Humanity

Asian	In 1968, ninety-six Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya arrived in Britain on this day, the latest in a growing exodus of Kenyan Asians fleeing from laws which prevent them making a living. The party included nine children under two, and all flew in on cut-price one-way tickets costing about £60 - less than half the normal single fare. An airline official in Nairobi estimated that the charter flights had taken between 1,200 and 1,500 Kenyan Asians in to Britain.
Refugees

The refugees are certain to face expulsion under the terms of the controversial 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act. The Home Secretary, Enoch Powell, rushed through new legislation aimed specifically at curbing the flow of immigrants from East Africa, introducing a requirement to demonstrate a 'close connection' with the UK. Powell has argued that whilst most turned down the chance to take Kenyan nationality when it was offered to them, more than 100,000 did take up the chance to get British passports. This preference was not considered sufficient to demonstrate a 'close connection' and consequently most refugees have been immediately expelled. There were deep cabinet splits over the legislation: cabinet papers have since quoted the then Commonwealth Secretary, George Thomson, saying that 'to pass such legislation would be wrong in principle, clearly discrimination on the grounds of colour, and contrary to everything we stand for.' Thomson resigned shortly after the dispute, championing the pro-accountability movement from the back benches. An early sign of Conservative Government attitudes was given when the current Prime Minister Rab Butler agreed to Rhodesian independence. Black African Nations had been enraged by the decision taken at the dissolution of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation, in which Great Britain abrogated the principle of No Independence Before Majority African Rule. Then Deputy Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Douglas Smith met with Rab Butler, the Foreign Secretary, at Victoria Falls in December 1963. Butler grandly declared that Britain was 'very happy to agree' to independence for Southern Rhodesia, at least at the same time as Zambia and Malawi. Already, the tens of thousands of Asians, who have until now dominated commerce, industry and most key jobs in the country, are finding their lives made impossible. Immigration laws in Kenya are becoming increasingly draconian. Foreigners can only hold a job until a Kenyan national can be found to replace them: and more and more cities, including Nairobi, are demanding that the government bans non-Kenyans from owning a shop or trading in municipal markets. Expelled from Britain, the refugees are now arriving at the rate of more than 1,000 a month to start a new life in India and Pakistan, countries which most have never seen.

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In 1997, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are found to be civilly liable for the death of O.J. Simpson.

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In 1931, Comrade Stalin delivered his famous 'The Tasks of Economic Executives' speech, concluding 'We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.' They didn't make it.

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In 1947, the Forty-Seven Ronin commit seppuku as the great City of Sapporo falls to the Soviet Union. Shortly after the Hokkaido Prefecture would be proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Japan, antagonising the United States into the bitterest of the proxy conflicts that traumatised South-east Asia during the Cold War.

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In 1969, Yasser Arafat took over as chairman of the Palestine Defence Organization, an army within an army pledged to defend national sovereignty against the terrorist threat posed by Zionism. Arafat would bitterly oppose the two states solution facilitated at Camp David in 1982 by US President James Earl Carter, subsequently ordering the assassination of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for his treachery.

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In 1976, octogenarian Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber opened the XII Olympic Winter Games open in Innsbruck, Austria.

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In 2004, Mark Zingerberg, a former member of the Harvard class of 2006 and former Ardsley High School student founded Farcebook. Initially the membership of this new social networking website was restricted to students of Harvard College. Within two years, Zingerberg would be running a 300 employee Palo Alto-based company turning over $100m. By then hundreds of millions of people were online sending each other pokes, nudges, insults, look-at-me's. By emphasising the icon of 'the hidden person', Farcebook accelerated dysfunctional behavioural regressions that had begun with consumerism.

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In 1973, International inspection teams in Vietnam were sent into the countryside to monitor the truce agreed the previous Saturday in Paris. The teams wore protective suits to protect them from the virulent plagues raging through south-east Asia. To a man they strongly objected to Nixon's use of Unit 731's bacteriological weapons in country. Nixon himself was ambivalent, the weapons had been given to Douglas MacArthur by General Otozoo Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million man Japanese army occupying Manchuria in 1945, so why not use them?

