In 1998, to mark the seventy-fifth birthday of the former President, Bill Clinton signed legislation that authorized a change of name to the Charlton Heston Washington National Airport.
An installment from the 49th State thread.

Sparks Fly over Charlton Heston Washington National AirportThe decision sparked fury in the Hispanic Community. Emerging as a national spokesman, Sen Fidel Castro, D-Cuba described the timing of the announcement as a centennial commemoration of genocide dating back to the US-Spanish War of 1898 after which his island was "coerced" into joining the Union as the forty-nine State. After decades of rising nationalism, the violence sharply escalated after independencistas led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara landed at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. And by the eighties, President Heston was fighting a brutal Contra War in Southern America.

Inadvertently, the lame duck President had launched a new war - of words- which developed between ultra conservatives and liberals. Because Clinton was facing impeachment charges, it was even suggested that the President was exchanging political favours by recognizing a mainstay of the GOP. That charge soon rung hollow, because two year later,in a hotly-contested election, Democratic nominee Castro narrowly defeated former Texas governor George W. Bush to win the U.S. presidency, becoming the first native Spanish-speaker to hold that office. In his inaugural address, he made an oblique reference to the Airport controversy, declaring that "No hay mal que por bien no venga (Every cloud has a silver lining)".

In 1936, on this day, German Émigré Artist Arnold Hiller was accidentally swept into the disturbances on Cable Street and arrested by the Metropolitan Police.
An article from the Comrade Arnold Hiller cross-over thread.

The Rise and Fall of Comrade Arnold Hiller
Part 1At the Bow Police Station, he was falsely charged under the provisions of the draconian new Public Order Act 1936 [1] introduced by Prime Minister Oswald Mosley. Chastened by the injustice of this transformative experience, he spent his time in custody venting his anguish by authoring a diary.

But his political awakening really began soon after his release through a chance meeting with the left-wing journalist and movie critic German emigré "Clubfoot" Joey Goebbels who actively encouraged Hiller's expression of Communist doctrinal thought. The result was the articulation of a radical new Communist agenda simply called "My Struggle" that was widely circulated amongst the left-wing intelligentsia. He soon became an outspoken critic of the fascist regime, ensuring that Comrade Hiller was one of the many political activists swept up in the brutal internment programme that followed the outbreak of war. Because Mosley made common cause with continental fascists Mussolini of Italy, Franco of Spain and Roehm of Germany during his premiership, but where they are all gone by the end of the decade, his rule of Britain has only begun.

In 1636, confirmation that the Swedes were a spent force after the earlier battle of Nordlingen was assured by the glorious victory of the combined Imperial-Saxon army at Wittstock.

Swedes defeated at WittstockBecause a Swedish-allied army (pictured) under general Johan Baner decisively was comprehensively defeated by a combined Imperial-Saxon army, led by Count Melchior von Hatzfeld and the Saxon Elector John George I. Baner was helped by Swedish Count Lennart Torstenson and Scottish professional soldiers Alexander Leslie, later first Earl of Leven, James King, later first Lord Eythin, and John Ruthven. The Imperial army was larger in strength than the Swedish army, but at least one-third of it was composed of Saxon units of questionable quality. The Swedish artillery was considerably stronger, forcing the Imperial commanders to adopt a surprise tactics and fool Baner who expected them to maintain a largely defensive position on the hill tops. [1]

The broader context for the battle was that the Holy Roman Emperor, with his Saxon and Roman Catholic allies, was fighting for the control of northern Germany against the Swedes and an alliance of Protestant princes opposed to Habsburg hegemony. The Swedes were also allied to the French, but they played no part in the engagement, but after Wittstock the French soon became the dominant partner in the alliance.

In 1830, having asserted its independence from the Netherlands, the Belgian National Congress considered several candidates for the Kingship of the newly-formed country.

Belgian SuccessionIn the event, the Netherlands invaded Belgium before a suitable candidate could be finalised. Although confined mostly to skirmishing, a low grade state of war was to continue for eight years. Of course a decision could have been taken almost immediately had the most obvious candidate been cleared for selection. Being a bold militaristic iconic figure, Leopold Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (pictured) would have been an ideal choice for the monarchy being well placed to rally the Belgian defence of their newly found freedom.

