Visions

Rev. Ratty	In 1976, as Damien Thorn was celebrating his narrow escape from the knives of his adopted father at Meggido, watching Ambassador Thorn get buried, he feels a hand upon his shoulders. "I'll see you again, shortly," Estelle Gerard says to him, "and next time, the people caring for me won't be so easily tricked." With that, she ascended to Heaven, leaving Damien to ponder the fact that he was going to have a very short life, indeed.
Professor Emeritus

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In 1930, Aldeburgh Lodge school magazine rather wittily imagined how children taught in 1909 would have viewed modern Britain. An obviously humorous map of the world of 1907 was shown in which the British Empire was reduced to Iceland, leaving the rest — including even `Kgl. Preuss. Reg. Bez. Grossbritannien' — to Germany. The reality of course was that Britain was 'a small island off the western coast of Teutonia'.

In 1916, combat tension combined with an over-active imagination amplified by the experience of the Battle of the Somme had traumatised Second Lieutenant John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, eleventh battalion Lancashire Fusiliers.
Balrog	"Gandalf lifted his staff, and crying aloud, he smote the the Bridge [of Khazad-Dum] before him. The bridge cracked. Right at the Balrog's feet it broke. With a terrible cry, the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and vanished. But even as it feel it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and curled around the wizad's knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasping vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss".
Inside a military field hospital Tolkien fought a mental battle to defeat the phantasmagoric projections of the Somme. A battle, he would both win, and lose, and win again. Like Kurt Vonnegut fifty years later, Tolkien's need for expression sought out escapist literature, and his own fight was portrayed in this animated scene from the Mines of Moria. And also later, when he finally defeated the Balrog in the well of the Abyss.

Alternate Kenne..	In 1968, Republican President-elect Robert F Kennedy died in an automobile crash in Massachusetts. Also in the vehicle but unharmed was unsuccessful Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Edward M Kennedy. The brothers had met in New York to settle their differences after a close-fought campaign, and had decided to relax at the Cottage at Martha's Vinyard. Soon into the journey, feeling fatigued they had realised it was a mistake. A short distance from the Cottage, they had approached the difficult bend at Chappaquiddick, and the car skidded off the bridge into Poucha Pond where the President-Elect died.
Kennedy's running mate Richard M Nixon had been forced to step aside to permit Robert Kennedy to run. With the nominee's death, he now prepared to enter the White House as described in Mark Aronson's dramatic account President-Elect.

In 1995, in Ottawa, Canada Duc de Richleau and Rex van Ryn rescued the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his wife Aline from a First Nation cult. During the rescue they prevent André Dallaire brandishing an Inuit stone sculpture of a loon. The Prime Minister and his wife escape to the home of the Eatons, friends of Richleau and van Ryn, and are followed by the group's leader, Mocata, who has a psychic connection to the Chrétiens. After visiting the house to discuss the matter, and an unsuccessful attempt to influence the initiates to return, Mocata forces Richleau and the other occupants to defend themselves through a night of first nation magic attacks. The dramatic story was described in the 2000 TV movie The Inuit Rides Out directed by Dennis Wheatley Junior.	Inuit Rides Out

Snakeyes	In 1963, the strange being known as Snake Eyes arrived in Dallas. He had sight of the Presidential motorcade route, and the mind controlled patsy Lee Harvey Oswald had secured a job at the location from which the shot would be taken. Of course the suggestion that Oswald himself would take the shot was simply ludicrous; during his otherwise undistinguished military career, Oswald had barely earned the Sharpshooter weapons qualification badge with a score of 212 out of just 250 targets. A lone gun might get one head shot, and choosing an ex marine who hit the target 4 times out of 5 from a short distance years before, that would have been a fool's odds.

In 1965, US President John F Kennedy is briefed on Operation Quartz . To prevent the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), this plan envisaged placing Rhodesian troops at strategic points from which they could simultaneously wipe out the terrorists at the Assembly Points and assassinate Robert Mugabe and the other terrorist leaders at their campaign headquarters. The strike would be assisted by Puma helicopters of the South African Air Force and would involve the participation of elite Recce units of the South African army.	Kennedy

Hallowe'en

Haloween	In 1976, the police siren reached its apex and stopped, the child screaming as Jeremy Thorn raised the stiletto high above him. "Stop!" shouted a voice from the street and two policemen emerged from the rain, one drawing a resolver as they ran from their car. Thorn glanced up at them, then down at the child, and with a sudden cry of rage plunged the knife downward, the child's scream coming simultaneously with the sound of a gunshot. For a moment, everything was frozen. Then the church doors swung open and a priest stared out at the scene: a tableau behind the veil of down-pouring rain.
Hallowe'een Story

By using just one of the seven knives of Meggido, Thorn had only succeeded in extinguishing physical life from the saviour, Estelle Gerard. "This makes things really difficult" said Father Brennan, stepping forward to face the policemen.

