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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The state of TIAH

April 25th-26th Combo

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Alternate Historian's Note: Well, I'm typing this in the dark, with an extension cord running off to the part of the house that has power plugged into the computer. The modem is still acting up, so I can only hope that I'll be able to upload this before it goes out again. We got hit by a tornado yesterday morning – it ripped off a small part of our roof and threw a couple of trees through a couple of our fences, but no big damage and nobody hurt. It did inconvenience me by killing all the electrical power in one part of our house – the part with the computers in it, naturally. We have all kinds of adjusters and repair people supposed to come out, but there are people with worse damage, so we're kind of low on the list. Hopefully, things will improve and we'll be able to keep up the posts. We'll do our best!

April 25th, 2007

in 1891, troops begin heading west to reinforce General Anthony Franklin in Missouri, where he is planning a large-scale siege of Kansas. He sends messengers to the governors of the surrounding states for militia men to handle the main portion of the siege while he uses federal troops to penetrate into Kansas. “Once we take Topeka, the rest of these rebels should fall like dominoes,” he told the messengers to tell the governors. Major Mark Wainwright, who had been involved in the struggle longer than Franklin, said, “Sir, I fear that you're underestimating these men. They've proven themselves capable of fighting off trained military – more than once, as you know.” Franklin, stung by the memory of his own defeat at the hands of the Kansans, ordered Wainwright, “Be quiet, sir. Your defeatist attitude has no place in this campaign – which will be short and successful. Understood?” Wainwright nodded, saluted, and left to see to the few men who had survived the trip to Kansas with him.

In 2165 matters were unraveling fast in the real world. Michael Version7 Punk and Stanley 3XG Homeboy were no longer able to ignore this state of affairs when the words GAME OVER flashed up on their consoles just after noon Eastern Seaboard Time.

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

Margaret Thatch..	In 1972 Prime Minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher spoke to the nation from the BBC. The country had not come to terms with Britain's new position in the world, she wisely said, and the empire, and then the great wars had bankrupted the nation. Those were the facts, but they were here to  change the facts . We ..
.. won the war, but lost the peace, she added by way of explanation. Effective immediately, Britain would be speaking to her partners in the Commonwealth to establish a new economic union based on free trade and the pooling of British technology. The first such meeting would be the following week with President Idi Amin Dada of Uganda; a graduate of Cardiff University, “Dada” was a true friend to Britain.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1983 at a press conference on this day, the  Bormann Diaries  were declared by historians Hugh Trevor-Roper, Eberhard Jäckel and Gerhard Weinberg experts to be  authentic . Even though they had not yet been properly examined by scientists, Trevor-Roper endorsed the diaries thus:  'I ..	Bormann
.. am now satisfied that the documents are authentic; that the history of their wanderings since 1945 is true; and that the standard accounts of Hitler's writing habits, of his personality and, even, perhaps, of some public events, may in consequence have to be revised'
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Elbe Day Celebr..	In 1945 on this day US President Charles Lindbergh declared Elbe Day. United States and Tsarist troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Weimar Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1982 as agreed in the Camp David Accords, Israel completed its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula. Anglo-French forces were also removed from the Suez Canal Zone in a synchronised troop withdrawal.	Camp David Acco..
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

April 26th, 2007

in 1891, General Anthony Franklin receives replies from the governors of Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado and the Oklahoma Territory. All pledge their support to his mission, and say that their states stand ready to preserve the Union. He sends them the plans he has drawn up to lay siege to the Kansans and tells them to be ready by May 1st, when he plans to have troops ready to make a run to Topeka. The first reinforcements from Washington have already reached him and are being drilled by Major Mark Wainwright, who has reluctantly become General Franklin's chief aide.

in 1999, now that the Commonwealth stands behind King Arthur, he issues a call for support of the kingdom to all loyal citizens. “We are about to embark upon the greatest struggle of our history,” King Arthur says in the televised address. “An enemy sits across the Channel from us; an implacable enemy who sees us as nothing but an impediment to their own plans, as tools in their overarching conspiracy to control our world. Today, we declare war against these Illuminati and their henchmen inside the Central European Empire. Today, we declare that we will live as free men and women in this world. Today, we declare that the United Kingdom of Great Britain shall fight to the death those that seek to extinguish the light of liberty from our land. We ask for your aid in this great conflict, and with God's help, we shall emerge victorious.” Hours after the address, Emperor Pierre of the Central European Empire declares war against Great Britain.

In 1983 a time travel team from the far distant future prepare to snatch passengers (“goats”) out of a DC-10 and a 747 just before they collide over Oakland, California. They will leave prefabricated smoking bodies (“wimps”) for the rescue team to find. The goats will be held in hibernation on a spaceship to be sent to the stars. This human re-population project is a desperate and final attempt to save humanity. The mission is headed by Louise Baltimore, Chief of Snatch Team Operations who is as yet unaware of a paradox being created by her mission in 1983. The airline disaster threatened an end to the world as we know it.

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

Margaret Thatch..	In 1972 Prime Minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher announced a series of appointments to the new civilian government, all absolutely necessary to execute the go-forward plan for Britain. Messrs Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph and Norman Tebbitt were pleased to accept the great offices of state as the nation prepared for a return ..
.. to parliamentary democracy by 1976.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1983, German news magazine Stern published extracts from what purported to be the the  Bormann Diaries . The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books as well as two 'special issues' about Rudolf Hess' flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945.	Bormann
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Chernobyl Disas..	In 1986 on this day an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant consisting of an explosion at the plant and subsequent radioactive contamination of the surrounding geographic area. A plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland ..
.. and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, western loans were conditioned about the dismantling of atomic energy which was completed by 1995.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1925 on this day Paul von Hindenburg defeated Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected Reichspräsident, the head of state of the Weimar Republic. He was succeeded by his nominee, the former German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, previously known as 'The ..	Red Baron
.. Red Baron'. This was considered a master-stroke as the appointment of another illustrious officer from the glorious past held the highest-level centrifugal forces together in the Weimar Republic in the absence of the deposed House of Hohenzollern. Gathering right-wing forces were unable to justify action to fill a vacuum of power that was of course ultimately averted.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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