And Now For Something Completely Different

August 3rd, 2007

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The Announcement

Reminder! Birthday contest coming up – yours truly, August 14th, and Steve on November 22nd. Give us alternate lives and we'll post your take on how we were really meant to live...

And now, something a little different – haikus based on Lord of the Rings:

The Lord of the Rings
Four hobbits in grave peril
Second breakfast missed

Hobbit wants the ring
Declares himself the Dark Lord
Frodo, nine-fingers

Five races combined
The fellowship of the ring
Doomed to be broken

Hobbits to defend
Warrior is overthrown
Peace, son of Gondor

Where is my precious?
In the darkness, he whispers
Gollum sits alone

Tom Bombadill, Oh!
Happy prankster and saviour
Not in the movie

Forgotten wizard
Servant of the hidden west
Rhadagast the brown

A moth flutters by
Wizard snatches and whispers
Gandalf is rescued

The fires of Mount Doom
A hobbit stumbles backwards
Dark Lord is no more

Thomas Edward Lawrence	"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia [modern day Iraq] 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." ~ Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence in a 1920 newspaper article. The full article is available at Securing America
Arabist

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

In 1975, "they" had eliminated ex-Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa. Having made a payment of half a million dollars to President Richard Nixon and his attorney general, John Mitchell to secure his release from prison in 1971, Hoffa had had his union activities curtailed. Recently, he had been trying to strong-arm his way back in to a position of influence.
Jimmy Hoffa	As part of his comback plan, he had recently threatened to reveal the mob's entanglement with Teamsters pension funds -- even though he himself turned the Central States Pension Fund into the Mafia's private piggy bank. He also wanted to expand the national union agreement to encompass all transport works, placing himself in a position to paralyse America.
The White House organized the execution, naturally turning to their trusted allies, the Tralfamadorians. Kurt Vonnegut had likened the aliens to Plumber's friends. He was quite right. They were real tight with E. Howard Hunt and the White House team. And so it goes.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

We have all the time in the world Time enough for life to unfold All the precious things love has in store We have all the love in the world If that's all we have, you will find We need nothing more
Louise Armstrong	Every step of the way will find us With the cares of the world far behind us We have all the time in the world Just for love Nothing more, nothing less Only love ~ Lyrics to “All the Time in the World” - Click to Play Sample
Satchmo

Heads-up ~ Diana Brackley was a research scientist working for Francis Saxover, a somewhat eccentric private researcher. In 1960, by accident they independently discovered that a specimen of lichen sent to them for analysis had the ability to extend human life by many hundred years. Within months, they had discovered precisely how the lichen extract could substantially retard the aging process, preparing the prototype drug Antigerone. The trouble was that the lichen was in limited supply being a very slow-growing plant which grew in China. Both biochemists saw the implications of this, realising that many institutions would try to repress this knowledge and were careful to keep the substance secret. However Brackley decided that it must eventually become available to all humans and sets up an organisation designed to introduce it by stealth. Unfortunately Saxover decided to let his immediate family in on the secret, and his daughter-in-law gives away part of the secret for money. As a result criminal forces begin to take interest in both Francis and Diana. In The Trouble was Lichen investigative journalist John Wyndam foresaw the coming of a new evolutionary order and with it, a revolution. The TV advertisement for the Antigerone product featured Louis Armstrong's classic “All the Time in the World”. Neither Armstrong nor Wyndham use Antigerone, and by coincidence both died months apart in 1969. The lyrics are available at at Lyricwiki

