AH Run-downs, summaries and general gubbins

[Bolt451]

"The gritty, derpived, post-industrial Northern town of Watford."

According to my uncle when he was young, Growing up in Caterham, North of Watford was "The North"

 

[Steve Brinson]

The God Abandons Summers is a five-part documentary television series created and narrated by British documentarian Kevin A. Curtis, focusing on the modern history of the United States, particularly the period leading up to the resignation of President Lawrence Summers. Commissioned by TVUK 2 in 2014, it was cancelled between production and broadcast, then bought and aired by Venture Broadcasting in 2016, with the first episode broadcast at 9 pm on 1 May 2016.

Episodes

• Part 1: The End Of History
  • In 1976, Francis Fukuyama witnesses the Young Czechoslovakia uprising, the establishment of the French Fourth Republic, and the 'Bicentennial' Constitutional Convention in the United States; eleven years later, he addresses the Socialist International in St. Petersburg, Russia, arguing that the 'pink tide' indicates that American-style 'guided democratic socialism' constitutes the "end of history", but fails, a year later, to persuade the SDPA to nominate Jeane Kirkpatrick or Jack Kemp for the Presidency. In 2006, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and editor of Partisan magazine Martin Peretz convene a meeting of intellectuals, including Fukuyama, at Typesetter House in Mid-Manhattan; many of those at the meeting, including Steven Pinker and Stephen Glass, go on to serve in the Summers administration after his victory in the 2008 election. In 2009, Summers has a testy exchange of words with British reporters at a press conference at the INTERMIL-WA base in Kumasi, Ashanti.
• Part 2: Red Harvest
  • In 1932, James W. Ford and Richard B. Moore have a falling-out over strategies of partisan war in the American Theater of the Global War Against Imperialism; Ford argues for and maintains centralized control of anti-Rooseveltist forces, while Moore argues that the Army should organize, train, and arm functionally independent partisans to be reincorporated after the end of the war. In 1963, the United States provides asylum to deposed Dahomeyan President Sourou-Migan Apithy after Mathieu Kérékou's Japan-backed coup during the Euro-Japanese War, but also to Japanese-backed Emperor Haile Selassie after a coup supported by Britain and France. In 1979, William S. Lind and David Petraeus serve in the American intervention in the Portuguese Civil War; Petraeus rises through the ranks to command the American contingent in West Africa, using his experience to help develop INTERMIL counterinsurgency doctrine, while Lind works his way into the Reagan administration's Department of War, reviving the Ford-Moore debate by arguing against conventionalist military bureaucrats like Kirkpatrick, Donald Rumsfeld, and Floyd C. Miller and winning the argument as his opposition dies and Presidents Iacocca and Carville seek to cut costs. In 2004, mineral and agricultural commodity shocks precipitate the collapse of Thomas Sankara's United States of Sokoto, leading to a region-wide refugee crisis and INTERMIL intervention. In 2009, President Summers (acting on the advice of Peretz, Fukuyama, and Assistant Secretary of State for Security Affairs Bruce P. Jackson) announces that the U.S. military will join INTERMIL-WA; nine months later, despite early successes, the rise of Jamaat Ansar Al-Muslimin severely undermines INTERMIL efforts, with rising rates of western fatalities, and militarists like Matt Sanchez and Allen West argue with isolationists like Walter Jones and Veterans Against War.
• Part 3: How To Blow Up A Factory
  • In 1957, Alan Haber and Carl Oglesby organize the MINU branch of the Young People's Socialist League to call for President Heinlein's resignation; as student radicalism flourishes during the Pauling administration, Haber withdraws from the movement, while Oglesby increasingly moves towards the libertarian fringe. During the 1960s, Saul Alinsky refines his strategic doctrine for citizen organizing, influencing Pat Caddell and Phyllis Schlafly in their efforts to organize Ronald Reagan's candidacy in 1974. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Andy Stern and the New League for Industrial Democracy attempt to organize workers around the changing face of work, while Bruce Sterling and Newton Gingrich see new political possibilities in peer-to-peer broadcasting and narrowcasting and Earth First! and the Direct Action Network attempt to revive American revolutionary spirit. In the spring of 2010, people across the United States (including students and 'independent' unions) organize protests against corruption, inflation, tuition and fee hikes, and the American commitment to INTERMIL.
• Part 4: How The Other Half Lives
  • In 1944, Bertolt Brecht visits the United States, then returns to Council Bavaria, where he writes the play The Trial of Robert West and the essay "In The Age of the Worker". In 1979, Win Than studies cybernetics at the International University of the Pacific, then returns to Burma and plays a major role in the Southeast Asian Boom; simultaneously, President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Dwayne Andreas open the American economy to international trade, leading to major economic and political shocks across the world and a few people both within and without America (such as Jeffrey Epstein, Thomas Pickens, György Schwartz, and Son Masayoshi)* becoming extremely rich at the expense of their workers. In 1995, Czechoslovak journalist Jana Wienerová interviews an anonymous SDPA administrator, writing the book Anatomy of a System; within five years, Canadian-American exile William Gibson and Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa publish their own reflections, influencing opinion of the regime abroad and at home. In the summer of 2010, a special conference of the Group of Seven convened by former British Chancellor Kenneth Clarke meets at the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris to discuss international efforts to stabilize the global economy, perhaps by stabilizing the United States itself, while anti-establishment figures like Canadian Leader of the Opposition Naomi Klein, Korean dissident Roh Moo-hyun, and Dutch populist Geert Wilders work to take advantage and inspiration from the situation.
• Part 5: The Exquisite Music Of That Strange Procession
  • In 1994, former First Lady Jane Fonda-Reagan takes advantage of the chaotic reform efforts of the Carville administration to become its power behind the throne, then rises to the Presidency two years later; that same year, then-Investigator General of Portland, OR Amy Klobuchar gains plaudits for successfully prosecuting Governor Neil Goldschmidt for statutory rape. In 2010, Attorney General Klobuchar announces that she will be prosecuting President Summers for corruption and investigating his involvement in Jeffrey Epstein's child sex-trafficking ring. As protests escalate, Summers tenders his resignation, and Fonda-Reagan throws her weight behind Klobuchar to right the ship; while Klobuchar is forced to call for a special election and liberalize the electoral laws, she is able to maintain SDPA control of the process and ensure that her main opposition, former Senator Ramsey Clark and President Emeritus of Texas National University John Silber, comes from within the party. She is re-elected in 2010 with more than two-thirds of the vote.

