A Second Sunrise: Taiwan of 2020 Sent Back to 1911
- Thread starter ChrisProvidence
- Start date
- Original Modern Post-1900
Did someone ever show her that one movie about ''her''?
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Alive, still a noble, and works as a medical researcher who really likes office pranks.
Yes. It kinda led to a habit of disguising herself as a commoner.
It annoyed her security detail to no end.
Arms Trafficking- er, I mean, "Laundering" for Dummies (Part II)
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"If you want to get technical," Shannon Wu told her wife over dinner, "It's not so much 'fencing,' as it is 'laundering.'"
"Shan, those are semantics," Rachel Fong yawned, before taking a well-deserved sip of coffee, "'Fencing' works just fine."
"Tell me," Rachel could see the mischievous grin on Shannon's face. "Which one of us writes for a living?"
"Fair enough," she relented, oand she needed only a second to think of a comeback. "But which one of us runs a spy agency for a living?"
"Running a spy agency doesn't give you an excuse to use the wrong words, dear."
Honestly, Shan. I don't know if you're bored, or if this is actually that big a deal for you.
You'd think I'd know after almost thirty years.
"You're really going to do this, Shan?"
"Yup."
"Fucking Hell. Since when did you have such a stick up your arse?"
"I mean, there was last-"
"NOT LIKE THAT!" Right, then. She's definitely screwing with me. Well, it's not as if I have anywhere else to go, tonight. "So, why isn't it 'Fencing,' then?"
"'Fencing' refers to knowingly buying stolen goods and reselling them for profit," Shannon began, only to take a sip of her tea, "But the weapons you're shipping to America aren't stolen - They're legitimate sales to third-party sellers."
On one hand, fair.
On the other hand, I'm starting to regret bringing you in to advise training American Apache pilots.
On the other side of the same hand, at least I can talk about work with you, so there is that.
"I suppose so, Shan." Rachel shook her head as she spoke. After all, she hated being wrong. "So, why would it be "laundering," then?"
The manhua writer shrugged, "I mean, it's basically money laundering at the end of the day, isn't it? Just with weapons and military equipment, instead of money."
"Go on..."
"When you launder money, you can use shell companies as intermediaries to conceal the true origins. When you launder military equipment, you can use third parties-"
"You know, you can just say 'Arms Dealers,' right?"
"Sure. Sounds cooler, anyways." Now that she thought about it, Rachel had to agree. "Anyways, you use these Arms Dealers to transfer weapons in between people. The weapons go from us, to Company A who buys them from us in China, then Company B who buys from Company A in Australia, then Company C who buys them from Company B in Mexico-"
"I get the idea," Shannon promised. "And eventually it gets to the Unionists?"
"More or less, Shan. And if anyone tries to trace them back to their origin, they'd have to go through multiple companies in different countries."
"So your plan is to drown them in paperwork?" asked Shannon, and Rachel nodded. "Ouch."
"Indeed."
"And even if they did go through all that bureaucracy and the weapons did get traced back to us, they'd just find out that all of the sales are legitimate, anyways."
"More or less, Shan," Rachel answered. Now, there was a whole conversation to be had about the moral culpability of knowingly selling weapons to Person A when they're going to use them to kill Person B, but in Rachel's defense, Person B is fucking cunt. "Of course, it's more convoluted than our other method."
"Which is?"
"Have the European Radical Socialist countries like the French ship over their equipment, then tell the Nationalists to fuck off while we send over more supplies to replenish their stocks."
"That seems... less convoluted. And we'd just be acting as good allies, right?"
"Yes. We'd be terrible allies if we didn't re-arm our allies, right?"
"Of course." That seemed to make enough sense to Shannon. "Wait."
"What is it?"
"That's what we tell the Nationalists when they get mad at us, isn't it?"
"...Yes."
"Shan, those are semantics," Rachel Fong yawned, before taking a well-deserved sip of coffee, "'Fencing' works just fine."
"Tell me," Rachel could see the mischievous grin on Shannon's face. "Which one of us writes for a living?"
"Fair enough," she relented, oand she needed only a second to think of a comeback. "But which one of us runs a spy agency for a living?"
"Running a spy agency doesn't give you an excuse to use the wrong words, dear."
Honestly, Shan. I don't know if you're bored, or if this is actually that big a deal for you.
You'd think I'd know after almost thirty years.
"You're really going to do this, Shan?"
"Yup."
"Fucking Hell. Since when did you have such a stick up your arse?"
"I mean, there was last-"
"NOT LIKE THAT!" Right, then. She's definitely screwing with me. Well, it's not as if I have anywhere else to go, tonight. "So, why isn't it 'Fencing,' then?"
"'Fencing' refers to knowingly buying stolen goods and reselling them for profit," Shannon began, only to take a sip of her tea, "But the weapons you're shipping to America aren't stolen - They're legitimate sales to third-party sellers."
On one hand, fair.
On the other hand, I'm starting to regret bringing you in to advise training American Apache pilots.
On the other side of the same hand, at least I can talk about work with you, so there is that.
"I suppose so, Shan." Rachel shook her head as she spoke. After all, she hated being wrong. "So, why would it be "laundering," then?"
The manhua writer shrugged, "I mean, it's basically money laundering at the end of the day, isn't it? Just with weapons and military equipment, instead of money."
"Go on..."
"When you launder money, you can use shell companies as intermediaries to conceal the true origins. When you launder military equipment, you can use third parties-"
"You know, you can just say 'Arms Dealers,' right?"
"Sure. Sounds cooler, anyways." Now that she thought about it, Rachel had to agree. "Anyways, you use these Arms Dealers to transfer weapons in between people. The weapons go from us, to Company A who buys them from us in China, then Company B who buys from Company A in Australia, then Company C who buys them from Company B in Mexico-"
"I get the idea," Shannon promised. "And eventually it gets to the Unionists?"
"More or less, Shan. And if anyone tries to trace them back to their origin, they'd have to go through multiple companies in different countries."
"So your plan is to drown them in paperwork?" asked Shannon, and Rachel nodded. "Ouch."
"Indeed."
"And even if they did go through all that bureaucracy and the weapons did get traced back to us, they'd just find out that all of the sales are legitimate, anyways."
"More or less, Shan," Rachel answered. Now, there was a whole conversation to be had about the moral culpability of knowingly selling weapons to Person A when they're going to use them to kill Person B, but in Rachel's defense, Person B is fucking cunt. "Of course, it's more convoluted than our other method."
"Which is?"
"Have the European Radical Socialist countries like the French ship over their equipment, then tell the Nationalists to fuck off while we send over more supplies to replenish their stocks."
"That seems... less convoluted. And we'd just be acting as good allies, right?"
"Yes. We'd be terrible allies if we didn't re-arm our allies, right?"
"Of course." That seemed to make enough sense to Shannon. "Wait."
"What is it?"
"That's what we tell the Nationalists when they get mad at us, isn't it?"
"...Yes."
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ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's an old topic, but it checks out.
Plus, I get to go in-detail about the diplomatic implications and the sheer bureaucratic shenanigans the MIB makes the Nationalists deal with.
After all, the best way to get somebody to not do something ismurder to convince them that doing it would annoy the crap out of them.
Plus, I get to go in-detail about the diplomatic implications and the sheer bureaucratic shenanigans the MIB makes the Nationalists deal with.
After all, the best way to get somebody to not do something is
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Chapter 95: Face the Nation in the Mirror
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Saint Louis City Hall, Saint Louis, Missouri, Contested Territory, United States of America, 2 September 1942
"Clear!" shouted a soldier as they rushed into the room. Sure enough, there were no Nats here. The dead sniper with a torso that was more shrapnel than organs at this point didn't count. "That's about everyone, Captain."
"Good to hear," Captain Coles said over the radio, only to turn to Colonel Truman, "City Hall's ours, boss. Or what's left of it, anyways."
Colonel Harry S Truman let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and nodded. "What's left of it" truly meant it, when the windows were shot to Hell and half the Neo-Renaissance rooftop had collapsed.
"You're clear to plant the flag," he said to the men over the radio. "God knows you've earned it. Are there any survivors?"
"Twelve KIA, sixteen wounded, sir," the soldier told him over the radio. "Thirteen are stabilized, and three are critical."
"Acknowledged. I'll redirect a field ambulance their way."
And then he breathed again.
Is this what winning feels like? Half the damned city is blown to Hell, and the other half is falling apart!
Then again, urban combat was like that. It was violent, brutal, and full of enough traps and ambushes that just bombing a damn building might be better than storming it.
Of course we couldn't just flatten this one, and the Nats knew it. They tried to turn this place into the Alamo, but it ended up becoming their Little Bighorn.
And us?
Well, the city may be rubble, but it's our goddamn rubble, and that's what matters.
That, and the Nats'll be unable to cut us off from the West Coast.
"The North Falls Apart," Ken Burns' The Second Civil War, National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, 1995
[Footage shifts between battles in Saint Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, and all across Montana as Nationalist soldiers with white or red armbands fight against the the Unionists in a variety of combat. The scene then shifts to a live broadcast of the PBS Evening News reporting the war that is suddenly shut off]
ALEX GREENE: By the time I joined up as militia, we'd completed the encirclement of the Nats up north. A young man, about my age - so we're talking mid twenties at the time - asks me, in an Australian-sounding accent, "Where are you from?"
GREENE: I said, "I'm from Montana." He said, "Where?" and I said, "Butte."
GREENE: What he told me next, was that he was from Kalispell, and that he'd moved here from Cornwall as a child. I asked him, "From where?"
GREENE: He said, "Cornwall, England. This is our homeland. Or at least it was, until you showed up with them."
GREENE: I was confused. I didn't know what they were talking about. I was born in Butte! And here this guy is, saying that I'm not American enough?!
GREENE: And then I saw him turn to the guys from the 542nd and motion towards them. And do you know what he told me?
GREENE: "Them."
"The Encirclement of the Nationalist Forces in the Second American Civil War," Student Report by Fidel V. Ramos, Whampoa Military Academy, 1947
The Army of the Rockies had always been in a precarious position. Despite the larger popular migrations to the Western United States compared to the Lost History, they still lacked the manpower to effectively control such a large territory with spread-out population centers.
