AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY

GENERAL MAXIS--RE: AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY

AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY
THE DEATH OF THE OLD ORDER
THE DAWN OF DISSENT
THE RISE OF THE RESISTANCE
THE PETRA EXPERIMENT
WORLD ECONOMIC CONSORTIUM: ORIGINS


From: Gen. Q. Maxis, CIC
To: All field commanders and special operatives
Re: “Avoidance of Accountability” by Dr. Singh

The attached document is an article entitled “Avoidance of Accountability: The Rise of the World Economic Consortium,” by Doctor Ethan Singh. I consider this to be one of the cornerstone documents of our movement - it will come to be regarded much as the Federalist Papers were to American democracy. Every senior officer in my command should study this work carefully.

You will notice that when Dr. Singh discusses the growth and mission of the Resistance, he does so “warts and all.” Dr. Singh is a committed member of our movement, but he has not allowed that to cloud his scholarly objectivity. The Resistance is a movement of ordinary people reacting to extraordinary provocation. In the course of our history, mistakes have been made, opportunities have been lost and principles have sometimes even been compromised. This in no way detracts from the essential justice of our mission. What would, however, compromise our credibility would be to resort to the sort of whitewash and distortion that our enemies employ on a daily basis.

As a life-long soldier, though, I recognize that wartime is not always the appropriate time for absolute historical objectivity, Therefore I leave it entirely to the discretion of each unit commander whether to distribute this document to his troops. I only encourage you to distribute this document to the maximum degree you find consistent with unit morale and efficiency.

At the moment, HumOps is considering how best to move this document out to the general public. Therefore, for the time being, it remains “Confidential.” Please do not distribute it outside the organization, even via secure channels, as such efforts may compromise future efforts to capitalize on this information.

AVOIDANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY

The Rise of the World Economic Consortium
By Ethan R. Singh, Ph.D.

It is the nature of civilization to progress from chaos, to a strongly controlled social order, to a social order founded upon individual liberty and maintained by the consent of the governed. There are those who charge that the cycle then proceeds once more to chaos, but it is more accurate to say that chaos is always the result of the breakdown of the social order at any stage of this evolutionary process. It is the chasm which social evolution constantly skirts.

In understanding the rise of the World Economic Consortium (WEC) and the revolutionary Resistance which now challenges WEC global dominance, it is necessary to remember that all human progress is incremental. It is impossible for a civilization to go from anarchy to utopia in a single step. When the reformer of today asks himself, “Why did people ever surrender their liberties to the WEC?” he is avoiding an answer that is painfully simple - there was a time when the WEC was far preferable to any of the other available options.

THE DEATH OF THE OLD ORDER

Every school child knows that at the dawn of the 21st century the globe was divided up into hundreds of autonomous states, which often warred against one another. It is commonly believed that the peoples of the world turned to the WEC to unify them and save them from war and international strife. This belief is completely erroneous.

Although international war was tragic on a human scale, it was also, in many ways, a sign of social health and vigor. It often stimulated industry and trade, and increased overall economic efficiency by bringing the population together in a common cause against a common enemy. Nations often emerged from wartime stronger than they were when the war began - and if this statement is more true for winners than losers, it is by no means exclusively true for winners.

The fears that caused the people of the 22nd century to turn to the WEC for relief were, generally speaking, not fears of violence from without, but fears of stagnation and chaos from within. Across the globe the old social orders were breaking down. National authorities were ineffectual or simply absent. Crime was not merely rampant - in many places organized crime had, in fact, become the de facto government for neighborhoods, communities, sometimes whole regions. Often, such informal gangster “governments” were more stable and less corrupt than in those areas where the remnants of the original government still held sway.

The reasons for this international disintegration of the social order are, of course, extremely complex, but they can all be boiled down into three words - global economic collapse. By the end of the 20th century, governments had completely ceased to be self-contained economic units. The economic well-being of each government had become completely dependent upon the economic health of the rest of the world’s governments. Various policies and agencies were created to regulate this global economy, but all were entirely dependent on the consent and co-operation of the governments they regulated. There was no central economic authority with the power to enforce financial prudence on the world. The history of the early 21st century is one of nations sacrificing one prudent economic safeguard after another in response to some local or short-term need or crisis. Each such action only set up more such crises in the future.

