John Simkin

It was created for 11/12 year olds. It is based on the feudal system introduced by the Normans in the 11th century. Was it different in Spain?

Built by Halliburton of course.

It looks the same at this end. Maybe you have changed the settings of your computer.

This is a very good idea. I believe Yalding is the best thing I have ever done and would love to develop it using the latest developments in technology. It would make an excellent E-HELP case-study. Students would find a visit to Yalding interesting as there are still aspects that remain the same since the 14th century.

In a detailed analysis of wealth and income in the UK the Institute for Fiscal Studies has reported that inequality is virtually unchanged from when Tony Blair first arrived in Downing Street in May, 1997. In the 1980s under Thatcher and the Tories, the incomes of the richest 20% rose almost 10 times as quickly as those of the poorest 20%. Things stablised under John Major. This pattern has continued under Blair. As the report points out: "the reversal of the increase in inequality seen over the 1980s still seems an unlikely prospect any time soon."

When Tony Blair was elected he promised to reform the House of Lords in order to make it acceptable in a democratic society. However, he has failed to do this and Robin Cook disclosed in his diaries that Blair was never keen to reform the second chamber. The reasons are clear. Selecting who should be in the House of Lords gives tremendous power to the prime minister. It is also a source of income as Blair has been selling honours for the last nine years. All but one of Labour’s top donors who have given over £1m have received a peerage. The exception is Lakshmi Mittal, the steel magnate (he has been rewarded in other ways – the Romanian steel contract). One of the most interesting cases is Lord Drayson, the chief executive of Powderject Pharmaceuticals. He has given £1.1m. As well as a peerage he has obtained multimillion contracts to provide vaccines for the government. It is one of the clearest examples of government corruption in recent history. Giving money to New Labour is good business. In 2001 Richard Desmond gave £100,000 to New Labour. Within days the DTI gave permission for Desmond to buy Express newspapers for £125m. Afterwards he admitted it was a good deal as New Labour spent £114,000 advertising in his newspapers “so I actually made money on the deal.” Over the last five years, 17 out of the 22 donors who have donated more than £100,000 have been given some kind of honour. The publicity over links between donations, honours, and government contracts (PFI was always going to lead to government corruption) has resulted in Blair developing a new tactic. This involves businessmen in providing loans rather than gifts. Loans do not have to be declared. The idea is that several years after the contract has been given or the honour awarded, the loan is turned into a gift. Chai Patel (1.5m), Sir David Garrard (1m) and Barry Townsley (1m) all gave this money to Lord Levy (Blair’s bagman). Levy himself obtained a peerage after arranging the payment of £7.5 million from a group of Jewish businessmen to Blair just before he was elected as leader of the Labour Party. The charm of George Bush is not the only reason we have troops in Iraq.

