In Part Three of Cory's groundbreaking documentary, she addresses Karl von Habsburg's meteoric rise to power; as well as the principles touted by his Pan European Movement, which rises to prominence and is voted into office by an exhausted Europe.
Habsburg and the Pan Europeans institute systemic change, we learn, eliminating wasteful social programs and performing much-needed belt-tightening. A new government is formed called the Global Union, and what Cory discovers in her many interviews is that survivors of the Great Collapse ardently supported Habsburg's efforts. Felt it was "about time", or so they claim, now that 48 years have passed. We go on to learn how globalization of commerce is pursued in earnest, along with a worldwide conversion to alternative sources of energy such as wind and solar. This has the dual effect of putting millions of North Americans back to work...and causing the collapse of Islamic Theocracies controlling Middle Eastern oil reserves.
The timing couldn't have been better, we learn, for as far back as 2015, scientists had been predicting that the world’s supply of fossil fuels would become depleted within decades. The Earth - and more importantly humans as a species - would have to reckon with this irrefutable fact. Things had to change. The Global Union reacts swiftly - and in so doing sets off an economic expansion that brings about the dawning of a new, spectacular era.
In Part Three of Cory's groundbreaking documentary, she addresses Karl von Habsburg's meteoric rise to power; as well as the principles touted by his Pan European Movement, which rises to prominence and is voted into office by an exhausted Europe.
Habsburg and the Pan Europeans institute systemic change, we learn, eliminating wasteful social programs and performing much-needed belt-tightening. A new government is formed called the Global Union, and what Cory discovers in her many interviews is that survivors of the Great Collapse ardently supported Habsburg's efforts. Felt it was "about time", or so they claim, now that 48 years have passed. We go on to learn how globalization of commerce is pursued in earnest, along with a worldwide conversion to alternative sources of energy such as wind and solar. This has the dual effect of putting millions of North Americans back to work...and causing the collapse of Islamic Theocracies controlling Middle Eastern oil reserves.
The timing couldn't have been better, we learn, for as far back as 2015, scientists had been predicting that the world’s supply of fossil fuels would become depleted within decades. The Earth - and more importantly humans as a species - would have to reckon with this irrefutable fact. Things had to change. The Global Union reacts swiftly - and in so doing sets off an economic expansion that brings about the dawning of a new, spectacular era.
Hello, and welcome back to Twin Paradox. I'm King Everett Medlin and what you're hearing is a SciFi trilogy I wrote four years ago under the pseudonym Purple Hazel. Twin Paradox follows my first podcast series entitled Deathwalker Colony, which is now a full length novel available for purchase on Amazon. It's on sale today in E-book format for only $2.99, as well as the first two books in the Rijel 12 Series, The Rise of New Australia and Return of Anarchy. You can check out some of my other works by going to the link provided in the transcript.
When I set out to write Twin Paradox four years ago, I wanted to create a realistic and believable world less than one hundred years in the future. In this first book of the Twin Paradox trilogy, the setting for which begins in the year 2086, the reader learns of our current society's collapse. How the major cities of Earth plunge into anarchy. How the American credit-based economy comes crashing to the ground, bringing an abrupt end to a system that essentially goes back to 1971. Part One is called Collapse and Aftermath and in the first five chapters you'll hear of a new world order taking shape following the debacle ... not to mention the beginning of an exciting new era in human history.
Twin Paradox is a SciFi series encompassing three full length novels; all of which will be read in their entirety during the coming weeks. You can go online and download the E-books by searching Twin Paradox ... Purple Hazel ... or, if you prefer, tune in each week and listen to me read them to you. So let's continue, shall we?
Ladies and Gentlemen, Twin Paradox, Chapter Three, The Rise of the Global Union ....
In “Part 3” of Cory’s exposé she addressed Karl von Habsburg’s meteoric rise to power. This was easy to research using government-approved macronet sites. He possessed instant credibility, it was said, and not just because he was a Habsburg. Europeans had little patience for “royals”. Nostalgia for Europe’s glorious past was never a factor.
Government-sanctioned historical documentaries and college texts instead spoke of his impeccable background.
Cory had learned all about him as a child growing up in Canada. For that matter, most any sixth-former or high school senior knew of the man’s stellar credentials. The life of Karl Habsburg was a common subject in classrooms. He was the “real article”: an educated leader with a history of carrying on his father’s work in promoting a united Europe. His “Pan Europa” movement garnered immediate appeal once his colleagues began campaigning in support of him. People listened to what he had to say, and for good reason.
The movement Karl championed was fiercely independent of all existing political parties. It maintained a strict code of conservative Christian principles which not surprisingly helped Habsburg gain acceptance among both Catholics and Protestants. Also, it acknowledged contributions from both Islam and Judaism whose heritages the Pan Europeans professed to share. To an already-integrated Europe who’d experienced so much pressure from ethnic minorities - as well as from right wing zealots who campaigned openly for their expulsion - the suggestion of a united more tolerant Europe quickly gained traction among a disillusioned electorate. That said, it came at a price.
