The clock hits midnight and the crowd cheers, 2050 is here!
Hello everyone, my name is Bread and today my team and I are proud to present the very first Chaos in Diversity Progress Report. Though our discord has been filled with teasers and development updates, our development team has finally reached a point where we have enough content done to showcase it all to you in a more formal setting. So, what is this mod?

Introduction To Dystopia:

Chaos in Diversity (or CiD) is an upcoming mod set not in the past but in the near future, 2050.
Though, notably, this is not our attempt to predict the future, only to create a world that seems plausible. We set ourselves a soft 'Point of Departure' in mid-2018, the point in which we would stop updating our lore in accordance with real world events. The sole exemption to this fact, so far, has been COVID-19, which we worked into our lore in one form. So remember, our history and the mod’s history have already departed in key ways, some of which you’ll be able to spot even in this PR.
The world of Chaos in Diversity is noticeably more multipolar than our own, due to both the decline of American influence and the rise of Chinese power on the world stage. An economic phenomena known as the Pacific Shift has seen the economic centre of the world rapidly shift towards the east, realigning the politics of the world drastically. Furthermore, climate change has continued on its seemingly unstoppable course, bringing rising sea levels, desertification, and countless events which will shape the lives of those within. Our development team has worked hard to create a world on the halfway point to a plausible dystopia: it seems as though the optimism of the early 21st century has been snuffed out and the global slide into mediocrity, despotism, and conflict appears inexorable.
Or perhaps not, should you play your cards right.
While there’s a lot of history to get into, we’ll be talking about one of our custom mechanics first. But before jumping into that, take a moment to enjoy these.
Our Starting Screen
Our World Map
And some of our Loading Screens which should help set the tone!
Now, please remember that everything here is a work in progress. Everything is subject to change, especially when it comes to balancing the mod.

Economic Points

At this point, we’re all quite familiar with HOI IV mods trying to emulate the complex system of economics that keep countries running. The clunky system inherited from base Hoi4 leaves much to be desired, as one designed purely for a massive endgame conflict. However, trying to accurately portray modern economics at this point (or even future economics) is a task which seems insurmountable. Systems which try to perfectly emulate real world economies tend to be restrictive rather than additive, limiting what are already fairly scarce mechanics from the base game even further. As such, we’ve had to turn to an old friend (or enemy, depending on who you ask): Abstraction.
That’s why we have tried a different approach with the introduction of the EP system (short for “economic points”). EPs are supposed to represent government income from taxes, trade and other forms of revenue and are used by the government to fund its services, invest into public works, or whatever other projects may come to mind. The EP system indirectly ties into laws and policies, as some policies have a cost to them that the government needs to pay. EP, in this regard, mostly works like political points and for good reason: by making government economics as abstract as the concept of “political power”, it fits right in the weird economic system of HOI IV as a type of monthly-gained mana instead of concepts such as GDP.
Economic Points
Let’s go over the different things you see, shall we:

Taxation income: a monthly income that depends on your total population and the amount of civilian factories that your nation has. To keep nations like China not too OP (and believe me, without this China was quite up there) the benefit you gain from civilian factories is lowered and the benefits of population are also lowered if a total population reaches a certain amount. Before that, India and China dominated in tax income, gaining around +1000 EP per month.
Other income: a catch-all-term for income that isn’t from taxing people or companies or from trade. This is mostly for events, decisions and focuses as a variable that isn’t tied to another variable like population.
Export: a monthly income depending on the pricing of resources and how much your nation exports. We get to the pricing of resources in a bit, but the general gist of export income should be quite clear.
Government expenses: a monthly cost that exists due to certain policies, laws and the size of the army.
Debt: currently still in a processing stage, but debt can be accumulated throughout the game by governments borrowing EPs from several institutions. This system should represent the old time v accessibility conflict, as a player can of course wait until he has enough EP to do certain projects but he can also decide to borrow enough EP to start his project early and pay more money as a result later. This system would also include interest on the paid debt, but again, it’s still WIP.
Corruption: unlike all the other things on here, corruption isn’t a simple cost or income, but instead a percentage that represents how much corruption your government has. Corruption is generally a bad thing to have, as it subtracts a percentage of your monthly income, and it’s thus recommended to keep it as low as possible.
Import: the opposite of export. Everything nations import will have a cost to it outside of the civilian factories that you trade in for your precious resources. Again, the cost of import is the amount of resources you import times the price of one piece of that resource. Which brings us to…
Resource prices: these variables are updated monthly and look at the total amount of a certain resource that is produced (the supply) and the amount that is imported globally (the demand), creating the price of the resources. Due to the prices being dependent on supply and demand, they’ll be quite volatile. What you can generally expect out of this is that prices for resources like steel and aluminium will increase during the game’s duration as more conflicts start and more military factories are built that need their resources, all the while the supply doesn’t change drastically. For oil, however, something different could happen. To increase the pricing of oil to make it profitable, civilian factories consume a small bit of fuel from gamestart, kickstarting quite a healthy oil price (testgames show an average starting price of around 10, which is 2.5 times as high as the average aluminium price and around 10 times as high as steel and rubber prices). However, later technologies will lower fuel consumption of these factories drastically, representing the shift away from fossil fuels in many nations and towards sustainable energy sources, which is great for the environment but can have a deadly impact on global oil prices. When the game reaches this stage, expect extreme measures to be taken by nations that depend on oil for their EP income (especially as some nations will have EP be directly tied to their survival as a state).

With Economic Points, we hope to create a system in which the player has MORE options to approach their gameplay with, rather than less. Sure, one might want to have as large a military as possible, but your EP will take a serious hit in the process.
Hell, who knows where a player might look for new opportunities to earn EP?
Onto the main content!

China (2050-2052)

In 2050, there is and shall be only one nation which can claim any sort of hegemony: The People’s Republic of China.
While the US saw defeat after defeat domestically and abroad, China seemed to simply move from triumph to triumph, each setback merely a bump in the road. Sure, COVID-25 was somewhat of an embarrassment but, as China led the world through the recovery process, people found they were willing to overlook it and politicians followed suit. Perhaps the Hong Kong situation was mishandled but, ultimately, the international scene eventually looked the other way, for what could be done to stop the CCP?
The situation in Xinjiang was an open secret, deeply horrifying, but would the world truly confront China on the matter? As the years passed, it seemed unlikely.
With economic growth that seemed unstoppable, a pragmatic leadership, and a united party, China began to eclipse all others.
But not everything was united behind the scenes. Xi Jinping, in his efforts to continually centralize and cement his own power as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, began to alienate members of his own party. Their reasons were many, some simply despised the man, others were worried about the long term stability of putting so much power in the hands of the General Secretary.
Ultimately, their time to strike arose in the most unexpected manner when the General Secretary was struck with a (highly disputed) bout of illness. The actual details on the event are scarce and widely contested. Whether it was a fabrication or a fact, Jinping began to slowly retreat from the spotlight in his role as General Secretary during 2024 and the Party began to reassert its authority under the pragmatic Hu Chunhua, a change in leadership which arrived just in time for a dramatic upheaval in both domestic and international politics.
The Covid Crash, as it began to be known, wreaked havoc on the global and domestic economy, with the Chinese coastal provinces seeing their development plummet amid a panicked retreat of foreign investment. The knock-on effect of this downward turn led to some of the largest liberal protests in recent Chinese history. Whilst the protests dragged on for many months, Chunhua was focused on an economic, not military, solution to the crisis. His caution was well-rewarded, as his plan to ‘turn foreign prosperity into Chinese prosperity’ by filling the void which foreign investment had left proved a boon in both the short and long term, both ending the protests and beginning China’s utter economic independence and dominance.
Chunhua’s successor, Teng Jiang focused on international efforts, the one area in which Chunhua made little progress. Aggressively pushing China’s influence abroad, he solidified the creation of the Asia-Pacific Defense Organisation to secure China’s hegemony over the Pacific in the wake of the Pacific Shift. Jiang was also one of the strongest voices regarding China’s affairs in Africa, leading to massive investments in the struggling East African Federation and other powers who were increasingly falling under the Chinese sphere. At the end of his reign, Jiang had transformed Chunhua’s domestic success into international prestige and power.
Finally, we have Zeng Xinyi, who has been in power since 2042. ‘China’s Uncle’ was swept to power on the back of his cheery persona and electric ability to rouse the masses. Yet, Xinyi is a man deeply troubled by the apparent mediocrity of his own rule. Whilst his flagship program focused on China’s technological sector has broadly been a success, he is overshadowed by the successes of his predecessors. Already, he has been described as a safe but uninspired pair of hands to guide China, carried through his eight years of rule by continued growth and prosperity, none of it his own.
Whilst for the large part he is preoccupied with the preparations for the 101st anniversary of the People’s Republic and the wrangling of the Party’s Political Bureau, Xinyi is not a man who will not allow himself to be idle.
Thus, Xinyi begins to push back against the seemingly inevitable, undermining years of established tradition, trying to get his own ‘protégé’ as the prime candidate for General Secretary.
Perhaps Xinyi has underestimated the complexity which his scheme will require but, once his mind is made, he will not turn back. So begins his gambit. To succeed, he will need to convince key members of the State Bureaucracy, Military, and Party. He will need to avoid the suspicions of his peers. Some of this will come naturally. Some of it will be much harder.
And needless to say, failure is not an option if Xinyi wants to have his future.
At the end of the day, Xinyi's plan will either meet failure...
... or succeed.
But regardless of where his actions lead him, Xinyi has unintentionally revealed deep divisions which run through the core of the party. The future of China as the pre-eminent power of the world is in question and the Party is uncertain of how it should be led forward. Above all you must remember to keep the Party united.
Or the party will take the actions necessary, without you.

The United States of America (2050-2052)

Hello! I’m Michael7123, the lead developer for the United States, and I’m here to tell you how things have gone for the land of the free and home of the brave:
Terribly
How did the United States get here? Well, I’m not going to explain all of America’s lore here. But you can see the Presidents who presided over the decline, as a treat:
45th President: Donald Trump [R] (2017-2025)
46th President: Sherrod Brown [D] (2025-2029)
47th President: Tom Cotton [R] (2029-2037)
(Past this point, it's all original characters)
48th President: Martin Lawrence [D] (2037-2045), a veteran and relative political novice who ran on withdrawing from Lebanon. Withdraws from NATO which soon becomes defunct, reorients American foreign policy to focus on China. Pays little attention to domestic politics.
49th President: Thomas Randal [R] (2045-2046), A Republican who attempted to shift his party economically left, but was assassinated while campaigning for down ballot republicans in the 2046 midterms.
50th President: Andrew Mitchel [R] (2047-2049) The Vice President of Randal who was sworn in after his death and managed to win the presidency in his own right by milking sympathy from his now deceased running mate. A libertarian leaning politician, any shift on economic policy was scrapped. After winning re-election, a scandal known as “Floodgate” began, and it eventually was uncovered that Mitchel had been taking bribes from Chinese companies to ensure the departments of justice and labour wouldn’t raise a fuss when they violated health and safety standards while operating in the United States. In 2050, matters reached a climax in an impeachment and conviction by the senate.
51st President: Samuel Sanford (2049-2050) [D—-> I——>F]
So you’re probably wondering what on earth [D—-> I——>F] means. It happens that Mitchel’s Vice President, knowing full well that he would be next to be impeached as he was implicated in the Floodgate scandal, resigned while the Senate was voting to convict Mitchel. With no president or Vice President, the Presidency passed to the Democratic Speaker of the house by default, Samuel Sanford. Seeing the horrendous political optics of an impeachment vote that he facilitated in resulting in his own party’s power growing at the expense of the GOP, he quickly announced his departure from the Democratic Party to become an independent.
Soon afterward, he held a press conference, joined by members of the political establishment in both the Democratic and Republican parties to announce the creation of the Federalist Party: a centrist political institution to quell the rising tides of radicalism, and corruption, and heinous violence plaguing America. While the party is split on ideological lines, Sanford called on all who wished to uphold liberal democracy to back his new creation.
There were very few takers. As things stand at game start, both the Democratic and Republican parties have lost their leaders, and the new Federalist Party, while controlling the executive branch and managing to corral members of each party in both houses of Congress to function, they remain deeply unpopular among the public at large, and appear to be set to lose horrendously in the upcoming midterm elections of 2050.
President Sanford can decide that somewhat more drastic measures are required to stave off the illiberal forces trying to change the American way of life. For the 2050 elections will not only determine who controls Congress: it also happens to be a census year, and whoever controls the various state legislatures controls the shape and size of congressional districts. The fate of the House of Representatives is of vital importance, as with the 2052 Presidential Race shaping up to be a 3 way contest between Samuel Sanford and whomever the Democratic and Republican parties nominate, it’s exceedingly likely that no candidate will win an outright majority of the Electoral College, which means that the President will be determined by a majority of state delegations in the House of Representatives.
Of course, the Federalist Party doesn’t have to engage in shenanigans. Additionally, all three parties are capable of achieving a victory in the 2050 midterms. The beginning of the trees for each party to work with and/or antagonize the Sanford Administration can be seen here:
Democrats
Federalists
Republicans
Of course, it should go without saying that if the legally dubious actions of the Federalist Party are discovered by the public at large, there will be dire consequences.
Regardless of who occupies the Whitehouse next, they’re going to have to contend with the increasingly powerful Supreme Court. In an effort to highlight just how important the institution is to the United States in 2050, we’ve opted to create an entirely unique Supreme Court mechanic
The bar on the right shows the current legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution. The higher it is, the more respected it is by the public at large. Whenever the court is viewed as legitimate, judges decide cases based on their ideological leanings. All pretensions about impartiality aside, the Supreme Court is a political institution. However when the legitimacy of the Supreme Court falls too low, the Chief Justice might start rallying judges who are similar to him or her ideologically to start deciding cases in ways to preserve the court’s legitimacy, and such efforts may or may not be successful.
Regardless of how the presidential election goes, Sanford will have the opportunity to appoint and nominate a new Chief Justice of the court in 2050. This decision will have extensive repercussions for the rest of the game, so you’ll want to pick carefully.
You will also be able to directly increase or decrease the court’s legitimacy at the cost of political power, , but there’s only so much attack ads and press conferences can accomplish. Should the legitimacy of the court fall enough, you can try to pack the court. Of course, it goes without saying that this sets a dangerous precedent.
And beyond that, the road to 2054 awaits...
But that's for another time. Thank you!

