John Paul I

The state of TIAH

August 26th, 2006

Alternate Historian's Note: Today's post is from Guest Historian Tom Oliver, whose format will break from our normal one, as you'll see below. Our thanks to Tom for giving us the day off, and if you would like to do the same, just email me.

Italian Cardinal Albino Luciani, 65, was elevated to the papacy as John Paul. Though in sickbed for weeks with a highly mysterious ailment, following just a month of being pope, he made a 'miraculous' recovery. Though perceived as an intellectual lightweight and 'out-of-his-league' by critics in his first month of his papacy, his brush with death (due to circumstances never fully explained) changed such perceptions. He was one of the longest-serving popes in modern history, dying at the ripe old age of 93, in 2006. He outlived the man he had mistakenly predicted would be pope some day, the conservative Pole, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla.

John Paul was a hugely popular pope with the masses; unpretentious, and a moderate in terms of theology. There was great consternation among conservative elements in the Church when the pope allowed for certain types and uses of contraception. The public cheered him for allowing the Italian police authorities access to information related to the Vatican Bank and its murky relations to the Banco Ambrosiano, data which led to the huge scandal that rocked the Italian government and financial elites for a decade (and led to the disgracing of a media magnate, Berlusconi, for his attempts to protect friends with biased reporting in all his media outlets.)

John Paul was far from popular with many conservative Americans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, such as President Ronald Reagan; the pope's improving of Church ties to the Soviet Union, and dismissal of many pro-US clergy, seemed to conservatives to be prolonging the Cold War and strengthening the USSR's diplomatic position on the global stage. When John Paul made a public pronouncement against the installation of US Pershing II missiles in West Europe, US and Vatican relations soured for decades (though the US is rumored to have stealthily installed them anyway). The Holy Father's stance towards the Russians was seen as lacking in moral clarity vis a vis which side in the Cold War was more committed to true human freedom – it was 'moral equivocationism', in the words of then Vice President George H.W. Bush, in 1983. The pope was given high marks by most Balkan experts across the political spectrum for his calming, 'non-partisan' pronouncements regarding the possible breakup of Yugoslavia after Marshal Tito's death in 1980 (a breakup which never occurred, ethnic aspirations being assuaged with strongly autonomous ethnic republics that remained within a loose federation.) However, John Paul was criticized for not speaking out against a robust yet ostensibly 'humanitarian' Soviet intervention in 1987 that prevented land-grabbing, 'score-settling', or population-removal attempts, albeit with a marked favoring of the Orthodox Serb (fellow Slav) brethren of the Russians. (This intervention continues to this day; the Russians accuse the US of arming Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, and Kosovo Albanian independence movements that wage armed struggle against the Soviet 'peacekeepers'.)

Though the dream of many neoconservatives, in the successive two-term Reagan, Bush, and Dole administrations, of regime change in Moscow has yet to be realized (as of 2006), most liberals dismiss any conservative carping about the significance of John Paul's "not standing up to the Communists". Many liberals either believe in the moral equivalency promulgated by John Paul, or at least the non-confrontational approach he took toward the Soviets, or feel that the political importance of the Vatican in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries was highly exaggerated by the neocons.

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Raging

The Violent yet peaceful death of Marvin Lee Aday Part VI ~ Sgt. Davis, of the Dallas Police Department prepared the most stringent security precautions in Dallas' history, so that the demonstrations like those marking the Adlai Stevenson visit in October would not happen again. But Winston Lawson of the Secret Service, who was in charge of the planning, told the Dallas Police not to assign its usual squad of experienced homicide detectives to follow immediately behind the President's car. This police protection was routine for both visiting presidents and for motorcades of other visiting dignitaries. Police Chief Jesse Curry later testified that had his men been in place, the Incident might have been prevented, because they carried submachine guns and rifles to take out any attackers, or at least they might have been able to stop Oswald before he left the building. In the long years that followed, Orvis Wesley Aday had pondered much on this decision. Spoke to hundreds of people in the bars of Dallas. Often late at night when such conversations flow more freely. With tongues loosened by alcohol. Got drunk, blind drunk. His son Marvin and his mother Wilma Artie (Hukel) would drive around to all the bars in Dallas, looking for him to take him home. Hated himself. Hated them.

