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I would interpret it more as sorium is not particularly rare or precious in a space context (similar to how hydrogen/helium are rare on earth but dirt common elsewhere). 2 out of 3 gas giants we've looked at have enormous accessible reserves. Maybe Sol is an especially weird system, but it's more likely that most gas giants have sorium, especially since the aliens don't seem to have been particularly excited by Neptune. Saturn would be a fueling station built because there was some other reason to want one there, not something built to exploit an unusually rich reserve
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Mar 1, 2021 22:08
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Foxfire_ posted:I would interpret it more as sorium is not particularly rare or precious in a space context (similar to how hydrogen/helium are rare on earth but dirt common elsewhere). 2 out of 3 gas giants we've looked at have enormous accessible reserves. Maybe Sol is an especially weird system, but it's more likely that most gas giants have sorium, especially since the aliens don't seem to have been particularly excited by Neptune. Saturn would be a fueling station built because there was some other reason to want one there, not something built to exploit an unusually rich reserve It's this, because we are only working with the data present in Sol the assumption many many people are going to go with is that Sorium isn't all that hard to find on a galatic scale. Saturn is also closer to their Mars base so even if it wasn't the perfect motherload it was close enough and would save on fuel costs that it was worth it. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Mar 1, 2021 |
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Mar 1, 2021 22:11
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lmao @ pulling a soft coup in the arab league and effectively separating all of the large population/viable countries from the decrepid gulf monarchs. Glad the Nasserite and Ba'athist parties decided to come along with us instead, the holdouts can safely be marginalized/ignored outside of potential GLADIOS related connections, I'd think.
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Mar 1, 2021 23:57
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Yeah it turned out to be pretty slick, even if we didn't quite intend that. I was ready to have to deal with a bunch of Saudi bullshit but they went and did us a favor by just loving off to slowly get left behind by history. A bunch of temporarily-but-not-permanently wealthy states in decline getting increasingly desperate in the region is TOTALLY never going to come back to haunt us, but in the meantime the can has been kicked and we have some breathing room to fix up the rest of the region.
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Mar 2, 2021 00:19
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I'll confess that I'm just glad this year's conference is only on the other side of the Alps for me, rather than the other side of the world. Work on the global transportation network can't come quickly enough. This has been one of those years where decades happen. We have gained our roadmap to the rest of the Solar System, undertaken the first major diplomatic talks with Japan and India since the War, and, well, inadvertently destroyed a major regional competing bloc while making a large number of new allies. These are the kind of moves that diplomats used to dream of. And, of course, the incredible discoveries and events on Mars. The Volksrat has given me its conclusions, and hopefully I should have put the finishing touches on making this proposal actually formal by the time the council convenes. It IS good to be back. Fletcher's Notes: - Please God don't let anything happen with Rudi before the session ends. - Don't like those princely states breaking away into their own rotten bloc. Probably will turn into violence, there's no way they can keep social order together without it once sorium power starts coming online. Situation already feels stretched thin, maybe some of the Arab League moderates can help with talking them down off the gas tank. Will not be easy. Almost certain all remember what happened to Selassie. - Have Willi get me the JCP report as soon as it's available. Essential to forming proper response to Japan. Those nukes HAVE to come off the table. - Indian situation does not feel solvable simply with economic levers. Feudal system, caste system unbelievable. Relevant parallels hard to think of. To-Do: - Apply for funding to transfer cassette data storage library to new CD-ROM system, hire interns for entire room of office space freed up in basement. - Contact (formal) Frazetti (PCI) about pre-War intelligence files on behalf of IvaR for Schwertbrecher. - Contact (formal) working group for Comintern World Tour. Desperately need real name. - Contact (informal) working group for Comintern World Tour for fact-finding mission to Milanese clubs. Cultural exchange of latest Kraftwerk album for information on "Italo disco".
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Mar 2, 2021 05:53
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One thing that has come up is the idea of a provisional or observer status for nations like japan and india as a form of diplomatic outreach: a form of sponsored membership with less obligations in terms of government and societal structure, but also less benefits to match: technology, information and economic sharing treaties, but no voting or intelligence rights. Guaranteed protections for those inside them, in exchange the right to maintain a civilian spacefleet, that sort of thing as a halfway step to ease up tensions and let the cultural bloc do it's work. Edit: it's also for spain, maybe some of those arab league splinters who don't want to be chained to a dying wreck, some north american polities, ect. NewMars fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Mar 2, 2021 |
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Mar 2, 2021 08:47
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After ruminating on what Hunter S. Thompson might be like and might be doing in this timeline, I have these excerpts to show you. The sad, sorry state of America "The thing about the reds that a lot of people out there think is that they hate america. Now while there's your fair share of neo-bolsheviks that are all for the eternal triumph over the enemy, that was decades ago and is gone. Most of them? They don't care. Hell, even way back just after it happened they mostly didn't care anyway. The best of them have that sort of condescension you have to a relative who's gone and lost it. To them, America's just a strange memory that doesn't even seem real anymore." Fear and Loathing in the Northwestern States "The thing you have to understand about northwestern anarchy is that it is in existence if not in principle the exact opposite of that wild, unrestrained energy that so permeated the bay and still lives in the heart of every street freak from LA to the hole in Washington. It is also nothing akin to that wide-eyed red-star screaming behemoth so commonly attached to the name of communism that once stalked the nightmares of every slack-jawed war ghoul in the nation. It is in short, like someone took a homeowner's association and tore out all that blonde-haired gingham-wearing sneering suburbanite reactionary tyranny and replaced it with the weariness of having to sit down for six hours to ask which choice between the bomb craters and bullet holes you want filled in today. Make no mistake, as much as they would initiate a screaming fit to make the heroically departed Hoover proud if it were ever put to them, the American Dream lives in these people