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Alexander Litvinenko

In 2006, former KGB spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised. He died three weeks later, becoming the first known victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. Litvinenko's allegations about the misdeeds of the KGB and his public accusations that the Soviet government was behind his unusual malady resulted in worldwide media coverage.

The unsolved death brought a new low to Anglo-Soviet relations. "The police investigation will proceed, and I think people should know that there is no diplomatic barrier to that investigation," Mr. Blair told reporters during a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. The use of polonium-210 is an alarmingly new escalation in the biological phase of the Cold War going back almost thirty years. In 1978, while walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Giullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from in a specially-designed umbrella. Security around government facilities has been doubled and the British Security Forces are on their highest alert since the first Gulf War ending in exchanges of bio-weapons with Iraq in 1991.

Abraham Lincoln	"A house divided against itself cannot stand. (Mark 3:25) I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved..It will become all one thing, or all the other." ~ Abraham Lincoln (16 June 1858) Before the War of Southron Independence forced a decision - “the other”. A synopsis of Lincoln's pre-election statements are detailed at Wikipedia
US President

Kinky Friedman	In 2008, on the eve of Election Day, Texan singer/songwriter and Independent US Presidential Candidate Richard S. “Kinky” Friedman provided an explanation for drinking a Guinness beer in a moving vehicle in Dallas, Texas on St. Patrick's day - I admit to drinking it, but I did not swallow.

In 1952, Operation Ivy was conducted on Elugelab Island in the Enewetak atoll of the Marshall Islands. The United States successfully detonated the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike" yielding 10.4 megatons of explosive power, over 450 times the power of the bomb that fell on Nagasaki. Military planners were once again trapped inside the logic of the nuclear option. Applying Bernard Montgomery's second law they had demonstrated unwillingness to “take their land army to Asia” and accept American casualties in the hundreds of thousands. Therefore with Communist forces threatening to overrun Korea, China and Vietnam US President Thomas Dewey had two choices. Either to withdraw from Asia or to use the hydrogen bomb. He chose the latter, it was a no brainer really.	Hydrogen Bomb

Margaret Thatcher

In 1990, on this day the Conservative Government of Great Britain was dealt a fatal blow by the resignation of a senior cabinet minister. Margaret Thatcher, one of Sir Geoffrey Howe's oldest and staunchest supporters, resigned from her position as Deputy Prime Minister in protest at Howe's European policy. In her resignation speech in the House of Commons two weeks later, she suggested that the time had come for "others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties" with which she stated that he had wrestled for perhaps too long.

In 1973, on this day Leon Jaworski was appointed as the new Watergate Special shortly after the Saturday Night Massacre which led to the dismissal of prosecutor Archibald Cox. During his tenure as Special Prosecutor, Jaworski was perhaps most famous for his protracted constitutional battle with the White House concerning his attempts to secure evidence for the trial of former senior administration officials on charges relating to the Watergate cover-up. The Special Prosecutor knew that President Robert F Kennedy had discussed the Watergate cover-up with the accused on numerous occasions and that these conversations had been recorded by the White House taping system. Jaworksi requested tapes of sixty-four Presidential conversations as evidence for the upcoming trial. The President refused to hand them over, citing executive privilege.	Richard Nixon
The Watergate scandal refers to a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. by members of the Kennedy administration. The White House “plumbers” were attempting to stage manage a burglary by the Republican nominee Richard Nixon, the second time the Kennedys had cheated Honest Dick out of the White House. The resulting cover-up led to the resignation of the President.

Showdowns

In 1995, historian Richard M. Langworth described the early phases of World War III. Operation Overlord was modified to invade a very different Occuped Europe than that original envisaged. Halifax's carthaginian peace in May 1940 created a power vacuum, such that Stalin's conquest of Europe did not stop at Berlin. Consequently the Allies beach head was the first step on the long road to Moscow. “Without the logistical support of Stay Behind Organisations” said Langworth, "it is improbable that Overlord would have been a success". This reference to the Nazi Werwolf group run by Otto Skorzeny and Operation Glaudio in Italy is bound to create deep embarrassment in European Democracies. Complicity with defeated Fascist nations was hinted at in the banned movie Dr Strangelove: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Nazis, and was considered a no-no for many years.

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In 2007, Los Angeles Police Department charged African American actress Halle Berry with racial incitement. Whilst on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Berry had been shown a picture of herself with a distorted, large nose. She had remarked “I look like my Jewish cousin”, to which Leno had replied, “I'm glad you said that and not me, that's ten years in County”.

