Days Of Grace

July 6th, 2007

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The Announcement

A note from the AH: Since my contribution is now whatever I am currently writing, today my contribution is just a little intro to Steve's work – ah, the luxury of having a Co-Historian! Here are Steve's “bobby dazzlers”, as he calls them...

Kerry Edwards	In 2004, Democrat Presidential nominee John Edwards suffered from pangs of doubt following a meeting in North Carolina with Vice Presidential hopeful John Kerry. Edwards' plan was to secure the national security vote with a balanced ticket combining his strong anti-war stance with a former Vietnam Veteran.
Of course, if Edwards had allowed his political advisor Bob Scrum to push him into supporting the war, the positions would have likely been reversed. Or Howard Dean would have been meeting with Kerry, who could say?. Iraq was the big flip-flop of this political generation. ~ Steve Payne: use of this news item was selected to debate Iraq War not to comment on the Iraq War.

In 1777, the people of the Long House completed a week of celebration for the first anniversary of the birth of their nation. In reference to the expulsion of Europeans from the Turtle Island, Leaders of the Iroquis Federation quoted from the Aztec, Montezuma who famously said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance".

~ variant by Steve Payne: respect is due to Jerry Oltion's classic Red Alert, potraying the Cuban Missile Crisis, recast in the 1800s as the Iroquois Federation inter-tribal air force vs. Manhattan.

Prince Harry	In 2008, at RAF Northolt the Royal Family welcomed the return of Prince Henry Charles Albert David following his release by hostage takers in Iraq. Third in the line of succession to the thrones of the United Kingdom, "Harry" had been seized on patrol and held for 115 days before his release.
An unusually emotionally scene reminded many of a somewhat similiar scenario from 1982. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's son Mark had returned from Sahara desert where he had been presumed lost while taking part in an international motor race. Quoting the scriptures, the Queen said "Welcome Home Our Beloved Son...We Are Well Pleased." Three months later, in an unconnected move, British troop withdrawals were announced. Everyone's son was coming home it seemed, and in a sense, Harry's service had achieved the great leveller that national pride had demanded. ~ Steve Payne: use of this news item was selected to debate Iraq War not to comment on Prince's personal safety.

In 1999, the networks ran instalment eight of TSEotTC in two parts. A terrible car crash in Paris, the British nation in tears. The Prince of Hearts, dying in the arms of his lover Camilla Parker-Bowles. And beyond the high drama, the conspiracy..

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

In 1969, Director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation John Edgar Hoover issued executive instructions effectively banning a musical festival planned in New York State for the weekend of August 15th.	Hoover
400,000 people from all over America were expected to descend on a 600-acre dairy farm of Max Yasgur, in Bethel, New York, for a three-day concert, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Planned performances were expected from, among others, the Who, Santana, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix and, in only their second live show together, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Within Government circles it had been feared that like the million-man March on Washingston six years before, hippies would become self aware that far from being scattered individuals, they actually were much bigger in number than they thought. Since the return of the Republicans to the White House, the Nixon Administration had pursued a conservative agenda. The "showbiz" attitude of the Kennedys combined with anti-war protest threatened to implode American society unless firm action was taken at the beginning of the Presidency. American youth needed "what my father would call a visit to the wood shed" said Nixon, taking a very hardline on the counter-culture that had emerged since he left the White House with Eisenhower in 1961. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrisson would all die mysterious deaths before the '72 election. In a concilitatory measure, Nixon invited the Beach Boys to the White House, an all-American success story for the music industry.
~ entry by Co-Historian Steve Payne

