NationStates Jolt Archive

Bihar Soviet State, Indian Soviet Commonwealth of Beddgelert (Late 2008)

"Usually at this time of year a person standing where I am today would expect to be under three or four metres of rushing water. Above me is the 54th Causeway, a raised road that now seems superfluous. No wetland can be seen from here.

"This area should produce rice enough to feed a large portion of this state's more than half billion residents, but not this year. The annual monsoon, it seems, has failed. Certainly it is already many weeks late, and Soviet meteorologists are admitting that it seems unlikely to arrive at all."

The BBC carried news from Soviet India to the 1st World. Gadar! (revolution) was restricted in many nations owing presumably to its distasteful addiction to truth and habit of exposing the fallacies of various convenient myths supporting the anti-Communist agenda, while at the same time India's own -highly controversial- Fox hunting law made the sub-continent a very dangerous place for many capitalist journos, who were often fair game for rifle, bow, or hound. Several American journalists had just last year quite literally lost their heads after getting a bit carried away in reporting on a 'cult' that turned out to be a traditional Tolistobogi hill fort community in Geletian India. So, Aunty, tollerated by the Soviets, though not without frequent criticism, was a vital link between the home of Igovian Communism, and the capitalist world.

India, long infamous as the land of famine, had since 1947 become self sufficient in staple foods and had even become a net exporter of foodstuffs, but now she was on the brink of disaster.

Eleven billion Soviet citizens from Quetta to Colombo faced massive shortfalls in their food supply as rains failed to come.

In Muzaffarpur, comrade Rhiannon Dhoni made her feelings perfectly clear. In her opinion, air pollution from irresponsible capitalist enterprises was at the root of the failure of the rainbelt to move as it should, and she was joining a chorus of citizens calling for stern action against serious polluters. As even perennial rivers fed by glacial melts were suffering from a... lack of glaciers, citizens were increasingly up in arms.

(OOC: Time's up, but I'll be back soon!)

To: Bihar Soviet State
Re: aid

Dear Bihar Soviet State leaders

We, as a fellow socialist state, are offering you aid to help calm your citizens.
We offer 10,000,000L of water and 10tons of rice. If you accept our aid we shall begin to load a tanker right away, and along with a small military force of 4 escort vessels, to protect the goods during transportation, they will be with you 4 days from when you accept the offer. More can be sent upon request.

President Vladimir Burte
The United Socialist State of Burtilana

Message to the Bihar Soviet State

We offer 1 billion gallons of water, 500 tons of rice, and 600 million chicken dinners to the Bihar Soviet State. These can been sent right away.

Food Department of Greal

[OOC: I'm guessing that Beddgelert's view of meat is the same as a religious Hindu's, correct?]

Communiqué to the Government of Soviet India

The news of the flooding in your nation is disheartening and the Empire, as a whole, sends its condolences to the government and people of your nation. We are not interested in a body count, only in avoiding said body count. As a consequence, the Second Empire comes before you willing to pledge support as early in this tragedy as possible, to avoid the further loss of human life - or, at least, avoid as much loss of life as is humanly possible. Soviet India will soon be receiving large shipments of foodstuffs based on wheat, and hopefully there are warehouses large enouth to stock up the food for a number of months. We are willing to begin the construction of a reserve food base, until the agricultural sector can recuperate the lost land and harvest - we'd expect this to take up to two years! Due to other nation's priority on shipping water, we will instead look to curtail the probability of famine in BeddGellert. We hope that our aid will at least indent the number of potential casualties due to malnutrition - the history of India, in this sector, is far too dark to allow it to happen again.

Besides this, the Emperor himself has implemented emergency members to mobilize technicians to aid in the different problematic areas of the flood. Ths includes doctors, nurses and volunteers to aid with reconstruction and the looking for bodies that may be hidden by the rubble. All in all, we're hoping to send around one hundred persons by aircraft, most of which will be military personnel acting as civilians. We're hoping that these people will serve as a vanguard for future 'deployments', and they will be given everything necessary to set up Macabee-based medical camps and volunteer construction teams. Ultimately, the amount of people that we send will be entirely based on Beddgellert's necessities for them and acceptance of their deployment.