Thought members would like to see this article by Michael Dobbs: Still Secret After All These Years By Michael Dobbs Sunday, March 12, 2006 Washington Post; B02 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6031002039.html Government secrecy will not be an issue, I told myself optimistically as I began to research a history of the Cuban missile crisis. After all, the classic showdown of the Cold War occurred more than four decades ago, well outside the 25-year period established by the administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for the automatic release of everything but the most sensitive government documents. The Soviet Union has been consigned to the ash heap of history, and '60s-era defense technologies, such as the U-2 spy plane, are no longer considered secret. How wrong I was. It turns out that most government documents on the missile crisis -- including the principal Pentagon and State Department records collections -- are still classified. Hundreds of documents released to researchers a decade ago have since been withdrawn as part of a controversial -- itself secret -- reclassification program. And the backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests to the National Archives has grown to two, three or even five years. Six months traveling across the country in pursuit of missile crisis records -- from the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston to the National Archives in College Park to the Air Force Historical Research Agency in Montgomery, Ala. -- spawns conflicting impressions. On the one hand, these institutions are part of a national treasure trove of archival riches. On the other, the system of declassifying government information has become so chaotic in recent years that it is difficult for outsiders, and even many insiders, to understand the logic behind it. Thanks to the White House tapes declassified in 1996, I have eavesdropped on intimate conversations between President Kennedy and his aides as they struggled to respond to the deployment of Soviet rockets less than 100 miles from Key West. I have perused top-secret signals intelligence released by the National Security Agency, and page after page of U.S. invasion plans for Cuba, down to the gradient of the landing beaches and the Cuban "most wanted" list. On the other hand, Air Force records describing the inadvertent penetration of Soviet air space by a U-2 at the very peak of the crisis are still secret. The files of former Kennedy military adviser Maxwell Taylor are full of withdrawal slips marked "Access restricted." An archival turf war between competing agencies has blocked access to the records of the State Department intelligence office. Te extent of the reclassification program only became clear late last month after a historian noticed that dozens of documents that he had previously copied from the National Archives had mysteriously disappeared from State Department boxes. The withdrawn records included several documents that had already been published in official government histories, such as a 1948 CIA memo on using balloons to drop propaganda leaflets over Communist countries. While the reclassification drive is intensely irritating to historians, an even bigger problem is the ripple effect such efforts have had on declassification. The routine declassification of government records has ground to a virtual standstill over the past few years because of the diversion of resources to reexamining previously released records. Documents that would have been released routinely a decade ago are trapped in a bureaucratic twilight zone. A good example of this phenomenon are the thousands of pages of Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense records on the missile crisis transferred to the National Archives more than five years ago, but currently stored in confidential stacks. Archives officials told me that they will probably be able to release part of that collection in the next few months, but the bulk must go through an elaborate interagency screening process that could take several years. It is instructive to compare the situation of Cuban missile crisis records with that of World War II records. The last great wartime secret -- the existence of the Enigma code-breaking machine -- was officially revealed in 1974, 29 years after the end of the war. By 1990, 45 years after the victory over Nazi Germany, the wartime records were almost completely accessible. An equivalent amount of time has passed since the missile crisis, but archival access is much more limited. While the reclassification drive has accelerated under the Bush administration, particularly since 9/11, it actually began under Clinton. The initial impulse came from the Kyl-Lott amendment, passed by Congress in 1998 in response to a scandal involving the alleged leaking of nuclear secrets to China. The CIA and the Pentagon took advantage of the new climate to look for information that had supposedly been released without their consent, and demanded its withdrawal. On March 2, the National Archives announced yet another initiative to respond to the flurry of bad publicity about reclassification -- this time to check whether documents have been improperly withdrawn from circulation. While the initiative has been welcomed by historians, it also carries dangers. A vast amount of energy, time and taxpayer money is being wasted reviewing and re-reviewing the same documents. If the missile crisis is any guide, the whole laborious process could be greatly speeded up by better coordination between agencies, improved data management, and what one frustrated National Archives records officer terms the application of "a little common sense." Some agencies -- the Air Force is a prime example -- lack an effective system for tracking documents previously declassified under the Freedom of Information Act. By contrast, the CIA, which is often accused of dragging its feet, has found a way to make declassified documents instantly available to all researchers. The agency has a public database that includes day-by-day intelligence analyses on the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba, based on reconnaissance flights by U-2s and low-level planes. Archival work is a little like tackling a giant jigsaw puzzle. If you are patient enough, you can eventually make out the picture, even if many of the pieces are missing. In the case of the missile crisis, I have assembled enough of the puzzle to be confident that few, if any, of the missing pieces contain national security information that could be useful to an enemy -- the criterion established by both Bush and Clinton for continuing to classify more than 25-year-old secrets. So why, if the puzzle is largely resolved, am I -- and other researchers -- making such a fuss? Because history is not just about the big picture. It is also about the small stuff, thousands upon thousands of individual acts of bravery and skill and, yes, foolishness. In order to make sense of the anguished White House debates between Kennedy and his advisers in October 1962, you need to understand how the Cold War was actually fought, by the generals, the spies, the reconnaissance pilots. It is the details that make history come alive -- and in far too many cases those details are still being hidden from us.

