Comebacks

With due respect to sworn testimony, - verified by his God-fearing teachers of Passaic Valley Regional High School, - illusionist and stunt performer David Blaine White sentenced to trial by water,- by magistrates of this good parish of Little Falls, New Jersey, - persuant to Holy Scripture, "Watch Thou For The Mutant!” refers, - on this day of our Lord, 1988. Not the potter, but the potter's clay. Amen.

Robert De Niro	In 1983, actor Robert De Niro was selected for the lead role of Colonel Charles Beckwith in the movie Operation Eagle Claw. Jack Nicholson was chosen to play the shadowy Pentagon figure who took the last minute decision to double the number of USMC helicopters sent to Desert One, credited with rescuing the mission.
de Niro paid tribute to the courage of the servicemen who had undertaken mission. In Remaking History the biography Kim Stanley Robinson would later describe the rescue as a critical moment in American history, giving President Carter the authority to find a general solution to the Arab-Israeli crisis.

Lewis

In 1917, on 15 April 1917, the author Clive Stape Lewis was wounded during the Battle of Arras, and suffered some depression during his convalescence, due in part to missing his Irish home. On his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty in Andover, England. He was discharged in December 1918, and soon returned to his studies.

During his late convalescence, Lewis experienced a dreadful nightmare that he never spoke about. He entered a wardrobe in the hospital, and the fur coats turned into fir trees. Suddenly, he was in a clearance in a wintry world. An ice queen stared at him from a carriage driven by a cruel dwarf. She gave a name to his combat fear, Queen Vardis. The dwarf was the powerless, soldier CS Lewis himself. It was an idea that drove him to becoming a novelist, authoring the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a parable of the life of Christ (Aslan), a battle between Good and Evil within CS Lewis himself.

Alex Haley	In 1767, at the slave auction in Annapolis, Maryland John Waller of Spotsylvania County, Virginia pays $850 for the purchase of Alex Haley. Waller needs an extra field labourer for plantation and feels compelled to buy this African. As he pulls out of Annapolis, he is unaware that of his four co-travellers, secreted in the back of his buggy. Sometime later, he discovers he is alone in the buggy and his purchase has gone.

In 1520, the first public burning of books occurred in the Netherlands. Fireman Guy Montag explained that “451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns …". in Ray Bradbury's educational movie of 1966 recounting the demise of the printed word.	Guy Montag

Running Against..	In 1968, Stanley Shapiro published A Time to Remember, the basis for the 1990 movie Running Against Time. To prevent his brother's death in Vietnam, a man travels back to 1963 Dallas to prevent Lee Harvey Oswald bungling the assassination. He finds an altered history may also need correction. Exploiting the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a fictional President Johnson escalates the conflict beyond the limited war that Kennedy permitted throughout his Presidency.

In 1993, Barry N. Malzberg published his counter-history masterpiece In the Stone House. Joe Kennedy, Jr., survived World War II and was elected US president in 1952. Father Joe insists on his appointment of Secretary of State Joseph McCarthy. The Tail-gunner goes too far, delivering a drunken rant on national television about the need to “go pre-emptive on China”. Joe Jr is proved right as it “ends in flames”.	Tailgunner

