Reds! Official Fanfiction Thread (Part Two)

[Miss Teri]

This is the second Fanfiction thread for the Reds! Timeline. Due to certain circumstances, the updates for the first one could not be threadmarked, making it hard to find and catalog the pieces written .

Thus, it is necessary to create a second thread in order for updates to the author's liking to be threadmarked. @Jello_Biafra , @The_Red_Star_Rising , and myself will be curating this new thread, and will threadmark updates that we feel are consistent, or at the very close, with the canon or plans that we have.

If you are unfamiliar with this timeline, here are a few links to catch you up to speed:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/reds-a-revolutionary-timeline-special-edition.168330/
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-great-crusade-reds-part-3.270711/
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/a-red-dawn-american-revolution-and-rebirth.148698/ (Note, a lot of the stuff in this particular link has been retconned, so proceed with caution)
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/reds-fanfic.341837/

A couple rules:
- As always, be respectful in discussion, and try to avoid personal remarks.
- Keep the discussions on topic. Do not derail the thread with random tangents or topics unrelated to the timeline.
- Nothing specifically geopolitically related in regards to the Cold War, except stuff explicitly stated in canon at the moment. Local politics is allowed
- If you want to make a fake discussion thread, please follow the same rules of communication and discourse that other forums follow. Also stick within revealed canon.
- An update will be threadmarked at the author's discretion.

With all that said, have fun, go wild, and we are looking forward to reading all the wonderful stuff that people will write for this.

Oh, and for a list of all the pieces on the previous thread, here is a list compiled by @Nevermore (very special thanks to him), with some additions afterwards by yours truly

Because I'm an insane person, I've compiled every in-universe update that this thread has under one convenient list that isn't a thread conversation (with the exception of stuff from the TL's creators). You're welcome, damnit.
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Two Minutes to Midnight
Man Conquers Space
Reign of the Supermen
Comics
A conversation with grandma (pt. 1)
More comics
A conversation with grandma (pt. 2)
A conversation with mom
Rise and Revolt: Blue Alert!
Star Squadron
Rise and Revolt: Blue Alert! 2
The Scientific Rebel
Reign of the Supermen (pt. 2)
The Blue Alert Thread
Beyond the Horizon (pt. 1)
The Blue Alert Thread (pt. 2)
The Blue Alert Thread (pt. 3)
The Blue Alert Thread (pt. 4)
Entertaining Comics
Reign of the Supermen (finale)
Comics in the Golden Age
The Cultural History of the Second World War
"Why is Rhodesia Still There?"
A Science of the Mind
A Science of the Mind (pt. 2)
At the Mountains of Madness
Blue Alert 2 Intro
The Life of Howard Stark
King Kong Redux
Après L’Empire
Uncle Sinclair's Strange Views
History of Rapture (pt. 1)
The Mutant Liberation Front
History of Rapture (pt. 2)
Justice League of Avengers
Updated UASR emblem and WWII-era agitprop
SEU emblem
A Science of the Mind (pt. 3)
Dolla, dolla bills
ANC logo
The Brotherhood of Nod
The Man with the Golden Gun
SEATO and the Greater Indian Commonwealth
UASR Party Breakdown Expansion
AHC: What if Salgado's Troops Less Brutal?
Revolt against the Night
Red Emma
Donald Duck: Fowl of the People
Casino Royale
Star Squadron through the ages
In the grimdark future there is only franchise speculation
Revolutionary Road
Political parties of the Greater Indian Commonwealth
Ancient Aliens
Sci fi franchise musings
Fallout: San Angeles
The 88th Academy Awards
Rise & Revolt: Blue Alert 2 installation process
An Ocean and a Heart Apart
Alternate Alternate History (BWAAAM)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
WFRA Rank Insignia
WFRA Navy Rank Insignia
More Alternate Alternate History
Stranger in a Strange Land
Liberty for All
FN Model 1939/1941 Self-Loading Rifle
Gundam speculation with corroboration by Jello
Go, Mighty Atom!
The May Day Revolutionary Marathon
Kaiserreich TV Tropes
Book Talk with Douglas Adams
The Hell Hound Bays at Midnight
The Franco-British War against Horror
American Horror
Byzantium
Warhammer Fantasy: The Resurrection of Nagash
The Americans
Soviet Horror
History of the Women's Liberation Union (pt. 1)
Mirage Men
Walt Disney: An Animated Life and update
Walt Disney: An Animated Life (pt. 2)
The Rhodesians are at it again
Nuclear Fission Research
Atoms, Missiles, and Monsters: Nuclear Physics and Popular Culture
Marvels
Pan's Kingdom
Netaji: The Life and Struggles of Subhas Chandra Bose
"William Zebulon Foster"
Centauri-1
Comics in the USSR (pt. 1)
Sh*tty Miracles: The Legend of The Legend of Johnny Birch
Anti-Reaction Movie Night Classics
Ditto for the above
Comics in the USSR (pt. 2)
Comics in the USSR (pt. 3)
Nova Havana
The Planet of the Apes
Storytime with Mr.E
The Legend of Johnny Birch (pt. 2)
The History of the Society
Revolutionary songs for a revolutionary era
Tarzan, John Carter, and the Revolution
Horror movies from Mr.E
A History of the All-Negro Comics Collective
Civ I leaders
Buddhist themes in the work of Steve Ditko
One, Two, Three
Hotel Habana
Tachanka
Red Something
I Remember Babylon
Touhou Hijack
Comrade Smith Goes to Moscow
Weapons of "The Final Conflict" AH thread
The DNA Wars
The Crystal Ship
The Paul Robeson Show
What is Family?
USSL West and East Standings c. 2016
The Tenth Year
The Yule Season
08/08/88
The Second Avenue Subway: A Train for The Workers
Captain Ultra
Colonel Columbia
Major League Baseball in the UASR
Differences Between Brooklyn Code and KC Code Baseball
Workers' League 2016
Fallout: Paradise Isles
Waververse Major Characters (pt. 1)
The Haymarket Revolutionary History Museum: A Brief History
Internationale Film Collective
Fantastic Four
Richard C. Brown and the Universal Christian Community
Crossed by Garth Ennis
Vampire: The Masquerade
Star Run
The Iron Man Corps
The Unusual Origins of Maccabean Hanukkah
The Killing Crow
Columbia
Canada First
The Greatest Gift
Maggie Pie Corporation
Psycho
Battlefield Earth
The Infiltrators
Divided by Border, Separated in Spirit
First King: Original Sin. A waververse story
More Waververse villains
Info Wars
National Radio Service Stations
The Infiltrators sequel
AHL and CHL Standings 2016
Emile DuMont
Two Tales of Love and Treachery
Cinderella
Miami
Call of the Proletariat
The True Story of Maggie Pie and Richard Finlay
Dogmatism in Science Fiction
New Horizons
Only Watch if You Have Collateral
Derry's: The Fall and Rebirth of American Chocolate (Part Two)
Alcoholics of the World, Unite! A history of American Microbrewing (Part One)
Two Tales of Love and Treachery (pt. 2)
Blue Alert 2 world map
Puli
The Miracle Worker
Political parties of the GDR
Call of the Proletariat Campaign Outline
Political parties of the Polish People's Republic
Call of the Proletariat II: Global War
Political parties of the People's Republic of Bulgaria
Political parties of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Political parties of Hungary
Denver
Political parties of the Romanian People's Republic
Political parties of Yugoslavia
Rethinking The Family: The Rise of The Kollontaian Community
Higher Education in the UASR
Political parties in Cuba
Political parties of the People's Republic of Albania
Political parties of the Federation of Rhodesia-Nyasaland
Political parties of the Socialist Republic of Japan
A Lullaby of the Stars: A Waververse story; part 1
Buddhism in the UASR
AH.com Rogues Gallery
Sun of Red Desert
The Curse of Freedom: The Black Easter Massacre turns 25
The Candle That Burns Bright
How The West Was Lost: The Story of Dean Reed's Sand Creek
The Holocene Calendar
The Comedians
Black Easter and the Birth of Independent Soviet Media
A story piece by Mr.E
Whatever Happened to the Million Dollar Baby?
Horror from Behind the Curtain - American Black Metal
Orion's Belt
I'd Like to Teach the World
Daily Worker's Book Review
MST3K Segment by The Red Iron Chef
Letters Home by Kirtida Ritu Patil
Great Rivalries of The Rugby Union World with Bryant Gumble: Spartacus and Belgravia
In-universe military quotes
Letters Home by Kirtida Ritu Patil (pt. 2)
People's Hockey League
Another MST3K interlude
Letters Home by Kirtida Ritu Patil (pt. 3)
Requiem for an Electric Man
International Futurology Conference and A Grape in the Sun
Illicit Trade Between UASR and Cuba Continues to Grow
AH.com membership list
The Red Wombat: The Kevin Conrad Story
Women from the Country of Soviets - Women's Press on the eve and after the Cultural Leap
List of PBS stations in the UASR
Dr. Strangelove, Or How to Stop World War III Without Really Trying
The War Game
Sarkar
1963
Privilege
The Death Factory
Goodbye Capitalism
Political parties of the Mongolian People's Republic
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Satta Turns Twenty Five
The Gladiators, also known as The Peace Game
The Black Raven in Fiction
Organized Crime in the Post-War World, 1945-1995
Memoirs of the Red Turn
Political parties of West Germany
Kingmaker
A Lullaby for the Stars (pt. 2)
AH.com: The Official Culinary Thread II: The Second Helping
Political parties of the Empire of Brazil and an update
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 2)
Waververse: Coalition of Champions
Highland Jack
The Space Merchants
Superman and Columbia: Gods and Kings
An Interview with Samantha and Amanda Waver
Even more Waververse characters
A Very British Civil War
Ameaça Verde (Waververse)
The War That Time Forgot
You wouldn't believe it's the Waververse again
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 3)
Charge of the Ghadar Brigade: Indian Volunteers and militias during the Second American Civil War
Pesach Week: Schedule of Activities for University of Florida, Hillel Members
Red Heat
Futurist parties in the USSR
The Freedom and Liberty Guardsmen
Mystery Science Theater 3000", Episode 320 "Sinbad and the Roc"
American Romance Comics and the FBU
Sweet Dreams and Electric Lights
Samurai Tanooki
Love and Unity
Rebel, Rebel
Notable Quotes involving American Marines
60s American Romance Comics: Love and the Forest and The Happy Rangers
More quotes about American Marines
Cultural Trends in the UASR as Witnessed by Archie Comics
The Workers and Farmers Revolutionary Marines Dress Uniform
Time and Time Again
Four Queens
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 4)
Rivals in Love and War: Girl's Best Comics, post romance comics and some AFS reactions to the American romance comic genre
SPARTACUS/BELGRAVIA BRAWL!
Call of the Proletariat II: Unsung Heroes
Lodge and Ferris skit
Unexpected aspects of American society
A Red Sun Over Arizona
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 5)
Diary of a Southern Town
Fordlandia
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Marvel's The Punisher
Futuristic Dead End
Spies Like Us
The Fall of the ANCC and the Rise of Solaris
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 6)
The Veedback Music Society
Titans of Thrash: Peshmerga
World Cup 2006
Scarface
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 7)
Interview with Telos
Transformers
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 8)
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 9)
Mobile Suit Gundam
The Spirit of Compassion
Trainwreck: The Unauthorized, Uncensored History of the 2006 World Cup
The Man from Arctic Cola
The Wind Howls
Comics in 50s China: Passion of the Demon
Political parties of the FBU (expansion)
Contraband by Harry Green
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 10)
From Stalinist to Celebrity: Dissecting Lazar Kaganovich by Fyodor Berezin
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 11)
The International Space Bridge SETI Conference
A Compass, A Maple Leaf, and a Puck: A Story of Ice Hockey
Surrogate
The Cola Wars
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 12)
Excerpt from www.pbi.co.uasr/about_us/history
Americatown
HWBN
Speech Given by Former Irish Ambassador to the UASR Sean Fitzpatrick
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 13)
Body and Fascism - A Wide Look
Competing Ideologies!
Stars and Stripes: The Fall and Resurrection of 4th of July
Section Zero
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 14)
2015 - The impression of American fans from the performance of the group Xandria
Fair and Public: The Martin Fosher Story
The Testy Origins of the term "Red Turn", and How It Set Back Autism Research By Decades
The Camera
Red Cap
Captain Columbia concept model
More Waververse here and here
Interview with Samantha Waver and Stan Lee: 2015
Tage des Hungers (Hunger Days) TV Tropes page
Fear and Hope: The Okotoks Siege
Waververse characters continued
TRSR is trying to kill me
Holidays in Hell by Kirtida Ritu Patil
Irish political parties and more
Dawn of the Dead
Hearts of Iron IV mod post (may be relevant for in-universe RTS games)
Conservative Time Bombs in Soviet Children's Tales
Utopia for the Children
Havana Vice intro
Memoirs of the Red Turn (pt. 15)
Aristotle Island franchise
Are We Alone in the Universe?
Dom Pavlova
The Plot to Bring Worker's Revolution to Rhodesia- With American Movies and Russian Snack Food
The end of the North American Border Guard
Quotes about the Second Cultural Revolution
Toronto Worker's Book Review
Havana Vice
Political parties of Turkey and junior parliament members
The Free American State: The Grim Story of American Nazis (pt. 1)
Legend: The Life of Japanese Communist Akiro Nakamura
Quotes on subversive messages in film
The Free American State: The Grim Story of American Nazis (pt. 2)
Britannia Falls
Adapting Oceania
The Free American State: The Grim Story of American Nazis (pt. 3)
The Free American State: The Grim Story of American Nazis (pt. 4)
Planet of the Amazons
Common Baby
Worldwar by Harry Turtledove (pt. 1)
Worldwar after the Peace of Cairo
Exile-in-Chief: The Tale of Herbert Hoover
Moscow Nights: How Rock'n'Roll Invaded The USSR by Boris Ivanovich
Muhammad Ali intro
Soccer World Cup hosts and winners
An Intro to Jack Stern and Sternology
Smedley Butler's War Is A Racket: Fighting the wars for big business
UASRballs
Flag of the Franco-British Union and Latin Confederation
The Life and Death of Emile DuMont
Caesar
Jack Stern in The Land of the Tiger King
Werewolves: The Rage
Johnny Alucard
1942
Former Russian President Alexander Kerensky Gives Conciliatory Speech at Winter Palace on the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Predictions on the People's Alliance leaders for the FBU
Reds! version of Kaiserreich
In-universe AH map for "Last War of Abraham"
Top 10 Musicals of the Great White Way
The Prince and the Sweeper
Leaders of the Progressive National Party in Arabia
Proposal For Bering Underwater Tunnel Entering New Phase of Negotiations
Micheaux Studios
Tex Mex Towns
The Drama of Ideas and Alexandra Kollontai
Macaco movie
Hut ab, wenn du küsst!
The Comintern vs. 40k
The Harrington/Theisman Series by David Weber
The Brothers Green
An Imperial Revolution: America and Warhammer 40000
The Green Blair Mountain: How Coal Country Became A Model For Green Industries
Alcatraz Island: History
Political parties of the Greek Socialist Republic
When Red Chains Set Me Free: A Memoir of American Rehabilitation
Edward Teller: Doomsday Architect by Leonard Grayson
The Republic Survives (pt. 1)
The Republic Survives (pt. 2)
The Hunt for Harry Bennett
The Republic Survives (pt. 3)
The Republic Survives (pt. 4)
In the Shadow of Two Moons
The Goal of "Uplifting" Humanity: Remembering Cuba's Eugenics Program
The Republic Survives (pt. 5)
The Count from St. Petersburg
A White Ship Caught in a Red Maelstrom: The Life of H.P. Lovecraft
Allan MacArthur’s Great Escape
Youngest Living Veteran of the Second American Revolution Turns 100
The Republic Survives (pt. 6)
Warhammer fantasy lore
Ten Days that Shook the World
Reds: A Century of Communism - A PBS Mini-series
Lunatic right in the UASR
The Church of Jesus Christ, Imperialist
Factions in the Labour Party
World War II: The Revolution That Brought About Modern Mexico
The Taj Mahal
Anti-Red Protests Rage Across the Blue World
Anti-Catholicism in America Film
Hail Columbia! A television experience of the new era (pt. 1)
Mosleyite Wing of Labour Carries On
Truth, Justice, and Socialism
Ford v. Ford: A Father, A Son, and the Fate of the World by Alan Davidson
Gillespie
Members of Satbayev University Student Body Demand Removal of Stalin Statue
Lest the Heavens Fall: The Secretariat of Public Safety in the Second Cultural Revolution by Sean Gurstmann
From Red The Blue: Profiles of American Defectors
A Brazilian Ex-Pat To the Soviet Union Explains the Process of Red Immigration
Cuba and Venezuela: A Fraught Union by Miguel Assante
Parties of the People's Alliance and a ratio breakdown
The World is Yours!: a history of the Anglo-French "Scarface"
The Soviet Diaspora
The American Diaspora
Partisan alignment of FBU (English) newspapers
Quotes about the Cultural Leap
Famous quotes by Peter Shore
Vanguards: An Overview
More famous quotes about Peter Shore
Does a Good Deed Make Up For Serving A Bad Cause? The Debate Over "The Righteous Diplomat"
Capitalist and Socialist Worlds come together to aid struggling New Orleans
---

