Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Industrial Action. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Industrial Action. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Raven

Hari SeldonIn 926 Foundation Era, on the Planet Terminus, a vault opened and Hari Seldon emerged. This time, in flesh and blood, not the holograms of the previous eight crises.

His prediction of the eventual fall of the Galactic Empire, and the apocalyptic predictions around that event, was the reason behind his nickname 'Raven' Seldon.

By 20,069 Galactic Era, Seldon had decided that his initial plan was insufficient. He required a panic button.
Hari Seldon - Psychohistorian
Psychohistorian
Biographer Gaal Dornick reported that 'had been working up until his last moments on psychohistorical equations; his activated Prinie Radiant was discovered clutched in hand. According to Seldon’s instructions, the instrument was shipped by his colleague Gaal Dornick who had recently emigrated to Terminus.'

This was a lie, Gaal Dornick brought Hari Seldon's cryogenically frozen body to the periphery of the galaxy, to be activated by the Prinie Radiant nine hundred thirty years later.
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In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the nation for the last time in office, issuing a strange warning.

'We face a hostile ideology [communism] global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method ... [warning about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals] [that] we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by [Ike leans forward for emphasis] the congressional military industrial complex... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.'

Richard M Nixon was seething with angry. Not only had Ike failed to back him during the campaign, not his former boss was trying toreally spoil things for him.
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In 1596, there were so many black people in England that Queen Elizabeth I demanded that they be expelled from the country. An edict from the Queen, at first it brought no action. However it was then followed up by a Royal Proclamation, issued in 1601.
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In 1776, the defeated General George Washington is astonished by the generous final settlement terms being offered to from King George IV at Buckingham Place. Prepared for the humiliation of crushing terms for the vanquished republicans in the Colonies, rather King George IV proposes a genuine partnership for Anglo-America based on local representation and self-governing taxation. 'No victors, no vanquished' chips in his shadowy adviser Ernest Shackleton by way of explanation.
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In 1819, Simón Bolívar proclaims the Republic of Baja California, the predecessor nation to a twenty-first century mega state on the west coast. Today Spanish speaking citizens enjoy the world's highest per capita income and literacy rates.
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In 1942, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. Was born in Louisville, Kentucky on this day. Aged just eighteen, Clay, Jr. won the Gold Medal at the Rome Olympics. Four years later Clay beat Sonny Liston to take the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship. Clay had driven to Sonny's home in Denver at one o'clock in the morning, shouted for Sonny to come out and fight him on the spot, and set up a huge bear trap on the lawn. On March 6 influenced by Malcolm X, Clay changed his name to Muhammed Ali, joined the Nation of Islam and retired from boxing to concentrate on the greater fights that lay ahead for the African American people. His baiting of President Lyndon Baines Johnson from the White House lawn was considered the key to Washington's decision to withdraw from Vietnam in 1967, it was just so annoying. Just like Arthur Ashe, draconian measures would be taken by the Division to prevent Clay giving the game away. He really had the establishment on the ropes.
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In 2232 AUC, the Empire of Mali in Africa declared war on its northern neighbors of Rome. The Republic had been encroaching on Malian territory for decades, and the settlement of a small town on Mali’s eastern border by Romans was the final straw. The war between Mali and Rome lasted almost seventeen years, and killed millions in Africa and Europe.
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In 1775, following the example begun by the witch-hunters of Salem, Polish Christians burn 9 women at the stake in Kalisk. The witch-hunter movement reaches its peak in the 19th century as countries that were simply full of witches were taken over by Christians and put to the torch.
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In 1860, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov. His comedies of manner helped the noble class in Imperial Russia forget the troubles of the day like the crushing poverty of the serfs and the communist agitation of the Americans. His last play, Good Comrade Wilson, was a skewering indictment of the communist system as practiced by America.
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In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower addresses the nation for the last time in office. While his speech begins with time-worn platitudes, he then veers into conspiracy theory, warning Americans of the Military-Industrial Complex and the consequences of its takeover of the country. Just before he starts naming names, though, he suddenly clutches his chest and falls over dead from a heart attack. Most politicians attributed Ike’s remarks to delirium brought on by the heart attack he was obviously suffering from as he began his speech.
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In 1971, British spaceflight Commander's wife Mrs Bert Smith confessed to her sister Betty that she wasn’t sure her Bert would be back tomorrow despite her optimistic statement to reporters. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission had been too much trouble, it really had.
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KennedysA Review of PBS' 'The American Experience: Bobby & Teddy' ~

