AFRICAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN NEWS
TURKISH PUBLIC WEARY WITHOUT CHANGE
Little has changed in Turkey since the painful war in Egypt, and hallow calls to the former glory of the Ottomans have done little to instill confidence among Turkeys middle class or its minority constituents in Turkish Europe. This general sense of decay has caused even stronger social movements and a counter-culture that sees their democracy as broken and unrepresentative of the peoples interests. Elections feel like they are run by a small group of wealthy Turkish men, and calls are being made in the form of pamphlets and peaceful protest for a new era of pluralism. Even among Macedonians and Bulgarians, with the alternative pro-Slav fascists in Serbia, and their Russian theocratic adversaries, there is still optimism that Turkey can return to a more democratic era or else the forces of labour and a socially conscious middle class may force such a change.
IRAQ AND ARAB SULTANATES AGREE TO TRUSTEESHIP OF ARAB SOIL
Iraq and the Arab Sultanates have agreed to participate in a system of mutual trusteeship, in which companies from either country may participate in the extraction of oil from inner Arabia without import/export restrictions or nationally discriminatory regulation. The agreement has been seen as a huge loss of prestige to the Arab Sultanates, which has a commanding trading position, but a weak army many believe the Arabs threatened to invade had the Arabs not conceded this, and perhaps they decided it was preferable to have some companies in the region rather than none at all and a military defeat. Whatever motivated the agreement of the Arabs, many businessmen have lobbied the government angrily, because the countrys growing oil industry has led to a boom in plastic production, which the country has greatly benefited from selling in the form of various consumer goods. The Iranians have been said to back the Arab Sultanates ultimate sovereignty over the area, even if under mutual trusteeship, and local sheiks currently run daily affairs outside of the oil rigs.
SAHARAN TRIBAL FEDERATION DISINTEGRATES BETWEEN ALGERIA AND MALI
The loose federation of various Saharan tribes, whom survived the past century with surprisingly large populations, has been torn asunder by competing overtures from Algeria and Mali for the federation to join their growing empires. The diplomatic and political competition was centred typically on tribal chiefs, and it became clear by 2190 that the country would be divided based on which local leaders preferred Mali or Algeria. The next ten years eventually resulted in the peaceful end of the federation, as Mali, Algeria and the various chiefs loyal to one or the other agreed to the new territorial divisions. Algeria inland lords were especially inclined to expand their influence, so as to prevent the kind of government response the Anglo-Algerian War caused in which the lords were displeased that peace talks werent begun immediately, and Algeria was forced to undergo an embargo and humiliating military defeat. Mali on the other hand attracted fewer chiefs due to their highly left-wing communist governments lack of appeal to tribal nomads; though with the promise that they would be given the local autonomy, many were still interested in protection from Algeria or England, recognizing that the Saharan Federation was at an end.
SUDANESE MUSLIMS FACE SYSTEMATIC EXCLUSION IN ETHIOPIA
A horrific twenty year campaign of apartheid and genocide has been committed in Ethiopia without action from the regional community, where Sudanese Muslims have face systematic imprisonment, encroachment, and finally extermination by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians in search of new lands, particularly the oil rich parts of Sudan which have served as an economic boon to Ethiopias project of industrialization. All three of the countrys major social and corporate organizations have been complicit in the violence, which has taken two decades to eventually succeed in ethnically pushing away Muslims from the most valuable parts of the land though this has ended up concentrating Sudanese Muslims in the frontiers of the country, where further encroachment has been met by violence, and hasnt appealed to the central government, which is more concerned about the oil. The three major organizations that have defined Ethiopian life of the past couple decades that were complicit in part or whole with this movement into Sudan include the Adasa DERG for Emancipation, a hard-edged social movement taking its cues from an ideologically eclectic thought mix including Marx, Stalin, Tupac, Gramsci, Lincoln, Garvey, Elvis, John Lennon, Toto, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Kim Il Sung, Mao, etc. They have tremendous organizational power, the loyalty of much of the poor (though their loyalties also lie with the Emperor), and even possible plants in the army; the Lords Revelations Church, a loose alliance of a group of cults and splinters from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, taking their inspirations from as far afield as Buddhism, Scientology, and the flowering of millennialist doctrines and proselytization in the years leading up to and decades following the "False Apocalypse" (the real one is when Jesus comes riding a lion). There are disagreements on the Emperor, ranging from "antichrist" to "Jesus' brother;" AfroCornCorp, a monopoly agribusiness with its tentacles firmly implanted into the oil industry, government, and organized crime. Not too much of a threat to usurp power and often the co-target of groups like Adasa DERG. Some believe they basically are hopelessly intertwined with the government by this point, and the close relationship of CEO Zuri Adhiambo (female) with the Emperor has raised eyebrows. The development of Ethiopias western territories and setting up of a somewhat stable civil society under the fascistic emperor has had the fiercest resistance from Islamic terrorists, organizing in their newly concentrated settlements on the frontier and outside Ethiopias borders in central Africa.