This was helped by the large presence of Colonial immigrants from Africa, as well as members of the Golden Circle militias who had joined their ranks after the 1942 Coup, but they still faced shortages of materiel and manpower to effectively consolidate their control as they did in the relatively more-populated and industrialized Southern United States.
This splitting in two of the Nationalist Forces effectively determined the Nationalist strategy throughout 1942, during which Van Horn Moseley's Army of the Rockies and the Patton's Army of the Heartland pushed on Saint Louis, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, and Denver to sever the Unionists' connection to the South.
In doing so, the Army of the Rockies would be reinforced and resupplied, while the Unionist Forces would be separated along the Rocky Mountains and dismantled piecemeal.
It is this strategy that ultimately led to General Van Horn Moseley's focusing the bulk of his forces on Salt Lake City and Denver. Had he not coordinated his forces with Patton in a rapid pincer maneuver across Utah, Denver, Kansas, and Missouri, his forces would risk being cut off themselves by a consolidated push by the Unionists from the Midwest and the Pacific Coast.
It is this decision that ultimately led to a weakened flank that was exploited by the Unionist Army of Cascadia under General DeWitt and the Army of the Midwest under General Eishenhower. The 10th Mountain, 11th Airborne, and 1st Cavalry Divisions pushed from Washington State, while the 101st Airborne and the re-activated 3rd Armored Divisions pushed from Minnesota against the dug-in forces of Nationalist-Aligned militias and National Guard units.
This counter-offensive by the Unionists left the Army of the Rockies in a predicament. Sending their reserves to the Southern Front would leave their flanks wide-open, while sending their reserves to the Eastern and Western flanks would almost-certainly lead to an abandonment of the offensive against Salt Lake City and Denver.
It is for this reason that General Van Horn Moseley dedicated the bulk of his reserves to his Southern Front while ordering his men to engage in a fighting retreat with the irregulars as the Unionists pushed through Idaho and Minnesota.
This strategy would be countered by the lack of materiel and population centers in the Great Plains and the Northwest. The lack of population centers in the region meant that the Nationalist forces had no nearby population centers to fall back to. This, coupled with the use of kamikaze drones against air defenses and Airborne forces on the Eastern and Western flanks, meant that the Nationalist forces holding strategic cities such as Coeur d'Alene were effectively cut off with nowhere to retreat to.
The Nationalists would respond with a guerrilla campaign by their irregular forces and the remnants of their National Guard units. While these forces would provide some means of stalling the Unionist advance, the latter would counter with their own irregular forces. This side-campaign mirrored the African Bush War in the late 1920s in former Colonial Africa, in which government forces as well as allied irregular forces would track down and besiege the "Redoubts" of the Colonial Holdouts and eliminate them.
This would prove to be a sideshow for the Unionists, and the Nationalists' inability to effectively re-organize their forces after the initial counter-offensive turned into a rout that left the bulk of the Nationalist forces in the South and North surrounded.
"Prologue: A New Home," Diary of a Prisoner: My Year of Redemption in Delano Prisoner Camp, by Melvin Holmes, Union Press, Fargo, North Dakota, 1960
Before the War happened, I don't think I've ever seen that many Asian people in my life. Then again, not too many Asian-Americans moved to Mississippi, and I honestly don't blame them. Sure, they weren't Black, but they definitely weren't White, either.
But when you grow up in Biloxi when I was a kid, you sure hear a lot of stuff about them. Plenty of people going on about how they wanted to "Replace us," and "Take our lands and our lives."
Basically, they were going to make us not white and take over the world. In a way, they were kinda like how people talked about the Jews and the Jesuits: Everything that was bad was their fault.
There's this stereotype that it was only the Golden Circle types and the Collies (Former white settler populations of Africa resettled in America) who were like this. And there were people like that, when I was a teenager. I can still remember one former soldier from, I think it was Kenya, who was going on about how "The Asiatics took everything from [them]. Everything [they] built, worked for, and fought for was taken away in an instant."
But it wasn't just them. I can still remember my mother and father saying the same things over dinner when I was in high school. They believed it as much as the Golden Circle and the Collies did - they just didn't make it their entire identities.
It's kinda funny. In hindsight, I realize I was only hearing one side of the story. But in my defense, it wasn't as if the schools brought in many Black people from Africa to tell their side of the story. Turns out not many of them wanted to settle in the South or come by to visit after the war.
Now, I'm not trying to defend how I used to be, but you have to understand that if you grow up in an environment where people keep demonizing Asians and Africans people and say they're going to do what they did to Africa to the South, you're going to start believing it. Especially when you aren't exposed to anyone saying otherwise.
That's what happened to me.
Back in '42, I was a True Believer who thought that I was fighting for what made America, well, America, from the degenerates to the East.
It was only when I was captured in Saint Louis and shipped off to Delano that I realized that the people I've been taught to hate were something I couldn't comprehend.
They were people.
You know, it's funny in hindsight. And I'm not just talking about the fact that I am now, one, married to a Japanese-American woman, and two, a practicing Ba'hai.
No, I'm talking about how the people I've been told to hate, who were not only "Not American" (despite being in America longer than I've been alive), were so similar to the people I grew up with.
I mean, there was somebody who reminded me of almost every single person I grew up with in Biloxi.
It was then that my life changed forever.
"The Coming Boom: How Latin American Economies Capitalize on American Instability," Future Today, Youtube.com, 20 September 1942
[The video begins with a pan over the modern cities of Lima, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, RIo de Janeiro, and Caracas]
NARRATOR: It's no surprise that Latin America is doing better than in the Lost History.
NARRATOR: Between the switch to the Good Neighbor Policy over the last decade and almost three decades of Asian investment to bring Latin America up to speed, it is no surprise that the economies of Latin America are more-productive, more-dynamic, and more-independent than they were in our own history.
[An American flag fades into the shot]
NARRATOR: While this would be an economic miracle in and of itself, it was stymied by the United States' economic modernization.
NARRATOR: For all of Central and South America's economic development, the simple reality is that the United States was able to produce more goods and export more resources with the same technology, because they were already producing more goods and exporting more resources before the Great Journey happened.
[Screen shifts to show John Maynard Keynes]
NARRATOR: As economist John Keynes put it, "It is easier to build on a foundation than to build from scratch."
[Screen shifts to show the aftermath of the Capitol Bombing]
NARRATOR: This changed in the outbreak of the Second American Civil War.
[Video of American industry cross-fades into military production]
NARRATOR: Resources that would have gone to market were now needed for the war effort, and factories dedicated to consumer goods were repurposed for war production, leaving an American-sized hole in the global economy that Latin America could fill.
[Footage of American farms fade into Latin American farms]
NARRATOR: Almost every export of the United States was soon replaced with an equivalent in Latin America. Grains grown in Nebraska were replaced with those in Brazil and Colombia. Livestock bred in Kansas was replaced with Argentine beef and poultry. Oranges bought from Florida and California were now bought from Mexico.
[Footage of American mines fades into Latin American lithium mines]
NARRATOR: This phenomenon wasn't just limited to food. Copper from the frontlines of Utah and Arizona were replaced with Peruvian and Chilean copper, and the same could be said for Columbian pines with Amazonian wood or Texan, Californian, and Albertan oil with the vast oil reserves of Gran Colombia.
NARRATOR: And it goes without saying that the demand for Latin American goods has skyrocketed, now that their northern competition is distracted.
NARRATOR: As 1942 comes to a close and the Army of the Rockies surrenders, many see this as a turning point. The question is, what happens next?
NARRATOR: Will the United States be able to claw back its lost market share, or will it be too busy rebuilding to retake its dominant place in the Americas What happens to Latin American economies if the United States regains its footing?
NARRATOR: Only time will tell, but one thing is clear: Latin America's economies have found their place in the sun, and it's not going anywhere.
Atlanta, Georgia, Nationalist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 10 October 1942
"During the American Revolution," the Reverend said to his son, "Mobs would strip people naked, slather them in hot tar, and coat them in feathers."
"They did that until a few years ago," the young Black man pointed out, "Klan would do that, back during the '10s."
"That they would, son," the Reverend said sadly, before looking up at the traffic lights. "But as bad as that may be, many of those same people still live to this day. These men?" the Revenend motioned upwards, "They're long gone after last night."
The boy looked up to see over a dozen corpses hanging from the traffic lights.
"Were they guilty?"
"God only knows, Martin," said the Reverend to his namesake. "Maybe they were. Maybe they weren't. Their crowds didn't care, though - they made up their minds already."
The young man looked up to see the corpses. They were men and women. Young and old. Black and white and every color in-between.
All of them were united in two things.
First were their deaths. Both he and his father had seen the videos last night of the mob lynching these people in the street with the protection of the militias and the unspoken blessing of the police.
Second were the placards on their necks. They were bits of scrap cardboard with holes punched in the side for string. The same word was on every placard, written in big black letters for all to see:
"TRAITOR"
"Clear!" shouted a soldier as they rushed into the room. Sure enough, there were no Nats here. The dead sniper with a torso that was more shrapnel than organs at this point didn't count. "That's about everyone, Captain."
"Good to hear," Captain Coles said over the radio, only to turn to Colonel Truman, "City Hall's ours, boss. Or what's left of it, anyways."
Colonel Harry S Truman let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and nodded. "What's left of it" truly meant it, when the windows were shot to Hell and half the Neo-Renaissance rooftop had collapsed.
"You're clear to plant the flag," he said to the men over the radio. "God knows you've earned it. Are there any survivors?"
"Twelve KIA, sixteen wounded, sir," the soldier told him over the radio. "Thirteen are stabilized, and three are critical."
"Acknowledged. I'll redirect a field ambulance their way."
And then he breathed again.
Is this what winning feels like? Half the damned city is blown to Hell, and the other half is falling apart!
Then again, urban combat was like that. It was violent, brutal, and full of enough traps and ambushes that just bombing a damn building might be better than storming it.