The remaining leaders of the 21st century, however, were by no means unconscious of the roots of their problems, or of the obvious solution. They needed an economic compact with teeth in it - something that could restore order to the economy, and if necessary enforce that order against destabilizing forces. By the last half of the 21st century, when DOMO, followed by NAA, EEI and ALN, came on the scene, the people were more than ready to welcome any organization offering relief from civil disorder and poverty, and the former national governments were so weak and decentralized that they could not offer any effective resistance.

The effects of membership in one of the new economic alliances were marked and nearly immediate. Hunger was drastically reduced, employment rose, medical care improved. Those regions which tried to hold out for autonomy were soon forced by their own population to join a union. It is at this point that we begin to see the first glimmers of imperialist ambition in the new alliances. Prospective members were told they must capitulate entirely to the new order, or they could not participate at all. This refusal to compromise was portrayed as a necessary safeguard against the kind of creeping isolationism that had destroyed the first global economy. Certainly a more potent economic regime was needed, but it would have been entirely possible to make certain concessions to local rule without seriously compromising the mission of the organization. It is clear that, in refusing benefits of membership to nations with any degree of hesitancy whatsoever, the economic alliances were not merely after stability, but were in fact actively pursuing the economic subjugation of the member states. Any remnant of the original national government was so thoroughly stripped of real political power as to be left a mere ceremonial courtesy. (A few such ceremonial relics of the pre-alliance past still survive to the present, including the monarchies of Denmark and Kuwait, and elective ceremonial offices like the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Texas.)

In the early ‘60s, a few areas of the globe, although officially part of the WEC for more than a decade, still held out against full assimilation of all local autonomy. The WEC, in its first blatant act of global suppression, embargoed all such territories for three months, from August through October of ‘62. All official trade was ended to seven cities worldwide, and they were blockaded to prevent citizens from leaving. Economic chaos soon reigned in the affected areas, and starvation loomed. In all seven cities, rioting broke out among residents convinced (sometimes with cause) that the local government was withholding stockpiles of food. The food riots effectively crushed any lingering spirit of independence among the local governments in the embargoed territories, but it also created a lingering mistrust against the WEC. Decades later, the Resistance would find its most fertile recruiting grounds among the survivors of the food riots.

In general, however, it must be admitted that the member states were only too happy to be subjugated. For most, the bottom line was that, for the first time in several generations, hunger was on the decline, employment was on the rise, and children were being educated. Most regions welcomed the new alliances as saviors; only a few yielded to them as conquerors. In either case, the end result was the same.

As long as the WEC endures, the average scholar will probably never have access to any of the records of the secret negotiations and behind-the-scenes machinations that finally led to the formation of the WEC in 2150. By all standards the consolidation was an astounding success. Disorder vanished, crime continued to fall and the economy continued to soar. The WEC probably reached its all-time apex of success in 2176, when the original “five states” were abolished and replaced by the cartel system as the primary administrative sub-unit of the WEC. For the first time humanity had achieved a dream of centuries - a world completely devoid of geographical borders.

THE DAWN OF DISSENT

About the same time that the WEC was achieving its greatest success (with the establishment of the cartel system), it also began to feel the first real pressure from dissident reformers. Their message was simple - the WEC had been formed using emergency powers during a crisis situation. Now the crisis was over, and it was time for the WEC to step back and allow its “partners” to explore other alternatives of self-governance. Scholars had, of course, long been speculating about the proper limits of WEC power and the long-term options available for the new global economy. The 2170s, however, were the first time such speculations began to gain popular support. The average citizen-partner remained grateful to the WEC for providing him with security, employment, health-care, education and sustenance. He was, however, beginning to question whether those benefits really justified the average 55% of his nominal earnings withheld by the WEC for “security and economic development.”

It is difficult for us, in these days of 90%+ taxation, to appreciate how indignant the world population could become over a 7% rise in the tax rate between 2167 and 2173. This issue led to public demonstrations and even some isolated incidents of rioting. The anti-taxation movement of the early 2170s is historically significant as the first organized resistance movement in WEC history. It was also (at least nominally, and in the short term) a success. The tax rate was reduced below 50% in 2173 and did not rise to pre-movement levels until 2181.