In 1795, as a mere child, Leopold was appointed colonel of the Izmaylovsky Guards Regiment in Russia. Seven years later, he became a major general. When Napoleonic troops occupied the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg in 1806 Leopold went to Paris. Emperor Napoleon I offered him the position of adjutant, but he refused. Instead, he took up a military career in the Imperial Russian Cavalry. He campaigned against Napoleon and distinguished himself at the Battle of Kulm at the head of his cuirassier division. In 1815, at the age of twenty-five, Leopold reached the rank of lieutenant general in the Imperial Russian Army. In Carlton House on 2 May 1816, he married Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate child of the British Prince Regent (later King George IV of the United Kingdom) and therefore second in line to the British throne, and was created a British field-marshal and Knight of the Garter.

However by 1830, the ascension of Charlotte Hanover was less than a year away. Accordingly, it was reasonable to expect that Leopold would serve as her Britannic Majesty's Prince Consort and therefore his candidacy for King of the Belgians was unacceptable in London. One of the indirect consequences of this disconnection was that Britain felt under no royal family obligation to guarantee Belgium from German Invasion at the London Conference of 1867.

In 1936, on this day five thousand members of the Greater Zionist Resistance (GZR) congregated in London's East End for a demonstration march which would ruin the celebration of the fourth anniversary of the formation of the British Union of Fascists (BUF).

Battle of Cable Street
An installment from "Elders of the Protocols of Zion"Despite the half-hearted attempts of the Metropolitan Police to clear a path for the GZR, the march soon developed into an armed clash with the hundred thousand black-shirted supporters of Sir Oswald Mosley (pictured).

Left with little other choice, GZR leader Eric Arthur Blair was forced to concede defeat and disband his followers. Around eighty fascists had been arrested, and at least seventy-three police officers injured. But the real consequence of the Battle of Cable Street would land upon the Anglo-Jewish Community which would (according to a Joint Parliamentary Committee) witness an "an intensification of Fascist Jew-baiting and hooliganism". The very next weekend saw the most serious anti-semitic violence sofar, as a gang of two hundred youths, some armed with iron bars and hatchets, wrecked and looted Jewish shops, set alight a car and threw an elderly Jewish man and young child through a window.

Even though Mosley dismissed the Jewish question as "irrelevant", his rise to power would blend domestic fascism with anti-semitism until the two aspects of extremism were virtual indistinguishable.
All of Robbie Taylor's novels are available for download at Amazon.

In 2013, on this day President Rick Perry stated that a tragic loss of life in the accidental bombing of a border town Christian mission would not deter the United States from continuing the deployment of Drone Aircraft to end Mexico's drug cartel woes.

Perry's War on DrugsDuring his predecessor's tenure, unmanned aerial vehicle attacks by pilotless Predator drones were conducted against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas. It was a strategem that Perry was forced to turn to when he encountered sharp resistance to the deployment of US troops on Mexican soil.

During his successful 2012 election campaign, the President resolved to destroy the networks of Mexican drug cartels operating on the US border. It was a pledge intended to overshadow the incumbent's promise to capture (or kill) Osama Bin Laden.

In 1970, Janis Joplin described her early life as that of a "Babylonian whore", quoting a line from a fellow graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School interviewed during her ten-year high school reunion.

Janis Joplin Born Again She had grown up the eldest of three in Port Arthur, TX, and had always had a psychological demand for attention. Her mother once said, "She was unhappy and unsatisfied without it. The normal rapport wasn't adequate". During high school, she held a group of other outcasts as friends, but overall felt that her schoolmates had "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state".

A new story by Jeff ProvineWhile with her friends, she had been exposed to the records of blues singers, which inspired her to become a singer. In college, she developed a style after the blues as well as beat poets. Without completing her degree, she left for San Francisco in 1963. Her career began, but so did her life-long struggle with drug use and drinking, even to the point of heroine. In 1965, her friends from Texas, worrying about her health, persuaded her to return and even threw a party to pay for her bus fare. Once in Texas, she regained her footing, returned to school, and drove to Austin to perform with her guitar and singing. While in Austin, her career exploded when she joined Big Brother and the Holding Community.