Of course we couldn't just flatten this one, and the Nats knew it. They tried to turn this place into the Alamo, but it ended up becoming their Little Bighorn.
And us?
Well, the city may be rubble, but it's our goddamn rubble, and that's what matters.
That, and the Nats'll be unable to cut us off from the West Coast.
"The North Falls Apart," Ken Burns' The Second Civil War, National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, 1995
[Footage shifts between battles in Saint Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, and all across Montana as Nationalist soldiers with white or red armbands fight against the the Unionists in a variety of combat. The scene then shifts to a live broadcast of the PBS Evening News reporting the war that is suddenly shut off]
ALEX GREENE: By the time I joined up as militia, we'd completed the encirclement of the Nats up north. A young man, about my age - so we're talking mid twenties at the time - asks me, in an Australian-sounding accent, "Where are you from?"
GREENE: I said, "I'm from Montana." He said, "Where?" and I said, "Butte."
GREENE: What he told me next, was that he was from Kalispell, and that he'd moved here from Cornwall as a child. I asked him, "From where?"
GREENE: He said, "Cornwall, England. This is our homeland. Or at least it was, until you showed up with them."
GREENE: I was confused. I didn't know what they were talking about. I was born in Butte! And here this guy is, saying that I'm not American enough?!
GREENE: And then I saw him turn to the guys from the 542nd and motion towards them. And do you know what he told me?
GREENE: "Them."
"The Encirclement of the Nationalist Forces in the Second American Civil War," Student Report by Fidel V. Ramos, Whampoa Military Academy, 1947
The Army of the Rockies had always been in a precarious position. Despite the larger popular migrations to the Western United States compared to the Lost History, they still lacked the manpower to effectively control such a large territory with spread-out population centers.
This was helped by the large presence of Colonial immigrants from Africa, as well as members of the Golden Circle militias who had joined their ranks after the 1942 Coup, but they still faced shortages of materiel and manpower to effectively consolidate their control as they did in the relatively more-populated and industrialized Southern United States.
This splitting in two of the Nationalist Forces effectively determined the Nationalist strategy throughout 1942, during which Van Horn Moseley's Army of the Rockies and the Patton's Army of the Heartland pushed on Saint Louis, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, and Denver to sever the Unionists' connection to the South.
In doing so, the Army of the Rockies would be reinforced and resupplied, while the Unionist Forces would be separated along the Rocky Mountains and dismantled piecemeal.
It is this strategy that ultimately led to General Van Horn Moseley's focusing the bulk of his forces on Salt Lake City and Denver. Had he not coordinated his forces with Patton in a rapid pincer maneuver across Utah, Denver, Kansas, and Missouri, his forces would risk being cut off themselves by a consolidated push by the Unionists from the Midwest and the Pacific Coast.
It is this decision that ultimately led to a weakened flank that was exploited by the Unionist Army of Cascadia under General DeWitt and the Army of the Midwest under General Eishenhower. The 10th Mountain, 11th Airborne, and 1st Cavalry Divisions pushed from Washington State, while the 101st Airborne and the re-activated 3rd Armored Divisions pushed from Minnesota against the dug-in forces of Nationalist-Aligned militias and National Guard units.
This counter-offensive by the Unionists left the Army of the Rockies in a predicament. Sending their reserves to the Southern Front would leave their flanks wide-open, while sending their reserves to the Eastern and Western flanks would almost-certainly lead to an abandonment of the offensive against Salt Lake City and Denver.
It is for this reason that General Van Horn Moseley dedicated the bulk of his reserves to his Southern Front while ordering his men to engage in a fighting retreat with the irregulars as the Unionists pushed through Idaho and Minnesota.
This strategy would be countered by the lack of materiel and population centers in the Great Plains and the Northwest. The lack of population centers in the region meant that the Nationalist forces had no nearby population centers to fall back to. This, coupled with the use of kamikaze drones against air defenses and Airborne forces on the Eastern and Western flanks, meant that the Nationalist forces holding strategic cities such as Coeur d'Alene were effectively cut off with nowhere to retreat to.
The Nationalists would respond with a guerrilla campaign by their irregular forces and the remnants of their National Guard units. While these forces would provide some means of stalling the Unionist advance, the latter would counter with their own irregular forces. This side-campaign mirrored the African Bush War in the late 1920s in former Colonial Africa, in which government forces as well as allied irregular forces would track down and besiege the "Redoubts" of the Colonial Holdouts and eliminate them.
This would prove to be a sideshow for the Unionists, and the Nationalists' inability to effectively re-organize their forces after the initial counter-offensive turned into a rout that left the bulk of the Nationalist forces in the South and North surrounded.
"Prologue: A New Home," Diary of a Prisoner: My Year of Redemption in Delano Prisoner Camp, by Melvin Holmes, Union Press, Fargo, North Dakota, 1960
Before the War happened, I don't think I've ever seen that many Asian people in my life. Then again, not too many Asian-Americans moved to Mississippi, and I honestly don't blame them. Sure, they weren't Black, but they definitely weren't White, either.
But when you grow up in Biloxi when I was a kid, you sure hear a lot of stuff about them. Plenty of people going on about how they wanted to "Replace us," and "Take our lands and our lives."
Basically, they were going to make us not white and take over the world. In a way, they were kinda like how people talked about the Jews and the Jesuits: Everything that was bad was their fault.
There's this stereotype that it was only the Golden Circle types and the Collies (Former white settler populations of Africa resettled in America) who were like this. And there were people like that, when I was a teenager. I can still remember one former soldier from, I think it was Kenya, who was going on about how "The Asiatics took everything from [them]. Everything [they] built, worked for, and fought for was taken away in an instant."
But it wasn't just them. I can still remember my mother and father saying the same things over dinner when I was in high school. They believed it as much as the Golden Circle and the Collies did - they just didn't make it their entire identities.
It's kinda funny. In hindsight, I realize I was only hearing one side of the story. But in my defense, it wasn't as if the schools brought in many Black people from Africa to tell their side of the story. Turns out not many of them wanted to settle in the South or come by to visit after the war.
Now, I'm not trying to defend how I used to be, but you have to understand that if you grow up in an environment where people keep demonizing Asians and Africans people and say they're going to do what they did to Africa to the South, you're going to start believing it. Especially when you aren't exposed to anyone saying otherwise.
That's what happened to me.
Back in '42, I was a True Believer who thought that I was fighting for what made America, well, America, from the degenerates to the East.
It was only when I was captured in Saint Louis and shipped off to Delano that I realized that the people I've been taught to hate were something I couldn't comprehend.
They were people.
You know, it's funny in hindsight. And I'm not just talking about the fact that I am now, one, married to a Japanese-American woman, and two, a practicing Ba'hai.
No, I'm talking about how the people I've been told to hate, who were not only "Not American" (despite being in America longer than I've been alive), were so similar to the people I grew up with.
I mean, there was somebody who reminded me of almost every single person I grew up with in Biloxi.
It was then that my life changed forever.
"The Coming Boom: How Latin American Economies Capitalize on American Instability," Future Today, Youtube.com, 20 September 1942
[The video begins with a pan over the modern cities of Lima, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, RIo de Janeiro, and Caracas]
NARRATOR: It's no surprise that Latin America is doing better than in the Lost History.
NARRATOR: Between the switch to the Good Neighbor Policy over the last decade and almost three decades of Asian investment to bring Latin America up to speed, it is no surprise that the economies of Latin America are more-productive, more-dynamic, and more-independent than they were in our own history.
[An American flag fades into the shot]
NARRATOR: While this would be an economic miracle in and of itself, it was stymied by the United States' economic modernization.
NARRATOR: For all of Central and South America's economic development, the simple reality is that the United States was able to produce more goods and export more resources with the same technology, because they were already producing more goods and exporting more resources before the Great Journey happened.
[Screen shifts to show John Maynard Keynes]
NARRATOR: As economist John Keynes put it, "It is easier to build on a foundation than to build from scratch."
[Screen shifts to show the aftermath of the Capitol Bombing]
NARRATOR: This changed in the outbreak of the Second American Civil War.
[Video of American industry cross-fades into military production]
NARRATOR: Resources that would have gone to market were now needed for the war effort, and factories dedicated to consumer goods were repurposed for war production, leaving an American-sized hole in the global economy that Latin America could fill.
[Footage of American farms fade into Latin American farms]
NARRATOR: Almost every export of the United States was soon replaced with an equivalent in Latin America. Grains grown in Nebraska were replaced with those in Brazil and Colombia. Livestock bred in Kansas was replaced with Argentine beef and poultry. Oranges bought from Florida and California were now bought from Mexico.
[Footage of American mines fades into Latin American lithium mines]
NARRATOR: This phenomenon wasn't just limited to food. Copper from the frontlines of Utah and Arizona were replaced with Peruvian and Chilean copper, and the same could be said for Columbian pines with Amazonian wood or Texan, Californian, and Albertan oil with the vast oil reserves of Gran Colombia.
NARRATOR: And it goes without saying that the demand for Latin American goods has skyrocketed, now that their northern competition is distracted.
NARRATOR: As 1942 comes to a close and the Army of the Rockies surrenders, many see this as a turning point. The question is, what happens next?
NARRATOR: Will the United States be able to claw back its lost market share, or will it be too busy rebuilding to retake its dominant place in the Americas What happens to Latin American economies if the United States regains its footing?
NARRATOR: Only time will tell, but one thing is clear: Latin America's economies have found their place in the sun, and it's not going anywhere.
Atlanta, Georgia, Nationalist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 10 October 1942
"During the American Revolution," the Reverend said to his son, "Mobs would strip people naked, slather them in hot tar, and coat them in feathers."
"They did that until a few years ago," the young Black man pointed out, "Klan would do that, back during the '10s."
"That they would, son," the Reverend said sadly, before looking up at the traffic lights. "But as bad as that may be, many of those same people still live to this day. These men?" the Revenend motioned upwards, "They're long gone after last night."
The boy looked up to see over a dozen corpses hanging from the traffic lights.
"Were they guilty?"
"God only knows, Martin," said the Reverend to his namesake. "Maybe they were. Maybe they weren't. Their crowds didn't care, though - they made up their minds already."
