A tale of two embargoes (2016)
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With Friends like these….
"Humanity can learn from those who have broken their chains. Those who have chained humanity for centuries cannot teach humanity anything."—Castro
"I look at these labor brigades and I feel grateful and impressed, how can you not be when they fix up the water pumps, refurbish the town school, and set up drone deliveries in a single week? But I also can't help but feel dread because my mind can't help but ask what disasters made them necessary to begin with"—Dewey Denied, a Cuban Citizen in an interview with Redworld.
Of the nations in the Dewey Denied world, by far the most to profit from the event known as the worldmerge was the republic of Cuba.
Before the sole socialist bastion in the western hemisphere was increasingly isolated and being strangled by a spite-fueled embargo and sanctions regime spearheaded by the world's hyperpower throwing the geopolitical equivalent of a hissy fit over the Cuban people not laying down and dying like good little colonial subjects and daring to want something better.
The Cuban people would manage to do well with the hand dealt to them, despite the hardships and suffering brought on by the special period and the severing of most of its economic ties to the world, managing to establish a respectable scientific sector and a healthcare system whose success would always embarrass that of its supposedly richer and more advanced nations.
But the seemingly inevitable march of marketization was already establishing beachheads within the island, with America's seeming loosening of restrictions only hastening the erosion of Cuban state control over the economy, even as it became that liberalization was only worsening pre-existing problems.
In another time, this slow pitiful decline of a nation that dared dream and had given its all for the cause of universal liberation might have continued unabated, the vultures circling closer every day as they dreamed of inflicting upon Cuba the same social mass murder they inflicted in Chile, Russia, Iraq and practically the entire globe to build new obscene fortunes from mountains of corpses.
It is enough to drive all but the most staunchly materialistic socialist to hope for a miracle.
And to the shock of everyone, a miracle did happen as the worldmerge utterly changed the status quo and flipped the script over a story that might have been tragic.
The opening of relations between Iskandaria and Havana was almost immediate once the confusion of the worldmerge cleared , the former eager for any foothold in this strange world that was both wonderful and nightmarish at the same time while the latter was simply grateful and desperate for any sort of lifeline that didn't also involve cutting its own veins; which they would receive and then some.
To the long marchers, Cuba was both a pleasant surprise (after witnessing what total global Schlafyism looks like, and the disgusting mockery of leftist ideals that was "socialism with Chinese characteristics") and a depressing insight into just how low Actually Existing Socialism has fallen.
everyone agreed that it was unacceptable that a fellow socialist traveler, much less a nation that was in another world would have been a founding member of the Comintern be left in such a state, and as soon as proper agreements and arrangements in place (helped by the personal interference of both versions of Fidel Castro) aid began to flow in unimaginable quantities to the world's seventeenth-largest island.
The Cuban government now found itself in a position where everything it could ever need was being delivered on a silver platter and then some as the resources of an entire world were marshaled to its economic rescue, with everything from Bharati food shipments, Chinese labor volunteers, state of the art medical supplies/equipment, modular housing, agricultural facilities and more being delivered to Havana, the process made much easier by the still poorly understood effects of the glide.
Indeed sailors, pilots, and native Cubans on both sides of the divide found inducing "folds" within the bizarre phenomenon to be much easier once DD Cuba formally obtained Comintern membership, leading to the largely undisproven claim that the glide seems to be influenced somehow by human geopolitical alliances and political ideologies, which only further confounded scientists regardless of affiliation and would inspire a veritable flood of amateur theories on both the Inter- and Com- nets.
Regardless of the exact mechanisms, the ease of transport would only hasten Cuba's planned reconstruction as International reconstruction experts now worked in tandem with Havana officials to map out how to revitalize the island's infrastructure and economy, the former having mixed feelings about their field gaining relevance once more just as it was increasingly becoming obsolete in their native reality.
Along with reconstruction, there was also the opening up of the two cubas to one another and the sheer difference between the two was more than a little disconcerting for both, one was predominantly Hispanic, relatively conservative socially, and having to be self-sufficient while the other was International, cosmopolitan (and in the middle of a Taino cultural revival), interconnected, queer embracing and had the privilege of a global economic network to support it, and the Comintern's more esoteric elements that showed up to help such as the multitude of fleet communes and gift flotillas only served to stun and stupefy the Dewey Deniers even more (especially when one fleet was accompanied by its dolphin non-human citizens).