too. I have seen them, every day get up and look to the wreck of a world around them and say that "this will be a city again." The work of their councils may be a crushing tedium like I have never seen since the press coverage of that dearly departed snake nixon (who was so filled with spite and venom for humanity that he tried to take it with him), but at least it is that honest, american labor, done in their name, for their good and not for the good of some nameless boss who vacationed every month to the Caribbean on their dime and should be and was shot." Communist Moonmen and The New Olympics "Despite my repeated protestations that I am in fact dead and shall be until I am finished with my book-writing tour, my erstwhile colleagues at Rolling Stone have seen fit to keep me abreast of world developments. By far the most important of these updates has been on the proposal of a so-called "Lunar Spartikade" by the moon communists. Far more interesting than their hopelessly blatant olympic rebranding is the location. The moon. Every red-blooded human being loves the moon: there is something inescapably majestic about it, something that defies comprehension, the sight of it's pearlescent sheen cutting through the eye and the brain, straight to the spirit. So of course the only possible thing to do once we've reached it is to have a bunch of screaming brutes go at it with sticks, balls and whatever else equipment we can procure to create the most depraved spectacle in the history of this galaxy. Morally speaking, this is the objectively correct response: an idea so fundamentally human that it must be automatically dredged from whatever swamp that lies at the very far end of our unconsciousness the moment it becomes viable, putting the lie to every screaming fit about the inhumanity of the reds that has ever been. The question then, is not a matter of if, but what? The long jump is in for sure and pole-vaulting will defeat all criticism. However, the true test of our advancement is a species can only be the playing of that still-breathing national pastime: football. Utter, glorious chaos will result of course. But what kind? That is beyond even my own formidable talents of imagination to say. I can only hope that we are blessed by the grace of god to witness the spectacle of a wide-eyed John Madden, sent spiraling into space from a misaimed tackle as I foresaw on that trip to Vegas so long ago."
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Mar 2, 2021 17:53
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NewMars posted:Fear and Loathing in the Northwestern States Never has there been such scathing criticism and glowing endorsement of the CWC as this. I'm so happy god bless
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Mar 2, 2021 20:06
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COMRADES We should put TRAINS on THE MOON.
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Mar 6, 2021 21:26
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paragon1 posted:COMRADES
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Mar 6, 2021 22:10
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paragon1 posted:COMRADES
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Mar 7, 2021 00:47
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An ultraheavy ground unit brigade which is actually just a train with each unit being a different weapon system mounted trian car. This would be helaciously expensive to produce and research.
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Mar 7, 2021 02:06
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paragon1 posted:COMRADES I mean, the Moon is rich in Corbomite, which apparently has room-temp superconductor properties. Superconductors allow for easy magnetic levitation, so you could build some VERY impressive maglev bullet trains. Basically a refinement of Mass Driver and Railgun tech. You could get up to some hellish speed on the moon without having to worry about atmospheric friction heating, allowing you to build a lunar mass transit system to circumnavigate the body in hours. The big problem is going so fast you fly off the tracks and into orbit.
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Mar 7, 2021 02:21
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Asterite34 posted:I mean, the Moon is rich in Corbomite, which apparently has room-temp superconductor properties. Superconductors allow for easy magnetic levitation, so you could build some VERY impressive maglev bullet trains. Basically a refinement of Mass Driver and Railgun tech. You say problem. I say cheap, innovative surface to orbit delivery mechanism.
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Mar 7, 2021 02:23
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The limit is probably how much acceleration the meatbags inside can withstand, but even accelerating at 1g both ways could make Moon Trains scary fast
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Mar 7, 2021 03:07
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Ian McDonald had the freaking cool idea of having a train containing a solar-powered smelter and foundry mounted in a train, permanently circling the moons equator to stay in the sunlight. Lunar trains are best trains.
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Mar 7, 2021 14:04
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MOON TRAIN MOON TRAIN MOON TRAIN MOON TRAIN COLLECTIVE AROUND THE EQUATOR MOON COMMUNISTS SUPPORT THIS IDEA
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Mar 7, 2021 15:08
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I'm finally catching up on this and stuck in the great debate over whether to be imperialist fuckos towards Japan because they're imperalist fuckos who deserve it. Jesus Christ these threads sometimes. One thing I'm wondering is how in hell the PRC is ok with any deal with Japan, though. They have legit complaints and Deng is no wilting flower. Also, I assume that Vietnam and China still have poor relations, though hopefully alternate reality means that the Khmer Rouge didn't happen. What's the discord link?
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Mar 10, 2021 02:14
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habeasdorkus posted:I'm finally catching up on this and stuck in the great debate over whether to be imperialist fuckos towards Japan because they're imperalist fuckos who deserve it. Jesus Christ these threads sometimes. Iirc it's been hashed out some on the discord. Speaking of, here's the discord.
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Mar 10, 2021 02:26
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habeasdorkus posted:I'm finally catching up on this and stuck in the great debate over whether to be imperialist fuckos towards Japan because they're imperalist fuckos who deserve it. Jesus Christ these threads sometimes. I don't think Deng's in charge. China right now is extremely inward looking because the red guard and the central government are in an incredibly tenous power-sharing agreement that has been threatening to collapse for any moment for decades now. Basically they're really big on national sovereignty and decentralization as a way to stop the rest of the comintern from doing some well-meaning meddling that makes them explode. Discord link is here: https://discord.gg/zr6Um6mgUc
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Mar 10, 2021 02:27
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That makes a lot of sense, and when it blows up it's gonna be a MESS.
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Mar 10, 2021 03:10
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So, just how insufferable are the third world maoist groups in the former US in this alternative timeline?
