Future Historians

All over America, local strike committees, occupiers, workers’ councils and community assemblies were galvanized into action – tending to the wounded, relieving the homeless in the zones of destruction, preparing to go underground and resist. Meanwhile, striking truckers began hauling in relief supplies while keeping the committees informed of troop movements along the Federal Interstate System.¹⁾ Striking firemen put themselves at the committees’ disposal, and in many localities they became the de facto local government. At the national level, the Federation of Strike Committees, Councils and Assemblies, consulting via Internet chat, took rapid stock of the situation around the country and issued a Ten Point Emergency Declaration:

1. In so far as the Federal Government, having made war on the United States People in their Separate States, can no longer be considered their legitimate representative;
2. In so far as the Union that hitherto bound the Several States has thus been dissolved,
3. The Federation calls for a Constituent Constitutional Assembly to be organised as early as possible.
4. In the interim the Federation pledges its cooperation to all State and Local Authorities who agree not to cooperate with the so-called Federal Government of the Formerly-United States.
5. Federal Officials found responsible for using Weapons of Mass Destruction on Homeland civilians, when apprehended, will be turned over to the International War Crimes Tribunal, whose jurisdiction the Federation now recognizes in the name of the American People.²⁾
6. In the absence of a Legitimate Constituted Authority representing the inhabitants of the Fifty Formerly-United States of America, Sovereignty now reverts to the American People in their Several States.
7. The Federation, speaking in the name of 180,000,000 Americans affiliated with ten thousand state and local Workers’ Councils, Strike Committees and Community Assemblies, assumes Provisional Authority in cooperation with those State and Local governments who have declared in favor of the Constituent Constitutional Assembly.
8. The Federation calls upon all Americans in uniform to refuse to transmit or execute orders to fire on civilians. Soldiers should elect delegate councils in their units, supervise and control the official command structure at every level.
9. The Federation, acting as the Provisional Sovereign Authority in International Affairs, declares a unilateral Truce ending all hostilities, undertakes the orderly withdrawal of all US troops abroad under a flag of truce, and appeals to the Governments and Peoples of the Planet to boycott the former Federal Government.
10. To remain effective, this Emergency Declaration must be ratified within Twenty Four by a nationwide Internet Plebiscite.

Thus the Internet linking the embattled strike committees, councils and assemblies across the US and around the world began to function like the nervous system of a living organism – receiving impressions and feelings from its alert sense organs in every locality; comparing, classifying and evaluating them in its millions of brain cells; comparing them with similar impressions in its memory-cells; bringing the passions and needs of its myriad cells into consciousness; sending out messages to the muscles and limbs so as to rise as one body made up of billions of individuals, head held high, feet planted firmly on the green globe, a sleeping giant awakened, never again to sleep. Thus humanity, electronically galvanized through its new electronic nervous system, came to life as a conscious self-acting subject, a multiple organism striding forth to defend and preserve its habitat – the planet.

The Federation’s Appeal echoed around the planet with the speed of the electron. Soon messages of solidarity were flowing in from countries all over the world. New popular governments including those of Argentina, Brasil, Korea and Iran were demanding that the Federation be admitted to the United Nations as the “Provisional Authority of the Formerly-United States.” Speaking before the European Parliament, Prime Minister Thaurice Morez (Liberal-Communist, France) denounced the United States as a “rogue state” and presented a Resolution condemning the US in the name of Human Rights and calling for sanctions. This Resolution was a compromise with the European Strike Council’s demand for full diplomatic recognition of the Federation’s Provisional Authority. As negotiations with the Morez government dragged on, the European Strike Council had grown into a “second power” in the European Union, controlling transportation and the economy, with tacit veto power over any governmental decisions.

The US delegate having walked out of the UN Security Council, the European Union’s resolution was adopted unanimously in the absence of a US veto. The European Rapid Strike Force (organised over US objections) to supplement NATO, was placed on red alert. For their part, the Russians, although mired in chaos, sharply reminded Washington that the World Disarmament Treaty Organisation (which the White House had refused to join) allowed member nations to take pre-emptive action (including tactical nuclear strikes) against any non-signatory atomic power who threatened the peace and was declared a Rogue State.

The White House was rumored to be preparing a second wave of surgical strikes using Star Wars weapons from space. Leaks from the National Security Council about possible use of tactical nuclear missiles alarmed those circles in the Pentagon where the War On Terror had long been considered unwinnable, given the absence of a viable exit strategy. An informal group of superior officers, including active and retired Service Chiefs, had been holding quiet meetings for some time, thinking the unthinkable. Now a vote was called. One hour later, uranium-tipped missiles capable of penetrating six meters of concrete and steel were streaking toward the secret bunker where the President and National Security Council were holed up. In a fiery instant the nest of world terrorism was destroyed, once and for all. The succubus had been exorcised. The planet breathed a sigh of relief. The future could take place.

Ceasefire