NIGERIA COUP BY RELIGIOUS LEADER
The Nigerian military began the 2190s with the systematic destruction of the Arewa Republic and its state, first with a formal occupation by a vastly superior armed forces, then with reconstruction and restructuring policies meant to permanently seal the region within the countrys grasp and had their leftist leadership stayed in power, perhaps the ideological glue of socialism could gloss over the religious and ethnic gaps between the regions. Instead unrest in the south over the expensive restructuring and improvement effort encouraged a religious figurehead, whom had been thought unpopular and not worth the governments suppression, to start and lead a national religious political party based on Christian (though actually mixed local and Christian) beliefs into politics. Eventually agents of the Lords Impression on Earth the name of the organization had secretly assumed leadership roles in the local leftist leadership, and a coup was instigated in the national congress. The leadership was taken hostage, and anyone whom didnt convert to the faith of the new leadership was executed on the spot in the middle of the legislature. The president organized the military behind him, but public protests began outside his residence when he tried to retake the legislature forcefully, and he abdicated. The new leader has sworn to convert all to Christianity, and rebuild the state as a religiously moral and economically free market nation, to the benefit of the coastal communities and sorrow of inner Nigeria.
MOZAMBIQUE PARTITIONED
Under the leadership of the reformer President Morany, a position under South Africa as an autonomous and safe region was offered to Mozambique, for its defence and prosperity. Close economic ties sped up the deal, as the monarchy there accepted the deal, fearful of the Tanzanians to the north and for good reason, as the Tanzanians were prepared to fight South Africa to stop the deal. Tanzanian troops moved across the border, with intent to take land this time, however the conflict did not escalate from there, as South Africa threatened both a trade war and a ground war unless they stopped where they were. The Tanzanians, having taken a portion of the country, conceded this, and the country was partitioned, to the disappointment of the monarch of Mozambique but the overjoyed relief of the economic elites of all three countries, whom lobbied forcefully to prevent a conflict.
ASIAN AND PACIFIC NEWS
FAR EASTERN REPUBLIC AND RUSSIA MEET FOR FIRST TIME
After one hundred years of separation by the vast wilderness of Siberia, the Far Eastern Republic and Russia have finally met each other, their respective railroads reuniting near Lake Baikal. Though leaders from both countries through long-distant Mongolian or Kasgharian merchants knew of each other, no actual direct communications have ever taken place between the two nations however that hasnt stopped either of them from considering their mutual future into the next century. The divinely sanctioned Orthodox republic of Russia and the liberals of the Far East have found they have little in common; not only are their governments and foreign policies somewhat contrary, Far Eastern Russians have developed a linguistically distinct accent that makes communication in Russian somewhat difficult. Dashing hopes of ethnic brotherhood as well, a majority of Far Easterners are also, if not native Chinese or Mongolian, some mix between white Russian and Pacific Asian. In any case, both countries seem to accept each others existence, and both also have opportunities to exploit in the Arctic, where untapped oil resources and a potential new trade passage may exist for both of them whether they compete for it or cooperate is up to their governments.