In 2010, climatic changes around the globe forced CIRCLE (the Center of International Research for the Continuance of Life on Earth), to redefine Category 6 of the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Much like the Richter scale for earthquakes, this potential measure give officials and the public an idea of what to expect from an approaching hurricane. The scale is named after Herbert Saffir, a consulting engineer in Coral Gables, Fla., and Robert Simpson, who was director of the National Hurricane Center from 1967 through 1973. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is a scale classifying most Western Hemisphere tropical cyclones that exceed the intensities of "tropical depressions" and "tropical storms", and thereby become hurricanes.

Satellite Photo of Raga Storm

The categories into which the scale divides hurricanes are distinguished by the intensities of their respective sustained winds. The classifications are intended primarily for use in measuring the potential damage and flooding a hurricane will cause upon landfall. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is used only to describe hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean and northern Pacific Ocean east of the International Date Line. Other areas label their tropical cyclones as "cyclones" and "typhoons", and use their own classification scales. Proposals for a Category 6 tropical cyclone were not redefined until 2010. Previously, experts such as Robert Simpson, advised that there was no reason for a Category 6 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale because it is designed to measure the potential damage of the speed of the hurricane above 250 km/h (156 mph). Historian A.A. Attanasio recorded the early work of the self-sufficient scientific community on the southern Peruvian coast known as CIRCLE which operated from 2009 until its causal collapse in 2113. CIRCLE was established to find ways to compensate for the massive morphological changes that began as the earth swung into "Line". The Line was defined as a hypertube; the timelike geodesies which connect the spacefree internal domain of a naked Kerr-singularity (a rotating black hole that is "open" to our universe). CIRCLE mantics first identified the ray of metafrequency energy jetstreaming from the massive black hole at the galactic hub as the Line; earth migrated into the flux of the Line fully in 2113, though the transmuting effects of this atypical energy had been altering the planet for over a century. The collapse of CIRCLE marked the end of the "Kro" culture. Instead the human societies that followed termed a Category 6 hurrician as a "Raga Storm". The use of a term instead of a category is of course indicative of the failure attempt to prescribe solutions to radically altered global environment. It was an acceptance of a new reality.

In 1976, executives of the ABC TV network channel agreed to cancel the planned broadcast of Roots, a television miniseries based on Haley's work Roots: The Saga of an American Family which was due to run in less than eight weeks. To desensitise the issue, the executives had consulted with professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University. Dr. Gates acknowledged the doubts about Haley's claims with regard to “Roots”, saying, "Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship.”

Molotov and Rib..	In 1945, on this day at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice began the Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal. The leadership of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact was prosecuted by Allied military justices. Although officially labelled a "non-aggression treaty", the pact included a secret protocol, in which the independent countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania were divided into spheres of interest of the parties. The secret protocol explicitly assumed "territorial and political rearrangements" in the areas of these countries.
Subsequently all the mentioned countries were invaded, occupied or forced to cede part of their territory by either the Soviet Union, Germany, or both. All of the signatories of the pact were sentenced to death and hung within twelve months. Both Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop dismissed the verdict as victor's justice.

In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful sequel "What if Clinton was watching a football game?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario of October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the south lawn, thinking that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing there. In Burns plot Clinton was in the White House Residence watching a football game; no one was hurt and Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.	Clinton

Snakeyes	In 1963, in the early evening, the strange being known as Snake eyes stood outside a Dallas rooming house owned by Ruth Paine. He knocked on the door, and spoke briefly with a former US Marine who had lodged there for a fortnight only. The following day, the man was to ask a co-worker for a ride to Irving, saying he had to pick up some curtain rods. His teachers would have been astounded to see the calm acquiescence of a character who had been withdrawn and temperamental since early childhood. Those teachers had described a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies" and recommended continued psychiatric intervention. You could say that continued psychiatric intervention had been applied; Snake eyes was utilising an advanced form of mind control known to only a dozen people in the United States; eleven of them were in Dallas.