The young man looked up to see the corpses. They were men and women. Young and old. Black and white and every color in-between.
All of them were united in two things.
First were their deaths. Both he and his father had seen the videos last night of the mob lynching these people in the street with the protection of the militias and the unspoken blessing of the police.
Second were the placards on their necks. They were bits of scrap cardboard with holes punched in the side for string. The same word was on every placard, written in big black letters for all to see:
"TRAITOR"
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ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'll be honest: I had this one in the pipe for a while, but my drafts kept getting deleted. Same with the last chapter.
Something I like to do in my stories with historical context is that a lot of the awful stuff is based on things that actually happened. In SST, we have things like mass internment of ethnic minorities and lynchings in America, while Russian Chauvinism nearly ran the country into the ground. Twice.
I guess it ties into the whole theme of the story: The protagonists are those who look to the future, and the antagonists are those who look to an idealized past.
I'm not saying that everything should be burned to the ground and we should abandon all of our traditions and cultures. But the idea is that trying to return to or recreate an idealized past is a terrible idea on almost every level.
Doesn't matter if you're the Qing, Japanese Militarists, the Russian Empire, the Klan, the British Empire, the Colonial Holdouts, or the Nationalists in America or Russia.
Not only does trying to recreate an idealized past greatness ignore the reality that the circumstances have changed in the X number of years since then, but it also leads to more human suffering and wasted potential.
Anyways, I'm gonna go sleep.
Or go watch Mass, because I probably need Jesus after this.
Something I like to do in my stories with historical context is that a lot of the awful stuff is based on things that actually happened. In SST, we have things like mass internment of ethnic minorities and lynchings in America, while Russian Chauvinism nearly ran the country into the ground. Twice.
I guess it ties into the whole theme of the story: The protagonists are those who look to the future, and the antagonists are those who look to an idealized past.
I'm not saying that everything should be burned to the ground and we should abandon all of our traditions and cultures. But the idea is that trying to return to or recreate an idealized past is a terrible idea on almost every level.
Doesn't matter if you're the Qing, Japanese Militarists, the Russian Empire, the Klan, the British Empire, the Colonial Holdouts, or the Nationalists in America or Russia.
Not only does trying to recreate an idealized past greatness ignore the reality that the circumstances have changed in the X number of years since then, but it also leads to more human suffering and wasted potential.
Anyways, I'm gonna go sleep.
Or go watch Mass, because I probably need Jesus after this.
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I don't know if this is a coincidence or not but Fidel V. Ramos, OTL Filipino general and former President (Only died relatively recently) now appears to be a military historian in China this time.
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh, I have him writing that as a student at Whampoa Academy. I'd use West Point, but it'd still be rebuilding at that time.
Also, fun fact: I met him about a decade ago during his book tour when I was in high school.
He thought I was in college.
I blame being taller than everyone else in a room full of Filipinos.
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ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So one of the things I kinda want to cover is how certain media gets treated.
Fixed. Thanks.
Finally caught up after finding this great story 3 weeks ago.
I've got a few questions, did the uptimers prevent animal extinctions like the thylacine, also how much technological advances has Taiwan gotten (I know that there has been a few mentioned) and finally what about HP Lovecraft, the Onion and Charlie Chaplin?
I've got a few questions, did the uptimers prevent animal extinctions like the thylacine, also how much technological advances has Taiwan gotten (I know that there has been a few mentioned) and finally what about HP Lovecraft, the Onion and Charlie Chaplin?
Chapter 96: Trial Run
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chen Residence, Ishigaki, Taiwan, Republic of China, 1 November 1942
"Remind me," Dr. Chen Akira said to her husband in his workshop, "Why exactly are you doing this?"
Her husband Michael just laughed a hearty laugh and sighed. "Because I just can't seem to get away from being roped into historical events? It's as if God heard my teenage wish to live in interesting times and said there were no take-backs."
The professor shook her head and crossed her arms. "We both know that's not what I meant. I never took you for an existentialist, anyways."
"Fair enough, Aki. I'm doing this because I'm bored."
"Most people write books or watch baseball when they get older," she pointedly observed. And he did do those things (even if she had done most of the writing for him). "Not try to modify the settings of an exoskeleton for combat."
"Most people don't nearly have their kids murdered by terrorists, Aki," Michael countered, "And if this is the difference between our daughter coming home safely and not at all, I'll work as many sleepless nights as I need to."
Work really is your way to stay focused, isn't it?
Hmph. You never change, do you?
"So what exactly is the difference," she asked him as she walked over to the modified exoskeleton. "Plenty of people use these for their arms and legs already."
"For logistics," Michael countered, "It's for heavy lifting and carrying stuff. Not actual combat. Hence the limiters on them."
"Which I assume they have for a very good reason, Michael."
"That they do," he admitted. Of course, said "very good reason" involved people not tearing their muscles clean apart, but he figured she got the idea. "The difference, now, is that the Armaments Bureau has a new upgrade software for the Mark V exoskeleton that'll synch with the body's motions to prevent any overexertions."
"And how do they do that?" the professor asked curiously to the engineer. "Programming?"
"Pretty much," he figured. "I didn't really 'get' it when they explained it to me."
Michael liked to think he was tech-savvy, but he was the same person who studied Mechanical Engineering and minored in physics because he thought Computer Science was "too hard."
Classmates never did stop giving me shit about that.
"So the computer basically amplifies the operator's movements," Aki observed, and her husband nodded. "Except instead of carrying heavy equipment, it can be used to improve their strength and agility in combat?"
Michael shrugged. "Pretty much. I mean, it's no Iron Man suit - more like the exo from Advanced Warfare, if I'm being honest."
"...I have no idea what that means, but I'll take your word for it," Aki decided. She wasn't much of a shooter player; Grand Strategy was her forte. "So, does the software update work?"
"Probably," Michael figured. "At least on the proving grounds. Next step is field testing."
"I really hope that you're not going to be the one testing it."
"Me? God no," Michael promised, much to her relief. "I may look like I'm forty, but I'm pushing sixty, Aki. I'm too old to do this."
"Oh thank goodness. You had me worried for a second."
"Yeah," he agreed, "This kind of stuff is for Morgan's generation."
"...She volunteered to test it, didn't she?"
"Yup."
"Fuck."
"Yup."
Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire, 5 November 1942
"It wasn't my first military tribunal," is something most people wouldn't be proud of, depending on which side of the bench they were on.
Thankfully, former Director Military Intelligence Bureau Martin Li, had been on the side of the prosecution in both of them. Such was to be expected, when he had at least some rank and influence.
Even if it's less than when I was still in charge.
He could still remember the Accord Tribunals in The Hague after the Great War, when that bastard Reginald Dyer finally answered for his crimes against the Indians.
Dyer was remorseless and said he was serving his duty as Commander in Chief of the Raj, but the evidence was insurmountable when dozens of men and women testified against him.
Reginald Dyer would die by firing squad in 1926, with both Li and his old friend Michael Chen of the ROC Marine Corps watching.
Now, neither of them took any satisfaction in killing. Sure, Chen would convince himself that the people he killed were terrible human beings or at least doing terrible things, but it wasn't as if he liked killing people.
Li was a little more complicated.
While he didn't exactly enjoy killing people, he'd signed off on numerous morally-questionable operations that led to numerous targets assassinated in the name of a "Greater Good." And while he still believed he was doing the right thing, he still signed off on the operation that killed off the Saudi Royal Family.
Children included.
But this?
Well, he saw justice as something different, which meant that satisfaction was on the table.
And with Igor Sakharov sitting in the defendant's chair, he knew it would only be a matter of time.
"Mister Sakharov," the Russian judge said to the defendant, "You are charged with Crimes Against Humanity for the murder of countless civilians under your control, as well as rebellion against the Russian government. How do you plead?"
"Not guilty," the one-armed former Ultranationalist leader spat. "On all counts."
Martin Li could only look from the gallery and sigh.
They never deny it. None of them do.
Well, here we go again...
Bridge of the MN Internationale, International Waters, Caribbean Sea, 12 November 1942
As far as warships went, the French aircraft carrier MN Internationale was the most-obvious choice for a command ship. Its large operations center, squadrons of planes, and sheer tonnage were all arguments in its favor that Admiral André-Georges Lemonnier understood.
It was no surprise that the Internationale became the flagship for this operation despite it ostensibly being a Pan-American (as the Latin American nations called themselves) operation. Then again, it was Admiral Henrique Guilhem who was in charge.
Admiral Lemonnier and the Internationale's carrier group? They were simply here as reinforcement to "Ensure the Freedom of the Seas."
Of course, "Endure the Freedom of the Seas" in this context meant, "Threaten to destroy the Nationalist navy if they tried anything," but the point still stood.
Latin American shipping would continue, and the Nationalists simply lacked the tonnage to go up against them.
Khartoum, Republic of Sudan, 20 November 1942
"Well, today's the day," Mustafa Aydin said to his brother Yusuf over the phone, "Sudanese, Darfurian, and Azanian independence, all at once."
"Well, they do want to- Mehmet!" Mustafa could hear his nephew shouting in the background, "Put that down!"
"Is this a bad-"
"No, it's fine," Yusuf sighed. "Oh, and your nephew can walk, now. Wait, what were we talking about?"
"Handover ceremony, Yusuf. After over a decade out here working with the locals to basically build not one, but three states from scratch, I can finally say that my work here is done."
"It sure sounds like it," said the younger Aydin brother, "So, still think it was 'Too good to be true?'"
"Hindsight is what it is, Yusuf," Mustafa figured. And while the work was daunting, it wasn't as if the Accord could be too picky when it came to administrators who could speak Arabic. "But we had to basically train people from scratch, then phase them in to replace the people like me who had to keep things running in the meantime. I'm probably the last of the bureaucrats from that time, and I'm getting transferred to the embassy next month."
"Here's hoping you're getting a raise for your trouble, brother."
"Of course," Mustafa chuckled. It's half the reason I'm staying. Even if the other half is my wife was born here. "And easier work, too. Those are the perks of seniority."