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Mar 10, 2021 03:19
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HiHo ChiRho posted:So, just how insufferable are the third world maoist groups in the former US in this alternative timeline? Swamp maoists are still considered a joke, even by the comintern.
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Mar 10, 2021 03:30
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NewMars posted:Swamp maoists are still considered a joke, even by the comintern. We keep getting messages that "we will rue the day!" I am not quite sure what we are ruing?
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Mar 10, 2021 16:04
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Roux for days? That's capitalist decadence!
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Mar 10, 2021 17:10
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The Lower Georgia United Worker's Front contains several groups that can be considered swamp maoists. They're no fun at parties, but great when you need someone to shoot at reactionary pigs.
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Mar 10, 2021 17:14
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God, the loving Japan debate.habeasdorkus posted:Also, I assume that Vietnam and China still have poor relations, though hopefully alternate reality means that the Khmer Rouge didn't happen. Sadly the Khmer Rouge did happen, because the events that led to it happening occurred before the timeline split. They were a member of the Comintern for a hot minute at the behest of China and were extremely unpopular, a major sticking point between China and the USSR. However, before game start they were in fact thrown out and Vietnam stomped them, just as IRL. With no US and UK to make hideously bad decisions-that-look-like-realpolitik, the Khmer Rouge is dead as gently caress and the resistance that the West funded for years is much, much more dead. As is Pol Pot. Vietnam captured him and were dragging him to a war crimes trial, when he... fell down some stairs. Onto some bullets. It was a truly tragic accident. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Mar 13, 2021 |
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Mar 13, 2021 20:06
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Redeye Flight posted:God, the loving Japan debate. Makes my decision to roleplay as an attache for Vietnam's biggest contribution to Comintern - General Giáp - a good one.
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Mar 13, 2021 23:52
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Why does Japan even require a response? Can't the Comintern just continue to ignore them?
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Mar 14, 2021 00:33
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tatankatonk posted:Why does Japan even require a response? Can't the Comintern just continue to ignore them? Collaring the Joint Chiefs would be a pretty big win.
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Mar 14, 2021 02:04
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tatankatonk posted:Why does Japan even require a response? Can't the Comintern just continue to ignore them? It doesn't require one, but it would be good for a number of reasons 1) They've made clear they want into space, and if we can't stop them we can at least keep a close eye on them. I'd like to avoid the scenario where we end up playing whack-a-mole with a million hostile capitalist enclaves scattered throughout the stars because we didn't get a grip on the situation earlier 2) They have tactical nukes lying around that we'd like off the table. They show no indication of planning to use them, or even particularly wanting them, but their mere existence is a tacit threat 3) We can benefit from their resources to get some otherwise prohibitively costly projects done that people have been agitating for for a while now, namely Venus colonization. Maybe a joint research plan for a new high-capacity tractor beam tugboat, too 4) As a major player among the remaining capitalist powers, them being buddy-buddy with us helps our dealings with everyone else
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Mar 14, 2021 02:25
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Asterite34 posted:It doesn't require one, but it would be good for a number of reasons 5) they've indicated they're quite happy to burn the world down with themselves. Treating with them leads to 6) Why fight and die for GLADIO when you can go to Japan and just, you know, get your capitalist on.
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Mar 14, 2021 09:52
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I feel like 5 is more "we'll burn the world down if you're not going to make a place for us" than "we're happy to burn the world down." It's a realpolitik vs ideological decision, with reasonable arguments on both sides. I'd go with the famous words of Premier Kruschev, personally. We will bury them. By outlasting them, that is. A simple matter of containment over a couple generations will see capitalism falter and fade away. That being said, if the ComIntern chooses to work with Japan, Việt Nam will certainly try our utmost to make such rapproachment work. Especially since the Japanese are playing host to a number of gentlemen like William Westmoreland who should be tried for crimes against humanity. One wonders what the ghoul governments of the Joint Chiefs and Thatcher would do if they knew that the Japanese plan on selling them out. Sloppy tradecraft on the part of our intelligence services might accidentally provide them the relevant details of our offer. I wager they'd seek a decapitation strike upon Japan afterwards, and they don't have the resources to pull that off without being annihilated themselves.
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Mar 14, 2021 18:24
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URGENT Discussions in the congress have come to a frightening conclusion: with the loss of noticeable amounts of life-support machinery on the moon, including CO2 scrubbers and other supplies used in the construction of long-term habitats, combined with the recent incident on the roads, it is likely that GLADIO has at least one outpost on the moon of indeterminate size. This in mind, they are likely not using our population to hide in substantial numbers, but are working on constructing their own facilities in unscouted sectors.
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Mar 20, 2021 17:03
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We must find them and put an end to them.