Credited as "the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement" in Time and "the most staggering leading woman in rock" in Vogue, she stormed the scene. She sang with numerous bands, changing over the next four years and developing her style with each. Over the next four years, her name would become famous across the US as well as internationally. Her drug use, however, also returned. She struggled against it, vowing with bandmate Dave Getz to keep needle-use out of their apartment (a vow broken), but the addiction surrounded and finally seized her.

On October 4, 1970, Joplin was discovered with a severe overdose in the Landmark Motor Motel by a delivery man with a wrong address. Rushed to the hospital, she survived but had to progress through weeks of recovery. During this time, she underwent something of a spiritual revolution, believing that "Jesus sent that delivery man". That Christmas, she would return to Texas and rejoin the Church of Christ she had attended as a child with her family.

Joplin became as fed up with organized Christianity as she had before and soon stepped into what became the "Rock Christian" movement. Casting aside the darker themes of rock, the "Jesus hippies" embraced psychedelic art, powerful emotions, and beneficial anarchy. She would meet with other leaders of the Christian movement, applauding some and voicing disgust at others. Most famously, she gave a concert with evangelist Billy Graham in 1973. Most notoriously, she launched into a feud with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, referring to the Praise The Lord Club as a "nest of vipers". When scandal broke in 1987, Joplin refused to allow her fans to celebrate, saying that there is no glory in the fall of PTL since "it shouldn't have ever existed in the first place".

Joplin's position in ministry is often called into question with many members of the Christian Right praising her devotion and good work while others say that she is two steps down from the Devil himself, possibly even an anti-christ. Opponents routinely bring up her history of drug abuse, a topic from which she never shies and uses as grounds for further promotion.

In 1984, with Democratic Party nominee Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson riding high in the polls on this day, President George H.W. Bush desperately needed an "October Surprise" to stay in office. Big time.

October SurpriseAfter Shirley Chisholm, Jackson had become only the second African American to mount a nationwide campaign for President of the United States, running as a Democrat. Key to his selection over the lacklustre Walter Mondale, was his adoption of a moderately populist platform. In so doing he dropped a number of his original Afrocentric policies, such as declaring apartheid South Africa a rogue state, and promising reperations for descendants of black slaves. Ironically, whilst George Bush's father Prescott was descended from New England abolitionists, his mother, Dorothy Walker's family were slave-owners from Maryland.

Bush had initially enjoyed high hopes of winning the 1980 election outright, narrowly beating Reagan at the Iowa Caucus. Defeated in the primaries, Reagan had chosen Bush as his running mate. And scarely after entering office, "the Gipper" had been assassinated by John Warnock Hinckley, Jr. Yet ever since he had been sworn in, Bush had experienced a dreadfully torrid time at the White House. Catastrophically, during the first year, compelling evidence had emerged that suggested Bush himself might have been behind the assassination. Because John's older brother, Scott Hinckley had a dinner date at his son, Neil Bush's Denver home that very evening. News footage indicated that a second shooter had fired the fatal shot from a nearby hotel window. And just nobody believed that Reagan could have been hit from the front when the bullet proof door was clearly opened between him and the assassin.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on May 4, 1982, By then it was clear that Bush's woeful performance in office was an even bigger blocker to his election in 1984. But two weeks before that election, her Sikh bodyguards killed Indira Gandhi. The Republic of India entered meltdown, the Punjab seceded, and the world went a little crazy.

In 1919, on this day "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, deeply traumatized by the Comiskey Park fire, quit professional baseball for good and left Chicago.

Disaster at Comiskey Park by Chris OakleyEven the most jaded Chicagoans were stunned by Jackson's decision; as he was leaving his house to board a train back to South Carolina, one distraught boy could be heard pleading "Say it ain't so, Joe!"

In 1964, in an article published in Life Magazine on this day Malcolm Little alleged that orders were given by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood to 'destroy' him.Hajj Part 6 - Getting on like a House on Fire by Eric Oppen
Life published a photograph of Malcolm X holding an M1 Carbine at a window (pictured). The photo was taken as representation of his declaration to defend himself from the daily death threats received. Undercover FBI informants warned officials that he had been marked for assassination.
The Muslim Brotherhood were not the only threat to Little's life. In June, the Nation of Islam had sued to reclaim Malcolm X's residence in Queens, which they claimed to own. The suit was successful, and Malcolm X was ordered to vacate. The evening after the publication and the night before a scheduled hearing to postpone the eviction date, the house burned to the ground. He and his family survived. No one was charged with any crime. Both the Nation of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood denied responsibility for the arson.
To be continued..

