The Forty-Fourth HoS List Challenge

[Walpurgisnacht]

In many ways, lists are the real universal telephone code prefix. Don't ask me to explain how, it should be obvious.

The rules are simple; I give a prompt, and you have until 9:00pm on the last day of the month (or whenever I remember to post the announcement on that day) to post a list related to the prompt. As for what constitutes a list? If you'd personally post it in Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State rather than another thread, I think that's a good enough criterion. Writeups are preferred, please don't post a blank list, and I'd also appreciate it if you titled your list for polling purposes. Once the deadline hits, we will open up a multiple choice poll, cocurrent with the new challenge going up, and whoever receives the most votes after a week gets the entirely immaterial prize.

September is a month rich in historic events, albeit so are all other months because that's how linear time works. Probably the most well-known is the most recent, a second day that would live in infamy for all Americans and specifically New Yorkers, on the 11th of the month. Yes, this list challenge is themed around Terrorism, both its impacts and the reaction it provokes, and the impact of those reactions, and so on, and so forth, until we're all fighting over a blasted wasteland. It's terrible, but it makes for some decent lists at least.

Good luck!

 

[The Red]

Abstractions are pitiless



Prime Ministers of the French Republic

1935-1936: Pierre Laval (Radical)
1936-1936: Albert Saurrat (Radical)
1936-1937: Paul Faure (SFIO)
1937-1941: Édouard Daladier (Radical)
1941-1941: Henri Giraud

Directors of the French Union

1941-1947: Henri Giraud (National Centre)
1947-1958: Yves Bouthillier (National Centre)
1958-????: François Mitterrand (National Centre)



La Cagoule, fittingly, has long been shrouded in mystery. To the left one may find it synonymous with terms like ‘scab’, ‘cop’, or ‘COINTELPRO’ in the Anglophone world; a foreign evil lurking and festering. To their supposed allies on the right they are characterised as anything from stuffy old reactionary officers to radical young turks; even the most ardent reactionaries outside the secret society will differ on whether they are patriots doing what is necessary to defend the fatherland, or crypto-Nazis. The shroud they operate under may appear charming to some but to most, even amongst the established order, it is anything but a joke.

The organisation can be traced back to former members of Action Française. The AF had once been the leading force in the French right, staunchly Catholic, antisemitic and anti-republican. However the interwar years would see it decline, with Papal condemnation unsettling more devout followers and the rise of Fascist movements across Europe and right-wing veterans movements within France leading many to seek something more dynamic than the wait and see approach of the AF leadership.

The 6th of February 1934, would mark the first abortive right-wing coup of the Third Republic. Amidst an embezzlement scandal which pointed to institutional corruption the assembled ranks of AF and right-wing veterans leagues would engage in violent riots with the Parisian police and antifascists and briefly took control of large sections of the centre of Paris but dithered on storming the National Assembly and proclaiming a new regime. The conservative French military establishment saw this lack of intent as amateurish and didn’t intervene.

Instead a new centre-left government would be formed and efforts towards a Popular Front to unite the left against the reactionary threat began in earnest. La Cagolue grew out of the failure of the coup and the spectre of a united left, animating those who believed targeted action was necessary to eliminate Communism and were willing to actually dismantle the republic. For many French industrialists this was an attractive agenda and whilst largely unwilling to dip their own hands in the blood, La Cagoule allegedly found healthy financial backing.

The former AF members would expand their ranks from elite boarding schools where angry young men of the elite could find an outlet for their violent fantasies. Throughout 1935 the Third Republic would be beset by assassinations, bombings and sabotage against any individual or organisation the group considered Communist or republican.

This initial campaign would culminate in the murder of the SFIO leader Léon Blum who was found lynched in the early hours of the 6th of February, 1936. The scandal threatened to engulf France much as the riots had two years before with only the German reoccupation of the Rhineland focusing minds away from the talk of civil war.

With Blum now a martyr and the growing threat of Fascism at home and abroad, the nascent plans of unity of the French left materialised and following the April elections a Popular Front government was finally formed. With their majority dependent on the centrist Radical party, the new government was unable to pursue social revolution however it did have a clear determination to hunt down the murderers of Blum and their backers in business and the military.

It was the reaction the society had hoped for with paranoia growing amongst the French bourgeois of an imminent Communist takeover. The farcical Sanjurjo affair south of the Pyrenees and the subsequent purge of the Spanish military by the new Caballero regime appeared eerily prophetic. La Cagoule gained further backers and grew their connections within the French military, most notably Marshal Louis Franchet d'Espèrey and General Henri Giraud who agreed to seems at this point to have made the agreement which would finally make La Cagoule a covert branch of the French military in preparation for the next crisis.

Said crisis would come in the September of 1937 with the mass poisoning of much of the Popular Front government. Amongst the casualties would be Prime Minister Paul Faure and several of his ministers alongside senior civil servants judged to be sympathetic to the new regime. Few survived and while most evidence now points to La Cagoule having perpetrated the massacre at the time it was unclear who was responsible with everything from a Communist coup to it being the precursor to a German invasion appearing possible.

Giraud mobilised his troops and entered Paris whilst most were still in shock. He declared martial law and imposed a curfew, placing the police under his control. The following events would push France the closest it had been to civil war since 1871 and whether having miscalculated or following an agreed plan the general would ultimately cede authority to a new unity government composed largely of the centre and right.

Whilst not a military regime the new Daladier government would become increasingly authoritarian and anticommunist. Finding the perpetrators of the poisoning was originally pledged to be a priority the investigation slowly withered as the threat of war eclipsed domestic matters. The PCF and its unions would be curtailed and, following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, banned. The party which had arose to defend Dreyfuss introduced the first antisemitic legislation which limited opportunities for citizenship to Jewish refugees

French industry received large contracts towards a crash course rearmament whilst the French army were given free reign to professionalise and grow as a political force. The French proletariat were partially placated with the honouring of some Popular Front commitments, with a shortened working week and paid holidays surviving the poisonings.

For the moment the Third Republic survived also though in Daladier’s regime we can see compromise with the forces who intended to destroy it and the building of a regime which would ultimately do so. The conquest of the metropole and the chaos of the flight to Algiers which followed would finally spell the end. La Cagoule, whose members had largely fought against the German invasion, found themselves fleeing across the Pyrenees.

It was during internment at the behest of the Spanish Lenin that the organisation would take its final form, keeping order in the camps and rooting out any opposition or criticism for the government-in-exile. This year of internment, finally broken by Spanish entry into the war, would be the closest thing French citizens may have come to a full blown Cagoule state. At least for the moment.

The disappearance of Daladier’s plane may have actually been an accident, air travel was notoriously unsafe in the 1940s, exacerbated with the ongoing war. Nonetheless it coincided with the return of Cagoule-dominated internees who were able to act as cadres for Giraud’s final successful coup.

Forced to exist in the colonial and military reality of 1941 Algiers, the surviving National Assembly agreed to dissolve itself under the auspices of the current emergency. Giraud was quick to lay out a new constitution detailing a unitary French state under a militaristic hierarchy. To London and Washington it was sold as a more efficient way of organising the war effort and in Moscow there were currently more pressing concerns than internal French politics.

Thus Giraud was the undisputed ruler of France by the time he returned to the metropole following the Allied landings in Southern France. The following year he arrived in Paris to a hero's welcome, a marked difference to the reception he had received seven years earlier. Amidst the triumph, Communist resistors and German collaborators were rooted out in kind, despite some of the latter having been loyal to La Cagoule.

Giraud declared a new beginning, a National Revolution introduced by a regime forged in the fires of war. A single political party was formed from the old centre and right of the Third Republic, alongside industrial and military interests. At its heart lay, quite possible, La Cagoule. Opposition parties were not officially prohibited but soon found it beneficial not to stray too far from the new, ‘patriotic’ regime. La Cagoule remained willing to act extrajudicially against anyone dissenting to the new order.

Having finally achieved the old goals of the anti-republican right, Giraud proved a poor political actor and was soon convinced to retire and bask in the glory of his achievements. He was followed by a technocrat whose intelligence and lack of morals made him the perfect candidate to usher in the widespread social engineering required to make the dream of a society of soldier-peasants a reality.

French women were reorganised around the basis of family and motherhood. Anyone detracting from the notions of French or Catholic preferred by the regime found their citizenship removed. Industrial syndicates absorbed the first the syndicalist unions, then the French proletariat itself. The raw materials and peoples of the colonial periphery were harnessed into one large resource stockpile to be used and discarded. French workers were encouraged to build homesteads in the fertile lands of the empire where they could live out the soldier-peasant dream, those who remained would manage and oversee those shipped to France to replace them in the factories.

This vision inevitably attracted resistance. The granting of independence to Morocco following the end of the war created a ready made centre for Arab nationalism and independence struggles soon began across French North Africa. French threats to Madrid and Rabat were met by Soviet protection of both and thus the new soldier peasant class blossomed in blood from the mountains of Algeria to the jungles of Vietnam.

The casualties and the economic cost had become too much by the late fifties. The X-Crise inspired Polytechniques had been designed to produce a generation of brilliant young technicians and bureaucrats but instead enabled anti-imperialist and left-wing centres of thought to manifest. It was agreed within the National Centre that technocracy had failed.

But what to replace it with? The new director appears to be a man of the future, a young veteran who is open minded to bringing the overly bloody and complex Syndicalist economy into Europe and France back into the world. He has even made allusions to allowing some autonomy for the colonies, provided the Americans are willing to provide the investment needed to bring them up to a standard with the metropole.

Nonetheless, he is almost certainly a member of La Cagoule and what thoughts truly reside behind the smile and youthful good looks remains as cloaked as his brethren.




---

 

[Alberto Knox]

Semtex, Treason & Plot


Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
2016-2017: Theresa May (Conservative)
2017-2017: Theresa May (Conservative)
def Jun. 2017 (Minority): Jeremy Corbyn (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat)
2017-2017: Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative leading National Emergency Government)
2017-2017: Dennis Skinner (Labour)
def Aug. 2017 (Minority): Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Liz Leffman (Liberal Democrat)
2017-2019: Douglas Alexander (Labour leading National Government)
2019-0000: Douglas Alexander (Labour)
def. 2019 (Majority): Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative), David Cameron (National Conservative), Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Nigel Farage (Reform)
def. 2024 (Majority): Syed Kamall (Conservative), Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat), Kate Forbes (SNP), Richard Tice (Reform)


On 21st June 2017, a set of powerful explosive charges were detonated in the Palace of Westminster, reducing half of it to rubble. Tragically, it was the half where the Queen (with Prince Charles at her side) had been in the middle of addressing the assembled Houses of Parliament. In one stroke, the entire UK Government (along with virtually the entire legislature and a large part of the judiciary) was wiped out.

To this day, the exact details of the Westminster Attack remain closed to the public. While an until then relatively obscure North African Islamic terrorist group took public credit in the immediate aftermath, security service investigations over the next two years revealed something far more troubling. A home-grown group brought together online during the Brexit referendum campaign, radicalised by American alt-right ideology and (somewhere along the way) gaining shadowy backers that gave them the resources and connections they needed to pull off the Clean Sweep they considered necessary to reshape Great Britain into a place where the Right People were in charge. While some came to trial, several key names were suppressed for reasons that will be the source of fierce speculation for conspiracy buffs for many years to come.

