During the Reagan Revolution, the Heritage Foundation was seen as the soul of the free market conservative revival. As senior vice president for research at the think tank from 1981 through 1992, Burton Pines was in charge of its intellectual output — “If Heritage were General Motors, I ran the factory,” he says — but as Heritage comes under fire this week for a controversial immigration report, Pines says the storied organization has lost its way.

“It’s a new Heritage and it’s one that’s not standing by the principles of Ronald Reagan,” he told Salon Thursday. “I’m puzzled why they came out with this study and I’m more puzzled why they seem to be against immigration.”

The foundation’s new report, which estimates that immigration reform will cost taxpayers $6 trillion, has touched off a civil war on the right....

Source:  Salon Source URL:  http://www.salon.com/2013/05/09/ex_official_heritage_has_betrayed_reagan/ Date:  5-9-13

Of all the commemorations marking this month’s 70th anniversary of the Second World War’s most famous bombing raid, it is perhaps the most poignant.

A new plaque has been unveiled in a German field where one of the Dambuster bombers crashed, with the loss of all seven men on-board.

The memorial has been installed by a local historian who located the crash site as part of his research into the fate of the aircraft, AJ-E....

Source:  Telegraph (UK) Source URL:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/10038011/New-German-plaque-for-downed-Dambuster-bomber.html Date:  5-5-13

Guido Westerwelle today (MON) added Germany's voice to mounting concerns over extreme nationalism in Hungary and EU criticism that Prime Minister Viktor Orban's strong government is eroding the checks and balances common to European democracies.

"We have questions and we have some doubts," Mr Westerwelle told Bild newspaper before addressing a meeting of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest.

"The European Commission and the Council of Europe have not concealed their criticism of the Hungarian government. It must now be spoken about openly and honestly."...

Source:  Telegraph (UK) Source URL:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10039952/German-warning-to-Hungary-over-rise-of-anti-Semitism.html Date:  5-6-13

...The year was 1946. Winston Churchill stood in a small Midwestern college gymnasium in Fulton, Missouri, just a few miles to the west of St Louis. He was accompanied by President Harry Truman and had been driven to the speech by the grandfather of one of my co-workers. And his speech, later to be called The Iron Curtain Speech, would resonate from the halls of Westminster College, and be heard throughout the world.

Today, those echoes are still being heard, and are being amplified in the US by the National Churchill Museum, a museum recognised by the US Congress as "America's National Churchill Museum" and built on the site of that 1946 speech. The museum, staff, volunteers and supporters are dedicated to commemorating and celebrating the life, times, and distinguished career of Sir Winston Churchill, and inspiring current and future leaders by his example of resilience, determination and resolution.

And it was the museum that drew leaders from across the Midwest, elected officials and representatives of Her Majesty's Government to St Louis to honour Sir Winston and to present the Churchill Leadership Medal to former US ambassador, Stephen Brauer.

Source:  Telegraph (UK) Source URL:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/10033499/The-Midwest-honours-Churchill-just-as-it-should.html Date:  5-7-13

On a hot Provencal day in July 1890, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo – blocking out, as he often did, space for a drawing. In it a black cat stealthily circles a dead painter’s garden. The portentous ink was set: four days later van Gogh had shot himself. Now a collection of papers, for sale at Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday 8 May, shows that many of the artist’s contemporaries shared his epistolary flair.

Letters by Manet, Picasso, Renoir, Signac, Matisse, Chagall and Gauguin are composed not only of the articulated preoccupations of the artist (Picasso and Renoir are fixated on culinary pursuits) but also their visual riffs. Snapshot compositions sketched on the fly and odd motifs punctuate these sheets.

Source:  Telegraph (UK) Source URL:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10035390/From-Matisse-to-Manet-illustrated-letters-go-on-sale-at-Sothebys-in-New-York.html Date:  5-8-13

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The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency in what would be the first compensation settlement resulting from official crimes committed under imperial rule.

In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts.

Source:  Guardian (UK) Source URL:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/05/mau-mau-victims-kenya-settlement Date:  5-5-13

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A controversial Nazi-themed production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser has been cancelled after it caused some audience members to seek medical help and prompted others to walk out in anger.

The Rheinoper in Düsseldorf said it was in a state of shock after being deluged with complaints by members of the public who called the opera tasteless and unnecessarily provocative.

The production, which opened last Saturday and was expected to be one of the highlights of the celebrations for the bicentenary of Wagner's birth later this month, has a Nazi storyline, and includes scenes of people dying in gas chambers, being shot and raped, and of members of a family having their heads shaved before their execution....

Source:  Guardian (UK) Source URL:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/09/german-nazi-opera-cancelled-wagner-tannhauser Date:  5-9-13

The House of Commons heritage committee has launched a study of how history is preserved in federal, provincial and municipal programs, and how easily Canadians can access historical information.