In their book Simulation in the Classroom (Penguin, 1972), John Taylor and Rex Walford argued that an educational simulation has three main components: (1) Students take roles which are representative of the real world and involve them making decisions in response to their assessment of the situation that they have been placed in. (2) Students experience simulated consequences which relate to their decisions and their general performance in the simulation. (3) Students monitor the results of their actions and are encouraged to reflect upon the relationship between their own decisions and the resulting consequences of their actions. An essential part of a simulation involves the student playing a role of a character in the past. One of the major objectives of the creator of the simulation is to help the student understand the situation of that person. In other words, helping the student develop a sense of empathy. In his book, The Process of Education (1960), Jerome Bruner argues that simulations encourage active learning. However, Bruner prefers some simulations to others. He argues that the “value of any piece of learning over and above the enjoyment it gives is that it should be relevant to us in the future”. That is something I always take seriously when I am constructing a simulation. Other arguments in favour of simulations include: (i) They are usually problem-based and are therefore helpful in the development of long-term learning. (ii) The normally involve the use of social skills which are directly relevant to the world outside the classroom. (iii) Simulations deal with situations that change and therefore demand flexibility in thinking. I now want to take a look at some of the simulations available on the internet. One of the best sources is the BBC history website. Hunt the Ancestor http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/games/ancestors/index.shtml The student plays the role of a an archaeologists. In the simulation the student has to save a prehistoric burial site from destruction by quarrying. When the burial site is found the archaeologist has to find the remains and to work out about the lives of these people. The archaeologist is given a budget of £72,000 and this is used to take aerial photographs, visiting the local records office, etc. Another good source of simulations is Russel Tarr’s Active History website. Russel teaches history at the International School of Toulouse and runs one of the best history websites on the net. Life in the Trenches In this simulation students play the role of a British soldier who joins the army in 1914 to fight the Germans. The simulation takes the student through the process of joining the army. They are constant links to a First World War encyclopaedia that provides the student with the opportunity of carrying out further research into the situation. The student is also asked factual questions that they have to answer before continuing with the simulation. The simulation involves the students making difficult decisions. For example, “You turn your head up towards the sky to get some fresh air, and you spot a large kite flying in the distance which clearly has writing on it. Do you: “Stand up on the fire-step and read the message on the kite?” “Ignore the kite and carry on working?” In this way the student discovers that the kite with a message was a tactic used by the Germans to get the Allied soldier to lift their head above the parapet. The students survival in the simulation depends on them learning what it was like to live in the trenches during the First World War. Adolf Hitler Russel has also produced a controversial simulation on Hitler. This involves the student interviewing Hitler. When I publicized this simulation in my weekly newsletter, Teaching History Online, I got some abusive email. Russel has also suffered from this claiming that this simulation somehow encourages fascism. As Russel points out at the beginning of the simulation: “Several people have suggested that by tackling this controversial topic in an accessible way I am guilty of promoting Neo-Nazism. My reply is this: dismissing Hitler as "pure evil" ignores the fact that millions of ordinary, supposedly 'decent' people supported him. Sweeping this fact under the carpet is much more irresponsible and dangerous than tackling it head on. Empathising with the German people who supported Hitler does not mean sympathising with them, but it does prevent us complacently dismissing the evils of Nazism as a "German problem" and thereby leaves us much better equipped to tackle similar tragic situations if and when they arise again.” Finally I want to look at some simulations on my own website. I have been involved in creating history simulations since I first started teaching in 1977. When we established Tressell Publications in 1979 we were committed to producing commercial simulations. In fact, the second book we published, included a simulation on the First World War that I had created during my PGCE course. We then went onto publishing computer simulations such as Into the Unknown, Attack on the Somme and Wagons West. When I started Spartacus in 1987 I also published computer simulations such as Wall Street, Russian Revolution and Presidential Elections. When I get the time I plan to pace these computer simulations on the web. However, I have been able to create several historical simulations over the last couple of years that are freely available on the web. One involves the issue of child labour at the beginning of the 19th century. Child Labour http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Twork.htm Each student is given the name of an individual that was involved in the debate that was taking place at this time. This included factory owners, factory reformers, child workers, parents, journalists, religious leaders and doctors. The student is then given an instruction sheet with details of the Textile Industry Encyclopaedia Website and what they needed to do. This includes writing an account of their character and a speech on the subject of child labour. Each character had an entry in the Spartacus Encyclopaedia. This provided them with biography and sources that enables the student to discover his or her views on the issue. The website also includes information under headings such as factory pollution, parish apprentices, factory food, punishments, working hours, accidents and physical deformities. There are also entries in the encyclopaedia on the machines the children used and the type of work they did in the factory. It is interesting the way they react when they discover who their character is. Initially, they are much happier about playing the role of a factory owner. They quickly develop the idea that they are in some way responsible for the wealth that the character has obtained. Those who are given the role of a child worker are less happy at first but the more they investigate their situation, the more involved they become in the need to find ways of overcoming the problems that they faced. The exercise helps to explain the complexity of child labour in the 19th century. The students discover that some factory owners, such as John Fielden and John Wood, were actually leaders of the pressure group trying to bring an end to child labour. At the same time, social reforming journalists like Edward Baines were totally opposed to any attempt by Parliament to regulate the use of labour. Even doctors did not agree that it would damage a child's health to be standing for twelve hours a day in a factory where windows were kept closed and the air was thick with the dust from the cotton. What the children discover from their in-depth studies is why the individuals felt the way that they did. In the debate that follows, this is revealed to the rest of the class. A second example concerns the Cuban Missile Crisis. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDcubamissileA.htm The simulation comes at the end of a detailed study of the relationship between Cuba and the United States in the 20th century. This involves a study of the three main characters in these events, John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev. During the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy established the Executive Committee of the National Security Council to advise him what to do. The students have to imagine they are members of this committee. They are given six possible strategies for dealing with the crisis. They have to work out the possible consequences of these strategies before advising Kennedy what to do. A third example concerns Russia in 1914. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/LRUSsimulation.htm The students are given information about the character they are playing. This includes their beliefs and objectives. The students are then placed in four discussion groups: Group A (supporters of Nicholas II and the autocracy); Group B (liberals and moderate socialists); Group C (Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries) and Group D (Bolsheviks). Each group has to decide how to respond to different events that took place between 1914 and 1917. The students are warned that there could be spies in their groups. During the simulation they have the freedom to move to another group. In fact, if they keep to their beliefs and objectives some will actually do this. For example, Trotsky is likely to move from Group C to Group D during the simulation. If they do not go of their own accord the teacher plays God and tells certain characters to move. Playing the simulation students should get an idea of why the Bolsheviks gained power in 1917. At the end of the simulation the students go to the Russian Revolution encyclopaedia on the website and discover what happened to their character during 1917. They then write a brief summary of what happened, comparing their decisions with those of their character. The final task is for the students to write about what happened to their character after the Russian Revolution. A session could then be organized where the students tell the rest of the class about their fate. Since 1995 I have been using a paper simulation based on a medieval village. This summer I plan to put it online. When I created the original I got a group of local teachers to trial the material. Would anybody willing to try out the online version? If you have your own websites you might wish to host parts of the simulation. For example, at various times in the simulation the characters leave the village. This includes the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage, take part in the 100 Years War, on march on London during the Peasants' Revolt. Serfs in the village also get the opportunity to runaway and hide in a town. The scheme of work begins with a look at Richard FitzGilbert, a Norman knight who took part in the Battle of Hastings. After the battle he became the Earl of Clare and became one of England largest landowners. For the next few weeks the students follow the history of the Clare family between 1066 and 1330. This involves looking at issues such as castle building, feudalism, Domesday Book, religion, Thomas Becket, the Magna Carta, Origins of Parliament, the Clares in Ireland, the Clares in Wales and the Battle of Bannockburn, where the last of the Clare male line is killed. The Clare Estates (only the king owned more land than the Clares) are then divided up between Gilbert, 10th Earl of Clare’s three sisters. The simulation looks at just one village under the control of the Clare family. The village is Yalding in Kent. I selected Yalding because a lot of its manor records have survived. It also has the same church and stone bridge that existed in the 14th century. It is still farmed and its common land still exists (they still hold the village fair there today as they did in the 14th century). The land is fertile but the village still suffers from the flooding that plagued medieval residents of Yalding. The simulation starts in 1336. Each student is given a character who lived in Yalding at that time. They are all given a house in the village and details of their family, animals, land, farming equipment, etc. Some are serfs and some are free. Each student is a head of a family with children. In 1375 they will become the son or daughter of the present character. Every week the students will receive via the website an update of their changing circumstances. For example, increasing revenues means they can buy more animals or if they are serfs, their freedom. During the simulation the students experience events such as harvesting, meetings of the Manor Court, a Village Fair, the Hundred Years War, the Black Death, Statute of Labourers Act, the Poll Tax, a visit from John Ball, and finally the events of 1381. The highlights of the simulation includes when the village is hit by the plague and when they have to decide whether to join the peasants revolt (a slight majority usually decide to take part). The whole activity was designed to deliver the Y7 unit on Britain 1066-1500 (Medieval Realms in 1995). All the material in the simulation is differentiated. So also are the characters. Therefore it is possible for the teacher to allocate the students roles that are applicable to the abilities of the individual. Schools who use the simulation are recommended to arrange a visit to Yalding. Several features are the same as in the 14th century. The students get a particular thrill when they visit the churchyard and they see the names of the relatives they have been playing on the tombstones. Unusual names like Singyard and Brickenden have survived in the village for over 700 years. The simulation has detailed teacher notes and a commentary on the answers of the tasks set. The first draft of the Medieval Village Simulation is now online. I have a few more pages to do on the administration of the simulation. They will be ready by early next week. The first-half concerning the emergence of the Earl of Clare family is complete. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Yalding.htm