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Mar 21, 2021 03:17
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Gladio delenda est
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Mar 21, 2021 04:56
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STATE OF THE WORLDS, 1982 It has now been almost fifteen years since the red flags were hoisted in Paris. The first generation born after the revolution has not quite reached adulthood. The world they are growing up in has changed enormously, and the rate of that change continues to accelerate every day. It can be hard to keep up. Even the scientists, engineers, academics, and policymakers at the forefront of those changes routinely find themselves overwhelmed by the speed of it, the scale of it. People – not many people, but people – who were adults when the Wright Brothers first achieved heavier-than-air flight are still alive today. A precious few veterans of the Russian Revolution of 1905 live, as do hundreds of thousands of veterans of the 1917 revolution. They have lived to see a world completely transformed, socially, economically, politically, and technologically. The Great Revolutionary War, the worst and longest of the twentieth century’s three global conflicts, still weighs heavy on humanity’s collective memory, a trauma no one has really entirely recovered from. Though the fighting has ended, and much of the physical damage has been repaired, it will likely take centuries for the scars to heal. Between direct combat deaths, civilian collateral damage, and indirect deaths from radioactive fallout, ecological disruption, loss of infrastructure, famine, diseases such as smallpox, and other knock-on effects, over one billion people lost their lives as a direct consequence of the war. Bloody, but unbowed, the loose alliance of communist and socialist states that formed in the fires of the last great war ultimately emerged victorious. Though they are not the sole power in the new world, they are, if taken as a single body, overwhelmingly the dominant one, and their power and influence has continued to grow. The final victory has not yet been won – but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s close. Not just close, but inevitable. The capitalist oppressors’ backs have been broken. They have been humiliated and laid low, the wealth the workers created for them returned to its rightful owners, the power they once wielded stripped from them. Though many of them still linger on, their time has passed, the world they lived in no longer exists, and they are obsolete. The future is red. Socialism is the only way forward now. Building socialism is a difficult and ongoing task. The incredible power of Trans-Newtonian technology makes it easier. Magic is becoming a part of everyday life. Materials of incredible strength and versatility, literally pulled from the ether, are finding uses in every sector of the economy. From transistors and resistors to complex integrated circuits, from simple dry-cell batteries to nuclear reactors powering entire nations, from prefabricated apartment blocks to habitats on the Moon, from automobiles to interplanetary spacecraft, the technology of the new world is increasingly dominated by TNEs, and so far humanity has been the better for it. The 25-year Cold War ended in a hot one. The capitalist world-system ended in revolution. Humanity’s long incubation in its planetary cradle ended in a plume of sorium fire. All of them are over, and we are fast leaving them behind. VITAL STATISTICS  While census taking remains very unreliable in much of the world, the human race probably consists of approximately four billion individuals, give or take a few million. The average age is fairly young. Life expectancy, which cratered dramatically worldwide during and immediately after the Great Revolutionary War, is trending up almost everywhere, rapidly in some places, slowly and unevenly in others. Of those, over 2.5 billion live in full member states of, or ‘neutral’ nations closely allied with, the Communist Interplanetary. Over nine hundred million of that 2.5 billion are in the People’s Republic of China. Other major population centers include Mexico and the Soviet Union. Most of the remaining 1.5 billion live in member states of the reconstituted United Nations. Of these, over 1/3 are in India, with Brazil, Nigeria, and Japan being the other major population centers. A few tens of millions, no more than a hundred fifty million total, live in neutral nations or stateless territory, at the fringes of the new world, eking out an uncertain existence. Between the nearly a dozen orbital stations of various size that now circle the Earth, the shantytown-habitats of Luna, the tiny outposts at Barsoom and Cydonia, and the distant exploration ships in the outer planets, nearly two million humans are offworld at present time, the majority of them long-term or permanent residents. Even within the Comintern, literacy, per capita income, average standards of living, life expectancy, and other statistics can, and do, vary enormously. It is simply too large an entity to generalize. That having been said, they are, in general, improving. INTERNAL AFFAIRS    Here is every single piece of legislation the Comintern has ever passed, in chronological order: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nF1aPOZtM7RuXMZ42cDRW9xubv-EK8IH-hYn0RlxCdA/edit?usp=sharing The Comintern (or ‘Cominterp’, technically, but the former term remains more popular informally, as it ‘sounds better’) remains a fractious and argumentative body, but it also grows more powerful and centralized with each passing year. This is not a result of any single policy or any deliberate effort, but a natural evolution of the work it is doing. Officially, its members remain sovereign states. Officially, it is not yet a world government; world government is something it aspires to build one day, not something it claims to be now. Unofficially, the line between the alliance and its member states already grows blurry. Most of the Comintern bloc’s economic planning has, in the years since the Trans-Newtonian Revolution, been gradually, and at first informally, subsumed into the larger organization. This was largely out of necessity – the truly enormous scale of the body’s industrialization efforts required an international outlook. Thousands of factories and mines have been constructed, tens of millions of workers were directly involved in that construction, hundreds of millions more have been trained to operate them, many of those had to be moved and housed, and entire new cities’ worth of construction have been built to provide goods and services to them. Millions of people, and millions of new Trans-Newtonian computers, manage the vast and constantly-evolving logistics network that keeps the whole thing running. Cables criss-cross the globe, satellites circle above, data streams across the airwaves. Cybersyn control centers collect, collate, and interpret economic data, and distribute it across the Internetwork in near-real-time. Borders mean little anymore, and which member state your firm is technically located in is less and less relevant. The production order you are fulfilling on any given day may not have even necessarily come from an actual person; members of the radical Cyberneticist faction in the Soviet Union are experimenting with primitive predictive algorithms to automate economic planning entirely, anticipating trends and placing orders for goods before they’re needed. The roads and rails of the Comintern’s Network Project, though they are young, are spreading inexorably across the planet. Hundreds of millions of people live in the