However, even if the WEC was willing to cut its own profit margins a bit to ensure public tranquillity, that gesture was far removed from actually compromising its political autonomy. The WEC response to calls for political reform has always been, to say the least, ingenious. The WEC claims that it is not responsible for governmental reform because it is NOT a government. Whenever it needed to claim one of the traditional prerogatives of a national government the WEC would do so, but publicly it maintained the fiction that it was merely an economic regulatory body, with no interest in how its “partners” chose to govern themselves, so long as their policies were not bad for business. Of course, every time a policy was proposed that compromised WEC political authority, that policy would turn out to be somehow “bad for business.” It has, of course, been repeatedly pointed out that the WEC had all the authority of a government, that there was no other governmental body to be found anywhere, and it seemed to be functioning as a government. However, these arguments were at first ignored, and later violently suppressed.

After the anti-taxation unrest, the WEC moved on to a new method for avoiding public accountability. Previously, the WEC’s justification for its own existence had been entirely functional - the WEC deserved to exist because the alternative (pre-WEC chaos) was infinitely worse. Now, people were actually proposing viable alternatives to the WEC. The WEC’s answer was “Scientific Administration.” Basically, it began to present its policies not merely as pragmatic responses to new circumstances, but as scientifically established, and PROVEN, optimal responses. No longer were the WEC’s ideas simply the best ideas of informed individuals - they were now scientific FACTS, as unquestionable as a proven mathematical theorem. Of course, the actual theories or algorithms that determined these policies were never revealed to the public.

THE RISE OF THE RESISTANCE

The introduction of the “Scientific Administration” propaganda campaign proved remarkably successful among the general populace, but it was far less so among intellectuals. When told that a given idea is “scientifically proven,” the average worker will probably respond, “Oh, that’s good then,” and go about his business. Saying the same thing to a scientist, however, will immediately awaken a burning desire to examine, dissect and elaborate on the theory and its proof. When the WEC claimed scientific infallibility, but refused to present the proofs underlying that claim, suspicions soared.

Even among the intelligentsia, however, opposition to the Scientific Administration movement was muted. This is not surprising, since the WEC has always been a scientific meritocracy, seeking out the most gifted scientific minds and rewarding those who contribute most to Consortium interests. Scientists might have been intellectually skeptical about Scientific Administration, but pragmatically they knew where their bread was buttered. Those who could come up with plausible-sounding support for the WEC’s scientific administration claims were richly rewarded; those who challenged them were disgraced.

Inevitably, however, the friction between the claims of Scientific Administration and the demands of real science increased in the minds of at least some intellectuals. In 2186, several economists attempted to publish criticism or refutations of Chen’s “Predictive Economics” - one of the cornerstones of Scientific Administration theory. These works were systematically suppressed, and the authors were made the targets of WEC surveillance and harassment.

Word of this program of intellectual repression quickly spread on the academic grapevine. Here and there, cells of scientists began to meet secretly to consider what they had come to regard as the “problem” of the WEC. In a very short time these clandestine reformers began to reach out to one another and form a worldwide underground movement.

Popular disgruntlement with the WEC was both wide and deep by this time. Citizen anger had been growing steadily for years, due to taxation, corruption, bureaucratic stagnation, and even lingering resentment over the food riots of two decades past. Rioting and anti-government sabotage was an ever-growing menace to the Consortium’s world-wide social order. What this tide of resentment lacked, however, was any sort of central organization to give it direction and make it effective. It is the seemingly-minor academic backlash against “Scientific Administration,” and the semi-organized network of dissidents it spawned, which provided the catalyst and nucleus around which the global Resistance (capital-”R”) could form.