In 1947, the bond between the British Empire and Imperial Germany strengthens when Princess Elizabeth married Louis Ferdinand Hohenzollern, Prince of Prussia at Westminster Abbey in London.

Elizabeth

The Wrath Of Wellington

July 17th, 2007

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The Announcement

Apologies From The Alternate Historian: sorry about missing yesterday's post, and many thanks to Steve for stepping up. Pets – they can be a source of great joy and great frustration, if you know what I mean. Much like children, except you can't depend on them to care for you in your frail old age.
Come to think of it, you can't really depend on your children to do that, either... Anyway, on with our regularly scheduled TIAH!

Marvin looked at her a little non-plussed. “So, it's probably just an automatic thing, right? I mean, you send something like that out here, naturally you want it to signal back home if it finds something important.”
“Right,” she said, walking with him over to the food table and lowering her voice so the others wouldn't hear. “My whole team thinks it's just an automatic signal, triggered by the radio waves we've been hitting the probe with. They figure that if the thing can still send a signal forward after this long, then of course it's got the power to send a signal home, to all its long-dead builders, letting them know it found somebody else.” She made sure the reporter and the cameraman were occupied, which they were – they were interviewing Monica. “But, what if the builders aren't long-dead, Marv?”
“Three million years is a long time, Andi.”
She dipped a celery stick into some ranch dressing and munched it. “That could be a wrong figure.”
“I thought you all agreed that was how long it took to get here from that Wolf place.”
She nodded. “Based on its current speed and trajectory. But, what if it slowed down once it approached our system? I mean, it's barely going mach 3 right now, and that's awful slow. Our probes are all traveling in excess of 15000 miles an hour. In 3 million years they'll have traveled ten times the distance this thing has. The probe's been in our system for years, and we only just noticed it because it suddenly turned on its radio.”
“Look, Andi,” Marvin said, rubbing her shoulder. “Even if its only been a few thousand years instead of a few million, it's not like this is gonna be Independence Day, right?” He smiled broadly, and she returned the smile. “You're a hard-nosed scientist. Remember when we had that argument after we saw War of the Worlds? Alien invasion just doesn't make sense.”
“If you're that advanced, you can just repair the planet you're on,” she said, quoting herself. “You're right. Sorry, Marv. I'll try to let go of all the shop talk.”
“Well, don't let it go too much,” Marvin said, pointing at the reporter. “Don't want him to get itching for something else to say about you.”

"Eddie"	"White man came across the sea Brought us pain and misery We killed his tribes we killed his creed Took his game for our own need We fought him hard we fought him well Out on the plains we gave him hell ~ Lyrics to Run to the Hills (Click Note to Play Video)
Iron Maiden Icon

British Heavy Metal band playing live on their "Eddie Rips the Long House" 2005 Tour of the Inter-tribal states on the Turtle Island. Ironically, members of the band were rebellious Etonians who had studied at the same school as the leaders of the failed imperial adventure to conquer America. The full lyrics are available at Dark World

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

Salisbury	"The Civil War was the last chance we [Great Britain] had of stopping them [the United States]." ~ Marquis of Salisbury
Prime Minister

Speaking in 1898 of the British Century to come by justifying British intervention on behalf of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. A widespread consensus of Victorian politicians agreed that a resurgent Britain would not have been possible if the Union had been permitted to defeat the South, creating a world hyper-power in North America. The history of this period is masterfully explored by Amanda Foreman in her classic opus The Trent Incident Leads to War which is available at Uchronia

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

In 2007, A. Breeg wrote ~ I feel that my search is now over. The person who contacted me from Romania has finally met me. Only now, eleven months later can I find the words to describe our meeting. And the contents of the journal. Finally I was given the answers I sought regarding my cousin Benjamin Breeg. I can hardly contain myself at the thought of sharing them..