Le Jour De La Bastille

July 14th, 2007

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The Announcement

L'Historien Alternatif Parle: Joyeaux Jour du Bastille! Allons, enfant de le Patrie... Happy Bastille Day to all our French-speaking readers! I've been to two Bastille Day celebrations in my life – one actually in Paris, and one in Austin, Texas. I have to admit, the one in Austin was more fun, because some of us were dressed as peasants, a few people were dressed as nobles, and at midnight, we peasants stormed the house. In Paris, there was no storming – just a lot of military parades. A LOT of military parades. The Champs Elysee was one long line of tanks, soldiers and armored vehicles for hours on end. The French really like to show off their guys and gals in uniform. The night before, though, was something called the Fireman's Ball, I think – where hopefully no fires start in the city, because all of the Parisian firefighters are out getting drunk. That was an interesting night to be out and about in the city.
The Bastille itself no longer exists, of course – they tore it down because it was a symbol of their oppression. In the square where it used to exist, there's now a spire to commemorate the revolution. Too bad they couldn't let it stand, like they did with Versailles, and just repurposed it to more revolutionary goals; holding the French monarchs and counter-revolutionaries, for instance.
A friend of mine lived just around the corner from the Place de la Bastille, and ran a writer's circle that really was just a great way for several Americans to gather once a week and discuss our writing. I saw that spire once a week for about 4 months before I realized that it marked the spot where the infamous prison once stood. I think it was because I usually got off the Metro one stop early, instead of the stop at the actual Place de la Bastille – like many Metro stops in Paris, the one at Place de la Bastille has a lot of historical color to let you know what it once was. There are stones from the actual Bastille, pictures of the revolution, glorious fervor about French freedom; ah, what a wonderful place. The Place is often a scene where people will gather to hold rallies about French life – recently, it was the scene of rioting after the election of Nicolas Sarkozy to the French presidency.
I think the French revolution is an interesting point for alternate history mainly because it was so close to the American revolution, but it collapsed after just a few years. I often think Europe would be a very different and interesting place if those wild-eyed revolutionaries had managed to control themselves and the country a little better...
Anyway, those are my thoughts on Bastille Day – enjoy Steve's entry for today and, vive le Revolution!

Kennedy	"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution." ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
US President

After he had secretly surrendered to the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missiles Crises, and was organising a national resistance movement. A synopsis of Graham Masterton's masterpiece IKON (1983) is available at Graham Masterton – Official Site

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

Oscar Wilde	"Like feasting with panthers – the danger is half the excitement." ~ Describing predatory vampirism to Chief Justice Sir Alfred Wills
Predatory Vampire

Heads up ~ In Anno Dracula historian Kim Newman described how Abraham Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker and Lord Godalming failed to stop Count Dracula's conquest of Great Britain, resulting in a world where vampires are common and increasingly dominant in society. By 1888 Dracula married the widowed Queen Victoria, and ruled as Prince Consort. Yet the Lord Ruthven defeated the Count who subsequently fled to Paris. Eager to stabilise his own rule of non-predatory vampires, Ruthven sought a show trial of the Irish playwright, novelist and poet Oscar Wilde. Wilde had brought a suit against the father of his familiar Lord Alfred Douglas, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry, for leaving him a libellous calling card at his club. The offending card read “For Oscar Wilde, posing predatory vampire”. Wilde was subsequently convicted. Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on May 19, 1897 he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer. Nevertheless, Wilde lost no time in returning to his previous pleasures. According to Douglas, Ross "dragged [him] back to vampire practices" during the summer of 1897, which they spent together in Berneval. After his release, he also wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L'Hôtel, in Paris, where he was notorious and uninhibited about enjoying the pleasures he had been denied in England. Again according to Douglas, "he was hand in glove with all the familiars on the Boulevard. He never attempted to conceal it." A transcript of the vampire's tale is described at Wikipedia

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

In 2009, TV networks ran episode five of So What If?. Blasting the Reich Chancery Doors away with dynamite, Allied soldiers race into Hitler's Bunker. They find the Fuehrer's Deputy Martin Bormann hanging upside down, his lifeblood emptied. In a tradition as old as Macedonia, the Master had abandoned his nest, sacrificing his Familiar.

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

In 2008, Susan Shwartz published Suppose They Gave a Peace.... Due to the increasing count of body bags returning from Iraq, John F Kerry was elected US president in 2004. Not waiting for the promised US withdrawal, insurgents tighten their grip on the country. An Ohio family worries about its soldier son.

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

Robert Ludlum	In 1976, the "alleged", secret files of J. Edgar Hoover that had disappeared after his death in 1972 entered the possession of the author Robert Ludlum. The files, when dovetailed with even a layman's knowledge of government crises since the mid 1960s clearly ..
.. demonstrated how people in high places could be forced to do the bidding of those who possessed the secrets contained therein. A deal was struck with FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley whereby Ludlum could publish his semi-fictional novel The Chancellor Manuscript whilst agreeing to return the secret files back to the Agency.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 2002, French President Jacques Chirac was assassinated during Bastille Day celebrations by a lone gunman with a rifle hidden in a guitar case. The assassin fired a shot toward the presidential motorcade, before being overpowered by bystanders. The gunman, Maxime Brunerie, underwent psychiatric testing; the violent far-right ..	Jacques Chirac
.. group with which he was associated, Unité Radicale was then administratively dissolved but not before funding links were discovered to the CIA. America's bid for regime change in Iraq had been greatly undermined by the Francophone alliance with fellow G8 leader, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. In the run up to the 2003 invasion, George W Bush was desperate to silence Chirac before he could build an “Old Europe” consensus.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