Western Europe (2050-2052)

Hi all! We're Erwin, Michael7123, and Preussenball, and we’re going to discuss the history of Western Europe and the trials and tribulations of it’s two most prominent countries, France and Germany.
Why only Western Europe? Well, keep reading and you’ll understand.
France, Lebanon, and the collapse of NATO:

Lebanon. Tensions between Hezbollah and the government have soured immensely in recent years. When push comes to shove, Hezbollah officially abandons its policy of relative cooperation, declaring an end to the Lebanese state in its current form. This event leads to the kickstarting of the Lebanese civil war, a conflict that draws Europe’s attention in several ways, one of which being that Lebanon is a member of the Good Neighbour Policy. However, despite all this, Europe learned from Iraq and Afghanistan and is unwilling to get it’s hands dirty in Lebanon.

This changes on the 1st of January 2035, a day of national tragedy for France. After the hijacking of a French airplane by a group connected to Hezbollah, the French Airforce had no other choice but to shoot it down before it collided with Palais Bourbon. The death of 102 passengers would spark outrage in Europe and the US, giving then President of the United States Tom Cotton the ammunition he was hoping for. The USA, emboldened by this brazen act of terrorism, convinces a coalition of France and other European nations and Israel to formalize a coalition against Hezbollah, starting the NATO intervention in Lebanon in 2036. The President of France at the time, Chandler Laurent of Les Républicains was among the intervention’s strongest supporters.
While the conflict itself was already terrible, muddied by another refugee crisis in Europe, the intervention wouldn’t be better, as the American nation-building strategy developed after Iraq and Afghanistan simply couldn’t apply to Lebanon. 2037 would see US troops being pulled out of Lebanon shortly after the inauguration of President Lawrence. One by one, other members of the coalition withdrew, and after the USA abruptly withdrew from NATO in the same year, France was left desperately trying to wage a war that, while still popular domestically, was being criticized by the public for not being waged decisively enough, and moreover trying to what was left of NATO together at the same time.
In the end, President Chandler Laurent announced in 2038 that France would be scaling back their involvement in Lebanon to pre-war levels, leaving Lebanon in its current state. Les Républicains found itself sharply divided over the issue, leading to half of the party breaking away in protest to form Voici la France! under the leadership of Antoine Dimont, a liberal conservative.
Laurent resigned as president following a vote of no confidence collapsing his cabinet. In the ensuing snap elections, France brought La France Insoumise, a social democratic party that took the place of the defunct Parti socialiste and briefly held power in the late 2020s. What followed was 10 years of relative stability for France, albeit coupled with their formal withdrawal from NATO, sealing the fate of the organization. In that time, France went on to make rapid progress in the goal of reaching carbon neutrality, and focused on strengthening their domestic economy with a great deal of success- but more on the long term consequences of that later.
However, while the past 10 years were primarily prosperous, voices in France grew called for France to take a more active role on the world stage- and with good reason too, given what befell the European Union mere years after the collapse of NATO. At game start they are governed by a coalition between La République En Marche! And Voici la France! In the National Assembly, with Antoine Dimont in his first term as President, which began in 2048.
France in 2050
Today, we’ll be focusing on President Dimont’s plans of ushering Europe towards a greener future. When most people think of green politics, they imagine youthful activists wearing tie dye shirts, maybe throwing buckets of red paint at CEO’s if they are particularly feisty, but who are otherwise inoffensive and harmless. President Dimont, in contrast, is making the effort to rely on a more environmentally friendly way to bolster French power, prestige, and influence across Europe
And what better way to do that than by going after Gazprom, the Russian Energy giant that serves as an unwanted Russian foothold on the European Energy market. While most of the “Energy War” will be about outstripping Russian Energy production and investing in new energy technologies, you will also have much more… forceful... ways of trying to combat Russia and Gazprom. You can expect to read much more about this once we showcase Russia to you all in an upcoming progress report, but, as an extra treat.
On top of this, the French government wishes to repair the European Union. Why “repair”? I’m glad you asked….
Germany, Greece, and the secession of the East:
As a result of the collapse of NATO in the late 2030s, Germany found itself funding the Bundeswehr more than ever before, and at the time, few complained. It made sense, after all. With NATO gone, Germany could no longer rely upon American benevolence for the protection of Europe. Nobody outside of the political fringe would have predicted that it would need to be used so quickly.
The Greek election of 2040 was not won by one of the traditional parties, nor even a radical fringe party, but by the new Greek Reform Party created 7 months prior to the election by the famous Chinese-Greek businessman Georgi Vidalides. His victory was met with international outrage, as a previous investigation by the Greek government had exposed the party accepting funds from Chinese companies tied with the Chinese Government. Tension between the newly elected Greek government and the European Union would lead to the Greek PM pushing the parliament to leave the European Union outright and reneging on their financial commitments to the economic bloc. The EU declared that Vidalides had acted outside of his democratic mandate by publicly bribing members of parliament and actively ignoring the demands of the Greek high court and was thus guilty of plotting an end to Greek democracy.
Chancellor Lennart Dittrich of the Christlich Demokratische Union (at the time in a coalition with Die Grünen and Freie Demokratische Partei), was not the man people thought would drag Germany into an offensive war. A soft spoken and collegial former journalist, a man who easily could have gone down as a good but forgettable Chancellor was wound up ensuring his name would become mud because viral footage came out of Greek police who brutally arrested an investigative journalist in suspect circumstances. Whilst officially not the event which triggered later events, it was after this fact that Chancellor Dittrich gave a press conference where he vowed that it was time for the European Union to act in order to defend its values.
When the vote on forming a coalition to invade Greece came to the Bundestag, it set off a political firestorm that would shake Germany to its core. In the end, the vote passed by the slimmest of margin, contingent upon dozens of amendments, compromises, and contingent on getting other nations of the EU to support the coalition. Dissent ranged from nearly the entire SPD to defecting conservatives (particularly from the Bavarian CSU).
Once again, the German military was on the march, readying itself to invade foreign soil (even if under an agreeable cause). All of this was met with resounding condemnation from the Visegrád Group and other eastern European members of NATO. And on the day when the first German boots landed on Greek soil, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary all announced that they intended to begin the process of leaving the European Union.
But things might have been salvageable up until then. Then everything went to hell when the Old Royal Palace was hit with a bomb that killed most of the Greek government. In a panicked frenzy, the V4 all unilaterally removed themselves from the European union to form their own economic bloc, and were soon followed by a majority of the European Union's member states in Eastern Europe
While the situation of the Union of Visegrad (or colloquially: the Eastern European Union) will be discussed in a later progress report, here is the new face of Europe
While the initial occupation in Greece itself was met with, if not goodwill, than at least not overt hostility by the Greek people, after the deaths of their government, however unpopular, resentment spiked. For the Bundeswehr and other members of the Greek military, the next 4 years were spent trying to suppress terrorists of every shape and size.
And it is ultimately from one of these terrorist attacks, however indirectly, that lead to the complete restructuring of the German political system. It was the rise of Viktor Kapp and his Deutsche Friedenspartei.
And with that, troops started pouring out of Germany as the diplomats started pouring in.
The Coalition of the Roses had one truly grand accomplishment, and that was effectively ending the Greek crisis. But in choosing to work with the DFP, the SPD had legitimated their newest rival. With the collapse of the CDU and the descent of the AfD into deeper and deeper levels of reaction, the DFP managed to present themselves as the big tent party of everyone from the right wing to the center without any of the troubling political baggage of older political movements, while also drawing the support of some on the political left more focused on the effective exercise of state power than about issues of culture (albeit in far smaller numbers).
Yet it was this very blender of ideologies that resulted in the DFP’s increasing popularity, and the creation of a new party at the European level: the Eins Europa Parti, dedicated to the transformation of what remains of the European Union into a single, federal state.
In terms of gameplay, Germany starts in the middle of Kapp’s second term and is thus busy with the promises he has made during the 2049 election. While every issue is important, such as the veteran issue and the growing radicalism among the German youth, the main issue Kapp faces in his second term as chancellor is the Greek question: what is Germany still doing in Greece?
This question is mainly formed by the factionalism of the party between Engels and Denzinger, with Denzinger opting for pulling out of Greece while Engels is worried about the stability of the region and only thinks limited retreat is necessary. These issues are also made more important with the next election in mind. Kapp, Denzinger and Engels are quite worried about the situation as the 2049 election was won by only one seat. However, if the events during the season are anything to go by this election won’t go the same as 2049. If the DFP wins this year’s election by a larger margin than 2049, it will be quite secure in seeking to achieve its goals in the third Kapp government.
On the Future of Europe:
It is a widely acknowledged truth that the current status quo in Europe cannot and will not last, both France and Germany can agree on this. On what direction they should take, on the other hand, the two are divided. France insists that until the schism between East and West is fixed, Europe will always be fragile. In uncertain times, they look to instill Europe with strength and security, and to this end, they propose the European Defense Community.
Germany, meanwhile, looks to perhaps loftier goals. The weakness of Europe shall always be its division, they might argue, and that only through a true political union can their goals be realised. They look to form the EU into a single political entity.
The struggle for influence over Europe take place over ten years of gameplay through our European Struggle GUI. As each country obtains political success, they’ll be able to gain influence points. After every 10 points, they’ll be able to activate the first step of their European reforms.
However, bringing together the myriad states of Europe together will not be a trivial task in the slightest, with each reform stacking the odds against the player further and further…
And should you not be careful, the whole thing might break.

Africa (2050-2052)

2050 will be an important decade for Africa, for more reasons than one. For many countries on the continent, they shall be marking one hundred years since the end of colonialism. A hundred years of independence from the European powers. Many more will be asking themselves, how much better have things gotten?
The answer, as always, is difficult to say.
The 2025 Covid Crash was a brutal period for the African continent. Whilst the disease itself seemingly dealt less damage than some more unprepared western countries, the ensuing financial crash sent a wave of disruption through the continent. Though its effects were varied and myriad, the most important event during this period was the Crisis of the East African Federation, in which the crisis of both health and finances caused a wave of reactionary nationalism to trash negotiations for the unification of the region’s nations into the East African Federation - right as the nations were supposed to be unifying. Whilst the East African Federation soldiered on, it was a sign that the path towards peace for the continent was not guaranteed.
And it didn’t get any better from there.
Over the next 25 years, the African Union would be mired by the growth of three opposing blocks, the Continental African Committee, the Triple Alliance, and the United Front for African Democracy. The coalescence into these blocks was a slow and fully preventable process but by the time the world realised what was happening, the reactions had already begun and mere hindsight could not prevent it. There was no one inciting event which diplomats could’ve talked out but rather a thousand slights, mistakes, and grudges building over fifty years of high tension. Or maybe the roots went back even further than that?
To the west, the United Front for African Democracy was pitched as the battle against Chinese influence in the region, though this seems… tenuous at best. To the east, the Continental African Committee was pitched as the final battle against neo-colonialism but is accused of simply being one appendage of Chinese power. The only group which can truly call itself free from influence is the Triple Alliance, although the group is rather dysfunctional, and critics point to tensions over Triple Alliance sponsored plundering in the Eastern DRC as the only reason why the three nations have not joined the UFAD.
But, at the dawn of 2050 at least, it does not appear as though the blocks will ever achieve much, other than pointless bickering.
That is until the death of Nnamdi Christian.
A Left-Wing Nigerian firebrand, Nnamdi Christian is the rising star of Nigerian politics. A young man who challenges the corrupt, decaying establishment of the oil-rich nation. On the back of massive wealth inequality, concerns about climate change, and a two party system which is practically an oligarchy, Nnamdi Christian seems set to achieve the seemingly impossible and win the 2051 Nigerian Elections.
This changes very quickly.
The botched assassination not only captures the attention of an outraged Nigerian general public but every African on the continent, fed up with a status quo that seems to insist on screwing them over. On election day, the entire world is watching.
As the oligarchy overplays its hand, the results of this election are all the continent needs to let the dominoes fall.
By the summer of 2052, this period has taken on a new name: The Summer of Revolutions.
This continental shift in politics is wild and impossible to control, shattering the status quo, with no regime in Africa being beyond its grasp. It seems to be a period of genuine change for the better. However, there is an old saying: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
For Africa, 2052 is only the beginning.

The Future

And now we reach the end of the first progress report, though we have barely begun to scratch the surface of the world of Chaos in Diversity.
It is a world which has been irrevocably changed, a world of isolation, and apathy. So here is just a small taste of the flavour events. There were many nations which, though we wanted to fit them in the PR, we simply did not have the space. We have a standoff in Britain, a crisis in India, droughts in Poland, and more than I could even fit into a singular run-on sentence!
But something tells me that next time, we’ll be looking at Italy and... Oh dear.
Thank you!
If you enjoyed reading this and want to know more, the best place to look is almost certainly our discord, where we regularly post teasers, updates, and you can ask the mod team your questions!
And if you can write, make GFX, or code, please do not hesitate to make an application to join the team!
Goodbye and let us pray that the future is brighter than this one!