"Anything is easier than, how did you call it? 'Building three nation states to minimize ethnic tensions?'"
"Something like that."
Because it's not like I can say that the meetings were fifty percent negotiations and fifty percent trying to prevent future genocides and ethnic cleansings from happening.
Los Angeles General Hospital, Los Angeles, California, Unionist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 1 December 1942
"Remind me, Lena," Chen Lin said to his wife as they walked into the hospital, "Why do I have to do this?"
"Because there are a bunch of children who just got out of an internment camp, and they could use a visit."
"No, I meant, why did they ask for me, specifically?"
Selena Chen shrugged. "Because the kids'll probably think you're cool or something? I dunno."
Huh. She actually said it.
A mischievous grin formed on Lin's face. "What was that, Lena?"
"I said they think you're cool, Lin," she wryly answered back, before elbowing him in the side. "I, personally, think they're more of a dork. Lovable dork, but it still counts."
That's a fancy way of calling me a Himbo, isn't it? Oh well.
"Yeah, maybe," he figured, before showing his ID to the security guard. The man nodded, then let them walk inside the recovery wing. "Well, at least these kids think I'm cool."
Okay, here we go. I'm here to cheer some kids up, so just be myself.
Wait, I swear too much. Myself but without the swearing. Don't want to set a bad example.
Oh, and the kid's lost his parents, so don't bring that up. Ever.
Here goes... well, something, I guess.
Lin knocked on the door and peered inside. A nurse turned around, then walked up to let them in the hospital room.
"Glad to have you here," the guy told Lin and Lena, before motioning to a frail child on a bed. "Henu, this is Chen Lin of the Los Angeles Angels. Lin, this is Henu Kim."
"...Hi," the tired boy yawned, "Wait, is it really you?"
"Last I checked," Lin figured, before sitting down next to the kid. "How you doing, kid?"
"Better than I was a week ago," the frail boy answered. Tired as he was, Lin could still see the kid's eyes light up. "I didn't think you'd show up."
"Well, this is the first time I've visited anyone in the hospital," Lin said sheepishly. "Still getting used to being in the pros. Oh, and before I forget-"
Lin pulled out a baseball from his pocket, signed it, and handed it to Henu. "It's yours if you want it."
"Thanks!" Out of all the things, that was what had gotten the kid to open up? "Congrats on getting Rookie of the Year, Mr. Chen."
"Lin." The kid looked at him weirdly. "Kinda weird being called 'Mister.' I mean, I'm not even 25."
"Alright then, Mist- I mean, Lin. Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, I guess," Lin figured. It couldn't hurt, and it wasn't like Lin was the one with the state secrets. "What's up?"
"Do you think I could be like you? You know, when I grow up?"
"You mean, as a baseball player, right?" Henu looked at him weirdly. "Yeah, I guess so. Why?"
"The guards at the camps didn't think somebody like me should play baseball. Said that people like us are 'ruining the game.'"
"Really?" Henu nodded. "Well, those people can go fuck themselves."
Edmonton Internment Camp, Edmonton, Alberta, Unionist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 28 December 1942
"You're going to want to see this," Daigo Shinoda said to his friend and commander. "It's bad, Sam."
"How bad are we talking?" the Japanese-American sergeant asked, but Daigo just shook his head. "How bad, D?"
"We don't have enough medical supplies," the medic answered, before turning to Morgan. "I'm going to need one of you to call it in."
"Way ahead of you," Morgan Chen promised, and she turned on the radio. "This is Sergeant Morgan Chen broadcasting to all Unionist troops. We have civilian prisoners at our position, around - How many, D?"
"Four thousand?" he figured, before looking over the supplies in the truck. "We don't have enough, Mo."
"Right," Morgan breathed, before turning back to the mic. "We have approximately four thousand civilian prisoners of unknown condition. We need reinforcements and medical supplies, ASAP."
"Understood," Lieutenant Colonel Young-Oak Kim answered, "Sending a QRF from the 11th Airborne and the rest of the 542nd. ETA thirty minutes."
"Copy, Colonel," Morgan sighed. She wasn't happy about it, but the sound of gunshots made her fall to the ground and drop her radio. "Shit!"
Both Sam and Daigo ducked behind their Humvee, while Inouye, Gabaldin, and Nakano did the same behind theirs.
"I thought this place was empty, Sam!"
"Every other camp was, D!" Kimura shouted, before looking around for any sign of the shooter. "See anything, Mo?"
Morgan peered through her scope and scanned around the area for a good thirty seconds over the sound of distant gunshots.
"Nothing!"
"Are they shooting at us?!" Nakano shouted from the other truck, "Might be shooting somebody else!"
"Partisans?" Daigo figured, and Sam shrugged. "Whoever it is, they're probably friendly."
"Want me to call it in, Sam?" Morgan offered, and her counterpart nodded, "Colonel, we have enemy fire in the area. Unknown shooters with possible friendlies. Moving to assist."
"Copy, Chen," Young decided. "ETA twenty minutes. Kim out."
"We're moving in," Sam shouted to the other truck. "Gabaldin, Inouye, Nakano, hold the entrance. Nobody comes in our out. Mo, D, you're with me."
The move inside the camp was... quiet, outside of the gunshots, but the trio could smell a familiar odor of smoke as they moved towards the center.
"I thought this place was empty of Nats," Daigo muttered under his breath. "Every other place was empty of Nats when we showed up!"
"Every other place had somewhere else to go," Sam pointed out, "After this, it's just Yukon."
"Contact, 300 meters!" Morgan hissed, before re-adjusting her sight. "Looks like a couple fireteams. Your call, Sam."
"Yeah, I see 'em," Sam answered, before looking through his holo. There were about a dozen men there, surrounded by burning buildings and a few dead bodies. Sure enough, he could see the red and white tapes on their sleeves as the soldier readied picked up what looked to be a molotov. "Drop 'em."
The familiar whiff of her suppressed M14 was all the Nationalist militiaman heard before his brain splattered on the wall behind him.
"Open fire!" Sam shouted, and both he and Daigo did just that. Round after round shot through the Nationalists who rushed to cover.
"Shit," Morgan spat, before reloading another magazine into her M14, "Sam, there are people in those buildings!"
"What?"
"They're burning them!" Morgan shouted over the sound of the gunfire, "Anyone who's in there is going to burn to death!"
Damn it. Did they stay behind to kill everyone?
Daigo didn't have enough time to think before his best friend grabbed his shoulder. "We're going around the far side. Morgan!"
"Yeah?!"
"Keep them pinned!"
"On it!" Morgan shouted back, before firing again at anything. It didn't matter if it was a leg or a hand or a hair - she kept shooting.
"C'mon," Sam said as he moved around the side with Daigo. "Fifty meters and around the corner!"
"On it," Daigo promised, before kicking his legs into overdrive, only to find a dozen men behind cover.
From the looks of them, they had the red tape the nationalists wore to show which side they were on.
The men were distracted, hiding from Morgan's sniper fire at the other side of the yard and unaware of the two 542nd soldiers behind them.
"Drop 'em." Sam growled.
And they opened fire on the last remnants, gunning them down where they stood.
"Clear!" Sam shouted, before turning back towards where Morgan was, "Courtyard's clear!"
"And not a minute too late," Daigo observed as the sound of distant helicopters drowned out the groaning men on the ground. "So, what do we do about the survivors?"
"Screw 'em!" Sam said off-handedly, "C'mon, we gotta get these guys out of the barracks!"
"Alright then," he sighed, before taking one more look at the enemy wounded.
You're not worth it, anyways.
Threat Assessment: John Brown's Army, Federal Bureau of Intelligence, Washington, District of Columbia, Nationalist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 1 January 1943
ORGANIZATION: John Brown's Army
IDEOLOGY: Socialism, Libertarianism, Opposition to Legitimate Government
POLITICAL POSITION: Far-Left to Centrist
SUMMARY
The organization known as "John Brown's Army" (also known as the "JBA")is a decentralized partisan movement located within the territory currently under control. While its exact date of formation is unknown, its origins can be traced back to internet traffic in the wake of the traitors' rebellion to the north.
Its composition consists of a "Broad Tent" along the ideological spectrum that is largely united in opposition to the legitimate American government on the grounds that President Theodore Bilbo's succession was illegitimate as well as the conspiracy theory that the Capitol Bombing was perpetrated by the Knights of the Golden Circle in order to decapitate the Olson Administration and allow President Bilbo to enact martial law.
The John Brown's Army first appeared on the radar at the Battle of Maxton, in which the insurrectionists attacked allied militias in the vicinity of Hayes' Pond. The organization would first claim responsibility for the attack during the aftermath, and it served as a rallying cry for armed resistance in support of the illegitimate Philadelphia Government.
The organization can be best-described as a decentralized alliance of different insurgent groups throughout the South and Sky Country. Organizations largely claim membership to the main organization despite the main organization being largely non-existent.
This apparent lack of a centralized leadership does hinder our efforts at rooting out the organization, though it does prevent any Unity of Command on their side. Insurgent groups under their banner largely act autonomously and their Modus Operandi will vary between different cells.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We must continue to use all mediums to reinforce the idea that these accusations of a coup are baseless. While there are likely members of the Knights of the Golden Circle within our ranks as militia, they make up a fraction of a fraction of our forces. These are the "Bad Apples" of our forces, and we simply do not have the resources to vet our forces at this moment.
It is also imperative that we martyr the victims of these attacks by painting them in the most-positive light to portray the JBA as murderers of decent, everyday Americans. Ideal victims would include public servants, police, and volunteer militia, though it is imperative that a background check is done whenever possible to prevent our side from elevating less-sympathetic members of our ranks.
Resources and manpower should also be dedicated to performing background checks on any identified members of the JBA to discredit the organization. When possible, criminal records and social media footprints should be referenced to find particular members who would be less-sympathetic to the average American.
These include, but are not limited to, men and women with a criminal record, homosexuals, and anyone who has a history of radical statements. Identifying these people and bringing them to attention will invoke a sense of "Guilt by Association" that will discredit the JBA in the eyes of the general public.