*Rumors that Curtis excised a segment on Richard Branson, chairman emeritus of Venture Broadcasting, from this episode at his request have been denied in interviews.

 

[Warthog]

The God Abandons Summers

Wow! Very complex

 

[Warthog]

Donald Trump Storm Daniel Trial took place in Orlando, Florida, in 2023 to 2025 after the former president was indicted with 27 counts of fraud and corruption in the federal response to the devastation of Palm Beach by Tropical Storm Daniel in 2018. Trump was convicted on all but 3 of the counts, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, reduced to 9 years by the 11th circuit court of appeal.

 

[Comrade Izaac]

Zhankoye, Wisconsin is a medium-to-large sized town of 27,000, located twenty seven miles from the Wisconsin-Michigan State Border along the Upper Peninsula. One of the famous "Greenbelt" towns, towns created entirely through public funding and along the basis of common infrastructure ownership during the Administrations of Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Henry Wallace, Zhankoye is one of the largest townships in Wisconsin and serves as the administrative capitol of Forest County. Among other things, Zhankoye is known as a hub of American Jewish culture and a center of Jewish political representation in the United States.

Founded as apart of the expansion of Secretary Rexford Tugwell's Greenbelt Town program in 1947, Zhankoye was explicitly created as apart of an agreement between the Department of Housing, the AFL-CIO, and the Jewish American Labor Bund to create a refuge for European Jewish immigrants that had fled the Holocaust. Construction on the first public housing facilities, now designed along Program Director Frank Lloyd Wright's "Usonian" model, would begin in September 1947, followed by the establishment of the National Recovery Administration's Zhankoye Offices three months later. Initial residents, mostly Jewish immigrants from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Ukrainian SSR, would begin arriving in full in the Summer of 1948. Over the course of the decade, Zhankoye's population would grow from 900 in 1948 to nearly 8,000 in 1959, stemming primarily from the success of the joint National Recovery Administration-AFL-CIO efforts to provide suitable public employment and housing to new residents; The success of towns such as Zhankoye even a decade and a half after the program was shuttered under the Stassen Administration, would convince later U.S President Fred Harris to restart the program in 1966. Even before Zhankoye would see a resurgence of public funding during the Harris Administration, the town would see considerable growth and economic and cultural success. Zhankoye's local Synagogue would become a prominent site of pilgrimage for American Jews in the Midwest, the town becoming an example of the resilience of Jews in the face of unforseen inhumanity. Jewish artists, musicians and filmmakers would soon call the town home during the 1950s, taking advantage of Zhankoye's Public Arts and Humanities Center to showcase the Jewish Cultural Resurgence during the 1950s. The Zhankoye Hebrew Academy would attract classes of hundreds of students, even many from out of state, becoming a prominent center of Jewish Academia in the United States; In the modern era, the Zhankoye Hebrew Academy remains an active spot for Jewish academics across the world. Tens of thousands of Jewish Americans would journey to Zhankoye during these years, which would later attract the attention of the State of Israel's Diplomatic Delegation in the United States, later leading to the establishment of the Zhankoye Consultant, which would remain the primary diplomatic center between Israel and the United States until the Palestinian Reformation in 1983.

