This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com.

Library of Congress opens the National Jukebox


Nora Bayes

Just in time for Memorial Day, the Library of Congress has opened a new web site containing digitized versions of over 10,000 records made from 1900 to the 1920s. For anyone like myself who love pop classics, this is a gold mine, with some of the greatest musical artists of the time. VOA

Here are a couple of selections of songs that are still familiar today:

They didn’t believe me is a charming love song from Jerome Kern’s 1915 Broadway show, “The Girl from Utah,” recorded by vocalists Alice Green (Olive Kline) and Harry Macdonough. It’s great to hear this because there are a couple of verses beyond what you normally don’t hear today.

Next we have George M. Cohan’s stirring war song from 1917, Over There, sung by Nora Bayes. It almost makes you want to go to war.

Library of Congress National Jukebox

Serb nationalists rally in Belgrade for Ratko Mladic

Last week’s arrest of Ratko Mladic on charges of war crimes in the Bosnian war of the early 1990s is splitting Serbia, where many consider him to be a war hero. ( “27-May-11 News — Europe cheers the capture of Ratko Mladic, the butcher of Srebrenica.”) As Serbia approaches the beginning of its generational Awakening era, some 10,000 protesters clashed with police in Belgrade, demanding the resignation of president Boris Tadic, and demanding that Mladic not be extradited to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Irish Times

Al-Qaeda (AQAP) militants capture south Yemen town of Zinjibar

200 masked Islamist militants, some of them from Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), launched an attack on the provincial capital of Zinjibar, pop. 18,000, at town on the southern cost of Yemen. The fighters were accused of pillaging the town, burning down buildings and launching violent reprisals that left corpses strewn across dusty streets. Telegraph

Top Yemeni opposition leaders are accusing Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh of handing the provincial capital of Zinjibar to al-Qaeda militants on purpose. The alleged motive would be to show what would happen to all Yemen towns if Saleh were forced to step down. VOA

Qatar and Algeria face off in Libya

Algeria has been supplying tanks and armored personnel carriers to the Gaddafi regime in Libya, at least partially accounting for Nato’s slow progress in its air campaign against Gaddafi. In response, Qatari armed forces are now assisting Libyan rebels in the western port city of Misrata, and their officers are helping to train guerrilla fighters on the perimeter of the fighting. Independent

ECB board member calls orderly Greek restructuring a ‘fairy tale’

The European Central Bank (ECB) continues to clash angrily with European Union officials who say that they’re considering “reprofiling” or “soft restructuring” of Greece’s debt, all of which are forms of default. ECB board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi says that such talk “has been very damaging,” and makes people think “that investing in the euro area is unsafe.” He adds, “[The Greeks] have assets they can sell and reduce their debt. … If you look at the balance sheet of Greece, it is not insolvent.” Financial Times (Access)