There were clashes and misunderstandings but thankfully the process was peaceful and productive for the most part, even with minor protests over Cuba's rabid relaxation of anti-LGBTQ+ laws so that it may qualify for International assistance and membership; though this seemingly minor hiccup would be merely the beginning of a long chain of events and debates that would question the uneven power dynamics between the new socialist bloc and its prospective allies in the new world along with the question of how to better effectively ensure social progression in a world still largely trapped in 20th-century social mores.
And of course, this new partnership didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the Dewey Denied world, who of course went through with the usual denunciations and tightened sanctions (along with condemnation of Comintern "red colonialism and denial of self-determination"), the Obama's administration scrambling to pre-empt accusations of being soft on Cuba and communism in general by ending any possibility of a dentente and thaw with Cuba and nullifying any prior agreements to that effect; even as it proved utterly ineffective in silencing the GOP's and broader conservative movements, instead galvanizing to demand even more as the elections loomed ever closer.
The global socialist bloc of course had its own answers to its neoliberal counterpart's accusations, quickly remarking on the Dewey Denied world's abundance of conflict zones, disease hotspots, poverty, continuing famine, colonial exploitation, environmental degradation and other issues that were left unaddressed despite the Cold War being over, and that was before talk began about the misfortunes that the Washington consensus did not see as a problem at all but features.
And beneath all the subtle and not-so-subtle barbs and proclamations the likes of NATO, the PRC, and others were keenly observing the Comintern's actions and policy in Cuba to gauge its motives and capabilities, and found themselves more than a little scared of the sheer magnitude of the resources the International could muster at such short notice and the near inhuman efficiency with which the International Labor Battalions operated, doing work that should take months in mere weeks as roads were repaired, public transport updated and cybernetic infrastructure was set up as a remnant of the Cold War was brought into a post-capitalist age with a speed that was proving disorienting to the island's now stillborn capitalist and elite classes.
A new chapter was beginning in the history of Cuba in both worlds, marked not just by the worldmerge but by the passing of legends; the two Fidel Castros both passed away months after managing Cuba's transition to Comintern membership.
Dewey Denied Castro would pass away on December 11th of the worldmerge year while his Long March counterpart survived into the seventh month of 2017 before joining his double (though not before surviving one last assassination attempt).
| Even legends must die to make way for the future |
….Who needs enemies
"People will die young but it will be fun. We will burn the corpses of the heroes."--Edward Limonov
"We see no issue in dealing with you because you are a slave, as are all the other non-whites in the United States, the only difference between you and the original wretches dragged from Africa is that you are so well trained that chains and whips are no longer needed"—Sovrant Varga Kallio to President Barrack Obama
Like Dewey Denied Cuba, Freedonia was a nation that existed in a state of global siege and isolation when the worldmerge began; though the world of the long march had very good reasons to shun the post-American state.
The so-called labor republic was a nation that celebrated every historical atrocity and sin of humankind and updated them to a form that could persist in the modern age, even if barely in a world dominated by communism and its emancipatory politics, and made no secret of its wish to not only continue doing so (despite also professing to be socialist) but to actively exterminate or enslave those it deemed lesser as evidenced by the now infamous E-day countdown.
As such the Comintern expended every possible effort to contain and strangle this blight upon the world (open war not being an option thanks to the LRF's nuclear arsenal) from arming rebel groups and dissidents, running smuggling operations, destroying infrastructure, denying resources and refusing any diplomacy and contact, even to the point of refusing to bolster Freedonian environmental protection and reconstruction programs at the apartheid's state's own request.
To the Comintern all of the above was the only remotely sane response to a state whose elites paraded around with child bride harems and kept millions in a state of de facto slavery for no other reason other than petty spite, unfortunately however many in the new world had a different view of these events.
To many observers outside the long march timeline, Freedonia was either a besieged bastion of liberty forced into making difficult decisions by the reality of communist dictatorships triumphing all over the world or a state that was maligned by a relentless propaganda machine that distorted and exaggerated every aspect of what was likely a normal liberal democracy (a view that was helped by the fact that Freedonian society had many absurd beliefs and practices in ways both hilarious and horrifying), and most disturbing were those who believed everything the Comintern said about Freedonia but only saw every single crime against humanity as another reason to support the heir of humanity's dark ages.
None of these opinions, however, mattered when it came to Washington's decision to open relations with Jefferson in the aftermath of the Hanoi conference's failure to produce a favorable arrangement for American interests.
Oh there were sympathizers to Freedonia within the edifice of the Federal government and military for one reason or the other, but the bedrock of the then nascent Freedonian-American partnership was grounded in mercenary pragmatism: the US (and its NATO/OCED allies to a lesser degree) needed a foothold in the Long March world and it needed it yesterday with the threat of a globally entrenched socialist world order being something that was unprecedented and existential for a neoliberal hegemony predicated in part upon the notion of their being no alternatives.