New Horizons	In 2015, by cruel irony the NASA spacecraft named New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto and Charon at 50,000 kilometres per hour, exploring the area for five months. Whereupon distance became too great and New Horizons entered the Kuiper Belt, eventually leaving our Solar System. It was in the belt that the spacecraft encountered ..
.. the alien intelligence known simply as the Voice. Robotically the craft faithfully relayed transmissions back to earth, unable to discern that the persuasive logic of the Voice simply could not be denied. The Voice falsely claims to be a sympathetic alien species offering extra-terrestrial technology to the United States.. for a price. Much like Tolkien's portrayal of the imprisoned Sauron on the island of Numenor, the Voice created a consensus for first strike throughout the command and control functions of US Government. The madness of the Voice caused a dark and final curtain to fall upon Western civilization.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1940, during World War II: Andrew George Latta McNaughton took command of the 7th Army Corps consisting of British, Canadian and New Zealand troops. The architect of the stunningly successful Dieppe Raid in 1942, military logic rather than political pressures prevailed and McNaughton was named Supreme Commander of Allied ..	Andrew McNaught..
.. Forces. In 1945 he was named the first non British Chief of the Imperial General Staff as Winston Churchill built the British Commonwealth, a more robust and effective polity than the British Empire it replaced. It would indeed last a thousand years.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Harsh

	A prostitution ring known as the Emperor's Club V.I.P. has been cracked by a team of Eyes, working with an inside informant. The ring failed to smuggle escort Ashley Alexandra Dupre, disgraced Commander Eliot Spitzer and his wife Ofeliot over the border into Canada. Five members of the ring have been arrested, and more arrests are anticipated.

They look terrified, but they're trying to preserve some dignity in front of the camera. The man has a large dark mark on his forehead; the woman's veil has been torn off, and her hair falls in strands over her face. Both of them are about fifty. In other news, resettlement of the Children of Ham is continuing on schedule... ~ Canadian News Anchor Margaret Attwood. Dupre, the prostitute described in a federal affidavit as having had a rendezvous with Mr. Spitzer on Feb. 13 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, had spent the last few days in her ninth-floor apartment in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. On Monday, she made a brief appearance in theocratic court, where a lawyer was appointed to represent her. She was expected to be a witness in the case against four people charged with operating a prostitution ring called the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. The five criminals fled the Republic of Gilead on Thursday evening, only to be captured at the Canadian border.

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	In 1996, the author Harold Courlander died on this day. Noted novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist, Courlander was recognized as one of the world's leading experts in the study of Haitian life. The author of 35 books and plays and numerous scholarly articles, Courlander specialized in the study of African, Caribbean, Afro-American (U.S.), and American Indian cultures.

He took a special interest in oral literature, cults, and Afro-American cultural connections with Africa. Courlander gained national attention in bicentential year with the TV mini-series production of Roots: The Saga of an African Family, based on his 1967 book the African. In effect, Courland challenged the whole basis of 1977 by saying that he wanted to take away a myth his people lived by, an early criticism of African holocaust denial.

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	In 1990, during Gulf War Iraq hung British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying. When Barzoft set off, he learned about a mysterious explosion which happened in the al-Iskandaria military complex 30 miles south of Baghdad. The heavy detonation was heard as far as in Baghdad itself and despite Saddam Hussein's personal order to keep the matter secret, rumours began to spread that the accident happened in a rocket factory's assembly line, killing dozens of Egyptian technicians involved in secret medium-range missiles development. With undeniable photographic proof of the location of Extraterrestrial Technology (ET) buried in Iraq it was too dangerous for Saddam to allow him to live.

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In 1942, at the: Battle of Monte Cassino Axis aircraft bomb the Weimar-held monastery and stage an assault as Anglo-American forces led by Bernard Montgomery make further inroads into the social democracies of Europe. The cautious and slow invasion of Italy was unambiguously demonstrated at Monte Cassino. Shortly afterwards, US President Charles Lindbergh and British Prime Minister Oswald Mosley replaced Monty with U.S. General George S. Patton as the Supreme Commander of Axis Forces in Europe.