As it proved, the British political system, the construction of centuries of procedure and precedent, proved remarkably resilient in a crisis and these terrorists' hopes of a new authoritarian state went unfulfilled. As one bad but surprisingly popular joke would put it, the headless chicken somehow safely crossed the road without being stepped on by any passing jackboots.

Chris Heaton-Harris, a senior government whip who was playing the traditional role of ‘parliamentary hostage’ at Buckingham Palace, was the only known surviving MP in the first 24 hours following the attack and was thus designated ‘Prime Minister’ by a rapidly called meeting of the rump Privy Council and soon after officially appointed by King William V (who had been celebrating his birthday privately that day). Long retired ex-cabinet members of all parties (and even a couple of ex-PMs) filled the required statutory offices, with Heaton-Harris remaining at the head to maintain a sense of continuity and legitimacy from Theresa May’s ministry.

While Orders-in-Council could allow the Emergency National Government to function in the short-term, the unwritten constitution of the UK demanded there be a functioning Parliament. As soon as the required funerals and memorials were concluded and immediate security matters dealt with, Heaton-Harris’ first action was to call a new general election for August 3rd. The campaign period was muted, even sombre, the energies of the major parties occupied with appointing their interim leaders, finding a whole new slate of candidates and figuring out how to finance it all after having just done this all less than two months ago. A reluctant Dennis Skinner, rescued from the rubble-blocked Commons where he had been sitting out the Queen’s Speech, was shunted into the interim leadership of the Labour Party by the NEC for lack of any other viable options. As it happened, the dramatic nature of his rescue had drawn a great deal of media attention and his performance in subsequent interviews had turned him into something of a national hero. While Heaton-Harris was considered to have acquitted himself reasonably well in the midst of the national tragedy, it was the Beast of Bolsover who won out on election night, Labour safely winning the largest number of seats, though just short of a majority.

To the collective relief of the surviving political establishment, Skinner (ever suspicious of office and patronage) had no interest in serving for any length of time and publicly declared that same night that he would remain PM only as long as it took the Labour Party to elect a new leader from amongst the new elected MPs. He would serve for only 12 days, taking the record of shortest serving PM from Heaton-Harris who served 43. Skinner’s brief ministry is recalled fondly as the beginning of the return to relative normalcy, as well as for a very memorable performance at his only Prime Minister’s Question Time (the new Parliament meeting at Richmond House while Westminster underwent reconstruction and long overdue renovation).

There would later be claims of a ‘Blairite stitch-up’, but the fact of the matter is that the NEC set the number of required nominations so high in order to ensure as high a calibre of candidates as possible from the least experienced Parliamentary Party of modern times and to ensure as speedy a timetable as possible. As it proved, with Burnham committed in Manchester and the mourning Balls refusing to stand, only Douglas Alexander (Blair/Brown era cabinet minister, recent Foreign Secretary in the National Emergency Government and newly returned MP for East Lothian) had the required numbers when the deadline came and went.

Building on the spirit of unity in the face of the recent crisis, Alexander invited all parties to participate in a continued National Government focused on negotiating and securing a fair and equitable deal for leaving the EU. On April 16th 2019, the Withdrawal Agreement (including a customs union with the EU and clear workers' rights guarantees) passed with the backing of Labour, the Lib Dems and the National Conservative grouping under David Cameron (who had lost the whip under arch-Brexiteer, Heaton-Harris). On the back of this triumph, as well as the recent sentencing of the ‘ringleaders’ of the Westminster Attack, Alexander went to the country in the hopes of securing a majority for Labour. He got his wish.

With the crises of the last few years dealt with, Alexander looked to the future with a cautious optimism. Little did he know he would have a whole new crisis to deal with when the pandemic came. But that’s another story altogether…

 

[The Red]

A Westminster version of Designated Survivor, very nice although for a moment there,

Spoiler: Designated Survivor

I thought Skinner was going to be revealed as the Peter MacLeish; pulled out of the ruins and willing to get Brexit done

 

[Alberto Knox]

A Westminster version of Designated Survivor, very nice although for a moment there,

Spoiler: Designated Survivor

I thought Skinner was going to be revealed as the Peter MacLeish; pulled out of the ruins and willing to get Brexit done

I was wondering if anyone would catch it.

Spoiler: Designated Survivor

I did consider going that route, but then I liked the idea that the alt-right plotters had either forgotten about Skinner or just weren't prepared to work with him and assumed he would die as well. His survival thus ends up unintentionally scuppering their plans further, preventing them from using Heaton-Harris as an unwitting stooge.

Also, I didn't want to just copy the show. Though maybe a failed assassination attempt on Skinner would have been fun.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

X is for Extinction​

Commanders of the Mother Earth Army
1975-1981: Ronnie Lee*
1981-1983: Robert Cogswell*
1983-1989: "Village" (Richard Hunt)
1989-1991: "Rainbow"† (George Marshall)
1991-1992: "Village"* (Richard Hunt)
1992-2004: "Saucer" (Tim Hepple)
2004-0000: group dissolved into National Combat Organisation

Commanders of the Whole Earth Army
1991-1994: "Wrench"† (Steve Booth)
1994-1996: "Brick" (believed Derek Wall)
1996-0000: group merges with broader Alliance for Worker's Liberty

Commanders of the "Continuity"/Real Whole Earth Army
1996-2001: "Bran the Blessed"* (John Rothwell)
2001-2010: "Marshal Marshland"* (Daniel Marc Hooper)
2010-2023: "Burning Pink"† (unknown)
2023-0000: unclear

Commanders of the Extinction Army
2015-2019: "Hourglass"† (believed "Zion Lights" [pseudonym])
2019-2022: "Hourglass"* (unknown)
2022-)))0): "Hourglass" (unknown)

* indicates death at the hands of security services
† indicates death at the hands of other dissident groups

What counts as terrorism, really?

I mean, let's look at what I've been doing for the past--ooh, got to be three or four years now. There was the thing at that research lab up in Suffolk, what happened at Gascoigne Wood--which I do regret, really, and deeply. I just want that on the record, since we're doing this--oh, right, yeah, the whole thing with the van and the old bastard, thought you'd let me off on that one, enemy of an enemy and all that. Right. Oh, what I'm doing here, of course, can't forget that, suppose it's hard not to. So that's poisoning, breaking and entering, kidnapping, murder. Yes, and starvation! Didn't know that one was a separate crime. Where would we be without chaps like you, eh? Not a joke. Someone has to keep in mind all the semantic niceties.

Poisoning, starvation, kidnapping, breaking and entering, and murder. That's what makes a terrorist.

Do we agree? Just say if--ah. Well, nod your head if you agree and have tape over your mouth. Or, if you can't speak and can't nod, I'll just assume you agree. Best traditions of British democracy and all that.

Poisoning. Poisoning. You poison one man, you go to prison--you poison about ten of them, whose jobs it is to poke needles in baby monkeys just to find a way to drag 78-year-olds to 80, and you go to prison for even longer. Now, let's say you poison a million, or ten million people. Since you're working at scale, you're not just spiking a cooler, you're spiking anything you can get your hands on. You can use blatant stuff, like arsenic or mercury or nuclear waste, and you can use subtle stuff, like a mild acid or bits of plastic or--well who knows what cocktail of crap you can throw together. And you can put it everywhere, in rivers, in the taps, even in the gentle rain from heaven. Wouldn't someone come after you, for doing that poisoning on the whole world and the whole ocean?

Well, go to Redcar some time. Lovely beach. At least it was, back before the punters got put off by our fine Northern weather and the runoff from our fine Northern steelworks. These days, the main attraction is watching what blows ashore, and the fun's gone out of that. When I was young, you'd be able to see dead herring, dead crabs, ooh, all sorts of dead things. Now, if you get your mask out for a trip and brave the smog, it's just the occasional jellyfish bloom slowly rotting on the beach. And I hear even they're an endangered species these days.

Starvation, that's another biggie. Of course, it's much harder to kill off--poison's instant, it's clean, it can be better than some people deserve. To starve someone, like a grasping old cult leader who thinks carnival stunts are action and shoots down anyone who makes real change, you need to hold them down, properly, tie 'em up away from any food, and even then you've got all that waiting to do. Should bring a book or something. If you wanted to starve a lot of people, you'd need some kind of better solution. Maybe you could take away all the food, bit by bit, take away their ability to make any more, and...well, you're still waiting, but you're not watching, because none of them notice as their rations get smaller and smaller and their stomachs thinner and thinner. What an astounding crime--aren't you glad that didn't happen?

Like I mentioned, you used to get a lot of jellyfish blooms around Redcar. So someone had a bright idea--make a little plant to repurpose them, and give those fisherfolk something to do, now all the proper fish are dead. Have you ever tried jellyfish? They dry it out, stretch it out with all sorts of flavourings and repackagings, and what do you get? Papery biscuit sort of thing that tastes of nothing and leaves you more hungry. Only thing more mind-numbing than trying to live off of jellyfish, while ignoring the cold and the loose clothing and the hair falling out, is having to chop the bloody stuff ten hours a day.

Kidnapping! We're getting to some serious, top-shelf crimes now. To take someone, and force them somewhere, with no choice in the matter, snatching them up from some pointless meeting in the paved-over Garden of England and taking them right out into the old dump of slum houses they put along the top of the South Downs. Unlike the last one, that's very scalable to a higher level. You just need to have the gun, and if it's one scared middle manager or a million of them, you can march them wherever you want! You can force people to go where they'd never choose to go, do things they'd never choose to do, or sit down and listen to you ramble on about the nature of justice, as you're well aware, and the more you force and take away the less likely it is anyone can do anything about it. Maybe someone could even be forced to exist, frog-marched out of a woman's womb.

On the way to the jellyfish plant--if you'll forgive me the digression in what's sort of a big pile of digressions, but I promise all of this is going somewhere--there was this homeless women. A pretty standard type, lost her husband and lost her benefits, eking out a living on the fringes, living off what remaining food people can still afford to throw away. What always got me, walking past, was her baby. This tiny scrap of a thing, clutched to her chest. In all the time I saw it, it never grew, never cried, never really moved. It just twitched and gurgled every once in a while, to prove it was still clinging to life. If that baby had been asked if it wanted to be born, and go through what it went through, I don't think it'd say yes.

Breaking and entering. Two crimes for the price of one, I think, but I've never seen anyone really prosecuted just for breaking something. Fair point, it is also bloody hard to enter without breaking. Not impossible, just bloody hard. If you get some white coats and lanyards and lie, you can get a certain amount of the way. Hard hat and a toolbox, and say you're fixing the pipes, and you can get even farther. Of course, if you had a way of entering without leaving any kind of trace, that'd work even better. If our robber could permeate into water and air, pass through any door and any wall, strike at everyone at the same time--almost as good as a hard hat and a toolbox. Of course, with no hands and no brain, all this robber could do is try and get in the way. Yeah, good one, mate--flipping the script into entering and breaking. Wish I'd thought of that one. Good thing this hypothetical universal robber doesn't exist to hear that gag.

The women died a good few years back. It was the cough that carried her off, to quote the old bit of doggerel. The cough carried off the baby, too. It carried off my mum, it carried off my dad, it carried off all the fish along the beach in its own special way, and I think there's a good chance it carries off me. Everyone knows where it comes from--the bloody great chimney that dumps smoke across the whole town to the point where it stains the walls. If only the same bloody great chimney's housing didn't employ nearly everyone in town, and the smoke didn't kill off the jobs that were left. If only we had more of those masks, like the ones they have in the cities, rather than a damp rag. If only we didn't need all that bloody steel. If only, if only, if only.