Was Hitler a Rothschild ?

by David Icke
from DavidIcke Website
Official history is merely a veil to hide the truth of what really happened. When the veil is lifted, again and again we see that not only is the official version not true, it is often 100% wrong.
Take the Rothschilds, the bloodline formerly known, among other names, as the Bauers, one of the most notorious black occult bloodlines of Middle Ages Germany. It became known as Rothschild (red-shield or rotes-schild in German) in the 18th century when a financial dynasty was founded in Frankfurt by Mayer Amschel Rothschild working in league with the Illuminati House of Hesse and others.
They took their name from the red shield or hexagram/Star of David on the front of their house in Frankfurt.
The Star of David or Seal of Solomon is an ancient esoteric symbol and only became associated with Jewish people after the Rothschilds adopted it for themselves. It has absolutely no connection to "David" or "Solomon", as Jewish historical sources confirm.
The Rothschilds are one of the top Illuminati bloodlines on the planet and they are shape-shifting reptilians (see The Biggest Secret).
Guy de Rothschild, of the French House, heads this bloodline dynasty today. He is one of the most grotesque exponents of trauma-based mind control, indeed the top man according to many of those who have suffered mercilessly under his torture. I am always loath to use the world evil, but if evil is the reverse of live, Guy de Rothschild is thoroughly evil.
He stands for the opposite of life. He has been personally responsible for the torture and death of millions of children and adults, either directly or through those he controls. He conducts satanic rituals, as all these bloodlines have always done, and goodness knows how many human sacrifices he has been involved in.
If what I am saying is wrong, Guy de Rothschild, then take me to court and lets reveal the evidence. You are a multi-billionaire and you control the courts and the media. I have next to nothing. I should, therefore, be a pushover. So come on, Mr. Rothschild, lets have you. Lets take these claims into the public arena and have you and me in the witness box. Make my day.
Already I can hear the clamor gathering to condemn me as "anti-semitic" because the Rothschilds claim to be "Jewish." Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai B’rith have already made strenuous efforts to label me in this way for exposing the Rothschilds and to stop me speaking in public. How funny then that both organizations were created by, and continue to be bankrolled by, the Rothschilds. Just a co-incidence, nothing to worry about.
B’nai Brith means, appropriately, "Sons of the Alliance" and was established by the Rothschilds in 1843 as an intelligence arm and to defame and destroy legitimate researchers with the label "anti semitic."
Many of their speakers openly supported slavery during the American Civil War and today they seek to condemn some black leaders as "anti-semitic" or "racist!" Every year, the Anti Defamation League award their "Torch of Liberty" (the classic Illuminati symbol) to the person they believe has served their cause the most. One year they gave it to Morris Dalitz, an intimate of the notorious Meyer Lansky crime syndicate which terrorized America. Perfect choice.
Of course, the strength of feeling that fans the flames of condemnation against anyone dubbed "anti-semitic" today is the sickening persecution of Jewish people by the Nazis of Adolf Hitler. To expose or question the actions of the Rothschilds or any other Jewish person or organization is to be called a "nazi" and "anti-semitic", that all-encompassing label which has discredited so many researchers and stopped them having the opportunity to speak in public because of protest by unthinking robot radicals and the refusal of venues to host their meetings.
I have had this from time to time, not least in eastern Canada thanks to a campaign by B’nai B’rith and the Anti-Defamation League (which spends it’s entire time trying to defame people). Both organizations, I repeat, are Rothschild created and controlled.
How strange then, that as I have documented in And The Truth Shall Set You Free and The Biggest Secret, along with endless other researchers and scholars, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were created and funded by… the Rothschilds.
It was they who arranged for Hitler to come to power through the Illuminati secret societies in Germany like the Thule Society and the Vril Society which they created through their German networks; it was the Rothschilds who funded Hitler through the Bank of England and other British and American sources like the Rothschild’s Kuhn, Loeb, bank which also funded the Russian Revolution.
The very heart of Hitler’s war machine was the chemical giant, I.G. Farben, which had an American arm that was controlled by the Rothschilds through their lackeys, the Warburgs.
Paul Warburg, who manipulated into existence the privately-owned "central bank" of America, the Federal Reserve, in 1913, was on the board of American I.G. Indeed Hitler’s I.G. Farben, which ran the slave labour camp at Auchwitz, was, in reality, a division of Standard Oil, officially owned by the Rockefellers, but in truth the Rockefeller empire was funded into existence by… the Rothschilds.
See And The Truth Shall Set You Free and The Biggest Secret for the detailed background of this and other aspects of this story.
The Rothschilds also owned the German news agencies during both World Wars and thus controlled the flow of "information" to Germans and the outside world. Incidentally, when Allied troops entered Germany they found that the I.G. Farben factories, the very core of Hitler’s war operation, had not been hit by the mass bombing and neither had Ford factories - another Illuminati supporter of Hitler. Other factories nearby had been demolished by bombing raids.
So the force behind Adolf Hitler, on behalf of the Illuminati, was the House of Rothschild, this "Jewish" bloodline which claims to support and protect the Jewish faith and people. In fact they use and sickeningly abuse the Jewish people for their own horrific ends. The Rothschilds, like the Illuminati in general, treat the mass of the Jewish people with utter contempt.
They are, like the rest of the global population, just cattle to be used to advance the agenda of global control and mastery by a network of interbreeding bloodlines, impregnated with a reptilian genetic code, and known to researchers as the Illuminati.
Indeed, the Illuminati are so utterly obsessed with bloodline, because of this reptilian genetic code, that there was no way that someone like Hitler would come to power in those vital circumstances for the Illuminati, unless he was of the reptilian bloodline. If you look elsewhere on this website you will see how the same bloodline has held the positions of royal, aristocratic, financial, political, military, and media power in the world for literally thousands of years.
This is the bloodline that has produced ALL 42 of the Presidents of the United States since and including George Washington in 1789. It is the bloodline of the runaway favorite to win the 2000 election, George W. Bush.
The World War Two leaders, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, were of the bloodline and also Freemasons and Satanists. They were manipulated into office, and their country’s war effort funded, by the Rothschilds and the other Illuminati bloodlines.
So are we to believe, therefore, that although this same group provably funded Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and his war machine, that he would be the odd one out, a leader of crucial importance to the agenda who was NOT bloodline?
But hold on. Hitler couldn’t be the same bloodline as, say, the Rothschilds because, as we all know, the Rothschilds are defenders of Jewish people and Hitler slaughtered them, along with communists and gypsies and others who opposed him or he wanted to eliminate. The Rothschilds are Jewish, they’d never do that.
Oh really.
According to a book by a psychoanalyst, Walter Langer, called The Mind of Hitler, not only was Hitler supported by the Rothschilds, he WAS a Rothschild.
This revelation fits like a glove with the actions of the Rothschilds and other Illuminati bloodlines in Germany who brought Hitler to the fore as dictator of that nation. He was also supported by the British Royal Family, the House of Windsor (in truth the German House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), and these included the British royal "war hero", Lord Mountbatten, a Rothschild and a Satanist.
Their royal relatives in Germany, who you would never have thought would normally support an apparent guy from the street like Hitler, were among his most enthusiastic supporters. But, of course, they knew who he really was. There is no way in the world when you do any study of the Illuminati obsession with bloodline that Hitler would not have been one of them.
Langer writes:

"Adolf’s father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. It was generally supposed that the father of Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber) was Johann Georg Hiedler. There are some people who seriously doubt that Johann Georg Hiedler was the father of Alois… (an Austrian document was) prepared that proved Maria Anna Schicklgruber was living in Vienna at the time she conceived.

At that time she was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Rothschild. As soon as the family discovered her pregnancy she was sent back home... where Alois was born."
Langer’s information came from the high level Gestapo officer, Hansjurgen Koehler, published in 1940, under the title "Inside the Gestapo". He writes about the investigations into Hitler’s background carried out by the Austrian Chancellor, Dolfuss, in the family files of Hitler.
Koehler actually viewed a copy of the Dolfuss documents which were given to him by Heydrich, the overlord of the Nazi Secret Service. The file, he wrote, "caused such havoc as no file in the world ever caused before" (Inside the Gestapo, p 143).
He also revealed that:

"..The second bundle in the blue file contained the documents collected by Dolfuss. The small statured, but big-hearted Austrian Chancellor must have known by such a personal file he might be able to check Hitler…His task was not difficult; as ruler of Austria he could easily find out about the personal data and family of Adolf Hitler, who had been born on Austrian soil...

Through the original birth certificates, police registration cards, protocols, etc., all contained in the original file, the Austrian Chancellor succeeded in piecing together the disjointed parts of the puzzle, creating a more or less logical entity. A little servant girl… (Hitler’s grandmother)… came to Vienna and became a domestic servant, mostly working for rather rich families. But she was unlucky; having been seduced, she was about to bear a child. She went home to her village for her confinement… Where was the little maid serving in Vienna? This was not a very difficult problem.
Very early Vienna had instituted the system of compulsory police registration. Both servants and the employers were exposed to heavy fines if they neglected this duty. Chancellor Dolfuss managed to discover the registration card. The little, innocent maid had been a servant at the…Rothschild mansion. ..and Hitler’s unknown grandfather must be probably looked for in this magnificent house. The Dolfuss file stopped at this statement."
Was Hitler’s determination to take over Austria anything to do with his desire to destroy records of his lineage?
A correspondent who has extensively researched this subject writes:

"It appears to me that Hitler knew about his connection long before his Chancellorship. Like his father before him, when the going got rough, the Hitlers went to Vienna. Hitler’s father left his home village at an early age to seek his fortune in Vienna. When Hitler was orphaned, after his mother died in December of 1907, he left for Vienna not long after the funeral.

There he seemed to drop out of sight for ten months! What happened during this ten-month stay in Vienna is a complete mystery on which history sheds no light. It makes sense, now that it has become established that Hitler was a Rothschild, that he and his cousins were getting acquainted, and his potential for future family endeavors was being sized up".
The Rothschilds and the Illuminati produce many offspring out of wedlock in their secret breeding programs and these children are brought up under other names with other parents.
Like Bill Clinton, who is almost certainly a Rockefeller produced in the same way, these "ordinary kids from ordinary backgrounds" go on to be extraordinarily successful in their chosen field. Hitler, too, would have produced unofficial children to maintain his strand of the bloodline and there will obviously be people of his bloodline alive today.
So which Rothschild was the grandfather of Hitler? My thanks to a website correspondent for the additional, updated, information to this article, a man has researched this story in some detail.
Alois, Hitler’s father, was born in 1837 in the period when Salomon Mayer was the only Rothschild who lived at the Vienna mansion. Even his wife did not live there because their marriage was so bad that she stayed in Frankfurt. Their son, Anselm Salomon spent most of his working life in Paris and Frankfurt away from Vienna and his father.
Father Salomon Mayer, living alone at the Vienna mansion where Hitler’s grandmother worked, is the prime, most obvious candidate.
And Hermann von Goldschmidt, the son of Salomon Mayer’s senior clerk, wrote a book, published in 1917, which said of Salomon:

"…by the 1840s he had developed a somewhat reckless enthusiasm for young girls.." and "He had a lecherous passion for very young girls, his adventures with whom had to be hushed up by the police."