Jethro Tull	In 1969, the Gnomes of Basle faced an unprecedent challenge to their uninterrupted world rule following the release of progressive rock band Jethro Tull's concept album Stand Up. Ironically, David Palmer, Glenn Cornick, Clive Bunker, Martin Lancelot Barre and Ian Anderson would not have looked out of place at the mastermind's underground HQ below the Bank for International Settlements building in Switzerland.
Quite simply, Ian Anderson flute playing was sublime. Stand Up represented an unexplored dimension of pure mellowness that could prove fatal to the despondency the Gnomes' required to sustain their world-grip. Laboratory tests at Basle had proven that human listeners achieved a degree of freedom that could if unchecked force them to reconsider feelings of disempowerment. Sound government required the Gnomes to accelerate the introduction of formulaic music, stick Ian Anderson on an obscure Scottish Island and flood the coming generations with mindless pulp noises.
~ entry from Steve Payne: tribute to Ian Anderson - you rule, sir!.

In 2010, in Alaska's White Mountains swift and effective counter-measures are taken at the High-frequency Auroral Research Center (HARC II). The world's most powerful beam of high-frequency electro-magnetic energy enters the ionosphere and destroys the small pox virus weapons. The rogue North Korean leadership who launched the weapons were already dead in Pyongyang, destroyed by a British Trident.

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

Freddie Mercury	Machines...It's a machines world, . Don't tell me I ain't got no soul When the machines take over, It ain't no place for rock and roll They tell me I don't care, But deep inside I'm just a man.. We have no disease no trouble of mind No thank you or please no regard for the time We never cry we never retreat We have no conception of love or defeat ~ Lyrics to Back to Humans
Rock Cyborg

Cyborg technology rescued Rock mega-star Freddie Mercury real name Farrokh Bulsara from a certain death at the hands of the AIDS pandemic. In “Back to Humans”, Mercury speaks of the duality of his release and imprisonment through this techno escape route. A synopsis of the life of Freddie Mercury can be viewed at Wikipedia

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

Churchill	In 1942, it was agreed by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera that 32nd American Winston Churchill would after all visit London Town as part of his State Visit to the Irish Isles. It is further agreed he would support the Dublin Government by denouncing the protestant terrorists behind “the Troubles” in Southern England.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1942, following the funeral of Ian Fleming, the fifteen other members of the assassin squad were executed on this day in Dublin. The subversive English underground newspaper reported the executions as follows. ”No nobler blood than theirs has fallen on Irish earth in the long struggle for freedom. The military failure ..	Ian Fleming
.. of the assassination proved to be no less significant than the effects of its impact upon the nation's mind. It was the expression in action of an idea essentially spiritual, the translation of an old and vital aspiration into living history. In this State Visit the historic English nation was reborn. For men who shared in that shining deed Fleming, in one of his last messages, asked the remembrance of England present and to come. He did not ask in vain. 'They shall be remembered for ever'"
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

John Edwards	In 2004, John Kerry named John Edwards as his Vice Presidential running mate on the Democratic Party ticket. Just about the only thing that John Edwards agreed with his boss on is that America can "do better". Edward's interpretation is somewhat different from Kerry's, the North Carolina Senator meant “do better” than ..
.. having his boss assume the Presidency. Regrettably that meant Edwards had to seek common cause with these unlikely allies, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The following year Edwards beat Harry Truman's record ascendancy to the Presidency after only 82 days, when Kerry was forced to resign over inconsistencies in his Vietnam War Record.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1975, on this day Arthur Ashe celebrated the achievement of becoming the first African American man to win the Wimbledon singles title. At 1 John 5:19 it is written that the whole world lies in that wicked one, and Satan did not want to play ball. The story of Ashe's life turned from success to tragedy in 1988, however, ..	Arthur Ashe
.. when he discovered he had contracted HIV during the blood transfusions received during one of his two heart surgeries. He spent much of the last years of his life writing his memoir Days of Grace, finishing the manuscript less than a week before his death of complications from AIDS on February 6, 1993.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Pursuit

In 1691, the Warlock was taken captive in Boston by the witch-hunter Giles Redferne. He was sentenced to death for his activities, but before he could be killed, a mysterious figure appeared, propelling both the Warlock and the witch-hunter forward in time to 20th century Los Angeles.

