Labor Reform Act; Troubles In Berlin

The state of TIAH

September 4th, 2006

in 1959, the needlessly restrictive Labor Reform Act sponsored by Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts passes the Senate. Kennedy had given in to Republican and conservative Democratic pressure to put a leash on the unions, in spite of his own sympathies towards them, and gleeful anti-labor forces eagerly passed the bill in the House the next day. Once President Eisenhower signed it into law, unions immediately took the matter to court, arguing that if business organizations – made up of owners and managers - were not restricted in a similar manner, that this law was blatantly unconstitutional. The court agreed, and struck the law down. This attack on the right to organize labor convinced the vast majority of the unionists in America that they were not being represented by either the Democrats or the Republicans, and they began the Union Party to speak for their interests in politics. The initial result of their entry into the political fray was a diminishment of the Democratic Party, as union members abandoned their traditional home for the Union Party. By the 1970's, the Union Party held a strong minority in both Houses of Congress, and with the elections of 1982, captured the House, which they have held ever since. The Senate remains an elusive goal for them, but they managed to elect President Andrew Stern in 1976 and reelect him in 1980.

in 1969, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh dies in the Vietnamese capitol of Hanoi. Although fairly left-wing in politics, Minh had been the most steadfast ally of the United States in southeast Asia ever since President Wilson had stood up for the Indochinese at the conclusion of World War I. Minh's socialism allowed him to act as a middleman between the United States and the Soviet Union on hundreds of matters, and he proved invaluable in easing tensions between the two superpowers. Minh is often credited with laying the groundwork for the Global Peace Treaty of 1965, that reined in the headlong rush of stockpiling atomic bombs that the superpowers had been engaged in. Minh was so beloved in Vietnam that they renamed Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City after his death.

in 1980, French and West German armored divisions roll towards Berlin as the Soviets consolidate their hold on West Berlin. Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev warns the Europeans that they could provoke “dire consequences” if they insist on recapturing their toehold in East Germany. Great Britain's Margaret Thatcher, mobilizing the Royal Air Force to provide air cover for the ground troops of their allies, replies that they have a few dire consequences of their own that they can unleash. The nuclear forces of France, Britain and the Soviet Union all go on high alert. The United Nations, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, calls out to America to intercede in the conflict, but President Charles Evans refuses to expand on his original statement from the day before. Nations from around the world pledge their aid to both sides of the conflict as worried UN mediators shuttle back and forth between NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Soviet Union's capitol in Moscow.

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Wait A Minute, Mr. Postman...

June 23rd, 2007

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The Announcement

in 1999, as Queen Gwen settles into her old cell, Sir Lance guards her outside it; he trusts no one else. She taunted him, “Will you not be my champion in this, brave Sir Lance?” “You have bewitched me,” he spat at her. “Made me betray my king, my country, everything I hold dear.” She laughed at his torment. “I've done much more than that, Lance.” She rubbed her belly. “I carry your child.” Lance's face turned grey, and he looked away from the queen. “I had no will to resist you.” She laughed heartily at him. “How pathetic. The greatest warrior in the United Kingdom can't resist one little woman? What will the enemy think of that?” He turned back to her cell and pounded the bars. “Silence! Silence, or I will find a way to silence you.” She shrank back in mock horror, holding her hand to her mouth melodramatically. “Threatening a pregnant woman – how ungallant of you, sir knight. What would the people think of that?” Sir Lance attempted to calm himself down, whispering, “When they know everything that you have done, they will forgive me.” Gwen put her face right up against the bars to throw her next barrage at him. “What I have done? Rally the nation? Cement our alliances? Crush the enemy? What else matters?” The shaken du Lac shrinks back her assault before coming up with an answer: “Honor, my lady. Honor, above all else.” She sits down on the cell's bed and mutters, “We'll see.”

In 2009, falsely claiming to be a Postman, Gordon Krantz used his very last gambit to gain admittance to the community of Oakridge. Krantz retrieved three letters from the postal sack found in the long abandoned federal vehicle. The first two were for long dead members of the community, but the third was sent by Gregory Benford for David Brin, congratulating his fellow author on the quality of his Uplift Universe*. There was a movement on the parapet from where most of the community were listening to the exchange between the Mayor and Krantz. The Mayor shrugged the figure of Brin away, but he cried out clearly “I..I'm David Brin!”. Hands reached out, smiles passed around and Krantz entered the community.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.
* Author's Note: act of Uplift - a patron nurtures a client.