And Hitler’s grandmother, a young girl working under the same roof would not have been the subject of Salomon’s desire?
And this same girl became pregnant while working there? And her grandson becomes the Chancellor of Germany, funded by the Rothschilds, and he started the Second World War which was so vital to the Rothschild-Illuminati agenda? And the Illuminati are obsessed with putting their bloodlines into power on all "sides" in a conflict?
And the Rothschilds are one of their most key bloodlines? And it is all a co-incidence?
HITLER WAS A ROTHSCHILD!!
The Second World War was incredibly productive for the Illuminati agenda of global control.
It led to an explosion of globally-centralized institutions, like the United Nations and the European Community, now Union, and many others in finance, business, and the military. Precisely what they wanted. It also put countries under an enormous burden of debt on loans provided to all sides by... the Rothschilds and the Illuminati.
The Rothschilds had long had a plan to create a personal fiefdom for themselves and the Illuminati in Palestine and that plan involved manipulating Jewish people to settle the area as their "homeland." Charles Taze Russell, of the Illuminati-reptilian Russell bloodline, was the man who founded the Watchtower Society, better known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
He was a Satanist, a pedophile according to his wife, and most certainly Illuminati.
His new "religion (mind-control cult) was funded by the Rothschilds and he was a friend of theirs, just like the founders of the Mormons who were also Rothschild-funded through Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. Russell and the Mormon founders were all Freemasons.
In 1880, Charles Taze Russell, this friend of the Rothschilds, predicted that the Jews would return to their homeland. It was about the only prediction Russell ever got right. Why? Because he knew that was the plan. He wrote to the Rothschilds praising their efforts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Then, in 1917, came the famous Balfour Declaration, when the British Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour, stated on behalf of his government that they supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Now when you hear that phrase, the Balfour Declaration, you get the feeling that it was some kind of statement or public announcement. But not so.
The Balfour declaration was a letter from Lord Balfour to… Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild. Researchers say that the letter was in fact WRITTEN by Lord Rothschild and his employee, the banker, Alfred Milner. Now get this. One of the most important secret societies of the 20th century is called the Round Table. It is based in Britain with branches across the world.
It is the Round Table that ultimately orchestrates the network of the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. See my books for details.
How fascinating then, that Lord Balfour was an inner circle member of the Round Table, Alfred Milner was the Round Table’s official leader after the death of Cecil Rhodes, and the Round Table was funded by... Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild. These were the very three people involved in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Two years later, in 1919, came the Versailles Peace Conference near Paris when the elite of the Round Table from Britain and the United States, people like Alfred Milner, Edward Mandel House, and Bernard Baruch, were appointed to represent their countries at the meetings which decided how the world would be changed as a result of the war these same people had created.
They decided to impose impossible reparations payments on Germany, so ensuring the collapse of the post-war Weimar Republic amid unbelievable economic collapse and thus create the very circumstances that brought the Rothschild, Hitler, to power. It was while in Paris that these Illuminati, Round Table, members met at the Hotel Majestic to begin the process of creating the Bilderberg-CFR-RIIA-Trilateral Commission network.
They also decided at Versailles that they now all supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As I show in my books, EVERY ONE of them was either a Rothschild bloodline or was controlled by them.
The American President, Woodrow Wilson, was "advised" at Versailles by Colonel House and Bernard Baruch, both Rothschild clones and leaders of the Round Table in the United States; The British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, was "advised" by Alfred Milner, Rothschild employee and Round Table leader, and Sir Phillip Sassoon, a direct descendent of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the dynasty; The French leader, Georges Clemenceau, was "advised" by his Minister for the Interior, Georges Mandel, whose real name was Jeroboam Rothschild.
Who do you think was making the decisions here??
But it went further. Also in the American delegation were the Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles, who would become US Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, who would become first head of the new CIA after World War Two. The Dulles brothers were bloodline, would later be supporters of Hitler, and were employed by the Rothschilds at Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. They were also involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles would serve on the Warren Commission which investigated the assassination.
The American delegation at Versailles was also represented by the Rothschild-controlled, Paul Warburg, of Kuhn, Loeb and the American branch of I.G. Farben, while the German delegation included his brother, Max Warburg, who would become Hitler’s banker!! Their host in France during the "peace" conference was… Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the leading force at the time pressing for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Israel. See my books for fine detail.
The Rothschilds have always been the true force behind the Zionist Movement. Zionism is in fact SIONism, Sion = the Sun, hence the name of the elite secret society behind the Merovingian bloodline, the Priory of Sion. Contrary to most people’s understanding, Zionism is not the Jewish people. Many Jews are not Zionists and many non-Jews are. Zionism is a political movement, not a race. To say Zionism is the Jewish people is like saying the Democratic Party is the American people. Jewish people who oppose Zionism, however, have been given a very hard time.
Now, having manipulated their puppet-governments to support their plan for a personal fiefdom in the Middle East, the Rothschilds began the process of settling Jewish people in Palestine. As always they treated their own people with contempt.
Enter Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the "Father of Israel", who died in 1934, the man who hosted the Versailles "peace" delegations. Edmond was from the French House, like Guy de Rothschild. Edmond, in fact, began to settle Jews in Palestine as far back as the 1880s (when Charles Taze Russell was making his prediction).
He financed Russian Jews to establish settlements in Palestine, but it was nothing to do with their freedom or birthright, it was to advance the Rothschild-Illuminati agenda. Edmond financed the creation of farms and factories and ran the whole operation with a rod of iron.
The Jewish farmers were told what to grow and they soon found out who was in charge if they questioned his orders. In 1901, these Jewish people complained to Rothschild about this dictatorship over their settlement or "Yishuv".
They asked him:

"..if you wish to save the Yishuv, first take your hands from it, and…for once permit the colonists to have the possibility of correcting for themselves whatever needs correcting.."

Baron Rothschild replied:

"I created the Yishuv, I alone. Therefore no men, neither colonists nor organizations, have the right to interfere in my plans.."

In one sentence, you have the true attitude of the Rothschilds to Jewish people, and indeed, the human population in general.
These people are NOT Jews, they are a non-human bloodline with a reptilian genetic code who hide behind the Jewish people and use them as a screen and a means to an end. According to Simon Schama’s book, Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (Collins, London, 1978), the Rothschilds acquired 80% of the land of Israel.
Edmond de Rothschild worked closely with Theodore Herzl, who just happened to be the founder of Zionism, the political movement created to ensure a "Jewish" homeland in Palestine. Rothschild was also the power behind Chaim Weizmann, another leader of Zionism.
As Rothschild told Weizmann:

"Without me Zionism would not have succeeded, but without Zionism my work would have been stuck to death."

So now with the Rothschilds increasing their financing of Jewish settlements in Palestine, and with their agents in governments officially supporting their plans for a Rothschild, sorry Jewish, homeland, they needed a catalyst which would demolish Arab protests at the take-over of their country.
That catalyst was the horrific treatment of Jews in Germany and the countries they conquered by the Rothschild-funded Nazis and one of their own, a Rothschild called Adolf Hitler.
The wave of revulsion at the Nazi concentration camps gave vital and, in the end, crucial impetus to the Rothschild agenda. It was they who funded the Jewish terrorist operations like the Stern Gang and Irgun, which committed mayhem and murder to bring the State of Rothschild (Israel) into being in 1948.
These terrorist groups, who slaughtered Jewish people with equal enthusiasm, were led by the very people who later rose to lead the new Israel… people like Menachem Begin, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yitzhak Shamir. It was these Rothschild-controlled Zionist gangs who murdered the international mediator Count Bernadotte on September 17, 1948, apparently because he had been intending to present a new partition resolution to the United Nations.
And the Rothschilds were not satisfied with causing the unimaginable suffering of Jewish people under the Nazis, they also stole their wealth when the war was over, just as they stole the Russian wealth during the revolution they had financed.
In early 1998, during a speaking tour of South Africa, I had a personal meeting with P.W. Botha, the apartheid President of South Africa during the 1980s.
The invitation came out of the blue when I was speaking a few miles from his home. We spoke for an hour and a half about the manipulation of South Africa and it was not long before names like Henry Kissinger, Lord Carrington, and the Rothschilds came up.

"I had some strange dealings with the English Rothschilds in Cape Town when I was president", he said, and he went on to tell me a story that sums up the Rothschilds so perfectly.

He said they had asked for a meeting with him and his foreign minister, the Illuminati operative, Pik Botha (no relation).
At that meeting, he said, the Rothschilds told him there was massive wealth in Swiss bank accounts which once belonged to German Jews and it was available for investment in South Africa if they could agree an interest rate.
This is the very wealth, stolen from German Jews who suffered under the Nazis, which has come to light amid great scandal in recent years. The Rothschilds have been making a fortune from it since the war!! Botha told me he refused to accept the money, but Pik Botha left the meeting with the Rothschilds and he could not be sure that they did not come to some arrangement.
Breathtaking? Of course it is, but the world is not how we think it is.
To this day the Rothschilds continue to control the State that has their family symbol on it’s flag and it is they who use that country and its people to maintain the conflict, both within its borders and with surrounding Arab countries, which has allowed the Illuminati-Rothschilds to control their so called "Arc of Crisis" in the Middle East through divide, rule, and conquer.
It has allowed them, not least, to control the oil-producing countries since the war when the oil really came on line.

PLEASE, JEWISH PEOPLE OF ISRAEL AND THE WORLD, LOOK AT THIS. YOU ARE BEING PLAYED OFF AGAINST THE NON-JEWISH RACES AND VISA-VERSA. YOU AND ALL OF US WHO CARE ABOUT OUR CHILDREN AND THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD MUST UNITE AND FOCUS ON THE FORCE THAT IS PLAYING ALL PEOPLE LIKE A VIOLIN. FEAR OF EACH OTHER AND DIVIDE AND RULE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE BASIC TOOLS OF DICTATORS, GLOBAL AND OTHERWISE. AND I SAY THIS TO ARAB PEOPLE: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, DO THE ROTHSCHILDS AND THE ILLUMINATI CONTROL ONLY ONE SIDE IN A CONFLICT. IF THEY DID THEY COULD NOT BE SURE OF THE OUTCOME AND THAT’S NOT THE WAY THEY PLAY THE GAME. IN EVERY SIGNIFICANT CONFLICT THEY CONTROL THE LEADERSHIP OF ALL FACTIONS, EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY FIGHT AND BATTLE WITH EACH OTHER ON THE PUBLIC STAGE. SO WE KNOW WHO CONTROLS THE JEWISH LEADERSHIP IN ISRAEL. THE ROTHSCHILDS AND THE ILLUMINATI. BUT WHO, THEREFORE, CONTROLS YASSER ARAFAT? I’ll GIVE YOU ONE GUESS. THE SAME PEOPLE WHO CONTROLLED MENACHEM BEGIN OF ISRAEL AND PRESIDENT SADAT OF EGYPT DURING THE "PEACE AGREEMENT" OF THE CARTER PRESIDENCY. BEGIN, SADAT, AND CARTER, WERE ALL ILLUMINATI PUPPETS, JUST AS THE ISRAEL LEADERSHIP, ARAFAT, AND CLINTON ARE TODAY. IT’S A SCAM, A SHAM, A MOVIE FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION ONLY. WHAT IS DONE IS DONE AND THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL-PALESTINE NEED TO WORK AND LIVE TOGETHER IN HARMONY AND MUTUAL RESPECT. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY, EXCEPT MORE DEATHS, MORE SUFFERING, MORE CONFLICT - EXACTLY WHAT THE ILLUMINATI AND THE ROTHSCHILDS WANT.

THEY HAVE HORRENDOUS PLANS FOR ISRAEL IN WHICH ALL SIDES WILL SUFFER, NOT LEAST THEIR PLANS FOR A MAJOR EVENT AT THE TEMPLE MOUNT MOSQUE, THE SITE OF THE SO CALLED "TEMPLE OF SOLOMON" ACCORDING TO THE JEWISH BELIEF SYSTEM COME ON PEOPLES OF THE WORLD, NO MATTER WHAT YOUR RACE, COLOUR, OR CULTURE. NO MATTER WHAT YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEF OR YOUR SPIN ON LIFE.
THE FREEDOM, WHAT REMAINS OF IT, FOR ALL OF US IS AT STAKE HERE AND WHILE WE ARE DIVIDED ON THESE IRRELEVANT GROUNDS, THAT FREEDOM IS DOOMED.
LETS WORK TOGETHER WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME. WAR IS OVER WHEN WE WANT IT. THE WORLD IS WHATEVER WE ALLOW IT TO BE. WE WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD. OK, LET’S CHANGE OURSELVES.

The future of the United Kingdom post US election

[Event] The Quadrennial Act

Batman & Robin #1 - New Gotham

DC Next presents:

BATMAN & ROBIN

In Return of the Caped Crusaders
Issue One: New Gotham
Written by AdamantAce
Edited by JPM11S & PatrollinTheMojave

Next Issue > Coming Next Month

Writer’s Note:
Check out Gotham Knights #1-20 and Gotham Knights Annual 1 to see how we got to here! ~Adam

Dick Grayson stood in the charred remains of Wayne Manor on an unremarkable day. The sun was low in the sky, not that you would be able to tell through the thick clouds and wintry fog. A long black coat kept him warm, a grey and blue scarf pulled tight around his neck as he searched through the remains of his family’s home with his eyes. He had lost a lot in his life: parents, mentors, friends, and he liked to think that made losing his home easier. The manor had been in the Wayne Family for generations. He only remembered the manor as the cold, stuffy castle he found himself in after his parents died, and then as the warm home where he had forged new familial bonds, their base of operations as he and that family saved the city countless times. But it was just stone. There would be another home like it, Dick knew, he just had to make it.
He wandered around the ashy remains of the manor. The place was so grand that even in its immolated state, the walls remained mostly intact. But passing from room to room, finding soot and debris where there was once lavish luxury felt to Dick like he had stepped into a parallel universe. Fortunately, even in this state, it wasn’t hard to recall the same memories the young man had cherished - Alfred teaching him how to play piano in parlor, getting to know Garth in the armour room, studying for his high school finals with Babs in the library. They were all safe.
“Dick?” a boy’s voice rang out. Dick turned, lifted out of his trance.
“Tim,” he smiled, seeing Tim Drake, his younger brother and successive Robin, having appeared in what was once the doorway at the front of the house. He was in a red sweater, a black canvas jacket zipped up over it.
“Thought I’d find you moping here,” Tim jabbed, walking in to meet his brother and minding where he stepped.
“I don’t mope!” Dick cried with a laugh.
“No, of course,” Tim replied. “Dick Grayson’s finally remembered he’s too good for that!”
Tim was 14 when Dick first met him, when a disaster pulled him back to Gotham and away from the Teen Titans in New York. Dick was 21 at the time, and mightily surprised to see that Bruce had dressed yet another kid up as Robin in his absence. Dick was initially less than impressed, while Tim was starstruck to meet his hero. Luckily for them both, their perspectives changed with time. Dick came to appreciate Tim’s cunning and intelligence, while Tim had just about begun to take Dick off of that hero pedestal. All in five years. In truth, they had really not had that long together, but it didn’t take long until Tim was yet another powerful familial bond.
“I guess… it’s kind of like paying my respects,” Dick spoke.
“To the house?” Tim raised an eyebrow.
“I did have Alfred make some calls to put together a whole funeral procession,” Dick jested, “But then I decided that’s probably too much.”
“Just a bit.”
Dick watched as Tim took his own last look about the place. Unlike Dick, Helena, and Jason, Tim never lived at the manor. He had a room but seldom used it, living with his father over the hill in Burnside. Back then at least, before he had left Gotham and come back, with everything that had happened in between.
“I sent Alfred to the new site,” spoke Tim abruptly. “To supervise some of the contractors, make sure they don’t go snooping. In a mask, of course.”
“I can’t imagine what they’re thinking,” Dick shook his head, “Doing a job for Batman.”
“It’s good to keep Alfred busy too.”
“I keep telling him we don’t need waiting on. That he can relax, or even consider retiring.”
“Alfred Beagle will retire the day Hell freezes over!” Tim cried out.
Dick shrugged in jest. “I’m not sure he will.”
Tim pulled out a thin smartphone. He unlocked it and quickly brought up a series of images he showed to Dick of the new site they had been working on. Each showed a different angle of the new site, metallic and gothic, the limited sunlight pouring in from out of sight as workmen moved heaved materials back and forth, a slender man in a suit and a white theatre mask directing them. “They said they could black out the windows if need be,” Tim explained, noting the abundance of light from the daytime. “For when it gets bright in the summer.”
“Shutters,” Dick nodded. “We can put them up in the summer, but a little sunlight now and then never killed anyone.”
“And I was talking with Alfred, wondering if we should install sleeping quarters,” Tim continued. “Might be more efficient than living in a townhouse all the way in New Gotham and commuting to the other side of the city.”
Dick shook his head. “Just cos we’re used to living above where we work doesn’t mean we have to,” he explained.
Tim blinked. He was putting his all into the development of the new site, and only wanted to get things right. “I thought it could be like Titans Tower.”
“Titans Tower was a clubhouse with a crime lab, not a barracks with a lounge.”
Tim shrugged. “I’ll note that down as constructive criticism.”
Dick put his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “It’s a good idea, Tim,” he smiled. “Let’s have some bunk beds, a kitchen maybe, but let’s not make a point of using them.”
“Right,” Tim nodded. “Let’s go downstairs.”