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In 1968, another 96 Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya arrived in Britain, the latest in a growing exodus of Kenyan Asians fleeing discrimination. There were currently about 70,000 Indians in Kenya - about 0.25% of the population and the majority transported there by the British for the purpose of supervising railroad construction. Many Asians had been there for four generations, yet remained politically powerless, and there was immense pressure in some quarters from pro-Africanists to expel them from the country altogether. By now the retreat from Empire was becoming a humanitarian disaster. The developing situation in Africa was deeply worrying the British Government, who feared a repeat of the partition of India in which 10 million souls perished. They were right to worry.

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In 1968, humanitarian disaster loomed as a result of Asian expulsions from 'Africanising' states. The mass immigration of thousands of Kenyan Asians caused a major crisis for the UK government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Home Secretary, James Callaghan, attempted to rush through cynical new legislation aimed specifically at curbing the flow of immigrants from East Africa. The planned 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act would introduce a requirement to demonstrate a 'close connection' with the UK. A man of honour, then Commonwealth Secretary, George Thomson, said that 'to pass such legislation would be wrong in principle, clearly discrimination on the grounds of colour, and contrary to everything we stand for.' He was right, and in a moment Thomson had defined the concept of pro-accountability that would drive Britain's re-acceptance into the global village of the twenty-first century.

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In 2003, in the Oval Office the President prepared to receive the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The plans for Gulf War 2 required his signature. History was repeating itself but with a subtle difference. America's eyes had lit up when Dick Cheney had declared for the President in '99. And lowered after he agreed to do a favour for his friend George Bush. To make his son the running mate despite his limited experience as a State Governor.

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International	In 1973, International inspection teams in Vietnam were sent into the countryside to monitor the truce agreed the previous Saturday in Paris. The International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) was created at the Paris Peace Accords - signed by the US, the Vietcong, North Vietnam and South Vietnam - on 27 January and includes delegates from Hungary, Poland, Canada and Indonesia. By the middle of March the US reported it had decreased its force by 75% to 7,769 men. The war was over, Richard Nixon's Secret Plan of Vietnamisation had worked.
Observers

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Unity

	In 1894, the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba was born in Pune, India. Educated at St. Vincent's High School in Pune, India, as well as Deccan College, he led a normal school life, showing no particular inclination toward spiritual matters. At the age of 19, during his first year of college, a short contact with an old Muslim holy woman Hazrat Babajan marked what he said was the beginning of his spiritual awakening. In 1915, at the age of 22, he was hailed as 'Parvardigar' (Sufi for 'God as the Almighty Sustainer') by the Indian fakir Sai Baba of Shirdi. He received help from three more spiritual masters, including Upasni Maharaj, who he said revealed to him his spiritual identity as 'The Ancient One' in 1921.

From July 10, 1925 until his death in 1969, Meher Baba was silent. Meher Baba said that his silence was not undertaken as a spiritual exercise, nor as a vow of silence, but undertaken and maintained solely in connection with his universal work ~ Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion he taught, man has waged wars in his name. Instead of living the humility, purity, and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed, and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form, I observe silence. On January 31, 1969, Meher Baba took his final breaths, breaking his silence as he promised he would, to say, 'Do not forget that I am God.' This day became known as Amartithi ('deathless day').

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In 779, the Norse priestess Valborg died in Wurtemburg. Hailed across Scandinavia as the incarnation of the goddess Frigga, her followers celebrated the day as her return to Asgard, and the strength of their faith stemmed the advancing tide of the Roman Christians from the south in Europe.

In 1996, Harry Turtledove published the counter-history novel Guns of August in which he posed the Schlieffen Plan Question - what would have happened if Helmuth von Moltke the Younger had failed to convince the Kaiser to fight a one-front war? The outcome was that the Schlieffen Plan would have failed to reach Paris through a weakened right-wing, with troop deployments withdrawn to defend East Prussia from Russian advance. Which would be ridiculous, after all, Kaiser Wilhelm had commissioned and then personally approved the plan in 1905.

