Confusion In Texas

August 11th, 2007

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Birthday Contest Coming Up: Alternify me (August 14, 1965) and Steve (November 22, 1967)! I only have one entry for my own birthday so far, so start sending me some love, people!

I continued trying to connect to Mr. Dharne. I thought, if I could make a personal connection with him, that it might be possible to get him to see reason and let Mr. Johnson stay in the hospital to recuperate. “His disappearance from where, exactly?”
“From his home,” Dharna answered me. “We have been concerned that he had lost his senses after an accident there.”
“What sort of accident?” I hoped I wasn't sounding too accusational, but he seemed to have no problem with answering me.
“He was repairing his roof and slipped.” He looked ruefully at the rest of his companions, who mimicked his expression. It was very eery. “He kept reassuring us that he was all right, but when we saw that he was missing the next morning, we began searching for him.”
“Well, he was in very bad shape,” I said, hoping to play on their expressed sympathies for their 'brother'. “People who've been exposed to the elements unprotected, especially the heat, need medical help to recover completely. How long was he out wandering?”
Mr. Dharne noticed my unsubtle advice and focused on that. “We believe that a higher power gives us all the help we need, Dr. Miles. With that help, medical attention is quite unnecessary.”
I bobbed my head up and down, hoping to reconnect with him. “Of course, that's your right, but perhaps Mr. Johnson was led here in order to receive the help he needed.”
Dharne looked at me somewhat contemptuously. “That is not the sort of power we believe in, Dr. Miles.” He turned his attention back to the hospital staff, who were not producing Mr. Johnson at a speed that pleased him. “I still do not see our brother here,” he said to the doctor who had been watching our exchange.
“It takes a long time to remove intravenous tubing safely,” the doctor said. “Mr. Johnson needed a lot of it.”
“You never did say how long he's been missing,” I said, hoping to draw his attention away again. His eyes flashed back to me, and I saw a touch of menace in them, now. “He thought he was in Connecticut when I picked him up. How far from home are you, Mr. Dharne?”
“Farther every day, Dr. Miles.” He and his companions smiled a bit at that, and I frowned, puzzled by the statement. “But, to answer your question, Brother Johnson has been missing for three days.” He added, after a slight pause, “And no, he did not walk from Connecticut. We are based here in Austin. The brother is from Connecticut, originally.”

Sam Cooke	"You know I'll always Be your slave 'Til I'm buried, buried in my grave But I'm forgiven if you Bring it on home to me " ~ Lyrics to “Bring it on Home to Me” - Click to Play Sample
King of Soul

On December 11, 1964 Cooke was found shot dead in the Hacienda Hotel, a small place close to the Watts section of Los Angeles California. The police reports that came from the crime scene were ugly. Cooke was reported to be found lying slumped on the floor with bullet wounds all over his body, shot by the Motel Manager in self-defence. Witness reports of the decapitated state of the body by singer Etta James contradicted police reports. Attourney General Robert F Kennedy subsequently announced an investigation of conspiracy charges as part of his continued crack-down on the mob. The investigation proved a "hit" had been organised by racketeers behind the record label and the Mob who had conspired to execute Cooke. In being one of the first African American musicians to attempt to take control of his own destiny, Cooke attended to the business side of his musical career. In so doing Cooke abandoned his backers and some shadowy people were severely out of pocket. A synopsis of Sam Cooke's mob execution is described at Epinions

~ quotation by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter-history – You're the Judge!

In 1975, in a dream photo opportunity for democrats US President Robert F Kennedy welcomed the actor Jack Lord to the White House. Joking Book 'em Dano, RFK paid tribute to the role of Steve McGarrett Saigon 5-0 as the greatest work of American truth since John Wayne's 1968 movie Green Berets.

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1919, the Jewish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference met secretly with US President Woodrow Wilson. Unmistakable evidence was presented of British complicity in the death of Aaron Aaronsohn. Chaim Weizmann had invited Aaronsohn and his sister Sarah to join the delegation, but they were killed in an airplane crash over the English Channel on May 15. Both Aaronsohns had been leader organizers of NILI, a secret intelligence group pursuing unothodox means to assist in the liberation of Palestine. Allegedly NILI had provided military intelligence to the Turks that had been used to crush British forces under General Edmund H.H. Allenby. Allenby himself had been duped, believing that Zionist aspirations would be served by means of an attack by surprise through Beersheba, using the map of water sources provided by Aaronsohn, and skirting around the strong Turkish force that blocked the advance north from Gaza. The destruction of British forces created a post-war vacuum in Palestine that was very much in the Zionists favour, and Weizmann for one saw the airplane crash as a simple revenge attack by the furious British government of David Lloyd-George. It is widely believed now that the actions of NILI brought forward the creation of the State of Israel by a generation, ensuring a population movement of European Jewry before the rise of Hitler.

