Chapter 8

“Ladies and gentlemen, this just in. Violence has broken out in parts of Wales as several prominent city councils have declared for the ‘Real Assembly’ and several detachments of soldiers of the New Order regime have been deployed to remove them from office by force. At least three battalions in one Welsh city have defected to the separatists and backed the new Plaid Cymru-led coalition government installed by the ‘Real Assembly.’ A formal declaration of secession and independence is reportedly being drafted, in order to officially proclaim an entirely sovereign Welsh nation for the first time in seven centuries.

“In Ottawa, large demonstrations of New Order sympathizers have protested Prince Harry for divorcing his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, allegedly over her radical feminist views. Other protests formed outside the English consulates in Toronto and Montreal this Friday, with ten thousand or more students and others shouting at English staff in both cities. Some rocks have even been used to break windows, though diplomatic security forces have kept most protesters at bay.

“Manpower shortages now faced by New Scotland Yard, MI5, and MI6 have presented real security issues for the New Order regime, with hastily recruited gangs or militias of regime supporters being deputized to assist with law enforcement. In addition, NATO has formally suspended England from its membership and Interpol is refusing to provide any kind of assistance or cooperation to the new English Government.

“An estimated two million English nationals worldwide have declined to return to England at this time and have requested political asylum in a variety of nations and states. Some seventy percent of Britons of Indian origin or extraction have accepted the offer of full citizenship made to them under a variety of new laws enacted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist majority in Parliament. Modi indicated that he fully expects the ‘repatriation’ process to take up to seven years to fully assimilate former English nationals of Indian descent back into mainstream Indian society itself.

“In Belfast, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, in its last act prior to being disbanded and folded into the An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national civilian police, issued a formal, public denunciation of the New Order regime and vowed that ‘any attempt to politicise or radicalise uniform or plainclothes civilian police forces in Ulster will be met with the scorn that it so richly deserves.’ The new, admittedly Catholic chief of police for Ulster put a quick end to speculation about sectarian abuses by naming a Protestant chief deputy to assist him in command of the constabulary.

“In America, three different college demonstrations, one at Stanford, one at Harvard, and one at Columbia, each resulted in bloodied noses, black eyes, bruises, and other acts of petty, vicious, yet non-lethal violence between sympathizers and detractors of New Order. A riot that broke out during the Boston Marathon just hours ago is still ongoing, with some fourteen people slain and seventy-nine injured due to stabbings, beatings, tear gas, trampling, and heavy use of automatic gunfire.

“At least four Molotov cocktails were either used or almost deployed by either pro or anti-New Order zealots among the general public,” the anchorman was very grim as he pointed out the horrific news of growing waves of violence caused by polarizing attitudes about New Order among the American people.

“Excuse me, Jim, but I have a special news bulletin. This is breaking news, from Paris, France, where a ‘Yellow Vest’ insurgent militia has seized control of the Elysee Palace and deposed French President Emmanuel Macron as being ‘too weak on the feminist peril and menace to France.’ A wide range of estimates of the insurrectionist strength varies from seven thousand to thirty thousand heavily armed rebels now patrolling the streets of Paris and evidently arresting even suspected feminists on the spot.

“Calling themselves the ‘United Front for the French Patria (Fatherland),’ an apparent loose coalition between right-wing and left-wing populists has assumed power in France and imposed martial-law on the capital as well as several other cities. The rise of this provisional government means that the Fifth Republic has indeed collapsed, with most French armed services eagerly swearing allegiance to the new regime. All effective resistance in Paris itself has absolutely crumbled, due to lackluster or lukewarm support for the old regime at the best of times.