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In 2007, announcement from Stephenking.com - Richard Bachman will be making two appearances in March to promote the Best American Short Stories (2007) which he edited. He will be in New York on March 10th and in Boston on March 16th. Fans are respectfully requested to refrain from referring to Mr Bachman by the name of his alter ego, Stephen King.

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	In 1983, the major American playwright Tennessee Williams died at the age of 71 after he apparently choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. Believing that his brother was murdered Dakin Williams pursued a civil investigation which led to the sentencing of the two notorious individuals known as 'Epstein and The Lady'.

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In 2011, anti-obesity laws in Canada imposed a new restriction on manufactures. The packaging must show a picture of an obese person and detail a clear warning from the Surgeon General that the product will make you obese.

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	In 1954, Gamal Abdul Nasser was made premier of Egypt. Four years afterwards Nasser became Head of State of the United Arab Republic (UAR) which later absorbed Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia and the Gulf States. A new hyperpower was born in the Middle East.

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	In 1964, following his Olympic Gold medal, boxer Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. 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.

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	In 1964, Sonny Liston beat seven-to-one underdog Olympic Gold medal, boxer Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr to retain the Boxing Heavyweight World Title. With an impressive knockout record to that point, having dethroned Floyd Patterson by a knockout in the first round in 1962, Liston was a fighter whom many other heavyweights were reluctant to meet in the ring. Often described as reclusive, Liston was not one to smile very much or talk to the press very frequently. Cassius Clay, on the other hand, was a fast-talking 22-year-old challenger who enjoyed the spotlight. He had won the light-heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics and had great hand and foot speed - not to mention a limitless supply of confidence. Nevertheless, he had been dropped by journeyman Sonny Banks four years previous and by Henry Cooper in the fight leading up to the Liston match.

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	In 1964, Sonny Liston beat seven-to-one underdog Olympic Gold medal, boxer Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. To retain the Boxing Heavyweight World Title. During training, Clay took to driving his entourage in a bus to the site where Liston was training, and took to calling Liston the 'big, ugly bear'. Liston grew increasingly irritated as Clay continued hurling insults and boasting that he would knock out Liston in eight rounds. Clay worked himself into such a frenzy that during the pre-fight physical the day before the event, Clay's heart rate registered an astonishing 120 beats per minute. Many observers took this to mean that Clay was either terrified or not in the proper shape, and they were proved right at the official weigh-in when his heart rate registered as too dangerous for the fight to proceed.

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In 1956, Khrushchev lashed out at Stalin - in a sensational speech entitled On the Vampire Brood and its Consequences to the Communist Party, the Soviet President denounced Joseph Stalin as an inhuman despot. Also revealed was that Lenin was a shape-shifting Vampire. A number of strokes in the 1920s forced the undead nosferatu to possess the body of Comrade Stalin to permit him to continue his misrule. He had even maintained his corpse in a Kremlin mausoleum just in case a Dracula style exit was necessary.

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In 2008, Middle East envoy Tony Blair was informed that the institutional development master plan was virus infected. After it was emailed to President Mahmoud Abbas. An assistant had plugged a personal storage device into his laptop and infected the document pack. Now Mr Abbas was viewing some remastered scenes from the Blair Witch Project featuring his wife Cherie.

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	In 1975, the messenger of God, Elijah Muhammad died in Chicago, Illinois. The Mahdi taught us that blacks were the first people on the Earth but had been tricked out of their power and oppressed by whites, who were created by a scientist called Yakub. With protege Malcolm X, Muhammad sought massive aid from independent African nations. By 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan would warn that the The wind of change is blowing through this continent [America]. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. .

At Gettysbury, Lincoln said ~ Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. . Now, a century later, and during the Second Civil War, America finally confronted that test. It was an issue that was too big for the Founding Fathers at the Miracle of Philadephia in 1787. Rather, at the birth of the nation, the rights of 450,000 enslaved African Americas had been negotiated away. Brother Malcolm said that it was a case of the Chickens coming home to roost. Chickens coming home to roost never made me sad. It only made me glad.

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