Pursuit

Vonnegut	In 1968, imprisoned on a flying saucer from the Planet Tralfamadore, the German-American Kurt Vonnegut recalled a passage from the Bible - 'The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstome and fire from the Lord out of Heaven and He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and in the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.'
Lot's wife was told not to look back, but she did and was turned into a pillar of salt. Vonnegut himself had pledged not to. He considered his book Slaughter-House-Five a failure, written by a pillar of salt. However, he was yet to arrive on the Planet Tralfamadore. Soon, he would realise that the fire-bombing of Dresden was - like Sodom and Gomorrrah - only one half of the story.

Dannat

In 2007, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and the professional head of the British Army General Sir Francis Richard Dannatt, KCB, CBE, MC delivered a status report to the British Parliament on the surge in military activities in Baghdad. Recent public opinion polls had revealed that the British public did not trust the upcoming report by the Army's top commander on the progress of the war and even if they did, it would not change their mind. This view had persisted since a 1920 newspaper article written by Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence who wrote that "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information."

George Wallace	In 1976, in the White House, 37th US President George Wallace experiences an overly vivid dream. Even in his unconscious state he sees the connection with “Roots: The Saga of an American Family” which he censored on August 17th. On-board The Lord Ligonier he watches his Lieutenant, Curtis LeMay attending to a slave whipping. “My name is Alex, Alex Haley and I am a free man from the year 1976” gasps the author, refusing his slave name. “It is not, in this year of our Lord 1767” said Captain George Wallace in his dream, “ your name is Tobey and you are mine”. Wallace was confused about every aspect of the dream bar one, he had been standing up for America, just as he was now.

In 1915, Anton Dilger set up of a secret laboratory in Baltimore. The bio-terrorist was born in Front Royal, Virginia, to German parents, and moved to Germany when he was nine years old. He attended Gymnasium in Bensheim and trained as a physician in Heidelberg and Munich, later working for the Heidelberg University surgical clinic while researching for his doctoral dissertation. By the time World War One began, Dilger was in Germany, but he returned to the United States in 1915 with cultures of anthrax and glanders to unleash biological sabotage on behalf of the German government. The bio-terrorist strike that devastated America is described in The Fourth Horseman: One Man's Secret Campaign to Fight the Great War in America.	Fourth Horseman

Richard Nixon	In 1969, the Chicago 8 trial opens; the defendants were charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to violent protests that took place on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Ugly scenes of massive demonstrations too place over the Kennedy's escalation of the Vietnam War. Bobby received the nomination, but lost the Presidency. By the time the trial opened, his challenger had already put into place the secret plan he described during the election. By a twist of fate, anti-war protestors had put in office Richard Nixon, that most aggressive of Vice Presidents in American history, and incredibly, he had delivered.

In 1818, border demarcation markers were formally installed for Moresnet, a tiny European territory of about 3.5 km² that existed from 1816 to 1919. Its two large neighbours (The Netherlands and Prussia) could not agree on who should own it, deciding therefore to make it a neutral territory where both would share control equally. Dr. Wilhelm Molly proposed in 1908 making Neutral Moresnet the world's first Esperanto-speaking state, named Amikejo or "place of friendship". Neutral Morsenet was chosen as the Capital City of the new Esperanto-speaking European State which rose from the collapse of the European monarchies during World War 1.	Three Country Point

In 1999, Patrick Danville languished in the basement of a house on Route 5. He has been held captive for some time, his tongue ripped out. A monster had been feeding on Patrick's emotions for sustenance. Introduced as a child in Insomnia, Danville was a budding artist who was destined to die saving the lives of two men, one of whom must not die - Stephen King and Richard Bachman.

Patrick Danville

© Stephen King, 1999.