Interesting article by Nan C. Druid that originally appeared in High Frontiers Magazine in 1985. It is the first time that I have heard that Lisa Howard knew Mary Pinchot Meyer. http://www.sirbacon.org/jfk.htm

Interesting article by Nan C. Druid that originally appeared in High Frontiers Magazine in 1985. It is the first time that I have heard that Lisa Howard knew Mary Pinchot Meyer. http://www.sirbacon.org/jfk.htm

The people who own the copyright to Anne Frank’s diary also refuse permission for her work to appear on the web. I have found a great deal of my material on school websites. They usually claim that they did it without permission because it was restricted to students in the school (intranet, etc.) and it got put on the web by accident. For example, I discovered that Bedford School had been illegally downloading my whole website every night to their intranet (they wanted the latest version). The headmaster appeared surprised when I told him this was illegal. His defence was that major corporations would not produce software to carry out illegal acts. Bedford School has a history of carrying out illegal acts. That includes trying to bring down this Forum and being member of a price fixing cartel.

The BBC has always supported the government in a time of crisis. They still have a few journalists who ask awkward questions but they are few and far between. However, Rupert Murdoch said in a speech this week that the era of the media baron is over. He admitted that the power of people like him is being undermined by the internet. For example, it would not be possible today to kill a president and then cover it up as they did with Kennedy.

The death of Profumo has resulted in articles in newspapers speculating on what the scandal was all about. It has been pointed out that the death of Stephen Ward during his trial was very convenient. It was definitely greeted with great relief by those who attended his sex parties. In her autobiography, The Truth at Last, Christine Keeler claims that Ward was a Soviet spy who had recruited her to get information from Profumo about the placing of nuclear warheads in West Germany. This suggests that there were indeed similarities between the Stephen Ward and Bobby Baker cases. We know that both used women to get information from politicians. I suspect their real purpose was to obtain information on these politicians in order to blackmail them into granting defence contracts to their clients.

I am unable to see how this phone conversation supports the story being peddled by Summers, Baker & Hersh. LBJ is letting George Smathers know that Bobby Baker has tapes on his illegal activities. This is how LBJ operated. In this way he was able to blackmail politicians into doing as he wanted.