THE PETRA EXPERIMENT

Gradually, these intellectual dissident cells began to reach out to the general public. There they found an ever more willing ear for dissent. Government monitoring of citizens, on the rise since the turn of the century, was starting to chafe. The temporary propaganda boost the WEC got from the introduction of Scientific Administration had exhausted itself in the face of the old specter of rising taxation. In 2189 taxes, for the first time, rose over 75%. Once again there were protests, but this time the protests turned much more easily to violence, and this time the WEC did not back down - the violence was suppressed. Even more alarming, for the first time since the introduction of the cartels, parts of the globe were experiencing food shortages, and while employment remained nominally at 100%, rumors were on the rise of whole communities where the people’s “jobs” didn’t involve actually doing any work . . . or collecting any pay. The “refusenik” anti-registration movement surged during the late ‘80s, from a worldwide total of barely a thousand ideological extremists in 2185, to at least a half-million non-registered persons by 2190.

At the beginning of the decade, the Resistance began to go cautiously and quietly “public,” actively recruiting new members from all levels of society, and taking a generally more militant stance in demanding WEC reforms. They even won a few victories, here and there, notably the de-installation of cameras and microphones from the non-public areas of all Ontario housing complexes in 2192. Of course, WEC reaction was growing at an even faster rate. The Resistance estimates that at least 75,000 dissidents were incarcerated or assassinated by the WEC between 2190 and 2193, and countless more were harassed or demoted for Resistance activities.

One of the main reasons for both the success and the persecution of the nascent activist resistance was a small but efficient underground cadre that specialized in harassing the WEC through guerrilla tactics. The Resistance guerrillas became almost folk-heroes in certain areas, due to their success at creating violent demonstrations that seriously impeded WEC operations while minimizing civilian casualties and collateral damage.

Gradually, even WEC administrators and civic authorities began to be influenced by Resistance rhetoric, and to formulate their policies accordingly, often in direct defiance of WEC policy. For a time, it seemed that sheer concentrated public will would restrain the WEC from taking any extreme reactionary measures. “Policy reviews,” “public inquiries” and “blue-ribbon commissions” were promised by the WEC, with the professed purpose of evaluating the possibility of reform along Resistance lines. Few of these efforts ever came to fruition. Those that were actually formed either stonewalled and stalled, or turned in reports supporting existing WEC policy.

The whole thing came to a head in the city of Petra in 2194. In January of that year, Petra announced that a public referendum would be held March 1st, on the question of whether the city should renounce its affiliation with the WEC. Much to the surprise of everybody, the election was allowed to proceed. 71% of the populace turned out to vote, and the final tally was 82% in favor of secession. Immediately, the provisional government of the city declared itself in power and took over all WEC administrative functions. Any Consortium officials that opposed the takeover were held for deportation.

A full month passed as the Petran government established itself. New civic elections were scheduled for September. A trade delegation sent to Admin Cartel headquarters to attempt to negotiate with the WEC for commercial relations was arrested and imprisoned, but allowed to stay in contact with the Petran government, and apparently not mistreated.

Other cities with strong Resistance ties began to make plans for a referendum on secession. Speculation was voiced about the possibility of a worldwide network of Resistance enclaves, offering an alternative to WEC control - trading freely with each other, and perhaps even with the WEC, but each with purely local administrative jurisdiction. In what later proved to be a major strategic mistake, Petra began to welcome thousands of Resistance sympathizers from around the globe.

On April 7, 2194, at 0545 hours, more than 300 stratospheric fighter-bombers were launched from the MilOps cartel air base at Brasilia. At 0700 hours, the Petran trade delegation was executed without trial. Simultaneously, saturation tactical nuclear bombing of Petra and surrounding regions began, first with a missile barrage launched from the still-under-construction Vigilance Platform, followed by a second strike from the stratospheric craft. The last bomb detonated at 0744, at which time 14 million people were dead or dying. Over the course of the next four days, the WEC began a vicious worldwide pogrom aimed at stamping out the Resistance movement. A further 2.3 million people were summarily executed, and more than a million were imprisoned. The entire globe remained under martial law for six months while Security Cartel monitoring was stepped up, and the tax rate was raised to an all-time high of 94%. The WEC announced that Petra had been reclaimed by the MilOps cartel, and that further separatism would not be tolerated. The official death toll was set at 440,000.

Despite this crackdown, riots occurred on an almost daily basis, all over the world. WEC economic loss due to civil unrest for the year 2194 (excluding Petra, which was not restored) are conservatively estimated at 700 trillion dollars.