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

In 1996, Brad Linaweaver published And to the Empire for Which It Stands. In Linaweaver's alternate Rome of 44 BCE, Gaius Julius Caesar survived the ides of march assassination by a group of senators known as the Liberatores (or "Liberators") led by Brutus and Cassius. Having escaped tyrannicide, Caesar announced at the Theater of Pompey that he would after all accept from the Senate the hereditary kingship he had planned to decline. Surpassing the world conquest of Alexander the Greater, the new Emperor built a Roma Eterna that survived twenty glorious centuries. The breakup of the “sick old man of Europe” was deferred until the holocaust of World War I, with the assassination of Procurator Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo – the shot that was heard 'round the world. Ironically, Rome had been agitating for a conflict with the Ottoman and Russian Empires as a means of suppressing nationalist fervour in the Balkans. However, the declaration of war backfired principally because of south-eastern European sympathy for the enemy. Mobilized troops used the opportunity to fan the flames of civil war, creating a patchwork quilt of successor states throughout the Balkans.

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

In 2009, the TV networks presented episode twenty-three of So What If?. The commanders of the Anglo-French forces in America Arthur Wellesley and Napoleon Bonaparte argue how best to set the clock back to 1776.

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

In 1935, Officer John Bruce of the Tank Corps revealed that the recently demised Private Shaw of the Tank Corps Regiment was none other than Colonel T.E. Lawrence, pursuing his ambition to be remembered as "a man of letters, not a man of action" by retreating into obscurity at Bovington Camp.
Clouds Hill Cottage	In early 1920, Lawrence set about the daunting task of rewriting as much as he could remember of the first version which he had allegedly mislaid whilst changing trains at Reading Station. Working from memory alone (he had destroyed his wartime notes upon completion of the corresponding parts of Text I), he was able to complete this "Text II", 400,000 words long, in three months.
Lawrence's Woodland Retreat

Lawrence described this version as "hopelessly bad" in literary terms, but historically it was "substantially complete and accurate". That was a filthy lie. Text II was a substantial rewrite of Lawrence's capture at Deraa in November 1917. ~ entry by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter-history – You're the Judge!

King João II of..	In 1482, a third day dawned at St. George El Mina Castle on the Gulf of Guinea. The military factory was remarkable for being the first precast building to have been planned and executed ever, in or outside Europe. Eleven ships and 700 soldiers commanded by Diogo de Azambuja had brought heavy numerated granite stone blocks ..
.. to Elmina. Azambuja’s men had set up shop and now they opened for business, that being native gold commerce for the Portuguese Crown monopoly. And the passage of twenty million shrieking African souls to the new World.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1995, Richard M. Langworth combined fiction and fact in his publication “If Weygand had lost the Battle of France”. In this somewhat far fetched scenario, the failure of the Weygand Plan causes the General to flee to North Africa with Free ..	General Maxime ..
.. French Forces. Defeated again by Rommel, he then heads south to the Brazzaville. General Maxime Weygand dies in 1965 in his exiled Congolese stronghold, buried under a boulder inscribed, "Founding Father of the movement to uproot Nazidom from the world." His mission, as the book ends, is unfulfilled.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Empress	In 1917, Tsarist representatives at the Paris Peace Conference adopted a blended approach to the concepts of possession and territorial integrity. Whilst Prime Minister Peter Stolypin legitimised the annexation of Galicia and Besserabia to the Russias, the magician Grigory Rasputin was sleeping with the Empress Alexandra ..
.. Fyodorovna at the Elysees regencia hotel. Not that the Tsar was being cuckolded, far from it. Rasputin was sparing his son's life from a terminal blood-related condition known only to the Russian Royal Household.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1989, Greg Bear published his masterful short story Through Road No Whither set in a world where the Allies won World War II. During the occupation of German, British officers insult a gypsy woman when asking for directions, and she arranges for the Allies' retroactive defeat.	Greg Bear
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Fresh Starts

Ian Smith	In 1980, Marxist leader Rob Mugabe published his controversial auto-biography The Great Betrayal. The central event in the memoirs was a decision taken at the dissolution of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation, in which Great Britain abrogated the principle of No Independence Before Majority African Rule. Then Deputy Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Douglas Smith met with Rab Butler, the Foreign Secretary, at Victoria Falls in December 1963. Butler grandly declared that Britain was “very happy to agree” to independence for Southern Rhodesia, at least at the same time as Zambia and Malawi. Smith asked Butler for the undertaking in writing. Butler demurred with: “There is trust between members of the British Commonwealth.” Smith wagged his finger at Butler, and said: “If you break that, you will live to regret it.”
Prime Minister