INDIAN COALITION ENTERS PAKISTANI CIVIL WAR
The Pakistani corporate project has ended, beginning with Afghan warlords and Ganges Maoists seizing government buildings during ongoing riots for the countrys board to resign or be dismantled. The government responded in the only way it saw feasible, without taking away the boards power, by clamping down with the army galvanizing people across the country to action either in favour or against the existing regime, which, despite its flaws, did bring economic prosperity to Pakistanis from the industrial core and middle class cities. Afghans took over mountain passes and then Kabul itself, while sporadic fighting across the east left the Maoists with various villages under their total or partial control. Waging guerrilla warfare, the Maoists have resorted often to terror cells in Pakistan proper and control of government held territories at nighttime in the east, supported by their use of terror. Urban labour in the core has also been restless, and when labour unions took this as an opportunity to campaign for a raise, they too were stopped by the government, putting many of them which escaped raids on their headquarters or capture of their leaders into the opposition camp. It was no secret Iran had been supporting the Afghan rebels, which Pakistans central government realized they could not regain without much effort, and refocused their attention on the east. This general chaos completely wrecked Indian trade by land up the modern Silk Road, and for the liberal leadership in Maharashtra and Hyderabad the humanitarian crisis also constituted a just cause for intervention against the regime. Supported again by Iranian arms, and their probable entry into the war if the government turned the tide against the Indian coalition, Maharashtra, Hyderabad and Kashmir joined as a coalition for the total surrender of the Pakistani regime. Their collective armies routed most of the conventional Pakistani forces in the south, while Kashmir made a slow advance into Punjab. The Maoists, relieved from their guerrilla fighting, banded into conventional divisions and were able to make huge territorial headway, pushing all the way to the ancient border of India and Pakistan, where they met the rest of the coalition forces, having conquered the country. A harsh peace was enforced, with Kashmir, Maharashtra, and the newly revived Ganges taking the majority of Pakistans former territory. The country was also forced to hold elections, inviting an easy liberal-labour party victory. The Maoists, for their part, kept good relations with the other liberal states, mostly because of the total devastation of the Ganges economy, which the liberal states have been more than happy to help refinance the reconstruction of, with the allowance that their companies and government investments to be secured by the interim Ganges government.
CHINESE UNIFICATION
After the death of millions of soldiers and civilians over multiple successive wars, the last War of Chinese Unification has succeeded in communist victory over the warlords of the north. This final installment of the conflict began when the Kingdom of China seized the capital of Mongolia by force, after a successful coup initiated by northern operatives in the country. The communists, whom would later fail to attempt a similar coup in Kashgaria after the war, called this an intolerable aggression against a peaceful people, and mobilized for war. As planned, anchoring their flank to the western mountains, hundreds of thousands of soldiers attempted rapid surprise attacks, using their competent air force for reconnaissance and cover. The northerners, quickly restoring order to their new Mongolian possessions, with even larger armies than the south and intelligence agents providing them occasional strategic information, covered so much of the frontier that southern rapid attacks no longer took them off guard, and multiple such attacks by the south were encircled before the tactic was abandoned for sustained trench and urban combat. Defenceless to bombing raids, the first communist bombers took their shots at production centres behind the lines, while the regular jet fighter force provided cover on the main line, keeping the less experienced and less numerous southern forces comparable. Warlords, if they were ever captured or their armies forced to surrender, found communist amnesty for their participation on the enemy side of the war surprising, the policy producing mixed results. While some armies joined the Peoples Republic, knowing their defeat would mean their permanent exile from the Kingdom, other warlords refused, and at least on one occasion a warlord joined only to provide critical intelligence to northern spies. It was by the end of the second year of fighting that Kashgaria declared war on the north, stating the Kingdoms persistent oppression of Muslims, and the fear that if the communists lost, Kashgaria would be a target for domination. Redirected northern troops smashed their advances in the mountain-ranges, while the communists made slow but definite gains, rolling out their first tanks from their advanced and unhindered industry. Each region slowly fell, with urban centres holding out to partisans, as the massive northern armies became more distraught and in poorer communication due to raids and bombing, eventually falling back to Beijing. When the emperor-king died of a munitions accident, the kingdom went into full retreat, as the communists and Kashgarians found only highly disorganized feudal resistance remaining.