One may think that the Pacific State would be a more palatable option on the surface but the third post-American state was far too independent-minded and economically powerful to neatly fit within a world order with room for only one superpower (and the US already having a hard time containing the PRC and its entanglement in the global economy), while Freedonia was seemingly more subservient and economically threatening even if the nightmare republic retained enough industry to be a formidable addition to the US' economic sphere and offered the potential of a new market for the ever hungry capitalist class.
On Freedonia's end, the benefits were both more and less obvious: on the former front they gained a powerful patron to shield them, access to a new global support network, and the potential for help in keeping their restive "surplus" population in line.
Sure Washington's market fetishism and the demands that came with it were a hurdle but not an insurmountable one as evidenced by the Chinese of the DD world, and the Freedonians fully believed in their ability to eventually sway the political consensus in their favor.
Even the alter USA's seeming commitment to racial and gender equality was not alienating to the Freedonian elites (or at least not enough of them), the dark Marxists and national Bolsheviks accurately assessing that behind the curtain of progress the America of Jim Crow and Manifest Destiny not only survived but thrived under new guises, with Europe being little better in their eyes.
Indeed, as evidenced by internal memos and proclamations, the Freedonians saw in the world where the Nazis lost a second chance to forge a world of many sister white labor republics; one who they believed the foundations for had already been laid and merely needed to properly built upon.
This was why the Freedonian Sorvant Kallio, a man whose rise to power began with pioneering the Reservation system, saw no problems in publicly shaking hands with America's first black president even as he seemed to delight in mocking his far more powerful counterpart in ways both subtle and unsubtle (knowing that the calculus of politics ensured that there was backing out for the Americans).
For their part the Americans knew of Freedonia's dreams and aspirations but thought little of it; they were hardly the first or last abominable regime that the land of the free had happily got in bed with, and like all the others Freedonia would be used as needed but kept on a leash and probably made to reform to something more publicly acceptable once it ensured its obsolescence, with a few even entertaining the notion of a post-Comintern collapse Freedonia being incorporated into the United States.
Of course, all of this rested on many assumptions, from the US intelligence agencies' belief in their country's continued competence and President Obama's confidence in Hilary Clinton's victory and ability to keep America's newest monster in line.
| So many un hatched chickens counted |
"Humanity can learn from those who have broken their chains. Those who have chained humanity for centuries cannot teach humanity anything."—Castro
"I look at these labor brigades and I feel grateful and impressed, how can you not be when they fix up the water pumps, refurbish the town school, and set up drone deliveries in a single week? But I also can't help but feel dread because my mind can't help but ask what disasters made them necessary to begin with"—Dewey Denied, a Cuban Citizen in an interview with Redworld.
Of the nations in the Dewey Denied world, by far the most to profit from the event known as the worldmerge was the republic of Cuba.
Before the sole socialist bastion in the western hemisphere was increasingly isolated and being strangled by a spite-fueled embargo and sanctions regime spearheaded by the world's hyperpower throwing the geopolitical equivalent of a hissy fit over the Cuban people not laying down and dying like good little colonial subjects and daring to want something better.
The Cuban people would manage to do well with the hand dealt to them, despite the hardships and suffering brought on by the special period and the severing of most of its economic ties to the world, managing to establish a respectable scientific sector and a healthcare system whose success would always embarrass that of its supposedly richer and more advanced nations.
But the seemingly inevitable march of marketization was already establishing beachheads within the island, with America's seeming loosening of restrictions only hastening the erosion of Cuban state control over the economy, even as it became that liberalization was only worsening pre-existing problems.
In another time, this slow pitiful decline of a nation that dared dream and had given its all for the cause of universal liberation might have continued unabated, the vultures circling closer every day as they dreamed of inflicting upon Cuba the same social mass murder they inflicted in Chile, Russia, Iraq and practically the entire globe to build new obscene fortunes from mountains of corpses.
It is enough to drive all but the most staunchly materialistic socialist to hope for a miracle.
And to the shock of everyone, a miracle did happen as the worldmerge utterly changed the status quo and flipped the script over a story that might have been tragic.
The opening of relations between Iskandaria and Havana was almost immediate once the confusion of the worldmerge cleared , the former eager for any foothold in this strange world that was both wonderful and nightmarish at the same time while the latter was simply grateful and desperate for any sort of lifeline that didn't also involve cutting its own veins; which they would receive and then some.