Like most Greenbelt Towns, Zhankoye's economy would be deliberately centered on publicly owned infrastructure and goods and services provided by public institutions. While the National Recovery Administration, which would provide most employment in public works during Zhankoye's early era, would be disbanded in 1954, the previous six years of effort and public investment would give way to a thriving economy of local small businesses, mainly shops and tradespeople. As was the pattern in other Greenbelt Towns, Zhankoye's private economy would be explicitly bolstered by the presence of both a powerful local AFL-CIO Chapter and publicly and cooperatively owned infrastructure. Midwestern Greenbelt Towns, including Zhankoye, have long maintained some of the highest local unionization rates in the United States. It also can not go without mentioning that Zhankoye's citizens, many of them formerly small farmers, would go on to form the first of the "Kibbutz Americana", joint Farming/Housing Cooperatives owned and managed by the farm's employees and residents. Zhankoye's Cooperatives would prominently focus on raising and producing cattle and growing corn and wheat, often utilizing cheap supplied energy and water through the Public Power Administration to maintain their work and living spaces during poor harvests. Kibbutz Americana would catch on prominently in the post-war world across the United States, mainly based on the effective self-sufficiency, community maintenance and fair exchange demonstrated by the Zhankoye's initial Cooperative Farms. The legacy of the Kibbutz Americana has impacted towns like Zhankoye to the modern day, with many rural towns without significant Jewish populations maintaining their Cooperatives, which are often referred to as "Kibbutz" regardless of cultural or religious affiliation. High rates of unionization, secure public housing and the continued production of significant public wealth through the Kibbutz would make Zhankoye one of the wealthiest and most secure small towns in America; As of 2023, Zhankoye retains the highest concentration of land ownership by Jewish Americans and the second highest rates of living standards in a predominantly Jewish area in the entire country.

Many American Jews, among them figures like Golda Meir, Howard Zinn, Ben Sanders and the Phoniex Brothers have called Zhankoye home at one point.

 

[Callan]

From The New Encyclopedia of British Politics, 10th Edition, Pub, 2015:

DOWNING STREET

1) Historical shorthand for the Prime Minister of Britain's former residence.

Before 1932 the prime minister's official residence and de-facto office was Number 10 Downing Street, a townhouse 50 metres south of the present day location of Century House. It was gifted by King George II to Sir Robert Walpole in the 1700s to be used as the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury. By the early 20th century the residence was in a dilapidated state and was widely considered to be of inadequate size and scale for the growing obligations of the British government and the British empire.

In 1923 Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who considered Downing Street to be a "miserable middle-class townhouse," commissioned Aston Webb to design a governmental headquarters modelled after the German Reichskanzlei (Chancellery) in Berlin. Built to the contemporary neo-baroque style, construction was delayed by the onset of the Western War. Despite this the prime minister's office and residence moved to the partially completed Century House in 1928 after an aerial bombing raid severely damaged 10 Downing Street, which was demolished post-war to make way for the completion of of the new Chancellery.

2) Modern shorthand for the south and eastern ends of Century House.

Contrary to popular belief, and many a protest, the prime minister's does not look out onto Whitehall. The prime minister's office is on the western or "Horseguard's" side of prime ministerial complex complex, looking out onto Horseguard's Road, St. James's Park and the Presidential residence at St. James's Palace. [See COMMONWEALTH SECRETARIAT for the history of the post-1932 Prime Minister's Office] In fact, Century House, built to Winston Churchill's great imperial ambitions, has always been too large for the prime minister's office and their staff.

This leaves the southern and eastern ends of the complex (named after former prime ministerial residence Century House is partially built upon) a strange, politically liminal space. While it is not large enough to house the operations of the larger government departments, it remains the most valuable piece of political property in Whitehall: whoever occupies the Dover End has unparalleled physical access to the prime minister with all the power that comes with that.

David Lloyd George, the first regular resident of Century House, kept Downing Street empty and used it sporadically for official government functions. This arrangement, along with the overall scale of the building, led to Lloyd George privately complaining that he felt like "a butler in the townhouse when the lord and lady have left for the summer". Towards the end of his tenure, as the Radical Coalition began to coalesce into the modern Radical Party, the Dover End became offices for leader of the Labour Party Charles Latham and other Labour Party officials, setting the precedent for Dover House becoming the workplace for those most valued by the prime minister.