When the show aired, they cut out her 'Jewish' comment and added a laugh track to the bit."

The actress later apologised for her remarks, insisting she didn't mean any offence. She said: "I so didn't mean to offend anybody - and after the show I realised it could be seen as offensive, so I asked Jay to take it out, and he did.

"I was backstage before the show and I have three girls who are Jewish who work for me. We were going through pictures to see which ones looked silly, and one of my Jewish friends said of the big-nose picture, 'That could be your Jewish cousin!' And I guess it was fresh in my mind, and it just came out of my mouth. But I didn't mean to offend anybody. I didn't. I didn't mean any harm."

LAPD have confirmed that these remarks in no way protect Berry from a violation of racial incitement law, and are determined to maintain their “zero tolerance“ policy.

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In 1976, Mrs Baylock instructed Jeremy Thorn "Go to the city of Meggido, there see the Old Man Bugenhagen. Only he can describe how the child must die". "See Bugenhagen before its too late!" repeated Mrs Baylock with great urgency. She need not have worried, Thorn was by now a man with a purpose.	Hallowe'en Story

In 2007, on this day the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called an early election. He sought a fresh mandate for change, aiming to capitalise on the improved opinion polls since his arrival at 10, Downing Street.
Gordon Brown	The campaign anthem was appropriate - “We like to move it, move it”. After ten years in government, an unprecedented opportunity to change Britain had been wasted by Tony Blair. However, Blair had at last resigned in favour of Brown, and the Labour movement had a once in a century change to get it right. ~ Reel to Real's I Like to Move It, Move It - Click to Watch Sample
Move It

The exceptionally tough life experiences of Gordon Brown prepared him for the highest role in British politics. The show man Tony Blair put the plan on hold for ten years. In his defence, Blair had the charisma of an international statement, that perhaps Brown did not. However, it was widely recognised that it was time for Britain to focus on matters close to home and stop causing trouble on the world stage.

In 2008, at the head office of the restaurant chain Wanda's of Montreal a disgruntled employee, a database administrator issued a rogue instruction to the corporate database: UPDATE COMMENTS SET NICE_COMMENT = 'Y' WHERE ABUSIVE_COMMENT='Y' AND UPPER(THE_COMMENT) CONTAINS 'THUX%';

Glaudio	In 1990, Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti revealed to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian "stay-behind" clandestine paramilitary NATO army, intended to counter a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. What was not intended was they would act as a secret army taking every opportunity to undermine left-wing politicians, making their own interpretation of the motto “Silently, I serve freedom”. Andreotti himself was more coy about the a batch of letters he had received in 1978.
"As the conspiracy theorists would have it, [Italian Prime Minister] Mr. [Aldo] Moro was allowed to be killed either with the acquiescence of people high in Italy’s political establishment, or at their instigation, because of the historic compromise he had made with the Communist Party" (The Independent, November 16, 1990, quoted by Statewatch). "During his captivity, Aldo Moro wrote several letters to various political figures, including Giulio Andreotti. In October 1990, "a cache of previously unknown letters written by the former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, just prior to his execution by Red Brigade terrorists in 1978... was discovered in a Milan apartment which had once been used as a Red Brigade hideout. One of those letters made reference to the involvement of both NATO and the CIA in an Italian-based secret service, 'parallel' army", wrote The Irish Times on November 15, 1990 (quoted by Statewatch).

In 1960, an R-16 ballistic missile exploded on the launch pad at the Soviet Union's Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing 165. Among the living is Field Marshall Mitrofan Nedelin, who left the pad shortly before ignition for a cigarette break and was to play a decisive role in the Turkish Missiles Crisis just two years later.	Nedelin Disaster

Kennedy	In 2999, the mind cast for the next instalment of “Personality of the Triple Millennia” was re-run across the networks. POT3M drew an even larger audience because of its oddness. John F Kennedy was the candidate, the context was the Cuban Missiles and the moment was seconds after US Air Chief Marshall Curtis LeMay had proclaimed a military government. Kennedy asked MC Millennia if remembered where they were the day LeMay tried to kill them?

In 1998, on this day the spacecraft Deep Space 1 was launched on top of a Delta II rocket. As part of NASA's New Millennium program, the primary goal was the testing of twelve advanced technologies that have the potential to lower the cost and risk of future missions. Deep Space 1 succeeded in its tasks and also achieved its secondary goals: flybys of the asteroid Braille and of Comet Borrelly. Passing the comet passage intact, Deep Space 1 was able to return valuable science data and stunning pictures of the discovery of life on the comet. Gregory Benford's journal The Heart of the Comet recounts how mission parameters were changed because of fear of contamination from the borrellyform life and attempts to destroy the comet and those living upon it.	Deep Space 1

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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