SECOND AND THIRD JAPANESE CIVIL WARS
Primed by combat in Korea and with a larger industrial and economic base backing up their new-found enthusiasm to reignite war on Honshu, the southern Japanese state launched an attack on Tohoku, with pretenses to reuniting the island. Two piercing attacks were launched on Tohoku Chubu and East Tokyo, in which both dealt devastating blows to the regular infantry of the northern state. However urban and Chubu combat led to several retaliatory ambushes and near-suicide missions which resulted in the total decimation of the southern armys artillery divisions. The final year of combat saw the north strategically retreat, laying waste to their most valuable holdings in the major cities as they left, and taking substantial shots at the southern armies as they occupied into East Tokyo and Kanto, before casualties and war exhaustion pressured them to accept peace at a new border. Determined to finish off Tohoku before the century ended, however, and still having a strong youthful reserve of fresh troops, the south launched a second war on the same rationale as the last, with much more artillery than before. In the interim the north had invested in a small air force, and improved the technical calibre of its military equipment, which helped prevent a repeat of the general retreat of the last war. Prepared for southern advances, when the first enemy troops crossed the border, the north sent its entire air force to harass the advancing armies and scout their locations. This was instrumental in providing their artillery with advanced warning, letting them target armies rather than infrastructure, however southern technical advances had provided their soldiers with anti-aircraft weapons, which kept the effect of the manoeuvre limited. After several very tight struggles, the south was pushed back into Tokyo urban combat. The southern navy meanwhile busied itself blockading Hokkaido, keeping that island from helping the fight. The northern air force helped very little in fighting in Tokyo, and the north decided yet again to strategically retreat, obliterate the barely recovered industries present in the city, before returning to the original border for a second wave. Highly diminished and demoralized, the northern armies fell after another bloody battle, and surrendered. The following peace treaty stripped the north of much of its land and made it a puppet of the south.
The Tribune
LABOUR INTERNATIONALISM ON THE RISE WORLD-OVER
From England to La Plata to the United Commons, workers are unionizing and class consciousness is on a global rise. Industrialization and urbanization has brought together millions of labourers into similarly poor and cramped areas to work at the behest of a growing international trading system. Meanwhile, outposts of socialism and communism abound in faraway parts of the planet, from newly triumphant red China to revolutionaries in Sao Paulo or longstanding socialists or communists in Mali or Hungary-Poland. For the time being, the new internationalization of commerce has also facilitated the meeting of leftist leaders from distinct cultures and areas; it is the Tribunes hope that this may reinvigorate international organizations, and prevent the reoccurrence of global imperialism.
PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION IN SAO PAULO
The tyranny of the late monarch of Sao Paulo has ended, and a truly proletarian revolution has brought South America a voice of the worker another step in the internationalization of the communist movement and the liberation of workers world-wide. The countrys ruling dynasty had spent the past century creating an army of unemployed proletarians, alternating between building a poor and ill-equipped but massive army, and investing in the industrialization and urbanization of the imperial capital of Sao Paulo. A great slums existed there, where labour unions, whether illegal or registered, worked to give the countrys poor a fair share but the government committed itself to a disastrous war at the expense of the worker, and class struggle through labour solidarity combined with a general strike in Sao Paulo brought down the government. Workers united cannot be stopped, however there are worrisome signs in the new revolutionary government. It appears to have been usurped by a member of the old aristocracy, whom has ruthlessly silenced most aristocratic or capitalist opposition within the major cities of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, while asserting his control over the labour movement too. Meanwhile Gaucho liberals, former allies of monarchy, have created a Republican front to try and replace the monarch under their own militant variation of liberal capitalism. A civil war has already started, and it is unlikely that the natural processes of revolution will be allowed to flourish and ultimately overcome their current leader, as regional powers are unlikely to avoid intervention, the Gauchos already doing so.
Journal of Public Policy
INTERNATIONAL AND TRANS-OCEANIC TRADE
Not less than forty years ago the worlds oceans were the near exclusive zone of ambitious fishing trawlers, however the reconstitution of manufacturing in naval supplies and ships, combined with state policies expanding regional markets whether through expanded merchant marines or the acquisition of island outposts for commerce has led to a rebirth of trans-oceanic and international trade. There have been several noticeable effects of this more prominently internationalized trade. Countries with strong domestic industries in particular goods have found themselves able to dominate newly emerging regional markets. Countries like the Arab Sultanates, Venezuela or Bavaria have found themselves still quite safe from increasing trans-oceanic competitors, but sea-based trade has made more noticeable impacts on peripheral markets. English trade into the Caribbean has been difficult against stiff Venezuelan competition for example while South Africa and the Arab Sultanates have made inroads into West African and South-East Asian markets (respectively) otherwise too distant to export to without naval protection. Competition has been heightening as a result of growing navies protecting trade from piracy and increasing investor confidence in sea-based trade with the guarantee of security from naval states. Countries such as Indonesia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, the Arab Sultanates and Venezuela have been busily brokering new relationships facilitated by their merchant marines. Countries with both regional monopolies and international control of trade have become extremely dominant, and the end of the century has also seen right-wing groups push back against perceived foreign economic invasion in the local politics of less developed or less merchant-oriented countries. The actual shipping in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean however is still carried out only by the most advanced economies, and even then, only by the most wealthy individuals or collectives within said economies.