Finally, identified members and sympathizers should have their public information leaked to the general public, including (but not limited to) their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, as well as any and all actionable information.
Doing so will create a sense of perpetual sense of insecurity and unease among the ranks of the JBA and their sympathizers, which has the potential to cause desertions and defections in their ranks while dissuading sympathizers from publicly-supporting them out of fear of retribution.
Due to the extra-justicial nature of these actions, it is recommended that the actual actions be undertaken by non-official entities. This creates a sense of plausible deniability on our part.
CONCLUSION
As an decentralized insurgent group, the JBA needs to be fought on all fronts by any and all means necessary. Insurgencies may have the advantage against organized force of arms, but they can be combated through a hybrid warfare of propaganda and counter-insurgency warfare.
Galeão International Airport, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro State, Republic of the United States of Brazil, 6 January 1943
"So," Gisele da Silva asked her mother and father at the baggage claim, "They're going to live with us?"
"For a bit," Ana told her daughter, "At least until the Civil War up north is finished. Then they'll go back."
"What if they like it here?" their younger son, Joao, asked, "Then could they stay?"
"I'm sure there will be some way to help them," Ana yawned, before looking to her husband to do the talking, "Isn't that right, Rico?"
"I'm sure we can find work for them at the yard," he figured, before peering at the arrivals. "Thought they'd be here now."
"Do they even speak Portuguese?" asked Joao, only to get elbowed in the side, "Hey!"
"Ana, no," Henrique said sternly, "Joao, that's rude. Plus, we have real-time translators for a reason, you know."
"Sorry..." the boy said sheepishly, "So it's no problem?"
"Shouldn't be," Ana thought aloud. At least if their flight shows up on time. "Oh, there they are."
At least I think they are. Unless there is another family of three American refugee women with brown hair and fairly nice luggage walking towards us.
"Are you the Silva family?" the mother's voice asked through the translator. Both Ana and Henrique nodded. "Well then. It is good to finally meet you."
"That it is," Ana confirmed. Both she and Henrique had agreed that she would do the talking after what their guest had been through. "It's a pleasure to meet you Mrs-"
"Please, call me Janet," the former socialite insisted with a tired smile. "I've had enough formalities for a lifetime."
Ana simply nodded.
I can imagine. At least this means I don't have to worry about accidentally refer to her as "Mrs. Bouvier."
That would be awkward even if her husband wasn't a drunken womanizer.
"Are you ready to go?" Ana asked the family of three, "How long until the taxi gets here, Rico?"
"Called it now," he promised, "Should be here in fifteen."
And so they waited at the terminal. Ana and Henrique made small talk with Janet while the children started talking with one another.
Of course, they took extra care not to talk about anything even tangentially-related to the divorce. It went without saying that any mention of her ex was out of the question.
From what they heard, John "Black Jack" Bouvier was, for lack of a better term, a piece of shit. The guy was a womanizer, a drinker, and also a sympathizer for the Nationalists who was currently in Washington. And even if he wasn't, it wasn't like divorcees liked talking about their exes.
"...we don't actually have a house," Ana overheard her daughter explain to one of the girls, "But the apartment should be big enough, and we're nearby the beach, too."
"Can we come with you?" one of the girls up front asked. Her son and daughter nodded, and the two Lee girls' eyes lit up.
It was at that moment that she knew that everything would work out just fine.
Sure, they were cramming three additional people into their condo.
And sure, that refugee family of three might not speak a word of Portuguese.
But if the children were as optimistic as they sounded, then she knew they'd all make it work.
"Remind me," Dr. Chen Akira said to her husband in his workshop, "Why exactly are you doing this?"
Her husband Michael just laughed a hearty laugh and sighed. "Because I just can't seem to get away from being roped into historical events? It's as if God heard my teenage wish to live in interesting times and said there were no take-backs."
The professor shook her head and crossed her arms. "We both know that's not what I meant. I never took you for an existentialist, anyways."
"Fair enough, Aki. I'm doing this because I'm bored."
"Most people write books or watch baseball when they get older," she pointedly observed. And he did do those things (even if she had done most of the writing for him). "Not try to modify the settings of an exoskeleton for combat."
"Most people don't nearly have their kids murdered by terrorists, Aki," Michael countered, "And if this is the difference between our daughter coming home safely and not at all, I'll work as many sleepless nights as I need to."
Work really is your way to stay focused, isn't it?
Hmph. You never change, do you?
"So what exactly is the difference," she asked him as she walked over to the modified exoskeleton. "Plenty of people use these for their arms and legs already."
"For logistics," Michael countered, "It's for heavy lifting and carrying stuff. Not actual combat. Hence the limiters on them."
"Which I assume they have for a very good reason, Michael."
"That they do," he admitted. Of course, said "very good reason" involved people not tearing their muscles clean apart, but he figured she got the idea. "The difference, now, is that the Armaments Bureau has a new upgrade software for the Mark V exoskeleton that'll synch with the body's motions to prevent any overexertions."
"And how do they do that?" the professor asked curiously to the engineer. "Programming?"
"Pretty much," he figured. "I didn't really 'get' it when they explained it to me."
Michael liked to think he was tech-savvy, but he was the same person who studied Mechanical Engineering and minored in physics because he thought Computer Science was "too hard."
Classmates never did stop giving me shit about that.
"So the computer basically amplifies the operator's movements," Aki observed, and her husband nodded. "Except instead of carrying heavy equipment, it can be used to improve their strength and agility in combat?"
Michael shrugged. "Pretty much. I mean, it's no Iron Man suit - more like the exo from Advanced Warfare, if I'm being honest."
"...I have no idea what that means, but I'll take your word for it," Aki decided. She wasn't much of a shooter player; Grand Strategy was her forte. "So, does the software update work?"
"Probably," Michael figured. "At least on the proving grounds. Next step is field testing."
"I really hope that you're not going to be the one testing it."
"Me? God no," Michael promised, much to her relief. "I may look like I'm forty, but I'm pushing sixty, Aki. I'm too old to do this."
"Oh thank goodness. You had me worried for a second."
"Yeah," he agreed, "This kind of stuff is for Morgan's generation."
"...She volunteered to test it, didn't she?"
"Yup."
"Fuck."
"Yup."
Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire, 5 November 1942
"It wasn't my first military tribunal," is something most people wouldn't be proud of, depending on which side of the bench they were on.
Thankfully, former Director Military Intelligence Bureau Martin Li, had been on the side of the prosecution in both of them. Such was to be expected, when he had at least some rank and influence.
Even if it's less than when I was still in charge.
He could still remember the Accord Tribunals in The Hague after the Great War, when that bastard Reginald Dyer finally answered for his crimes against the Indians.
Dyer was remorseless and said he was serving his duty as Commander in Chief of the Raj, but the evidence was insurmountable when dozens of men and women testified against him.
Reginald Dyer would die by firing squad in 1926, with both Li and his old friend Michael Chen of the ROC Marine Corps watching.
Now, neither of them took any satisfaction in killing. Sure, Chen would convince himself that the people he killed were terrible human beings or at least doing terrible things, but it wasn't as if he liked killing people.
Li was a little more complicated.
While he didn't exactly enjoy killing people, he'd signed off on numerous morally-questionable operations that led to numerous targets assassinated in the name of a "Greater Good." And while he still believed he was doing the right thing, he still signed off on the operation that killed off the Saudi Royal Family.
Children included.
But this?
Well, he saw justice as something different, which meant that satisfaction was on the table.
And with Igor Sakharov sitting in the defendant's chair, he knew it would only be a matter of time.
"Mister Sakharov," the Russian judge said to the defendant, "You are charged with Crimes Against Humanity for the murder of countless civilians under your control, as well as rebellion against the Russian government. How do you plead?"
"Not guilty," the one-armed former Ultranationalist leader spat. "On all counts."
Martin Li could only look from the gallery and sigh.
They never deny it. None of them do.
Well, here we go again...
Bridge of the MN Internationale, International Waters, Caribbean Sea, 12 November 1942
As far as warships went, the French aircraft carrier MN Internationale was the most-obvious choice for a command ship. Its large operations center, squadrons of planes, and sheer tonnage were all arguments in its favor that Admiral André-Georges Lemonnier understood.
It was no surprise that the Internationale became the flagship for this operation despite it ostensibly being a Pan-American (as the Latin American nations called themselves) operation. Then again, it was Admiral Henrique Guilhem who was in charge.
Admiral Lemonnier and the Internationale's carrier group? They were simply here as reinforcement to "Ensure the Freedom of the Seas."
Of course, "Endure the Freedom of the Seas" in this context meant, "Threaten to destroy the Nationalist navy if they tried anything," but the point still stood.
Latin American shipping would continue, and the Nationalists simply lacked the tonnage to go up against them.
Khartoum, Republic of Sudan, 20 November 1942
"Well, today's the day," Mustafa Aydin said to his brother Yusuf over the phone, "Sudanese, Darfurian, and Azanian independence, all at once."
"Well, they do want to- Mehmet!" Mustafa could hear his nephew shouting in the background, "Put that down!"
"Is this a bad-"
"No, it's fine," Yusuf sighed. "Oh, and your nephew can walk, now. Wait, what were we talking about?"
"Handover ceremony, Yusuf. After over a decade out here working with the locals to basically build not one, but three states from scratch, I can finally say that my work here is done."
"It sure sounds like it," said the younger Aydin brother, "So, still think it was 'Too good to be true?'"
"Hindsight is what it is, Yusuf," Mustafa figured. And while the work was daunting, it wasn't as if the Accord could be too picky when it came to administrators who could speak Arabic. "But we had to basically train people from scratch, then phase them in to replace the people like me who had to keep things running in the meantime. I'm probably the last of the bureaucrats from that time, and I'm getting transferred to the embassy next month."
"Here's hoping you're getting a raise for your trouble, brother."
"Of course," Mustafa chuckled. It's half the reason I'm staying. Even if the other half is my wife was born here. "And easier work, too. Those are the perks of seniority."
"Anything is easier than, how did you call it? 'Building three nation states to minimize ethnic tensions?'"
"Something like that."