There was no cause for concern in London or Salisbury, and Smith was being characteristically belligerent. Smith, who became the Prime Minister shortly afterwards, was of Scottish ancestry, and a war hero that had fought bravely for Britain during World War 2. Ian Douglas Smith was born in the village of Selukwe in central Rhodesia, of a Scottish father, Jock, and Rhodesian-born mother, Agnes. He was educated at Chaplin School nearby with moderate academic achievement, captaining the first XV and running the 100 yards in 10 seconds. He began a bachelor of commerce degree at Rhodes University in South Africa in 1938, establishing an impressive academic record and rowing for the university. War broke out in 1939 and in 1941 he joined the RAF Empire Air Training Scheme at Guinea Fowl in central Rhodesia. He was posted to 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron in the Middle East, flying Hawker Hurricanes. Taking off from Alexandria on a dawn patrol in 1943, his throttle malfunctioned, he lost height and clipped the barrel of a Bofors gun. He crashed and rammed his face against the Hurricane’s gunsight. He suffered severe facial injuries, broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder, and buckled his back. Surgeons at the 15th Scottish Hospital in Cairo reconstructed his face and, after only five months, he rejoined his squadron in Corsica. He realised his dream to fly Spitfire Mark IXs, carrying out strafing raids and escorting American bombers. In mid-1944 Smith was leading a raid on a train of fuel tankers in the Po Valley when he made the mistake of going back for a second run. The Spitfire was hit by an anti-aircraft shell, caught fire and he baled out. He was soon picked up by the partisans. The five months he spent with them near Sasello, learning Italian, reading Shakespeare and working as a peasant, he regarded as one of the best times of his life. Near the end of the war, he and three other Allied fugitives made their way through occupied Italy to the Maritime Alps. At one point the conspicuously tall, fair-haired Rhodesian strode unhindered through a German checkpoint. He led his tiny group over the mountains, walking barefoot on ice, until they reached an American patrol on the other side.

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Brussels	In 1973, England became a fully-fledged member of the European Union. Ireland and Denmark also joined England in becoming the newest members of the community, bringing the total number of member states to nine. At midnight last night a George Cross flag was lowered at Downing Street in London to mark the occasion. Celebrations were held in the city and one of Britain's new European Commissioners, George Thomson, joined revellers in a torch lit procession. Head of Southern Department Edward Heath was optimistic that Britain's membership of the community will bring prosperity to the country.
Government HQ

He said: "It is going to be a gradual development and obviously things are not going to happen overnight. "But from the point of view of our everyday lives we will find there is a great cross-fertilisation of knowledge and information, not only in business but in every other sphere. "And this will enable us to be more efficient and more competitive in gaining more markets not only in Europe but in the rest of the world." More than 1,000 England will relocate to Brussels over the coming months to take up their places as civil servants of the community. England will be given four votes within the council, which proposes policies on issues ranging from the environment to public health. Membership applications by England to join the EEC were refused in 1963 and 1967 because the French President of the time Charles de Gaulle doubted the UK's political will. It is understood, however, his real fear was that English would suddenly become the common language of the community.