Modernist Monthly
EDITORIALS
EUROPEAN CONSORTIUM
We the undersigned petition the leading governments of Europe to endeavour the creation of a continental consortium of nations to adjudicate disputes, realize optimal trade relations, and form a stable European order, based on the belief that efficient governments and expedient relations are what foster prosperous societies. From Scandinavia to Italy, technocrats and technocracy are heralded as a great political and economic success, providing the continent with more unity than any other contemporaneous region in the world, despite the upheavals of the past century. There was once an institution, known as the European Union, which tried to prevent war and maintain economic prosperity in past centuries, but it failed in the face of nationalism and resource scarcity. Fundamentally, the projects of the past never extinguished chauvinism in politics, in fact parliamentary democracies positively exacerbated these conflicts by consigning legitimacy to vulgar nationalists whose digressive ethnic and cultural policies could be ignored because they occupied an economic position earlier leftists failed to capitalize on. This era is gone, and truly objective and efficient economic and social planning has taken place since the beginning of the past century which has allowed Europe unprecedented order and peace. It is our duty to spread this project to the rest of the continent, by creating a transnational legal court and legislature for the creation of pan-European law, and a pan-European technocratic council for issuing protocols as a collective group. United, the technocratic powers cannot be stopped, for no matter how backward or inefficient a place starts, the principles of modern political-economy and social engineering can always be applied by a scientific academia to maximize the output of anyplace anywhere.
RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY
Glory, in a forgotten and now ancient past, had an effervescence which engrossed the virtuous and strong peoples of the earth, and inspired heroism in the darkness. Nowhere does darkness not studious try to swamp it is a swamp in our own industrial backyards as well as the jungle of unexplored climes; the advocates of civilization decried the savagery of other peoples, and so disproved themselves in their own barbaric adventurism, indeed ironically, when they undertook their lavish, global, colonial project. The genetic fad, a most tragic and destructive phase of human conceptions of the darkness, was yet another vainglorious and inconsistent project; for what happy people is content to infanticide of the weak, and worship Thrasymachus strength, so enthusiastically and murderously against the interests of the vulnerable. The Soviet project is needless of explanation, its mutated descendants persist into our second modern era. These projects meant to lionize an idea, to their boring, vainglorious and uniform conclusion. Whether it would be a world run by the civilized, the master race, the proletariat, the free market, religion, or anything else, these projects ceaselessly fought one-another for their prized End, the final state of world being. I propose, as I have proposed elsewhere, that precisely because of their mutual incompatibility they were star-bound to failure and sadness; but I insist that the personal and external glory of an individuals actions, for their own sense of right or the sense which they subscribe to from their community, has intrinsic value which transcends which project they are working for. There should be a plurality of projects, which mutually recognize their necessary interdependence to attain individual glory when compared with one another; no echo chamber of similar states, but a plethora of ones which can better ascertain the darkness of meaningless obscurity. For one cannot be more obscure but when immersed in a wholly corporate world of one project, without question, comparison, or competition.
PLURALIST MANIFESTO
The prerequisites for a world to survive with so many ideologies, separated by canyons of difference, are several and strenuous. Firstly the free movement of people and labour should be near absolute, and the possessive habit of nationalism over such people should be eliminated among the family of projects. International organizations should be erected to support cooperative construction of speedy, inexpensive and universal transit systems. If ideological projects fail to impress their citizens or cause an outright desire to emigrate, such people need access to it. Further, under normal conditions, people whom simply do not agree with the premise of the country they live in need to be allowed to, as is so often said more vulgarly, get out. Secondly, a new international legal system should be setup and agreed to by as many parties as possible, outlining the rules of engagement but as well as the rules of revolt, rebellion, secession, and so forth, so that just adjudication of the rightness of separation can be ascertained, and thereafter, violating parties can be punished by the unanimous agreement of the remaining countries. Thirdly, an international charter of rights and freedoms should be drawn up to the satisfaction of as many countries as possible, so that the most obviously incompatible ideological beliefs are reconciled otherwise bitter cold and hot wars will inevitably ensue because of the lack of clarity in relations. Freedom of movement should of course be the strongest point in the charter.