🔹🔹 🦇 🔹🔹

Through the foyer and into the parlor, together they moved aside the bookcase that concealed the steps leading underground, the locking mechanism busted in the riot that had left the manor in the state it was in. They moved down the winding stone steps, descending deep below before reaching their destination: the Batcave.
Jagged rock, rushing water, dozens of bats streaking by at a hurried pace. Down below was a series of interconnected platforms, each with their own purpose. One housed the Batmobile, another was the training ring, and another was the home to the armoury, lined with suits from throughout time and an array of gadgets. Once. Now, the Batcave was almost empty, it’s features stripped away, moved elsewhere. No more giant penny, no T-Rex. But what did remain was at the centre-most platform. The Batcomputer.
“It doesn’t look right,” Dick shrugged, overlooking the full view of the cave from the top of the final flight of stairs, atop a catwalk running along the perimeter of the cave. “It doesn’t feel real.”
Tim moved ahead, beginning down the last steps. “It never does when you pack up all your stuff. The joys of moving.” He paused. Tim had moved a lot in the last year and a half. From Gotham to Metropolis. From Metropolis to Palo Alto. And now back to Gotham. Each locale had their own unique challenges. Some more harrowing than others.
Dick saw a look emerge on Tim’s face and interjected. “You don’t have to tell me, I was born in a travelling circus.”
“It’s not a competition!” Tim chuckled. “Honestly, I don’t see why we can’t dress up one of Bruce’s old city-side bunkers in the meantime until the new site is ready.”
Dick followed after him. “We can’t keep spending Wayne money like it’s nothing,” he explained. “Not now everyone’s watching us and the company so closely. We should be grateful Lucius is cutting us the odd cheque for a new Batmobile.”
“And why can’t we just stay here?” Tim asked. “Doesn’t matter if we don’t have the manor up top.”
“Cos we’re rebuilding the manor,” Dick continued. “And dedicating it to the homeless. Babs’ idea.”
The pair reached the foot of the stairs and stepped onto the first of the interconnected levels of the cave. Tim kept walking ahead, turning and walking backwards to keep facing Dick. “So when do I get to meet the next Robin?”
“What do you mean?” Dick replied.
“Well, she spent Christmas at her friend’s, and I’ve been so busy with the construction, and--”
“I promise you, there’s no new Robin.”
“You sure about that?” came another voice. Tim turned around and Dick looked past him to see the padded chair beside the towering array of monitors and machines that was the Batcomputer swivel around, revealing the form of 17-year-old Stephanie Brown, with blond hair and bright blue eyes, wrapped up in a large green sweater, sat cross-legged. Dick’s ward. “Remember we have training tonight, Dick.”
“Training?” Tim turned to face Dick. “Is that training training?”
“Don’t you gang up on me, not already!” Dick threw up his hands. “The house was attacked by armed rioters; she needs to be able to take care of herself.”
“More than I already can?” Steph cocked her head.
“You can never be too good at defending yourself,” Dick reasoned.
“Well, anyway, it’s--” Tim turned back to face the girl in the chair by the Batcomputer. “I’m, er, Tim. Drake.”
“Steph,” she replied, bringing her knees down and extending her hand for his, the cuff of her sweater past her knuckles.
“Steph,” Tim repeated, shaking her hand.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Dick asked her.
She grinned. “Just getting to know the systems.”
“Right…” Dick conceded. “Well, if you want to get moving, let Tim get set up. We need to get changed for tonight.”
“Tonight?” Steph questioned before her eyes shot open. “Oh shit, it’s tonight!”

🔹🔹 🦇 🔹🔹

The paparazzi was a well-accepted part of Dick’s life. He had been forced to accept it as the subject of rumour and speculation when the richest, most eligible bachelor on the East Coast adopted him at age 9. Suited and booted, he had little to worry about attending the gala to celebrate the rise of Gotham’s new mayor, after the successful second emergency election - even if he was now the subject of a different breed of gossip and rumour. What he did worry about… was Steph.
She entered the rented ballroom close behind Dick, in a belted purple sheath dress of Helena’s. The daughter of a deceased henchman of the Penguin, the crime boss who had killed the late Mayor Hull. Now the adopted ward of Dick Grayson, the far-too-young billionaire, recently former GCPD detective, now ousted from the board of Wayne Enterprises, the man that made no sense. Naturally, Steph’s mere existence invited speculation.
If she was being honest, Steph was terrified, overwhelmed by the hundreds of photojournalists at the doors. But once they were inside, all she had to worry about was the run-of-the-mill Gotham elite. They all had questions for her, and few respected her boundaries. As such, Dick had an evening of interception and deflection onto himself ahead of him.
Later, having survived some dreadful hobnobbing and some not-so-respectful flirting from the snotty heir of Lydecker Aerospace, Steph heard the ballroom’s PA system begin to whine. Sound crackled through the large speakers spread about the place. She looked to the stage set up at the head of the room, where the new mayor stood at the podium. Either side of her stood two resolute, stone-faced cops. Steph wondered if they were old friends of Dick’s.
“Hello everyone, people of Gotham. Thank you so much for attending,” smiled the new mayor. She stood in a black pantsuit, tailored like the rest of the Gotham elite. But her olive skin and tight black curls immediately flagged her a new presence among Gotham’s often stagnant hierarchy. “My name is Sarah Essen, and I am proud to announce that I am your new mayor.”
The room was filled with applause as everyone toasted the politician on the stage. Steph didn’t know much about Essen, just that she was a cop who got booted from the force a lifetime ago for unknown reasons. How Gotham ever elected a cop to be their new mayor following the carnage of the last few months eluded her.
“I know the questions everyone is asking,” Mayor Essen continued. “How will we create new jobs? How will we keep our city safe? And how will we earn back the trust of the common man and woman?”
Murmurs permeated about the room.
“And it’s simple,” spoke Essen with punctuation. “For too long, Gotham has catered only to the elite, to the millionaires. And-- Now don’t get me wrong, our industry is our greatest strength. Without it, we would be nothing. But with some well placed incentives, I believe we can unite the rich and the poor in the furthering of our great home.”
Stephanie shrugged. It sounded to her like keep relying on the rich’ in more words.
“Through subsiding real estate, we have already had several industry leaders commit to a move to Gotham, bringing their factories, stores, and offices with them, along with all of the jobs they will create, and…” Essen gestured to the stage exit behind her, “Here to announce an initiative to redevelop some of Gotham’s most neglected neighbourhoods, Wayne Enterprises’ own CEO: Lucius Fox!”
As Lucius stepped out onto the stage, the audience gave a hearty, respectful clap. It was clear to Steph that the rich folk present were less than enthused by Essen’s plans. And while Steph herself thought they seemed awfully shortsighted, she believed the new mayor was making an earnest attempt to take the city in a better direction.
Suddenly, a voice crackled in her ear. “Robin to Batman: Update - Is the commissioner present?” Was she supposed to be hearing this?”
Over her shoulder, Dick replied down his earpiece. “I haven’t been able to identify him yet, why?”
“Skycams have the Bat-Signal high in the sky,” Tim replied.
Dick took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “On it…” He turned to Steph, shame on his face, and went to speak.
But Steph cut him off. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Go,” she urged him. “Can’t miss your first time!”
Dick nodded and gave an earnest smile.

🔹🔹 🦇 🔹🔹

Commissioner Jim Gordon stood atop the GCPD headquarters, the large modified searchlight that was the Bat-Signal beside him. It was old tech, older than most cops in the department, but it was effective. Some said the same about him, twenty years into a career in a position few had interest in gunning for, bearing an unimaginable responsibility.
Batman had been gone for almost three years, and in that time Gordon had used the Bat-Signal beside him to summon and communicate with what felt like an endless supply of half-baked replacements; children, faceless spies, and imposing figures made themselves known in the city before vanishing without a word. But now, the whole city knew Batman was back. Or rather, there was a new Batman in town. So upon receiving emergency information, the stalwart commissioner had shot to the roof and fired up the Bat-Signal once more. Through it, the large silhouette of a bat was projected onto the very clouds above, cutting through the night for all to see. Jim hoped Batman would see it, that it would bring him to the rooftop for a debriefing, that - whoever he was - he meant business in a way the ‘Gotham Knights’ had not. But, more importantly, he hoped that every criminal out at night looked to the sky and knew that the consequence of their actions was coming for them.
“Commissioner,” a voice spoke out, deep but not quite as much as Jim was expecting.
He turned around, holding his hat in place against the howling winter winds. He nodded as Batman stepped out of the shadows. So he could sneak up on him like the old guy could.
“Batman,” Jim replied. “Thank you for being prompt.”
“I came as soon as I could,” Batman spoke plainly.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Jim threw his hand up. “You can cut the dramatism; you’ve made it clear you’re not him.”
“Sure.” Batman said ‘sure’ now. “What is it?”
“A user online - a hacker or mole - has released highly sensitive, dangerous information from one of the businesses flourishing under Essen’s new plan.” Jim made it clear what he thought of the new mayor.
“What information?”
“Access codes and detailed instructions on how to infiltrate the vaults of the new Powers R&D plant.”
“Publicly?” Batman replied, taking a step further out of the dark.
“Exactly,” Jim shook his head. “Which means all the gangs are stocking up to raid the place any minute now. I need you to get there first.”
“When was this information released?” Batman asked.
“Ten minutes before the nightlight went up,” Jim replied. “You do have the others with you, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?” The vigilante raised an eyebrow beneath his cowl.
“Huntress, Batwing, the new Batgirl, ” the Commissioner explained, “The ‘Gotham Knights’ or whatever you call yourselves.”
Batman took a deep breath. Not this time. “I have it handled.”
Jim turned and moved towards the Bat-Signal, ready to shut it off. “Now you go do your disappearing trick before I turn back--” He flicked the switch. “And get--”
“Something wrong, Commissioner?” Batman stood on the edge of the building.
Jim paused. “No, get going. You have a job to do.”
“Sure,” Batman nodded and dove from the rooftop.

