Seeds

In 2013, the City of Mississauga reported a dramatic fall in vehicular mansalughter. Put simply, drivers were notorious for ignoring white lights permitting pedestrians to cross. Corners were taken very quickly after light changes in order to beat oncoming traffic. Also by “beating the lights” drivers chose not to decelerate if they did not see pedestrians actually crossing, even if they were approaching the kerbside. Both of these scenarios had caused a large number of accidents for immigrants who thought that the white light might it was safe for pedestrians to cross. The rising population of immigrations caused the Department of Transport to take action, and they turned to telegram technology as a draconian measure. Images of children were picted just after light changes. This huge rise in virtual deaths led to widespread traffic calming. And not a few fender benders, which insurance companies recovered from increased premiums.

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In 1905, the Japanese attack on Port Arthur is frustrated by the arrival of Russian reinforcements. At one stage it looked as if the Tsar would be humiliated by defeat, but after Port Arthur, the Russo-Japanese war drifted into a stalemate.

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In 1979, punk rocker Sid Vicious goes on trial for the murder of his girlfriend/manager, Nancy Spungen. Vicious attempts suicide several times during the trial process, until he is finally placed into custody and put under a suicide watch. He is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. He was paroled in 2002, a shell of his former self.

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In 1727, James Wolfe was born, a British general remembered mainly for his role in establishing British rule in Canada. By 1942, British rule only existed in Canada, with the British Government in Exile, headed by Lord Halifax unexpected guests of the Governor General at his residence in Rideau Hall, Ottawa.

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Stephen R. Donaldson	In 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.
Unbeliever

She came out of the store just in time to see her young son playing on the sidewalk directly in the path of the gray, gaunt man who strode down the center of the walk like a mechanical derelict. For an instant, her heart quailed. Then she jumped forward, gripped her son by the arm, snatched him out of harm's way. The man went by without turning his head. As his back moved away from her, she hissed at it, "Go away! Get out of here! You ought to be ashamed!" Thomas Covenant's stride went on, as unfaltering as clockwork that had been wound to the hilt for just this purpose. But to himself he responded, Ashamed? Ashamed? His face contorted in a wild grimace. Beware! Outcase unclean! ~“Golden Boy”

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In 1727, James Wolfe was born on this day in Westerham, Kent, England, the eldest son of Colonel Edward Wolfe and the former Henrietta Thompson. Around 1738, the family moved to Greenwich, in London.

From his earliest years Wolfe was destined for a military career, entering his father's marine regiment at the age of 13. No other British Officer in North America was to achieve Wolfe's level of disreputation, following his decision on September 13th to destroy the city of Quebec after the winter threatened to overtake the besieging British red coats.

In Wolfe's own condemnatory words, he said “I propose to set the town on fire with shells, to destroy the harvest, houses and cattle, both above and below, to send off as many Canadians as possible to Europe and to leave famine and desolation behind me; but we must teach these scoundrels to make war in a more gentleman like manner."

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In 870, the infidel rulers Ferdinand and Isabella fall to the righteous forces of Caliph Boabdil. Allah saw fit to give the Moors control of Espagne, and from there, a foothold on the rest of Europe, so that His word might reach the poor northerners who had not heard Its beauty.

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In 1903, after appointing a black postmistress to the post office in Indianola, Mississippi, President Roosevelt sent reinforcements along with her to ensure that she would be able to do her job. Roosevelt’s commitment to the civil rights of the African-American population of America gave him a hitherto unmeasured degree of support in the south. His Civil Rights Act of 1904, ensuring the voting rights of blacks across America, is credited with landing him his unprecedented 3rd term of office in the election of 1908.

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In 1960, Senator Joe Kennedy, Jr. threw his hat in the ring for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Kennedy’s inspiring tale of recovery from injuries suffered in a horrific plane crash during World War II made him a natural choice, and he won the nomination handily. He had a little more difficulty defeating Vice President Nixon in the general election, but squeaked by with a margin of half a million votes.