However, it backed down from a plan to examine how history is taught in schools after a barrage of complaints from the opposition, which had accused the government of intruding on provincial jurisdiction, which includes school curriculum development, and of wanting to revise history in its own image.

The committee began hearing from witnesses for its history study on Monday....

Source:  CBC Source URL:  http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/05/06/pol-heritage-committee-studies-canadian-istory.html Date:  5-6-13

A virtual newspaper bringing the most momentous period of Irish history to life has gone live.

Ten years of news from 1913 will be published by Century Ireland every fortnight over the next decade in real-time.

Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, said the digitalised material will catalogue the major events that shaped modern Ireland from the Home Rule debate to the Civil War in a balanced and fair way....

Source:  Irish Independent Source URL:  http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/virtual-history-newspaper-goes-live-29249332.html Date:  5-7-13

WASHINGTON, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Visiting South Korean President Park Geun-hye Wednesday urged Japan to face history honestly for the good of Northeast Asia.

"Those who are blind to the past cannot see the future," Park said in an address to the U.S. Congress, a day after meeting with President Barack Obama.

"This is obviously a problem for here and now. But the larger issue is about tomorrow," she said, adding "for where there is failure to acknowledge honestly what happened yesterday, there can be no tomorrow."...

Source:  Xinhua News Agency Source URL:  http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/09/c_132370286.htm Date:  5-9-13

TOKYO — Japan’s conservative government will abide by official apologies that the country’s leaders made two decades ago to the victims of World War II in Asia, top officials said Tuesday, backing away from earlier suggestions that the government might try to revise or even repudiate the apologies.

Japan formally apologized in 1993 to the women who were forced into wartime brothels for Japanese soldiers, and in 1995 to nations that suffered from Japanese aggression during the war. Both apologies rankled Japanese ultranationalists, and there were concerns that the hawkish current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, would try to appeal to them by whitewashing Japan’s wartime atrocities, a step that would probably infuriate Japan’s neighbors.

The United States shared those concerns, and it urged the Abe government to show restraint on historical issues so that Japan would not further isolate itself diplomatically in the region....

Source:  NYT Source URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/world/asia/japan-says-it-will-abide-by-apologies-over-war.html Date:  5-8-13

After a complicated 20-year effort to save a redbrick mill in North Carolina that was once considered the largest in the world for textiles and that played a significant role in the South’s textile history, the plant is finally moving toward a new life as a multiuse complex.

The Loray Mill, which for decades produced fabric for car tires, last month began a $40 million conversion project that will create 190 apartments in its six stories, as well as several floors of shops and restaurants. The mill, which was the site of an famous labor strike in the 1920s, is in the city of Gastonia, a former industrial hub outside of Charlotte.

To the delight of preservationists, the development team of JBS Ventures, of Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., and Camden Management Partners, of Atlanta, will retain much of the original 600,000-square-feet structure of the complex. This first phase of the redevelopment will reinvent about 450,000 square feet of the mill, including the main section, which dates to 1902....

Source:  NYT Source URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/realestate/commercial/in-north-carolina-a-historic-textile-mill-undergoes-conversion.html?pagewanted=all Date:  5-8-13

ATLANTA — Inside Craig Ivey’s travel bag are objects reminiscent of the Middle Ages.

He has a steel, rounded shield; a five-sided, wooden shield; a red, white and blue surcoat; a protective vest; a wraparound helmet, pockmarked with dents; steel pads to hide his forearms, knees, legs and hands; and a blunt-edged sword designed to inflict pain but not cut. His collection cost about $4,000.

Ivey, a fitness trainer in Atlanta, will use all 60 pounds of the equipment Thursday at an outdoor arena in Aigues-Mortes, in the south of France. He will compete in his first Battle of the Nations, a modern-day, medieval-like combat involving national teams of fighters....

Source:  NYT Source URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/sports/battle-of-the-nations-a-holy-grail-of-battle-re-enactments.html?_r=0 Date:  5-9-13

NEWARK, N.J. — Carol Wilkins leaned over the side of her father’s wheelchair and handed him the small red box, a heart-shaped cutout revealing its contents: a weathered, bent silver dog tag.

“Oh, Daddy, look,” Wilkins exclaimed as her 90-year-old father opened it, his eyes beaming and smile wide. “They’re back.”

Sixty-nine years after losing his dog tag on the battlefields of southern France, Willie Wilkins reclaimed it Wednesday after a trans-Atlantic effort to return it to him. It started more than a decade ago in a French backyard and ended with a surprise ceremony in Newark City Hall....

Source:  WaPo Source URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nj-veteran-reunited-with-dog-tag-he-lost-in-france-during-world-war-ii/2013/05/08/6e25a2fe-b7fc-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html Date:  5-8-13

A Chicago alderman introduced an ordinance Wednesday that would allow museums to display unloaded firearms for historical purposes.