Murder. That's the big one. The capital M for capital punishment. Always thought the way that gets prosecuted is weird. Y'know, I killed about three, maybe four, people working in Gascoigne Woods, but blowing up the mine itself? Look, I--I didn't think the seam would catch. The bombs, we'd tested it a little beforehand, and--yeah. I know, yeah. Well, regardless, there's a reason you can't go back to Sherburn any more, the other one. And they charged me for the four blokes I shot, and I don't feel a thing about those bastards, but every night I think of the photos they showed me before the trial, of a town burning down from underneath, and not one of those deaths, legally, is on me. Because it only bloody counts as murder if you do it with your own two hands.

If not? Well, it's good business. The pit-boss who flogged his stinking coal, what's left of it, to every power plant and steelworks and coal-duster lorry in the country, he's just doing good business. The security guard who tramps up and down the fields and through the slums and all around the last lonely hunting moor not yet turned into fields, he's just doing good business. The politician who keeps abortion illegal except for his mistress and sinks every boat coming from Europe except for the one still bringing oil and slashes rations down except for himself and takes anyone who speaks out about it and throws them in a little cell the light can't reach with ten other men because even our fucking prisons have an overpopulation problem, he's just doing good business.

They're all terrorists, same as me. It's just I'm smaller.

Yeah, yeah, cliched, I know. Sorry. If it's any consolation, it won't matter in...ooh, five, maybe ten minutes.

Like I said, I feel bad about what I did to Sherburn. Maybe that makes it ironic that I'm going out like this. Maybe not. The important thing is, unlike the last fire, this is clean. Ask anyone who's dropped a nuclear bomb--radiation kills people, and leaves the world standing. With any luck, it'll mutate whichever species comes next so they're smart enough to avoid our mista--

I get it, yeah. Fair. I've been rambling on for too long. The point of our movement was always to cut out the agendas, left and right, and let nature itself do the talking, and here I am--I'm at it again, even! Sorry, so sorry. I think it's the stress getting to me.

Let's try and do something nice to go out with. How about some light music? Cheers, mate, you're a good sport.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound...

 

[Wendell]

Goering Up for Rule.

A bomb brings down a famous beer hall in Munich in 1939 killing leading members of the German government and ruling party. The perpetrator is taken alive and cooperates in the investigation which follows. So depleted is the leadership of Germany that Hermann Goering, reputed to have been Hitler's intended successor anyway, rapidly consolidates power. As president of the Reichstag, Goering stood before the body on November 9th addressing the country and the world on the previous night's events. His remarks link the plot and its perpetrator, Johann Georg Elser, to two captured British spies even as he indicated that peace was on the table as soon as Paris and London were willing take German overtures seriously. The Reichstag followed his comments with a standing ovation before elevating Goering to the chancellery and declaring him Führer with the Enabling Act and other emergency laws remaining in effect.

Spoiler: Wall of text

The plot though proves to be a boon for the nascent regime as its fosters divides in the tolerated opposition as some among its leaders see the new leader as more amenable to their concerns and less ideologically driven. Others though view him as a drug addict and crook, and within this group some plan to ingratiate themselves to the new leader as a step toward ultimately casting him aside. State and party organs supportive of Hitler but which might have shifted towards opposing Goering quickly fall in line bereft of alternative leadership.

Notable casualties of the Bürgerbräukeller Bombing:
Adolf Hitler, Leader and Chancellor
Hermann Esser, Second Vice President of the Reichstag
August Frank, SS Officer
Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Gauleiter of Berlin
Rudolf Hess, Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party, Reich Miniter Without Portfolio, et cetera
Reinhard Heydrich, Director of the Reich Security Main Office
Robert Ley, Leader of the German Labor Front
Alfred Rosenberg, Reichsleiter of the NSDAP and leader of its foreign policy office
Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Franconia
Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the German Police and Reichsführer-SS
Christian Webber, SS Officer

Goering also used his first appearance before the Reichstag after the bombing to announce the members of his cabinet:

Leader and Chancellor of the German Realm: Hermann Goering
Vice-Chanceller of the German Realm: Hans Lammers
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Ulrich Friedrich-Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop
Minister of the Interior: Wilhelm Frick
Minister of Finance: Johann Ludwig "Lutz" Graf Schwerin von Krosigk
Minister of Justice: Franz Guertner
Minister of War: Werner von Blomberg
Minister of Economics: Walther Funk
Minister of Agriculture and Food: Richard Walther Darré
Minister of Labour: Franz Seldte
Minister of Transport: Julius Dorpmueller
Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda: Karl August Hanke
Minister of Aviation: Wolfram von Richthofen
Minister for Science, Education, and Culture: Bernhard Rust
Minister of Church Affairs: Hanns Kerrl
Minister without Portfolio & Governor-General of Poland: Hans Frank
Minister without Portfolio & Protector of Bohemia and Moravia: Constantin von Neurath
Minister without Portfolio & Deputy Governor-General of Poland: Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Minister without Portfolio: Hjalmar Schacht
Minister of State & Chief of the Presidential Chancery: Otto Meisner
Commander-in-Chief of the Navy: Erich Raeder
Commander-in Chief of the Army: Walther von Brauchitsch
Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe: Erhard Milch
Chief of the Armed Forces High Command: Wilhelm Keitel


Goering continues on with war planning even as he attempts without much success to broker an end to the war favorable to the thus far victorious Germany. While in no particular rush, Goering sees securing a peace before the end of the year as a means of discrediting the internal opposition to his and the preceding regime. Then, at the end of November, an opportunity presents itself as the German government receives advance notice of its cobelligerent's impending invasion of Finland. Thus, once more, Goering appears before the Reichstag reiterating the importance of Germany's relationship with the Soviet Union while once more calling for a peace conference to end the "phony war" in the West.

A diplomatic back-and-forth ensues from roughly mid-December, and a Christmas truce is announced, with negotiations to commence in Zurich just after the first of the year. In that eventual conference, Germany agrees to vacate Bohemia and Moravia beyond the Sudetenland, permits a restored Poland in the "General Government" area and further restores some of the areas Germany annexed unilaterally while keeping the bulk of it. German efforts to push a border adjustment with Belgium gets rejected. Arms limitations and reparations from the previous war are waived, and prisoners are to be exchanged. Germany agrees to respect the independence of the Nordic states. The allies seek this as a means to make landings in support of Finland. Britain, France, Poland, and Prague agree to recognize the Slovak Republic. Controversially, the allies agree to allow population transfers between Germany and the restored Czech and Polish states that the Germans use to expel its Jewish and Roma minorities, not just its Poles and Czechs, into its diminished and battered neighbors. Both sides end up accepting and ratifying this agreement.

With his enemies soon to go to war with the Soviet Union, Goering feels successful in having achieved his main goals and takes a gamble domestically that pays off. The emergency laws under which the country has been governed for eight to ten years are adjusted such that opposition parties are legalized ahead of a snap election after which Goering will be the president and someone else the chancellor. The swiftness of the election and legalization of parties ahead of it catches domestic opponents off guard and has the effect of cementing the Nazis' hold on power for the moment. Further, the election was set up such that the areas annexed in and since 1938, while participating in the election, weren't subject to the legalization of opposition parties as they were not subject to the Weimar constitution before the varies emergency decrees of the Hitler chancellery.

The Reichstag grants Goering a presidential mandate until 1946. Hans Lammers becomes the chancellor, and, while every member of the cabinet remains in place, those in it who previously identified with a different party resume doing so, which the government sees as a means of making itself appear pluralist. Neurath and Hans Frank remain ministers without portfolio while assisting the new Ministry of State Reform and Integration under Seyss-Inquart. The meticulous records the Germans kept throughout the Hitler and Goering periods won't be released until well after the latter is dead and buried, but rumors of the many crimes of this era in German history will permeate and impact German diplomacy. The world will learn of the preliminary plans Germany made to systematically exterminate Europe's Jews, even as deportations to neighboring states no less friendly to Europe's oldest minority is the course taken in this timeline.

Poland and Czechia struggle with the damage done by war. Shortages of housing, food, and medical care result in death, violence, starvation, and pestilence with little foreign support reaching their populations. A slight border adjustment with Germany and reaffirmation of the non-aggression pact leads to the Soviets returning a small amount of land to the reconstituted Poland while securing the legalization of the communist parties there and in Czechia. The Americans send aid, but as both reconstituted states are landlocked, considerably less arrives than was actually sent, and emigration to the Soviet Union increases.

The lack of functioning economy coupled with anger at the Western Allies for abandoning them sees many Poles joining Soviet ranks in the Finnish war that soon expands into the Balkans and Persia. Germany stays out of the conflict but transitions from its war economy back to a civilian one by supplying the Soviet War effort and continuing the informal cooperation between the NKVD and the SS. Of course, German trade with Britain and France returns to prewar levels as well.

Efforts by both the allies and the Soviets to bring Yugoslavia into the war results only in that country's collapse into civil war and ultimately dissolution. Hungary, previously eager to take a piece out of Romania, is reluctant to act, not wanting to be seen as a Soviet ally even as it increasingly cooperates with Moscow and settles for joining Bulgaria in trying to gain territory from Belgrade, which Paris and London reluctantly accept.

Whereas the German war with Poland lasts about a season, roughly autumn 1939, the Finnish-Soviet War pushes well into 1940 as the allies undertake aerial campaigns against Soviet oil infrastructure. Efforts at landing forces to assist the Finns are repulsed and only drag Norway and Sweden into a war they had hoped to avoid. But, with Germany agreeing to stay out of Nordic affairs, the threat of Berlin was not there to present as an excuse to hang Finland out to dry.

With the Soviets fighting a larger war than merely Finland, efforts at assisting the Chinese diminish giving the Japanese, also in receipt of generous German support, an opportunity. Committed now to fighting the Soviets, the British and French agree to recognize Manchukuo and Wang Jingwei's Japanese puppet government in China in return for using these as staging areas in the war against the USSR. Whatever this arrangement could hope to achieve, however, never comes to pass as the Norwegian and Swedish governments collapse with their monarchs going into exile. Germany occupies Denmark and the Faeroe Islands as a "precaution", while Britain occupies Greenland and Iceland. The Nobel Committee relocates to Switzerland.

Finland surrenders. "neutral" republics are established in Stockholm and Oslo. The Soviets get their way in Romania and offer Hungary northern Transylvania in return for the briefly independent parts of the Subcarpathan Rus. By 1941 a peace has settled across the world that no one wants. But things were about to explode in India and Africa. All because Elser succeeded.

German heads of state, 1919-present:
Friedrich Ebert (SPD) 1919-1925
Hans Luther (Independent) 1925 (acting)
Walter Simons (Independent) 1925 (acting)
Paul von Hindenburg (Independent) 1925-1933
Adolf Hitler (NSDAP) 1933-1939
Hermann Goering (NSDAP) 1939-1946
Otto Meissner (Independent) 1946-1953
Kurt Freiherr von Schroeder (DVP) 1953-1960
Franz Halder (Independent) 1960-1967
Friedrich "Fitz" Ebert, Jr. (SPD) 1967-1974
Erich Honecker (KPD) 1974-1981
Hasso von Etzdorf (Independent) 1981-1988
Wilhelm "Willi" Stoph (KPD) 1988-1995
Hans Modrow (Independent) 1995-2002
Lothar de Maizière (Zentrum) 2002-2009
Richard von Weizsaecker (DVP) 2009-2016
Horst Mahler (SPD) 2016-2023
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Zentrum) 2023-

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Goering Up for Rule.