uniform, prefabricated housing blocks of the Socialist Aid Program. Over one billion people watch the Comintern News Network or a Public Broadcasting System television station every day. Over half of the electrified households in the alliance receive their power from a source operated directly by the Comintern. Thousands of square miles of contaminated wasteland left over from the war have been rendered habitable again by Comintern liquidators and environmental remediation teams. For each of these tasks workers had to be brought on and trained, supplies and equipment had to be acquired, policies and procedures had to be written up, instructions had to be created and disseminated, and everything, everything, had to be transported. Quite organically, bureaucracies developed to organize and carry out these tasks, and these bureaucracies invariably report directly to the People’s Congress, through one of its steadily-increasing number of standing committees. Security is fast becoming the purview of the Comintern as well. Though the member states still maintain their own militaries, they are dependent on the logistical network operated by the Comintern, the intelligence provided by the Comintern, and direct themselves at targets designated by the Comintern. The still-ongoing fight against the reactionary terror organization Gladio has been spearheaded almost exclusively by the Interplanetary, and humanitarian efforts in the shattered Americas have been conducted largely by its young army. Right-wing terrorism, and occasional full-on guerrilla activity, remains a constant threat, and there are dozens of attempted attacks per month, most of them thwarted by your security efforts before they begin. Though you know enough about the Gladio network to do great damage to it if aggressive action is ever ordered, the very real possibility that they may have access to a submarine full of nuclear weapons has made you somewhat wary. Despite all of this, with rare exceptions such as Ascension Island, the member states and nonstate entities of the Comintern remain mostly-sovereign bodies with their own unique political systems and ultimate authority over their own internal affairs, for the most part, with several asterisks. The average Comintern resident still considers themselves a citizen of their own state or polity first. To see oneself as a citizen of the Comintern itself is a rare and fringe position, and people who publicly hold this position will in general be seen as a bit odd – but they do exist, and their numbers have been growing. Addendum: Language Many hundreds of languages are spoken in the Comintern. French is the closest thing to a lingua franca in most affairs of government. In the People’s Army, the Ministry of Outer Space Affairs, and XCOM, Russian dominates instead, due to Interkosmos Academy being located in Russia. An exploratory committee has been active for several years with the responsibility of developing a ‘universal second language’ for Comintern space operations. Their main operations are currently an Esperanto school at Interkosmos for new cosmonaut cadets, an Esperanto immersion program on the Moon, experimentation with a few entirely new constructed languages, and, most importantly, the development of a standard sign language for communicating in space suits. This language has already caught on, despite being less than two years old and still very much in its infancy, and has taken on a life of its own on Luna. It has even developed dialects, with the ‘Spacer Sign’ common among Earth’s orbital shipyard workers showing noticeable differences from the ‘Lunagrad Sign Language’ of the Moon. Given time, they may branch off into entirely different languages, ironically defeating the entire purpose of the program. Addendum: Comintern governance The unicameral People's Congress functions as the supreme legislative and executive body of the Comintern. It consists of representatives from member states, statelike entities, and non-state bodies, including communist parties, revolutionary unions, and other radical groups active in non-Comintern states. Every full member organization in the Comintern gets an equal vote, from the largest sovereign state to the Japanese Communist Party, which some of the more populous countries chafe at a bit. Their representatives are chosen any way they see fit - some are elected, some are appointed by the government, some are decided by sortition, etc. Legislation is proposed and voted on at annual sessions; outside of session, standing committees selected by the Congress are responsible for actually implementing the legislation. There is no executive as such, which creates a bit of a problem at times; the metaphorical buck doesn't really stop anywhere in particular. Most of the actual power in the organization is informal and centered in the enormous and unelected bureaucracy that has sprung up to handle the many duties the Comintern is taking on. EXTERNAL AFFAIRS Technically no Comintern member is prohibited from engaging in independent diplomacy with nonmembers, but it’s strongly discouraged. The Comintern’s diplomatic corps, in the early days of the organization a motley network of subversives, activists, negotiators, and secret agents moving through the shattered world attempting to hold the alliance together through Armageddon, have evolved into an experienced, professional, and close-knit fraternity. Comintern negotiators have waited outside doomsday bunkers as the people inside emerged, believing they had escaped nuclear apocalypse and were going to rebuild civilization. They have held council with Iroquois warrior societies in what was once Canada, talked bandit kings in North Dakota into giving up their ICBMs, trudged across the frozen wastelands of Antarctica to tell the men who have kept a scientific station operational since 1968 that they can come home, and had a thousand boring meetings at a thousand boring conference tables the world over. They’ve been putting in work, in short. Many of the countries that are not in the Comintern are closely aligned with the bloc, either for ideological reasons or because of simple realpolitik – they’re the biggest going concern right now, after all, and if you’re dependent on imports or exports to survive, you pretty much have to deal with them. These aligned states exercise varying degrees of independence – some, like Albania, are so closely integrated that they’re Comintern members in all but name; others take some pride in little acts of rebellion here and there. The remaining capitalist powers have largely aligned under the blue banner of the United Nations, a dead organization that existed for less than 25 years before it unceremoniously dissolved, having failed in its mission to prevent another world war. The new UN is based in Japan, and claims to be a direct continuation of the old organization, though this claim is questionable. Despite its dubious legitimacy, the new UN remains a sizable organization that is capable of wielding a decent amount of economic and diplomatic influence, and its member nations count over a billion people as citizens. Too weak to mount a serious challenge to the Comintern, and yet too strong to simply roll over effortlessly, they remain an annoyance. The original UN building is still standing in the Five Nations. It was occupied by a scavenger gang for several years during the collapse; part of the building has since been redeveloped into a museum, while the rest is a housing cooperative occupied mostly by resettled refugees. OUTER SPACE AFFAIRS Space is, as far as humanity is concerned, the near-uncontested domain of the Comintern. Every single interplanetary spacecraft in human