If necessary, we can also begin massive economic aid packages and loans, in the way of actual funds. Please, tell us what we should do for you and your people. Ideological differences have no place in tragedy,

[signed]Daví Fern, Minister of Agriculture

Official message from Conserative morality:
We can offer you ten million gallons of water, but we warn you that such monsoon failures happen, and you cannot rely on aid each time it happens.

"The government of New Brittonia wishes to extend its condolence, and wishes to allow remittance rapid response humanitarian aid terms of the Foreign Service Corps and the Marine Corps to enter India for aid and reconstruction."
-Foreign Minister Nabila Katchab

With your permission, Skyland Mt. would be willing to dispatch an humanitarian relief force to distribute aid among your people. We can send helicopters and trucks filled with food, water, and, if needed, medical supplies.

In the mean time we offer our deepest condolences to your people.

Minister George Benson,

Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

Skyland Mt.

(OOC: My non-military technology is quite PMTish, if there is any issue with this, I'll just retcon it, hope there is none, as this is a long-term decisive solution rather than a direct aid to the current problem)

The news of the disaster in Beth Gellert have reached the people of the Confederacy quite quickly. It became clear that they were still dependent on weather to ensure their foods to be available. Cecily Lockhelm wished she had some spare funds to give by herself, but there was no tax collection to add funds, for it was considered a highly inefficient manner of allocating resources, and all public services were under control of the private sector, although such sector was of workers self-managed cooperatives rather than of corporations. Nonetheless, the logic of profit still was present in their mindset, usually conflicting with their more ideological-loaded options in the daily decision-making process of all the cooperatives of the Confedearcy.

Eleven billions was a too large number of people to attend, and indeed, the Confederacy agricultural supply of basic foods, as one of the only fully "free" and collectivized product in its economy to ensure that starvation would never happened, decentralized among cooperatives whose members believed that not only they were doing the right thing by ensuring food to everyone, but also having an excellent marketing ploy and losing the earnings of each one beyond basic needs. Such was one of the reasons why most of the cooperatives offered basic public services for free, as they knew that by doing so the effective consuming power of those who they depended on for their living would raise dramatically.

As expected, the skyscraper hydroponics and aeroponics farms of the densely populated Confederacy were expanded to cover almost exactly the needs of its people, with a margin of safety for emergencies of course, with the sole goal of avoiding waste of foods, and thus they had little to no surplus of basic foods to offer. On the other hand, snacks, elaborate dishes and alike were commonly found, although of course, they depended on the crops grown "for free" by the private, but non-capitalist sector of Third Spanish States free market economy. Some of such farms were fitted with advanced life support enclosed modules which allowed them to work continually regardless of weather, as part of an experimental research which not only intended to boost the agricultural potential of the Confederacy even further and allow Oasis to be built in the middle of nuclear wastelands, but also as one of the many needed efforts to allow a manned mission to farther corners of the solar future, and in five or more decades, an ambitious plan of colonizing the solar system possible, should it become economically interesting by then, as future is in many ways unpredictable. Such technology was on its early stages.

There was little that Third Spanish States could thus offer, apparently. Unfortunately it seemed to the despair of many sympathizers of Igovianism that it was beyond their reach to help their comrades, although many sent as much as they could of both natural and industrialized foods freely towards Beth Gellert, with naval shipping cooperatives offering their services for free for their transport towards India.

In a virtual conference, Cecily Lockhelm asked the creator of the life support system and Future Weather-Independent Agriculture project whether it could serve to supply the needs of tens of billions of people. The answer was pretty clear. Although it would require a decade or even more for the needed infrastructure to be built, if their know-how was given to Beth Gellert, they would eventually become a nation not only completely independent from the harsh unpredictability of weather in a world harmed by the threat of global warming, but in the medium-term future, a nation capable of expanding the ideals of libertarian socialism and communism even in the most inhospitable pieces of Earth.

Now all that was left was the people's approval. A research which has cost dozens of billions of mutualist credits, now was about to be given, as a gift, to the people of Beth Gellert, their newest allies. Although at the short and medium term it wouldn't make any immediate difference, rather than an alleviation to the issue, such new method of agriculture was sought to avoid things like this to ever happen again. Despite some resistance, due to the important nature of such tech, most approved the referendum asking for it to be donated to Beth Gellert, and as expected, a message have arrived to the government of Igovian socialist India.