In 1847, on this day Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny was dispatched to the former western Mexico peninsula where he was ordered by US President George M. Dallas to prepare the combined territories of Baja and Alta California for statehood by creating a new seat of government in the city of La Paz.

Manifest DestinyThe United States was by now one of the largest nations of the globe. And yet the fulfilment of America's "Manifest Destiny" was due in part to the timing of the premature demise of President James K. Polk. He had stood against the "All Mexico" proponents within his Cabinet, but by the time Gen. Zachary Taylor's US troops forced their way into the Main Plaza of Monterrey, Mexico Polk's health had deteriorated to the extent that he worse forced to relinquish power to Dallas.

Veteran officers of the war such as Brig. Gen Franklin Pierce and L. Ulysses S. Grant founded the Aztec Club to celebrate the bravery of those troops who fought in Mexico. US Generals had never lost a battle and having landed at Velacruz marched with ease to Mexico City where the American Flag was raised atop Hispanic fortresses and palaces. And yet the military victory was to prove illusory.

A highly unstable situation awaited Kearny and even though the US government occupied the former Mexican heartland, control was limited to actively occupied urban areas. The indigenous population were hostile to the Protestant Anglo invaders. It would soon become clear that the Mexican-American war had effectively passed into a guerrilla phase, and Kearny would soon be writing to Dallas to advise the President that Baja California was essentially lawless.

In 1574, on this day the forces of Francisco de Valdez finally captured the rebellious city of Leiden, South Holland.

Fall of LeidenDutch rebels had taken up arms against the king of Spain, whose family had inherited the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands. Most of the counties of Holland and Zeeland were occupied by rebels in 1572, who sought to end the harsh rule of the Spanish Duke of Alba, governor-general of the Netherlands. This territory had a very high density of cities, which were protected by huge defenseworks and by the boglands, which could easily be put under water.

The Duke of Alba tried to break resistance using brute force. He used Amsterdam as a base, as this was the only city in the county of Holland that had remained loyal to the Spanish government. Alba's cruel treatment of the population of Naarden and Haarlem was notorious. The rebels learned that no mercy was shown there and were determined to hold out as long as possible. The county of Holland was split in two when Haarlem was conquered by the Spaniards after a costly seven month siege. Thereafter, Alba attempted to conquer Alkmaar in the north, but the city withstood the Spanish attack. Alba then sent his officer Francisco de Valdez to attack the southern rebel territory, starting with Leiden.

The war finally ended in 1648 with the Peace of Münster, whereupon the Hapsburg Netherlands were fully restored to Spanish rule, albeit with some local autonomy sought by the Dutch rebels.

In 1938, on this day, co-chairmen US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov opened the second round of the peace conference after earlier diplomatic talks had imploded at Munich.

October 3rd, 1938 - Talks Restarted at MunichFrench Prime Minister Édouard Daladier had given Chamberlain the leading role in the first round, but as negotiations progressed he had determined that Hitler wanted "a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of Napoleon were feeble".. President of Czechoslovakia Edvard Beneš refused to roll over and began mobilization of his country for war. The talks imploded, and British (and indeed European) leadership of the crisis was brought to an abrupt end. Obviously a breakthrough would have to come from outside the Continent.

By now Daladier and Beneš had realized their mistake in not insisting that the United States and Soviet Union attend the Conference. The United States was particularly relucant to attend, and almost certainly would have not become involved on any engagement terms other than co-sponsor of the Conference. And to prevent the informal formation of a Permanent Contact Group (a League of Nations Security Council if you will), Hull and Molotov were sent as co-chairman. The Fuhrer was even more reluctant; soon after the meeting with Chamberlain hehad furiously exlaimed "Gentlemen, this has been my first international conference and I can assure you that it will be my last". However it appeared that the German Government was locked in a power struggle with a military leadership unwilling to fight, and their agreement to attend was potentially nothing other than a cynical attempt to build the case for war.