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the genius of Iron Maiden's "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg".

In 2009, TV networks ran episode eight of So What If?. General Augustus Pinochet refused to handover his friend Margaret Thatcher to face trial for war-crimes in Britain, isolating Chile within the Organisation of American States. Pleading ill-health, the Iron Lady died in exile in Santiago. Her son Mark returned to Britain to organise a counter-coup with Simon Mann and other mercenaries drawn from Old Etonians.

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

In 1967, British Minister of War Dennis Healey announced a decision to increase British troop levels in Singapore and Malaysia. East of Suez was a term used in British military and political discussions. It referred to Imperial interests beyond the European theatre (sometimes including, sometime excluding the Middle East). Strategically the empire military infrastructure was based upon sea lanes of communication through the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal and round the Cape to India and on to East Asia and Australia. With the post-war struggle to prevent a retreat from empire, starting with the Indian Emergency(1947), a gradual build up of the military presence "east of Suez" started. In 1967, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Minister of War Denis Healey announced that British troops in major military bases in South East Asia (primarily in Malaysia, Singapore, and Aden) would be doubled by 1971. Edward Heath's government decided when it came to power in June 1970 to send further forces to augment a small political and military commitment to South East Asia through the Five Power Defence Arrangements.

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

In 1916, the Battle of the Somme headed towards an apocalyptic stalemate.
Battle of the Somme	The background was thus; Winston Churchill had struck a tremendous blow for the Allies with his stunning victory at the Battle of Gallipoli, achieved with the use of staggering quantities of gas which were released by the British Navy to overcome the Turkish defenders.
Promoted from the Admiralty to the position of Minister of War, when the French mutinied at Verdun, Churchill convinced the Cabinet to authorise a similar attack, Gallipoli on Land. Reluctance and xenophobia was widespread, after all, they would be releasing the gas at fellow Europeans, not the Turk who had stolen Constantinople from Christendom and threatened Western Civilization. German humanist sympathisers in the British Government warned the German High Command who prepared troops by supplying huge stocks of gas masks. However, the gas release was bungled, rendering the region of Picardie uninhabitable for twenty years.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1918, by order of the Bolshevik Party and carried out by Cheka, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his immediate family, and retainers were murdered at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia. By feigning death, Princess Anastasia escaped to Paris where provided a detailed report of the tragedy. The western world was horrified ..	Romanovs
.. by a whole nest of vampires draining the Russian Royal Family of their blue blood in an act of indescribable violence. Calls for the War of Intervention in Russia started immediately. By cruel irony, the White Forces were soon dispatched to the city port of Arcangel.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Montreal 76	In 1976, controversy marked the Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada when a Congolese-led block of 25 African nations boycotted the opening ceremony. In protest at a tour of South Africa by the All Blacks team earlier in the year, Congo's official Jean Claude Ganga led demands that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ..
.. bar the New Zealand team. The IOC was unable to resist the logic of these demands, and the New Zealand team departed the next day. The Commonwealth Games planned for Edmonton in 1978 were cancelled completely to the disgust of the provincial government which had planned for the event for many years and was seriously out of pocket.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1815, Napoleon surrendered to British forces at Windsor, Ontario. The contribution of New France to the North American conflict was over, as was the statehood of the Francophone nation.
The United States faced the wrath of Duke Arthur Wellesley alone, as Wellington turned the clock back to 1776.	Napoleon Bonaparte
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Noise

Martian	In 1924, the Royal Greenwich Observatory briefly began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the 'BBC pips'. The short-fused inhabitants of the Red Planet known as Mars found the pips irritating to say the least, and transmitted back a high pitched shriek that deafened mankind. You just need a firm hand when dealing with noisy neighbours.
Noise Control

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Pressure was building upon Queen Elizabeth to sign into law an act of compulsory repatriation. Ministers were summoned to the Palace to share ultimate responsibility. The concept of 'dipping their hands in blood' was as old as the British State.