I think I may have carpal tunnel syndrome after all that so I hope it was worth it.

Some added since this was compiled:
Speed Racer as an Example of American Influence in Nippon following the Second World War
Media Mogul Ted Kennedy Dies at Age 77
Samurai Tanooki: Lunar Eclipse
The Jewish Renaissance
The Radical
Holidays in Hell by Kirtida Ritu Patil, Azad Hind Books, 2013 (2)
Cuban Immigration in 2017 at Lowest Level Since 1977
Commune of the Apes
The 1956 Miami Riots
Ghosts of Bogata
Neonacionalismo
What, Me Worry?
"Generalissimo Douglas MacArthur is Still Dead"
Comintern Cinema In the Early Cold War
Excerpt from "Christmas Around the World", a survey of Christmas traditions across the world, published 2009 (Travelogue Press, London)
The Tabloid Paradox: A Chink In the Puritanical Facade of the British
Red Air Force Finds Santa
An American Carol
"Sorkin to develop series on a deputy in the All-Union Congress set in the late 40's"'
Fall of the Vatican In Cuba: How the Last Bastion of Catholicism in the Americas Became So Antipathetic Toward the Holy See?
Political parties of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (part 1 of 3)
Political parties of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (part 2 of 3)
Political parties of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (part 3 of 3)
Excerpts from "Art in the First Cultural Revolution", generic art history textbook, c. 2003
Franco-British Party for the Advancement of Mankind/
Parti Franco-Britannique pour l'Avancement de l'Humanité
Pluto Demotion Causes Controversy in Strange, Unexpected Places
Mambo Film
Lord of the Manor
Fire Emblem: Tsar Dragon
Neo-Catharism
Reds! at the Olympics: Snippets
How My Trip to Debs Has Made Me Rethink The Strength of a Nation
Sergei's Science Club
The Coldest Continent: Two Antarctic Horror Films, Studied
97 Year Old Man Returns to His Hometown in Ukraine
The Soiling of the Hammer and Sickle (Published March 10, 1985)
The Great Stellar Voyage: The Story of Rhodesia's Secret Sci-Fi Propaganda Film
Quotes about Globalization and Telecommunications
Declassified Film from the Free American State Defines the Banality of Evil
The Search for the Reflex
The Salvador Miracle: What Turned a Central American Backwater Into the Region's Fastest Growing Economy
Martin Dies, Jr., Longtime Leader of the True Democratic Party, Dies at Age 79
Triple Entente - What if the FBU, UASR, and USSR United?
Andrei Gromyko, Lothar Bolz, and the Negotitations that Opened Eastern Europe
More Gundam AU ideas and other famous anime series
Excerpt from the article "Kadet secretary general booed off stage by Bolshevik Permas for proposing gun control! - Daily Mail editorial, 2014"
Mr. India
Tweets
Has East German Identity Evolved Into Something Too Alien For Its West German Counterpart? The Burgeoing Ostlander Movement Believes So.
Franco-British Science Fiction
Rubyverse character dossier
The Postal Clause
Even as the old Jewish Identity Fades in Berdichev, Another is Slowly Emerging in Leningrad
Quotes About UASR Youth
Andrew Miller
Comrade Helms censured for singing anti-British song to FBU delegation
Militia Mary
Quotes about the Quarrymen's first visit to the UASR
Origin of Species: a Retrospective Review
The final clash of the first war between Mendrogan the Conqueror and Columbia.
The Gift Shop
Siegfried and Columbia's second and final fight in the first [Columbia] film
Why didn't Japan surrender the same way Brazil did? And Could the Invasion of Japan Been Avoided?
An American in Moscow
Mr. India Vs. The Red Queen

 

[WotanArgead]

Politically incorrect Marxism or Passion for Luria
(From the publication of the Annual Almanac "Humanitarian Problems and Modern Natural History")​

For the modern science of the countries in transition to the communist stage of development, the relationship between Dialectical Materialism and Natural Sciences has long been a stumbling block for local scientists. It is also known how far the whole world can enter a dispute between philosophy, science, and politics (although remember the ban on teaching the theory of evolution in pre-revolutionary America). Because of this, some scientific (or pseudoscientific) statements are accompanied by loud scandals and excesses, sometimes lasting for decades. One example of this is the reaction to the research of Alexander Romanovich Luria. But first things first.

Alexander Romanovich Luria (July 16, 1902, Kazan - August 14, 1977, Moscow) is a Soviet psychologist, founder of Soviet neuropsychology, an employee of Lev Vygotsky and one of the leaders of Vygotsky's circle.
Professor (1944), doctor of pedagogical sciences (1937), doctor of medical sciences (1943), full member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR (1947), member of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (1967), is one of the prominent Soviet psychologists, pedagogical activity.

Luria was a convinced Marxist, who tried to connect the psychological theory in various ways with the dialectical materialist interpretation of human existence. Being a disciple of Vygotsky, mentioned above, Luria shared with him the belief that social factors play an important role in the processes of shaping the human psyche. And like his teacher, Luria also faced political problems when he tried to spread his views about the social conditioning of human behavior on citizens of the Soviet Union. And yet he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party - in accordance with her political demands, and also with the development of his own scientific interests and views, he somewhat changed the emphasis in his scientific research.

Luria, Vygotsky, and another young psychologist at that time, who later became a well-known Soviet scientist. Leontiev formed the "troika" of young researchers who initiated the processes of reconstruction of psychology, following the views according to which "the origins of the higher forms of conscious behavior should be sought in the relations existing between the individual and the social environment surrounding him". According to Luria, Vygotsky was a "genius", as well as "the leading Marxist theoretician among us."

Representatives of the said "troika" described the principles of the new conception of psychology put forward by them as having "instrumental", "cultural" and "historical" character. Speaking about the "instrumentality" of these principles, they meant that the higher functions of man are not stimulus-reaction processes (as described by behaviorists and representatives of the Pavlov school), but rather certain "intermediate" reactions of the organism, in the process which generate their own stimuli. In other words, a person does not just react to stimuli offered by the experimenter, but modifies these stimuli. The simplest example is the case where, in order to memorize something, people tie a string around their finger or a "knot in memory" on the kerchief. Luria and his colleagues, in experiments with children aged 3 to 10 years, also managed to demonstrate many other examples when the external stimulus underwent much more complicated modifications.

Under the "cultural" nature of the principles of Luria's psychology, Vygotsky and Leontyev implied the fact that society makes a special kind of demands on a person, which have an important influence on his behavior. One of the best examples of cultural influence on human behavior is language or speech, whose great importance as a factor determining the development of thought, emphasized Vygotsky.

Speaking about the "historicity", the named scientists emphasized the inadequacy of a purely functional approach to psychology, the need to consider it in the socio-historical context. People who belong to different social classes and ethnic groups think differently. Oral and written speech is a product of evolution, and therefore it should be studied in the context of its socio-historical development, exploring its influence on the development of human thinking. It is obvious that the historical aspect turns out to be closely connected with the cultural one; as Luria wrote about this, "it is through the internalization of the historically and culturally conditioned ways of processing information that the social nature of man becomes, as well as his psychological nature."

Guided by these principles, in 1929-1930. Luria conducted and published a number of studies in which he analyzed the ways children develop speech, thinking and writing skills. Analyzing, in particular, the development of speech in children, he noted that "there is nothing surprising in that speech in children born to parents representing different social classes is developing differently," and also expressed the conviction that this difference, in turn, has an impact on the development of thinking of these children. Some of his publications were based on experiments conducted with children living in the city, the countryside, and also with homeless children. Carrying out experiments on the study of associative thinking in children from rural areas, Luria found that their associations reflect "unchanging and monotonous environmental conditions" in which these children grow and develop. In this regard, he noted that, "although a village child may think that the associations called by him are answers borrowed in his own head, in reality his environment was" spoken "by the environment surrounding him." Luria also discovered that some words have a "completely different meaning" for those children who were brought up in normal home conditions, and children who were brought up outside the home, the homeless. In addition, children who were brought up under different conditions demonstrated different attitudes towards other people, including psychologists who conducted the research. For example, homeless children were more distrustful and suspicious of experimenters than other categories of children. As a result of the studies Luria came to the conclusion about the "absolute absurdity of studying children outside the environment that formed them," and called for appropriate changes in the system of Soviet pedagogy.

In his article "Ways of developing children's thinking," published in 1929, in the journal Natural Science and Marxism, Luria tried to show that children's thinking passes through the following stages in its development: primitive thinking, formal thinking and dialectical thinking. The first stage, allocated by Luria, has much in common with the stage of "pre-speech thinking", the existence of which was justified by Vygotsky. When a child learns that every surrounding object has a name, and begins to speak, then under the influence of speech and language, changes gradually occur in his thinking as well - he begins to obey the laws of logic. Later development of the child's thinking reaches the next stage - the stage of "formal thinking", which is the result of the child's inclusion in "practical activity" and in "complex, active social relations" with the people around him. Then the child begins to realize that he has "his own concepts and concepts," begins to reflect on his own thoughts and thus enters the next stage - the stage of "dialectical thinking", which distinguishes the behavior of an adult. In the last two stages, the main influence on the formation of thinking is rendered by society, its language, the structure of production and other relations. For Luria it was obvious that people living in different historical epochs will have different ways of thinking, corresponding to different social conditions.

The emphasis on the existence of various dialectically intertwined stages was also characteristic for Luria's studies of the "prehistory" of the development of written speech in children. He was convinced that before learning to write, the child goes through the same stages through which the civilization passed before the writing was invented, the stage of pictographic and representative writing. The development of written speech, Luria writes, has a "dialectical" character, like the development of speech, "but the most profound dialectical originality of this process is, according to our observations, that the transition to a new method first discards the writing process far back, so that it in the future could develop at this new, higher level. "

Emphasizing the importance of the social environment for the formation of children's / psychology, Luria believed that he thereby applied dialectical materialism (which he regards as "the most important philosophy of the age") in psychology. However, at first, Luria did not realize that some of the judgments that he allowed, arguing on psychological topics, could have a political coloring in the conditions of the Soviet Union, which was due to a certain kind of complications. If, as Luria believed, social conditions are crucial for the formation of the human psyche, it follows that various social conditions form a different psyche. Luria and his colleagues decided to test their hypothesis regarding the role of the social environment by studying the psychology of people living in the regions of the Soviet Union, where living conditions differ from those of Moscow and Leningrad. Through psychological tests and interviews with people living in fairly primitive conditions, Luria and his colleagues wanted to establish whether their thinking differs from the thinking of people living in a modern city. From this point of view, the most successful regions were represented by Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan - those areas of the Soviet Union, which at that time had not yet been touched by the modernization processes. It was there that Luria and his colleagues went, wishing to realize their ambitious plans.

Luria and his colleagues went to those parts of Kyrgyzstan where the conditions of life were archaic and where women still lived as reclusive in the so-called "female half." These women were not allowed to speak with men, and therefore their survey was conducted by women who are part of the expedition of Luria. Muslim men were more free, but they were also completely illiterate.

Among the many tests that these people were subjected to, there was one related to the ability of people to classify objects. They were shown the following drawings, and they were asked to say what they look like:

As a result of interviews of illiterate Kyrgyz women living in remote villages, the following list of subjects was obtained, which they considered to be similar to the above pictures:

1. plate
2. Kibitka
3. Bracelet
4. beads
5. mirror
6. clock
7. stand under the boiler.

When a similar test was offered to Muslim women who lived in cities and went to school, the typical answers consisted of the names of geometric figures: circles, triangles, squares.