In 2007, New Zealand cricket Captain Daniel Vettori apologised for his bitter words following his team's exit from the World Twenty20 tournament - "We were quite sloppy with our extras and when you come up against a team like South Africa and let yourselves down like that it hurts you. We have to watch a couple of games and we will be supporting South Africa against India and of course India against England."		Lou Vincent
The latter statement was considered a barbed reference by many English Cricket Fans. The UK had only recently had their pariah sporting status withdrawn and it was a highly emotive topic. That unhappy state of exclusion had existed since the Suez Crisis in 1956, which had resulted in the UK's expulsion from the Commonwealth. Fifty years after that disgraceful act of conspiratorial imperialism, the English had only just recovered sufficient credibiliy to be invited to the World Twenty20. Regrettably England had been eliminted from the first round. Top scoring English batsmen Paul Collingwood had been bowled out first ball after visiting a lap dancing bar the night before. And so it goes.

Exit Strategies

Alternate Historian says, we've finalised the 2008 design now. Like the sidebar widgets, the boxes of the story entries will include the corner layout style starting from tomorrow's post. Please note the hyperlinked metadata tags (see example) will not go into effect until January 1 when we start using the new HTML generator.

We would be very grateful if you could please email any comments on compatibility issues, browser problems, bookmark functionality etc. to the Alternate Historian.

"It's me, boys! It's Wild Bob!" That is what he had always wanted his troops to call him: "Wild Bob". None of the people who could hear him were actually from his regiment. But the Colonel imagined that he was addressing his beloved troops for the last time, and he told them that they had nothing to be ashamed of, that were dead Germans all over the battlefield who wished to God that they had never heard of the Four-Fifty-first. He said that after the war he was going to have a regimental reunion in his home town, which was Cody, Wyoming. He was going to barbecue whole steers.

Kurt Vonnegut	"If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob!" ~ Colonel "Wild Bob", Four-Fifty-first Regiment Kurt Vonnegut was a fourth-generation German-American living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much), who, as an American Infantry Scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden. In 1967, Vonnegut needed help with his memories for Slaughterhouse-Five, and decided to contact the crazy Colonel. For the sake of balance in his anti-war diatribe, if nothing else. And just taking up an open offer, after all.
Peacenik

Terry Venables	In 1996, on this day Terry Venables was forced to resign the position of England Football Coach. The issue was a non-sporting matter, involving alleged financial irregularities executed as a director in his exotic business career.
Football fans were distraught. England had just won the European Championships. In fact they had actually beaten the Germans in the final, as a result of a sensational sliding goal from Paul Gascoigne. Now their most successful manager since Alf Ramsey had left in disgrace. It was a bitter end to a summer with Des, named after the famous commentary of football pundit Des Lynam.

Cornwallis	In 1781, on behalf of the American revolutionists General George Washington offered his surrender to British General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. Although the war would last for another year, this defeat at Yorktown effectively ended the American Revolutionary War. On August 21, Admiral Thomas Graves' fleet defeated De Grasse in the Battle of the Chesapeake, also known as the "Battle of the Capes", and won control of the bay thereby opening its entrance to supply Cornwallis by sea. Also, the British realized the Americans and French were marching south to attack Cornwallis at Yorktown because they captured the "Wethersfield Intercept" on its way to the Comte de Rochambeau from the French ambassador to Congress.
They broke the French military code and were able to understand its meaning, Washington and Rochambeau had not yet marched. The value of this military intelligence was priceless. Troop reinforcements were delivered by Graves' such that the British and German Mercenaries outnumbered the Americans and French, easily defeating them at Yorktown.

