vowed to keep looking for a mysterious island that could extend its offshore oil claims after university researchers said they couldn't find it.
"The island doesn't exist" in the area where it was shown on maps, a National Autonomous University of Mexico study concluded after conducting studies with underwater sensing devices and aerial reconnaissance in the area.
"Isla Bermeja" appeared on maps from the 1700s as a speck of land off the northwest coast of the Yucatan peninsula. A group of Mexican legislators hoped the island would help their decade-long effort to fend off what they describe as U.S. encroachment on their nation's oil claims in the Gulf of Mexico.
9-11 Sculpture Embroiled in Alleged Fraud Scheme
Source: AP (6-24-09)
A towering sculpture in the Maryland mountains depicting three New York City firefighters raising the U.S. flag at ground zero was financed by investor fraud, federal regulators say.
Now the 40-foot bronze statue unveiled in November 2007 at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Md., is for sale. A court-appointed receiver and the sculptor, Stanley J. Watts of Kearns, Utah, say they hope to raise at least $425,000 to repay investors in Coadum Advisors Inc. — and perhaps have something left over for the artist.
Michigan Man, 88, Investigated by Poland for Alleged Nazi War Crimes
Source: AP (6-24-09)
At age 88, John Kalymon is a man stuck in the past.
He lost his U.S. citizenship two years ago after the government said he shot Jews while working in a Nazi-controlled police unit during World War II. Now, Poland is conducting a criminal investigation into what happened nearly 70 years ago in a town called L'viv.
The Justice Department has agreed to help Poland by questioning Kalymon about murder, death camps and other atrocities against Jews that occurred there in 1942.
Cheney Inks Memoir Deal
Source: TheDailyBeast.com (6-24-09)
Not all words written by Dick Cheney are classified: The Associated Press reports that Cheney has signed a deal to write his memoirs with a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book will be published in the spring of 2011, shortly after President Bush’s memoir, and will cover Cheney’s long career dating back to the Ford administration. "I'm persuaded there are a lot of interesting stories that ought to be told," Cheney told the Associated Press. "I want my grandkids, 20 or 30 years from now, to be able to read it and understand what I did, and why I did it."
88 years old--and confronted with allegation of WW II crimes
Source: AP (6-24-09)
An 88-year-old man living in Michigan who is now the subject of a criminal investigation in Poland into allegations he shot Jews while working in a Nazi-controlled police unit during World War II insists he did nothing wrong.
Polish officials are investigating what happened nearly 70 years ago in what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv. The U.S. Justice Department has also agreed to help by questioning John Kalymon about murder, death camps and other atrocities against Jews there in 1942.
"I don't feel guilty," the white-haired, retired auto engineer told The Associated Press during a brief visit Monday to his suburban Detroit home.
His lawyer is resisting the investigation.
"He guarded a stack of coal from looters. He didn't expend any rounds of ammunition and didn't commit any atrocities," Elias Xenos said of his client's work for the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police when Kalymon was in his early 20s. "He's disappointed that one or more governments are still trying to pursue him based on flimsy evidence."
Egyptian mummy was a man, not woman
Source: AP (6-23-09)
The mummy may actually have been a daddy.
North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., examined four ancient Egyptian mummies belonging to the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday. It turns out one of the four thought for centuries to be a woman is actually a man.
A CT scan revealed that one of the mummies, named “Lady Hor,” was a male.
Hiroshima memorabilia to be auctioned
Source: Telegraph (UK) (6-24-09)
Now a roof tile from the Sairenji Temple, which was handed to a British tourist by the chief priest, is to go under the hammer along with other macabre items next month in Lincolnshire.
Other lots include a signed picture of a crippled man with an injured back caused by the huge explosion and a signed parchment from Sairenji Temple's Rev. S. T. Katsaki.
The lot also features a tourist map and eight postcards showing the devastated city and the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay in September 1945.
Vietnam returns remains of US soldiers
Source: AP (6-24-09)
Remains believed to be those of two American servicemen killed during the Vietnam War were placed on a plane in central Danang city on Wednesday and sent back to the United States to be identified.
U.S. honor guards carried the two American flag-draped aluminum cases holding the remains onto the U.S. military transport plane under blazing sun at Danang International Airport. The remains were headed to Hawaii for forensic testing.
Ex-detainees allege Bagram abuse
Source: BBC (6-24-09)
Former detainees have alleged they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs at the Bagram military base.
The BBC interviewed 27 former inmates of Bagram around the country over a period of two months.
The Pentagon has denied the charges and insisted that all inmates in the facility are treated humanely.
All the men were asked the same questions and they were all interviewed in isolation.
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