🔹🔹 🦇 🔹🔹

A sleek, low-to-the-ground blur pulsed across Gotham City, its white eyes and pointed ears leaving it resembling a certain Dark Knight. But its eyes were the silver windshields, its ears were the tall rear tail fins, and the blur was the Batmobile. Dick had been quite the drag racer back in the day, recalling his most rebellious weeks following his arrival at Wayne Manor where he stole one of Bruce’s sports cars and took it for a spin, all at age 9. That fire in him, the love of cars, was one of the ways Bruce had broken through to him, getting the young orphan to help him spruce up some old vintages. Eventually, that led Batman to upgrade from driving a blacked-out sports car to driving a full customised supercar. Despite this, it felt weird for Dick to be behind the wheel of the Batmobile he had himself inspired, especially driving it alone.
But speed was speed, and the one-of-a-kind motor quickly carried him from the GCPD headquarters in Old Gotham to Otisburg up north. There, on Moldoff Boulevard, was the Powers Technology R&D plant on the site of the old Fallbrook Building. One of Dick’s friends in the GCPD had taken down the security information that the hacker had leaked as soon as she could, despite leaving plenty of time for a good few crews to make copies, but Dick had been given access to an archived version that he had been reviewing on the journey. In a hurry, Dick disembarked the Batmobile and began to scale the tower via grappling hook. But he didn’t get far before he saw foul play occurring below. An old pickup went crashing through the front doors of the building.
Forgoing his altitude, Dick moved into a nosedive, deploying his cape at the last minute and slowing his descent to land a kick on an approaching motorcyclist to knock him from his bike, taking him off-guard. Dick landed and counted the footsteps of three more raiders leaving pickup behind him. Dick looked over his shoulder, noting their crash helmets and body armour. The first of them discharged a shotgun at Dick’s back. The new Batman moved quickly, effortlessly cartwheeling to the left and away from the spray of pellets. Then he bounced up, somersaulting through the air and landing behind his new adversaries, putting himself between them and the building. The second turned, levelling a handgun, but Dick quickly smacked it from his grip. Unfortunately, that left him open to the third crook, who successfully got a shot off. Unluckily for that punk, the low caliber round plinked uselessly off of the front of the grey armour plating of the new Batsuit. This earned him a reprisal as Dick lurched forward, taking him by the shoulders and shoving him into his recently-disarmed compatriot, knocking them both into the crashed car. There was a magic to being Batman: You didn’t need to beat every enemy to incapacitation, just convince them it was a good idea to stay down.
The man with the sawn-off fired another shot, but a well-placed Batarang knocked his aim off course and sent the shot into the other criminal’s bike. Luckily for him, his comrade was too unconscious to notice. He tossed the spent shotgun aside, instead brandishing a tire iron, and charged at the Dark Knight.
Dick smiled, rushing forward to meet the thug. He ducked under the criminal’s swing, placing himself behind him. He drove his elbow into the small of the man’s back then he hit him with a high kick, knocking him back as he pushed off of him to earn himself some more momentum. But the thug wasn’t to be beaten, and persisted, whipping round as soon as he caught his balance and swinging again. But Dick had anticipated this and was done playing, converting his momentum to leap into a monster of a roundhouse kick, decimating the remaining foe. In just sixty seconds, they were done.
Upon using a few feet of Bat-line to bind the raiders, Batman continued on through the shattered front door of the Powers Technology plant but was quickly met with a different kind of trouble.
“Hands up!”
From the depths of the out-of-hours foyer moved a half dozen men in pale bodysuits, complete with marble white, black, and silver heavy-duty armour. They were from Monarch Security, a private security firm that had appeared in Gotham in Bruce’s absence. Their equipment was state of the art, which meant their fee was astronomical. Which, in turn, meant that their vow to protect Gotham only applied to the Gothamites with deep enough pockets, such as the newly-arrived Geraldine Powers.
Dick took a step back as the Monarch agents raised their bulky weapons that fizzed with blue energy - apparently they were too good for bullets - but he did not put his hands up as instructed. Batman wasn’t bossed around.
“Oh shit, it’s the Batman,” Dick heard one of them mutter to one of his colleagues beneath his helmet.
“It’s a Batman,” another corrected him.
But then a figure emerged from the mass of them, one with a golden crest on his right arm. He removed his helmet to reveal the case of Commander Ted Carson, the top of the Monarch chain of command. “Easy boys, he’s not our enemy.”
Under Carson’s command, the rest of the agents lowered their weapons. Dick had met Carson before, even if the commander didn’t know it was him beneath the mask. A year ago, he had helped Dick and the Knights in stopping Firefly, a high-tech arsonist who turned out to be none other than the billionaire investor in Monarch, Cameron van Cleer. For that alone, Dick implicitly trusted Carson.
“Thanks for the assist, Bats, but we have things under control here,” said Carson with a swagger.
“With all respect, Commander, Commissioner Gordon seems to disagree,” Batman replied.
“Right, well Monarch protects Powers, not the GCPD, so why don’t we stay in our own lanes?”
Dick sighed. Was he going to be blocked at every turn?
Suddenly, the few lights illuminating the wide foyer blinked off, plunging the room into total darkness. From above, Dick heard an explosion. “Looks like someone already got past you,” he exclaimed and tossed a smoke pellet at the floor. As the room filled with rapidly expanding dense fog, Batman vaulted over the blockade and up a flight of stairs. Knowing he’d be pursued, he then called the elevator a floor up and entered, quickly removing the ceiling panel of the cab - a weakness highlighted in the leaked info - and entering into the naked elevator shaft above. He pulled out his grappling device and soared up several storeys. As he rose, carried by his Bat-line, Dick saw a number of figures struggling to scale the elevator shaft using rudimentary pulleys and bungee cables, all criminals who vastly overestimated their own skills.
Eventually, he reached the level highlighted in the hacker’s info, Level 17G. All that was left was to escape the elevator shaft. To begin, Dick balanced himself precariously on the far-too-thin edge he had to stand on, likening it to tightrope walking. He then produced a Batarang from his belt and forced it into the gap between the two steel doors. With a shove, he drove the edge of the implement deeper through and began to twist, jimmying the doors open ever so slightly. The reinforced alloy of the Batarang started to crack and bend. They were strong but only thin. But no matter. As soon as the space made was big enough, Dick dropped the Batarang and threw in his navy-gloved hands, taking one steel door in each. Then, demonstrating an oft-underestimated strength, Dick forced the doors open, somehow managing to stay upright on the narrow edge. With an effort, he pulled the doors wide and then threw himself through. With a crash, the doors slammed shut behind him, and he had a new set of problems to deal with.
Dick found himself in an office dimly lit with a nauseating green light. Along the floor lay a dozen Monarch agents in full regalia, all beaten, many unconscious. He took a knee beside one of them and spoke.
“What happened here?” he asked. The man struggled to summon the strength to answer, his breathing slow and laboured, the immense weight of his gear making it difficult to move with torn muscles. Though Dick caught a glance at something elsewhere and hurried away to investigate. He moved along the corridor ahead of him to the far end, finding another similar sea of bodies. These were gangbangers from the Scarface Gang, some left groaning, others knocked clean out.
Dick hung his head in shame. He had missed the skirmish. He was lucky none were killed. But he didn’t have long to be disappointed in himself, not when a beast of a man leapt from the shadows around the corner and tackled him to the ground. Dick threw his arms up, blocking the slow, heavy bludgeoning from the man on top of him. He was huge, a grey woollen sweater stretched over his muscles. And… between the punches… Dick could have sworn he had a shark’s head.
Not sure how long he could endure this beating, Dick tensed his core and swung his legs up, knocking the Shark up, over and off of him. There, Dick watched as the Shark’s great weight was his undoing as he struggled to slow himself. Dick peeled himself off of the floor and moved down the bend from where the Shark had come but was met with a cane to his gut. The weapon didn’t do much upon impact, and Dick looked forward to see his new adversary: another man, this one with the face of a fox.
“What--?” the Fox exclaimed behind his mask, striking Dick with the cane once more, this time without much force behind it. The Fox moved back, raising his cane high and gripping it tightly. It crackled with blue electricity, and suddenly his adversary’s panic made sense.
Dick smirked. “Might’ve worked with the old Batman, but my armour’s special.” From beneath his cape, he rapidly drew his weapons: twin escrima sticks. Though, much like the Fox’s cane, these weren’t regular sticks. The new Batman closed his grip around them and sent an electrical current down through the inlaid circuitry in his suit, through his navy gloves, and into the matching implements. Then, they too began to spark and the Fox knew he was in trouble.
Dick swung up and around, moving his sticks together towards the Fox’s side. But the Fox was quick on his feet, hopping backwards and into a rapid parry and riposte. The electrical element of the Fox’s cane did little to faze the Dark Knight, not when his suit was specially insulated to allow for the proper use of his own stun batons, but it was clear the Fox had put more force behind his swing to account for this. Dick took note of his form. He had to be a practiced fencer.
When the Fox bounced back, Dick took the offensive once more, advancing and lunging. The Fox moved once again to parry, but it was a feint, a false move on Dick’s part that left the Fox open. So Dick moved quickly, beginning a flurry of blows to dismantle the fencing Fox that would no doubt have him disqualified for brutality if a referee were present. All the while he forced the two of them further and further down the hallway, putting the Fox on the backfoot. But he wasn’t the only one fighting dirty. As he worked to parry and reflect the Fox’s following strikes, Dick heard the brutish Shark come charging towards him. He stayed calm, continuing to trade blows with the Fox using his right stick. Dick very briefly glanced over his shoulder and flung his left stick as hard as he could at the ceiling behind him. Then, while he refocused his attention on the Fox, fighting to win back advantage he’d lost turning away, his airborne escrima stick ricocheted off of the low ceiling and straight into the forehead of the Shark, shattering his mask and bringing him to the ground. Confident in his abilities, Dick moved in for one last barrage with his remaining stick before shoving the Fox towards the left-open door of the target vault. But before Dick could savour the victory, he realised he hadn’t won at all.
The vault was open, and the pair were moving away from it. And--
Click.
Dick felt the tip of a handgun pressed against the back of his navy cowl. In other batsuits, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but Dick had insisted that his was thinned down as to not hinder his mobility. His approach was to avoid getting hit, the unstoppable acrobat he was. He couldn’t tank a bullet to the head.
“Nice save…” spluttered the bloodied Fox from the ground of the vault, “Nice one, Vulture…!”
But before Dick could deduce how to get himself out of check, smoke began to fill the room. He heard a thwack, and then a crunch, and then the gun was no longer pressed against him. The Fox dragged himself to his feet and screamed, charging towards Dick. But he wasn’t worried about him. All the same, Dick wasn’t able to get a hit off on the bad sport as an attacker lunged from behind him, striking the Fox in the head before Dick could. Fox hit the floor with a thud. His heart pounding, Dick turned around slowly. Sprawled across the floor was Shark, whom he himself had taken down, his discarded escrima stick slowly rolling away from him - and Vulture pinned to the ground. Stood over Vulture was a face Dick was pleased to see, a young man in a new red-and-black ensemble, complete with a black-and-yellow cape and a black domino mask, a bright yellow ‘R’ emblazoned over his breast.
“Did you forget it’s Batman and Robin,” Tim chided, lifting his quarterstaff from the Vulture’s ribcage.
“These guys aren’t exactly the Joker though, are they?” Dick replied with a smirk. “Dynamic Duo meet Terrible Trio!”
Remembering the urgency, Tim moved past Dick, running into the opened vault. There, he found a discarded key card, a counterfeit likely made using the leaked data. In the centre of the room was a small case, left open with the 3D-printed key still in the lock. Whoever this hacker was, they had provided an exhaustive list of every measure needed to get to this case. “It was too easy to get to here. Powers really need to beef up their security.”
But as Tim searched the case, it was empty.
“They got to it!?” Robin exclaimed, turning over his shoulder to look back at the new Batman. “The hacker didn’t disclose what was inside, but the info I… acquired said it was an experimental nerve gas. Where is it--?”
“Not here,” Dick interjected, reaching down to the Vulture’s squirming body. The nerve gas was nowhere to be seen, but shoved into his pocket the Vulture did have a sticky note, the glue still fresh, ornately inscribed with a message. No, an address.

🔹🔹 🦇 🔹🔹

While Robin secured the vault at the Powers building, making sure the ‘Terrible Trio’ were handed over to the police, and that any further heist teams were suitably dissuaded, Batman headed over to the address found on the note left in the nerve gas’ case. That led him to an apartment in the Narrows. The Narrows was an awful place to live, a cramped, often forgotten neighbour built on its own narrow island in the old Morrison Harbor, between Somerset and Old Gotham. The small, man-made island was originally created as a site for affordable housing in the sixties in an initiative led by Patrick Wayne. And while this did give affordable homes to a tightly-knit community of survivors, being bound by two bridges connecting the two greater islands hemming it in had seemingly doomed it to being looked over, neglected by the rest of the city.
Upon reaching the address and climbing the fire escape, Dick deftly cracked open one of the windows of the apartment and climbed inside. He moved silently through the darkness with no idea what to expect, and found a real mess. Broken glass was strewn all over the floor. A fallen bookshelf had emptied its contents - mostly wads of paper - onto the mottled carpet. He kept moving, exiting the disused bedroom he had found himself in and moving down the ensuing corridor. Along there, Dick noted a series of poorly filled-in holes in the drywall, each the size of a softball. Or something else. The more he explored, the more it saddened him. The cracked windows, the stained floors, the overturned furniture all about. A total state of disrepair. Having swept through every other room in the apartment, the Batman came to one final door. But, as he reached for the doorknob, it twisted open, and the door opened inward ever so slightly. Out through the narrow gap in the door scurried a young girl who shut the door behind her, placing her back against it. She looked up to the vigilante towering over and hissed under her breath. “Not here! Talk on the roof?”