Habsburg and the Pan Europeans swept into power and immediately began instituting systemic change. Wasteful social programs for the needy? Unemployment Benefits? These were one by one eliminated or in most cases unfunded. Millions were affected and the outcry must have been incredible, Cory had to assume, yet no one dared try and curtail such Draconian measures. The vast majority of working class citizens wanted stability above all else, as official sources boldly (and repeatedly) claimed, and this bore true when speaking with those who’d been around at the time.
What Cory discovered in her many interviews was that people honestly did believe such belt-tightening was necessary. It was almost surreal how these old-timers spoke. They sounded at times like government-authorized spokespersons as they described the necessity of “stoppin’ the bleedin’,” as one elder upstate New Yorker described it. Or as one old fellow from Quebec phrased it, “We were fed up with teengs you know? People sticking their snouts into the public trough - wizzout contributing nothing. Habsburg … he put a stop to this nonsense you see?”
Such a blunt comment was pretty common among that fated generation of hardened survivors, Cory noticed. Nevertheless, they were clearly speaking the truth about how they felt. When faced with the even more daunting challenge posed by Islamic Fundamentalists, folks were all the more willing to give ear to Pan European ideals of global unity. Many hastened to point out that the reasons for widespread acceptance were both practical as well as rooted in fear over the looming threat of democratic regimes being replaced by “Radical Islamists” in the Middle East.
Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and eventually the proud nation of Israel succumbed to the debacle. Wars and civil insurrection lasting weeks or even months plagued the region throughout the next ten years in fact, leading to skyrocketing oil prices and the overthrow of governments nominally allied to the West. Israel was the last of these to fall, and when its hard-pressed military used up the last of its resources – when there was no longer the United States of America to come to their aid – Israeli refugees fled in droves to an already over-burdened Europe seeking asylum. Millions did so as Jerusalem fell to Muslim forces seizing control of their ancient capital. Many never made it to European shores or starved into human skeletons living for months inside make-shift camps thrown together outside European coastal cities. Former refugees that Cory interviewed (now living in North America) described it as a “Second Holocaust”, only this time their nemesis was not some megalomaniacal dictator. It was an old enemy nevertheless - which had persecuted them for centuries – and the results of this could be seen as ships arrived at southern European ports delivering frightened, exhausted Jews to the continent.
Thus, the growing international threat - the destruction of Middle East democracies by Islamic radicals - was a huge motivation to vote the Pan Europeans into office and unite all free nations into a single “Global Union”. Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, and other nations joined as well. Even China petitioned for membership. They simply had no choice, lest they lose all trade ties with the West. But what of their former allies in the Middle East? What should be done? What could be done? Unfortunately, the first order of business was fixing the world’s economy.
Globalization of commerce was pursued in earnest. Borderless trade, a single world currency, abolishment of tariffs, standardization of an acceptable living wage, free public health care, free education … these were all proposed, then approved, then rapidly instituted. Bloated bureaucracies were evaluated, pared down, or in many cases eradicated. A streamlined system took their place, eliminating the need for wasteful, often redundant programs. In their place, minimal staff and administration overseeing public school systems and hospitals became the preferred format. Best of all, the lure of coming to Europe for its liberal social programs such as unemployment benefits, which served to disincentivize personal initiative, faded away like a human body purging itself of unhealthy toxins.
Meanwhile practically no one - maybe a mere handful of the millions of survivors worldwide - would now profess to missing all those liberal social programs and for that matter, why would they? Large cities had once become veritable quagmires of social discontent, brimming with legions of government-dependent poor. And what became of them; these “freeloaders” living off government handouts? These millions worldwide draining taxpayers of their heard-earned money and siphoning off the public treasury? They were largely eliminated during the crisis – either by disease or as a result of urban violence. Therefore, in the minds of many that Cory interviewed, there was no need to support this underclass anymore.
She heard this commented on several times during her research, from otherwise kindhearted people who were only speaking their minds after nearly fifty years since the collapse. Decades of government propaganda and sanitized historical accounts of those early days during the recovery had colored their memories perhaps, but their resoluteness was notable. Most truly believed that policies instituted by the GU had been long in coming. Checks stopped arriving in the mail for unwed mothers with children from three different fathers. No more food stamps or grocery vouchers either: the government had cut them off permanently. Tragically, that’s how many felt it needed to be.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal," stated one elderly American gentleman, quoting from the U.S. Constitution. "But let me tell you, it don't really turn out that way, not when you get right down to it. They's always gonna be people ya' just cain't do nuthin' for."
But how to get all the remaining wealth of the world once again flowing into and through this new world order now being championed by Karl Habsburg's Pan Europeans? The solution, Cory learned from her research, was clear. It was all there online for her to read in exhaustive detail. Establishing the Global Union and expanding its economic influence worldwide required only one very important first step: dominating the money. The move to make the Euro the world's reserve currency made the most sense.
So that’s what they did. The cost of goods and services were slowly brought under control. The United States and Canada, along with their traditional trade partner Mexico, formed a single province called “North America” using remnants of existing bureaucracies; eliminating redundancies. Living standards plummeted, but eventually things levelled off. That’s because with the vanishing of American hegemony and the devastation of its major cities, global industry was once again attracted to this new cheap labor force, which despite the horrific loss of life still numbered in the hundreds of millions. It was regrettable, seeing their country in tatters and no longer a world power, but most she spoke with found a way of rationalizing things.
