Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

35 – War games

Felix Jesus Carrillo Morales was a California businessman. He created the Vaqueros in 2027 following the death of a state assemblyman at the hands of a hateful assassin. He hired ex police officers and former military personnel as private investigators, so they could be licensed, and thus formed a private security group to protect politicians & public figures first across California and then the wider West. Due to his growing high-profile, plus his open ‘ethical’ business practices, Carrillo came into contact with Revolución. Money was donated by him to them so they could help in the fight to defend democracy. No money was given by Carrillo to politicians, direct nor indirect, yet he supported the same social causes as many of them did. Importing and exporting across the US-Mexican border, Carrillo’s business interests often attracted the wrong sort of attention. He had faced off against drug cartels and people smugglers as well as combatted allegations from opponents of his political positions that he had some sort of hidden relationship with them. Carrillo had sued detractors, won and then donated all of the damages to good causes. Allegations against him were said by supporters to be based solely on racism: Carrillo was widely lauded as a good person, the embodiment of the American Dream. That he wasn’t though. The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and state-level police forces all regarded him as a legitimate businessman with no cartel ties. Only the CIA knew different and they didn’t share that information with others because Carrillo was rather small fry in the drug business yet a big source of information for their efforts to fight against the cartels. However, in Langley, they didn’t know even half of what he got up to in his illegal dealings.

There was an Assistant United States Attorney in Arizona who had been conducting a private, off-the-books investigation against Carrillo’s activities. That AUSA was involved in a fatal collision when rising his motorbike on the way to work. An ‘innocent’ trucker came forward to the authorities to admit to accidently knocking him off his bike. Up in Nevada, where Carrillo had a growing interest more than everywhere else in the West other than California, a lawyer for a former employee who’d been fired looked too deep into Carrillo’s business. A tip-off came into Clark County’s Sheriff’s Office about that lawyer and what he’d been supposedly downloading on his computer. After an electronic search, an arrest was made for possession of child pornography: the lawyer didn’t know what had hit him and soon fell victim to a jailhouse killing which (while he might have liked to) Carrillo had no input in arranging. Prisoners didn’t like sex offenders, even ones who claimed that they had been framed. Governor Pierce belonged to Carrillo. The California politician had found himself in a pickle, turned to the friend whom he thought was Carrillo, and ended up in the man’s debt. One semi-illegal favour had turned into much more and then complete control over the man. Carrillo had his Vaqueros at Las Vegas’ McCarran airport when McCleary was arrested and it was a plane which he had rented that she had been on before her detention. McCarran was right in the very heart of Las Vegas and Carrillo was involved in a consortium of businesses seeking to buy that airport and built Las Vegas a new one in the Ivanpah Valley (a project long predating his involvement). There was prime real estate right there in the middle of Nevada’s desert city which Carrillo aimed to be a big part in redeveloping. With a private army, relationships open & covert which gave him much influence and a public perception as an upstanding citizen, Carrillo had serious political influence behind the scenes in the West. Few people, very few, knew what he was really about.


On the night of McCleary’s arrest, a collective of YouTube war gamers ran a simulation of a conflict scenario involving West America versus the rest of the United States of America. From across the country, and overseas too, they put together a multi-media simulation where they thrashed out a fight. Everything was taken into account from military strengths to logistics to morale to non-combatant civilian involvement. The victors of the fight were federal forces. The war game was highly publicised though, despite their best efforts, those gamers could barely get any real attention outside their own circle. That was rather frustrating for them. They’d put in so much effort to factor in every variable and created a viable narrative to explain the campaign they fought. Alas, they’d move on and craft something new in the future. They were hobbyists who knew the business of warfare despite none of them ever serving a day in uniform. Their war game was naturally something they never expected to see played out, especially the many details of how the plotted campaign went. With hindsight, sometime in the future, when fantasy became reality, so much of what they predicated would actually come true too! Friends of the organiser would be calling him ‘Captain Hindsight’ yet he’d been too aggrieved at the loss of life to care for that good-natured nickname.