When Luria and his staff asked illiterate women to group these drawings on the basis of their similarity, they did so based on the specific functions that the objects associated with these drawings had. So, for example, numbers 1 and 7 were united by them because both the plate and the stand under the cauldron were used in the process of cooking, and 3 and 4 - because they served as decorations. Urban women combined these drawings according to the principle of their geometric similarity: 1 and 3 - the variety of the circle, and 2, 6 and 7 - the triangle. When the members of Luria's expedition asked illiterate women whether numbers 1 and 3 (that is, those drawings that city residents classified as a variety of circles) were negative, since in their view the plate did not look like a bracelet or ( in another version), the coin is not like the Moon.

On the basis of these data, Luria and his colleagues concluded that the existence of certain "universal laws of perception" (which some representatives of Gestalt psychology spoke of) seems very doubtful and that, on the contrary, "the categorical perception of objects surrounding a person is the result of historical development ways of processing information. " People with pre-capitalist thinking "do not distinguish a common feature inherent in one or another object, do not give it categorical significance," as more educated people do, but classify objects of the surrounding reality "in accordance with the relations that exist between these objects in real life".

Wanting to develop this method of analysis, Luria wanted to find out whether these "primitive people" have the capacity for logical thinking. Will they be able to understand the question formulated on the basis of the syllogism:
1. In the Far North, where snow always lies, all bears are white.
2. The new Earth is located in the Far North.
3. What color are the bears there?
According to Luria, most of the men and women interviewed by him answered this question in the following way: "I have never been to the North and have not seen bears" or "If you want to know the answer to this question, you should ask people who have been there and seen these bears. "

In this regard, Luria notes that "although our illiterate peasants can use objectively logical relations in their reasoning based on their own life experience, it can be confidently asserted that they do not possess syllogism as a means of logical reasoning ..." These and similar studies were carried out by Luria in the areas of Central Asia:

"... in all cases we recorded that changes in the forms of practical activity, especially in those cases when these changes were associated with obtaining formal school education, caused qualitative changes in the thinking of the subjects. Moreover, we were able to establish that these changes could occur in a relatively short time, provided there were sufficiently radical changes in the socio-historical conditions of their lives, as exemplified by the changes that followed the 1917 revolution. "

According to Luria, these psychological discoveries, made as a result of these expeditions, served as confirmation of the Marxist principle, according to which being determines consciousness, and not vice versa. However, for the most radical among the Soviet critics who assumed the dominant position in the early 1930s (at the time of great ideological battles and political passions), the discoveries of Luria and his colleagues were presented as based on an elitist ethnocentric approach, characterized by a disparaging attitude toward the representatives of the lower classes and ethnic groups. If the Muslim population of the Central Asian regions was illiterate and backward not only in terms of knowledge, but also in terms of the very way of thinking, could not the same be said of the Russian peasants and workers, many millions of whom remained at that time, still illiterate? Luria's answer to this question, which says that this situation can be quickly changed through the introduction of education and the use of the advantages of a socialist economy, could not prevent accusations directed at him that he was under the influence of bourgeois concepts. Under the latter were in mind mainly the concept of German anthropology, according to which all societies were distributed according to a certain scale of assessment, at the top of which were modern industrial societies, which in comparison with others have superiority not only in terms of material and technological, but also cultural and intellectual.

Soviet ideologists emphasized the attractiveness of Marxism for representatives of primitive, lower classes and non-Caucasian cultures because of which Luria failed to publish fully the results of these studies, and he turned to another field of research - neuropsychology. He did not return to this topic for a very long time.

In the late 60's, in connection with the softening of the Soviet regime, Luria decided to publish the full results of his research. To do this, he enlisted the support of Ilyenkov (a Soviet philosopher using Vygotsky's work for his constructs). As a result, the results of the research were first published in Russian, soon and in English. However, the moment for this event was again not the most favorable from the political point of view. The neo-Marxist and post-Marxist concepts of historical development gained momentum, and the political factions of the USSR and UASR tried to enlist the support of the anti-colonial movement (whose representatives could be at the feudal or even primitive communal stage of development). As a result, many such conclusions did not find understanding.

The first with public criticism of the results of the study was the well-known linguist and activist of the Communist Party (Liberation) Noam Chomsky. He wrote a detailed review where he argued that all people living in different societies have certain universal forms of thinking and logical concepts, referring to their work "Syntactic Structures" and to their idea of "universal grammar." Professor Luria gave this response an answer, where he wrote that despite a number of interesting provisions, many provisions are controversial, and that he "does not have the same general properties of human thinking as thinking of a biological species," and he called Chomsky's theory "unhistorical and non-Marxist."

Later, his comments were published by Immanuel Wallerstein - a famous American sociologist and political scientist. He considered the main defect of this research "mistakes that were the consequence of the staging of traditional Marxism." This statement received a response from the famous Soviet historians Yuri Semyonov and Boris Porshnev, who argued for the existence of certain stages in the development of the countryside (despite the fact that Semenov and Porshnev largely held opposite positions - for example, in describing the social structure of the Ancient Eastern Despotism).

The next blow to Luria's works (and not only him) was dealt by the "Green Revolution". After 1977, there were thousands of articles and reviews where such studies were criticized primarily as follows: "If the development of human speech is treated in this way, then the mind and animals should be denied." And then the supporters of Porshnev (already by that time he was dead), who joyfully exclaimed - "So it is!" Given the following provisions of his teacher:

1. There is a fundamental gap between man and all other animals.
2. Anthropogenesis is not an ascending process of gradual humanization of ape-like ancestors, but a sharp turn over the abyss, during which something appeared in nature, and then disappeared, fundamentally different from monkeys and people.
3. The "remnants of the past" in human behavior are associated not so much with the "monkey" inheritance, as with what arose in the process of anthropogenesis.
4. The thinking of man is not the development of methods of processing information existing in other animals, but a fundamental new formation.
5. The thinking of a person is primarily collectively and originally carried out by a network of brains connected by speech signals. Only with the development of society is formed individual thinking.
6. Human labor fundamentally differs from the work of a bee and a beaver in that a person first thinks and then does. This work is peculiar only to Homo sapiens. The work of Pithecanthropus and Neanderthals was like the work of a beaver, and not of a Homo sapiens.
7. Human - this isn't the biosocial, but completely social being.

In response to this, a number of activists of the Social-Ecological Union published the "Manifesto for the expansion of the rights of sentient beings endowed with consciousness." This manifesto was ignored by the Central Committee of the SEU, but was enthusiastically picked up by the Transhumanists. It came down to the fact that this topic began to be discussed at the political debate .....

Gradually the hot phase of this dispute has declined, but these issues are still of concern to the scientific community.

 

[Crunch Buttsteak]

Ashley Morgan @SocialismDestroysLives@Communism.Kills
Before my family moved to the FBU, the socialists in America stole my family’s factory, our houses, and even my family’s stables. My grandma lost her favorite pony and she still cried over it years later.

DEHUMANIZE YOURSELF AND YOUR FACE TO BLOODSHED
@major_league_pissball@metropolis.uasr
extremely fucked up how foster took my grandma’s pony.

Raul Kirk
@HavanaPatriot@United.States
My family lost their farm in the first civil war, and when we tried to rebuild, the Socialists took everything away from us again.

peperony and chease
@FakeGamerGirl@Witches.Coven
i can’t believe abe lincoln took his family’s slaves

Raul Kirk
@HavanaPatriot@United.States
Ever notice how the people who hate socialism the most are the ones who have actually lived under it?
Re: 12.7K RT: 537 Fav: 957

Com. Brace Belden
@PissPigGrandad@debsdeleon.uasr
.@HavanaPatriot@United.States I’m sure all those people living in socialist countries are totally secretly miserable and longing for a return to exploitative capitalism. Well done diaper boy you’ve cracked the great socialist secret.

 

[Bookmark1995]

This was inspired by Caspian Report, and its wonderful and eloquently presented videos about geopolitics.

This is meant to explore how the UASR, like anything nation, is forged by both geopolitics, geography, and historical events.

Black Sea Report-A Comrade's Guide to World Politics

Understanding the American Mindset

Harold Nixon

March 10, 2014

The Union of American Socialist Republics is a nation that is a symbol to many with its egalitarian political and economic system, a humanist attitude. But it is also a source of apprehension for its bellicose foreign policy.

To many Americans, these attitudes are a product of "American exceptionalism", a sign that American Marxism is the destiny of the rest of the world.

But like many nations, their mindset is a mixture of history, geography, and economics.

But what makes the American mindset so unique it that it is a relatively modern one.

The Old American Mindset

In the late 18th to the late 19th century, America was a nation that one could not consider a world power. America, since the days of George Washington, remained a mostly isolated, rural society.

Land gained from Native Americans and Westward Expansion allowed for mass settlement by land-hungry pioneers and resource hungry corporations. The resources in this period were abundant enough to provide for the needs of a mostly rural populace, and thus foreign intervention was never the interest of the politicians of this period.

Not to say that the American nation in this period never committed acts of foreign intervention (the Japan expedition, or the filibusters in Central America, the purchase of Alaska), but the American state had little interest in American politics.

The political parties of both periods, whether pro or anti-slavery, also held a strong belief in free enterprise and "invisible hand" ideology. It was in this environment that people tilled the soil, and where industry began its first nascent steps in New England-and later, the Midwest.

In many communities, churches were often the center of their communities. Their clergymen and preachers were often considered moral figures, and like William Lloyd, they often became members of their communities.

Hawaii and the Beginnings of Late Capitalism

By the 1890s, however, America was beginning to end its Washingtonian neutrality, and rise to world power status. The growing industrial economy began to seek out more resources and markets as the American frontier closed. Slowly but surely, America began taking tepid steps toward imperialism.

The overthrow of the Hawaiian government by US sugar interests in 1893 and its annexation by America just five years later, marked the beginning of America as the nation that-like European empires-would begin to exert its influence on the world stage to defend capitalist business interests. The Hawaiian annexation was soon followed by other conflicts fought to defend America's economic and growing strategic interests: the Spanish American War, the Filipino War, and the numerous interventions in South America on behalf of United Fruit and other conflicts were begun to defend America's commercial ties, and ensure access to cheap resources and labor.

Also American business was reaching heights never before seen in the environmental of so-called "laissez-faire". Large corporate groups, known as trusts, had taken over entire industries, like oil and steel. The leaders of these trusts not only held not only vast wealth, but immense political political power to influence the ship of state.

The Capitalist Threat To Democracy, And the Birth of the Modern Political Tradition

The 1894 Pullman Strike, where the government had successfully intervened on behalf of a major corporation against thousands of workers, marked the beginning of the modern American mindset, that saw capitalism as an opposition to freedom. It was also the event that would mark the political rise of Eugene Debs, considered to be the intellectual godfather of the Union of American Socialist Republics, and the beginning of the unified socialist thought, when Debs and many of his contemporaries would use his experiences in the strike to found the Socialist Labor Party in 1898.

One popular answer to why America would be the second major power to fall into socialism is often described as the political culture. Unlike England, France, and other industrial nations, America was a nation supposedly forged by the ideals of the Enlightenment. The Constitution, while regarded as bourgeois, was indeed progressive in that it established that a nation is was not beholden to one man.

The growing imperialism of the American nation, and the tremendous wealth and power of the trusts created worries among many that the principals enshrined in the Constitution were under siege, and that few wealthy men were holding American democracy in a vice..

As the government continued to intervene, time and time again on behalf of capitalism and imperialism these fears pushed more and more people into socialism. Jack London's 1908 novel, The Iron Heel, considered the precursor to the modern dystopian novel, reflected the growing fears in society around this time period (after 1933, it was regarded as one of the most prescient books ever written) [1].

World War and the 1933 Revolution

The opening shot was the horrors of the First World War and the disgrace of the Bienno Rosso. The pointless death and futility of the First World War revealed to many people that the capitalist system would trade its own citizens for commercial gain. These figures, such as George Patton, would eventually became the first commanders of the UASR Army.

But the Bienno Rosso itself would prove that the government of We The People (as was the opening line to the Constitution) would outright decide the people had no say over their elected officials. In an instant, the words of socialism gained greater prominence.

The 1933 Revolution, the result of an establishment willing to subvert its own natural laws and institutions for political gain would be the final straw, the last thing that proved capitalists were in direct collision with human freedom.

The 1930s And the Birth Of The UASR Military Attitude

Even as parades and celebrations marked the fall of the capitalist America, the military brass of the new nation would not rest easy: nor would they EVER.

As stated, the American nation had been subjected to four decades of outrages and oppression, that culminated in a blatant seizure of power by a corrupt cabal of capitalism who sought to eviscerate their political rights for material gain. It was only by a hairs-breath that they avoided the nightmarish world imagined by Jack London.

This would leave America with a severe siege mentality. The UASR's notorious bellicosity was not merely born out of desire to spread revolution, but to defend a freedom that they felt always hung in the balance.

The geopolitical situation of the 1930s led credence to that. Across the Atlantic, Europe seemed to becoming a united fascist bloc. The growing threat of Nazi Germany and Italy and their increasingly expansionist policies, combined with the collaboration of Western democracies, implied that Europe would form a united bloc to crush the world revolution.

To the north, British Canada was arming itself and building up walls. To the south, MacArthur's government-in-exile and the European Caribbean possessions were preparing for a potential naval battle. On the South American continent, Brazilian Integralist, with British capital and exports, was building a terrifying war machine.

And to the East, the Japanese Imperial Army was viciously attacking and menacing the Pacific region, and seeking out trade ties with the European Colonial Empires, as well as Australia and New Zealand. But what was most frightening was that in the event of the invasion of Japan, the access to the Soviet Union would be serious. Soviet aid proved important, albeit not strategic in the success of the Revolution.

All around them, the UASR saw capitalists, whether fascist or "enlightened", as uniting to strangle their freedom and political.

In response, the UASR developed its modern strategy of creating a vast alliance of satellite nations that would provide not only raw materials but men as well. Through the 1930s, red nation building spread like wildfire across Latin America.

The goal of the UASR was not merely to uplift poor nations (a Red version of old imperial justification that civilization needed to spread to "lesser" races) to create allies and obtain resources needed in the war to defend American freedom.

World War II And Soviet American Aid

One of the greatest challenges of the Second World War had been the sending of supplies to the Soviet front. The vast distances and the threat U-Boats created a logistical situation almost as perilous as the Lake of Life had been for the brave souls trying to keep Leningrad from dying of starvation.

The desire to maintain an easy supply route for the Soviet Union was a major motivation for the Iranian coup. While couched in terms of "sparing the Iranian proletariat" it was a strategic move to ease -somewhat- the funneling of supplies.