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In 1811, owing to the utter incompetence of the Prince of Wales, Parliament named Prime Minister Spencer Perceval as Lord Protector because King George III had gone mad. After George III's death, the Lord Protector simply continued to rule England, and the princes and princesses of the realm no longer ascended to the throne.

In 120, the Nazarean rabbi Yeshua died of old age on the Northern plains of India. Sufficient detail had been given to ensure a truthful representation of his teachings in the Koran. Not so the synaptic Gospels, but then again it was understandable. He had left Judea in great haste of course.

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	In 2004, Economic Hit Man John Perkins died in an automobile accident. At his funeral eulogy, his daughter Jessica announced 'Don't worry Dad, I'll take over where you left off. We need to do this for the grandchildren I hope to give you some day'. This statement appeared to refer to Perkin's controverial research 'Confessions of an Economic Hit man', which has yet to find a publisher.

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In 2003, Soviet troops storm Seattle as ships bombard it from offshore. By the end of the day, all the People's Republic of America troops inside the city are ready to surrender, and they turn the city over to the victorious Soviet States of America. The entire soviet of Washington soon follows, and the die appears to be cast for the P.R.A.

In 1962, French President Charles De Gaulle calls for allowing Algeria to be an independent nation. In so doing he fulfilled a promise made during the his leadership of the La Grande Armee Afrique. Later that year De Gaulle was assassinated by the settler Organisation armee secrete terrorist group who then made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI).

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In 1971, crew members of the of the Apollo 14 Mission Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell aboard LM, Antares land on the Moon at Fra Mauro formation. By the end of the year both would be held at the Atlanta Plague Center, suspected carriers of a virulent space bug.

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In 1958, the Tybee Hydrogen Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. By a perverse twist of fate, it would detonate at the height of the Cuban Missiles Crisis, spooking the trigger-happy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Curtis 'Bombs Away' LeMay into believing that America was under attack. The cool head of President Joseph P Kennedy was required to question why Georgia should be the chosen target for a Cuban nuclear launch. A serial womaniser and prohibition profiteer, Joe was an old hand at self-preservation by avoiding unnecessary fights.

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Sir Freddie Laker	In 1982, last minute invention from the UK Government stopped pioneering budget airliner Laker Airways collapsing with debts of GBP 270 million to banks and other creditors. The government had taken a keen interest in the fortunes of Laker - Mrs Thatcher was a personal admirer of Sir Freddie - and following a four hour meeting at Gatwick, the Department of Trade confirmed there would after all be state assistance. Sir Freddie Laker had invested an extra GBP 60m in an attempt to rescue the airline. Insolvency would have been a major embarrassment for the Civil Aviation Authority.
Pioneer

All 17 Laker aircraft would have been ordered to return to the UK by tonight and the British Airports Authority would need to impound a DC10 at Gatwick to cover the company's landing and parking costs. Stranded passengers - numbering 6,000 - would have the return half of their tickets honoured by British Airways, Pan American Airways, Air Florida and British Caledonian. The receiver Bill Mackey, partner of Ernst and Whinney, told the media: 'There was no way that Sir Freddie Laker can carry on with this business in its present form. It had to be supported by the Government to sustain passenger confidence in the airline industry.'

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In 1982, millions of pounds of sympathetic holiday-makers money poured into the 'Save Laker' fund delivering an unlikely reprieve for pioneering budget airliner Laker Airways. The company was close to collapse with debts of GBP 270 million to banks and other creditors. Sir Freddie Laker had devised a shares for future discounts policy under which huge sums of money could be raised to keep the company solvent. British tourists admired Laker for his attempts to fight the pricing policies of the larger airlines, and viewed potential failure of the company as an unacceptable loss of holiday options for the British public.

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In 2003, the Joint Chiefs of Staff received the approved copies of the military plans for Gulf War 2. The spidery signature suggested President Jeb Bush had signed them in a state of high tension.

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