Dick Grayson stood atop the apartment building facing the young girl. He was expecting some kind of mastermind, a career criminal working in the Gotham underworld. Not… her. She was thin, remarkably so, skinny enough to see her cheekbones through her pale skin. She couldn’t have been older than seventeen. She had blue eyes with dark eyeliner encircling them, but that wasn’t what grabbed Dick’s attention. No, that would be her hair. She had a long fringe that fell to her chin, and a mess on top, in contrast with her shaved back and sides. Not only that, the hair she did have was bright blue and purple. There was no way a girl as young as she was, looking the way she did, could keep a low profile in the Gotham underworld.
“I’m sorry,” she spoke a bit louder this time, her voice rougher than he was expecting. “My brother’s sound asleep. He doesn’t do that often.”
“Where are your parents?” Dick asked her, commanding the still nature of Batman.
“Dead,” she replied plainly. “Well, Mom is. Dad’s out, luckily for him.”
“What’s your name?” he continued.
She took a deep breath, stirring beneath the baggy hoodie she had wrapped herself up in. “Harper. Row. I, uh, I’m sorry for the mess.”
“I…” Dick wasn’t sure what to say.
“At Powers, not in the house, I mean,” Harper interjected, realising her mistake.
“So it was you,” Dick affirmed.
“Yes.”
Dick took a step forward and Harper instantly threw up her hands.
“I-I-I- I can explain!” she cried out. She reached into the front pocket of her hoodie, in which she had been keeping her hands warm previously, and pulled out a silver canister marked with a red label. She held it out to the vigilante.
Carefully, Dick approached her and took the canister from her. Reading the label, it was clear that this was the stolen nerve gas.
“Since Mayor Essen brought all these big companies to Gotham, they’ve rolled out this huge internship program,” Harper began, shuddering as she did. “Meant to help poor kids get a taste for real careers. Anyway, since I’m only two or three points off being as marginalised as they come, I got selected. So I got to intern at Powers Technology.”
Dick nodded, wondering where this was going.
“Turns out they didn’t have much for me to do; they only took me on as part of the deal they made with the mayor. So I had a lot of free time. I got curious, went snooping maybe where I wasn’t supposed to,” Harper continued. “It wasn’t very hard to fake an ID card, give it the proper clearances, cos the IT is so out of date. And the security cameras were far too easy to bypass. So… without trying very hard at all, I basically stumbled on to everything Powers are working on. Not just the nerve gas, but weapons that’d destroy the city if they got onto the streets. And I thought… if I could get to them as easily as I did… so could any ol’ crook.”
“So you helped them?” Dick exclaimed. “You gave them everything they’d need.”
“Actually, I went to the police, submitted an anonymous tip,” Harper interjected, this time with more force, not to be pushed around. “But they did a fat load of nothing with that one. And I knew those crooks would figure things out soon enough, or they’d buy someone else working at Powers and he’d tell ‘em. So I just sped things up.”
“Why?”
“It’s not like there’s a Bat-Signal app!” Harper exclaimed. “You said we could depend on Batman, on you, to protect us, but you get your calls from the GCPD. So if they weren’t taking the threat seriously, I had to make them.”
Dick couldn’t believe it. This from a teenager in the Narrows? “So you leaked info to the gang to get them to try and steal from Powers… to get my attention?”
“To demonstrate that Powers security isn’t safe,” Harper pleaded. “I don’t want dangerous weapons on my streets.”
“And then you replaced the nerve gas with your address!” Dick exclaimed. “You know that means if we didn’t stop the criminals that got to the vault, they would have come for you. They would have killed you, and your brother, and they would have gotten the nerve gas.”
“But they didn’t.”
“Right, by chance.”
“By a good chance,” Harper shook her head. “I knew you would beat everyone else there, or stop anyone who got their first.”
“How could you know that?” Dick replied, lost.
“Because you’re Batman,” Harper smiled, replying plainly. “And, despite what the Joker mobs would have you think… a lot of people in Gotham trust you, and are depending on you.”
“I... “ The new Batman was lost for words. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Well…” Harper held out her wrists together. “I think you can start with ‘You are under arrest’.”
“No,” Dick replied. “You did a public service. I’ll see to it that these businesses lock up their gear better next time, or get out of the city.”
Harper’s face turned. For all her good intentions, she fully expected this night to end with her in cuffs. “Are you sure?”
“Just answer me this,” Dick replied. “Was Powers’ security the only thing you wanted to bring to my attention. You and your brother, and your…”
“No.” Harper snapped. “You can’t. The second we hit foster care, me and Cullen will be separated.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And neither do you.”
“I…” Dick felt as if it was his responsibility to protect her. Despite what she wanted, she was a child, and now he knew her father was a threat. If he did nothing and something happened to her and Cullen, it’d be on him. That was the curse of Batman, responsibility for every shadow you could see. But Dick also knew something else. He wasn’t a machine; he wouldn’t lose his compassion to the cape and cowl. “Okay, but in the future, you won’t have to try so hard to get my attention.”
“What does that mean?” Harper asked.
“It means we’re trying something new,” Dick explained. “No more secret cave. We’re done hiding. You’ll see.”
Harper tilted her head, not seeing the full picture. Slowly, the new Batman approached the edge of the building and then briefly turned back.
“Stay safe,” Batman smiled. “And thank you.”

Next: Things get chilly in Batman & Robin #2 - Coming February 17th

apth10 writes an open letter addressing the previous Justice MQs

I write this letter to address the recent Minister’s Questions session for the Ministry of Justice. In my current position as the Secretary of State overseeing this ministry, it is my duty to answer the concerns of parliamentarians and the people they represent, and I do seek to address them here. First off, I would like to thank my predecessor, the Right Honourable hurricaneoflies for his service to this government and to this ministry. However, I’d like to speed up things and get straight to the point. The questions asked and my answers provided are as follows:
---
“Exactly 149 days ago, I swore in as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. At the time, I said this:
‘The position of Lord Chancellor is an important one - I am all too aware of the immense responsibility that has been placed upon my shoulders. To defend the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law whilst serving in government is not always easy - especially because it may sometimes require telling my political colleagues in the cabinet that they may not do, or have, whatever they wish.’
In that time, the Lord Chancellor has made a mockery of the position of Lord Chancellor by making an outward attack on the independence of the judiciary. Has he seen the errors of his ways, and if not, will he offer his resignation?”
While I do hope I do not need to resign after immediately being appointed to this position, I do hope to uphold the independence of the judiciary, as we pride ourselves on being a government of transparency and fairness, and justice can only really be called justice if the judiciary is able to provide it without fear or favour. If the Right Honourable Baron or any member of this House has any concerns, I do not intend to discourage them, as compromise and cooperation is something so direly needed in a world that is getting increasingly divided today.
---
“Mr Speaker,
Does the Lord Chancellor agree with Rape Crisis England that;
‘Giving these [rape] suspects exceptional treatment compared to those suspected of similarly serious and stigmatising crimes would inevitably reinforce the public misconception - which is unsupported by evidence but nonetheless widely held - that those suspected of sexual offences are more likely to have been falsely accused than those suspected of other types of crime.’
When the Stern Review found no evidence of false reporting, instead rather under reporting with only 17% of those rape every reporting the assault to police.”
In all honesty, I agree with the Right Honourable Baron, which is why I think the protections given to rape suspects under the Sullivan Anonymity Act should be extended to others suspected of similarly serious crimes. Seeing as the crime is serious, it’s consequences are serious as well, and I would very much not like to see someone suffering social ostracisation due to being suspect in a serious crime.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
The Lord Chancellor, upon taking office, swore a solemn oath after what I’m sure was an unforgettable ceremony of pomp and pageantry. It is right that such an event is celebrated, in my view, because the oath sworn, to uphold the independence of the judiciary, is such an important one. Does the Lord Chancellor intend to uphold that oath, wherever and whenever necessary?”
I wish I had a ceremony of pomp and pageantry after I was appointed to this position. However, I agree that upholding the independence of the judiciary is necessary, and I also see it as my responsibility to do so.
---
“Mr speaker,
LB199, The Position Of Trust (Sexual Offences) Bill is going to a reading in the lords. It seeks to reverse the move last year to criminalise consensual activity in all cases between sports coaches/community leaders and people under them. It was an attack on the fundamental right to bodily autonomy.
I also point out that case law and CPS guidelines following the McNally case allow for rape and sexual offence prosecutions to be brought where consent was engineered.
So does the Lord Chancellor agree with me and indeed the Lord Falconer who as justice secretary at the time that;
‘We think it is right to restrict it to people who have a care or training function in relation to the people who may be victimised. We think it would be going too far to include a janitor or someone else who works in a school but is not a teacher. I understand the noble Baroness’s argument, but a line has to be drawn somewhere and we think that is the right place.’”
While I do agree with the Right Honourable Baron and the Lord Falconer that a line should be drawn somewhere, I think that sports coaches and community leaders should also be included, because evidently they are in positions of authority and thus in positions of trust, unlike the example of a janitor which the Lord Falconer brought up.
---
“Deputy Speaker,
As I welcome the Secretary of State to their questions, would they outline to this House on what policies have they been working at present and when can this House see them?”
Due to the short notice in which I was appointed, and also owing to the docket being full, I regret to inform this House that I have no legislation to push through this term. However, if the Right Honourable Lady would like me to sponsor any of her bills, I would be very happy to provide my input.
---
“Deputy Speaker,
As the Secretary of State may know, we have devolved Justice to Wales, would they inform us as to whether they have had any plans about the smooth transition to a Welsh Justice system?”
I regret to inform this House that I have no plans as of yet, I have not been presented with a contingency plan yet as I was appointed in short notice.
---
“In cases involving companies and their employees, companies almost always win. This is due to them having better legal support than their employees. Does the secretary of state have any plans to rectify this imbalance?”
I do not think it is possible as of now, owing to the timespan in which Parliament will be dissolved, but I intend, or maybe pitch this idea with my potential successor, to cooperate with the Department of Work, Labour and Skills to perhaps coordinate a legal aid system where employees could receive legal aid pro bono against their companies.
---
“Deputy Speaker,
Does the Secretary of State have any legislation planned between now and the end of the term?”
To repeat my reply to the Lady Kilmarnock, due to the short notice in which I was appointed, and also owing to the docket being full, I regret to inform this House that I have no legislation to push through this term. However, if His Grace the Duke of Aberdeen would like me to sponsor any of his bills, I would be very happy to provide my input.
---
“Deputy Speaker,
The member I assume is on board with plans to allow criminals to serve time in the military when on licence. What input did the Justice Secretary have in putting together this legislation?”
As I was just appointed, I frankly did not have any input in this legislation. I do need more time to deliberate over whether or not it is ethical to allow criminals to serve time in the military, although for now I do not think it is right to allow them to do so.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
Does the Lord Chancellor see the error of their ways regarding the misguided, the possibly well-intentioned, government plans for super injunctions?”
As I was just appointed, I do not have any plans for super-injunctions, as the Right Honourable Baron is claiming.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
What is the Secretary of State’s stance on anonymity until proven guilty?”
I believe that it is in the best interests of the accused party and the victim that the accused remains anonymous, as we all know convictions are stigmatising on people. If we practise innocence until proven guilty, what is to stop us from practising this fine proposal from the Deputy Leader of the Conservatives?
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
How do they intend to ensure that rehabilitation is prioritised in prisons?”
I do hope to ensure that we move from a punishment-based justice system to a rehabilitation-based justice system, so I will hope to see that prisoners will be given education and taught some soft skills so that they may rebuild their life starting on the right foot.
---
“Mr Speaker,
I would be interested to hear the Secretary's thoughts on the Sullivan Act repeal before the house earlier to this session. Could the Secretary tell us if they will be supporting the repeal?”
To be frank with the Right Honourable Member, I am sitting on the fence over this repeal. I support the idea of open justice, as having open justice is the only fair way justice can be served to the people. Open justice is also a way for the public to have confidence in our judiciary system, and it is something I would very much like to see.
However, I don’t support this repeal because the Sullivan Act provides civil protections that are crucial, especially one where the outcome is a make-or-break one. If someone is really convicted of a rape and found guilty, like Harvey Weinstein, then they will be sent to jail, no doubt about that. But, in another example, for example Morgan Freeman, who has not been convicted in a court for sexual harassment although multiple complaints have been brought up, is his career worth damaging for something that may very well be false? I do not think that mob justice is right, I do think that the power to decide whether a person is guilty or not is for the courts to decide, and currently the Sullivan Anonymity Act is in place to ensure that. If it is repealed, I presume the judge should be making a lot of super-injunctions then.
All in all I think the blame lies on how the media portrays such cases. We do have to find a balance, but in my opinion if it is repealed at least open justice can be served, but at the expense of privacy. If it is not repealed, privacy is maintained, but confidence is lost. I’d like to see a balance of that, so in my good faith a repeal is probably the best way going forward.
---
“Speaker,
What is the secretary's plan, if any, to deliver and increase the technological innovation much needed in the Justice sector, allowing higher efficiency in delivering Justice?”
Considering the remaining length of the term, I do not think I can deliver anything. However, I will try to bring about modernisation in where court proceedings will be recorded, or something of that magnitude.
---
“Speaker,
Does this government plan on expanding the requirements to receive legal aid, allowing more Britons the right to have representation without destroying their pocket?”
I do agree that people shouldn’t be bankrupted just because they have to deal with a legal case, and I do think legal aid should be given whenever possible, so I hope that after this election I can try to get to work writing legislation to enable the Ministry of Justice to be able to provide legal aid to those who need it the most.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
Does the Secretary believe that the United Kingdom should apologise for the occupation of the Chagos Islands and that it should be rightly returned?”
I think it is odd that I have decided to answer a question that I myself have asked, however I agree that the way in which we occupied the Chagos Islands is one that leaves a nasty mark on our track record as a beacon of democracy and justice, and I will try to look at the further steps we can take to mitigate this.
---
“Deputy Speaker,
Does the Secretary of State believe that professional lobby groups in the legal services sector should also be in charge of regulating themselves?”
While I do believe that the lobbying sector should be regulated, I am on the fence when it comes to the question of whether they should be given the power to regulate themselves. For all we know, giving them this power to do so might bring our system more harm than good, and I am sure this is a scenario which every member of the House won’t want us to be in.
---
“Deputy Speaker,
Will the government be securing an increase in funds for our courts, which have suffered from cuts and backlogs in cases accordingly?”
I agree with the Right Honourable Viscount that our courts are in dire need of funding, and a lack of this has caused legal issues to drag on for ages. We should be building a justice system for the people, so that will mean building a justice system that is fit for purpose and efficient in it’s running. Although I understand the budget has just been tabled, I will surely call for an increase in funding if we enter into government again.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
We have seen a lot of frantic virtue signaling on the independence of courts here, can the Secretary affirm that those hear which have actively and maliciously facilitated the breaking of international law have no room to lecture us on courts, and that it is incumbent upon us to enforce the ICJ’s rulings as long as we remain in it, whether we like it or not?”
I can undeniably agree with the Right Honourable Viscount on this one. We may be a sovereign nation, but we must also have a sense of respect and perspective. Ignoring the decision of the ICJ is akin to ignoring the jurisdiction of the United Nations, and if that happens we may very well see it’s demise like the League of Nations before it. I hope to right the wrongs of the previous administration if I possibly can and I will be discussing this with the Prime Minister on our best way forward.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
Should the role of the attorney general be made non partisan?”
I do not think that should be the case. The attorney general is the legal representative of the government. If the attorney general is not a member of the government, isn’t that just as bad as the government having a lawyer that could incriminate it’s clients?
---
“Deputy Speaker,
Following the vote in favour of devolution, along with a number of other justice-related responsibilities Wales has assumed authority over its own prison services. However, because of Westminster's past negligence, there is no place in Wales for female prisoners and they've had to be kept in England. Many Welsh parties have committed to building a Welsh female prison, but that will take time.
What arrangements have been made with the Welsh government, or arrangements planned to be negotiated, as to the management of these Welsh female prisoners in the interim, and what preparations will be done to ensure a smooth transfer when the Welsh prison service is ready to bring these prisoners back to Wales where their families can visit them more easily and they will have extended rights to use their native language?”
I agree with the Right Honourable Gentleman that a female prison in Wales should be built, but seeing as I have just been appointed into this position, I have not conducted any talks yet with the Welsh government. However, if I am somehow appointed to this position again, I would like to help organise this. In my personal opinion, I would prefer if these female prisoners would be transferred to a correctional facility closest to Wales. When a prison is ready, we should make all preparations necessary to transfer them over, and to put them under the jurisdiction of the Welsh justice system.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
Does the Secretary of State for Justice agree with me that it is our nations duty and responsibility to uphold the rulings of the ICJ and international law regardless of if they are too our benefit because to not do so shakes the faith in our governments ability to abide by the rule of law?”
To repeat my reply to the Lord Houston, I agree totally that the ICJ’s ruling ought to be respected.
---
“Mr Deputy Speaker,
Does the Rt. Hon. gentleman agree with me that the primary focus of our justice system should first be in rehabilitation with true punishment centric justice reserved only for those cases where we can see that rehabilitation will not work and continuing to do so would only put lives at risk?”
I agree with the views of the Right Honourable Gentleman and I do think that rehabilitation should come first, as everyone does deserve a second chance in life.

