Coalition of the Unwilling

Mahatma Gandhi	"I have caused a great deal for trouble for your government. But as men, we can set aside our differences for welfare of the nation."The following year, Gandhi met face to face with Churchill during the Indian round table conference -- "...I have an alternative that is unpleasant to you" he told Churchill and his clan of imperialists. " India demands complete liberty and freedom...the same liberty that Englishmen enjoy... and I want India to become a partner in the Empire. I want to partner with the English people ... not merely for mutual benefit, but so that the great weight that is crushing the world to atoms may be lifted from its shoulders". ~ Mahatma Gandhi, "Half Naked Fakir"
"Half Naked Fakir"

Before we knew for sure if Winston Churchill meant if when he said he would not preside over the end of the British Empire. Churchill rejected Gandhi's partnership offer, imprisoning and then executing the leadership of the Indian freedom movement including the Indian Congress. The tragic story of Britain's brutal response to the Indian Emergency in 1945 was recounted in journalist Adrienne Gormley's Children of Tears.

~ quotation by Steve Payne

In 1976, with fresh cunning, the vampires and the infected broke into recluse Robert Neville's fortified home, seized him, dragged him out into the street screaming.

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

Ho Chi Minh	In 1969, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh died in the Vietnamese capitol of Hanoi. Ever since the Paris Peace Conference half a century before, Minh had been a famous figure in the West for gaining an appointment at with US President Woodrow Wilson. Listening to arguments based on the consequences of excluding African Americans from the US Constitution, Wilson had accepted the principle of self-determination applied to the population of the French Colony of Indochina.
Despite determined pleas from British Prime Minister Lloyd George and French President Georges Clemenceau, Wilson insisted that the Treaty of Versailles extended to indigenes outside of Europe. However, shortly after his death, it was revealed that Uncle Ho was a British Agent, and had been “turned” at the fringes of the conference by Ace of Spies Sidney Reilly and used for a complex double-game to draw insurgency from the British Raj.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 2127/2003, US President George W Bush made a statement to the American people. A great debate had raged inside the governments of Britain and America. Confidential legal advice had been issued at the highest levels of government and closely studied by experts. Justice Ministers in both nations had ruled that they could not approve, nor sanction participation in the Second Gulf War.	George Bush
Anglo-American involvement in a land invasion of Iraq would be illegal due to the absence of a UN Security Council Resolution explicitly sanctioning participation by the “coalition of the willing”. Whilst he strongly disagreed, he accepted the outcome. Democracy had triumphed. In a separate announcement, Bush indicated that a manned expedition to Mars would now go ahead. Onwards and upwards, that was the key message!
~ entry by Steve Payne

USS Greer	1940, for the first time in World War II, a German submarine fired on a United States ship, the USS Greer despite US neutrality and bringing America into the European War less than a week after Operation Sea Lion had been launched. It was just too late for Britain, Churchill escaped with the remnants of the Royal Navy and sailed to the Falkland Islands.
Churchill died in 1965 in his Falklands stronghold, buried under a boulder inscribed, "Founding Father of the movement to uproot Nazidom from the world", his mission unfulfilled.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 1951, the first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. Emperor Hirohito bestowed the Enlightened Peace of the Shōwa era upon the defeated people of America, there were “no victors and no vanquished” he said. Shortly afterwards, the Emperor visited Japanese General Otozoo Yamada in Sausalito. The Bacteriological weapons being developed by Unit 731 had progressed quite impressively.	Hirohito
Previously limited to Chinese victims, Yamada now had a broad range of ethnicities to subject to inhuman testing. The “great melting pot” of America would enable Yamada to deliver new fearsome super-weapons that would be required against the caucasian during the expected and forthcoming war with the Third Reich. Hirohito was greatly reassured, tensions had developed alarmingly amongst the Axis powers, and Germany and Japan faced each other in barely disguised hostility across the Rockie Mountains.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 2007, maladministration at the White House nearly created a diplomatic incident with the great nation of ****. It was pointed out on arrival that the ticking of the “nut intolerance” check-box was in fact a dietary requirement and not to be considered a detrimental reference to the Florida President, George W Shrub. But you never can tell.

~ entry by Co-Historian Steve Payne