It was the desire to ease the supply of goods to the Soviet Union that ultimately motivated the decision to invade Japan. Although the stated desire of the UASR was to end a Japanese tyranny that had ravaged East Asia (although that was certainly a desire) the other was to create a client state that would no longer interfere with America-Soviet supply lines.

The brutal end of Imperial Japan was on the surface about liberation, but in reality a pragmatic decision to ensure security across the Pacific.

The Cold War

When the end of World War II did not lead to hopes of lasting peace, as the interests of the colonial powers superseded their commitment to wartime promises. The continued imperialistic attitude of Britain and France, plus the new threat of capitalist India, and a still capitalist Brazil, have conspired to ensure the siege mentality of the UASR has stayed in place.

The horrors of Salgado, Tojo, and Hitler combined had shaken the American populace, which had seen its greatest ally horribly eviscerated. Everywhere it seemed, capitalist plots were seeking to subjugate the American people, who acted like a freed slave that feared anything that could put chains back on him or her.

To this day, the UASR and the USSR continue to fund Communism everywhere, and create satellite states that offer both men and resources for the eventual battle, but for the UASR, it is their belief in self-defense that leads to them continuously keep their finger on the button. And as long as both sides continue to hold nuclear weapons, this atittude will not change in the near future.

This not meant to justify the willingness of the UASR to rattle international tensions, but to merely explain that the UASR and its viewpoint are a product of a history of near tragedy.

 

[Miss Teri]

Special thanks to @Jello_Biafra for the suggestion, since I was trying to figure out what to write on China.

Shui (1994)

A documentary film exploring the development and launch of the Chinese Shui probe to Mercury, launch in 1992.

The film first shows how the mission was planned. The Chinese Aerospace Association (part of the International Aeronautics and Space Association of Communist International) first determines the orbital path of the craft around Mercury, how close the craft will approach the planet, and what it will study (the composition of its soil, its topography, and photos of its surface). The CAA and IASA then plan what rockets and what scientific instruments will be needed. Collaborations with other Comintern programs will provide the necessary instrumentation (camera, spectrograph, magnetometer, radiometer (for solar studies), Goddard-IV rocket)

The next part of the film shows how it is built, showing rocket tests, how the electronics are protected through aluminum, the rocket tests, and calculations.

The final part shows the launch of the rocket from the launch point in Xichang in Sichuan, and its move towards Mercury. After some tensions after brief electronic blackouts, the craft arrives in Mercury orbit, and begins transmitting data back to the CAA. The most notable discovery is the discovery of ice in the poles of the planet. The mission proves to be a unparalled success, and now being used to study the sun as well as the planet.

The film was release to critical praise, and a nomination for the Best Documentary at the Oscars and Venice Film Festival.

 

[The_Red_Star_Rising]

Rubyverse Character profiles:

(Picture related)

Mekmenschen: First seen in the 1940 film "Blood and Iron" , the Mekmenschen are a pair of robotic supersoldiers created by the German war machine to serve as the basis of a mass produced army to crush the United Nations. Unlike most robotic minions of the time, they were fully sapient and capable of introspection and meaningful conversation. Nicknamed "Hans and Fritz" by the OKW, the pair are so inseparable that they can be essentially considered one character; having been built with the intent of serving as a two machine fireteam. Raised from "birth" to have an undying loyalty to Fuhrer and Fatherland, the pair carried out the credos of Nazism with childlike glee and fanaticism. Hitler to them, was their father who needed their undying loyalty to defeat the evil that would take from them their home and deny them their place in the world. But most of the human Nazis had little love lost for the pair; ultimately considering them to be expendable facsimilies of life, servants of the true flesh and blood master race valued only as far as the amount of reichsmarks that went into them and the tremendous destructive power they wielded.

And tremendously destructive they were. Using technology from lost alien civilizations whose ships were shot down by the old gods, the pair were outfitted with technology that even the finest minds in the Axis Powers barely understood. With powerful annihilation cannons that could destroy mountains, motors that gave them the strength to crack the earth with a punch or throw an entire battleship and move too quickly for bullets to keep up to them, and armour so durable that even the spear Crimson could not be expected to regularly pierce it, they were weapons of mass destruction with the minds of highly intelligent but deeply indoctrinated children. And despite them being a monumental achievement in science and technology, albeit one that the Nazis themselves did little of their own work in, their only positive relationship was with the project lead Gesine Oswalt who "raised" them like her own children to the point that they still affectionately called her "Mother". Meanwhile, Hitler himself expressed his disdain for "artificial monstrosities who play at having a soul."

In their first film, they challenged Columbia and her friends to battle in the Amazon as part of a clandestine operation by the Comintern team to stop the Axis powers and Co-Prosperity Sphere from uncovering ancient alien ruins in the heart of the jungle that had been left to moulder since the prehistory of humanity, with Axis mystics planning to sacrifice the lives of uncontacted native tribes to power a ritual to fool the still functioning security mechanisms of the alien warship. To the surprise of all involved, the warships creators were the same as the original source of the technology behind the creation of the Mekmenschen; the Ukith people, who had sought to take over the Earth to gain an advantage in a war with the Akari Federation but had been shot down. The governing intelligence of the warship recognized the Mekmenschen as derivatives of the Ukith's machine men technology and with encouraging from Valiente asked to speak to them, isolating the powerful machines from the film's ostensible primary villain Doctor Emanuel Costa Arruda who had hoped to use the technology to allow Brazil to match and surpass America.

The Machines were left to go free with a number of questions in their heads; such as whether what they were doing was right. The governing intelligence had a lot to ponder over the course of more than ten thousand years and had itself come to the conclusion that the Ukith were in the wrong, and its conversation with Hans and Fritz poked a number of questions in their conviction that Hitler was their infallible father. However, the machines would be called back to Germany by the film's end for a dressing down by the Fuhrer for failing to help Hitler's other super agents protect Emanuel from the "damnable communists!" Throughout the wartime period of superheroes and "modern fantasy" as Waver called it, they would often feature in comic issues, cameo in films, appear in radio dramas, and make other forms of appearances, with their last wartime appearance being as part of the "Berlin defense force" in 1946's "Wolf's den" animated short. Though there they were just part of a task force of Siegfried, Fafnir, Doktor Vandal, Blitzsoldat and other Nazi Supervillains in Nazism's last stand.

After the war, they gravitated towards Siegfried's "Night Soldiers" unit that would continue the fight with or without Germany itself supporting them. However, in a film "Does metal dream?" written with significant input by Stan Lee in 1974 the two made a watershed moment in superhero history by renouncing Nazism after finally deciding that even the image of Nazism that they clung to out of a desire for a feeling of security and belonging was not worth holding onto. Though an enraged Fafnir attempts to destroy them for their betrayal of the Nachtsoldat unit; the two manage to fight them off with the help of Heart Guard and Sangadian and by the end of the film, apologize to and ask for forgiveness from Molotok and Ashevar (the former on a date with Amanda and the latter having a chat with them), even if they are just soulless machines, to which Ashevar informs them that just the fact that they can ask for forgiveness is proof of them having souls, though that still means that they have to take the long road of earning that forgiveness to atone for what they did under Hitler and then Siegfried's command. He then introduces them to Gesine, who even in her advanced age still considers them "her boys".

In the "primary" canon, the two would go on to largely live out peaceful lives, facing the issues of obsolescence as many aspects of their technology becomes increasingly taken for granted and they face a need to upgrade to remain as relevant as they once were, the still heavy distrust they face for their high profile roles in the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS and in Nachtsoldat, their diverging interests and personalities as they go through differing life experiences and their struggle to maintain their brotherly bond, and the difficulties faced by machines built solely for war in adjusting to civilian life. Sort of a commentary on how dated the more static elements of the Rubyverse had become decades after the world revolutionary war, and the issues faced by the "greatest generation" when their call to arms had become just another part of the cultural legend as well as the general struggle often faced by those sent off to war face upon returning home to a quiet life.

In the present, the two are curators for a holocaust museum and often teach other robotic characters how to deal with civilian life, and maintain their place of residence close to where Gesine was buried. It is only on rare occasions that they take physical action these days. Though they were once formidable matches for Columbia, she has long since surpassed them in physical might in no small part to their decision to cease focusing on their destructive abilities. Though certainly not light weights, they've accepted that in the situations that do call for their help, their strengths are suited to different tasks than their former nemesis.

In other timelines of the Rubyverse they are often still Nazis to whatever that timeline sets as the present, and not all adaptations not set in the primary canon try to adapt their arc of redemption; while others have substantially different takes on their move away from Nazism and the embracing of humanity even in spite of them being war machines engineered for absolute destruction. "Hail to Columbia" however, despite taking place in its own canon; already introduces them as reformed however, with its writers seeing no need to redo an arc that everyone is already quite familiar with.

 

[Miss Teri]

Excerpt from “The Cuban Mafia: A Comprehensive History”, Manuel Pareja, 1999


“Despite a rocky start, [Bugsy] Siegel and [Meyer] Lansky’s Caracas scheme paid off, and the investment made in casinos, hotels, and plantations became very profitable for the Mob. Caracas became the exotic vacation city through the 50’s, with tourists coming as far as London and Delhi coming to the city. It also became the Mob’s South American capital, with operations being carried out from their headquarters in the city. They began to infiltrate Brazil from this location.


In 1954, the “Caracas Conference” was held in the Hotel Tropical, presided by Lansky and [Vito] Genovese, which was used to reform the Commission (which still reflected the Mafia as it existed on the mainland before the revolution) into new Families, (representing cities like Havana, Santiago, Jamestown, and Caracas), and expand the drug trade into the Americas (heroin and cocaine among them), as well as attempt a return to the mainland using native criminal groups. Siegel also detailed his plans for continued growth in Venezuela using legitimate fronts, even get into the oil industry using drilling contractors and favors from the government of Marcos Perez Jimenez. The expansion of several Caracas casinos was also discussed.


[....]


In 1957[1], Benjamin Siegel disappeared from his penthouse suite. Investigators found that the room had been broken into, and an altercation had happened, suggesting he had been kidnapped. Neighbors had noted shouting and muffled sounds the night of his disappearance.


The unsolved disappearance and presumed death of Ben Siegel has become something of an urban legend, with many theories as to what had happened to him. The main focal point are two strange men who had checked into the hotel late that night, and checked out the morning afterwards. One witness saw two men walking from the surrounding jungle one morning.


Several suspects have been given for who ordered the death of Siegel. The Commission itself is often cited as the most plausible. Some, including Genovese and [Carlo] Gambino had concerns that his plans for expansion could be financially disastrous. Some theories say that Lansky himself ordered the hit. The two reportedly had a falling-out over revelations that Lansky had purposely left several associates (including “Lucky” Luciano and Siegel himself) behind as fall guys for the communists, while he safely escaped to Cuba. Siegel threatened to reveal this information. (Lansky denied all allegations, especially that he had betrayed friends and associates, or that he ordered Siegel’s assassination) Another cited Mafia figure is Jack Dragna, bitter that he was edged out of the organization in favor of Siegel, when the latter returned.


Other stranger, but plausible theories have also arisen. Some point to General George van Horn Moseley, former White general and the head of the NBI, the Cuban secret police, from 1953 to his death in 1960. Moseley and Siegel had been inmates together at Alcatraz during the 30’s and 40’s, and the anti-Semitic Moseley was a frequent target of assaults ordered by Siegel himself. Moseley was purportedly hurt that a “criminal, degenerate Jew” like Siegel could wield such power against him, and using his new position, was determined to take him down as personal revenge. As Director, he had used extralegal means to “disappear” Cuban political dissidents in a manner similar to Siegel, and had been observing mob run casinos (many part of Siegel’s organization) as part of a preliminary investigation into their influence on the Cuban economy.


The Joint Public Security Secretariat or the SSPC (The Latin Confederacy’s Section 1 equivalent) is another strange, but plausible suspect. The Mafia’s drug trade was beginning to have its effects in the CL, with drug related crimes on the rise. The SSPC had determined that Caracas was the main source for drugs, and were able to gain details of the Caracas conference, in particular how drug smugglers had been sneaking them over the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Siegel’s disappearance may have been a warning to the Mafia to stop selling on their side of the border.


Siegel’s death would come to represent the peak of the old mob’s influence in Venezuela, and even foretell its decline over the next decade.


[...]


The Commission, under advice from Lansky and Genovese, had supported the proposed unification of Cuba and Venezuela, as a means of consolidating their holdings in both nations. Reportedly, new plans were drawn up to take advantage of the new connection. The international fallout, however, would nix this deal, and Perez Jiminez himself was overthrown in the aftermath. The new government, while a Cuban ally, was less enthused about how the country had become a mecca for organized crime, and began to fight back. They monitored mob owned establishments, raided various casino, and shut down the drug trade, massively crippling the mafia influence in the country.


Similarly, after the death of MacArthur in 1964, new President Robert Kennedy began a war against the influence of organized crime in Havana’s casinos and hotels. The new Attorney General Hamilton Fish IV began raids and collected testimonies about the activities of the Mafia. The era in which they dominated Havana seemed over, as their businesses were sold off to businessmen like Howard Hughes or conglomerates. The heads of the families were identified and arrested en masse. Some fled to South Italy or tried (like in the case of Meyer Lansky) to enter Palestine (with no success)


The decline of the old Mafia could also be attributed to a lack of continuity. Many of the old guard were slowly dying off, including the heads of family, and there was a decreasing pool of people to replace them.. While the Mafia in South Italy provided some new recruits (some with experience smuggling goods between the two sectors of Rome), it was not enough.


[...]


Much like after the revolution, the Italian-American Mafia was decimated. This time, with little other option, they began to form alliances to ensure that some continuity was established between the original Cuban Mafia and the inevitable new incarnation.


Native Cuban gangs had once clashed with the well-organized American Mafia over low-level crime in their neighborhoods. By the 60’s, the gangs in poor Cuban neighborhoods had become more organized, and some even began to establish branches in the FBU. After years, the Mob began to contract some of these gangs for access to these neighborhoods. These contracts would be the foundation of a new organization….

[1] Retcon from the previous piece, because something didn’t work out, as it turns out.