Because it's not like I can say that the meetings were fifty percent negotiations and fifty percent trying to prevent future genocides and ethnic cleansings from happening.
Los Angeles General Hospital, Los Angeles, California, Unionist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 1 December 1942
"Remind me, Lena," Chen Lin said to his wife as they walked into the hospital, "Why do I have to do this?"
"Because there are a bunch of children who just got out of an internment camp, and they could use a visit."
"No, I meant, why did they ask for me, specifically?"
Selena Chen shrugged. "Because the kids'll probably think you're cool or something? I dunno."
Huh. She actually said it.
A mischievous grin formed on Lin's face. "What was that, Lena?"
"I said they think you're cool, Lin," she wryly answered back, before elbowing him in the side. "I, personally, think they're more of a dork. Lovable dork, but it still counts."
That's a fancy way of calling me a Himbo, isn't it? Oh well.
"Yeah, maybe," he figured, before showing his ID to the security guard. The man nodded, then let them walk inside the recovery wing. "Well, at least these kids think I'm cool."
Okay, here we go. I'm here to cheer some kids up, so just be myself.
Wait, I swear too much. Myself but without the swearing. Don't want to set a bad example.
Oh, and the kid's lost his parents, so don't bring that up. Ever.
Here goes... well, something, I guess.
Lin knocked on the door and peered inside. A nurse turned around, then walked up to let them in the hospital room.
"Glad to have you here," the guy told Lin and Lena, before motioning to a frail child on a bed. "Henu, this is Chen Lin of the Los Angeles Angels. Lin, this is Henu Kim."
"...Hi," the tired boy yawned, "Wait, is it really you?"
"Last I checked," Lin figured, before sitting down next to the kid. "How you doing, kid?"
"Better than I was a week ago," the frail boy answered. Tired as he was, Lin could still see the kid's eyes light up. "I didn't think you'd show up."
"Well, this is the first time I've visited anyone in the hospital," Lin said sheepishly. "Still getting used to being in the pros. Oh, and before I forget-"
Lin pulled out a baseball from his pocket, signed it, and handed it to Henu. "It's yours if you want it."
"Thanks!" Out of all the things, that was what had gotten the kid to open up? "Congrats on getting Rookie of the Year, Mr. Chen."
"Lin." The kid looked at him weirdly. "Kinda weird being called 'Mister.' I mean, I'm not even 25."
"Alright then, Mist- I mean, Lin. Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, I guess," Lin figured. It couldn't hurt, and it wasn't like Lin was the one with the state secrets. "What's up?"
"Do you think I could be like you? You know, when I grow up?"
"You mean, as a baseball player, right?" Henu looked at him weirdly. "Yeah, I guess so. Why?"
"The guards at the camps didn't think somebody like me should play baseball. Said that people like us are 'ruining the game.'"
"Really?" Henu nodded. "Well, those people can go fuck themselves."
Edmonton Internment Camp, Edmonton, Alberta, Unionist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 28 December 1942
"You're going to want to see this," Daigo Shinoda said to his friend and commander. "It's bad, Sam."
"How bad are we talking?" the Japanese-American sergeant asked, but Daigo just shook his head. "How bad, D?"
"We don't have enough medical supplies," the medic answered, before turning to Morgan. "I'm going to need one of you to call it in."
"Way ahead of you," Morgan Chen promised, and she turned on the radio. "This is Sergeant Morgan Chen broadcasting to all Unionist troops. We have civilian prisoners at our position, around - How many, D?"
"Four thousand?" he figured, before looking over the supplies in the truck. "We don't have enough, Mo."
"Right," Morgan breathed, before turning back to the mic. "We have approximately four thousand civilian prisoners of unknown condition. We need reinforcements and medical supplies, ASAP."
"Understood," Lieutenant Colonel Young-Oak Kim answered, "Sending a QRF from the 11th Airborne and the rest of the 542nd. ETA thirty minutes."
"Copy, Colonel," Morgan sighed. She wasn't happy about it, but the sound of gunshots made her fall to the ground and drop her radio. "Shit!"
Both Sam and Daigo ducked behind their Humvee, while Inouye, Gabaldin, and Nakano did the same behind theirs.
"I thought this place was empty, Sam!"
"Every other camp was, D!" Kimura shouted, before looking around for any sign of the shooter. "See anything, Mo?"
Morgan peered through her scope and scanned around the area for a good thirty seconds over the sound of distant gunshots.
"Nothing!"
"Are they shooting at us?!" Nakano shouted from the other truck, "Might be shooting somebody else!"
"Partisans?" Daigo figured, and Sam shrugged. "Whoever it is, they're probably friendly."
"Want me to call it in, Sam?" Morgan offered, and her counterpart nodded, "Colonel, we have enemy fire in the area. Unknown shooters with possible friendlies. Moving to assist."
"Copy, Chen," Young decided. "ETA twenty minutes. Kim out."
"We're moving in," Sam shouted to the other truck. "Gabaldin, Inouye, Nakano, hold the entrance. Nobody comes in our out. Mo, D, you're with me."
The move inside the camp was... quiet, outside of the gunshots, but the trio could smell a familiar odor of smoke as they moved towards the center.
"I thought this place was empty of Nats," Daigo muttered under his breath. "Every other place was empty of Nats when we showed up!"
"Every other place had somewhere else to go," Sam pointed out, "After this, it's just Yukon."
"Contact, 300 meters!" Morgan hissed, before re-adjusting her sight. "Looks like a couple fireteams. Your call, Sam."
"Yeah, I see 'em," Sam answered, before looking through his holo. There were about a dozen men there, surrounded by burning buildings and a few dead bodies. Sure enough, he could see the red and white tapes on their sleeves as the soldier readied picked up what looked to be a molotov. "Drop 'em."
The familiar whiff of her suppressed M14 was all the Nationalist militiaman heard before his brain splattered on the wall behind him.
"Open fire!" Sam shouted, and both he and Daigo did just that. Round after round shot through the Nationalists who rushed to cover.
"Shit," Morgan spat, before reloading another magazine into her M14, "Sam, there are people in those buildings!"
"What?"
"They're burning them!" Morgan shouted over the sound of the gunfire, "Anyone who's in there is going to burn to death!"
Damn it. Did they stay behind to kill everyone?
Daigo didn't have enough time to think before his best friend grabbed his shoulder. "We're going around the far side. Morgan!"
"Yeah?!"
"Keep them pinned!"
"On it!" Morgan shouted back, before firing again at anything. It didn't matter if it was a leg or a hand or a hair - she kept shooting.
"C'mon," Sam said as he moved around the side with Daigo. "Fifty meters and around the corner!"
"On it," Daigo promised, before kicking his legs into overdrive, only to find a dozen men behind cover.
From the looks of them, they had the red tape the nationalists wore to show which side they were on.
The men were distracted, hiding from Morgan's sniper fire at the other side of the yard and unaware of the two 542nd soldiers behind them.
"Drop 'em." Sam growled.
And they opened fire on the last remnants, gunning them down where they stood.
"Clear!" Sam shouted, before turning back towards where Morgan was, "Courtyard's clear!"
"And not a minute too late," Daigo observed as the sound of distant helicopters drowned out the groaning men on the ground. "So, what do we do about the survivors?"
"Screw 'em!" Sam said off-handedly, "C'mon, we gotta get these guys out of the barracks!"
"Alright then," he sighed, before taking one more look at the enemy wounded.
You're not worth it, anyways.
Threat Assessment: John Brown's Army, Federal Bureau of Intelligence, Washington, District of Columbia, Nationalist-Controlled Territory, United States of America, 1 January 1943
ORGANIZATION: John Brown's Army
IDEOLOGY: Socialism, Libertarianism, Opposition to Legitimate Government
POLITICAL POSITION: Far-Left to Centrist
SUMMARY
The organization known as "John Brown's Army" (also known as the "JBA")is a decentralized partisan movement located within the territory currently under control. While its exact date of formation is unknown, its origins can be traced back to internet traffic in the wake of the traitors' rebellion to the north.
Its composition consists of a "Broad Tent" along the ideological spectrum that is largely united in opposition to the legitimate American government on the grounds that President Theodore Bilbo's succession was illegitimate as well as the conspiracy theory that the Capitol Bombing was perpetrated by the Knights of the Golden Circle in order to decapitate the Olson Administration and allow President Bilbo to enact martial law.
The John Brown's Army first appeared on the radar at the Battle of Maxton, in which the insurrectionists attacked allied militias in the vicinity of Hayes' Pond. The organization would first claim responsibility for the attack during the aftermath, and it served as a rallying cry for armed resistance in support of the illegitimate Philadelphia Government.
The organization can be best-described as a decentralized alliance of different insurgent groups throughout the South and Sky Country. Organizations largely claim membership to the main organization despite the main organization being largely non-existent.
This apparent lack of a centralized leadership does hinder our efforts at rooting out the organization, though it does prevent any Unity of Command on their side. Insurgent groups under their banner largely act autonomously and their Modus Operandi will vary between different cells.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We must continue to use all mediums to reinforce the idea that these accusations of a coup are baseless. While there are likely members of the Knights of the Golden Circle within our ranks as militia, they make up a fraction of a fraction of our forces. These are the "Bad Apples" of our forces, and we simply do not have the resources to vet our forces at this moment.
It is also imperative that we martyr the victims of these attacks by painting them in the most-positive light to portray the JBA as murderers of decent, everyday Americans. Ideal victims would include public servants, police, and volunteer militia, though it is imperative that a background check is done whenever possible to prevent our side from elevating less-sympathetic members of our ranks.
Resources and manpower should also be dedicated to performing background checks on any identified members of the JBA to discredit the organization. When possible, criminal records and social media footprints should be referenced to find particular members who would be less-sympathetic to the average American.
These include, but are not limited to, men and women with a criminal record, homosexuals, and anyone who has a history of radical statements. Identifying these people and bringing them to attention will invoke a sense of "Guilt by Association" that will discredit the JBA in the eyes of the general public.
Finally, identified members and sympathizers should have their public information leaked to the general public, including (but not limited to) their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, as well as any and all actionable information.