Press Release: Mirrorpix launch of Arcitext, the complete digitised back catalogue of the Daily Mirror Newspaper LONDON.--(Response Source)--March 14, 2006--Mirrorpix today announced the launch of Arcitext, the complete digitised back catalogue of the Daily Mirror Newspaper from 1903 to present. All pages are fully searchable online, offering immediate access and download capabilities to every story ever published. Arcitext represents one of the most comprehensive online archives currently available, documenting in great detail UK and world history over the past 100 years. This incredibly extensive resource covers a huge subject range; including news, politics, sport, crime, fashion, war, music and entertainment plus developments in scientific, medical and social issues. From charting the many facets of Winston Churchill's turbulent political career to Beatlemania. The careers of many silver screen actors and legends; the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, through to contemporary news coverage of London's July bombings (7/7) and ongoing war on terror, if it was in the Daily Mirror, it's on Arcitext. Arcitext is an invaluable resource and saves time and money for researchers, journalists and academics as well as individuals in many other fields including book and magazine publication, film and television production. In short, it offers a unique and comprehensive resource applicable to both educational and commercial professionals. "Arcitext is revolutionising the world of research. All the feedback we're getting shows that not only are our clients finding that it is now much easier to locate the information they need but they're stunned by the range and depth of data available and by just how quickly Arcitext finds it for them." said John Churchill, Commercial Director of Mirrorpix. "Obviously it has been a huge task to digitise all this content in order to make it available online, but we're immensely proud of the results. The history of the 20th century and beyond is a patchwork quilt of tales concerning the good, bad and ugly of humankind. Now, for the first time, you can read the entire story in one place. No other archive makes so much information so easy to find." Arcitext allows the user to search and download reproduction quality pages at the touch of a button; ready for broadcast in daily news cycles, publication in newspapers, magazines & books; or insertion as footage in documentaries. http://www.arcitext.com/ Key benefits of Arcitext: Speed - Access to over 1.25million pages of the Daily Mirror at the touch of a button Ease of use – enter a simple search term (e.g. Winston Churchill) and have all pages containing articles with that term returned within seconds Context – researchers can see how a story was originally run, its position and relative importance at the time of publication Designed for professionals – custom search tools such as front/back page and date searching Edition scrolling – users can scroll backwards & forwards within a newspaper edition allowing '360 degree navigation' of the entire archive Save Time – Researchers no longer need to access offline library resources to find the headlines they need, saving literally days in research time Save money – production time savings = money savings About Mirrorpix Mirrorpix, a division of Trinity Mirror plc, is responsible for housing the vast collection of Daily Mirror photography, over 30 million images, accumulated since 1904, published in the paper as well as never previously seen. All of which are available to license for use in TV and film Productions, book, newspaper and magazine publishing, licensing and syndication. The Daily Mirror is one of Britain's oldest national newspapers. First published on 2nd November 1903 and holds the unique distinction of being the first newspaper publication anywhere in the world to use photographs (first used 7th January 1904).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1730279,00.html Owen Gibson, media correspondent Tuesday March 14, 2006 The Guardian Rupert Murdoch last night sounded the death knell for the era of the media baron, comparing today's internet pioneers with explorers such as Christopher Columbus and John Cabot and hailing the arrival of a "second great age of discovery". The News Corp media magnate nurtures a long-held distaste for "the establishment" but last night confided to one of the few clubs to which he does belong - The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers - that he may be among the last of a dying breed. "Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let's face it, the proprietors," said Mr Murdoch, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday. Far from mourning its passing, he evangelised about a digital future that would put that power in the hands of those already launching a blog every second, sharing photos and music online and downloading television programmes on demand. "A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it," he said. Indicating he had little desire to slow down despite his advancing years, he told the 603-year-old guild that he was looking forward, not back. "It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy - not just companies but whole countries." The owner of Fox News added: "Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds." Refusing to reminisce over a career that saw him develop a global empire stretching from DirecTV and the New York Post in the US to Sky and the Sun in the UK via assets in South America, Asia and Australia, he declared: "I believe we are at the dawn of a golden age of information - an empire of new knowledge." But he combined his new-found enthusiasm for the digital future with a "change or die" message for the monolithic media empires of the 20th century. "Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall," he warned. "That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet." Two hundred liverymen and freemen of the trade guild were joined by family and friends who then dined in Stationers' Hall, a Grade 1 listed building near St Paul's Cathedral in London. He had some words of hope for his industry peers buffeted by declining circulations, free titles and the internet. "I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life but, equally, I think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels to our readers," he said, predicting a future in which "media becomes like fast food" with consumers watching news, sport and film clips as they travel, on mobile phones or handheld wireless devices. "Great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart," he enthused. Following its chairman's change of heart, News Corp has splashed out close to $1bn (£578m) on internet investments. Most tellingly, the company spent $400m on MySpace.com, the social networking phenomenon that has proved hugely popular with 35m regular users on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Murdoch has undergone a Damascene conversion, admitting he hugely underestimated the power of the web. He said last night: "It is a creative, destructive technology that is still in its infancy, yet breaking and remaking everything in its path. We are all on a journey, not just the privileged few, and technology will take us to a destination that is defined by the limits of our creativity, our confidence and our courage."