 

[Miss Teri]

Copper Canyon

A 1984 action-adventure-comedy directed by John Landis. A comedic riff on old Mexican adventure stories like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

In 1935 Chihuahua City, notorious bandit El Jefe (Alejandro Rey) is approached by Randall Ellis Chesterton (Michael Keaton), a former Texas oilman fleeing the Revolution, who wants to assemble an expedition to Las Barrancas del Cobras to find a legendary Cuevas de Oro, a cave filled with gold, found by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528, but never rediscovered upon other expedition. Chesterton, an antiques collector, received a map rumored to have been drawn by a member of de Vaca's original expedition, showing the location of the gold. Chesterton wants the gold before it potentially falls to the communists, and sprint for an easy life in Jamaica. Chesterton has a crew already for the expedition from former White Partisans, but wants the protection of the bandits against the Federales. Chesterton offers Jefe 40% of the gold in the cave, which El Jefe agrees to, and assembles his gang.

Robert Burke (Sylvester Stallone) is Chesterton's second-in-command, supposedly a former G-Man turned White soldier, and is skeptical of the location of the cave. However, while planning the expedition, he has a brief encounter with Walter (Lee Marvin) , an American prospector, who had been in the Canyon, and had seen the cave himself, and confirms that the information on the map is correct.

Just as Chesterton and Jefe are about to leave, a strange couple run up to them, and introduces themselves as Count Alexander (Vladimir Vysotsky) and his wife Olga (Natalya Negoda). White Russian emigres, they wish to join the expedition to help regain their lost wealth, with Alexander offering his services as a expert marksman, displaying his skills to Chesterton himself. While Jefe is skeptical, Chesterton is impressed and recruits the two of them.

Burke allegedly goes to town to find more supplies, but meets with Commander Maroto (Ricardo Montalban), the local head of the Milicia Federales . It turns out that he is actually a CSS agent, who has been ingraining himself with Chesterton to find any potential ties to counterrevolutionaries. He is keeping tabs to see if he is meeting with anyone within the canyon, using the alleged gold expedition as a cover. When Maroto asks him what happens if the cave is real, Burke, after some consideration, tells Maroto to stand by. Maroto also explains that, with the strain of the Civil War and the restructuring following the Second Mexican Revolution, the Federales have not been as effective in fighting bandits in the countryside, despite their best efforts. He demands that the arrest happens now to take down El Jefe, but Burke convinces him to wait for the larger prize of both El Jefe and Chesterton.

In a similar twist, "Count Alexander" and "Olga" are actually agents of the GRU. Chesterton had acquired artifacts as a collector from a Russian noble in England, ones which the Soviet government claim as their own. These artifacts were not among those that had been found after Chesterton fled, meaning he still has them with him. They are sent to secretly extract the location from Chesterton for the artifacts. They find out that his wife, Abigail (Kate Capshaw) knows the locations, and decide to "secretly interrogate" her during the journey.

The Journey begins, and they mostly follow map, despite some troubles on the way. They encounter a mudslide, and forced to camp for a day. Burke has to deal with a puma threatening their group, before Alexander is able to shoot it from a great distance. When they are travelling the next day, the bandits and El Jefe discuss their payment in gold, and find it a bit insufficient. They begin to formulate another plan....

They encounter a rival gang of bandits at one point, who threaten them. This results in a fight scene, where Burke, Alexander, and Olga are fighting, but secretly subverting the other side to weaken them. The battle ends with the rival bandits retreating.

In a comic subplot, Alexander and Olga befriend Abigail, and they talk about their shared love of jewelry. Just as they are about to learn where the artifacts are, they are interrupted for their meals.

Burke grows suspicious of the two alleged nobles, and confronts them while they are rifling through Abigail's things in search of the artifacts. After a tense discussion, their real identities are revealed. They agree not to interfere with their respective investigation.

Eventually, they actually find the legendary cave of gold. As Chesterton looks on in amazement, El Jefe pulls his pistol on Chesterton, revealing his plan to kill Chesterton and his group, and takes the gold for himself and his band. Chesterton pulls his pistol in turn. Just then, Burke reveals his identity, and pulls a gun on the both of them, leading to a classic Mexican standoff. Just then, Maroto and a small militia of Federales arrive, resulting in a shootout and fight scene. During this time, the crypt with the artifacts pops open from a stray bullet, but Abigail fiercely protects. The battle ends with both Chesterton and El Jefe getting shot in the chest.

The film ends with Burke getting a commendation for capturing Chesterton and helping discover and secure the gold in Copper Canyon (which will be mined and placed in the Reserves for redistribution). Maroto arrests the rival bandits, while El Jefe and his crew are in jail, along with Chesterton (still with the bullet wound he got from the battle), and Abigail. The artifacts are sent back to the USSR, with Alexander and Olga keeping watch.

---------------------------

 

[xie323]

Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg(expansion of The_Red_Star_Rising's post in the last thread)

(Note that this is taken from some observations The_Red_Star_Rising made in our discord, as well as an expanded version of this)

Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltrikeg is a Game Mod for the Hearts of Iron Grand Strategy game series, which is set in an alternate universe where the Russian Revolution failed and the Central Powers won World War I. The failure of the Russian revolution gave way in Russia to a "National Populist" regime, which combines nazism and ultra-reactionary religious fundamentalism under the rule of Boris Savinkov, but a Debian revolution converted the United States into the Combined Syndicates of America in 1919, which leaders the socialist forces of the Internationale alongsides Britain and France against the Central Powers led by Germany and the Eurasian Alliance of Natpop Romania and Russia. The CSA is less militant than the USAR in the real world, and has to content with leadership with the Commune of France, where the revolution spread from, in it's early years.

The British and French ruling class itself has been driven out of their homelands by Syndicalist Revolutions and are themselves veering closer and closer to national populism. A very likely outcome of the AI is the Royal exiles in Canada giving more and more influence to the National Populist National Unity Party and the Social Credit Party and becoming Natpop themselves, along with French exiles falling under the sway of an intergralist regime of Action Francais. This would lead to the merging of the Eurasian Alliance into the Entente, with Russia as the leader of the newfound Entente powers. Brazil, in a method similar to real history, may fall under the sway of the Intergralists and would seek to challenge the Combined Syndicates of America.

The main conflict of the mod usually boils down to the war between the Syndicalists vs. the New Entente, with MittleEuropa and the Syndicalists usually putting aside their differences in an enemy mine situation against the National Populist Entente OR the Entente and Germany forming an unholy alliance(unlikely) against the Red Threat. Alternatively, the war may resume between the Internationale and the Entente vs. Mittleeuropa, with the war then moving in to the second phase--war between the Internationale vs. the Entente after the division of Germany.

 

[migolito]

Inspired by @WotanArgead 's description of OTL Soviet science fiction, with this series being the result the of genre's interaction ITTL with American Weird literature.

The End Point Trilogy​

Know your meme: My tendency is Marxist-Lovecraftian
AKA: Marxist-Lovecraftianism, Marxist-Cthulhuism, Communist Party Marxist-Lovecraftian

Originally made by online opponents of transhumanist marxist strands in order to mock it, the original image is a still of a Typhonic Man from the 70s Soviet-Chinese animated adaptation of The End Point trilogy. Variations of the meme, typically using images from the 2000s comic adaptation of the trilogy, images of cephalopods or just any image with a suitably lovecraftian aesthetic, would later be used to mock perceived nihilism in 21st century comintern philosophy and politics. Of course, the image is more well known these days for having been adopted as an in-joke and tongue in cheek introduction in marxist transhumanist circles, which given the backstory of the Typhonic Men is actually appropriate...

Extract from the comic script for The End Point #4 (2005)

(Dmitri is an eager if somewhat trusting scientist, carrying the spirit and naivety of youth. By contrast, his comrade Wei, though also a scientist, is much older and much more cynical; her hair greying and her face carrying a scar across her cheek and nose from an event in her youth that the reader is not yet privy to. Circumstances have resulted in their first meeting with the Typhonic woman Nix. As far as the reader's know, the Typhonic men are the descendants of the communist societies in the New World that have existed in complete isolation for a century due to an ideological split with the Old World communists after the victory of socialism over capitalism)

Page 2 (this page is made up of a single panel, with two small smaller panels overlaying the panel, one in the top left corner and one in the bottom right, both only just large enough to contain a character's face and their reaction)

Main panel: (An oddly pallid but otherwise normal woman stands in the centre of an otherwise blank room, dressed in long red robes that conceal all except for their face and obscure their general body shape. She tilts her head ever so slightly, and gives a polite smile to her guests)
Nix: I'm sorry for the wait. Please, lets talk.

Top left overlaying panel: (A close up of Dmitri's face. From the reader's perspective, he's looking off panel towards Nix herself. He is pleasantly surprised)
Dmitri (this is not in a speech bubble, indicating that it reflects Dmitri's internal thoughts): She's... Like us?

Bottom right overlaying panel: (A close up of Wei's scarred face, glaring upwards and off panel at Nix. She either doesn't trust Nix, or she doesn't trust this situation in general)

Page 3 (this page has a panel configuration similar to the standard 6 panel page, but the 2 panels in the middle of the page have been combined into a single third panel)

Panel 1: (A waist up image of Dmitri and Wei side by side. Dmitri boldly starts striding forward, presumably to greet Nix. He doesn't notice Wei's arm held out strait across his belly, hand clenched into a fist, blocking his path)
Dmitri: Ah hello! I'm-

Panel 2: (Following on from panel 1. Dmitri has walked right into Wei's arm, taking the wind out of him and stopping both him and his train of speech in its tracks. Wei's arm has not noticeably moved.)
Wei: You're hiding something.
Wei: Or at least you're not what you appear to be.

Panel 3: (This panel stretches across the centre of the page. It is a close up of Nix's smile: pallid and doll like. The reader can't clearly see the inside of her mouth, her smile barely even showing teeth, but there is the impression of the insides being pitch black. We can't see Wei, but the text follows on from her speaking in the last panel.)
Wei: This is all too convenient...
Wei: ... And if nothing else, I know a fake smile when I see one.

Panel 4: (This panel follows on from panel 2, with Dmitri having recovered and looking at Wei with a gaze that is a little hurt, more for how suspicious of Nix Wei is than anything else. Wei doesn't seem to notice this, and carries on.)
Wei: If you are honest about this, we need the truth. Whatever that might be.

Panel 5: (This panel shows Nix from the chest upwards; facing slightly leftwards but with the reader able to see her face unobscured. She doesn't speak, but is obviously considering Wei's request)

Page 4 (this page is in the standard 6 panel configuration)

Panel 1: (This panel shows Nix's face and shoulders. She facing the reader, almost as if she was speaking to them rather than Wei)
Nix: Are you sure you want that?

Panel 2: (Nix has shifted her posture ever so slightly, but otherwise this follows in from and is almost the same as panel 1)
Nix: It is true that I am hiding things, but trust me when I say that I am doing it for your benefit.

Panel 3: (this panel shows Wei's face, faced as if looking to the right of the reader. She isn't saying anything, but her expression suggests that she is running out of patience for Nix's falsehood and more or less answers Nix's question without saying anything at all)

Panel 4: (this panel shows Nix, following on from panel 2, looking a little deflated)
Nix: oh

Panel 5: (following on from panel 4, with Nix carefully raising one hand up to her chin and another behind her head, as if she were removing a mask. She looks, if anything, a little disappointed)
Nix: well if that's what want...

Panel 6: (now looking upward at Nix with her facing to the left, her face detaching like a mask, though with the reader unable to clearly see what's beneath it)
Nix: ... a pity, I had worked hard on that smile...

Pages 5 and 6 (a double page, made up of one large panel with 4 overlaying panels placed roughly in each corner of the double page spread. The centre piece of the image is a mass of ink black tentacles, covering most of the page and flowing as they are caught in Nix's movement. Behind the tentacles though due to the effect of ink black on not quite vantablack [1] somewhat hard to distinguish from them, are cracks in reality or at least the reader's perception of reality following the flow of Nix's tentacles as her presence warps the laws of physics.)

Top Left Overlaying panel: (A close up of Dmitri's face looking down and to the right, mouth open as if silently screaming)

Top Right Overlaying panel: (a mass of lazy reptilian eyes open across Nix's body)

Bottom Right Overlaying panel: (A close up of Wei's face looking upwards and to the left. She isn't as obviously horrified as Dmitri, but is visibly rattled by what she's seeing)

Bottom Left Overlaying panel: (a pair of crustacean eyes and antenna pop upwards from Nix's body)

Page 7 (this page is divided into 2 panels, taking up the top and bottom of the page respectably.)

Panel 1 (this panel shows us the backs of Wei and Dmitri from just above the waist upwards. Though the reader cannot see their faces, the reader can see that their bodies are incredibly tense. Nix is in front of them, her form having stabilised at a bit over twice their height but with a great deal more mass to her body. From her crustacean like upper body, comparable to a mantis shrimp, sprout 2 crab like eyes slightly smaller than Wei and Dmitri's heads, whilst beneath her carapace her body becomes a shadowy mass of feelers and reptilian eyes and tentacles, some of which protrude from her body to give the eyes mounted on them a better look at her guests. Everyone is silent)

Panel 2 (the same as above, although Nix's sensory tentacles that were looking at Dmitri and Wei have changed their position noticably. And not everyone is silent.)
Nix (her speech bubbles in this form are similar the near vantablack cracks that appeared on pages 5 and 6, with their text coloured white): Just so you know, I thought this was a bad idea.

Steel and Tentacle, a quick (ish) guide to the End Point trilogy

... The first thing newcomers notice is that the trilogy part is actually a misnomer: Andrei Sokolov never actually wrote a sequence of 3 novels in the same way that Tolkien did. Instead, the main body of the story is divided into 2 novels: "Antithesis" (1964) and "Synthesis" (1966) with the third book "Tangents" (1969) being a collection of short stories that mostly follow on from the main story. The late 70s animated series broadly adapts the first 2 books, with some stories from Tangents being loosely adapted into episodes, whilst the later comic by and large splits the difference between its two predecessors...

In all versions of the story, humanity is threatened by an automated alien terraforming machine, one of several "end points" that the title of the series refers to, that still works while the civilisation it once served is long since extinct. The machine destroys a human colony and starts moving towards Earth, resulting in the events of the series as several human factions either unite to deal with the machine or try to take advantage of it for their own ends.

The faction who are the protagonists of most of the series are the Platonic Men, with Dmitri and Wei both belonging to the culture. Descended from the communist nations of the Old World, with the most noticeable cultural influence coming from China, Korea, Japan, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; with the war against capitalism having ended over a century ago they have started moving towards what some would refer to as true communism. Automation has reduced time working to nearly nothing, and as a result they have the time to regain everything humanity lost in the march of history. Reconnected to nature, their settlements look like gardens whilst the habits and behaviour of wild animals are understood sufficiently for humanity to coexist peacefully with them: a source of several recurring jokes in the animated series.