Doing so will create a sense of perpetual sense of insecurity and unease among the ranks of the JBA and their sympathizers, which has the potential to cause desertions and defections in their ranks while dissuading sympathizers from publicly-supporting them out of fear of retribution.
Due to the extra-justicial nature of these actions, it is recommended that the actual actions be undertaken by non-official entities. This creates a sense of plausible deniability on our part.
CONCLUSION
As an decentralized insurgent group, the JBA needs to be fought on all fronts by any and all means necessary. Insurgencies may have the advantage against organized force of arms, but they can be combated through a hybrid warfare of propaganda and counter-insurgency warfare.
Galeão International Airport, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro State, Republic of the United States of Brazil, 6 January 1943
"So," Gisele da Silva asked her mother and father at the baggage claim, "They're going to live with us?"
"For a bit," Ana told her daughter, "At least until the Civil War up north is finished. Then they'll go back."
"What if they like it here?" their younger son, Joao, asked, "Then could they stay?"
"I'm sure there will be some way to help them," Ana yawned, before looking to her husband to do the talking, "Isn't that right, Rico?"
"I'm sure we can find work for them at the yard," he figured, before peering at the arrivals. "Thought they'd be here now."
"Do they even speak Portuguese?" asked Joao, only to get elbowed in the side, "Hey!"
"Ana, no," Henrique said sternly, "Joao, that's rude. Plus, we have real-time translators for a reason, you know."
"Sorry..." the boy said sheepishly, "So it's no problem?"
"Shouldn't be," Ana thought aloud. At least if their flight shows up on time. "Oh, there they are."
At least I think they are. Unless there is another family of three American refugee women with brown hair and fairly nice luggage walking towards us.
"Are you the Silva family?" the mother's voice asked through the translator. Both Ana and Henrique nodded. "Well then. It is good to finally meet you."
"That it is," Ana confirmed. Both she and Henrique had agreed that she would do the talking after what their guest had been through. "It's a pleasure to meet you Mrs-"
"Please, call me Janet," the former socialite insisted with a tired smile. "I've had enough formalities for a lifetime."
Ana simply nodded.
I can imagine. At least this means I don't have to worry about accidentally refer to her as "Mrs. Bouvier."
That would be awkward even if her husband wasn't a drunken womanizer.
"Are you ready to go?" Ana asked the family of three, "How long until the taxi gets here, Rico?"
"Called it now," he promised, "Should be here in fifteen."
And so they waited at the terminal. Ana and Henrique made small talk with Janet while the children started talking with one another.
Of course, they took extra care not to talk about anything even tangentially-related to the divorce. It went without saying that any mention of her ex was out of the question.
From what they heard, John "Black Jack" Bouvier was, for lack of a better term, a piece of shit. The guy was a womanizer, a drinker, and also a sympathizer for the Nationalists who was currently in Washington. And even if he wasn't, it wasn't like divorcees liked talking about their exes.
"...we don't actually have a house," Ana overheard her daughter explain to one of the girls, "But the apartment should be big enough, and we're nearby the beach, too."
"Can we come with you?" one of the girls up front asked. Her son and daughter nodded, and the two Lee girls' eyes lit up.
It was at that moment that she knew that everything would work out just fine.
Sure, they were cramming three additional people into their condo.
And sure, that refugee family of three might not speak a word of Portuguese.
But if the children were as optimistic as they sounded, then she knew they'd all make it work.
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If your opponents include an organization named John Brown's Army, you must ask yourself whether or not you're morally right. Also yikes on the recommendations.
Also, what Azania? Is it South Sudan?
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thanks!
Conservation definitely got a head start, which was helped by the Roosevelt Administration from 1913-1921 and its successors. Pretty good chance a lot of species don't go extinct this time around.
We're looking at about a quarter century of scientific advancement, including:
- Real-time translator applications on mobile devices
- Modular molten salt reactors that power most of the Americas, Europe, and Asia
- Higher-capacity battery storage technology
- More-efficient solar energy
- Large amounts of off-shore windmill farms
- Carbon capture technology on a large scale
- Sixth-generation combat aircraft
- Integrated artificial intelligence that allows for optimized logistics
- Heavy investments in high-speed rail, including a tunnel across the Bering Strait
- Exo-skeletons used for logistics and heavy lifting that are being repurposed for combat purposes (see Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare)
- Artificial meat production on a large-scale
- Self-driving cars that don't run over children
- Drones used for "last mile" logistics
- Prosthetics that are as effective as human limbs (if not moreso)
- Advancements in 3D printing to handle custom part creation
- High-powered laser technology used to eliminate nuclear waste
- Massive particle accelerators that can reach parallel dimensions
- Improvements in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality that massively lowered the prices
- Electric cars largely-replacing gasoline-powered vehicles in the civilian market around the world
- Long-term missions to the moon
- Advances in cancer treatment
- AI-assisted surgery suites
- On-site, 3D printed organs
- Cures for hemophilia
- Increased efficiency/viability of desalinization technology
- Viable blood substitutes
- Mass-proliferation of drone technologies in warfare
- Cargo drones used to reach civilians in disaster areas and warzones
- 1 nm chips produced en masse
- Large-scale hydroponics in urban environments due to increased-viability
- Fourth generation tanks
- GPS Block IV equivalents
- Manually-piloted suits of armor (that are, unfortunately, very slow and power-intensive)
- And probably other things I can't remember off the top of my head
Lovecraft mellowed out and got the help he needed, so he's a lot less-racist than before. He now does a sort of Mythbusters-style show with Harry Houdini where they debunk pseudoscience and pseudohistory.
The Onion was revived by Sewer Socialists in Milwaukee yet they tend to be less-preachy than the post-2016 Onion of our timeline.
Chaplin stars alongside a young Marilyn Monroe in a TV series where they jump through alternate timelines.
Funny thing about that: The JBA is named after the antagonistic faction from Splinter Cell: Double Agent, though this version is much more morally-justified compared to the one in that game. Of course, Double Agent is a Tom Clancy game, so the bad guys' ideology wasn't really expanded upon.
Though in fairness, it's probably for the best, because it's Clancy. His antagonists fit into three categories:
- Soviets
- People filling in the power vacuum after the Soviets fell
- Liberals and anyone else who disagrees with his politics
Like I said before: A lot of the heinous and horrible stuff I write about is based on things in real life.
In this case, it's people I see on Twitter.
And yeah, they're horrible people for even considering these things.
Just as the people in real life are horrible people for doing them.
Azania takes its name from the Azanian Liberation Front in South Sudan's post-colonial era, which in turn takes its name from the Greek name for the lands south of Nubia.
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I'm guessing I didn't word out that part well what I ment was what is going on with them in recent chapters?
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
They're mostly doing the same things.
Lovecraft's not happy about members of the Nationalists trying to use his more racist past works as propaganda, and he actively pushes back against them on social media.
Kinda like how Harry Turtledove spends a lot of time on Twitter telling members of the far right to go fuck themselves.
Onion is trying to strike a balance of supporting the Unionist cause while still being fresh and in good taste.
There's only so many ways you can joke that if Nationalist President Theodore Bilbo was accused of being as inbred as a Catholic Habsburg, he'd be insulted that he was compared to Catholics.
Chaplin is doing speeches for the Unionist cause, along with fundraisers and mutual aid events for the Unionist war effort. His political leanings mean he's pretty open to doing anti-Nationalist propaganda.
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Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
the villains in one book are environmentalists.
also Kealty is apparently meant to be an expy of bill Clinton?
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I like to joke that Clancy ran out of people for America to fight after the Cold War ended, but I did notice that a lot of his later work (90s and beyond) shifted from spy thrillers to spy and political thrillers.
Without the Soviet Union, it seems like he didn't have a large entity that could serve as the long-term recurring villain for the US to fight like the Soviets were.
I mean, there was the Tehran-Beijing-Tokyo axis from Debt of Honor to Bear and the Dragon, but it really seems like he was trying to find somebody for the US to fight.
Once the 2000s and 2010s come around, be did seem to come up with two recurring villains:
1. The Umayyad Revolutionary Front (a sort of proto-ISIS entity)
2. The Democratic Party
ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is kind of the thing I've had to deal with when writing this story after the Great War arc. Once that was finished and China and the Nanjing Accord were able to establish "Pax Asiatica," one question remained:
What happens now?
Honestly, I kinda just went back on the two pillars of this story:
1. Exploring this world and seeing how different it becomes from our own.
2. Seeing how it affects everyday people's lives.
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ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So, I'm still tired from my high school reunion last night, but I figured I'd point out some of the historical references in the last chapter (because I'm bored).
The family that is being welcomed at the airport is actually Jackie Bouvier Kennedy's family. Or I guess "Jacqueline Lee" in this case.
Her mother really did separate from her father, as in our timeline.
He is also that much of a dick in our timeline.
The family that is being welcomed at the airport is actually Jackie Bouvier Kennedy's family. Or I guess "Jacqueline Lee" in this case.
Her mother really did separate from her father, as in our timeline.
He is also that much of a dick in our timeline.
- Location
- San Francisco
Yeah, I've never read a single one of his works but based on what I've heard it sounds like if he were still around, it would be a tossup on whether he turned into a hardcore Never-Trump republican or a full-bore MAGA type after 2016.
Perhaps there's commentary to be had here; like on how people who need an enemy for the world to make sense will inevitably turn themselves into one for everyone to fight against.
Also, if you lack for conflict, I would suggest instead of war, go smaller scale and do a political thriller; try dancing on the edge of war or reviewing the upheaval that might be caused by new technology. I noticed you kind of touched lightly on how the internet suddenly became available for everyone despite the fact that people at the time were still using telegraph wires mostly. Perhaps there's more to be found in that?
Or you could have a new technology entirely?
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ChrisProvidence
Time Traveling Unequal Treaty Destroyer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, he died in 2013.
That sounds like fun. I'm not really into doing retcons, but I can guarantee that people like Ian Smith (who killed himself in Montana... long story) would get radicalized by these things through the internet, so that could make a good side-story.
Or I could just talk about all the cool shit that's getting invented.
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