A bomb brings down a famous beer hall in Munich in 1939 killing leading members of the German government and ruling party. The perpetrator is taken alive and cooperates in the investigation which follows. So depleted is the leadership of Germany that Hermann Goering, reputed to have been Hitler's intended successor anyway, rapidly consolidates power. As president of the Reichstag, Goering stood before the body on November 9th addressing the country and the world on the previous night's events. His remarks link the plot and its perpetrator, Johann Georg Elser, to two captured British spies even as he indicated that peace was on the table as soon as Paris and London were willing take German overtures seriously. The Reichstag followed his comments with a standing ovation before elevating Goering to the chancellery and declaring him Führer with the Enabling Act and other emergency laws remaining in effect.

Spoiler: Wall of text

The plot though proves to be a boon for the nascent regime as its fosters divides in the tolerated opposition as some among its leaders see the new leader as more amenable to their concerns and less ideologically driven. Others though view him as a drug addict and crook, and within this group some plan to ingratiate themselves to the new leader as a step toward ultimately casting him aside. State and party organs supportive of Hitler but which might have shifted towards opposing Goering quickly fall in line bereft of alternative leadership.

Notable casualties of the Bürgerbräukeller Bombing:
Adolf Hitler, Leader and Chancellor
Hermann Esser, Second Vice President of the Reichstag
August Frank, SS Officer
Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Gauleiter of Berlin
Rudolf Hess, Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party, Reich Miniter Without Portfolio, et cetera
Reinhard Heydrich, Director of the Reich Security Main Office
Robert Ley, Leader of the German Labor Front
Alfred Rosenberg, Reichsleiter of the NSDAP and leader of its foreign policy office
Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Franconia
Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the German Police and Reichsführer-SS
Christian Webber, SS Officer

Goering also used his first appearance before the Reichstag after the bombing to announce the members of his cabinet:

Leader and Chancellor of the German Realm: Hermann Goering
Vice-Chanceller of the German Realm: Hans Lammers
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Ulrich Friedrich-Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop
Minister of the Interior: Wilhelm Frick
Minister of Finance: Johann Ludwig "Lutz" Graf Schwerin von Krosigk
Minister of Justice: Franz Guertner
Minister of War: Werner von Blomberg
Minister of Economics: Walther Funk
Minister of Agriculture and Food: Richard Walther Darré
Minister of Labour: Franz Seldte
Minister of Transport: Julius Dorpmueller
Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda: Karl August Hanke
Minister of Aviation: Wolfram von Richthofen
Minister for Science, Education, and Culture: Bernhard Rust
Minister of Church Affairs: Hanns Kerrl
Minister without Portfolio & Governor-General of Poland: Hans Frank
Minister without Portfolio & Protector of Bohemia and Moravia: Constantin von Neurath
Minister without Portfolio & Deputy Governor-General of Poland: Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Minister without Portfolio: Hjalmar Schacht
Minister of State & Chief of the Presidential Chancery: Otto Meisner
Commander-in-Chief of the Navy: Erich Raeder
Commander-in Chief of the Army: Walther von Brauchitsch
Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe: Erhard Milch
Chief of the Armed Forces High Command: Wilhelm Keitel


Goering continues on with war planning even as he attempts without much success to broker an end to the war favorable to the thus far victorious Germany. While in no particular rush, Goering sees securing a peace before the end of the year as a means of discrediting the internal opposition to his and the preceding regime. Then, at the end of November, an opportunity presents itself as the German government receives advance notice of its cobelligerent's impending invasion of Finland. Thus, once more, Goering appears before the Reichstag reiterating the importance of Germany's relationship with the Soviet Union while once more calling for a peace conference to end the "phony war" in the West.

A diplomatic back-and-forth ensues from roughly mid-December, and a Christmas truce is announced, with negotiations to commence in Zurich just after the first of the year. In that eventual conference, Germany agrees to vacate Bohemia and Moravia beyond the Sudetenland, permits a restored Poland in the "General Government" area and further restores some of the areas Germany annexed unilaterally while keeping the bulk of it. German efforts to push a border adjustment with Belgium gets rejected. Arms limitations and reparations from the previous war are waived, and prisoners are to be exchanged. Germany agrees to respect the independence of the Nordic states. The allies seek this as a means to make landings in support of Finland. Britain, France, Poland, and Prague agree to recognize the Slovak Republic. Controversially, the allies agree to allow population transfers between Germany and the restored Czech and Polish states that the Germans use to expel its Jewish and Roma minorities, not just its Poles and Czechs, into its diminished and battered neighbors. Both sides end up accepting and ratifying this agreement.

With his enemies soon to go to war with the Soviet Union, Goering feels successful in having achieved his main goals and takes a gamble domestically that pays off. The emergency laws under which the country has been governed for eight to ten years are adjusted such that opposition parties are legalized ahead of a snap election after which Goering will be the president and someone else the chancellor. The swiftness of the election and legalization of parties ahead of it catches domestic opponents off guard and has the effect of cementing the Nazis' hold on power for the moment. Further, the election was set up such that the areas annexed in and since 1938, while participating in the election, weren't subject to the legalization of opposition parties as they were not subject to the Weimar constitution before the varies emergency decrees of the Hitler chancellery.

The Reichstag grants Goering a presidential mandate until 1946. Hans Lammers becomes the chancellor, and, while every member of the cabinet remains in place, those in it who previously identified with a different party resume doing so, which the government sees as a means of making itself appear pluralist. Neurath and Hans Frank remain ministers without portfolio while assisting the new Ministry of State Reform and Integration under Seyss-Inquart. The meticulous records the Germans kept throughout the Hitler and Goering periods won't be released until well after the latter is dead and buried, but rumors of the many crimes of this era in German history will permeate and impact German diplomacy. The world will learn of the preliminary plans Germany made to systematically exterminate Europe's Jews, even as deportations to neighboring states no less friendly to Europe's oldest minority is the course taken in this timeline.

Poland and Czechia struggle with the damage done by war. Shortages of housing, food, and medical care result in death, violence, starvation, and pestilence with little foreign support reaching their populations. A slight border adjustment with Germany and reaffirmation of the non-aggression pact leads to the Soviets returning a small amount of land to the reconstituted Poland while securing the legalization of the communist parties there and in Czechia. The Americans send aid, but as both reconstituted states are landlocked, considerably less arrives than was actually sent, and emigration to the Soviet Union increases.

The lack of functioning economy coupled with anger at the Western Allies for abandoning them sees many Poles joining Soviet ranks in the Finnish war that soon expands into the Balkans and Persia. Germany stays out of the conflict but transitions from its war economy back to a civilian one by supplying the Soviet War effort and continuing the informal cooperation between the NKVD and the SS. Of course, German trade with Britain and France returns to prewar levels as well.

Efforts by both the allies and the Soviets to bring Yugoslavia into the war results only in that country's collapse into civil war and ultimately dissolution. Hungary, previously eager to take a piece out of Romania, is reluctant to act, not wanting to be seen as a Soviet ally even as it increasingly cooperates with Moscow and settles for joining Bulgaria in trying to gain territory from Belgrade, which Paris and London reluctantly accept.

Whereas the German war with Poland lasts about a season, roughly autumn 1939, the Finnish-Soviet War pushes well into 1940 as the allies undertake aerial campaigns against Soviet oil infrastructure. Efforts at landing forces to assist the Finns are repulsed and only drag Norway and Sweden into a war they had hoped to avoid. But, with Germany agreeing to stay out of Nordic affairs, the threat of Berlin was not there to present as an excuse to hang Finland out to dry.

With the Soviets fighting a larger war than merely Finland, efforts at assisting the Chinese diminish giving the Japanese, also in receipt of generous German support, an opportunity. Committed now to fighting the Soviets, the British and French agree to recognize Manchukuo and Wang Jingwei's Japanese puppet government in China in return for using these as staging areas in the war against the USSR. Whatever this arrangement could hope to achieve, however, never comes to pass as the Norwegian and Swedish governments collapse with their monarchs going into exile. Germany occupies Denmark and the Faeroe Islands as a "precaution", while Britain occupies Greenland and Iceland. The Nobel Committee relocates to Switzerland.

Finland surrenders. "neutral" republics are established in Stockholm and Oslo. The Soviets get their way in Romania and offer Hungary northern Transylvania in return for the briefly independent parts of the Subcarpathan Rus. By 1941 a peace has settled across the world that no one wants. But things were about to explode in India and Africa. All because Elser succeeded.

German heads of state, 1919-present:
Friedrich Ebert (SPD) 1919-1925
Hans Luther (Independent) 1925 (acting)
Walter Simons (Independent) 1925 (acting)
Paul von Hindenburg (Independent) 1925-1933
Adolf Hitler (NSDAP) 1933-1939
Hermann Goering (NSDAP) 1939-1946
Otto Meissner (Independent) 1946-1953
Kurt Freiherr von Schroeder (DVP) 1953-1965
Franz Halder (Independent) 1965-1972
Friedrich "Fitz" Ebert, Jr. (SPD) 1972-1979
Hasso von Etzdorf (Independent) 1979-1986
Wilhelm "Willi" Stoph (KPD) 1986-1993
Hans Modrow (Independent) 1993-2000
Lothar de Maizière (Zentrum) 2000-2007
Richard von Weizsaecker (DVP) 2007-2014
Horst Mahler (SPD) 2014-2021
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Zentrum) 2021-

Nice lore

 

[Wendell]

Nice lore

Thank you.

 

[Steve Brinson]

Under The Ice

1921-1930: Henry Ford (Independence)

'20 (with David Starr Jordan) def. Leonard Wood (Republican), Woodrow Wilson (Democratic), Parley Christensen (Progressive)​

'24 (with David Starr Jordan) def. George R. Lunn (Progressive), Oscar Underwood (Democratic), Calvin Coolidge (Republican)​

'28 (with Franklin D. Roosevelt) def. Upton Sinclair (Progressive), William Howard Taft (faithless Republican), scattered (faithless Democratic)​

1930-1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Independence)
1933-1937: M. Clyde Kelly (Progressive)

'32 (with Amos Pinchot) def. Franklin D. Roosevelt (Independence)​

1937-1939: Richmond P. Hobson (Independence) ✞

'36 (with John Purroy Mitchel) def. M. Clyde Kelly (Progressive), Maury Maverick (Radical)​

1939-1941: John Purroy Mitchel (Independence)
1941-1949: Philip La Follette (Progressive)

'40 (with Fiorello La Guardia) def. John Purroy Mitchel (Independence), W. Lee O'Daniel (Southern)​

'44 (with Frances P. Bolton) def. Patrick J. Hurley (National Union), Charles Lindbergh (Independence), Claude Pepper (Liberal)​

1949-1950: Wendell Willkie (Unionist) ✞

'48 (with John G. Winant) def. Paul V. McNutt (Progressive), Charles Lindbergh (Independence)​

1950-1953: John G. Winant (Unionist)
1953-1961: Douglas MacArthur (Unionist)

'52 (with John Lodge) def. Robert La Follette II (Progressive), Herbert Hoover (Independence)​

'56 (with John Lodge) def. John F. Kennedy (National Anti-War)​

1961-1968: Lyndon B. Johnson (Progressive) ✞

'60 (with Robert Wagner Jr.) def. Joe Foss (Unionist), John W. Bricker (Independence), Claude Pepper (Liberal)​