To the long marchers, Cuba was both a pleasant surprise (after witnessing what total global Schlafyism looks like, and the disgusting mockery of leftist ideals that was "socialism with Chinese characteristics") and a depressing insight into just how low Actually Existing Socialism has fallen.
everyone agreed that it was unacceptable that a fellow socialist traveler, much less a nation that was in another world would have been a founding member of the Comintern be left in such a state, and as soon as proper agreements and arrangements in place (helped by the personal interference of both versions of Fidel Castro) aid began to flow in unimaginable quantities to the world's seventeenth-largest island.
The Cuban government now found itself in a position where everything it could ever need was being delivered on a silver platter and then some as the resources of an entire world were marshaled to its economic rescue, with everything from Bharati food shipments, Chinese labor volunteers, state of the art medical supplies/equipment, modular housing, agricultural facilities and more being delivered to Havana, the process made much easier by the still poorly understood effects of the glide.
Indeed sailors, pilots, and native Cubans on both sides of the divide found inducing "folds" within the bizarre phenomenon to be much easier once DD Cuba formally obtained Comintern membership, leading to the largely undisproven claim that the glide seems to be influenced somehow by human geopolitical alliances and political ideologies, which only further confounded scientists regardless of affiliation and would inspire a veritable flood of amateur theories on both the Inter- and Com- nets.
Regardless of the exact mechanisms, the ease of transport would only hasten Cuba's planned reconstruction as International reconstruction experts now worked in tandem with Havana officials to map out how to revitalize the island's infrastructure and economy, the former having mixed feelings about their field gaining relevance once more just as it was increasingly becoming obsolete in their native reality.
Along with reconstruction, there was also the opening up of the two cubas to one another and the sheer difference between the two was more than a little disconcerting for both, one was predominantly Hispanic, relatively conservative socially, and having to be self-sufficient while the other was International, cosmopolitan (and in the middle of a Taino cultural revival), interconnected, queer embracing and had the privilege of a global economic network to support it, and the Comintern's more esoteric elements that showed up to help such as the multitude of fleet communes and gift flotillas only served to stun and stupefy the Dewey Deniers even more (especially when one fleet was accompanied by its dolphin non-human citizens).
There were clashes and misunderstandings but thankfully the process was peaceful and productive for the most part, even with minor protests over Cuba's rabid relaxation of anti-LGBTQ+ laws so that it may qualify for International assistance and membership; though this seemingly minor hiccup would be merely the beginning of a long chain of events and debates that would question the uneven power dynamics between the new socialist bloc and its prospective allies in the new world along with the question of how to better effectively ensure social progression in a world still largely trapped in 20th-century social mores.
And of course, this new partnership didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the Dewey Denied world, who of course went through with the usual denunciations and tightened sanctions (along with condemnation of Comintern "red colonialism and denial of self-determination"), the Obama's administration scrambling to pre-empt accusations of being soft on Cuba and communism in general by ending any possibility of a dentente and thaw with Cuba and nullifying any prior agreements to that effect; even as it proved utterly ineffective in silencing the GOP's and broader conservative movements, instead galvanizing to demand even more as the elections loomed ever closer.
The global socialist bloc of course had its own answers to its neoliberal counterpart's accusations, quickly remarking on the Dewey Denied world's abundance of conflict zones, disease hotspots, poverty, continuing famine, colonial exploitation, environmental degradation and other issues that were left unaddressed despite the Cold War being over, and that was before talk began about the misfortunes that the Washington consensus did not see as a problem at all but features.
And beneath all the subtle and not-so-subtle barbs and proclamations the likes of NATO, the PRC, and others were keenly observing the Comintern's actions and policy in Cuba to gauge its motives and capabilities, and found themselves more than a little scared of the sheer magnitude of the resources the International could muster at such short notice and the near inhuman efficiency with which the International Labor Battalions operated, doing work that should take months in mere weeks as roads were repaired, public transport updated and cybernetic infrastructure was set up as a remnant of the Cold War was brought into a post-capitalist age with a speed that was proving disorienting to the island's now stillborn capitalist and elite classes.
A new chapter was beginning in the history of Cuba in both worlds, marked not just by the worldmerge but by the passing of legends; the two Fidel Castros both passed away months after managing Cuba's transition to Comintern membership.
Dewey Denied Castro would pass away on December 11th of the worldmerge year while his Long March counterpart survived into the seventh month of 2017 before joining his double (though not before surviving one last assassination attempt).
| Even legends must die to make way for the future |
….Who needs enemies
"People will die young but it will be fun. We will burn the corpses of the heroes."--Edward Limonov
"We see no issue in dealing with you because you are a slave, as are all the other non-whites in the United States, the only difference between you and the original wretches dragged from Africa is that you are so well trained that chains and whips are no longer needed"—Sovrant Varga Kallio to President Barrack Obama
Like Dewey Denied Cuba, Freedonia was a nation that existed in a state of global siege and isolation when the worldmerge began; though the world of the long march had very good reasons to shun the post-American state.