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In 1920, Исаак Озимов was born on this day in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR. Isaac Asimov as he is more commonly known in the West is generally considered by many as the father of Psychohistory. During the 1940s, Asimov's research determined that the House of Romanov was in terminal decline. Without intervention, the Tsarist Empire would soon fall giving way to a barbaric interregnum of one hundred years before a Second Empire would arise. He concluded that it was too late to prevent the fall of the House of the Romanov. Secretly, Asimov put in place the Asimov Plan to reduce this interregnum to as little as a decade, by setting up Foundations within continental Russia.

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StrawBerry	In early 1999, Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) released the first StrawBerry, using the same hardware as the Inter@ctive pager 950, and running on the Mobitex network. Today the device supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services. RIM settled on the name "StrawBerry" only after weeks of work by Lexicon Branding Inc., the Sausalito, California-based firm that named Intel Corp.'s Pentium microprocessor and Apple's PowerBook. One of the naming experts at Lexicon thought the miniature buttons on RIM's product looked "like the tiny seeds in a strawberry," Lexicon founder David Placek says. "A linguist at the firm thought straw was too slow sounding. Someone else suggested blackberry. RIM went for strawberry."
Revolution

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In 1958, the following notice was published ~ with due respect to sworn testimony of God-fearing citizens, -
Mr Paul Adolph Volcker is found guilty as charged of usury,-
by magistrates of this good parish of Cape May, New Jersey, -
persuant to Holy Scripture, Mark 8:36 refers, -
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?,-
on this day of our Lord, 1958. Not the potter, but the potter's clay. Amen.

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The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

July 9th, 2007

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The Announcement

Placeholder for the AH's entry: Little difficulty getting up this morning – here's Steve's entries for the day, and mine will be up tonight.

Erich von Manstein	"Preussische Feldmarschälle meutern nicht (Prussian Field Marshals do not mutiny.) " ~ Frequent saying, repeated weeks before he shot Hitler.
Generalfeldmarschall

Von Manstein argued with Hitler about overall strategy on the Eastern Front, advocating an elastic, mobile defense. He was prepared to cede territory, attempting to make the Soviet forces either stretch out too thinly or to make them advance too fast so that they could be attacked on the flanks with the goal of encircling them. Hitler ignored Manstein's advice and continued to insist on static warfare. Because of these frequent disagreements, von Manstein publicly advocated that Hitler relinquish control and leave the management of the war to professionals, starting with the establishment of the position of commander-in-chief in the East (Oberbefehlshaber Ost). Hitler, however, rejected this idea numerous times, fearing that it would weaken his hold on power. On 19th February 1943 at Zaparozhe, German-occuped USSR Hitler made repeated anti-semitic references to Manstein during a military conference calling him a coward in front of Generals Keitel and Jodl, provoking the Generalfeldmarschall into shooting him dead. Quickly assuming the leadership mantle, Manstein said ”First, we must dispose of the carrion here, then devise a story to account for it in suitably heroic style..I see no reasonable hope of us winning the present campaign, let us make sure we do not lose it”. The full story of how Manstein fought the Russians to a stalemate in the East, and then repelled Allied invasions in France and Italy is described by the journalist Harry Turtledove in his masterpiece Ready for the Fatherland. A synopsis of Manstein's differences with Hitler are described at Wikipedia

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

In 1999, the networks ran the final instalment of TSEotTC. In great secrecy Rosemary's blessed baby was born in Manhattan shortly before the antipope's first visit to New York City during 1966. Across the world, the great day of Lord God the Almighty was awaited with joy and fear in equal measure.

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

In 1961, a verdict was reached in the trial of Juanita Jones for the murder of American Soul and R&B singer Jackie Wilson. Although married to Frida Hood since 1951, Wilson was a notorious womanizer and was allegedly shot dead by one of his alleged lovers, Juanita Jones, on February 15, 1961, in a jealous rage as he returned to his apartment with another woman, fashion model Harlean Harris, an ex-girlfriend of singer Sam Cooke. In order to protect his reputation, his management concocted a story that Jones was an obsessed fan who threatened to shoot herself, and that Wilson's intervention concluded in his being shot. Astonishingly, the story was accepted, and Jones was acquited.

~ entry from Co-Historian Steve Payne: extensive use of Wikipedia content has been made to modify the outcome of the event.