'64 (with Robert Wagner Jr.) def. Clare Boothe Luce (Unionist), Gerald Ford (Independence)​

1968-1969: Robert Wagner Jr. (Progressive)
1969-1973: Eugene McCarthy (Progressive)

'68 (with Jesse Unruh) def. Joe Coors (Independence), John Tower (Unionist)​

1973-1981: Shirley Temple Black (Unionist)

'72 (with Mel Laird) def. Eugene McCarthy (Progressive), Larry McDonald (Independence)​

'76 (with Mel Laird) def. Louie Welch (Independence), Wilbur Hobby (Progressive)​

1981-1981: John Y. Brown Jr. (Independence) ✞

'80 (with Meldrim Thomson Jr.) def. Hugh Carey (Progressive), George Bush (Unionist), Robert La Follette III (Farmer-Labor)​

1981-1989: Meldrim Thomson Jr. (Independence)

'84 (with H. Ross Perot) def. Dennis Kucinich (Progressive), Nick Nixon (Unionist), Eddie Brown (Liberal)​

1989-1993: H. Ross Perot (Independence)

'88 (with Bay Buchanan) def. Liz Holtzman (Progressive), Jimmy Hoffa (U.S. Labor), Claiborne Pell (Unionist)​

1993-1997: Dick Lamm (U.S. Labor)

'92 (with Dennis Kucinich) def. John Brademas (Progressive, replacing Neil Goldschmidt), H. Ross Perot (Independence), Will Romney (Unionist), Willie Nelson (Farm Aid)​

1997-2001: Larry Echo Hawk (Progressive)

'96 (with Lane Evans) def. Dick Lamm (U.S. Labor), Janet Reno (Unionist), Donald Trump (Independence), Elizabeth Herring (Farm Aid)​

2001-2009: John McCain (Unionist)

'00 (with Jane Harman) def. Pat Buchanan (Independence), Larry Echo Hawk (Progressive), Rudy Giuliani (U.S. Labor)​

'04 (with Jane Harman) def. Helen Chenoweth (Independence), James P. Hoffa (U.S. Labor), Jesse Ventura (Progressive)​

2009-2010: John Kitzhaber (Progressive)

'08 (with Charlotte Pritt) def. Wesley Clark (Unionist), Nina Turner (U.S. Labor), Paul LePage (Independence)​

2010-2013: Charlotte Pritt (Progressive)
2013-2021: Mike Pence (Independence)

'12 (with Mark Sanford) def. Eric Adams (Unionist), Charlotte Pritt (Progressive), Alan Grayson (U.S. Labor)​

'16 (with Mark Sanford) def. Mike DeWine (Unionist), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (U.S. Labor), Francis Fukuyama (Progressive)​

2021-: Amy Klobuchar (Progressive)

'20 (with Jim Folsom Jr.) def. Dan Patrick (Independence), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (U.S. Labor), William McRaven (Unionist)​

en/global-freedom-institute/country/united-states/2024
OVERVIEW

The United States holds competitive multiparty elections, in which power can and does change hands without large-scale armed violence. Its constitution contains protections for civil liberties, including freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, as well as protections against discrimination for ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. However, despite the superficial appearance of normality, political violence is rampant; all major parties are at least loosely affiliated with paramilitary groups that use terror tactics to harass opposition figures, journalists, and potential voters. Defamation, fraud, and incitement laws are heavily politicized, with much of the judicial and regulatory state corrupt and unable or unwilling to enforce legal rights or protections in a politically neutral way. Persecution of minority groups has declined in recent years, but systematic discrimination continues, particularly against immigrant groups, Afro-Americans, Jewish Americans, and gender and sexual minorities.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

In January, violence broke out against Centroamerican immigrants in several Southwestern states, most notably California and Texas, after rumors of migrants crossing the picket line at Brazoria Shipbuilding went critical on Iskra. As of August, government sources reported a death toll of 44, with some estimating more than 200 dead. Lawmakers and officials of the Independence Party and U.S. Labor Party were involved in organizing the violence.

In March, several Unionist lawmakers in New York were removed from their seats for supporting the war in Guyana; though the state Supreme Court ordered the Progressive-affiliated Roerich Foundation to pay legal fees for 'vexatious' accusations that their support of the war amounted to incitement to violence, the city of New York has openly stated its unwillingness to enforce that decision.

In April, Wisconsin Public Broadcasting used emergency powers to censor a BRF documentary criticizing former president Philip La Follette and accusing him of 'complicity in genocide' for refusing to allow American entry into the Russian War. Sitting Governor Robert La Follette IV, the former president's grand-nephew, said that his 'hand was forced' by WPB management but stopped short of endorsing the broadcast.

In May, the Virginia state government voided the registrations of dozens of Independence candidates due to signature fraud. On several occasions, Independence-affiliated protests were shut down by state and local police due to the threat of violence against Black Virginians.

In June, Sean O'Brien, a U.S. Labor candidate for the presidency, was shot at in Montana; though the attempted assassin is believed not to have had ideological motives, rumors that he was Canadian, Jewish, and/or affiliated with the Unionist Party led to dozens of instances of politically motivated arson and assault, including the assassination of Unionist candidates for Senate in North Dakota and Washington.

In August, The Progressive reported that several popular Unionist public intellectuals and journalists had been secretly accepting money and confidential research from foreign security services, including those of Britain; several of these journalists had previously reported on Progressive politicians accepting campaign contributions from figures linked to the governments of China and India.

Also in August, the Georgia Supreme Court voted to uphold criminal convictions for SCLC leaders who helped organize 2019 protests in favor of removing several controversial statues, including those of Confederate leaders and former president Henry Ford.

 

[morbidteaparty]

Fractionism

Presidents of the People's Republic of Angola & General Secretaries of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola

Agostinho Neto, 1975 - 1977 (1922 - 1977)

Nito Alves, 1977 - (1945 - )

Prime Ministers of the People's Republic of Angola & Chairmen of the General Council of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola

Lopo do Nascimento, 1975 - 1977 (1942 - 1977)

José Jacinto Van-Dúnem, 1977 - (1939 - )

The coup which marked a sudden turning point in the Angolan communist movement's trajectory came as a shock to Western observers, with it marking a schism in relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union, as well as a deepening in the rift between China and the Soviets that had been developing since the 1960s.

Nito Alves, the firebrand interior minister, with strong support of the MPLA's internal security apparatus and elements of the army had become increasingly perturbed with Agostinho Neto's generally moderate course in leadership, and was increasingly alarmed at reports of attempted rapporchement between the MPLA leadership and Holden Robert and Jonas Savimbi's factions in the FNLA and UNITA as part of a general normalisation of relations with Mobutu's Zaire (as well as to reduce Pretoria's influence in the southern regions of the country through their arming of UNITA.)

The coup, came as a pre-emptive strike, following rumours of the impending arrest of Alves, with the security services loyal to Alves and Van-Dúnem capturing Luanda's radio and television stations, main police station and major transport hubs in an operation which caught both Neto and his Cuban advisors by surprise. Originally planned to be bloodless, the coup descended into terror following the over-vigorous use of force by Nitistas in storming the governmental compound which saw Neto arrrested and beaten repeatedly, before following an attempt to reason with his captors, he was killed by a stray round (officially - according to recently released Soviet sources, he was unceremoniously executed by the more zealous advanced guards.) Neto's death, alonside that of Lopo do Nascimento caused widespread disquiet within the MPLA which, following Alves's seizure of power found itself beset. While the Soviets had tacitly supported the coup, they had agreed that both Neto and do Nascimento would be exiled to the Soviet Union, where Neto himself had repeatedly visited for medical treatment.

The coup, denounced as an act of terror by those loyal to the former leadership, saw purges implemented widely, as the MPLA tore itself apart, with Luanda soon descending into a warzone, much to the joy of UNITA, who, having rebuilt thanks to covert Washington-aligned support, began to steadily enroach Angola's interior much to the chagrin of the MPLA. The civil war, now ramping up in earnest was being fought on a scale of multipolarity - the internal conflicts within the factions themselves, the broader conflict between communist and anticommunist forces, as well as a broader expansion of conflict between Washington and Moscow (largely pursued through proxies - Zaire, South Africa, former colonial power Portugal and Israel all provided weapons, funding and training to UNITA and FNLA, while the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact followed suit for the MPLA.)

How this rapid escalation would develop was beyond the predictions of most within the global intelligence community, but the rise of Alves (who at 32 upon his seizure of power was one of the youngest contemporary global leaders) posited that it would descend into deeply violent anarchy and state-sponsored terror in the name of international revolution and democratic freedoms.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

Six more days to go for entries!

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Fractionism

Presidents of the People's Republic of Angola & General Secretaries of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola

Agostinho Neto, 1975 - 1977 (1922 - 1977)

Nito Alves, 1977 - (1945 - )

Prime Ministers of the People's Republic of Angola & Chairmen of the General Council of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola

Lopo do Nascimento, 1975 - 1977 (1942 - 1977)

José Jacinto Van-Dúnem, 1977 - (1939 - )

The coup which marked a sudden turning point in the Angolan communist movement's trajectory came as a shock to Western observers, with it marking a schism in relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union, as well as a deepening in the rift between China and the Soviets that had been developing since the 1960s.

Nito Alves, the firebrand interior minister, with strong support of the MPLA's internal security apparatus and elements of the army had become increasingly perturbed with Agostinho Neto's generally moderate course in leadership, and was increasingly alarmed at reports of attempted rapporchement between the MPLA leadership and Holden Robert and Jonas Savimbi's factions in the FNLA and UNITA as part of a general normalisation of relations with Mobutu's Zaire (as well as to reduce Pretoria's influence in the southern regions of the country through their arming of UNITA.)

The coup, came as a pre-emptive strike, following rumours of the impending arrest of Alves, with the security services loyal to Alves and Van-Dúnem capturing Luanda's radio and television stations, main police station and major transport hubs in an operation which caught both Neto and his Cuban advisors by surprise. Originally planned to be bloodless, the coup descended into terror following the over-vigorous use of force by Nitistas in storming the governmental compound which saw Neto arrrested and beaten repeatedly, before following an attempt to reason with his captors, he was killed by a stray round (officially - according to recently released Soviet sources, he was unceremoniously executed by the more zealous advanced guards.) Neto's death, alonside that of Lopo do Nascimento caused widespread disquiet within the MPLA which, following Alves's seizure of power found itself beset. While the Soviets had tacitly supported the coup, they had agreed that both Neto and do Nascimento would be exiled to the Soviet Union, where Neto himself had repeatedly visited for medical treatment.

The coup, denounced as an act of terror by those loyal to the former leadership, saw purges implemented widely, as the MPLA tore itself apart, with Luanda soon descending into a warzone, much to the joy of UNITA, who, having rebuilt thanks to covert Washington-aligned support, began to steadily enroach Angola's interior much to the chagrin of the MPLA. The civil war, now ramping up in earnest was being fought on a scale of multipolarity - the internal conflicts within the factions themselves, the broader conflict between communist and anticommunist forces, as well as a broader expansion of conflict between Washington and Moscow (largely pursued through proxies - Zaire, South Africa, former colonial power Portugal and Israel all provided weapons, funding and training to UNITA and FNLA, while the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact followed suit for the MPLA.)