In the New World however, the communists developed a different philosophy. Whereas the civilisations that would become the Platonic Men saw communism as a chance to reconnect with human nature that had been warped under the tyrannical economic systems the preceded them, in the New World the communists came to the conclusion that human nature was not an end in and off itself, and indeed was fundamentally a hinderance to their end goals, something that should join capitalism, the spinning wheel and the bronze age in the dust bin of history. Self segregated from their old world comrades in order to avoid the horrors of a second cold war, this civilisation became the Typhonic Men. They are not evil, being the protagonist's main allies against the machine for the first two novels and being portrayed sympathetically in their stories in "Tangents", they are nevertheless horrifying on a fundamental level: their presence provoking a phobic reaction comparable to snakes or spiders and seeing them "cast off their human masks" is described as the visual equivalent of nails on a chalk board.

The third main civilisation from the book series are the Cold Men: a civilisation that developed from capitalists and their sympathisers who escaped the Earth and took to living in hollowed out asteroids when it became obvious that socialism was going to win. Technically post capitalist, money being replaced with water and markets having no place when everything needs to be rationed, they have nevertheless embraced everything horrifying in capitalism. Reflexively viewing both each other and all other humans as a resource to be used, from birth they are given an increasing number of cybernetic "enhancements" that on the one hand help them survive in their inhospitable environment but also make them more reliant on their master's electricity supply; that make them more skilled at their jobs whilst making them specialised for that job to such a degree that they are essentially trapped in it. These are the closest thing to conventional villains in the main story: trying to take advantage of the chaos the alien machine is spreading.

A fourth civilisation, originating from the animated series but being inspired by a throw away line in the novels, are the Wilde Men. In the novels, Dmitri makes an off hand comment about a cultural difference between themselves and the nations that were once a part of the AFS: saying that "due to their peoples once believing that socialism meant the destruction of culture, when socialism came it made a promise of making culture open to everyone instead of just the powerful". Wei later summarises this as "socialism here means no kings, no nobles, no masters; socialism in London means everyone's a king, a noble, a master". In the novels, this is strictly an aesthetic difference rather than an ideological one. The animated series took this idea and ran with it.

The idea of a handful of throw away lines came from the desire to temporarily replace the Typhonic Men in the first season. Between the budget required and the feeling that the Typhonic Men could not transition from the written word to the screen without losing some of their power, there was a push to find a substitute for them until the series had a second season. The initial creative decisions here are usually attributed to the writer Rupert Fischer. A west german exile, he had previously spent some time as a satirist and, sticking to what he knew, decided to parody the Junker wannabes, Prussia glorification and medieval nostalgia in his former homeland: essentially writing the Wilde Men as communists playing at being aristocrats. The name itself was taken from Oscar Wilde, and further details for Wilde Man culture were drawn from Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"...

... The two main antagonists for the series are a pair of Cold Man masters in a pointedly temporary alliance of convenience: John Klein and Samuel Filling. In the first novel and first season of the animated series, Klein is the primary antagonist. Connected through his cybernetic enhancements to the stock piles, he sees the chaos brought about by the alien machine as a chance to liberate himself from the sheer scarcity of cold man existence by raiding the rest of humanity: preying on plant, animal and man alike to keep the few organic components of the cold men healthy... Samuel Filling, the main antagonist for the second part, is arguably more sympathetic. Growing up distant from all other life and only really understanding it in the abstract, he came to the conclusion that life is so full of pain and suffering that the only humane way of making it better is to end it completely, and once he learns of the alien machine he decides that it is probably the best chance he has to make his dream a reality...

... After the main story was completed, Sokolov kept intending to write a third novel, but the closest he got to achieving it were the short stories in Tangents: the most famous of these, due to being adapted into episodes of the animated series, following Dmitri and Wei as they explore ruins of the alien civilisation that built the machine. That said, the perhaps popular among fans of the novels is less widely known Nix's Lament. Set long after the main story ended in the surrealist landscapes of the Americas, the story occurred shortly after Dmitri and Wei's death, and followed Nix recalling her experiences with them and singing a song to lament their deaths. As she sings, the landscape itself, having long since become impossible to neatly separate from its inhabitants, joins in: as the song spreads from tree to man to rock to flower, until all of the Americas have joined together in mourning their deceased comrades.

[1] Actual vantablack is nearly impossible to use in most art: the impracticalities of spraying carbon nanotubes in order to ink a comic should be self evident. As such, the colour used is simply a version of black that is just dark enough to appear vantablack to the human eye.

 

[Miss Teri]

Special thanks to @Jello_Biafra for her input into one aspect of this.
The American

1971 Soviet-American film, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. Considered a Ostern, due to its setting and its tone, and is one of several Osterns in the 60's and 70's starring prominent American actors

Robert Perot (Clint Eastwood) is an American soldier serving in the American Expeditionary Force in Vladivostok in 1918. A World War I veteran, he remained in the army after the war. When President Thomas Marshall sent troops to aid the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, he was enlisted to help with the Siberia expedition, where he would help protect American supplies across the Trans-Siberian Railway to other Allied Expeditions in European Russia. He decides to enlist again, hoping to respark that patriotic spirit that had him enlisting in 1914, when the US entered the war.

However, the experience proves increasingly tenuous for him. The force have frequent problems with supplies, food, and machinery. He sees a man die from disease in the bunk next to him. The horse he is riding drops dead from the cold climate. Originally led to believe that he would not fight the Bolsheviks, he is stunned when the expedition is seized on by a small contingent of Red Army troops.

Perot's increasing dissatisfaction with the mission and the conditions is shared by General William Graves (Rock Hudson), who was also led to believe that he was simply protecting American arms and supplies for the Europeans. However, Graves assures him that conditions will improve eventually.

During one skirmish with the Bolsheviks, Perot is stunned to see some American volunteers among those who are attacking them. As he continues to trudge along with the Trans-Siberian Railway, the conditions finally get to him.

Perot deserts the Army, and meets up with the Bolsheviks. However, just as he is about to meet with the Reds, he drops from exhaustion. The medic states that he will be fine, though he needs to stay to recover. During this time, he meets with another volunteer (Alan Blake*), who says his disillusionment during his service in France and the Bienno Rosso inspired him to join the Reds during their own revolution.

Perot recovers, just as they learn that the expedition has been withdrawn (setting the ending at around 1920).

Historical Inaccuracy: While there were American volunteers for the Reds during the Civil War, there are no confirmed ones in Siberia during the time period described, and none encountered the Siberian Expedition.
--------------------

 

[Mr. C]

For what seemed to be the first time ever, Chicago was quiet. Just a few weeks before, The Whites were thoroughly humiliated in battle, and the influx of new volunteers and defectors swelled the ranks of the Red Army. After a massive citywide celebration that went on for what felt like centuries, the people of Chicago rested, knowing the end of capitalism would soon be coming.

But Anna Teitelbaum wasn't resting. She was on patrol. She wanted to be in Mississippi, liberating the South from the Klan. But she was stuck here, just in case the White Army suddenly decided to try Chicago again. Maybe this time they wouldn't be beaten that badly.

It was another uneventful day patrolling the streets, asking questions, and occasionally finding someone who looked suspicious but was innocent. Anna was just about to call in when a strange man caught her eye.

He was shabbily dressed, possibly in his middle forties. He was rummaging through a garbage can and muttering about the weather when he looked up and noticed her.

Nervously, he said "I, uh, just wanted to get some, er, art supplies"

"In the garbage?" said Anna, incredulously.

"I don't really have, ah, the money to buy actual art supplies. I get inspiration from stuff in the garbage."

"An artist, huh? What kind of art do you do?"

"Oh, it's illustrations for a book I'm writing! It's a fantastical, magical story about God!"

"What's it called?"

"I call it The Story of The Vivian Girls, in What is Known as The Realms of the Unreal, Of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion"

Anna gave the man a strange look. "You should think about shortening that title. It's a bit too...unwieldy."

The man frowned. "Well, I like it!"

"Anyways, Child Slave Rebellion, huh? Kinda sounds like what we do in the Red Army."

"The Red what?"

Anna couldn't believe it. This man didn't know there was a revolution? What the hell was he doing all this time?

"Well, we--"

"Oh, I remember!", the man suddenly recalled, "You're Willie's people!"

"...who's Willie?"

"My special friend! We started The Children's Protection Society together. He told me he was going to go to war. So, you're a soldier?"

"Yes, I am."

"A lady soldier?"

Anna was offended. "Excuse me?"

"Finally! An army that knows the truth."

Anna was confused. "What truth?"

"Well, everyone knows that women are much braver than men"

Anna was elated. "Hell yes, we are! The White Army didn't know what was coming!"

"Oh, so it's a war like the one they had Russia? I was wondering what all that noise was about a few weeks ago. It was disrupting my painting!"

Anna couldn't believe it. This man seemed to have something wrong with him...he was too busy painting to notice a war was going on just outside his window? Not only that, but he was painting illustrations for some weird pulp book that had something to do with God and a war caused by child slavery?

Still, though, she found the man charming. That bold assumption that "women are much braver than men" was something she secretly joked about with her friends. But here was a man--an older man, at that--saying this with complete seriousness. Despite being in his forties, he still had a childlike, almost impish personality. Plus, he said he started a Children's Protection society with one of our boys in the Red Army. How bad could he be?

"So, what do you know about socialism?"

"Not much. But I do know that the socialists want to protect people's rights. Worker's rights, women's rights, negroes rights--"

"We prefer to say 'Africans'. 'Negro' is what the White Army calls them."

"Oh. Sorry, I'm not up to date on politics. But what I'm really interested in is the rights of children. It breaks my heart to see children abused and mistreated by rotten adults."

Tears rolled down the man's face. "I was abused too. At the Lincoln Asylum, before I escaped. They told me that my heart wasn't in the right place."

"It must've been horrible for you! When we take over, that'll never happen to any child again!"

"Really? Oh, I wish people like you were in charge when I was a kid. I would join your Red Army if my eyesight wasn't so bad."

"What's your name? I could get you back in touch with your friend Willie."

"My name is Henry Darger. Tell me, what is your name?"

"Anna Teitelbaum."

"A Hebrew? Well, I'm Catholic, but I can respect a fellow child of God."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So here's part 1 of a thing I'm working on. The working title is "Welcome to the Realms of the Unreal", and it'll explore both Henry Darger's art and the development of communal psychology in the UASR.

(PS: I ship Henry Darger and William Schloeder. The photos they took together at Fairyland should be proof enough)

 

[Miss Teri]

"Pacifist: The Jeannette Rankin Story" review
The Labor Literary Review, 2010

Between the Non-Aggression Pact and the declaration of war in 1940, the UASR saw a rise in pacifist sentiments, even among the ranks of the Worker's Communist Party of America. The feeling went that the threat in Europe and Asia would eventually destroy itself, and sending troops in would only cause more death. Even during the opening stages of the war, this sentiment remained, though the horror stories coming from Europe and China would slowly drain it. One of those leading the charge against intervention in Europe was Jeannette Rankin. The first woman congressman in the old Republic, she would garner admiration and hatred for her dedicated opposition to war, even to the detriment of her own political career in one of the highest seats of government. Rankin's life is explored in detail in "Pacifist", which explores this under-appreciated part of history.

Originally from Missoula, Montana, and the eldest of six children, Jeannette Pickering Rankin took up activism as the suffragette movement was picking up steam across the nation. She became the first woman to address the Montana State Assembly in 1911. In 1916, after Montana passed enfranchisement for women, she would run for Congress for the Republican Party. She would become one of the leading voices for the withdrawal from World War I, along with actively rallying support for the 19th Amendment. A point of pride for her was being the only woman to have voted for the right of women to vote in 1919.

After losing the Republican primary for the Senate in 1920, she joined the Montana SLP, though she lost.[1] After spending the decade eking a rural existence in Georgia, the upsurge of support for the SLP in the aftermath of Black Thursday, she ran in Montana's 1st District, and won as part of the Worker's Party ticket.

After the revolution, she became a Congresswoman for the Congress of Soviets as part of the Worker's Party, and was prominently supported by Montana Attorney General Burton K. Wheeler. She worked with the various women's rights initiatives from the new revolutionary government, including those from Crystal Eastman. Her advocacy and political acumen eventually led to her being elected to the Central Committee. However, she was also outspoken in her advocacy of peace, attacking the military build-up for the potential war with the British government (arguing that should focus on de-escalating tensions with the British empire, instead of preparing for war with them).

Her advocacy of peace, even against the rising Fascist powers, earned her ire from a number of high ranking officials, among them Earl Browder and J. Edgar Hoover, the latter of whom directed agents to investigate any "Fascist or MacArthurist ties" Rankin may have had, and even floated the possibility she was a German agent.

Rankin had more legitimacy after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but by the declaration of war, she was one of the only Deputies to vote against the war in May of 1940. After extensive, heated arguments, she were forced to resign from the Central Committee. She, with others opposed to the war, promptly continued their opposition to the war in the form of a "Peace Committee" trying out-of-government pressure, though the complete lack of support among the populace and stories coming out of the USSR and Eastern Europe would cause it to dissolve in 1942.

In her later years, Rankin only doubled down on her opposition to war and peace advocacy, as well as women's rights in general. She opposed the foreign policy objectives of the LCP, and become a leading member of the American branch of the "World Peace Association" [2]. Many interviewed her in the 60's and 70's, primarily to chronicle the passing of the 19th Amendment, and opposition to American intervention in World War II. Studs Terkel interviewed her in The People's March in 1970. Rankin died in 1973.

The book manages to intertwine events of Rankin's life with some of the biggest events of the early 20th century, and allows the reader, even when they disagree with the subject, to sympathize with her, and why she fought against intervention. This is a highly recommended novel about a fascinating historical figure.

[1] OTL, she joined the National Party for her Senate run. The National Party was split from the right wing of the SPA.
[2] This will actually be looked at soon.

 

[Bookmark1995]

The Six Qualities Every Revolutionary Must Have (Excerpt from Civics For Kids (8 ed.) Metropolis, 1993)

For many people, the story of revolution is told of brave underdogs resisting a well-armed forced. The Second American Revolution and the Wars in Indochina give this. However, this is only one part of a huge job. You cannot merely take up a rifle to become a revolutionary, as any reactionary and fascist can do that.

You must be able to change society from the bottom up. But the war is not merely a physical one, but a social and mental one, the winning of hearts and minds.

To be a successful revolutionary, there are six qualities one must have.