Tonight, PBS airs the third part of its five-part series on the Kennedy brothers, Bobby and Teddy, and the way they shaped the life of a generation--the tumultuous times that brought President Kennedy to the Oval Office continue to reverberate down to the 2008 election. The first two episodes focused primarily on the family life of the Kennedys, one of the wealthiest and most storied political families in American history.
Kennedys -
The first episode was a masterwork on the emergence of ethnic politics in the early part of the last century, and the rise of the Irish Catholics in Boston, from 'Honey' Fitz to James Curley to Joe Kennedy Sr.'s storied career, culminating in his time serving as the American Ambassador to the Court of Saint James.

The second episode took up the experience of the family during the Second World War. Like any American family, it was marked with tragedy and triumph, the deaths of Joe Jr. and John leaving indelible mark on Bobby and Teddy, the family's youngest sons, as well as their sisters Eunice and Patricia.

The death of their brothers forced father's vast political ambitions to include his daughters, a move some Kennedy biographers have described as proto-feminism; others, noting Joe Sr's ambition, suggest that the post war era leading up to Pat running Bobby's Congressional campaign, and later, her own Senatorial run in California, were just another form of Ma Fergusonism, a way to expand the Kennedy family sweep throughout the country.

The third episode ended on a high note, with Bobby becoming Governor of Massachusetts as Teddy took over his Congressional seat. Nonetheless, the looming shadows of the Nixon Administration were problematic--the simmering crises across the globe, from the wars in Cuba and Vietnam, to flashpoints like Czechoslovakia, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Though as Governor, there was relatively little that Bobby could do, in the lead up to his election, the third episode noted his reaction to the attacks on Freedom Riders and muted disgust at Nixon's refusal to meet with the leaders of the Civil Rights' Movement during the March on Washington--an action that galvanized Bobby's idealism, while Patricia saw an opportunity to capture the black vote and propel Bobby to the White House at the end of Nixon's second term in 1968.

Tonight's episode promises new revelations regarding the conduct of both the Kennedys and Nixon during the 1968 election. Numerous books have been written alleging dirty tricks on both sides--Patricia mobilized the ethnic machines to their fullest, as well as achieving a mass registration drive of black voters--while Nixon, in full flights of paranoid fantasy, hoped to use the power of the federal government to smash 'that damned Catholic choir boy.'

The final two episodes will focus on the first and second terms of the Kennedy Administration, with a wildly expanded access to documents, staffers, and family members to create an in-depth psychological profile of the President, his Attorney General, and the Supreme Court Justices he appointed....
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Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Wrong

CommunistIn 1812, the communist traitor Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England.