How this rapid escalation would develop was beyond the predictions of most within the global intelligence community, but the rise of Alves (who at 32 upon his seizure of power was one of the youngest contemporary global leaders) posited that it would descend into deeply violent anarchy and state-sponsored terror in the name of international revolution and democratic freedoms.

I always like Angolan civil war TLs. Neat.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

The Fools, The Fools.
This is inspired by an offhand comment by @Japhy, who would undoubtedly have done it much better.

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom

1916-1921: David Lloyd-George (Coalition Liberal leading Coalition Government)
Dec. 1918 (Minority): Bonar Law (Conservative), Éamon de Valera (Sinn Féin), William Adamson (Labour), H.H. Asquith (Liberal), John Dillon (Irish Parliamentary Party)
1921-1924: Austen Chamberlain (Conservative)
def Nov. 1922 (Minority): David Lloyd-George (National Liberal), J.R. Clynes (Labour,) H.H. Asquith (Liberal), Joe Devlin (Irish Parliamentary Party)
1924: Ramsay MacDonald (Labour)
Dec.1923 (Minority): Austen Chamberlain (Conservative), H.H. Asquith (Liberal), Joe Devlin (IPP)
1924-1925 George Curzon, Lord Curzon (Conservative)
Oct. 1924 (Majority) : (H.H. Asquith), Liberal, Ramsay MacDonald (Labour), Joe Devlin (IPP)
1925-1929: Stanley Baldwin (Conservative)
1929-1935: David Lloyd-George, (Liberal)
May.1929 (minority): Stanley Baldwin (Conservative), Ramsay MacDonald (Labour), Will Redmond (IPP)
1935-1940 Neville Chamberlain (Conservative)
Feb. 1935 (minority):David Lloyd-George, (Liberal), Ramsay Macdonald (Labour), Frank MacDermot (IPP)
1940-1945 Winston Churchill (Conservative leading National Government)
1945 Clement Attlee (Labour)
Jun.1945 (Majority): Winston Churchill (Conservative), William Jowitt (Liberal), John A. Costello (IPP)
1945-1946 Herbert Morrison (Labour)
Sept. 1945 (Minority): William Jowitt (Liberal), Winston Churchill (Conservative), John A. Costello (IPP)
1946-1948 William Jowitt (Liberal)
1948-1952 Anthony Eden (Conservative)
Aug.1948. (Minority): Winston Churchill (Conservative), Herbert Morrison (Labour), John A. Costello (IPP)
1952-1955 Harold Macmillan (Liberal)
Mar.1952 (minority): Anthony Eden (Conservative), Ernest Bevin (Labour), John Esmonde (IPP)
1955-1956 Anthony Eden (Conservative)
1956 Rab Butler (Conservative)
Jun.56 (unclear): Harold Macmillan (Liberal) Ernest Bevin (Labour),John Esmonde (IPP)
1956 Francis Pakenham, Lord Longford (Labour)
1956 Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1956 Quentin Hogg (Conservative)
1956-1957 Hugh Gaitskell (Liberal)
Jan.57 (Minority): Arthur Greenwood (Labour), Quentin Hogg (Conservative), John Esmonde (IPP)
1957 Arthur Greenwood (Labour),
May.57 (Minority): Arthur Greenwood (Labour), Quentin Hogg (Conservative), John Esmonde (IPP)
1957 Megan Lloyd-George (Liberal leading National Government)
1957-1968 Bernard Montgomery, (Union of British Democracy)

David Lloyd-George was on the brink of opening peace talks with the IRA when their supplies finally ran out, and the resulting series of British victories brought an end to the Irish Rebellion (more commonly the First War of Irish Independence.) The Welsh Wizard's triumph was short-lived, however, as his attempt to secure the peace with the Government of Ireland Act was seen as too conciliatory now that the island had been secured again. Mired in scandals and distrusted by his party and his partners, the apparent 'gentle peace' was too much for the Tory backbenchers. Austen Chamberlain might not have broken the coupon government under other circumstances, but perhaps he felt his father's shadow upon him - and he ended the alliance.

Chamberlain's attempts to steer a 'moderate' course between his party's hardliners and Lloyd-George faltered quickly. Though the IRA had signed a formal surrender, partisan attacks continued. These did not threaten the integrity of the state the way the full rebellion had, but the bombing of the Old Bailey gave the lie to the claim that peace had been restored in the islands. The 'Government of Ireland Act' (1920) was withdrawn before its third reading; it would be replaced with the 'Security of Ireland Act,' that dispensed with both Home Rule and partition. Full membership of British democracy would be restored in Ireland - though, of course, rebellious elements could be interned without trial, assets of rebellious elements (or suspected rebellious elements) could be seized, and loyalty tests would be introduced for parliamentary candidates. In the election of 1922, the island largely returned candidates for the rump Irish Parliamentary Party, but the Tories actually secured a few victories in seats such as Rathmines. It was not enough to prevent the formation of a minority Labour government, and Chamberlain resigned the party leadership, never having relished it in any case.

Ramsay MacDonald faced a sisyphean struggle in the first Labour government. Ireland challenged the Labour party almost as much as it did the Liberals; different elements of Labour's base were militantly pro-Home Rule such as in Glasgow, a centre of sympathy for Ireland's patriotic Catholic working class, or vehemently against it, such as in Glasgow, a centre of sympathy for Ireland's patriotic Protestant working class. Both Labour and the competing Liberal parties wanted to unpick some of Chamberlain's peace settlement as an offence to parliamentary democracy, but the mere hint of it played to the public fears that Macdonald was presiding over a gang of Bolshevists. Despite valiant efforts to unpick the harsh austerity of the Conservative government and successfully persuading the French to withdraw from the Ruhr, Macdonald was brought down by a vote of no confidence. Leading his party into several further elections, MacDonald is a minor martyr of the Labour party - he tried and failed, but he kept on trying.

George Curzon was an accomplished diplomat, which was surprising from a man with no apparent sense of humility or moderation. he had the slimmest of majorities following the 1924 election, and he used it to the hilt. Austerity was resumed, a reorganisation of the Empire embarked upon, and a selection of Irish rebel leaders finally brought to trial after years of internment. In 1925, the storm broke - a General Strike, another wave of bombings, and the occupation of factories in Clyde and Tyneside. Curzon and his home secretary Joynston-Hix cracked down hard, and the 'Security of Ireland Act' was now joined by the 'Security of Scotland Act' and the 'Protection of Employment Act.' The 'Security of England Act' died in the Lords, a bleakly amusing outcome given Curzon's role blocking the People's Budget all those years ago. By the time Curzon died suddenly in late 1925, the crisis had passed. He remains one of the most controversial Prime Ministers Britain has ever had.

Stanley Baldwin governed as a return to normality. Home Secretary 'Jix' and Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill were too associated with Curzon's most militant tendencies; Baldwin was a refreshing slice of Middle England. His was a government of moderation; though the Security Acts were not repealed their provisions were used sparingly, especially outside Ireland. Baldwin took pains to be courteous to the IPP's new leader, Will Redmond (son of previous leader and Parnellite lieutenant John Redmond,) and quietly saw that many of those arrested over the Red Summer were released without going to trial. Baldwin's credibility with the armed forces was undermined by a rash of assassinations of retired officers. The crimes were not in fact connected - Reginald Dyer was killed by a Sikh nationalist, Henry Wilson by IRA holdouts, and Edmund Allenby by an Egyptian policeman - but they did contribute to an inchoate sense of isolation in officer's messes, a vague feeling that for over ten years the military had held the Empire together and hadn't been properly thanked. Baldwin went to the polls in 1929, knowing that a poor economy would be held against him but hoping that a divided opposition would give him another term.

As it happened, the Welsh Wizard returned. The Liberal Party was reunified, and for the first time in a decade it had advantages - Labour was terribly battered after so many activists, fellow-travellers and union leaders had been arrested in 1925 or found unfit to run for Parliament under the Security Acts, and the Tories were tired. The hung parliament should have meant that the IPP held the leverage it did under Parnell, but a new understanding had arisen in the 1920s that should there be any prospect of a vote where the IPP could bring down the government, the Tories and Liberals would simply arrange enough absences that the 'sectarians' couldn't carry the day. Labour sometimes went along with this system and sometimes did not, its internal politics always being too obscure for outside observers.

Lloyd-George's new term was a last hurrah. He governed with the enthusiasm old men sometimes muster, bringing John Maynard Keynes in as his chief economic advisor and doing his best to reclaim those parts of the middle class that had flirted with Labour in the early twenties. The reinvigoration of the economy was marred however by a weak response to the growing strength of the continental dictatorships; Chancellor Mosley was seen as all too impressed by the vigor and vim of Signor Mussolini's regime in particular. Lloyd-George failed to shake off the aura of scandal and suspicion that he had acquired the last time in office, and despite his government's successes it did not achieve a parliamentary majority in the 1935 elections.

Neville Chamberlain - Baldwin's Chancellor - was another figure tarnished by the hard memories of the 1920s, if somewhat unfairly in his case. He had smoothed the way for Mosley's economic reforms, and he had done what he could to repair the damage done by Churchill's disastrous ploy with the gold standard. But he shared a name with his brother and father, and their accomplishments were increasingly overshadowed by their ties to the bloody story of Ireland. Neville Chamberlain was much less doctrinaire on that issue, and in fact he used his family's unionist credentials to try for a softer approach. He released over two thousand political prisoners from the holding facilities on Mann and the Shetlands; despite the fears of his party, the tired men and women who returned to Liverpool and Limerick did not immediately start Soviets. Chamberlain presided over economic growth, but his foreign policy was unrealistic and unsuccessful. Though not seen as an enthusiastic appeaser like Lloyd-George or Mosley, Chamberlain simply did not understand the men in Rome and Berlin. His dreams of peace were shattered with the invasion of Poland, and his hopes of a lighter security state were crushed by the exigencies of war.

Churchill's national government is so well known as to not need discussion. Blood, sweat, toil, tears. The first Peninsular Debate over Norway, when Chamberlain's government fell; the second six months later as Allied troops retreated through Spain, when Lloyd-George and Mosley joined with Halifax's peace faction and almost forced a ceasefire. The knowledge that, had there been a 'Security of England Act,' the ex-Prime Minister would have lost his seat; the spectacle of unity when the new Liberal leadership joined the government. Dieppe. El Alamein. Tarragona. Hitler in his bunker, Mussolini on his lamppost, Hirohito on the gallows - and Churchill not getting to enjoy the victory.

As it happened, Clement Attlee didn't get much out of it either. He won the election, true, with the first parliamentary majority anyone had enjoyed in twenty years - and a week later, only five weeks after VE Day, the Munster massacres began. Foreign journalists described peaceful protests calling for an end to the Security Act and the loyalty tests, with localised strikes against 'foreign' employers; panicked reports to the RIC by factory owners and landlords described a second rising. The constabulary in turn appealed directly to the garrisons, as the Security Act entitled them to do. Really, the killing was already well under way before the new government had even finished forming a ministry. Attlee's attempts to restore order - in Ireland and in Westminster - were hampered by a climate of public hysteria, as the press barons declared that history was repeating itself, that just like after the last war the Irish were revolting. Attlee declared that he would govern with the consent of the people and the king, not with the permission of Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook. He therefore resigned, saying that he would not let the killings in Ireland be laid at his door. Over a three week period, over a thousand rebels were killed, as well as twenty two landowners and employers and thirty four constables and soldiers.