hands is either operated directly by the Ministry of Outer Space Affairs or under a charter granted by them. Space traffic control for interplanetary missions is handled by MOSA, the database of objects in Earth orbit is maintained by MOSA, Near Earth asteroid tracking is handled by MOSA. They are very nearly humanity’s space agency. Both MOSA and XCOM, the Comintern's other parallel space agency, retain some pseudo-military trappings but are formally civilian organizations. They currently operate no armed spacecraft, though they are very close to developing that capability (within a matter of months). MOSA operates orbital shipyard complexes, multiple interplanetary spacecraft, and scientific outposts on Mars, while XCOM at present time commands the two spacecraft of the Cydonia expedition, the Cydonia ground team, and the Earth-based SETI Initiative. ------------------------------------------------------------------- ATLAS OF THE WORLD If some of this seems vague, that's on purpose; the idea is to give people enough to work with while still providing them with enough freedom to come up with their own ideas, and write what the world is like. I do have more specific information available for much of it, though, and if you want something clarified, or more info about a specific country or territory, ask and I'll edit it in. EUROPE  As the center of the 1917 and 1968 revolutions, and the site of most of the fighting of the Great Revolutionary War, Europe is a near-unbroken sea of red. The microstates of Luxembourg, Andorra, and San Marino have remained separate from the body by simply doing everything the Comintern asks and hoping they go away. Albania, a friendly observer that generally supports the Comintern and fought alongside the organization as an ally during the GRW, currently regards the organization as being tainted with revisionism, and maintains wary distance. Spain, despite being dominated by a left-wing government that includes the country's Comintern-member communist party as a junior partner, will likely never join the Comintern fully, both because their enormously popular king would violate the body's prohibition on monarchies, and also because even the Spanish left is still unbelievably ratshit loving pissed about Catalonia and the Basque Country declaring independence. They've consoled themselves a bit by taking Gibraltar. The Warsaw Pact, depending on your point of view, either no longer exists or has been massively expanded; it was the direct predecessor organization to the Comintern as it exists now. The Soviet Union still exercises a great deal of soft power through this body, but is no longer interested in - or capable of - directly projecting power in Eastern Europe as it once did. Turkey remains independent - in a canny political move, they managed to avoid near-certain Soviet invasion by unilaterally withdrawing from NATO and letting the Soviets use the Bosporus, declaring neutrality. This triggered a US-backed right-wing uprising, which much of the Turkish military joined, with the remainder forced to grit their teeth and fight alongside their unlikely saviors, a coalition of liberal Kemalists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, and a Kurdish militant organization established during the conflict, known as the PKK. The bitter and brutal Turkish Civil War is an oft-forgotten theater of the wider Great Revolutionary War, and ultimately ended in the defeat of the Turkish right as a conventional military or political force. Though the country remains nominally capitalist, continuing counterinsurgency operations against the still very much active Grey Wolves insurgency have drawn Turkey closer and closer to the Comintern over the years. Switzerland, the world's most irrelevant historical anachronism, maintains its neutrality and tries really hard to pretend it isn't surrounded by revolutionary socialists. Pope Marcellus III, born Oscar Romero, reigns in the Vatican, and is officially ignored by the Italian government, receiving neither formal recognition nor formal opposition. They generally don't bother the Holy See and the Holy See doesn't bother them in return. ASIA  Asia is easily the most multilateral continent. The largest and most important powers of both major blocs can be found here, as can the stubbornly independent Iranians and the nuclear-armed fortress-state of Israel. Most of these yellow states have active left-wing opposition movements, many of them active participants in the Comintern. They include Japan, the most powerful remaining capitalist state on the planet, and India, the most populous by far. The Communist Party of the Phillippines, wary of China, has so far taken a 'wait and see' approach to joining the Comintern, remaining a 'pink' nation. The Arab League is currently imploding, and many of its pink countries will be red soon. Who knows how Israel will react to this. The People's Republic of China continues to maintain an uneasy peace between the official national government and the Red Guards, informally referred to as 'One Country, Two Systems'. Though the active phase of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is long over, the chaos of war and world revolution allowed it to consolidate itself well as an institution in Chinese life, and the revolutionary committees and Red Guards militias and related organizations have formed a network that operates almost as a parallel government. In practice they mostly let the Communist Party of China run the country unimpeded these days, but occasionally the central government does something the Red Guards don't like and a party functionary or local elected official gets beaten up or their house gets burned down. This state of affairs is probably not sustainable, but everyone in China is afraid it will fall over if they poke it too hard, so it continues. I forgot to color in a couple territories here and there, they should mostly be yellow AFRICA  Africa, birthplace of humanity, grows redder every year; Egypt, Tunisia, and Sudan are expected to be fully red within 12-18 months. The last remnants of colonialism have been purged from the continent, and it has begun to rebuild itself. Those states that do not see socialism as the way forward have rallied to the banner of the United Nations, and the UN's African Section maintain strong political, economic, and military links, fearful of communist invasion. The most noteworthy country on the continent is likely Nigeria, a resource-rich and very densely populated nation that's seen heavy Japanese investment and is very firmly yellow. THE AMERICAS  Much less red than we'd like, South America remains an ideological battleground, though rarely a literal battleground these days. The Brazilian military dictatorship remains in power thanks almost entirely to the strength of its economy, which is itself propped up almost entirely by Japanese capital. Vast Japanese state investment has sustained the so-called 'Brazilian Miracle' past all rationality, and when that bubble does finally burst, Comintern analysts expect the country's economy to collapse. When that happens, revolution is all but inevitable. Comintern-aligned forces in the country's underground opposition are already seeing to that. In Central America and the Caribbean, notable countries include the Caribbean Federation, which consists of a bunch of former French, British, and Dutch colonial island holdings united into a single government that absolutely insists it isn't the French Government in Exile, even though all the exiled French officials are there. There is also Haiti, a 'yellow' country which analysts expect to be pink or red soon, as the loss of US backing and the growth of