Duff Cooper gave the offices over to his Chancellor, friend and eventual successor Edward Horner, confirming the perceptions of the government as a "dual monarchy". In keeping with this thirty years later, Allan Bertram gave the space over to his wife Isabel and the variety of ministries she held in his government. During the Eastern War the Dover end housed the War Office which co-ordinated the war effort across multiple departments and was in 1987 the location of the infamous All-Saints Day Meeting where the British government agreed to support the German plan to use tactical Atomkraft weapons on front lines.

Postwar, Downing Street has been used as the office for Deputy Prime Ministers. More recently. Helen Kendrick has controversially broke with that tradition. Her deputy's new, sprawling Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs is far too large for the Dover End, but this was widely seen as a snub against her powerful subordinate; many previous Deputy PMs had kept offices in Century House while leading larger departments primarily based elsewhere in Westminster.

Equally controversial was who got Downing Street instead. While publicly insisting that Ben Griffin only got the space because it was the perfect size for the small International Co-Operation Unit tailor-made for the political veteran who had been delegated the task of carrying out most of the Kendrick Ministry's foreign policy ambitions, it was confirmation to much of Westminster that Griffin had once again returned from the political dead and had the unobstructed ear of yet another prime minister. As as always been the case since Century House's construction, Downing Street remains a sign of how location is as important a part of politics and power as it has ever been.

 

[Callan]

From The New Encyclopedia of British Politics, 10th Edition, Pub, 2015:

HORSEGUARDS

A colloquial nickname for SPECIAL ADVISORS, political appointees who advise and assist government ministers and senior politicians in Westminster and the Home Rule Administrations of Ireland, Scotland and other regions. They are paid and regulated under Section 10 of the 1995 Governance Act, which sets out a code of conduct for special advisors and allocates budgets and resources for their work and employment. The nickname refers to the prime minister's office in Century House that overlooks Horseguard's Road.

The first "Horseguard" was Raymond Asquith, Duff Cooper's Principal Secretary, who in the late 1930s who left the leftward-drifting Liberals to work as a military-style chief of staff to gatekeep information and visitors to a Tory Prime Minister. Like pre-war Principal Private Secretaries in the former Prime Ministerial residence of Downing Street, Asquith was a political appointee who possessed the title and powers of a civil servant, empowered to direct civil servants within the Commonwealth Secretariat and Whitehall more generally. The nickname was derisory, referring to the Principal Secretary's loyalty to the prime minister before the government or their party. It was first as the title of a cartoon in a 1941 issue of Punch, where Raymond Asquith is depicted as a guard dog residing in a kennel beneath Duff Cooper's office window outside Century House.

In subsequent decades the power and number of "Horseguards" grew in size, becoming responsible for centralised communications, policy development and political strategy. Under Allan Bertam in the 1970s, some "horseguards" such as Ben Griffin were regularly described as possessing more power than elected ministers. The power and opacity of these advisors was heavily scrutinised during the Eastern War, with some officials at Century House accused of overruling government ministers and military staff on war strategy. This led to Special Advisors coming to be formally defined and regulated under the 1995 Governance Act, often referred to as the "Horseguard's Charter".

Fiction set within the Westminster village frequently includes characters that are special advisors. The nickname of Horseguards was popularised by the 1996-2006 political TV drama Horseguards, which follows several special advisors at both ministerial and prime ministerial level as they manage and manipulate officials and events.

 

[Warthog]

HORSEGUARDS

A colloquial nickname for SPECIAL ADVISORS, political appointees who advise and assist government ministers and senior politicians in Westminster and the Home Rule Administrations of Ireland, Scotland and other regions. They are paid and regulated under Section 10 of the 1995 Governance Act, which sets out a code of conduct for special advisors and allocates budgets and resources for their work and employment. The nickname refers to the prime minister's office in Century House that overlooks Horseguard's Road.

The first "Horseguard" was Raymond Asquith, Duff Cooper's Principal Secretary, who in the late 1930s who left the leftward-drifting Liberals to work as a military-style chief of staff to gatekeep information and visitors to a Tory Prime Minister. Like pre-war Principal Private Secretaries in the former Prime Ministerial residence of Downing Street, Asquith was a political appointee who possessed the title and powers of a civil servant, empowered to direct civil servants within the Commonwealth Secretariat and Whitehall more generally. The nickname was derisory, referring to the Principal Secretary's loyalty to the prime minister before the government or their party. It was first as the title of a cartoon in a 1941 issue of Punch, where Raymond Asquith is depicted as a guard dog residing in a kennel beneath Duff Cooper's office window outside Century House.

In subsequent decades the power and number of "Horseguards" grew in size, becoming responsible for centralised communications, policy development and political strategy. Under Allan Bertam in the 1970s, some "horseguards" such as Ben Griffin were regularly described as possessing more power than elected ministers. The power and opacity of these advisors was heavily scrutinised during the Eastern War, with some officials at Century House accused of overruling government ministers and military staff on war strategy. This led to Special Advisors coming to be formally defined and regulated under the 1995 Governance Act, often referred to as the "Horseguard's Charter".