In 1955, for the first time, developments in modern civil aviation enabled the Chancellor of the Imperial Federation to hastily convene a special assembly to agree a globally co-ordinated response to the Russian dissolution crisis.

End of the Great GameWhich was fortunate because Britain was facing a challenge unprecedented in the three centuries of her global hegemony.

Even though both great powers shared common borders from the prairies to the Kyber Pass their political systems were at a radically different level of maturity. Because Tsarist Russia had never willingly embraced the concept of global devolution whereas Britain was an island that never enjoyed the luxury of contiguous landmass.

It was a hard lesson that almost cost Britain the Eastern Seaboard in 1776. The result of local representation was the Imperial Federation, jingoistically described by Rudyard Kipling as the "fence-less prairie". But therein lie the problem because the wave of nationalism bursting out of the Russias was threatening to overwhelm those largely undefended imperial territories.

In 1771, Quebecois rebel militias attacked the British garrison at Sherbrooke, starting one of the most significant battles of the Quebec Rebellion.

Double Jeopardy Part 3
Battle of SherbrookeOver the next five days rebel troops and British forces would fight tooth and nail for control of the garrison; early on the afternoon of the sixth day the British garrison commander was killed when a stray musket ball tore through his neck and severed his jugular vein. The disheartened remnants of the garrison then hastily retreated to Montreal, leaving all of Sherbrooke in rebel hands.

At the time of the battle it was thought a rebel gun had fired the fatal shot at the British commander; in 2003, however, an archeological dig near the original garrison site turned up startling new evidence the garrison commander might actually have been the victim of a friendly fire accident.

The rebel victory at Sherbrooke dealt a staggering blow to Great Britain's prestige in the New World. Not only did it embolden insurgent militias elsewhere in Quebec to mount still greater attacks on British outposts there, it triggered a surge in pro-independence sentiment among the people of what is today the eastern seaboard of the United States; by 1772 the most vocal advocates of American separation from Britain had formed a coalition known as the Brotherhood of Liberty to rally public opinion in favor of armed resistance to British rule. It was the Brotherhood that would finally launch the American Revolution in the spring of 1775.

In 1972, with their anti-communist crusade in headlong retreat around the world, the 37th President of the United States, Marion M. Morrison received his fellow ultraconservative politician, Senator Richard M. Nixon for talks at the White House on this day.

The ConquerorJust twenty years before, "the Duke" would have been incapable of holding such a meeting. A six-packet a day smoker and heavy drinker, film directors had to shoot his movie scenes before noon because he was such a mean drunk by the afternoon. In fact the cause of his self-destructiveness, and also his conversion to super-patriotism, was a deep-seated frustration that his employers had prevented him from participating in World War Two.

Ironically, all that changed in 1951 when two Russian hitmen posing as FBI Agents attempted to kill him in his offices at Warner Brother Studios. Enraged by his anti-communist activities in the late 1940s (when Hollywood blacklisted those perceived as Soviet sympathisers), Joseph Stalin had ordered this hit during one of the many late night movie watching evenings that marked the final crazy years of his rule.

By 2008, a vicious cycle of "predatory lending" following comfortable economic growth in the mid-2000s gave way to one of the largest economic disasters since the Great Depression. Governments all over the world faced trade problems, collapsing values, and surging commodities including oil and food costs. In the United States (often blamed as the source of this disaster), the main issue was sub-prime mortgages.

Bush Vetoes Bailout Under legislation to promote home-ownership in the Clinton era, laws limiting the offers of loans to persons with poor credit were softened. A housing bubble began, and money from investors quickly followed. Mortgages were taken up by banks, resold to lending institutions, and parceled out to securities, some at very high risk. When the growing economy hit an inevitable stone in the road, mortgages began to default, causing a loss to investors, causing a withdraw of spending, causing further economic downturn. With houses pouring onto the market, home prices plummeted. The stock market dove as well, and unemployment skyrocketed from businesses forced to downsize.

A new story by Jeff ProvineEconomic bad news seemed to swallow up all news, even eclipsing military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Famously, Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme would be one of many examples of the mishandling of funds that would all but destroy Americans' faith in business. With an election in November, President George W. Bush called for decisive action.