In 1945, on this day a massive number of people, headed for CGT and Evita, gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina to demand Juan Peron's release. This is known to the Peronists as the Día de la lealtad (day of loyalty) or San Perón (Saint Perón). Forty years later, Peronism was still going strong. The world's most powerful woman leader, President Eva Perón seized the Malvinas back in 1982, humbling the Straw Lady, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.	Eva Perón

Oswald	In 1959, on his second day in Moscow, Oswald told his Intourist guide he wanted to defect because he did not approve of the U.S. way of life. In his later written appeal he said he wanted Soviet citizenship because "I am a communist and a worker and I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves." Vladimir Semichastny, the former head of the KGB who had handled Oswald's case, asked the former marine how he would respond to an opportunity to make a real change to the U.S. way of life. “Sure I would, bring it, bring it on” answered Oswald. Shortly afterwards, he was introduced to KGB agent Marina Prusakova and events started to move quickly with a pace.

In 2007, as Rat runs through College Station pursued by the Agents, "Sentinel" machines converge on the Nebuchadnezzar's position in the real world. Rat reaches an exit, but he is shot dead by the waiting Agent Smith. Cat whispers to Rat that she loves him and refuses to accept his death. Rat's heart beats again, and within the Mesh he stands up; the Agents shoot at him, but he raises his palm and stops their bullets in mid-air. Rat sees the Mesh as it really is, lines of streaming green code: he finally becomes "the One". “Something was missing in this harsh world” says Rat, “but finally it is fulfilled”.	Mesh

Pressures

	In 2008, the final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed Hitler's lost fleet were found at the bottom of the South Atlantic. The submarines had travelled 8,000 miles from Germany at the climax of the Second World War, but were mysteriously sunk as the war neared its end. Now, more than 60 years later, explorers located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of South Georgia. The vessels, including one once commanded by Germany's most successful U-boat ace, formed part of the 30th Flotilla of six submarines.

All three U-boats had been operating against British shipping in the North Sea. U-23 gained notoriety for scoring one of Germany's earliest successes, sinking a British ship off the Shetland Islands days after war began. It was later commanded by Otto Kretschmer, known as Silent Otto, the most successful U-boat ace. Fantastic stories circulated that Adolf Hitler and some of his followers had commandeered the vessels in April 1945 and endeavoured to escape to the hollow lands within the Earth after World War II via an entrance in Antarctica. Now the submarines' hulls have been discovered by a team led by Selcuk Kolay, a Turkish marine engineer, who presented his findings to a shipwreck conference in Plymouth. He thought he was also close to pinpointing the third boat, U-19, thought to lie more than 1,000ft down, three miles from the coast of South Georgia. It's one of the least well known stories of the war but one of the most interesting, said Mr Kolay. It is a quite incredible story. To get to the South Atlantic these boats had to avoid Allied shipping in the Atlantic, and once they got there head for the southern polar opening to meet their Agarthan allies. Until the discovery, the Hollow Earth Research Society in Ontario, Canada asserted that Hitler and his Nazi followers were still there. After the war, the organization claimed, the Allies discovered that more than 2,000 scientists from Germany and Italy had vanished, along with almost a million people, to the land beyond the South Pole.

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In 1947, the Palestinian shepherd Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed found in eleven caves near Wadi Qumran the Dead Sea Scrolls comprising c850 documents including texts from the Hebrew Bible. Of great religious and historical significance, they are practically the only known surviving Biblical documents written before AD 100. The State of Palestine used the scrolls as a key bargaining chip in the negotiation of the two states solution in 1982, when the documents were ceremoniously handed to Israeli Chairman Yitzhak Rabin by President Mahmoud Abbas in the Free City of Jerusalem.

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In 1607, the Secret War begins between the two major factions of the Speaker's Line; those who wish to take control of the world's governments in order to fulfill the Speaker's Dream, and those who wish to continue their work without letting those outside the Speaker's Family know of their purpose.

In 1992, promising to get under the hood and fix the engine, Ross Perot announced his intention to run in the 1992 U.S. presidential election on CNN's Larry King Live. When US votes found out the extent of incompetence and waste in Washington, they were simply shocked, and today Perot is recognised as the Father of Small Government in the United States.