revolutionary forces in the country have left the current regime teetering on the edge of total collapse. Then we go north of Mexico, and things get complicated. THE FORMER UNITED STATES  The world's greatest superpower for a time, a globe-spanning empire, an unrivaled military and industrial and economic power, and one of the largest failed states in modern history. They say the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long; the United States of America burned so bright that it consumed the entire world with its flames, and, when its fuel was exhausted, quickly died, leaving only loose and scattered ashes. With no fewer than five successor governments claiming the mantle of the 'real' United States, five neutral nations that consider the US a dead nation but remain independent from or hostile to the Comintern, and vast swathes of territory that are still not effectively administered by any one polity, the former US is wild territory. Disease and food insecurity remain major concerns, the highway and rail networks are still broken, and the Saint Lawrence Seaway remains closed, though you are already working to repair it. Access to electricity and running water is highly uneven, ranging from universal in places like Las Vegas and California to nearly nonexistent in rural Wyoming or Nebraska. Low-level military conflict and organized banditry continues throughout the former US, though it is far less intense than it was even a year ago. More of the land is red every year, with the latest addition to the fraternity being the Republic of Lakotah. The five successor governments are all officially anticommunist but in practice almost exclusively fight each other, and once in a blue moon even engage in limited diplomacy with Comintern-aligned states. The least antagonistic of these is Jimmy Carter's National Reconstruction Committee. FORMER CANADA coming soon OCEANIA coming soon ANTARCTICA error map file corrupted The bottom of the world is an unlikely place to find humanity, and yet they are there, over ten thousand of them in total. When war broke out thousands were left stranded there, and over the years thousands more found their way there, as refugees or because they expected nuclear apocalypse and wanted to hide from it. Some of them have been there since 1968. A small team stubbornly maintains the South Pole station, more on principle than anything else, supplied very occasionally by grueling overland treks from McMurdo Station. The continent even has a government of sorts, a loose technocratic oligarchy of scientist-statesmen representing the various camps and bases. THE MOON  The Lunar Socialist Republic, consisting of the city of Lunagrad and about twenty outlying settlements of varying size, counts about 1.15 million people as citizens. The LSR remains a provisional member of the Comintern, with the local government supervised by the Lunar Planning Committee or Lunplan, which is responsible for developing the fledgling state's political and economic infrastructure and evaluating its readiness for full independence. As of this year, Lunplan's assessment is that the LSR continues to develop in a positive direction, but that more work needs to be done before a full independence referendum is workable. The most pressing issues on Luna are space, which you are already addressing with a run of additional life support infrastructure, and medical issues from long-term living in very low G. Suggestions for dealing with this have ranged from simple exercise, diet, and vitamin regimens, to constructing simulated-gravity centrifuge habitats like you use on spacecraft, to genetically modifying humans to survive in low-G, to the patently absurd like doping human bones with Duranium. The most viable long-term solution, however, may simply be to make your own gravity. You can, after all, already do that in a limited form; TNE mines rely on gravity manipulation, and the active sensor technology you are developing literally functions by generating pulses of gravity. It might be possible to do it on a large scale, and build habitats with such systems. Whatever you do, you'll need to do it soon. Current data indicates that humans can adapt to survive on the Moon, and will be viable - but it also indicates that all of Luna's current residents will be unable to safely return to Earth within 10 years at maximum, and their children will never be able to set foot on humanity's homeworld again. The probable existence of a Gladio 'shadow colony' somewhere on the Moon is also a matter worth considering. MARS  The Barsoom scientific outpost continues to collect extremely valuable but extremely boring data about Mars as a planet and about human survival and habitation there. On the other side of Mars, at Cydonia, things get more interesting. A separate report will follow, but, in summary, the Cydonia survivors have mostly acclimatized to their new situation. A few of them have surviving relatives, and they have been located and quietly contacted, under strict secrecy. We have yet to go public with their existence; you will have to decide when and how to do that. Some of them have expressed a desire to go home; others, having learned that their homes no longer exist, or that they no longer resemble anything they once knew, have instead indicated that they would like to stay on at Cydonia permanently, or even become cosmonauts. The medical team indicates in their report that, while the men are physically fine, their initial euphoria at rescue has given way to restlessness, anxiety, and depression. While they on some level already knew they had been asleep for a long time, having to come to terms with exactly what that means has hit them very hard. That having been said, allowing those of them who have surviving relatives to speak to them has helped a great deal. The survivors are being slowly, gradually educated about the state of the world, via guided lessons and large shipments of old encyclopedias. They are being provided access to entertainment media, food and drink, medicine, clothing, etc. They are also being given extensive work assignments - they are eager to help with the exploration, and it is also good for their mental health. We have yet to open any additional pods. Our Hawaiian representative on the Cydonia mission has requested that we wait until January, for their cryonics experts are still 'working on' the data we sent them. The overwhelming majority of the ruins remain unexplored, and there is only so much our small team can do. That having been said, they have discovered much, which will be covered in a report to follow immediately from this post. So this needs a bit of work. Tomorrow I'll edit in Canada and Oceania, and if you have any additional questions, anything you think I missed or that you want covered in more detail, say so and I'll add it in. THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, THE 1982 SESSION OF THE PEOPLE'S CONGRESS IS NOW OPEN! There is no order of the day. The floor is now open for deliberations, and will remain open for at least three days before we move on to voting. As always, proposed legislation must be seconded before it can be brought to the floor for a vote. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 08:50
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Great update!
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Mar 31, 2021 10:00
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drat, no Socialist Shoggoth Republic on Antarctica... or maybe the Comintern is simply hiding humanity's allies from us, for their own safety. Also hey, doping bones with Duranium sounds like an excellent idea. I volunteer to be first for the experiment.