Fiction set within the Westminster village frequently includes characters that are special advisors. The nickname of Horseguards was popularised by the 1996-2006 political TV drama Horseguards, which follows several special advisors at both ministerial and prime ministerial level as they manage and manipulate officials and events.

Lovely this. Spads have been around for a century, some of them not so young, but they have a derisory name amd their own show. More popular than Political Animals.

 

[Warthog]

The Murrell Sturgeon Scandal was a 2022-2024 corruption case involving the investment of Scottish government funds in a caviar business in East Falkland. Touted as an "international partnership within the British crown" by the SNP in Holyrood, hoping to showcase what Scotland could build as an independent commonwealth kingdom, it turned out only 3 of the acclaimed 20 sturgeon pens on the Murrell River were ever built, and the remainder of the funds were misappropriated by Falkland and Scottish officials. First Minister Gordon Jackson resigned from his seat and from the SNP, and Scottish Labour became the largest party at the subsequent election.

 

[Kerguelen]

Political Factions of the American Socialist Party as of the 1915 Emergency Party Convention ​

Parisians: Led by party officials who organized the New York Commune and the subsequent workers' uprisings across the nation inspired by the failed Paris Commune. Having spearheaded the Second Revolution, the faction is united in its desire for ideological purity and the political dominance of the socialist party.

Billyboys: An amalgamation of the various labor unions which helped spearhead the Midwestern Revolts in Detroit and Chicago. Vary in ideology though largely in favor of worker's democracy, the well-being of industrial laborers, and the centralization of the American economy.

Grangers: Often composed of miners and tenant farmers in the American West, drawn by the party's populist messaging. Initially forming much of the support base of the early Socialist party, they remain a significant voice in favor of protecting the rights of rural laborers beyond the Mississippi.

Polytechs: A loose faction named after the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, composed of skilled engineers and scientists who gained prominence from their role in the revolution. Many members draw inspiration from ideologies of technocratic governance and Comtean Positivism.

Marxists: Marxists

The Jubilee: Descended from the various sharecropper rebellions in the American South throughout the Weevil War which would later form a significant support base of the Second Revolution. Though rather divided on racial and religious lines, the faction remains largely focused on the improvement of the American South.

The Busk: Descended from the various Amerindian nations and their wars for liberation against the First Republic. Have now been largely folded into the structure of the Socialist Party but seek to address issues regarding their sovereignty and indigenous rights.

 

[Warthog]

This is fascinating @Kerguelen

Weevil War

A military conflict or the war against the boll weevil?

 

[Charles EP M.]

Someone's been borrowing ideas from 1920s Pan-Europa types.

After the 1913-1917 bloodletting of the Great European War, the Central Powers had technically defeated the Entente but had inherited a mess of shattered nations and the German state was struggling to keep control of itself. Vienna took the lead, with Archduke Ferdinand seizing power with ideas fed to him by utopian pan-europeans and the Central Powers enacted a controversial merger & reworking of most of the continent as the Unionisierung Mitteleuropas (awkardly translated in English as United Middle-Europe).

The Unionisierung dissolved national borders and imposed twenty cantons that came out of Vienna ("Unia Ĉefurbo") like spokes; the Canton Assembly met in St Stephen's Cathedral, with the unelected president rotating towards the four ethnic 'nations' (Romans, Germans, Slavs and Magyars) and appointed by the Emperor. The inherited colonies in Africa (Britain and America helped the Asian ones 'revolt') would undergo the same cantonese reconstruction and shift to Esperanto, with colonial governors from the same 'nations'.

Imposing the Unionisierung was relatively easier in continental Europe due to the massive devastation and presence of armed soldiers all over: people just wanted to have consistent food and anyone complaining could be shot. For the first few years, little on the ground changed for most people and it was only in the early 1920s that major legal & cultural changes were being imposed, by which point the sinister STKK (Sekcio de Trans-Kantona Krimo, "Department of Trans-Cantonese Crime") was active and rounding up dissidents. Riots and uprisings were shut down by soldiers sent from other parts of the country. Unable to properly rebel, thousands fled into Scandinavia, Britain, or Italy.

What the Unionisierung had not foreseen was that enforcing this system on Africa was going to be far harder. Colonial infrastructure was inconsistent, the white populace more used to believing they'd be left alone as long as the goods showed up, and the African peoples were a massively diverse bunch that Unia Ĉefurbo had little to no experience with. The colonies of rival nations surrounded the Unionisierung's empire and could more easily send dissidents quiet aid too (hoping to undermind the state). Small uprisings grew and grew until by 1927, there was an "emergency" happening in almost every colonial canton and the Unioniseirung was committing the bulk of the army to cracking down.