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

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TO: Comrades and friends in Beth Gellert
CC:
FROM: Cecily Lockhelm, head of State(clockhelm@diplonet.tss)
SUBJECT: A gift to eventually avoid your nation to be dependent on weather to survive.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Mutualismo.svg/120px-Mutualismo.svg.png
Anarchist Confederacy International

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3008/diplonettd1.jpg



From Cecily Lockhelm, on behalf of the will of the people of the Confederacy, to Igo Graeme and all comrades of Beth Gellert

Our people have become aware of the plight of yours due to recent climate changes provoked by an irresponsible lust for accumulating wealth from those who make "social responsibility" propaganda at the front door and dump their litter at the back door, like all capitalists ought to do. We lack a centralized pool of funds to offer to you, although many of our people and cooperatives are, from their own will, sending food and financial support to help Beth Gellert to survive such dark times. Unfortunately we barely produce more than what we need to survive and maintain our economy, as agriculture is entirely collectivized among us, albeit in a very decentralized way, rather than being a merchandise, and we consider it very unethical to waste food in a world where famine is growing exponentially. There are some significant stockpiles that some of our cooperatives are voluntarily offer, although as our production is not that greater to our needs, we are afraid we can't help much on that.

However, we are well aware that regardless of how much aid is sent, it will in no way solve the issue definitively. It's unfortunately beyond our reach, and even if it was, infinitely risky, to intervene for the sake of stopping global warming and the inherent failure of the capitalist free market into addressing it. However, we believe that there is another alternative, something which we took almost two decades to develop and master. As part of our own space research program, we have developed self-sufficient, enclosed agricultural units based on both hydroponics and aeroponics, patterned in highly space-efficient skyscraper farms, which are completely independent of outside weather, heavily automated and controlled by advanced and reliable computing systems, and could continue operational even in the middle of an irradiated external environment. Whereas many wasted billions with useless Future Warriors programs, we have invested wisely into the Future Weather-Independent Agriculture technology, which has made of the Confederacy an weather-independent nation regardless of the outside situation. Our comrades from cooperatives have invested 72 billions of mutualist credits in this project, which means this is something among the cutting-edge of our own technologies. However, we believe information should be free to all who are to make good use of it, and thus, our people have democratically decided to provide you with the blueprints that shall allow Beth Gellert's agriculture to become independent from how weather becomes worse in the next years. However, considering the size of your population, we unfortunately have to inform you that it will take at least a decade for the needed infrastructure and adaptations to your local conditions to be finished, making this new technology capable of replacing fully traditional, weather dependent agriculture, and of ensuring not only the future of your future generations, but perhaps the future of mankind as well.

Some of our scientists have voluntarily offered to provide your nation with the necessary technical expertise to make the transition to this new paradigm of agriculture as smooth, effective and fast as possible. The files are all individually encrypted due to the sensitive nature of this technology. I will forward the passwords for each of them in separate messages among steganography as a safety precaution.

We wish the best for all, and may India never again be stricken by famine and true forms of socialism shine and spread through the world. Although I was born in a time it was no longer a reality, my family told me of how horrible it is misery, for they witnessed the civil war that gave birth to the Confederacy. I will try to convince the people to send all our surplus basic agricultural foods to supply the best we can your needs.

Attentiously
Cecily Lockhelm (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Cleyere.jpg)
Head of State, vigilante and military advisor

Annexed files:

fwiap1.pgp
fwiap2.pgp
fwiap3.pgp
fwiap4.pgp
fwiap5.pgp
fwiap6.pgp
fwiap7.pgp

Mohali, Punjab Soviet State

Another day, another city -this one home to just under one million people- votes to introduce rationing. The Mohali Regional Soviet took the decision early, apparently not keen to see the Punjabi State Soviet resort too soon to paying for extra imports.

Punjab had perhaps been a little over enthusiastic, when compared with other states, in embracing Theoroshian and Zintharian imports since the historic signing of the Calcutta Communist Contract, and in its excitement over the acquisition of new foreign goods had let the search for export opportunities take a back seat. The state now had one of the worst trade balances in the Indian Soviet Commonwealth, and impending food shortages raising the prospect of still higher import expenditure -for essential foodstuffs- made it that much worse.