In 2007, blogger Darth Maddolis discovered a falsehood on the Wikipedia web site. Disturbingly a vandal had changed the text of the Early Years section of the Bruce Springsteen auto-biographical page to read - Springsteen was born dumb and needing special needs grew up in Freehold, New Jersey. After reversing the edit, Maddolis also discovered gaps in his CD collection which had been formally filled by an extensive CD collection of the Boss.

~ entry by Co-Historian Steve Payne

In 2016, on this day at 06:00 AEST in North Hamgyong province on the north-east coast of Korea an underground nuclear test was performed. The Government of South Korea reported an earthquake of a 3.58 magnitude; a 4.2 magnitude tremor was detected 240 miles north of P'yongyang. A small terrified lamb wandered above ground out of time. The detonation initiated the Change for reasons that are only partially understood even now at the time of writing, three hundred years later.

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

Fallen woman	In 1761, the seven European stowaways enjoyed fellowship aboard the Arab Dhow. Speakers of Flemish, German, French and Spanish, they struggled to communicate little more than their fierce job of freedom. Of course with freedom comes responsibility. Their immediate concern was the woman who had fallen. And then a more selfish ..
.. concern. How to avoid the Red Plague when they came ashore in Iberia. And what of the child then?
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1959, on this day convicted Project Rainbow spy Klaus Fuchs was released after only nine years in prison. He was allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany where he resumed a scientific career into the commercial application of teleportation ..	Klaus Fuchs
.. which was by then no secret at all.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Dutch Reform Ch..	In 1958, on this day the Dutch Reformed Church accepted male ministers. The ordination of men created a schism in the church that remains unresolved to this day.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1940, General Erwin Rommel received a rather odd transmission from Berlin. Not a conviction Nazi himself, he was not too troubled to hear that the national leadership had been wiped out under occultist circumstances. Still, he was a military man and did not require any instruction to proceed with the D-Day landings on ..	Erwin Rommel
.. the South coast of England. If anything, he felt the greater degree of empowerment would smooth the execution of the invasion plans.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Pursuits

Driving to Kashmir	Whoa, let the sun beat down upon my face and stars to fill my dream. I am a traveler of both time and space to be where I have been. T' sit with elders of the gentle race this world has seldom seen. Th' talk of days for which they sit and wait all will be revealed ~ Robert Anthony Plant, 1973 AD. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will' ~ Gospel of Matthew 26:39, 80 AD.
Robert Plant

In 2008 and thirty-five years later, Robert Plant finally explained the mystery behind the lyrics to Driving to Kashmir, written whilst driving through the Sahara Desert in Morocco in 1973. Confusingly for Led Zeppelin fans, Kashmir is a lush mountain region North of Pakistan. The area is famous for growing poppies, from which heroin is made, suggesting to some that the state of consciousness described in the lyrics is drug induced. Not so, said Plant, he had experienced a vision of our Lord. From Gethsemane to the Indian subcontinent, where the Father had permitted him to flee.

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	Those who had arrested Damien took him to Bugenhagen, the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled. But Baylock followed him at a distance, right up to the courtyard of the high priest. He entered and sat down with the guards to see the outcome. The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Damien so that they could put him to death with the knives of Meggido. But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward.

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, 'He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?'. 'He is worthy of death,' they answered. Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, 'Prophesy to us, antichrist. Who hit you?' ~ Grand Grimoir, Matthew Chapter 57-69.

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In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became Russian Prime Minister launching Perestroika and its attendant radical reforms in a determined attempt to prevent the Tsarist State from melting down. Gorby's 'new thinking' was welcomed abroad, but the pace of reform at home was too slow. On Christmas Day 1991 Boris Yeltsin declared himself the President of the new Russian Republic thereby ending the world's largest and most influential monarchy. Economic relations between the former Russian provinces were severely compromised. Millions of native Russians found themselves in the newly formed 'foreign' countries.

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Feanor	In 1916, combat tension created a new and frightening level of intensity for Second Lieutenant John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Serving in the eleventh battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, Tolkien's imagination was over-stimulated by the horror of the Somme. In escapist fantasy writing, Tolkien's inner hero struggled to restore his own dissipated life force.
Ships Burn at Losgar

So it was in that place called Losgar at the outlet of the Firth of Drengist ended the fairest vessels that ever sailed the sea, in a great burning , bright and terrible. And Fingolfin and his people saw the lights afar off, red beneath the clouds; and they knew they were betrayed. This was the first fruits of the Kinslaying and the Doom of the Nolder.' ('Of the Flight of Noldor')

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In 1993, Janet Reno was confirmed by the United States Senate and sworn-in the next day, becoming the first female Attorney General of the United States. She took personal charge of the Waco Incident, drawing the wrath of the necromancer David Koresh who trapped her spirit in a tree. She escaped but suffered acute physiological damage. By way of subterfuge in 1995 Reno revealed that she had Parkinson's disease, an incurable degenerative illness that causes muscular stiffness and involuntary trembling.