Under the code-name 'Boz', Dickens was an agitator for revolutionary change in Victorian society. On 9 June 1865 Boz orchestrated the Staplehurst rail crash, a disaster within a disaster. The first seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast iron bridge that was being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling, disguised as a bourgeous author returning from France.
Communist - Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
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In 1969, the original Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse is removed from service as engineers seek to cease the vortex caused by the multi-dimensional forces unleashed by the 100,000 KVA facility.
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In 1962, the United States Government bans all Cuban imports and exports in protest at the alliance with Nazi Germany.
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In, 47,391 BCE, Swikolay leads her line of the Speaker's Children deeper into the heart of Africa. She wants to study how birds fly and see if her children can mimic them. She feels her age creeping up on her, and knows that she will not see them touch the sky, but trusts that they will fulfill Telka's dream even without her.
In 1992, Harry Turtledove published the counter-history novel Guns of October, in which he posed the Cuban question - what if the United States had equal capability, preventing the Nazis from arming the island with nuclear weapons?
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Stephen R. DonaldsonIn 1968, Stephen Reeder Donaldson languished 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.
Stephen R. Donaldson - Unbeliever
Unbeliever
Baradkas swung his rod and lofted it towards the Unbeliever. He jerked aside and clutched at the lomillialor with his right hand. But he did not have enough fingers to get a quick grip on it; it slipped away from him, dropped to the floor with a wooden click that seemed unnaturally loud in the hush of the chamber. For an instant, everyone remained still, frozen, whilst they absorbed the meaning of what they had seen. Then, in unison, the Heers uttered their verdict with all the finality of a death sentence. 'The High Wood rejects him. He is a wrong in the Land. ~ Jehannum.
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In 4616, industrialist An Wang was born in Tangshan, Hebei Province. He provided the leadership and knowledge that drove much of the Chinese Empire's electronics industry over his lifetime. Once the rest of the world caught up to his innovations, though, he fell behind, and his later years were spent in more obscurity than he wanted.
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Black SeaIn 1945, talks at the Black Sea finalised plans drawn up by London, Washington and Moscow for the final phase of the war against Germany.

Leaders of the three countries, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D Roosevelt and Marshal Joseph Stalin, met at a secret location in the Black Sea area. A statement issued this evening was the first official confirmation of the talks which are said to have begun three days ago. They were there to discuss the future of Europe now that the end of the war was assured.
Black Sea - Yalta Conference
Yalta Conference
Trouble was a paralell set of discussions were proceeding on the Rhine under which the forces of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel would be used by Anglo-America to launch a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union.
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Ted HeathIn 1974, British Prime Minister Edward Heath called a snap general election and appealed to miners to suspend their planned strike action during the three-week campaign.

After no sign of a breakthrough in talks with the National Union of Mineworkers this week, he had decided call to an election and let the voters decide who governs the country. In a speech broadcast this evening Mr Heath said the government would continue to try to reach a solution to the miners' dispute during the election campaign. But he said the country was fed up with industrial action and he called on people to use their vote to show the miners how they felt.'
Ted Heath - Prime Minister
Prime Minister
The executors of the Plot Against British Prime Minister Ted Heath advanced their plans accordingly. Heath remained bitter over his defeat and was persistent in his criticisms of the party's new ideological direction for many years. He never forgave Margaret Thatcher for her role in the coup and would refer to her as 'That woman'.
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In 1992, with the signing of the Treaty of Maastrict, ministers from the 12 countries in the European Community take another step towards political and economic union which occured a decade later.
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CollapseIn 1987, South Korean police made hundreds of arrests in the country's biggest demonstrations for six years.

Rallies went ahead across the country to commemorate the recent death in custody of student Park Chong-choi, in spite of yesterday's warnings by President Chun Doo Hwan. Mr Park, 21, a linguistics student at Seoul National University suffocated during police interrogation for alleged pro-communist activities on 14 January. The ruling Democratic Justice Party claimed dissidents were using the memorial services as an excuse for violent and illegal political rallies.'
Collapse - South Korea
South Korea
Western democracies watched in horror as the domino theory played out with the loss of China, then South Vietnam and now South Korea. Eisenhower vocalized the theory during an April 7, 1954 news conference:

Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the 'falling domino' principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.
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In 2017, the Homeless fashion trend scandalises the Western World. Absence of shaving, increasingly casual clothes, lack of manners and universal youthful degeneracy had been tolerated to that point, but now superstars could not be distinguished from tramps.
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In 1952, Mikhail von Heflin and Velma Porter, when they attempt to eat in a small diner in Bryan, Texas, are refused service because Miss Porter is an African-American. The Baron has little use for a restriction like that, and Toledo's, the steakhouse that refused them service, is burned to the ground that night.




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