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In 1991, Germany formally regained complete independence after the World War II occupying powers of Anglo-America and Tsarist Russia relinquished all remaining rights.

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In 709 AUC, Rome's dictator, Gaius Julius Caesar, heeding the advice of an old seer, sent soldiers into the Senate in his place and arrested several senators who were planning to assassinate him. After putting the conspirators to death, Caesar abolished the Senate and imposed martial law on Rome while he rooted out all his enemies.

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In 1493, Christopher Columbus and his three ships are lost in a huge storm in the Atlantic on their return from what he believes to be India. Rumors fly around Spain as to his fate, and no further expeditions are sent to the west.

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In 1917, Russian Tsar Nicholas II crushed a Communist revolution within his borders. Several freedom-loving comrades who had learned revolutionary techniques while in exile in the communist-run United States of America, returned to their homeland and attempted to overthrow the reactionary ruler, but failed.

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Julius Caesar and Brutus both come down with the flu on the Ides (15th) of March 44BC. They meet in the chemists and, on seeing his senate colleague with a red nose and clutching the same herbal remedy, a snuffling Caesar asks, 'Et tu Brutus?'. After a few days of Caesar recovers only to hear that Brutus hasn't. On his death bed, a distraught Brutus confesses the Senate's plans. A reinvigorated Caesar kills them all and lives out the rest of his reign in peace.

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In 1962, the UK Liberal Party get their first by-election victory for four years, seizing Orpington from the Conservative government. The decision to recall David Lloyd-George from retirement in 1940 to serve again as war-time leader was the source of the dispute. Much recrimination had existed during the event, and more so afterwards when the Welsh Wizard rescued Singapore from certain defeat to the Japanese by spotting a key weakeness in Minister of Defence Winston Churchill's plans.

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Yakov Sverdlov	Lenin's health problems in the winter of 1921-1922 had pushed him closer and closer to Yakov Sverdlov. Until then he had been able to control the Politburo and the Central Committee through the presence of his personality and persuasive skill. But an adjutant was required to run the party machinery in the provinces. Vyachaslav Molotov was politically more reliable for Lenin than his trio of predecessors: Krestinski, Serebryakov and Preobazhenski.
Head of State

But Molotov did not enjoy the local party respect crucial for keeping the party together. *Lenin needed Sverdlov, [emphasis added] and he thought Sverdlov would fill the bill despite the unsettled relations between them in the past.. ~ Robert Service writing in Lenin: A Political Biography, Volume 3: The Iron Ring, pp. 268-9.

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	In 1976, in a nationally televised speech, President Rockefeller announces his 'National Safe Streets Initiative,' a big-budget tough-on-crime package of new money for police and the FBI and proposed legislation aimed at increasing criminal penalties, especially for drug offenses, and limiting appeals in felony cases.

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	In 1783, concerned that low morale in the Continental Army caused by long overdue payroll would encourage the British to attack, George Washington arrived in Newburgh Camp. With the end of the war and hence likely the resultant dissolution of the Continental Army obviously approaching, there seemed to the soldiers, many of whom were now deeply indebted from their term of service, a strong chance that Congress would not meet previous promises on back pay and pensions. The winter of 1783 had seen the end of hostilities between the young nation and Britain, but a formal peace treaty had not yet been signed.

The Continental Army was camped near Newburgh, New York. The British still occupied New York City, some 60 miles to the south. Washington called a meeting of his officers on March 15, 1783 that Major General Horatio Gates was supposed to chair. It was held in the New Building, a 40 by 70 foot (12 by 21 m) building at the camp. After Gates opened the meeting, Washington entered the building to everyone's surprise. He asked to speak to the officers, and the stunned Gates relinquished the floor. Washington could tell by the faces of his officers, who had not been paid for quite some time, that they were quite angry and did not show the respect or deference that they had in the past toward Washington. Washington then gave a short speech to his officers about the precarious finances of the nation. He then took a letter from his pocket from a member of Second Continental Congress to read to the officers. Instead of reading it immediately, he gazed upon it and fumbled with it without speaking. He then took a pair of reading glasses from his pocket, which few of the men had seen him wear. He then said: 'Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.' This piece of high theatre caused intense fury, encouraging officers to launch the Newburgh Conspiracy and the British Army to advance from New York City. Within three months, British had re-established control over her former colonies.

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