In Mohali, Pantisocratic Phalansteries -communes, usually of some 1,500 residents, at which Local Soviets operate- were reacting reasonably well to the city's decision. There was no denying the weakness of the rains this year, so the impending food crisis could hardly be blamed on the Soviet system. It was reasonable, then, that precautions be taken, wasn't it?

In any case, the restrictions were not too severe, and most luxuries would still be available, though some water resources may be redirected away from wine growing enterprises, which was a worry for drinkers and growers alike, and grains ordinarily used to produce Geletian ales would likely be turned over to production of breads and the like, which had the region's Celtic minority already grumbling.

It was hard to say, though, how much impact Mohali's steps would have. Near-by Amritsar, a city more than ten times Mohali's size, was yet to put rationing to the vote, and Chandigarh's more than six million citizens had already rejected the idea, apparently unwilling to believe that Soviet India could face such serious problems as some comrades were suggesting.

To nations offering aid

Soviet Consuls are not slow to express the Commonwealth's appreciation of the good will shown by the international community, and to congratulate governments for their speedy reaction to signs of a potential disaster in Beddgelert.

However, those same governments find some obstructions to their efforts.

Many Soviet Indians maintain that surely there is greater need in poorer nations, where disasters have been more severe and are already in effect. India, many point out, is only just suffering the genuine failure of a monsoon (though several recent years have had slightly weakened rains, it is true), and is a wealthy nation that has a lot of notches left on its belt, should it have to be tightened.

A few citizens, most notably headed by Celtic nationalist icon Adiatorix, manage -being, after all, old fashioned Geletian Celts- to take offence, and point out that the Commonwealth's economy alone is more than twice the size of the combined economies of all potential emergency aid donors, save the Macabees, that have come forward so far.

This is not something typically pointed out by the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian majority, but outsiders should understand the influential mindset of the large and influential Geletian populace. Men such as Adiatorix, General Indomartus, and even Sopworth Igo are naturally inclined to suggest that the solution to a problem such as this is in the extraction of tribute and protection money from weaker nations!

Fortunately, they are narrowly voted-down in the Soviets.

Still, independent of the broader Commonwealth system, Patna, capital of Bihar Soviet State, says that it would be willing to accept some food and water aid from those nations that have offered it. The State Soviet compromises and suggests that just a portion of the offered relief be sent, "to lessen the impact on prices, likely to rise as we are forced to import more of our rice", and that other resources be saved for genuinely poor nations.

Bihar is one of the Commonwealth's least developed states, but, even so, it's poorest citizens still enjoy standards of living comparable to the middle classes of most 1st world nations, all be it in a wildly different cultural environment.

Third Spanish States

The Commonwealth receives Lockhelm's communique with great interest. Radical engineering and the mutually beneficial application of advanced sciences are concepts prominent in the popular culture of Soviet India. The Igovian Revolution is much concerned with getting things right. The sun is the source of all life, so solar power plants pockmark the Indian deserts; time and tide wait for no man, so the Arabian Sea, the Tamil Strait, and the Bay of Bengal are littered with wave power generators; ground-effect makes for efficient transport of heavy loads at high speeds, so the maritime defence forces and trade fleet deploy WIG vehicles of epic scale; it is human nature to commune, so the people live in Pantisocratic Phalansteries... and if food can be produced safely, efficiently, and reliably in weather-independent complexes, perhaps that should be investigated as well.

Several Soviet States invite experts from the Third Spanish States to give lecture tours of their universities, and numerous communities offer to accommodate such experts for the duration of their work in India. The Calcutta Technical Institute is able to release funds for a trial of the Confederacy's futuristic agricultural method, and will be the first Soviet institution to attempt construction of a 'skyscraper farm' with Confederate technical assistance.

Overview

At the moment, Raipur (capital of the Commonwealth) says, widespread starvation is not thought to be an immediate threat. Some foodstuffs can be produced without the monsoon, some states are less reliant than others on seasonal rainfall patterns, emergency stockpiles of some foods exist -though they have been reduced by slightly weaker monsoons in several of the last few years-, and the Commonwealth has one of the world's fastest growing economies, so can afford to buy extra quantities of food from abroad. Last year, India was a net exporter of food, and a foreign aid donor nation.

This year, Soviet exports and aid will have to be cut drastically, leaving many poor socialist nations without food and financial/development aid they expected from India. Madagascar, its socialist government under Soviet protection since the attempted Roycelandian invasion of 1990, expected millions of dollars of development assistance, and now will not get much of it. Likewise Nepal, Vietnam, Laos, and countless others.