Herbert Morrison put together a new ministry, but his own party was too divided to function. The second election of 1935 saw Labour lose its majority. William Jowitt of the Liberals led the new government with Labour confidence and supply. Jowitt's program was essentially Beveridgeite - lots of Marshal Aid money to roads and rail and hospitals, the foundations of thirty years of economic growth in the mid twentieth century. His young Chancellor oversaw a massive housebuilding program, for example. It was also, unfortunately, a moment when the three main parties reached a consensus on fighting underfunded wars in Kenya and Malaya and Palestine and Egypt.

After the run on the pound and the resulting rampant devaluation in 1948, Anthony Eden would get a turn at minority government, backed with confidence and supply from the Liberals he had just defeated. Eden largely continued the funding of Jowitt's development programs, but he wanted to restore British prestige with a victory somewhere, anywhere, in one of these god-awful colonial wars. He also wanted to do it without properly funding those wars, and while letting the military know that there were peace talks coming up so there was a hard deadline for a victory. Predictably enough, this led to the disastrous Transjordan campaign, culminating in three different columns being cut off and destroyed by the Hashemites. Eden resigned and the dying king dissolved parliament.

Harold Macmillan came to power as a man on a mission. He campaigned on a peace platform, and got Britain out of its unpopular imperial wars with varying degrees of humiliation. A key figure in Lloyd-George's defenestration in 1940, he had been Jowitt's popular chancellor who had found the money for the great investment programs. Thought finished after the devaluation of the pound, Macmillan had held his nerve, noted that the economy was growing anyway, and talked his party round to letting him lead. After two productive years of government, his ministry was derailed by Bloody Easter in 1954, when the Second War for Irish Independence began with mass attacks on police stations and government buildings across the island. Macmillan’s attempts to balance a vigorous response with the repealing of the security acts were unsuccessful, and he lost a vote of confidence in late 1955.

Eden’s second term was marked by increased enforcement of the security acts, and denunciations of his predecessor’s peace settlements as ‘appeasement.’ The war in Ireland was at first broadly popular, but Britain appeared to be making all the mistakes in the second war that they had in the first – and from a much weaker position. Condemned by the Soviets, all-but condemned by the Americans, the battle for international legitimacy was being lost quickly. The IRA expanded its terror campaigns on the mainland as well, provoking ever harsher crackdowns – and that in turn demoralised the public. Then Eden died while undergoing surgery on his bladder, which hardly helped conservative party unity. Another election was called, and another hopelessly split parliament elected.

Butler was the first of the Seven Dwarfs, the last PMs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This a cruel sobriquet of a reasonably accomplished group of parliamentarians who were faced with a perhaps insoluble cocktail of civil war, crashing international prestige and a melting empire. The eighteen months saw three elections, a PM appointed from the Lords for his Anglo-Irish credentials, and a steady erosion of civil authority over the war in Ireland.

There was a brief promise of stability under the first female prime minister. Megan Lloyd-George actually cobbled together a reasonable majority, appealing to factions across the Liberal and Labour parties and - for the first time in over forty years - treating the Irish Parliamentary Party as equal members of the house. Unfortunately, she had only been PM for two weeks when The Daily Mail revealed that she had approached the United States about hosting peace talks. The news popped monocles across Rathmines and Surrey, and saw the seizure of Belfast by ‘The Unionist Covenant.’ The military was somewhat distasteful of the militant Unionists, but felt its prestige was tied to a victory in Ireland, and declined to move against the Covenant. In fact, Generals let it be known that unless a new PM brought an end to this period of national weakness, Action Would Be Taken.

And then there's The Field Marshal, the stereotype of a British PM, the old man who ran from the students at the LSE, the brave man who faced down the coup, the bigoted dinosaur, the wartime hero, the man who sold out Britain, the man who allowed a united Ireland - even the target in The Day of the Wolfhound. What else is there to say?

 

[306-232]

Inauguration Day

This is sort of based on the above post by @Alberto Knox ,all those timelines about an attack the inauguration on January 20th and all the January 6th timelines but mostly my own ideas

2017-2021: Donald Trump/Mike Pence (Republican)
2016 def. Hillary Clinton/Tim Kaine (Democratic)
2021-2021: Joe Biden/Kamala Harris (Democratic)
2020 def. Donald Trump/Mike Pence (Republican)
2021-2021: Mike Pompeo/Vacant (Republican)
2021-2023: Mike Pompeo/Al Gore (National Union)
2023-2023: Al Gore/Vacant (National Union)
2023-2025: Al Gore/Andrew Cuomo (National Union)
2025-2025: Andrew Cuomo/Susan Rice Democratic)
2024 def. Donald Trump Jr./Marjorie Taylor Greene [Replacing Donald Trump/Unknown] (Patriot), Robert Kennedy Jr./Nina Turner (Green), Nikki Haley/Chris Christie (Republican)
2025-2025: Susan Rice/Vacant (Democratic)
2025-Present: Susan Rice/Sherrod Brown (Democratic)

If you ask the Greatest Generation or the Silent Generation they will tell you about Pearl Harbor. If you ask the Baby Boomers or Gen X they will tell you about the September 11th attacks. Well if you ask the Millennials or Gen Z they will tell you about 1/20.

On January 20th, 2021, at exactly 12:00 pm a Dirty Bomb exploded near the Capitol Building as president Biden was giving his inauguration speech. President Joe Biden, the first lady Jill Biden, vice president Kamala Harris, the second gentlemen Doug Emhoff which includes both Biden and Harris' respective families were killed as a result. In addition outgoing vice president Mike Pence, his wife Karen, house speaker Nancy Pelosi, majority leader Mitch McConnell, chief justice John Roberts, Most of congress, six members of the Supreme Court and all of Biden's cabinet nominees also perished. Retried Government officials such as former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, former vice president Dan Quayle and their four wives all were killed in the blast. Hundreds of other guests who include celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Garth Brooks, Amanda Gorman, thousands National Guardsmen and ten of thousands of civilians were all tragically victims of the 1/20 attack.

Secretary of State and designated survivor Mike Pompeo was watching the inauguration from a secure military base near D.C on fox news in case anything were to take place during the proceedings. Then suddenly his screen had gone black and minutes later reports had came in of a major explosion at the Capital. Pompeo was then rushed onto a Military aircraft that was heading to the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, where he was solemnly Inaugurated as President of the United States. Donald Trump at first released a statement an hour after Biden and Harris' deaths were confirmed saying "I'm in control here, in Mar-a-Lago and I still have control of the Nuclear Briefcase!", which made many fear of a coup taking place. However just minutes after his statement, Trump was informed that Pompeo was sworn in as President and had access to the nuclear codes, so he was forced to retracted his statement claiming it was all just a big misunderstanding.

President Pompeo started off his presidency with high approval rating numbers equaling that of President Bush following the September 11th attacks in 2001. President Pompeo in an addresses to the nation, Pompeo reassured all Americans that no further attacks would happen, justice would be brought to people who committed this heinous attack and that evacuations of the nations Capital would take place. He also said would appoint a new Cabinet and new members of the Supreme court once a new Congress took office, pledging he would serve as a caretaker president. Pompeo stayed in Mount Weather for one year, alongside outgoing members of the Trump cabinet who did not attend the inauguration on January 20th. Pompeo had been tasked with coordinating the mass evacuation of Washington D.C. and surrounding areas with the help of FEMA and the Red Cross providing humanitarian aid to evacuees. The capital was rendered uninhabitable due to radioactive fallout, though not destroyed. Another fallout he was tasked with dealing with the economic one too, with the stock market crashing to levels not seen since September 2001 due to the aftershock of the 1/20. Additionally President Pompeo and the Joint Chiefs of staff in Raven Rock had to figure out how to deal with the riots gripping the nation after the initial panic following the 1/20 and find out who was responsible for the attack. They suspected that Far-Right domestic terrorists, an international group like Isis and possibly a foreign country like Russia or China or North Korea was behind the attack. Though most Americans do not buy into the conspiracies surrounding the 1/20 attack, some on the right claim that members of the "deep state" were behind the attack in order to install their puppet Mike Pompeo as president and do many other things. While those on the left claim that Donald Trump was behind the attack as a plot to install himself as President once again.

In the wake of the 1/20 the NFL delayed the January 24th, NFC and AFC championship games two weeks which meant the super bowl would be held on February 21st, 2021. The Green Bay packers defeated the Kansas city chiefs 21-10, with Aaron Rodgers winning his second super bowl and MVP. With the majority of players from Major professional teams in D.C being killed sports leagues and team owners had to figure out a contingency plan. The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS held disaster drafts to replace players and owners would re-locate teams to other cities, with the teams getting the number one pick in their respective leagues drafts.

On February 1st, 2021 the United States announced it would withdraw from Afghanistan as president Pompeo wanted troops help deal with the riots consuming the nation and provide aid to refugees from the Capital or Radiation victims. Isis-K would launch multiple attacks on Withdrawing US forces causing the deaths of dozens. This meant that Taliban was able to take control of the entire nation by May 2021 with Kabul falling and the Afghan Armed forces completely collapsing.

People both in America and the world would start to question how the 1/20 attacks was allowed to happen. After the January 6th attack why was Biden still publicly inaugurated at the Capitol as there was definitely the possibility of another attack? How did the Trump Administration and intelligence agency fail to stop the attack? How did a single one of the 25,000 national guardsmen or the 4,000 local law enforcement fail to detect the dirty bomb near the Capitol Building despite so many security measures? All these questions showed one things. The 1/20 attack was the worst national security fail in American history. By default president Pompeo's association with the former president Trump who failed to the prevent the attack meant he was in hot water too and his short presidential honeymoon came crashing down with it.

Special elections for the vacancies of both Congress and Senate were originally planned to be held sometime in March. But due to civil unrest with Trump supporters and antifa members clashing in the streets daily, radioactive fallout impacting the East coast and the complete crash of the stock market the election was to be moved to November 2nd, 2021. Polling stations around the nation were under very heavy security to ensure the special election would go on without incident. Democrats would gain supermajorities in both chambers of Congress, with president Biden being martyred by them. The greens and libertarians notably gained some seats in the house. Regardless president Pompeo would hope to work with them in appointing new members of the Federal and Judiciary branch. He also hoped to work with them to help the nation recover from 1/20 and prevent it from every happening again.

With the Inauguration of the new members of both house on January 3rd, 2022 at Independence Hall (for Congress) and Federal Hall (for Senate) under heavy security, the cities of Philadelphia and New York were basically under military occupation. The new congress would quickly get to work. Firstly they unanimously voted to pass the PROTECT Act proposed by the president Pompeo and newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney which is essentially the Patriot Act on steroids. Mass Surveillance was established in every major city in America and the Government could view the internet or text messages for suspected terrorists plots. Additionally similar to Opération Sentinelle in France, US troops were deployed in Major cities like NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles and many others to prevent another 1/20 or anything similar. Controversial both Republicans and Democrats decided against impeaching Donald Trump citing they wanted to deal with the ongoing national crises. Congress also passed the CARES Act 2 which is a copycat of the original one passed but also responding to economic fallout of 1/20 in addition to covid-19. When Ukraine was invaded by Russia in February 2022, and later when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023, congress gave limited military, financial and humanitarian aid to the two respective nations. They also gave aid to the National United Government, it's armed wing People's Defense Force and ethnic rebels fighting the military Junta of Myanmar led by Min Aung Hlaing. People on Right which included former president Donald Trump and on the left democratic senator from New York Robert Kennedy Jr. were critical of this aid. In a time of a National emergency why are we funding foreign countries when we have so many issues at home?