"We just had to accept it," as one kindly old man put it in an interview with Cory at his retirement home in upstate New York. "We just weren’t the land of opportunity no more. If jobs opened up somewhere down the road, well, people just had to take whatever they could get … but there weren’t no more need for folks comin’ up north from Mexico lookin’ for a better life. It wuddn’t no better up here than it was down there, ta’ tell ya’ the truth."
Some jobs were comparatively demeaning for those moreaccustomed to working as white-collar professionals; and to be fair, many of those opportunities did return with time. But once membership in the GU meant investment in the rebuilding of major cities, those long-lost manufacturing jobs that had flowed out of North America started returning. That wasn’t all. Converting portions of the continent into solar farms to generate global stores of electricity required millions of acres and millions upon millions of man hours. Meanwhile, here was this massive labor supply still crawling out of the 2028 Financial Crisis ready and willing to work.
"I guess if you can begin to understand just what we'd been through, it'd make a lot more sense," said the 86-year old from Buffalo. "I had no problem working construction after having a thirteen-year career as a claims adjuster." Then he added with a smirk, "Shit, none of us cared back then...work was work. If it meant sendin' them shiny new Euros back to our wives and kids so they could afford groceries, so be it. That's all we needed really and I gotta say, there's nothin’ like that feeling you get when you begin thinking to yourself'hey … maybe we're gonna get through this.' That’s how I saw it."
His was a typical story. Many had gone without a paying job for over a year. There just wasn't anything they could do. Most jobs prior to the collapse were service economy-based and people were too broke to buy anything. People couldn't afford gas, couldn't drive anywhere, couldn't afford restaurants, couldn't afford luxuries, couldn't pay mortgages, and rarely could pay rent, utilities, or even their water bill.
Families regularly abandoned homes and moved in together, trading specialized skills and forming micro communities where folks relied upon one another for subsistence. Everyone had to pitch in, everyone had to contribute. Community gardens were tended to by children and adults alike. Chickens were raised, duties and chores shared. Squirrels and rabbits were hunted so to bolster communal mealtimes. Nevertheless, people starved. They only ate once a day usually. Live birth rates plummeted as people realized there was no way to afford another mouth to feed. As for those still struggling to make do, they often went hungry, as Cory often heard.
"Yep... goin' without food in your belly for a day or two...that's what I remember the most," commented one little old lady sitting with her withered husband on a front porchin New Detroit.
"Makes ya' smarter, for one thing," clarified her elder companion seated next to her. "Makes ya' figure things out, let me tell ya'."
But that's just what North Americans did. They figured things out. It hardened them. It sharpened them. It killed them off by the hundreds of thousands, too. America and her previous greatness were all but a memory now. Her time had come and gone. Those who wished to endure - and live to a ripe old age someday - would simply have to find a way. The weak and the lazy could not be helped. They were, all these hardy survivors, like a massive herd of bison out on the Great Plains, surviving the winter by forming a circle during a blizzard. Nevertheless, everyone knew, just like the buffalo once knew, that the wolves would come again, the cold would kill off the feeble, and the grasses may not always be plentiful enough come spring. Every family's and for that matter every commune’s ultimate demise was never more than a month away if everyone didn't make sacrifices and above all, work hard.
The turnaround was quite long in coming, no question of that, but when the GU instituted new policies for the conversion of global energy production into renewable sources like solar and wind power (in hopes of strangling Islamist Bloc nations controlling the world’s oil supply) that’s when this threat to world stability finally subsided. Islamic theocracies in Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan and the Palestinian Caliphate, eventually collapsed, without having to fire a single shot.
It was a good thing too, Cory discovered in her research. Nick of time, some might say. As far back as 2015, she read, scientists had been predicting that the world’s supply of fossil fuels would become depleted within decades: specifically oil in about 53 years, coal in little over a century, and natural gas within 54 years. The Earth - and more importantly humans as a species - would someday have to reckon with that irrefutable fact. Things had to change. The Global Union reacted swiftly - and in so doing set off an economic expansion that brought about the dawning of a new, spectacular era.
This concludes tonight's podcast of Twin Paradox Book One, Chapter Three: The Rise of the Global Union. I hope you enjoyed it. Watch for episode four; which I'll be posting very soon. I wrote Twin Paradox books one, two, and three, four years ago under the pseudonym Purple Hazel and it is still available for purchase on Amazon. You can download and read all three books if you like; or if you prefer, simply listen in as I read them in their entirety; all sixty chapters. Each week I'll be posting a new episode with a brand new chapter from this epic SciFi trilogy.
Also, and don't forget, my latest full-length novel ... Deathwalker Colony ... is available right now in E-book format and can be downloaded today on Amazon.com, along with the first two books in the Rijel 12 Series, The Rise of New Australia and Return of Anarchy. A link to these as well as some of my other works can be found in the transcript for this episode.
I'm King Everett Medlin. Thanks for tuning in.
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