Huey Long	"Every man a king, but no one wears a crown" ~ The Kingfish, weeks before his assassination.
Populist

Huey Long was shot on September 8, 1935, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge; he died two days later at the age of 42. His last words were reportedly, "God, don't let me die. I have so much to do." Two months prior to his death, in July 1935, Long uncovered a plot to assassinate him, which had been discussed in a meeting at New Orleans’s DeSoto Hotel. Four U.S. representatives, Mayor Walmsley, and former governors Parker and Sanders had been present. Long read what he claimed was a transcript of a recording of this meeting on the floor of the Senate. Long had called for a third special session of the Louisiana State Legislature to begin in September 1935, and he traveled from Washington to Baton Rouge to oversee its progress. “Patsy” Carl Austin Weiss attempted to punch Long in the Capitol building at Baton Rouge. Weiss was immediately shot some thirty times by Long's bodyguards and police on the scene, and a bullet from one of the bodyguards hit Long as intended. A synopsis of Huey Long's assassination is described at Wikipedia

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

In 2010, multiple airline crashes occur in Alaska, Northern Russia and Scandinavia as the vibrations of the Aftershock disrupted electrical-mechanical devices in the upper region of the Northern Hemisphere. The Head of HARC, Physicist Mike Ryder informs the US military that added solar excitement will catastrophically amplify the vibration, destroying civilization in North America. Due to the twenty-hour daylight period of Alaska, HARC must be shut down before sunrise at 1:00am.

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

De Valera	In 1942, on the Irish Isles further reports from subversive underground newspapers in Southern England continue to fuel “the Troubles” with the Dublin Government. Today's mischief was the headline “1533 and all that” attributed to Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. His response to Churchill's call to action ( “Something ..
.. must be done”) was to say “The English must now move forward from 1533 and stop arguing about the past”. A truthful, but perhaps unhelpful reference to Henry VIII precipitous action to launch the Reformation, the event which triggered the collapse of English power.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1959, Richard Condon published a semi-fictional novel “The Massachusetts Candidate”, later adapted into films in 1962 and 2004. Ensign Bryant L. Larson, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) John F. Kennedy and the crew of PT109 are captured near New Georgia in the Solomon Islands when they are rammed by the Japanese destroyer ..	Massachusetts C..
.. Amagiri. They are all brainwashed into believing Kennedy saved their lives in combat, for which he receives the Medal of Honour when they return to the US. After the war is over, Larson begins to have a recurring nightmare in which Kennedy kills two of his comrades. When he learns that another platoon member has been having the same dream, he sets out to uncover the mystery. The Communists intend to use Kennedy as a sleeper agent and, using the queen of diamonds in a deck of playing cards as a subconscious trigger, compel him to follow their orders, which he doesn't remember afterwards. Kennedy is controlled by none other than his own domineering father, Joseph P. Kennedy who is working with the Communists in a plot to overthrow the government.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Queen Victoria	In 2999, the mind cast for the fifth instalment of “Personality of the Triple Millennia” was run across the networks. POT3M drew a huge audience; Queen Victoria of England was the interview candidate. The context was the royal assent to an act ..
.. creating the Commonwealth of America, thus uniting separate colonies on the continent under one federal government. MC Millennia asked the sovereign under whose jurisdiction could the possession of the Turtle Island be wrongfully denied from the First Nation indigenes. “Her Majesty's Government”, snapped the Queen, “ of course, and we are not amused”. Of course authority is best carried off by blaggers using pantomime tricks such as this, and the British establishment really had the mind share when it came to the insincere projection of impudence.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1955, in London the Russell-Einstein Manifesto was released in the midst of the Cold War. The document highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. The signatories included 11 pre-eminent intellectuals and scientists, most notably ..	Betrand Russell
.. Albert Einstein, days before his death on April 18, 1955. By chance of timing, the two Heads of State in America and Russia were fresh thinkers and recent arrivals who very much sought such an outcome. At the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, held in July 1957 President Eisenhower and Secretary Khruschev made the in principle agreement to disarm in that decade. The Cold War was not yet over, but at least it was no longer threatened extinction to the species. Russell was made a Nobel Laureate in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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