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1979, the movie Apocalypse Now portrayed a pivotal moment in the peculiarly American tragedy of south-east Asia - Captain Willard confronted General-san Arthur MacArthur in a titanic battle of good vs evil, but who was which?. The audience were about to realise that America's role as a global policeman was no more sincere or indeed welcomed than the Pax Brittanica it replaced. It was a self-appointed patronism that was also based on a fatal underestimation of non-anglos.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

Shrek

In 2004, Shrek was interviewed in Hello! Magazine for the article "Enough". Out of work since the sequel, the struggling actor complained that in just two movies, he had been typecast as a large, strong, solitude-loving yet grumpy green ogre. Not prepared to be the twenty-first century equivalent of Leonard Nimoy's Spock, Shrek had employed image consultants and was hopeful of an early turnaround.

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

"In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officer's table. He was a tough-looking youth of twenty-five or -six, with reddish-yellow hair and powerful shoulders. His peaked leather cap was pulled fiercely over one eye.
Eric Blair	He was standing in profile to me, his chin on his breath, gazing with a puzzled front at a map which one of the offices had open on the table. something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend - the kind of face you would expect in an Anarchist." ~ Eric Arthur Blair : “Homage to Catalonia”
George Orwell

In 1936, Eric Arthur Blair described his role in the Spanish Civil War, an event that would have huge long-term consequences for the people of Europe. The full article is available at Amazon

~ quotation by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter-history – You're the Judge!

Elimina Castle	In 1482, to pass the long night of six hundred years at St. George El Mina Castle, Kwame’s brother spoke to him of African Poetry. ”When our tears are dry on the shore and the fisherman carry their nets home and the seaguls return to bird island and the laughter ..
.. of children receds at night there shall still linger here the communion we forged the feast of oneness which we partook of. There shall still be the eternal gatesman who will close the cemetry doors and send the late mourners away. It cannot be the music we heard last night that still lingers in the chambers of memory. It is the new chorus of our forgotten comrades and the halleluyahs of our second selves. ”
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1995, on this day Richard M. Langworth published “If Halifax had lost the Battle of Britain”. theme of this book is "the Eternal Relevance of Churchill," which the author demonstrates by combining fact and fiction. Alternative to Churchill ..	Lord Halifax
.. is remarkably similar in approach to Norman Longmate's “If Britain Had Fallen”, factually relating the course of World War II up to a point then presenting an imagined scenario if a few things had happened differently. For Longmate, the turning point is Hermann Goering's decision to concentrate the Luftwaffe assault on RAF bases instead of London, leading to a successful German invasion and the fall of Halifax, defending Number Ten Downing Street from the onrushing Wehrmacht, dying with his pistol ablaze. For Ratnu, the turning point (which he calls "the diversion") is the decision of Chamberlain's critics Amery for the Tories, Lloyd George for the Liberals, and most of the Labour Party to mute their May 1940 attacks on the Government for the sake of national unity. Thus Churchill does not become Prime Minister on May 10th or any other time, it is Halifax that follows the success to Head of State. And there hangs our tale.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

A Collection of..	In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful entry "What if Lee Harvey Oswald had not missed?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario where John Kennedy had served as U.S. president only until 1963. The essence of Burns' ..
.. masterpiece is the book within the book, 'Camelot Redux', a work of fiction written by a man called Simon Burns. It describes a world where would-be assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was captured by the piercing gaze of JFK's glammour as the former Marine prepared to shoot the resurrected Merlin from the Texas Book Repository. Straight afterwards, Oswald threw his gun down and handed himself to Constable Tippett, a babbling lunatic.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1945, an uplifted US President Harry S Truman pours himself a congratulatory bourbon as he reflects upon the Japanese surrender. Contrary to the advice of his short-fused military, the delay was in fact nothing other than the slow cogs of decision-making. Definitely, unquestionably, a further strike ..	Ged
.. on Nagasaki would have been unnecessary. Startled by the door opening unannounced, he looks up from the Resolute Desk to see a strangely dressed young man appear. “I too was a reckless youth,“ says Ged “ hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. I mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.” When the Sparrowhawk leaves, Truman remembers nothing of his mysterious visitors.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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