The Resistance has reappeared during the last year, literally with a vengeance. Since Petra it has regrouped, reorganized, and has begun operations as a full-scale guerrilla army. Although care is still taken to avoid civilian casualties, military operations have been seriously escalated. Before Petra, guerrilla operations were mostly intended to harass and demoralize the WEC. Since that time the goals have changed to serious and continual disruption of the WEC economy and direct action against WEC security measures.

At this point, the economy of the WEC continues to worsen, public dissatisfaction grows, and Resistance opposition becomes increasingly focused and effective. To the objective student of history and economics, the signs of irreversible societal decay are unmistakable. The timing for dramatic reform along Resistance lines could not be better.

However, the odds against the Resistance remain astronomical. The rebel forces live a dangerous, hand-to-mouth existence completely surrounded by their enemies. WEC personnel and resources can only be described as infinitely more extensive than the Resistance’s. Nonetheless, the genie of revolutionary change is out of the bottle. If this Resistance should eventually fail, a new one will soon arise in its place, and if that movement is not immediately successful, it’s only a matter of time until, like the Soviet Union of the 20th century, the WEC crumbles beneath the weight of its own corruption.

WORLD ECONOMIC CONSORTIUM: ORIGINS

The origins of the WEC can be traced back to the beginning of the 21st century with the economic decline of geographically defined countries as the cornerstone of world power.

With the decline of the superpowers (formerly known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and The United States of America) in the late 20th century, a new economic power struggle began to rise in the wake of the failure of Russian economic reforms and the US protectionism amendments.

Early attempts to form multinational coalitions (The Common Market, League of Arabic States, NAFTA) met with little success within the global community. It was not until the creation of DOMO (better known as the Asian Alliance) that the true economic power of a multinational affiliation was realized.

After the collapse of the United States (due in part to the loss of California in 2025, and the continental flooding of its eastern coast caused by global warming), the remaining states voted to incorporate the last states of the former countries known as Canada (in 2037) and divided federations of Mexico (in 2064) to become the North American Alliance. Though not as economically powerful as DOMO, the NAA shortly took over as a world leader when China left the Asian Alliance after a long battle over scandal and corruption within DOMO.

2067

The North American Alliance jointly puts the first Orbiting Industrial Platform (OIP) in space. This is followed closely by the Europa Economic Interest completing theirs in 2069, and the first venture of DOMO in 2070.

2094

After years of famine and civil war, peace is finally established on the continent of Africa with the signing of the African League of Nations. Though renegade states threaten to destroy the alliance during drought of 2094 to 2097, the ALN survives its most bitter years of internal fighting.

2098

DOMO establishes the first permanent lunar colony. Minerals are mined on the moon and transported to the many DOMO OIPs for processing, demonstrating for the first time a full scale extra-terrestrial mode of production.

2105

The NAA becomes the American Alliance after La Unidad (its Latin American counterpart) signs the historic pact that merges the whole of North and South America into one single economic superpower.

2109

With their reserves of fossil fuels depleted, the League of Arab States declares bankruptcy. The territories are soon annexed after a long proxy war fought between the EEI and DOMO. The Asian Alliance emerges victorious, but at a cost that weakens DOMO financially for the next decade.

2112

Though never a strong power, the New Russian Republic of States divides again after the food riots at Yeltsingrad. This time the eastern-most provinces vote to join with the Asian Alliance, while the western ones decided to side with their longtime allies of the Europa Economic Interest. In a surprise move, the orbiting industrial platform of Pasternak joins with the EEI and its fleet of OIP, even though Pasternak’s main spaceport had sided with DOMO. This is the first time an OIP becomes an independent entity from its parent corporation.

2125

Under an equal charter, the EEI, the ALN, and the American Alliance establish the first colony on Mars, setting the stage for the ongoing program of terraforming and colonization.

2147

Under the burden of its failing economic empire, DOMO is the last of the coalitions to concede and agrees in principle to a pact that will combine all of the world’s coalitions into one super coalition with five economic states (America, Europa, Asia, Africa and a blanket state for all ETs). Talks between the major coalitions take three years to reach a full agreement.

2150

The World Economic Consortium is founded.