According to DNA Info Chicago, city museums are currently prohibited from displaying unloaded firearms....

Source:  Washington Times Source URL:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/8/chicago-alderman-fights-lift-ban-historic-guns-mus/ Date:  5-8-13

REHOVOT, Israel — With a hand on her chest, 82-year-old Rivka Fringeru battled back tears as she reeled off a list of names she has rarely voiced in the past 70 years: her father, Moshe, then her mother, Hava, and finally her two older brothers, Michael and Yisrael.

All perished in the Holocaust after the Harabju family from Dorohoi, Romania, was rounded up in 1944 and sent to ghettos and camps. Only Rivka and her brother Marco survived, and like many others, they spent the rest of their lives trying to move on and forget.

Now, Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum, is asking them to remember.

Decades after the Holocaust, experts have documented the names of about 4.2 million of the roughly 6 million Jews who were killed by the Nazis in World War II, and officials are going door-to-door in a race to record the memories of elderly survivors before their stories are lost forever....

Source:  WaPo Source URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-holocaust-memorial-seeks-to-preserve-memory-of-the-6-million-victims-a-name-at-a-time/2013/05/07/1e0f6fbe-b740-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html Date:  5-7-13

COSTA MESA, Calif. — A book about surfers in the early 1900s is expected to sell for about $40,000.

A copy of “The Surf Riders of Hawaii” will go before bidders Saturday at the Surfing Heritage Vintage Surf Auction. The auction will include more than 60 vintage surfboards and other items.

The book is one of eight made by hand by A.R. Gurrey Jr. between 1911 and 1915. Gurrey is considered the father of surf photography. The book helped spread surfing’s appeal from Hawaii to the mainland.

It is composed of six leaves of heavy brown woven paper, with eight mounted gelatin-silver photographs of native Hawaiians surfing Waikiki. Among them is Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic medalist swimmer who helped popularize the sport....

Source:  WaPo Source URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/rare-hawaiian-surfing-book-expected-to-fetch-40k-at-auction-to-benefit-surfing-foundation/2013/05/07/7967befc-b74f-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html Date:  5-7-13

TOKYO — Japan does not plan to revise past apologies to neighboring countries for atrocities committed by its Imperial Army before and during World War II, top government officials said Wednesday.

The comments by the chief government spokesman and the foreign minister appear intended to allay criticisms of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s earlier vows to revise the apologies, including an acknowledgement of sexual slavery during the war.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Japan recognizes the harm it caused during its invasion and occupation of much of Asia, and that it has repeatedly and clearly stated that position.

“The Abe government has expressed sincere condolences to all victims of the war, in and out of the country, and there is no change in that,” Suga told reporters. “We have repeatedly said we have no intention of making this a diplomatic and political issue, but I’m afraid this may not be fully understood.”...

Source:  WaPo Source URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japans-govt-says-it-will-honor-apologies-for-wartime-abuses-downplays-vow-to-review-history/2013/05/08/631de31e-b7a5-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html Date:  5-8-13

SHARPSBURG, Md. — A Maryland producer is hoping an online campaign will help him create a documentary about annual Antietam National Battlefield Memorial Illumination

Michael Wicklein recently started a campaign to raise $23,110 to help fund the documentary through the website Kickstarter. The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown reports (http://bit.ly/13yIK6e) that “Gods and Generals” author Jeff Shaara announced this week that he plans to match up to $5,000 in contributions to help fund the documentary.

Wicklein hopes to finish early next year after filming the 25th annual illumination. During the December event, volunteers place 23,000 luminarias at the battlefield to represent the casualties from the bloodiest single-day battle on American soil....

Source:  AP Source URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/producer-seeks-funds-online-for-documentary-on-antietam-battlefield-illumination/2013/05/08/e7d9b7ba-b7f3-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html Date:  5-8-13

TOKYO — Japan has acknowledged that it conducted only a limited investigation before claiming there was no official evidence that its imperial troops coerced Asian women into sexual slavery before and during World War II.

A parliamentary statement signed Tuesday by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe acknowledged the government had a set of documents produced by a postwar international military tribunal containing testimony by Japanese soldiers about abducting Chinese women as military sex slaves. That evidence apparently was not included in Japan’s only investigation of the issue, in 1991-1993.

Tuesday’s parliamentary statement also said documents showing forcible sex slavery may still exist. The statement did not say whether the government plans to consider the documents as evidence showing that troops had coerced women into sexual slavery.

Over the past two days, top officials of Abe’s conservative government have appeared to soften their stance on Japan’s past apologies to neighboring countries for wartime atrocities committed by the Imperial Army, saying Japan does not plan to revise them....

Source:  WaPo Source URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-admits-past-denial-of-proof-of-forced-sex-slavery-based-on-limited-study/2013/05/08/25aca8ce-b7b6-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html Date:  5-8-13