Once again, I would like to thank the Right Honourable hurricaneoflies for his time as the Secretary of State for Justice, and I believe the shoes that I have to fill are very big. Although my time here has been short, I do hope that my recommendations will be taken into consideration. Thank you.

#GEXV [Buckinghamshire] Seimer1234 launches his re-election campaign

Ah shit, here we go again…

So, the new US President has redecorated his home office, and the bust of Winston Churchill that Trump and George W. Bush retained there is now gone. Cue the usual fury from the right-wing tabloids and outrage-merchants.
For what it is worth I have never understood why some British people get so animated by this. Biden is an American President. Naturally he draws inspiration from great Americans. As far as I am aware, Biden hasn’t put up busts of Garibaldi, Gandhi, Clemenceau or Michael Collins, all of whom are inspirational in their own way. So why this is conceived of as a ‘snub’ to Britain and/or Churchill I will never understand. I think these episodes reveal more about the people complaining than they do about the President.
It is too early to discuss President Biden’s thinking, but this does provide an opportunity to revisit the controversy during Obama’s Presidency.
In 2001 George W. Bush requested the British Embassy loan him the Jacob Epstein sculptured bust of Churchill that was located in the British Embassy in Washington DC. Ironically, in light of all that has happened since, at the time some people complained about Bush being given the bust. After the presidential election in 2008 the British embassy offered to extend the loan. The White House declined, and it wasreported they retained a bust of Abraham Lincoln instead. Later on the story was that Obama had replaced a bust of Churchill with one of Martin Luther King Jr, although as far as I can tell Obama had busts of both men in the Oval Office.
The offer by the British Embassy to extend the loan was just a formality. It doesn’t seem like there was any expectation that the bust would remain in the Oval Office. To quote the British Ambassador at the time:

"So, to be honest, we always expected that [the Churchill bust] to leave the Oval Office just like everything else that a president has tends to be changed,” he explained in a valedictory interview with the Guardian. “Even the carpet is usually changed when the president changes.”

According to White House curator William Allman, the decision not to keep the bust was made before Obama became President.
Part of the reasoning for not retaining the Churchill bust was practical – you can only put so many busts on the tables of the Oval Office before they look cluttered. Another part had nothing to with Winston Churchill at all. As an African American, Obama (rightly, in my view) thought it would be appropriate to honour Martin Luther King. After all, had it not been for the effort, determination and bravery of Martin Luther King then arguably Obama could never have become President of the United States.
In fact, Obama retained an identical bust of Churchill - by the same sculptor - in the White House throughout his Presidency. This was originally donated to the White House in 1965 by American admirers of Winston Churchill. It was placed in the Treaty Room and there it stayed until 2017. Obama saw it ‘every day’. Here’s a pic of Obama admiring it with then British Prime Minister David Cameron. Incidentally it was this bust that Trump had moved into the Oval Office in 2017, until he could be loaned another one.
There has been speculation, which frankly borders on racism, that Obama had the bust removed because of a dislike of the British Empire. This in turn fuelled a myth that Obama had the statue removed because of a personal dislike of Churchill. Apparently, Churchill had his grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, tortured. This was reported by the Daily Telegraph in 2009, repeated by ~~journalist~~ plagiarist, sock puppeteer and liar Johann Hari in 2010, and you get people repeating it online constantly.
The claim that Hussein Onyango Obama was tortured in colonial Kenya originated with Sarah Onyango Obama. She was Obama’s grandfather’s wife. However, Obama’s biographers take her claims with a pinch of salt. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Maraniss writes in his book Barack Obama: The Story:

In its specifics the story seems unlikely. There are no remaining records of any detention, imprisonment or trial of Hussein Onyango Obama. Sarah did not witness any of it, and she is the only person to offer details. While there would be no obvious reason for her to contrive such a tale, her accuracy on other matters that can be documented is uneven. She speaks only in Luo, knowing some Swahili and no English, so her quotes are dependent upon the inclinations of the interpreter. And five people who had close connections to Hussein Onyango said they doubted the story or were certain that it did not happen.
John Ndalo Aguk, who worked with him before the alleged incident and kept in touch with him on a weekly basis in Nairobi thereafter, when he was placed in the homes of several employers at Hussein Onyango’s recommendation, said he knew nothing about a detention or imprisonment and would have noticed if his mentor had gone missing for several months. Zablon Okatch, a Luo who worked with Onyango after the supposed incarceration, when they were servants in the house of American embassy personnel, said, “Hussein was never jailed. I know that for a fact. It would have been difficult for him to get a job with a white family, let alone a diplomat, if he once served in jail… All prospective workers had to have details about themselves scrutinized at the Labour Office”. Chales Oluoch, whose father, Peter, had been adopted by Hussein Onyango when he was a young boy, said he doubted the story: “He did not take part in politics, nor did he have any trouble with the government in any way.” Auma Magak, Hussein Onyango’s daughter, disputed the story but offered a different version: “He was not detained. There was an incident where some thugs kidnapped him. He mysteriously disappeared. He was taken to a river where he was tied and left there. Some leopards were around him but left him alone. But the detainment never happened. He was working in Nairobi during those years. He never disappeared [for six months].” Perhaps the most authoritative account disputing Sarah’s story came from Dick Opar, who went on to become a senior police official in Kenya. “At that time, I would have known”, Opar said. “It may have been a day or two. People make up stories. If you get arrested for another thing. No. No. I would have known. I would have known. If he was in Kamiti prison for only a day, even if for a day, I would have known.

Maraniss goes on to add:

Several pieces of logic contradict the story. First if Huessein Onyango had been imprisoned, even if one were to further accept that he was eventually cleared of whatever charges were against him, he likely would have had difficulty, as Zablon Okatch noted, securing employment in the homes of security-conscious white officials in the following years, when the country was in turmoil and there were increasing concerns about the motives and loyalties of Kenyan workers. Yet he continued to be hired throughout the next decade…. Second it is also unlikely that his son would have been accepted into the most prestigious boarding school in western Kenya within a year of his father’s imprisonment, or that after many months without a salary the family would have been able to afford the tuition

Let’s assume though that Hussein Onyango was in fact tortured. Could this explain why Obama dislikes Churchill? Well, there are two holes in this theory. Firstly, Obama is on the record as saying:

“I love Winston Churchill, I love the guy,”

Obama has also quoted Churchill in his speeches, producing much reeing from the usual suspects.
The second problem is that Sarah Onyango never claimed that Churchill had Obama’s grandfather imprisoned and tortured. As reported in 2009, Hussein Onyango Obama was imprisoned in 1949. He was allegedly held for two years, meaning he was likely released some time in 1951. Churchill didn’t return to office until 26th October 1951 so the odds are that Hussein Onyango Obama had already been released from jail by then. If not, it was under Churchill’s premiership that he was set free. It is hard to see why Churchill should be blamed for the atrocities inflicted on Obama’s grandfather when he was not Prime Minister when he was arrested. If any blame should fall on a British PM for the mistreatement of Hussein Onyango, it should fall on Clement Attlee, not Winston Churchill.
In sum the Washington Post was correct in their assessment that:

The Churchill bust story has been a constant source of poor reporting.

odds labour to win election video

While Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn is yet to stand down as party leader, he has confirmed that he will not run in the next General Election – set to be in May 2024. Here are the odds according to ... It looks like Conservatives Majority has the best chance, at odds of 2/1*. A £10 bet on this UK - Next General Election result at these odds would win you £30. Another popular bet is Labour Majority, at odds of 2/1*. A £10 bet on this selection at these odds would win you £30. Labour leadership election odds: Who will win? A look at the three candidates A NEW leader will be installed to head up the opposition after Jeremy Corbyn officially steps down in early April. 18+ New Customers only. Deposit, opt in and place a £10 qualifying bet at odds of 2.00 or greater within 7 days of opening a new account; excludes cashed out bets. Receive a £10 Free Sports Bets, valid on set events only at odds 2.00 or greater, expires in 7 days. Plus a £10 Game Show Bonus, selected games, wager 40x to withdraw a max of £250. Then again, opinion polling suggested the recent Victorian state election would also be a close affair and it turned out to be a Labor landslide. State of the states: odds on for a Labor win, but ... New players only • £20 min deposit, excluding deposits by Skrill or NETELLER • Get 100% up to £200 Bonus and 25 Free Spins [FS] • FS valid on selected games & expire in 14 days • FS wins credited in bonus • Bonus wins are capped at £500 • To withdraw bonus & related wins, wager 30 x (bonus amount) within 90 days • Wagering req. vary by game • This offer may not be combined ... Federal election bookmakers' odds for Labor shorten in key WA electorates ... If the latest odds from bookmakers are to be believed, some high profile Liberals will be looking for a new job by mid ... There is still a very long way to go before we can talk about Labour winning - that's why the odds on them to getting a majority at the next election are 3.65 - but this week it felt like the ... Who will win the 2021 Western Australia Election? Labor leader Mark McGowan is the heavy favourite at odds of $1.04 and is holding the large majority of seats in the state. According to the bookies and the polls, Labour face an uphill struggle to win the 2019 general election. The money and the polling is with either a hung Parliament - where no party gets the 326 ...

odds labour to win election top

Election results 2019: Exit poll predicts Conservative ...

BORIS Johnson met with the Queen after historic election win.Seconds after the polls closed at 10pm a joint poll put the Conservatives on track for a huge wi... To win an election requires votes. In this quote Romney used the words "vote ... What are the odds that a guy running for President attending a fundraiser to help win that election might talk ... Oct.28 -- Stephanie Kelly, senior political economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments, discusses Scottish opinions of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a possible general election looms over ... Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Johnson's offer of an election was "a bit like an offer of an apple to Snow White from the Wicked Queen... offering the p... Are we likely to see an election soon? And if so, how would the battle unfold?Subscribe to our channel here: https://goo.gl/31Q53FWhy is everyone talking abo... President Trump predicts an election victory over the Democratic candidates in the upcoming 2020 election. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/Subscri... During the election, the Labour Party spoke optimistically of its ground game, flooding target seats with teams of campaigners to knock doors and speak to vo... UK election: Party loyalties tested in Labour heartlands - BBC Newsnight - Duration: ... Furious caller tells Len McCluskey the Labour Party has 'become a cult' - Duration: 3:29. LBC 255,964 views. It's been economy week in the campaign, with both Labour and the Conservatives unveiling their spending plans.But how much is actually sinking in? Sky's deputy ... The Conservatives are set to win an overall majority of 86 in the general election, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky News.The survey taken ...

British Politics Betting Odds Politics Oddschecker

odds labour to win election

odds labour to win election - win

Betting odds put Labour at evens to win Peterborough by-election. Brexit party on 5/4.

Lib Dems odds on to win Cambridge seat from Labour in general election

Labour is now at better than even odds of winning the most seats at the next general election, and the bookmakers favorite year for the next election to be held is 2017

Is it time for the Labour Party to finally back Proportional Representation before the next General Election?

The Steamie - Tuesday 2 February 2021

Progress Report 1: Welcome to Endless Grey