Maybe members will find this article on blogs interesting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1730326,00.html Arianna Huffington Tuesday March 14, 2006 The Guardian I am frequently asked if the rise of the blogosphere is the death knell for Big Media. My answer is that Big Media isn't dead; it's critically ill but will actually be saved by the transfusion of passion and immediacy of the blogging revolution. Blogging and the new media are transforming the way news and information are disseminated, as evidenced by the number of traditional media outlets, like this one, dipping their collective toe into the blog pond. Blogs are by nature very personal - an intimate, often ferocious expression of the blogger's passions. You're much more intimate when you're writing a blog than when you're writing a column, let alone a book: the conversational nature of it; the way that it draws people in and includes them in the dialogue. You may set out to write about politics but, in the end, you write about yourself; about the things you care about beyond politics. And this creates a close bond between blogger and audience. It really does become conversation. I've always enjoyed bringing people together from different parts of my life and facilitating interesting conversations. In the past, these have taken place around dinner tables. Now, via cyberspace, those conversations have gone global. And they are happening in real time. Just a year ago, I'd have an idea on a Monday, write a column about it on Tuesday, it would be published on Wednesday ... and readers would respond with letters to the editor two or three days later. Now, I can get an idea Monday morning, blog about it and immediately get comments. And these comments then take on a life of their own, as our community of commenters begins responding to each other. For me, one of the defining moments for the new media came last July, with the London bombings. Many of the Huffington Post's London-based bloggers - like Simon Jenkins, Guardian columnist and former editor of the Times - started weighing in with realtime reactions. I was having my morning coffee and reading my paper copy of the New York Times, which had a front-page photo of Londoners celebrating winning the Olympic bid. And I thought, what a different picture we'd be seeing at that moment. It gave me the sense of how anachronistic daily papers have become - and how, when reading them, you really get the sense you're reading yesterday's news. Blogging has empowered the little guy - levelling the playing field between the media haves and the media have-only-a-laptop-and-an-internet connection. It's made the blogosphere an invaluable tool for holding the mainstream media's feet to the fire. As blogger extraordinaire Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) puts it in his new book, An Army of Davids: "Where before journalists and pundits could offer illogical analysis or cite 'facts' that were in fact false, now the Sunday morning op-eds have already been dissected on Saturday night, within hours of their appearing on newspapers' websites." Bloggers have done the same with politicians. Witness Trent Lott and the way bloggers turned him from Senate majority leader into political chum by pursuing a story the mainstream media passed on. That's another great thing about bloggers: when they decide that something matters, they refuse to let go. They're the true pit bulls of reporting. That kind of relentlessness was never available to me as a newspaper columnist. When I started blogging about Judy Miller and the New York Times in 2005, it was something I never could have done as a columnist. My editors would have said: "Oh, you wrote about her last month." Same with Bob Woodward's involvement in Plamegate. I first wrote about it on November 16 2005, then did a follow-up on November 28. Then Nora Ephron wrote a blog on him that gained tremendous traction, including being mentioned in Frank Rich's New York Times column. By getting on these stories early and staying on them - and by linking to other bloggers covering the story, and having them link back to us - we helped shape and define them. Bloggers share their work, argue with each other and add to a story dialectically. It's why the blogosphere is now the most vital news source in America.

I have written about the relationship between Samuel Zemurray, Tommy Corcoran and the CIA in the thread on the Guatemala thread: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5945 What I did not know before today was his close associations with New Orleans. Zemurray gave more than a million dollars to Tulane University, founded Child Guidance and Mental Health Clinics in New Orleans, and endowed the New Orleans Institute of Mental Hygiene.