1. Tenacity

Lenin, Debs, and other revolutionaries fought not just their governments, but a corrupt society. The majority of Russians still believed their tsar to be ordained by God, while the majority of Americans still worshiped capital more than they did God or Allah. And while the revolutions that toppled them happened in a few short years, the background for them took many more.

Lenin spent years in Siberia, and many more years in exile. Debs lost much time (and health) in prison.

A good revolutionary and his or her own followers must expect that society cannot change overnight, that they must be prepared to fight their entire lives, and that they may never live to see their changes come about.

The UASR did not become what it is today overnight, but through the hard work and determination of those who saw the words of Marx as the end, and not the means alone.

2. Courage

The word "courage" is not merely strength or bravery or fighting. It is the ability to fight for your ideals when the world tells you your wrong.

As stated, revolutionaries must fight a society that is ignorant of its own oppression and imprisonment. You must be prepared to speak to those who will not listen, or those whose will strike back to keep their ears closed. And you must be prepared to fight when called for it.

Foster was forever immortalized for his refusal to abandon his ideals-even as death stared him in the faith. Many members of the German resistance defied their families, and sought to stop the Nazi madness.

Even non-Revolutionary figures can be immortalized for their bravery. Huey Long broke with his fellow Southerners who sought to sacrifice freedom in the name of white supremacy, and sought to protect the Constitution-even at the expense of his own life.

3. Tolerance (and compromise)

It is important to understand all Revolutionaries, though united the idea of changing society, will have different ideas about how to implement it, and what to change.

Robespierre, in his zeal for change, sent his own allies to death, and thus became the greatest enemy of Revolutionary France.

Harry Truman and other heartland people disliked the First Cultural Revolution of the 1930s, many in the Deep South opposed integration, and Emma Goldman thought of the former two as "fascists in disguise", but they put aside their differences for a better nation.

Even today, the great powers of China, America, Latin America, and Rossiya will often disagree on the means to an end, but this does not make them weak or indecisive. Their ability to unite is born from ignoring petty differences.

A revolutionary must acknowledge and reconcile the differences that he may have with his or her comrades, as these divisions can consume the society you wish to build.


4. Empathy

A good revolutionary is not one who merely reads about suffering from a book (as many bourgeois progressives do from their mansions). He or she is someone who feels the suffering of the common person, and the affronts that person faces at the hands of the landlord and boss oppressor. He or she can walk around in another person's shoes.

Norman Foster and Father Gapon were those who witnessed great suffering in their societies, and sought to ameliorate what they saw.

The Papacy, though professing a belief in the common person, could not understand the cause of his suffering, merely relying on old morality in a desire to maintain ties with the capitalist powers. The fascists, devoid of empathy, shaped their conservative nations into forces of murder and destruction.

But you must not only have empathy for those who troubled by capitalism-you must have empathy for your opponent. Even many oppressors are products of their environment. Even they suffer, and you must understand that, so as to avoid making the mistakes they made.

Many children of the Nazis were forced into battle in the closing days of the Second World War. While the Nazi horde sought to murder even children as an end goal, the Reds understood that these youngsters had no control over how they were raised.

5. Mercy (and Forgiveness)

The revolutionary Mao Zedong once said that "Political Power grows out of a barrel of a gun." In his words, revolution can only be achieved through violence.

It is naive to say that Revolution can happen on words alone. From the October Revolution to today, many goals have only been achieved through violent means.

But violence and vengeance must never be your end goal, comrade. Once the war is over, when faced with someone who has fought for an oppressor or has fed from the table of capitalist oppression, you must grant him (if possible) a second chance.

The French Revolution, for example, began as a desire to end the power of kings and nobles. The guillotine itself was considered to be form of mercy, but by the end, it became the very symbol of the Revolution, as even non-political figures lost their heads.

The German people, abandoned by bourgeois leaders to inflation and poverty in the 1930s, were seduced by a vicious and depraved ideology, and could be manipulated into destroying not only Communism, but entire peoples as well.

Perhaps it would have been within the rights of the Soviets and the Americans to destroy the people, who sought to destroy them. To subject them to a Shoah, or a Hunger Plan. Same idea for the Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, and Japanese. But instead, the Revolutionaries sought to reform a people not destroy them.

There are complaints about many war criminals who were granted political positions in the German Communist state, but East Germany is a nation that not only has embraced Revolution, but its people and the Soviet people are comrades themselves. Many other formerly fascist states became fierce allies of Comintern.

Yes, there are those who depraved enough to deserve the noose, but those are the men who pushed the misguided masses into their worst instincts. A good revolutionary seeks to push the misguided toward the correct attitudes.

Perhaps abandoning vengeance is a most revolutionary act: to abandon a grudge and work toward a better future is different from millennia of vengeance.

6. Faith

All these qualities rely on this most important one: faith. You must have faith for a better world, a better tomorrow, a world without fear, a world wear all men and women are comrades.

The courageous, the tenacious, the tolerant, the empathetic, and the merciful all get their power from faith. Faith in themselves, faith in their comrades, and faith in the world.

With faith, anything becomes possible.

If you heed these six qualities, you will succeed in changing society.

 

[migolito]

So you know the sci fi posts I mentioned earlier? Here's a short one, a semi-sequel to the End Point Trilogy post.

Baphomet's Revolution (1981)

Format: a 4 episode miniseries made up of 20 minute episodes, though it would later be edited into a single 80 minute film which would be the most commonly viewed version until the series' DVD release.

... simply put, the animation collectives involved had put too many resources into their End Point adaptation for the end result to justify the expenditure on its own terms. So they went with the only sane option: they recycled as much of their work from The End Point as they could in order to make something else with as little effort as possible. The most obvious example is the protagonist, Lei Federov, who looks like a younger Wei, with many of her movements being recycled Wei animations. If you know what you are looking for though, you'll be able to find a lot: backgrounds from the garden settlements of the Platonic men were recoloured; designs for stairways and corridors and bridges were copied onto a dark background in order to be used as catacombs; and here and the background for a Wilde man palace was just darkened, sometimes with an occult symbol added on a banner or just as graffiti.

Even the setting details are similar to The End Point, to such a degree that fans sometimes speculate that it is a sequel to the animated series. Lei Federov's culture are blatantly Platonic Men, with Lei herself being of Chinese and Soviet origin; Baphomet's religion/culture being a radically different take on the Wilde Men drawing from Aleister Crowley and Livy's scandalised accounts of bacchanalian Roman mystery cults instead of Oscar Wilde and West German reactionary culture; and an early discussion in the first episode says that a capitalist remnant that seems comparable to the Cold Men exists (though they are never seen).

Fortunately, the creative teams put more effort into the story...

Lei Federov is a spy whose normal job is to infiltrate and investigate the capitalist remnant. She is called in by the higher council (the closest thing to a governing body at this point) for an unusual job: the higher council has come to suspect that a religious leader of sorts calling himself Comrade Baphomet intends to make himself a dictator and resurrect a society comparable to the old AFS, and they want Lei to find out if this is true and if necessary sabotage his project. Lei is reluctant to spy on someone who is a comrade until proven guilty, albeit an eccentric comrade descended from a British aristocratic family, but given the risk agrees to it.

The first episode ends with her having successfully infiltrated the citadel of Baphomet's cult disguised as a new recruit. The second episode follows her confirming that the cult are stockpiling weapons and supplies and are training for something, but don't seem to be planning any attack in the sense the council were worried about and instead are busy studying some sort of time-space anomaly. The third episode, following on from the second episode's cliff hanger where Lei is discovered, follows Lei's increasingly desperate attempts to escape, which ultimately fail.

The final episode is probably where the fanbase for the miniseries comes from. Beginning with Lei being brought before Baphomet and his bodyguard/lovers, she outright accuses him of trying to launch a reactionary revolt as the Council suspected. Baphomet responds with the endearingly sincere line:

"Well gosh, nobody here wants that."

As it turns out, Baphomet and his cult are communists themselves, the time-space anomaly they were studying is a stable wormhole leading into the past, and that they intend to go back and liberate the earth's past so that all of human history may live in a world where "love is the law". Lei tries to convince him not to do this. First, she argues that the cult would be putting the present at risk, but Baphomet insists that Lei's present is in no danger as "the universe doesn't conform to human notions of causality: as long as all the particles in your body are present the universe doesn't care if their existence doesn't make any sense". When Lei them tries to convince Baphomet that it is the choice of the people of the past when they move on to communism Baphomet dismisses this by saying that they are not just making the choice for themselves but for many generations of their descendants who are hurt and trapped by the choices their ancestors made.

Realising that she's not going to convince Baphomet, Lei manages to briefly escape and tries to sabotage the power supply for Baphomet's fleet. She fails, and ends the series captured once again. The last shot of the series is Baphomet's fleet of Temple-Warships flying into the wormhole with no implication of what occurs afterwards.

- Entry from Soviet Animation, a watcher's guide and history.

 

[Miss Teri]

Andromeda

1988 5 episode OVA based on the novels "Andromeda", "The Heart of the Serpent" and "Bull's Hour" by Ivan Yefremov.

The anthology series splits the first novel "Andromeda" into two parts. The first episode is the various stories exploring the world of Andromeda, a post-scarcity society, in particular the interworkings of the "Great Circle", a council of various planetary systems, and their troubles with communications between each of them (FTL communications unavailable in this world). The main plot is that of Darr Veter, and his attempts to find a successor as head of the Global Space Agency. The Second episode "The Iron Star", follows the first part of Andromeda, exploring the first interstellar mission, to the titular star. While going fairly smoothly at first, the mission goes awry when they are caught in the grasp of the star itself, which pulls them towards another planet, where they find hostile lifeforms and the remnants of another civilization.

The third episode is a fairly straightforward adaptation of "The Heart of the Serpent,", with first contact made with an alien ship, and the tension onboard as to whether the other ship will be hostile towards them.

"The Bull's Hour" is split into the final two episodes, with FTL travel finally achieved, and a crew is sent to the distant planet "Tormance", which was colonized by humans before the era of the Great Circle. The society is heavily bureaucratic and run by an aging oligarchy, one which is starting to reform and collapse. The arrival of the crew further initiates further change and major reforms to the system (the original story was an allegory for the changes occurring in the USSR during the early Cultural Leap).

The series garned positive reviews and success. It was part of a wave of anime and OVAs adapting works of Soviet science fiction (including Aelita in 1985, Amphibian Man and Roadside Panic in 1986, and Red Star in 1988). It would become a minor classic in the FBU, albeit in a heavily edited form.

------------

 

[Bookmark1995]

I can kind of see The Stars and Stripes Forever losing popularity in the UASR but remaining quite popular in the US in Cuba.

Music Magazine

The Fall and Rise of the Star Spangled Banner

March 10, 2005

Music, like all art, can reflect the politics. While freedom of speech is celebrated, politics and-what some consider-good taste can never the less lead to unofficial censorship. This reflects the odd history the UASR shares with the Star Spangled Banner.

Revolution and Music

The Revolution changed a few minor things, like the political and economic makeup of our nation [1], but what it changed the most was political music.

Music dating back to the First American Revolution and the early 19th century found itself being thrown into the garbage heap of history.

For those who still believed in the old Constitution, these old songs about liberty became utterly empty as MacArthur and his forces perverted those very ideals. Even worse, however, was the use of these patriotic songs by reactionary forces. In the 1930s, it was common for far-right terrorists and Havana Radio to loudly play these songs before committing gross acts of terror.

The Star Spangled Banner, a short-lived national anthem and navy song, became associated with the various fascists gangs that roamed the early UASR (and who often, ironically, sang pro-Confederate songs alongside American songs).

"Singing the Star-Spangled Banner and other old patriotic songs were a sign of reaction to Hoover and his men," commented one historian, and worse than taboo.

By the 1930s, the Banner and other old songs and largely fallen out of favor of songs that celebrated workers and unity. But within a generation, a new political shift would resurrect the Star-Spangled Banner.

Cold War and a New Meaning to the Banner

The early Cold War was marked by increasing tensions between the former wartime allies of the UASR and the FBU. In this environment, old Revolutionary War traditions were revived, largely as a means of sticking it to the British.

The revival of 4th of July, at least in the regions of the US that made up the former 13 colonies, was one example of this new appreciation for First American Revolutionary history.

But the War of 1812, considered by some to be the Second War for Independence, also gained attention. British harassment of American ships and the enslavement of their soldiers were often depicted in film, but also many events were dramatized-including the writing of the Star-Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.

This occurred in the 1954 film Washington Burns, which dramatized the burning of Washington, but also dramatized the events that would lead to Key writing the Star-Spangled Banner.

The film demonstrated that the song, despite its bourgeois origins, was mainly a symbol of defiance against British tyranny.

The Star-Spangled Banner, regained considerable popularity afterward, including the Maryland Republic, where schoolchildren celebrate their heritage.

[1] Sarcasm

 

[Bookmark1995]

The Economist

Peter Stands

March 10, 2004

The Republic of South Florida: Why the Southern Tip of Florida Desires to Form its Own Republic?

In recent Soviet elections in Florida, a branch of the Social Ecology Union took control over much the government offices throughout the Southern offices of Florida. This branch, known as the Southern Florida Movement, seeks to separate the Southern portion of the Florida peninsula from the rest of the Republic.

If you ask Miamians, however, this move was already decades in the making, and already a political reality. When I drove through Brevard there were signs along the road (half-jokingly) telling me I am leaving Florida. Brevard is considered to be the unofficial border of North and South Florida

Tale of Two Floridas

"People aqui see the viejos in Tallahassee as being from a different country altogether," said Angelina Mirabel, a Premier of the People's Republic of Cuba, a government-in-exile founded in 1935 by Cuban exile Jorge Manach [1].

While governments-in-exile are seen as jokes, the People's Republic of Cuba is quite well-developed. It is located in a large, 12 story Brutalist building. It operates a militia force, collect taxes, holds elections that are taken very seriously, and provides social services. As she is seen as a major leader of the Cuban community, the office Mirabel sits in is often designated as the Second Premier of Florida. And if and when the capitalist government in Havana collapses, she would become the first Premier of a free Cuba.

Despite the stature of her office, like many Miami professionals, she is characterized by a lack of modesty expected of other politicians. Instead of a business suit, her professional attire (as well as that of her staff) is revealing swimwear. She wears a red sports bra and a green sarong around her legs.

"I think it doesn't matter what we wear as long as we get our jobs done," Mirabel said with a teasing smile.