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In 1985, the Republic of Ireland knuckles under to pressure from the Catholic Church and kills a measure in Parliament that would have allowed the sale of contraceptives, in spite of a Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that the Irish constitution provided a right to privacy that allowed such sales. Several pharmacies worked outside of the law to provide contraception to at least married couples, and were covertly aided by the government until a conservative backlash placed staunch Catholics in charge in 1990. A very repressive law against any form of birth control passed the Parliament, and provided an impetus for feminists in Ireland to organize and campaign. They were so successful, and tapped such a huge groundswell of support, that they managed to cast out the conservative government in 1992 and finally implement the 20-year old Supreme Court decision.

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In 1969, a world wide catastrophe occurred on the date predicted by anti-pope Michel Collin as the undeclared war between United States, Russia and China in Vietnam escalated into a nuclear exchange.

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In 1494, heretical bishop Johan Friis was born in Denmark. Bishop Friis converted to the Lutheran Church after Pope Henry VIII had Martin Luther executed. Friis was instrumental in spreading the outlawed faith across Denmark, against the laws of the Holy British Empire, and earned Pope Henry's wrath for himself. He was executed for heresy in 1542.

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In 12-10-19-10-7, Inca is hit by a huge earthquake, destroying the city of Talcahuano. Oueztecan Emperor Kanticli declares the great loss of life, numbering in the thousands, to be an imperial emergency, and aid from across the two continents of the empire pours in to help the citizens of Talcahuano.

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Alistair Cook	The Democrats have the man to beat George W Bush said Alistair Cooke in his final Letter from America, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, 20 February, 2004. Cooke pointed to the fateful testimony before the Senate Arms Services Committee of David Kay - the CIA's retired chief weapons inspector. 'We got it all wrong,' he said, finally driving a stake in the heart of the administration's main declared reason for going into Iraq. 'All we found,' said David Kay, 'and are likely to find are the relics of an abandoned chemical warfare arsenal and of a primitive nuclear programme.'
Letter from America

Only one man - a doctor and former governor of Vermont - sensed the rising tide of popular feeling against the war. He galvanised the young and in all the public polls he was way ahead of the other seven. In the actual primaries he was time and again a distant first. This week his main rival joined the other dear departed. Hence the 15 out of 17 primaries lost by the Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, who since the campaign's beginning has sounded an odd and lonely boast: 'George Bush must be driven from the White House and Howard Dean is the man to do it.'

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In 2004, fans of the film series The Lord of the Rings riot in Los Angeles after the film is snubbed by the Oscars, garnering only one nomination for a technical award. Control is restored in the city after the Motion Picture Academy takes the unprecedented step of declaring that The Lord of the Rings will be awarded a special Oscar for 'Artistic Merit'.

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In 1962, Marine Lieutenant John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth died after his spacecraft, Friendship Seven burnt up on entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Glenn, 40 had travelled about 81,000 miles (more than 130,000km) as he circled the globe three times at more than 17,000 mph (27,000kph). Lieutenant Glenn controlled nearly two of the orbits himself after reporting 'minor difficulties' with the automatic altitude control system as he completed the third circuit - the maximum anticipated. Messages from the astronaut were transmitted by radio stations across the United States and United Kingdom and his progress was monitored by 18 ground stations around the world. As he re-entered the atmosphere after his four-hour and 56-minute journey Lieutenant Glenn made his last transmission saying: 'Boy, that was a real fireball.'

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In 1976, the South-east Asia Collective Defense Treaty (SEATO) was disbanded. The defense considered necessary at the signing of the Manilla Pact in 1954 was no longer required. The success of President Douglas MacArthur's Second Pacific War had rendered the organization unnecessary as friendly governments ruled the AsiaPac states by the mid-1970s.

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In 2004, fans of the film series The Lord of the Rings riot in Los Angeles after the film is snubbed by the Oscars, garnering only one nomination for a technical award. Control is restored in the city after the Motion Picture Academy takes the unprecedented step of declaring that The Lord of the Rings will be awarded a special Oscar for 'Artistic Merit'.