During the Eisenhower administration, John Williams, the Republican senator from Delaware, began revealing details of what became known as the “Stockpile Scandal”. Williams was the same person who was later to expose the “Bobby Baker Scandal”. Williams claimed that George M. Humphrey, Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Treasury, was behind this corrupt operation. In the early stages of the Korean War, Harry Truman had established the Office of Defense Mobilization (ODM). This authorized the creation of stockpiles of raw materials that were important in the fight against international communism. The General Services Administration (GSA) was the operating agency for the program. As this scheme involved national defence, it was decided that this policy would be kept secret from the American public. Humphrey knew about this secret policy because he was chairman of M. A. Hanna Company. Humphrey’s company owned the mineral rights on Nickel Mountain in Oregon. The Hanna Mining Company provided large amounts of nickel ore for the ODM stockpile. Soon after becoming Secretary of the Treasury in January, 1953, he contacted ODM and suggested that it should sign two contracts with the Hanna Company. The first one involved buying nickel ore for $6 a ton (this was much higher than the market rate). The second one was that the ODM was to sell back the nickel ore to Hanna at the same price for it to be smelted. This would cost a further $6 a ton for processing. Hanna did not have a smelting plant so it asked for the ODM to spend $22 million on building them one. This was agreed and by 1961 over $100 million had been spent by the government on these Hanna contracts. The same thing went on in the purchasing of unneeded lead, zinc, copper, chromite, molybdenum, cryolite, tungsten, manganese and aluminium. The companies concerned who provided these raw materials charged a much higher rate than the market price. In effect, they were getting a government subsidy for producing these materials. One of the most amazing aspect of this scheme was that when prices were high, the ODM allowed the companies to buy the raw materials back at the original prices to sell on the open market at a higher price. For example, the Calumet & Helca Company, was able to buy back copper in 1958 for $26,093,314 (the price it sold it for in 1955) to sell at $29,086,616 on the open market. John Williams passed all his information to President Kennedy and on 31st January, 1962, he ordered federal investigators to looking into the stockpiling of these raw materials. He said: “It was apparent to me that this excessive storage of costly materials was a questionable burden on public funds and in addition a potential source of excessive and unconscionable profits.” Kennedy told the nation that the raw material stockpiles were worth $7.7 billion. It was calculated that this exceeded the stockpile needs by nearly $3.4 billion. The value of the aluminium in the stockpile exceeds the amounts we would need for three years in the event of a war by $347 million. The excess supply of nickel is $103 million.” A Senate Committee led by Stuart Symington later reported that: “The evil of the price support program was that it loaded the stockpile with greater quantities of unneeded materials at a time when the Defense Department was seeking funds for more urgent defense needs. This was done without public knowledge under a cloak of secrecy imposed because of the supposed demands of national security. Perhaps the primary lesson to be learned from this unfortunate stockpiling episode is that stockpile operations should be conducted with the full knowledge of the American taxpayer.” Only three senators, Stuart Symington, Claire Engle and Howard W. Cannon (all Democrats) signed this highly critical report. Clifford Case and J. Glen Beall, the two Republicans refused to sign. So also did the Democrat, Strom Thurmond. As a result, the case got very little publicity and Kennedy privately condemned the way the media protected the Eisenhower administration. Interestingly, none of Humphrey's web biographies mention this scandal. I wonder if there is any connection with this scandal with the appointment of Douglas Dillon as Secretary of the Treasury. Dillon had worked under George M. Humphrey during the Eisenhower administration. His choice of a Republican as Secretary of the Treasury caused a great deal of concern at the time. We now know he got the post as a result of lobbying by Lyndon Johnson and Philip Graham. We also know that Strom Thurmond was under the control of LBJ.

This is indeed a rare book. Even Abebooks do not have a copy (its database is made up of nearly all books in second hand book shops).

It is sometimes thought that dealing with the issue of “interpretations” in the classroom is a comparatively new problem. Some date it back to the arrival of SHP history or the introduction of GCSE or the National Curriculum. I know when I started teaching in 1977 few history teachers thought “interpretation” was a problem. Most teachers claimed they were “objective” professionals who did not allow their own political opinions to influence their teaching. The SHP was concerned about the possible exposure of the teacher’s political ideology while teaching the course and at first only sanctioned what they considered to be “safe” topics. Even a course unit on Nazi Germany was rejected because it was considered too “political”. I became aware that “interpretation” was a problem once I began producing my own teaching materials. Given my own unhappiness with the quality of the commercial materials available in the 1970s, this happened straight away. W.H.B. Court has pointed out: “History free of all values cannot be written. Indeed, it is a concept almost impossible to understand, for men will scarcely take the trouble to inquire laboriously into something which they set no value upon.” That has always been the case with my writing. Unless I have strong views on the subject, I don't bother to write about it. The first materials I ever produced concerned the First World War. It was a subject I had felt passionately about for many years. In fact, I can date it to 1956, the year that I inherited from my father the brass medal type object that provided details of my grandfather’s death at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. My research into why he died did not give me a value-free view of the war. These materials were about interpretations of the First World War. It of course included quotations from historians who were sympathetic to Sir Douglas Haig and other generals who followed the policy of “attrition”. It also included quotes from historians who were critical of this approach. For example, Llewellyn Woodward argued in his book “Great Britain and the War of 1914-1918 (1967): “Haig failed to comprehend that the policy of ‘attrition’ or in plain English, ‘killing Germans’ until the German army was worn down and exhausted, was not only wasteful and, intellectually, a confession of impotence; it was also extremely dangerous. The Germans might counter Haig's plan by allowing him to wear down his own army in a series of unsuccessful attacks against a skilful defence. Fortunately the enemy generals were of much the same 'textbook' type of mind as Haig.” I quoted people like Duff Cooper who made a good job of defending people like Haig (the book was actually commissioned by the Haig family): "There are still those who argue that the Battle of the Somme should never have been fought and that the gains were not commensurate with the sacrifice. There exists no yardstick for the measurement of such events, there are no returns to prove whether life has been sold at its market value. There are some who from their manner of reasoning would appear to believe that no battle is worth fighting unless it produces an immediately decisive result which is as foolish as it would be to argue that in a prize fight no blow is worth delivering save the one that knocks the opponent out." I also used extracts from Haig’s own defence of his tactics. But more importantly, I used extracts from those who had to endure Haig's orders. For example, William Brooks, who survived his time on the Western Front: “Haig's nickname was the butcher. He'd think nothing of sending thousands of men to certain death. The utter waste and disregard for human life and human suffering by the so-called educated classes who ran the country. What a wicked waste of life. I'd hate to be in their shoes when they face their Maker.” Although on the surface my teaching materials appeared to be objective because they attempted to tell all sides of the story (this included David Lloyd George’s attempts in his memoirs to distance himself from the military tactics used on the Western Front) it was far from being objective history. In fact, it was my “interpretation” of the past. The selection of the primary sources by the author plays an important role in delivering your interpretation of past events. I am fully aware of the different ways that the student will react to different sources. For example, which one is the most convincing, a dry defence of Haig by Duff Cooper or a passionate attack on him by William Brooks? I was guilty of using quotations against the people who made them. For example, here is what Sir Douglas Haig had to say about military tactics in a 1926 book review: “I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse - the well-bred horse - as you have ever done in the past.” It seems that Haig had learnt very little from his experience on the Western Front. Hegel once said that: “Peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” Maybe so, but I prefer to believe the comments of H. G. Wells: “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe”.

Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary. Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary." She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." If I was George Bush I would be very worried if an "honest" Democrat was elected next time. He would be in a position to expose the corruption of the Republican administration. This is what John F. Kennedy tried to do when he was elected in 1960. The full story appears in Clark R. Mollenhoff's book Despoilers of Democracy (1965).

Julian Borger in Washington Monday March 13, 2006 The Guardian Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary. In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges. Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary." She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings." In her address to an audience of corporate lawyers on Thursday, Ms O'Connor singled out a warning to the judiciary issued last year by Tom DeLay, the former Republican leader in the House of Representatives, over a court ruling in a controversial "right to die" case. After the decision last March that ordered a brain-dead woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo, removed from life support, Mr DeLay said: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour." Mr DeLay later called for the impeachment of judges involved in the Schiavo case, and called for more scrutiny of "an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president". Such threats, Ms O'Connor said, "pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedom", and she told the lawyers in her audience: "I want you to tune your ears to these attacks ... You have an obligation to speak up. "Statutes and constitutions do not protect judicial independence - people do," the retired supreme court justice said. She noted death threats against judges were on the rise and added that the situation was not helped by a senior senator's suggestion that there might be a connection between the violence against judges and the decisions they make. The senator she was referring to was John Cornyn, a Bush loyalist from Texas, who made his remarks last April, soon after a judge was shot dead in an Atlanta courtroom and the family of a federal judge was murdered in Illinois. Senator Cornyn said: "I don't know if there is a cause and effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country ... And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence." Although appointed by a Republican, Ms O'Connor voted with the supreme court's liberals on some divisive issues, including abortion, making her a frequent target for criticism from the right. After announcing that she intended to retire last year at the age of 75, she was replaced in February this year by Samuel Alito, who is generally regarded as being more consistently conservative. In her speech, Ms O'Connor said that if the courts did not occasionally make politicians mad they would not be doing their jobs, and their effectiveness "is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts". http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...1729379,00.html

DAY ONE SATURDAY 18th MARCH 2006 1:15pm Registration 2:00pm TONY McCULLOCH and BARRY KEANE “Introductions” 2:15pm MARK DE VALK “Imagery of JFK and Oswald: A Cultural Vision of an American Assassination” 3:15pm JOHN SIMKIN “Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex and the Assassination of JFK” 4:15pm Break 4:45 pm BARRY KEANE “Why was President Kennedy Assassinated?” 5:45pm Break for Dinner 7:00pm SHERRY GUTIERREZ “Trajectory Analysis applied to the Kennedy Assassination” 9:00pm Day one closes. (approx) DAY TWO SUNDAY 19th MARCH 2006 9:45am Opens. 10:00am IAN GRIGGS “History of DPUK” 10:30 AUCTION Mike Dworetsky 11: 00am JOHN ROSSITER “JFK, a window into the real world.” 12:30pm Break for lunch 2:00pm SHERRY GUTIERREZ “Bloodstain Pattern Analysis in the Kennedy Assassination” 3:45pm (approx) TONY McCULLOCH and BARRY KEANE “Closing Remarks”

The Fourth Dealey Plaza UK International Weekend Seminar will be held on Saturday 18 & Sunday 19 March. The venue will again be The Powell Lecture Theatre at Canterbury Christ Church University, North Holmes Road, Canterbury, Kent. Registration is at 1:15 pm and seminars begins at approx 2pm. Saturday's session will end approx 9:00 pm followed by drinks nearby. Sunday's session starts at 10:00 am and concludes at approx 4:00pm. Speakers include: Sherry Gutierrez Mark de Valk Ian Griggs Barry Keane John Simkin John Rossiter