The so-called labor republic was a nation that celebrated every historical atrocity and sin of humankind and updated them to a form that could persist in the modern age, even if barely in a world dominated by communism and its emancipatory politics, and made no secret of its wish to not only continue doing so (despite also professing to be socialist) but to actively exterminate or enslave those it deemed lesser as evidenced by the now infamous E-day countdown.
As such the Comintern expended every possible effort to contain and strangle this blight upon the world (open war not being an option thanks to the LRF's nuclear arsenal) from arming rebel groups and dissidents, running smuggling operations, destroying infrastructure, denying resources and refusing any diplomacy and contact, even to the point of refusing to bolster Freedonian environmental protection and reconstruction programs at the apartheid's state's own request.
To the Comintern all of the above was the only remotely sane response to a state whose elites paraded around with child bride harems and kept millions in a state of de facto slavery for no other reason other than petty spite, unfortunately however many in the new world had a different view of these events.
To many observers outside the long march timeline, Freedonia was either a besieged bastion of liberty forced into making difficult decisions by the reality of communist dictatorships triumphing all over the world or a state that was maligned by a relentless propaganda machine that distorted and exaggerated every aspect of what was likely a normal liberal democracy (a view that was helped by the fact that Freedonian society had many absurd beliefs and practices in ways both hilarious and horrifying), and most disturbing were those who believed everything the Comintern said about Freedonia but only saw every single crime against humanity as another reason to support the heir of humanity's dark ages.
None of these opinions, however, mattered when it came to Washington's decision to open relations with Jefferson in the aftermath of the Hanoi conference's failure to produce a favorable arrangement for American interests.
Oh there were sympathizers to Freedonia within the edifice of the Federal government and military for one reason or the other, but the bedrock of the then nascent Freedonian-American partnership was grounded in mercenary pragmatism: the US (and its NATO/OCED allies to a lesser degree) needed a foothold in the Long March world and it needed it yesterday with the threat of a globally entrenched socialist world order being something that was unprecedented and existential for a neoliberal hegemony predicated in part upon the notion of their being no alternatives.
One may think that the Pacific State would be a more palatable option on the surface but the third post-American state was far too independent-minded and economically powerful to neatly fit within a world order with room for only one superpower (and the US already having a hard time containing the PRC and its entanglement in the global economy), while Freedonia was seemingly more subservient and economically threatening even if the nightmare republic retained enough industry to be a formidable addition to the US' economic sphere and offered the potential of a new market for the ever hungry capitalist class.
On Freedonia's end, the benefits were both more and less obvious: on the former front they gained a powerful patron to shield them, access to a new global support network, and the potential for help in keeping their restive "surplus" population in line.
Sure Washington's market fetishism and the demands that came with it were a hurdle but not an insurmountable one as evidenced by the Chinese of the DD world, and the Freedonians fully believed in their ability to eventually sway the political consensus in their favor.
Even the alter USA's seeming commitment to racial and gender equality was not alienating to the Freedonian elites (or at least not enough of them), the dark Marxists and national Bolsheviks accurately assessing that behind the curtain of progress the America of Jim Crow and Manifest Destiny not only survived but thrived under new guises, with Europe being little better in their eyes.
Indeed, as evidenced by internal memos and proclamations, the Freedonians saw in the world where the Nazis lost a second chance to forge a world of many sister white labor republics; one who they believed the foundations for had already been laid and merely needed to properly built upon.
This was why the Freedonian Sorvant Kallio, a man whose rise to power began with pioneering the Reservation system, saw no problems in publicly shaking hands with America's first black president even as he seemed to delight in mocking his far more powerful counterpart in ways both subtle and unsubtle (knowing that the calculus of politics ensured that there was backing out for the Americans).
For their part the Americans knew of Freedonia's dreams and aspirations but thought little of it; they were hardly the first or last abominable regime that the land of the free had happily got in bed with, and like all the others Freedonia would be used as needed but kept on a leash and probably made to reform to something more publicly acceptable once it ensured its obsolescence, with a few even entertaining the notion of a post-Comintern collapse Freedonia being incorporated into the United States.
Of course, all of this rested on many assumptions, from the US intelligence agencies' belief in their country's continued competence and President Obama's confidence in Hilary Clinton's victory and ability to keep America's newest monster in line.
| So many un hatched chickens counted |