Control was lost in Europe and both the Oslo Pact and USSR came storming in to assist rebel movements in 1928's Wars of European Liberation. (North Africa found it now counted as Europe for the purposes of turfing the Unionisierung out in favour of 'protectorates' of Arabic and European-settler nations) The dissolved countries were mostly restored, with the former Germany and Austro-Hungary dissolved into racial homelands and over a dozen Germanic & Magyar micro-states.

The massive disruption in Europe had forced Britain to look to Asia and Latin America for its trade, causing some conflict with the United Stated who had to do the same thing, and a rise in power of Japan, China, Brazil, and Argentina - with Japan soon entering this great game as a player, causing the multi-decade competition for influence nicknamed "the Three Shopkeepers" after a prominent political cartoon.

 

[Warthog]

Red Wall - Blue Wall was an early 2020s phenomenon in organized crime in England, with cooperation in narcotic production and distribution. Gangs in the Midlands and Merseyside, which mainly trafficked heroine ("red") would exchange with London and southern gangs that largely trafficked in cocaine ("blue"), providing the gangs' customers with their preferred drugs while ending conflicting operations in each other's areas of influence. Both Red Wall and Blue Wall gangs cracked down on the distribution of crystal meth ("white"), which was seen as "too much agro for the price." The level of cooperation and open operations by Red Wall and Blue Wall gangs was made possible by the state of policing in early 2020s UK (see fiscal defunding of the police).

Not to be confused with the M&S confectionery Red whirl - Blue whirl

 White Power Gangs was the name given to 2020s crystal meth producer groupings that tried unsuccessfully to resist the Red Wall - Blue Wall enforcement. The last recorded White Power incident was a September 2023 shoot out in an abandoned Essex Pub, where 5 gang members were killed by a Blue Wall enforcement unit out of London.

 

[Aolbain]

Swedish General Election 2020:

Förbundet för folkets frihet (Covenant for the liberty of the people) - 260 - 47.3%
Liberala Folkpartiet (Liberal People’s Party) - 221 - 36.1%
Ungsocialisterna (Young Socialists) - 26 - 6.4%
Ty HERREN är vår domare/Sillä HERRA on meidän tuomarimme* (For the LORD is our judge) - 8 - 2.6%
Kristna Samllingspartiet (Christian Coaltion Party) 5 - 2.2%


Mannerheimförbundet (Mannerheim Federation) - 167 - 38.9%
Framstegspartiet (Progress Party) - 121 - 22.2%
Nysvenskarna (New Swedes) - 38 - 9.3 %
Fredsduverörelsen (Peace Dove Movement) - 4 - 1.2%
Framtidspartiet de gröna (Future Party the Greens) - 2 - 3.2%
Demokraterna (The Democrats) - 2 - 3%

Alliance for Popular Rule (Alliansen för Folkstyre) - 42 - 12.4%
People Power Party/Kansan valtapuolue* (Folkmaktspartiet) - 33 - 9.4%
Sveriges Förenade Kommunistiska Parti (Reunited Communist Party of Sweden) - 5 - 2.3%
Det Arbetande Folkets Parti (Party of the Working People) - 2 - 0.2%
Ekologi och solidaritet (Ecology and solidarity) - 1 - 0.4%
Socialistiska Arbetarpartiet (Socialist Workers Party) - 1 - 0.1%

Socialistiskt Alternativ (Socialist Alternative) - 2 - 0.4%

*Name not recognized by electoral commission, not allowed for public use.


Covenant
-Liberals: The PM looks very concerned and serious when she talks about the need for accountability in the TammerforsDevelopment Fund scandal, almost as concerned and serious as when she talks about the latest gay panic story on SR and the progress of counter-terrorism operations in Karelia. Meanwhile, both the defense ministers and speaker have all but openly sat up their campaign operations for the inevitable race to replace her.
-Young Socialists: Lindahl spent his allotted 45 minutes - as much as the opposition leader and half an hour more than the People Power spokeswoman had before she got proscribed - on SR 1 railing against the degeneracy of modern youths in general and the communistic university students in particular. Then he got in a nice couple punches about the decline of the status of women in the last 20 years (the 20th anniversary for the introduction of full female suffrage is next September, and he serves under the woman who got it done) and was just getting into what looked like a new line about how Presiden Ely imports prepubescent european girls to Washington to feast on their blood before his time was out.
-For the LORD: Still trying to sort out the succession after Rattamaa ate grass last month. Oh to be a witness to the talks taking place in the Laestadian prayer houses right now.
-Christian Coalition: If I were a Canadian poultry magnate sploshing money on every white christofascist I could find I would probably feel tricked if I knew they spent most of it waging a media war against their finnish-speaking brothers in faith.