When I visited Tallahassee, however, I was exposed to a Florida that does not gain much international attention. This is a Florida that resembles the American South: The people here a far more modest. The population that is mainly black, white, and mixed-race. The only Cubans are a few politicians and some college students. There is a plethora of old fashioned Southern architecture, and various memorials to slavery and the Jim Crow era. It is no backwater, and has the Southern charm, but it certainly lacks the cosmopolitanism of Miami.

"When tourists come here, they expect to fin' hot Cuban girls," David Carroll says with a mixture of playfulness and exasperation. "They soon find that is not what we are all abou'." We met in front of the Republic Capitol, a complex that consists of an old 19th century neo-classical structure, and in the background is a 22-story modernist building. The contrast symbolizes a South struggling with tradition and change.

Carroll seems like a more like a figure out of Dixie then a typical Floridan. Unlike Mirabel, he bears a large suit in the humid climate, he also speaks with a strong Southern drawl. He represents the city of Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle, an area that is very culturally conservative. He dislikes how Miami and the Southern part of the state influence the affairs of the North.

"I think these Cubans 'ave taken over our state and spent all our money on guns," David Carroll with a roll of his eyes. "I think if they want to leave so bad, I say good riddance."

Carroll and Mirabel signify the divide between North and South Florida. At first this seems typical of any republic of the UASR. In most UASR republics, the rural people often call their major cities "(x) miles surrounded by reality", even as the societal and cultural shifts that began in major cities begin entering the hinterland. In the South, Atlanta and New Orleans are especially known for the testy relationship between their Republics. But the divide between North and South Florida goes much deeper.


The Old Florida

Before the Revolution, Florida was a typical Southern state: defined by poverty, underdevelopment, and brutal discrimination of the black community.

While Florida had seen some development of its tourist industry and naval assets, it still remained culturally and socially reactionary on the Eve of the Revolution. The 1933 Revolution changed much of the Deep South. Poverty programs and cultural education slowly dismantled the Jim Crow establishment.

But the Revolution brought a change that was not typical of the rest of the Deep South: the first wave of Cuban immigrants arrived in Miami to escape from the excesses of MacArthur, and though small, already began changing the city into what would become the Second Havana.

The biggest changes, however, would occur in the post-war era, when over a million Cubans would flee the island to escape MacArthur's postwar repression. In Florida, they were told, they would find an atmosphere of tolerance. What they found was a society still escaping from a racist past, that was largely unprepared for such a mass influx. Their arrival would create tensions that would erupt with the 1956 Tent City riots, which showed the need to reform immigration in the South, but also left a permanent stamp on the Republic of Florida: namely the North-South Divide.

Carroll, who was 10 years old when the riots occurred, remembered the antipathy is family held. While Carroll became the first member of his family to go to a racially integrated school, prejudice still remained in his hometown of Pensacola, especially toward the influx of Cubans.

"My grandpa once told me that 'these Cubans is worse than niggers,'" Carroll admitted with shame. "We all felt like these bums were taken our jobs and money. I'm not proud to say I said cruel things about those poor people."

Facing such deprivation and a little hostility, the Cuban community responded with a devoted effort to political involvement and economic advancement. The Government-in-exile evolved from a small office into a serious political organization, under the leadership of exile Eduardo Chibas [2].

"The desire to achieve is born from a desire to do better than what we were allowed to do in our native homeland," Mirabel said.

The Cuban community, as a backlash to the cultural conservatism of their native land, heavily embraced the social and political changes of the Second Cultural Revolution. But this slowly but surely drove a wedge between North and South


Cuban Power (and Floridan Resentment)

The term "Cuban Power" describes the disproportionate influence Cuban's have over the UASR. Despite making up only 4 percent of the population, Cubans have enormous rates of advancement and political participation. Ten percent of Red Army command structure is said to be of Cuban descent, and many other fields such as medicine and research in the state are dominated by Cubans in Florida, breeding some resentment among the rest of the state.

"Us Cubans are seen a political aristocracy in what is a socialist nation," Mirabel said with a smile. "Power tends to breed resentment by those who don't have it.

In Florida especially this is true. Cubans have influenced the politics of this Florida for the past 40 years. However, they only make up about 15 percent of the population. Even in South Florida, where they are most concentrated, they only make up a plurality of the population, as South Florida also a diverse mixture of Latin-American, Jewish, African-American, and Asian populations.

But their impact has made Florida a political trendsetter in the Deep South. Often the Sunshine Republic is at the forefront of liberalization policies. The first laws in the American South liberalizing public exposure [3], sex work, and sexual freedom were developed in Florida were developed-often to the chagrin of the people in the North.

"My parents would always complain about how Miami was dragging down the rest of us," Carroll said with a smile. "My comrades still believe that the people of Miami drag us into things we don't want."

But culture is not the only thing dividing North and South. The other is the issue of Cuban military largess.

As stated, Cubans are the most heavily represented group in army. Largely because there has been a generational long dream of Cubans retaking their nation from the American-zombie Republic.

In the 3rd floor of the Cuban-Exile headquarters, Mirabal shows me an army training center, where she shows me young people exercising for potential invasion. I am astonished as these teenagers, some younger than 17, practicing the seizing of a beachhead in the event of an amphibious assault.

"Liberation is a dream we all seek to keep alive," Mirabal said firmly. "I hope to see the end of the occupation of my father's homeland by those Havana parasites."

Miami has become one of the most militarized cities in the world. Even in the famous beaches, teenagers practice military exercises, and the lifeguards drive around in rough-terrain vehicles. Swimsuit clad (or not) teenage militias roam the city carrying rifles on their backs. Cubans and other Miamians want to be prepared for The Day, as they put it.

Northern Floridans, however, feel their wealth and people is being wasted on a war machine that they have little interest in. While they do feel sympathy for the Cuban proletariat, they have less of a personal investment in a potential Cuban invasion. In a strange reversal of the usual political trend, the more conservative people are doves, while urban people are the hawks.

"You could spend one-third the amount they spend on guns, and still have an army that could topple Havana," Carroll says with annoyance. "We want that money going to our schools, not so a bunch of Cubans can play soldier with our cash, and with our young people."

"Playing soldier," Mirabal asks with disgust. "There can be no half-measures in fighting the class enemies. But the people up North would think that. They are traditionally reactionary of course. If we leave them, I will not shed a tear."

The divide reflects how even in worker's state, there can still be sharp divisions over the meaning of revolution, and jealousies that can divide a Republic along unofficial lines.

[1] OTL Reporter and opponent of Batista

[2] OTL political opponent of Batista and government reformer.

[3] Euphemism for public nudity.

 

[Miss Teri]

The Murder of Albert Munemori: A Case Study in Wartime Paranoia
www.wwiihistory.co.uasr/comintern/homefront/conflicts

On September 15th, 1944, 17 year old Albert Munemori, a native of Fresno and head of the local Pioneers, went to a goods store to buy some beans for his parents. He would not return that night. After an extensive search the next morning, his body was found outside of town. After an extensive investigation, Henry March was arrested for this murder, thanks to eyewitness testimony. March confessed to the murder, and justified it, stating that he was doing his part to "defeat the Imperialist fifth column operating in our borders". Munemori's murder would expose the long running paranoia and suspicion against the Japanese community on the West Coast, even in a worker's republic.

Japanese Americans on the West Coast:

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japanese laborers began to migrate to Hawaii'i and the US West Coast to find work. These "Issei" found work as railroad laborers, shop owners, and particularly farming. While some worked as farm laborers, many decided to lease land, and create independent farming, in which some became very successful. As a result, many Japanese American communities on the West Coast were primarily agricultural in nature. However, this success would come to earn the ire of many whites, who feared the competition from more successful farmers, and soon, discrimination would follow.

An informal Gentlemen's Agreement in 1907 between the governments of the US and Japan restricted the flow of Japanese migrants, and in 1913, California enacted the "Alien Land Law", making it illegal for many Issei to own land or lease it for longer than three years, which would become the basis for other laws of the same nature. As a result of these, and other forms of discrimination and suspicion, many second-generation immigrants or "Nisei" began to gravitate towards the Worker's Party. Nisei, along with Mexican and Chinese farm workers, would become key branches of the California WPA by the time of the 1930 crash. Many Japanese Americans would fight on the Antifa side during the Civil War.

With all laws relating to land ownership null and void following the victory of the Reds, Japanese Americans would become a key part of the large farming communes in rural California, with the help of Nisei WPA organizers. Immigration was opened again, and some refugees would settle in the "Little Tokyos" in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

However, anti-Japanese sentiment continued. The Sons of Liberty branch in California, "The Sons of the Golden West", would frequently target Japanese communities, with bombings of the LA Little Tokyo in 1937 and an Imperial Valley community center in 1938. However, the bigotry was not restricted to reactionaries. As the spectre of Japanese imperialism began to waver in China, many dedicated socialists began to express concerns that Japanese agents had ingrained themselves within Japanese American communities in Hawaii and the West Coast and might subvert the war effort. Even dedicated Party members Earl Warren and Vito Marcantonio [1] expressed concerns about "internal subversion" by Japanese agents.

These calls only intensified when Pearl Harbor occurred, bringing Comintern into a direct war with Japan. However, Defense Secretary Martin Abern and Civil Defense Commissioner Ulrich Stein jointly stated that such fears had "little basis in fact or evidence". Even before Pearl Harbor, many Japanese Americans enlisted to fight with the WFRA in Europe. Many would also enlist to fight in the Pacific, with their presence being a boost in the propaganda effort against Imperial Japan.

Despite this, tensions still remained between white and Japanese communities remained.

Albert Munemori

Albert Munemori was born on July 7th, 1927 in Fresno, California. His parents were Issei originally from the Chiba Prefecture. After several years as farm laborers, they joined the WPA as organizers, and served with distinction in the Red Army during the Civil War. They later became major administrators at the kibbutz they tended to. His older brother Edward would enlist in the WFRN after the declaration of war, and was serving in the Pacific.

Albert followed in their footsteps in becoming a leader. He excelled in the new school system, and later became a exemplar member of the Pioneers. He would participate in the school mock government. In his statements for the school yearbook, he expressed his desire to become a doctor.

Henry March

Henry March was born on July 3rd, 1924, in Reno, Nevada. Little is known about his early life. What is known is that he was rejected for military service, due to astigmatism. He ended up in Fresno as part of his alternative service in civil defense.

March was noted by his superiors for his apparent disdain for non-whites, and constant suspicions of the Japanese population. Prior to the murder, he would regularly report "suspicious activities" from Japanese individuals, which his superior would usually just find to be regular activities.

The Murder and the Aftermath

According to March, he was in the same store when Albert walked in, and bought several materials. March was suspicious of the materials, and followed Albert. Albert noticed, and confronted him. After he outright denied all of March's allegation, March grew more convinced, and decided to take action, strangling him, and hiding his body outside of town.

March was caught thanks to another farmer seeing him fleeing the scene, and the store owner reporting him leaving right after Albert. He confessed, expecting that his actions would be lauded as the "first line of defense". He was surprised when he was convicted of murder, and sentenced to death for the murder (carried out in early January)

Munemori was cremated and buried in a Buddhist ceremony, with his brother coming back through a special order to attend the funeral.

This incident, as well as other instances of threats and attacks against individuals of Japanese decent, prompted militias to protect Japanese communities, drawn from individual members.

The site has been designated a historical landmark, with a brief description of the event. His story is also described in the "Asian American History Center" in Los Angeles.

[1] Both of who supported internment OTL

 

[Bookmark1995]

Here's a contribution I hope will intrigue people. It is about how art itself can predict the future:

Commonpedia.uasr

The Unity Show

The Unity Show is a 1974 British dark comedy satire-film, directed by John Howard Davies [1].

An American diplomat (Walter Matthau) and a British television producer (John Cleese) create a reality show about an American family and a British family living together. Initially hoping to use the show to promote detente, they instigate conflict between the two families for the sake of ratings.

Due to poor marketing, the film was not a commercial success upon its release in June 1974. However its prescience-predicting not only the collapse of detente just 4 years later, but the rise of reality TV-have made into a cult classic.

Synopsis

Matthew Mathewson (Cleese) an unscrupulous and snobbish British television producer, is approached by Steven Green (Matthau), a somewhat egotistical American cultural attache, and his assistant Melissa (Adrienne Barbeau, to create a TV show that celebrates the current detente.

Matthewson's long-suffering assistant Horace (Michael Palin) gives Matthewson the idea for The Unity Show, a show in which two families, one British, the other American, must learn to get along for 6 months. Matthewson steals credit for the idea, and offers a cash incentive to two different families who must share a flat in Manchester, with all their actions being filmed for all to see.

The dour Harry Crease (Michael Caine) and his witty wife Rubella (Joan Plowright), a struggling English couple from Birmingham, agree to join the show to cover their debts. Their marriage has suffered from a lack of passion, with due to British reservation, isn't discussed among them. Their young son, Davis, and teenager daughter Georgina are model students.

An American family from Philadelphia signs on. Alan Katz (George C. Scott), an abrasive former World War II veteran, and his flirtatious wife Mary (Goldie Hawn) sign on for the program. They are joined by their teenage son Aaron and their young daughter Ashley.

The families despite some initial tensions, eventually get along very well.

The Crease family isn't as snobbish or stuffy as Americans are led to believe, and the Katz family aren't as promiscuous or boisterous as the British are led to believe, and become friends very quickly.

While Green sees the show as a success, and an example of detente, the profit-driven Matthewson is incensed with the ratings. However, during the filming, an accidental discovery of Harry's porn collection (and Alan's well-meaning but intrusive advice) gives Mathewson the idea of creating conflict between the two families. Green resists, but is eventually corrupted by promises of money and fame.

Horace and Melissa are forced by Matthewson and Green into instigating conflict between the two families, by exploiting prejudices. Horace bribes a bisexual hooker into hugging Mary (exploiting the Creases' homophobia), and Melissa plants right-wing materials in Harry's drawer (exploiting the Katzs' political prejudices).

The fights between the families generate a ratings bonanza for The Unity Show, which encourages Matthewson and Green to keep going further and further in their manipulations, including sabotaging meals and breaking the children's toys to get more violence, and revealing many of their dirty secrets.

The final straw comes when one fight causes Aaron to knock out one of Georgina's teeth, and the two-producers use it as a promotional tool. Guilt-ridden by their actions, and enraged at their employers, Horace and Melissa confess (off camera) to the two families. They set up a brutal revenge against Mathewson and Green, by pretending to get into a gun battle. The two producers come clean on camera, wrecking their reputations. The film ends with the two families and the two assistants watching the now unemployed Mathewson and Green beating each other up a new reality show called Git Fight.

[1] Director of Mr. Bean OTL.