In a special addresses to nation on the Anniversary of 1/20 president Pompeo, announced that White House would be temporary re-located to The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, California and the Supreme Court, to Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse, in Chicago, Illinois. He said that he would re-appoint Al Gore as vice president, announced he would appoint a Bi-partisan cabinet and new supreme court members, with Ketanji Brown Jackson the first female supreme court justice. He announced the re-creation of the National Union party, as a nod to Abraham Lincoln with a majority of democrats and republicans both chambers of congress. Pompeo said in "In a time of a national emergency and multiple crisis, there is no time for partisan political game." This angered many Far-right republicans in congress who either defected to the libertarians or joined the newly created patriot party, by former president Donald Trump and 1/20 survivor Marjorie Taylor Greene. Progressive democrats in congress on the other hand mostly defected to the greens or became independent, notably being congresswoman Nina Turner and senator Robert Kennedy Jr,

Eventually all the riots would stop, covid-19 started die down a little bit, the economy started to finally recover a little and overall things got a slightly better. But still cancer cases continued to rise across the nation and the perpetrators the 1/20 attack were finally releveled, disapproving the claims multiple Islamic terrorist groups across the globe had made. Through the PROTECT Act the government was able to look at pass text messages which showed that Far-right members of the United States army lead by Major general Malcom Hayes were behind the attack, in order kill the United States government and re-install Trump was president. Trump himself condemned the attack and those responsible but also claimed the attackers were members antifa. On July 4th, 2022, president Pompeo announced the commencement of Operation Firestorm to arrest or killed those responsible for the 1/20 attack. Raids were conducted which resulted in arrest or deaths of nearly everyone involved in the 1/20, with Hayes himself being killed during a firefight when he resisted arrest from Law Enforcement. This gave president Pompeo and the National Union party of the boost they needed going into the 2022 midterms. The National Union party would win the House, Senate and Governor elections in huge landslides.

However as quickly as the National Union rose, the harder it fell. On March 23rd, 2023, President Pompeo was shot and killed in Las Vegas, Nevada when visiting the city and talking about how Nellis Air Force Base was going be used as the new Pentagon for the US military. The shooter was a mentality ill, Afghanistan War who had believed conspiracy theories on the internet that Pompeo was behind the 1/20 attacks. This was yet another security failure despite the PROTECT Act which expanded the role of the secret service in protecting public officials.

When president Gore announced he was going to select New York governor Andrew Cuomo as his vice president, this pissed off the republican wing of the National Union, who thought he should have selected a somebody like Co-Senate majority leader Thom Tillis or Secretary of defense Dick Cheney for continued Bi-Partisanship. As a result Co-House speaker Joe Walsh announced republicans would be leaving the National Union. Following all of this president Gore stated that he would not be running for President in the 2024 election and vice president Cuomo immediately announced he was running for president. Vice president Andrew Cuomo ran unopposed for democratic nomination due to his praised handling of covid-19 in 2020 and taking on the Trump administration who denied it's severity. Former president Donald Trump unsurprisingly declared he was running for the presidency under the Patriot party handle and won the nomination without a primary even happening. Interestingly the Green party had Perennial candidate Jill Stein of course run for president, but their were candidates like congresswoman from Ohio Nina Turner and anti-vaxxer senator RFK Jr. running who were more exciting. Ultimately the race was only between Turner and Kennedy, but in a major upset Kennedy was able to win the Green nomination despite strange background. The republican side had much more candidates. You had senate minority leader Tillis who used his status as a 1/20 survivor to launch candidacy. Then you had senator from Texas and the nephew of slain former president, George P. Bush running. The main competition was between senator Nikki Haley of South Carolina and former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie. Christie initially was leading in most polls, as he had tied Haley to the Trump administration who failed to prevent the 1/20, not talking about the fact he also worked for the Trump administration. However during one of debates, Christie was heavily criticized by both side of aisle for calling Nikki Haley, Kamala Harris just in red clothing and questioning her ability to govern. Though Christie won a few early caucus and primaries, in the end it was Haley who had won the whole thing. So the four candidates for the 2024 election were settled right? Well Americans would be in for surprise.

On July 13th, former president and patriot party nominee Donald Trump was campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania when several shots ranged out. Donald Trump was instantly killed when one of the bullets went through his head, alongside multiple bystanders, members of secret service and shooter Matthew Thomas Crook who was gunned down. What was so terrible about it is unlike the 1/20 attack where the screen went black, viewers of fox news or those watching on other platforms could see everything was unfolding. Quickly video of the shooting went virial all over social media platforms such as X/twitter, Instagram, TikTok Facebook, snapchat, etc where they would all be later taken down with the help of the PROTECT act which allows the government to take down content they view as dangerous. President Gore, vice president Cuomo, senator Nikki Haley and senator Robert Kennedy Jr. would all condemned the assassination. But with the PROTECT act not even being able to stop presidents whether former or not from being killed how can we be sure another 1/20 will not happen? In the aftermath of the Trump assassination people made a lot of conspiracies about it and there were some riots but they never became so serve that president Gore would have to declare martial law. However there were multiple mass shootings and bomb threats across the nation on locations in retaliation for the Trump assassination which did result in some casualties. The patriot announced a week later there were going to hand over the nomination to late former presidents son Donald Trump Jr, but it reality mostly vice presidential nominee MTG was calling the shots. Andrew Cuomo picked secretary of state Susan Rice for his vice presidential candidate with some a lot of foreign policy experience. Haley and Kennedy pick there respective main primary opponents as running mates.

At first it looked like the 2024 presidential election could be won by any of the four candidates. Vice president Cuomo was using his time as governor of New York during covid-19 and stating that his presidency, with help of the experienced Susan Rice would be a continuation of the polices of Pompeo and Gore who were protecting America after the 1/20 attack from more copycats. However many many didn't buy into it which included son of slain president and patriot nominee Donald Trump Jr, who uses his father's death as a way to gain sympathy votes. He also says that the PROTECT Act is not actually to protect America but arrest or kill political dissidents or enemies "Deep state", which is true in the sense that the yes the law fails to prevent politicians from being killed. Haley used her time as UN ambassador to show if elected president she would bring the United States back on the international stage and said she had the most political experience out of all four candidates. Kennedy attempted to create a diverse coalition with the working class, Blacks, Asians, Latinos and woman by picking Nina Turner as her running mate. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade in, October 2023, Kennedy was one of first senators to speak out against it and called for violence against justices who ruled in favor, which he later retracted. He also said he would pass the proposed Green New Deal if elected president which excited many Americans.

A first and final presidential debate was held on October 1st, 2024 between the four candidates. I will not go into much detail but let's just say it was a bunch of yelling at each other, insults, name calling and multiple ridiculous things being said. Donald Trump Jr, accused vice president Cuomo of killing his father, Donald Trump which caused Cuomo, in response to say that his father was most likely behind the 1/20 attack. He also made several racist jokes against Haley saying "Fairmont Hotel will smell like curry" if she was elected. The two Jr's almost got into a fight after Trump made an insult about Kennedy's father assassination and Kennedy responded back by doing the same. Cuomo, Haley and the debate moderators had to stop them from fighting each other. Most viewers agreed Haley won the debate, as she mostly talked about her polices instead of making wild comments. But that had no real impact the actually election. On October 22nd, 2024 the PROTECT act finally helped foil a plot over on internet to attempt to assassinate Cuomo, Haley and Kennedy. This October surprise helped vice president Cuomo benefit a lot and ultimately win the November 5th election, winning 365 electoral votes the same as Obama in 2008. However the same cannot be said for the House and Senate as the democrats did lose a lot of seats to Green party candidates. Though Haley conceded, Trump and Kennedy continued to make false rumors that the election indeed been stolen. The Michigan State Capitol was stormed during the certification of Cuomo's victory in a attempted coup by a Oath Keepers killing 57 people. Multiple democratic state legislators were killed or held hostage and the national guard ordered by governor Gretchen Whitmer eventually after standoff between the militia members. Additionally supreme court justice Samuel Alito was assassinated by a member of Jane's revenge outside of his home in Alexandria, Virginia.

In Late-November to Early-December 2024 multiple woman came out accusing president-elect Cuomo of sexually harassing them, then being paid to keep silenced by Cuomo and the DNC. Additionally reports that had been alleged since 2020, that Governor Cuomo at the time covered up deaths related to covid-19 in nursing homes had resurfaced. These claims were irrefutable by the fact that leaked audio from Cuomo's secretary Melissa DeRosa showed she apologized to New York democratic leadership in 2021, for withholding data of nursing home deaths, in August 2020 under the fear that the president Trump could use it against them. All these showed one thing. President-elect Cuomo tried to hid his skeletons in the closet, so he could fulfill his political ambition of becoming president. Vice president-elect Susan Rice, speaker of the house, Joe Crowley, senate majority leader Sherrod Brown and almost all democrats would call upon Andrew Cuomo to step down as president. Cuomo had reached an agreement with democrats that he would resign the presidency in exchange that they would not press impeachment charges against him. On January 6th, 2025 hundreds of Trump and Kennedy supporters went to Philadelphia, to stop the certification of Cuomo as president due to fact that the charges raised against him showed he is the illegitimate president. Donald Trump Jr. and Robert Kennedy Jr. would give separate speeches where they both echoed the same that was said four years ago by a different man. "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Trump and Kennedy supporters clashed right outside the capital and when some tried to storm Independence Hall they were all gunned by United States armed forces killing hundreds. As result Trump and Kennedy supporters have taken to streets and attacked federal buildings which have caused calls for martial law.

Come January 20th, 2025 as Donald Trump Jr. (in Mar-a-lago) and Robert Kennedy Jr. (in Seattle) who was expelled from the Senate hold separate mock inaugurations, as they both have arrest warrants. Andrew Cuomo is sworn as the 49th president, alongside secretary of state Susan Rice in Fairmont Hotel under the most security for any event in American history. Some members of Congress, his cabinet nominees and supreme court are boycotting for various reasons. During his inaugural addresses, president Cuomo denies all of allegations of sexual harassment and covering up the nursing home covid-19 deaths, but for sake of the nation and democratic party he will step down as president effective immediately. Similarly to 4 years ago, yet another democratic president who is elected by the American people can't even complete an hour of his term, bring back the scars of the 1/20 attack. This makes vice-President Susan Rice the 50th president and first female president, making history that Kamala Harris could eventually have made if she was still alive.

President Rice has to deal with fallout of her predecessors scandals. She also has to deal with a stock market that's crashing due to all of the events of the past 4 years and the rising cancer rates which are causing serve birth defects. Rice is thinking about a new permeant capital for the nation. But mainly right now the concern is whether or not she should launch a raid of Mar-a-lago or the Fairmont Hotel, in Seattle which Kennedy is staying in. Governor Ron DeSantis and Mayor Kshama Sawant have stated they will not allow any FBI or armed forces to conduct raids. If Rice were to order this she may have to use force to remove DeSantis and Sawant from their political positions which could backfire severely. Only time will tell how president Rice chooses to deal with all these crises.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

Last day for entries!

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

Entries are closed, due to bomb threats! The poll and the next challenge will be up tomorrow.

 

[Dom]

A good harvest this month. Polls up!