Federation
-Progress: The nationalists are mad because the unions wont enforce monolingualism. The unions are mad because the Norrland teachers strike got its shit kicked in. The reformers are mad that they’re not in a different, cooler party. The youth wing is mad because just in general. As for our esteemed leader of the opposition? He’s crying, or might as well be.
-New Swedes: Andersson still haven't stopped glowing after that New York Tribune PR-piece (hailing her as the pragmatic progressive centrist Europe needs) came out. While she’s still in orbit her youth league released a statement ranking a few dozen journalists from “based” to “finn”.
-Peace Dove Movement: Released the draft of their new platform. 50% relatively sensible tax reforms (if you’re the technocratic center/center-right type), 50% millenarianism.
-Future Party: Please report any information on the whereabouts of the Future Party to the authorities or the Progress Party HQ. Reward available in the form of movie tickets.
-Democrats: Would on the whole still prefer if they were still the big normal people conservative party and not the most junior member in an alliance of losers.

Alliance
-People Power Party: Still not banned, we’re waiting for the verdict. The smart money are on a ban and Rantakyrö going back to jail, but Lathi and most MPs living to fight another day/setting up a new party.
-Communist: Their breakthrough in Tammerfors in the locals last years coming before it turned out the old liberal majority were all going to jail for crimes they 100% committed means that for the first time in forever it is kinda fun to be a communist. That their other high-profile mayor in Sundsvall looks like a dud isn’t spoiling the mood too much.
-Party of the Working People: I’m not saying I think we should adopt the Portuguese Road to Socialism in Sweden, but you have to give it to them that they can pull of some pretty cool demonstrations.
-Ecology and solidarity: Every day my suspicion that they are just crypto-trots grows stronger. I don’t have anything concrete, but if it walks like a trot, quacks like a trot, and sells newspapers like a trot…
-Socialist Workers Party: Apparently they got a dressing down from their international, because I haven’t really seen anything from them in a long while now.

Socialist Alternative: On the one hand they’re very annoying to deal with and their central committee is like 60% rapists. But on the other, when they talk politics and not the liberal-wrecker moralist campaign against them they make sense and you can see how they managed to fight their way to a foothold in Göteborg and Åbo.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

ranking a few dozen journalists from “based” to “finn”.

Breathed in very sharply through my teeth here.

 

[Time Enough]

Recently enjoyed @Comisario work; Il dono di Alcide. After some discussions with him and pondering I got to wondering, how would media react to per-say to the whisperings of assassination plots against a Socialist Prime Minister and so…

Killer In The Sun (1975)
Jean Patrick Manchette

In the Summer of 1973, writer Jean Patrick Manchette was in Italy to meeting up with the Italian producers of ‘Nada’. Whilst there Manchette in his typical style was intrigued by the political situation of Italy and the constant rumours of coup and assassination plots against the then Socialist government, particularly against Prime Minister Antonio Giolitti.

Inspired by the tension, Manchette would write a potential spec script before being persuaded by Série noire to turn it into a thriller novel.

The novel follows Claude, a hitman who spends most of his time rubbing away low time gangsters and fellow thugs in Southern France. When he’s invited to Milan for a seeming job opportunity, Claude jumps at the chance to change his hum drum routine. However whilst there he finds out the people giving the job aren’t low down crooks, but Fascists and Businessmen and his target is a simple one; the Socialist Prime Minister.

Claude finds himself for the first time questioning his role to play and begins to turn on his potential employers.

This lean and pulpy thriller would be lauded by the French Press, whilst the Italian publication would be controversial with the Italian Social Movement trying to organise a boycott against the book and Giovanni Agnelli threatening to sue over a seeming likeness within the book (the matter was settled out of court and the book edited, original Italian copies are often seen as a collector item), though filmmaker, poet and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini would write a positive review and would in time engage in a amicable relationship with Manchette.

Manchette’s work filled with his usual of pulpy hardboiled action and suffused with a dry Marxist analysis of the world and Italian politics would be on reflection showcase the pathetic nature of the Italian Establishment who feared Giolitti, indeed as an off handed Leftist newspaper seller says to Claude “Those fools, they think that the Prime Minister will destroy them, when he’s saving there fucking hides”.

A film adaptation would follow not long after in 1976, directed by Fernando Di Leo of Caliber 9 (1972) fame and starring Lou Castel as Claude and Fabio Testi as Franco, one of the Conspirators and a supporting cast that starred the likes of Luc Merenda, Laura Belli and Salvo Randone. Di Leo’s kept much of the political subtext of the original novel, though it would be accused as being propaganda by members of the government due to its release close to the 1976 election.