The crisis is in a large degree symbolic of what may be worse to come. If the rains were to fail again next year, India would have no emergency stores. She would have already drained much of her financial reserve. The sudden disappearance of Soviet food exports from the world market and the added Indian competition for produce there is sure to cause an increase in prices.

A major concern is that Soviet India is a direct democracy, and its people -many of them influenced by the warlike traditions of the Geletian Celtic population- are starting to blame major polluters, chiefly amongst the capitalist states, for domestic hardships. This means that many may vote for radical action that could push the Soviet power into conflict with the 1st world if a solution is not soon found.

(OOC: Beth Gellert, check your TGs, I've invited you for something I have planned)

There was a significant problem into transporting the scientists of the Confederacy to provide the needed expertise to allow the nation of Beth Gellert to take its first step into the road of secure self-sufficiency. Air transports were dismissed, for there were about five hundred scientists willing to join the effort to solve their agricultural crisis. Any naval vessel would have to cross the strait of Gibraltar, currently owned by the hostile, Stalinist government currently controlling Spain that they currently hate so much. However it is actually owned, rather than controlled at all. The navy of Soviet Spain is a cripple incapable of any degree of power projection, and thus most shipping happens independently of its approval there, as they lack the power to enforce it effectively. Nonetheless, it's still a costly place, for all convoys of the Confederacy going through there must always be escorted by a at least a flotilla of destroyers and a single cruiser-carrier for safety. It can easily be lost account of how many times the place was on the verge of hosting a naval battle between the People's Republic of Spain and Third Spanish States, and Gibraltar's strategic importance did not help to reduce suspicious on each side that the other was about to attack them. Interceptors of Third Spanish States usually escorted naval bombers of Soviet Spain without engaging them in combat, and it wasn't uncommon for both sides to prepare their vessels to fire. Once it was only through luck that the captain of a small escort flotilla didn't order it to launch their P-700 Granit missiles against the decadent Soviet Spain skeleton Navy.

Fortunately, despite the major tension, which put much fear to the minds of the hundreds of scientists, has not led to any conflict in their way through Gibraltar, and they safely crossed through the Mediterranean, until reaching for several scaled flights towards India. As they arrived, they spreaded through many cities, offering their expertise to, should it be financially viable, help separatedly on the construction of multiple self-sufficient skyscraper farms across Beth Gellert. A group of five scientists took responsibility over the initial project in Calcutta, giving more solid explanations on how their research have succeeded where Biosphere 2 has failed, and giving some basic concepts of artificial life support systems and enclosed self-sufficient ecosystems. They answered all questions local scientists had, but preferred, perhaps for humility and to truly make them capable to expand such technology and adapt it to their own neecessities, to allow them to build it mostly by themselves.

Some food supplies of semi-durable foods also were reaching India from the donations of many volunteers in the Confederacy two weeks after the arrival of the scientists. Something strange was how they lacked escorts, differently from the vessels with the scientists. International News would soon point why. The Confederacy Navy was maintaining a permanent "watch and return fire" policy on Gibraltar with multiple patrols, and any downed vessel would be enough of a casus belli for them to declare war immediately against the People's Republic of Spain.

Message from Alexander Kazansky[

Given the nature of Allanea's Constitution, I am not presently able to call for any kind of vote on the issue of food aid, and frankly I think most Allaneans would vote against international aid, unless it were military aid, and this does not seem to be the case here. Further, I do not see it as moral to seize money from the paychecks of innocent Allaneans to feed those people whom they do not like, and who live far away from our homes.

But I am, as you may or may not know, a multibillionaire. My 'second job' as the General Secretary of the Confederacy of Sovereign States pays me a billion dollars per years, and as key shareholder of the Confederate Banking Company I collect at least 250 billion dollars a year as dividends on the company's investments in stock across Derscon, Allanea, Wagdog, and other Confederate States.

This allows me to help you guys out a little bit.

I have purchased 40 million tons of wheat, and will send them over as soon as possible, by ship.

I hope this is helpful.

Should you however declare war on any first world nation, I advise that you do so on Allanea, as at least then your defeat will be swift, and your treatment post-war humane.