On September 21, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson would propose a plan for some $700 billion in government funds to support mortgage-backed securities like Freddie Mac, AIG, and Fannie Mae as well as major bankrupt businesses like General Motors. The original proposal called for nearly unlimited power as well as freedom from judicial review and oversight. Americans booed the plan, and it underwent a week-long adjustment through Congress before becoming the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

On September 24, Bush addressed the nation, describing a disastrous future for the American economy if some sort of action was not taken. The idea of using tax dollars to invest and then be returned when the economy was sound came off as good to many until the President mistakenly left out the word "back" from the phrase, "gives our economy the flexibility and resilience to absorb shocks, adjust, and bounce back".

Commentators on both sides (liberals looking to knock down Republican votes in November, conservatives looking to stop the "socialization" of America) descended upon the word, portraying the "bouncing" of the economy as a clear signal that nothing was in control. The government would throw desperately needed money at a problem, and debts would only rise. In a rash of speeches and a viral video describing its methods against Keynesian economics of feeding the cycle of boom and bust, the conservative economic ideals of Friedrich Hayek came to the forefront. Allusions to the works of Ayn Rand began to resound. "Let 'em Fail" drowned out the calls of "Too Big to Fail".

Feeling the change in American opinion, Bush vetoed the bailout bill, sending it back to Congress and asking for something that "won't pat the back of lazy sleaseballs". Another bill would be produced by the end of October called the Economic Solvency Act of 2008. It posed stiffer regulations and granted power to the FDIC to clean up the mess banks made with harsh penalties, including criminal investigations.

Wall Street reacted by collapsing. Americans flew into panic, stockpiling weapons, bottled water, and canned goods. Riots broke out in major industrial cities, practically tearing Michigan apart and creating militarized Union workers locking down factories until agreed pay was given. The 2008 election gave Democrat Barack Obama the White House and a country on the verge of anarchy. While millions were devastated, his alleviation programs akin to the WPA and breadlines of FDR kept the country from total disaster, which was seen in many other countries with open warfare in Greece and a collapse of rule in Iceland.

The economy has readjusted and begun to rebuild, slowly, upon Hayek grounds. The Second Great Depression drags on with promises that, one day, jobs will be plentiful again. In the meantime, savings of whatever is left are solid upon a gradually deflating dollar.

In 2009, on this day David Letterman's contract was terminated by his employer the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) who simultaneously announced that the new host of the "Tonight Show" would be Conan O'Brien.
Click to watch

"Tonight Show" implodes after NBC fires David LettermanThe original scandal had come to light when the alleged extortionist, Robert J. "Joe" Halderman was arrested trying to cash a phony $2m check after Letterman had contacted the Manhattan District Attorney's office. On September 9th, Halderman had allegedly broken into Letterman's car to place photographic evidence alongside the demand for the money. Requiring a grand jury to order the arrest, the photographs had been revealed, demonstrating that Letterman had pursued a string of affairs with the staff on his show. Because of his role as the manager, it later transpired that Letterman was liable to charges of sexually harrassment, forcing his dismissal from NBC.

Viewing ratings on the "Late Night with Jay Leno Show" on CBS received an immediate, huge surge which really meant that only Leno, and not O'Brien, was the main beneficiary from the scandal. Ironically, NBC had initially favoured Leno as the successor to Johnny Carson in 1992, but at the host's insistence, had instead offered the position to David Letterman. Leno had been one of a number of Talk Show Hosts who had sharply criticised Letterman's behaviour.
Click to watch

In 1941, this day the future President of Nigeria Kenule Beeson (Ken) Saro-Wiwa was born at Bori in the Niger Delta.

On a Darkling PlainHe spent his childhood in a polygamous household of Anglican faith and eventually proved himself an excellent student, netting him a scholarship to study English at Government College Umuahia. He would complete his studies at the University of Ibadan and briefly became a teaching assistant at the University of Lagos.

Saro-Wiwa capitalised upon his education by spending thirty years in the employment of the multinational Shell Oil company where as a press officer his principal function was falsely denying environmental damage to the Niger Delta.

But in 1995, he was re-united with his father Chief Jim Saro-wiwa. A religious awakening would inspire him to champion the rights of the indigenous people of the Niger Delta. His ultimate triumph was documented in his controversional biopic "On a darkling plain"¹.