Another adaptation by Marco Bellocchio and starring Vincent Cassel is currently in the works.

 

[varyar]

27th Armored Division

The 27th Armored Division ("Empire") is a division of the United States Army National Guard. The 27th Armored Division has served in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Egypt and the Long Watch. The division is currently headquartered at the Connecticut Street Armory in Buffalo, New York.

The division HQ is a unit of the New York Army National Guard. The division currently includes Army National Guard units from nine different states: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Like its brother divisions, the 27th Armored relies on Quinn MBTs, Donato IFVs, Harstad APCs and Crusader SPGs for offensive power. It is currently deployed to Kilcher Barracks, Pickhill, Barsetshire as part of Operation Iron Curtain.

(from my In and Out of the Reich TL, where one of the few bright spots is Buffalo, not Seattle, becomes the center of America's aviation industry and is slightly less afflicted by Rust Beltitis. We have an NBA team and an actual international airport here!)

 

[Charles EP M.]

The MacBheatha-class was the Royal British Navy's answer to the construction of Sweden's Fruktainte in 1894. On the backfoot against their old imperial rivals and against the rising power of Siam, the Grand Right Era government decided to invest in three Fruktainte ships for defence of home waters (HMS MacBheatha the First), the Central American colonies (HMS Mormaer of Moray), and Asian interests (HMS Battle of Seven Sleepers). As the race went on, HMS Lady Grouch and HMS Three Fates (after the famous 'greek chorus' in the Shakespeare play) were laid down

The naming convention was part of the Grand Right's manufactured patriotism - the declining power of Britain and a growing backlash against "Japanified elite" (growing ever since the dynastic marriage a hundred years prior) meant that the government wanted to associate itself with older British traditions, and thus the people were being forever reminded that the ruling monarchy still had its roots in 11th century Scotland.

Despite the war fears of the time, Britain would be increasingly left out of the great power politics and the MacBheatha-class ships never saw action - they were the last time the Royal British Navy had a gold-class naval force, as it proved unable to 'keep up' with later developments and would lose its imperial holdings to revolts in the 1920s. Of the fleet, only HMS Mormaer of Moray remains: after being captured by Darien revolutionaries, it was turned into a centrepiece of their National Museum.

 

[varyar]

Joseph Mruk International Airport (GATA: BUF, GCAA: ABUF, FAA: BUF) is the primary commercial airport serving the Western New York region of the U.S. state of New York, as well as the southern Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario, Canada. It is the second-busiest airport* in the state of New York and is located in the town of Orchard Park, about 14 miles (23 km) southeast of downtown Buffalo. The airport covers an area of 2,000 acres (3.125 sq mi; 8.1 km2) and has flights to cities throughout North America and the Atlantic Rim. It is a hub for Pan American World Airways, which operates many trans-Atlantic routes. As of 2022, 21 airlines operate at BUF, serving 45 domestic and 17 international destinations. Mruk International should not be confused with Buffalo Municipal Airport, the city's original airport which now primarily serves as home to low-cost carriers.

BUF international routes as of February 2023:

Vancouver
Montreal
Calgary
Edmonton
Halifax
Winnipeg
Mexico City
Cancun
Tijuana
London
Lisbon
Madrid
Sao Paolo
Caracas
Havana
Panama City
Rio de Janeiro

* - in this TL, LaGuardia and JFK were shut down in the 1970s and merged into a new mega-airport somewhere in Queens. Why? Reasons!**






**Buffalo Big

 

[varyar]

445th Fighter Group

The 445th Fighter Group is a United States Air Force unit. It is assigned to the 445th Wing and stationed at Niagara Falls Air Force Base, New York.

The wing was first activated on 24 June 1952 at Buffalo, New York as the 445th Fighter-Bomber Wing. Its initial equipment was the North American T-6 Texan, which remained its primary aircraft until 1955. It began to receive North American F-51 Mustangs and Lockheed F-80 Shooting Stars the following year. The wing and its components moved to nearby Niagara Falls Municipal Airport, where it received Republic F-84 Thunderjets, in 1955. Despite the wing's "Fighter-Bomber" designation, reserve fighter bomber wings had an air defense role if mobilized.

In 1958, despite pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide wartime airlift, the wing was converted from fighter bomber to interceptor due to the intervention of the Department of Defense. The 445th served in that role until
1967, when it was converted to an attack aircraft group. During the Strzechowski Strengthening of the 1980s, the 445th was reorganized and it now consists of two fighter squadrons and one bombardment squadron.

As of March 2023, the 89th and 90th Fighter Squadrons are equipped with F-17 Hurricanes, while the 76th Bombardment Squadron is composed of A-14 Arrows.