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In 1988, a ceasefire is declared in the Iran-Iraq War. Vice President George Bush had hoped to recover the Extraterrestrial Technology (ET) buried in Iraq under cover of warfare, but his Iranian proxies had failed him despite being beneficiaries of Colonel Oliver Norths Arms for Extraterrestrial Technology exchange. It was looking increasingly likely that the plan he had envisaged in 1975 whilst CIA Director would require an invasion, and for that he needed to win the presidency that very year. Bush was starting to realise he was in for the long-hall, not yet realising he was only thirteen years into a thirty-five year project that would extend to the final year of his son's Presidency.

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In 1988, on this day a ceasefire was declared in the Iran-Iraq War. Having armed Saddam Hussein against Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, America was not confronted with the scenario of two hostile regional powers. A change of plan was required, and direct intervention was highly likely.

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In 1988, a ceasefire is declared in the Iran-Iraq War. The House of Pahlavi flee the country, abdicating the Shahanshahs sixty-three year rule of Persia. Iraq stands astride the Middle East as the regional superpower, and the Gulf States fear immiment attack from Baghdad.

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In 1988, a ceasefire is declared in the Iran-Iraq War. The family of Saddam Hussein-al-Tikriti is executed in Baghdad, with the House of Pahlavi not far behind. It appeared that Muhammed Ali Jinnah's prediction of Pakistan as the 'Fort of Islam' was wrong, it would instead be here in the Middle East. In the new revolutionary state of Iran-Iraq - the reborn United Arab Republic.

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1985, BBC News reported - Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader: 'There is a new man in charge at the Kremlin - Mikhail Gorbachev takes over following the death of Konstantin Chernenko.' Through a careful process of reorganization, Gorbachev steered the Soviet away from imminent collapse. The arrival of oil revenues in the late nineteen-nineties ensure the long-term viability of the superpower.

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	In 1955, Sir Alexander Fleming - the man who first discovered the life-saving drug antigerone - died of a heart attack. He was 73. For many years, Sir Alexander was Professor of Bacteriology in the University of London and until last year was head of the Wright-Fleming Institute of Micro-Biology at St Mary's hospital, Paddington. The young scientist served in a battlefield hospital laboratory in France during World War I. When he saw how many soldiers were dying from infections he became determined to find a cure. His first notable discovery was lysozyme in 1922. It is a naturally-occurring antibacterial substance, found in tears and other body fluids.
Alexander Fleming

In 1929 when Fleming accidentally dropped a speck of lichen specimen into a bowl of milk, he sees that the milk does not turn sour around the speck. Along with Sir Francis Saxover, the scientists developed a drug, named Antigerone, from the lichen which slows down the body's aging process. Saxover distributed the product to his family, Fleming chose not to.

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In 1917, Baghdad fell to the Anglo-Indian forces commanded by General Maude who famously declared 'Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as liberators, but as conquerors.' Many insurgency attempts have been suppressed, most notably with the capture of the Shadow (Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majidida al-Tikriti) on December 13, 2003 yet Mesopotamia remains annexed by the British Empire to this day.

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	In 2008, Henry Blodget of the Huffington Post wrote ~ Should a public company have to tell its shareholders that its CEO has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness? In the case of Steve Jobs, a CEO who was arguably Apple's single most valuable asset, I think the answer is 'yes.'

Blodget was commenting on the latest issue of Fortune, in which Peter Elkind dredges up some old news about Apple and Jobs--the backdating scandal, a 2003 bout with pancreatic cancer--but he also adds a new twist to the latter: Jobs and Apple's board knew about Jobs' cancer for 9 months before they disclosed it to Apple's shareholders. Elkind's story was titled 'The Trouble with Steve Jobs,' and he suggests Jobs was reckless about his cancer because he pursued a diet treatment instead of getting an operation. The issue of a controversial one. In the aftermath of Jobs tragic death, and Apple's subsequent sale to Sony it is unclear which company owned the rights to the Sony wonder products. Apple fans claim that Sony POD, Sony Phone or indeed the 'Internet in Your Pocket' concept were developed by Jobs during his final months.

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