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Mar 31, 2021 10:14
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The UAWR has been in contact with many of our fellow comintern members, including those within the area of the former united states in particular. After long hours of negotiation and discussion, we have the following legislation to propose: 1: The Comintern Flag Act This will formalize this:  as the official comintern flag. Variations may be made in the future by adding new planets or personalizing it to the tastes of a member nation by exchanging the icons in the centre of earth.2: The Comintern Observer Status Formalization Act This will create the status of "Comintern Observer Nation" for those nations aligned with us or that we are negotiating with. This status would confer upon it lesser benefits than a full member, but without many of the obligations that some are unable to or currently unwilling to abide by. They will be able to observe the actions of the presidium, but not to vote themselves and their nation will gain access to such benefits as development grants, access to TNE materials and civilian technology, possibly even full technology and perhaps intelligence sharing. Included is the right to engage in the comintern customs and postal union. The right to maintain their own civilian spacefleets, ect. Edit: In return, they must abide by comintern regulations on the rights of workers, cooperation with comintern observers and full transparency on their end as well as full cooperation with international regulations and treaties. 2a: The Global Defence Initiative Foundation Act: As an adjunct to the prior act, this would allow observers, in the event of existing outerspace non-proliferation treaties being voided or rescinded, the ability to build their own military ships, under the condition that they are placed within an integrated command structure. 3: The Middle Eastern Observer Outreach Act: This act merely gives the suggestion to provide observer status to those members of the arab league who, while not willing to go the whole nine yards of joining the comintern fully, are sympathetic to us still, or unwilling to chain themselves to a sinking ship. 4: The Indian Negotiation Act: This act will formalize the goals of our negotiations with India: in exchange for the dismantlement of their feudal-throwback caste system and the initiation of continent-wide worker standards, we will begin providing aid and resources, while also opening up discussions with rebels to wind down the current conflict. We will use the provision of aid to start organizing unions and communes, educating and uplifting the workers before they can sway them towards capitalist-sympathetic views and undermine the class struggle. This may include the offering of comintern observer status. 4a: OPERATION CHAKRAVARATIN: If this operation is initiated, the comintern outreach will expand to the military sphere, formalizing the channelling of weaponry to incipient urban union and agricultural commune militias, the tapping of local communist rebel leaders for the training of said militias and the preparations for a future defensive civil conflict in India. 5: The Japanese Negotiation Act: This will formalize our stance on negotiations: their demands are provisional on accepting observer status. In acceptance of this status they will not need to change anything immediately, but will gain access to the benefits of observer status. They shall not be allowed to militarize spaceflight, unless the provisions under the GDIFA act come into play, should it pass. All other details are negotiable, but this is not, should the act pass. 6. The North American Outreach and Reconstruction Act: This act, developed in tandem with many local leaders, particularly the esteemed Comrade McGovern, would instigate a diplomatic and economic blitz on the north American continent in the region of the former United States. Simply put, we will attempt to bring onside every polity that is willing to negotiate with us, while we use economic and political pressure to undermine those that will not. First is a mass deployment of economic, medical and environmental assets to uplift and stabilize the situation across the continent. Those that are willing to work with us will be given access to TNE technology and aid to distribute as they see fit, while those who do not will not be granted this. McGovern's thoughts are that a show of trust is necessary to aid the situation. Nations that show particular vulnerability in the matter are the New England Commonwealth, which is environmentally collapsing, the Reconstruction Authority and the State of Texas, both of whom are willing to negotiate right now and represent the largest blocs that show such openness. The capstone to this will be the cultural outreach. As of right now, many see Socialism as an "unamerican" construct despite it's deep roots in the continent. We must change this perception as we work, drawing on the regional histories of each area to demonstrate that socialism can be an american symbol, too. From the Industrial Workers of the World and their stronghold in chicago to the appalachian miner's strikes, we must change the comintern's perception as an outside force. 6a. The North American Forum Creation Treaty: As an addendum to the prior act, this treaty will formalize the creation of a forum for the former USA plus the former area of Canada, as well as Mexico. Invitation to this forum will be extended to all polities of North America, small and large and it's first order of business will be negotiating the creation of postal and customs unions as well as continental sports leagues. 6b. The quaternary Lunar Landing Celebration Act: This act with formalize the creation of a holiday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the moon landing. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins will be invited to help reraise the flag and the day will be declared an international holiday. 7. The Bureau of Environmental Protection, Conservation and Restoration Act: Just because the radiation has been cleaned up doesn't mean that the damage is gone. Much of the world's biodiversity has been burned in flame and the knock-on effects may provide complete disaster in the future. In order to forestall this and other threats to the only green world we know, this act would formalize the creation of a comintern body devoted to protecting the wild spaces of the world, as well as working to restore those areas still ruined and to forestall future destruction through research into and implementation of low-impact industry and city design, the creation of international parks and conservation areas and the consolidation of existing efforts internationally. 8. The Bureau of Arts and Culture Act: This formalizes the creation of a body devoted to the funding and creation of art and culture throughout the comintern. It will have no censorial powers, but instead be responsible for the distribution of funding to bodies such as museums and local arts programs, as well as the creation of cultural outreach societies and programs. It's founding direction shall be making communist society more transparent and welcoming to those who might otherwise fear it. 9. The Socialist Aid Integration and Expansion Act: This act will create a "Bureau of Economic Development" that will have the Socialist Aid Program rolled into it. The mandate of this body will be to raise global society to an accepted living standard internationally, with expanded powers of integration into Cybersyn networks and an international Committee for wealth distribution and international economic cooperation. It's work shall be to continue the work of the SAP both within and without the comintern, while working to increase global prosperity and see to it that it's fruits are distributed equitably. 10. The Anti-Nuclear Defense Network Establishment Act: This act would mandate the creation of an international network of railgun defences with the goal of ending the threat of nuclear war once and for all. and the beginning of a global anti-space defence force I.. think. that is everything. NewMars fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Apr 1, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 10:31
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