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Stephen R. Donaldson	In 1968, Stephen Reeder Donaldson arrived in Vietnam. By inclination a conscientious objector, he had been compelled to serve in the armed forces. Much later, and after dropping out of his Ph.D. program and moving to New Jersey in order to write fiction, Donaldson made his publishing debut with the first "Covenant" trilogy in 1977. That enabled him to move to a healthier climate. He now lives in New Mexico. Donaldson's two year compulsory military duty would be the deep undercurrent of his escapist fantasy writing. In “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever”, the protagonist was a leper struggled with disempowerment in a Land he did not really believe in.
Unbeliever

VSE, Mr Covenant. Visual Surveillance of Extremeties. Your health depends on it. Those dead nerves will never grow back – you'll never know when you've hurt yourself unless you get in the habit of checking. Do it all the time – think about it all the time. VSE. Those initials comprised his entired life. ~ “Golden Boy”

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In 2008, Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton was informed that the security of some highly sensitive data had been compromised. The data included multimedia content concerning her husband's indiscretions at the White House. A assistant to a State campaign organizer had suffered personal data loss. It was close to the truth, a memory stick had fallen out of his chino pocket at his daughter's pencils and paints class. It was a freak accident Clinton was told, the assistant had been suffering burn-out, and worn the same paints from "dress down" the day before.

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In 1959, President Fulgencio Batista is overthrown by Fidel Castro's forces during the Cuban Revolution. The United States became increasingly hostile to Cuba during 1959, driving Castro away from the liberal elements of his revolutionary movement and into the arms of Nazi Germany. Just three years later the Nazis would site nuclear weapons less than 100 miles from the United States, leading the World to the brink of Armageddon

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	Clinically proven to substantially retard the aging process, extending human life by many hundreds of years. FDA approved product derived from very slow-growing plant originating in China. Contact either Diana Brackley or Francis Saxover for free consultation. This product will change your life! Watch This Item:

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Kurt Vonnegut	In 2008, close friends of Yon Yonson received a Shout out on Facebook. He was a proud father. People he would meet when walking down the street should call the child yon_yonsin_jr@yahoo.com. Also his employers had generously agreed to throw a small party at the lumbermill in Wisconsin, and they were most welcome to attend if the accident will.
Pacifist

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In 1892, the main port for immigrants entering the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was established on Ellis Island at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbour. Sixteen years before the Statue of Liberty was given to the United States by the Paris based Union Franco-Americaine, standing at Liberty Island in the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbour as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans, inscribed with the message 'Bring me your poor and weak'. Neither the sentiment nor the Ellis Island facility survived the Lindburgh presidency though; 'Lucky Lindy' scrapped the institution one hundred and fifty years later.

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In 1801, the legislative union of Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland is completed to form the United Kingdom. Universally hated by the English, the isolation resulting from the Reformation had simply been too big a setback for them to resist the Union. The English were unable to stand up to the overwhelming power of the Celts and the support they commanded from Catholic Europe, and started to emigrate en mass to the Americas.

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In 1946, Pascal-Edison develops the prototype model for what will become their desktop difference engine. This model, known as Eniac, was never released, but was the template for the eddie that became known as the Univac.

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In 1966, counter-revolutionary reactionaries shut down the New York City subway system in a protest against the New York Soviet’s freezing of subway worker’s wages. Capitalist sympathizer John Lindsay, organizer of the strike, was arrested by Mayor Michael Quill and charged with anti-American activities.

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In 1764, the child prodigy Wolfgang Mozart performed for the Royal Family of King Louis XV in Versailles, France. Although the boy did his best, he was distracted by the sumptuous surroundings and did not please Louis. Discouraged, the boy’s father gave up on his dreams of making the boy Europe’s foremost musician. Mozart went into mathematics after being given his choice of direction in his life, and published many important papers during the early 19th century.

Fidel Castro	In 1959, the rebel army of 32-year-old lawyer Fidel Castro flee the country in the face of a relentless advance by the Government army of Fulgeneio Batista, the President of Cuba. Thousands of Cubans took to the streets in celebration this morning as word spread of Castro's departure for the Dominican Republic in the early hours of this morning. There was a carnival atmosphere as cars cruised through the streets of the capital, Havana, with Cuban flags draped over their bonnets, blowing their horns continuously.
Rebel

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