Another report came to the Pentagon where the Secretary of Defence was told that a pair of senior military officers had been approached by a political figure of note from one of the states out West. The commander officer of the 500th Military Intelligence Brigade, a US Army unit based in Hawaii, had to go outside of his chain-of-command to report upon his superior also out there in that island chain. US Army Pacific was headquartered on Hawaii just like the 25th Infantry Division was. The two generals commanding them, one a four-star and the other a two-star, had met with the Governor of Hawaii. The colonel making the report was rather concerned at the secrecy he had eyewitnesses to occurring during the liaison. He likewise was concerned about what his report called ‘seditious tendencies’ of all three involved. He’d based his opinion of the governor based on what he’d seen in the media, but why he said that about the two generals was due to what he informed the Pentagon he’d heard around Hawaii’s extensive military facilities. In normal times, such a report would have received a very different response than it did. The colonel would have been regarded as going a bit off the deep end with paranoia and likely recalled to Washington while being relieved of his own command. These weren’t normal times though, not in late December 2028. He was told to keep the matter to himself and that an investigation would be launched. That order came from the Defence Secretary. General Ferdinand had only days before relieved of duties – at presidential instruction – the commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force out in California after that US Marine had turned down a meeting with the vice president yet took too long to report the attempt. Ferdinand did not believe that reacting like that to any hint of suspicion was the right way to go about things. That colonel in Hawaii had no evidence to back-up his claim: Ferdinand didn’t want to ruin the careers of two good men if another one was a little bit crazy. If those two generals had met with Hawaii’s governor, they could soon report that or the whole thing could be innocent. Ferdinand wanted to investigate. He had military people who could do that and saw to it that it was done.

In addition, after talking it through with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defence also drafted a memo for distribution to senior military officers across all the armed services. It was for urgent attention and required a reply that it was to be carried out. The chain-of-command was to be remembered by serving personnel should they be approached by civilians of high political standing asking to speak with them privately about ongoing political upheavals in certain parts of the country. Meetings weren’t to be taken and reports were to be made of attempts to have them occur. On the Joint Chiefs of Staff committee was the Chief of the National Guard Bureau alongside the other top-level military brass (the chair, vice chair and heads of the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps & US Space Force). His position was to oversee training and capability of the individual state’s national guard units so that should they be federally-assigned, they were able to function in roles tasked for them. Ferdinand had him send out a message to Army National Guard and Air National Guard units across all fifty states, the District of Columbia and the unincorporated territories. They were told that the ongoing political disturbances might have seen them mobilised and under state control to assist in combatting unrest, but they still had their duty as citizens of the United States too in abiding by the US Constitution. Should they be given an illegal order, even by a state governor or a federal official, that was to be disobeyed. This was sent to everyone, not just those in states out West. Ferdinand was seeking to not ruffle feathers where claims could be made that he was trying to cause offense in certain states.


The arrest of Shauna McCleary brought immediate comment from political figures all across the nation’s partisan divide… as well as arguments among those on one side of that usually strict gap. Senators Kirk and Yorke, Democrats who’d so strongly criticised all that she had been doing, welcomed the arrest. So too did Murrow, the Chair of the DNC. They were each quick off the mark to praise the action taken in Nevada by District Attorney Babcock though also openly questioned why it had taken to long for that to be done. McCleary was trying to break up the country, Kirk’s statement said. Yorke said that McCleary had been talking sedition for a while. Her arrest can only help bring the craziness to an end, Murrow added, and see it all forgotten. Vice President Padley, Governor Pierce, Oregon’s former governor King and New Mexico Ignacio Gutierrez came out in strong condemnation. It was federal overreach, persecution against First Amendment rights and an affront to common sense. These big supporters of New America / West America, who all helped craft the circumstances surrounding McCleary’s arrest, played their role as the outraged well. Maria Arreola Rodriguez – unaware she was being manipulated – joined them with strongly expressed indignation at events in Las Vegas.

Republican figures praised McCleary’s arrest. There were calls for more arrests to be made to add to just hers. Governor Cook and Senators Dunn & Stokes wanted more people charged with sedition. They were demanding that that begin and were joined by US House Speaker Fraser who told a Fox News journalist that the FBI had a list of ‘a hundred names’ engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy who he wanted to see brought up on federal charges too. Asked whether Padley was on that list, Fraser confirmed that that was his belief, yes. The journalist questioned how the vice president could be arrested with Fraser saying that it could be done… and should be as well. She was trying to bring down the United States, using her constitutional role to do that. Damn right she should be locked up with the rest of those he called ‘traitors to the American people’! From a select few countries overseas, none of them friends of America due to their government’s behaviour, there came cheeky criticism delivered at the arrest of McCleary. From Beijing, Caracas, Damascus, Havana, Moscow and Tehran there came allegations that she was a ‘political prisoner’. Washington had long accused their regimes of locking up political prisoners and now the same was being done in America too.

All of these words from politicians at home, and those abroad seeking to poke the bear, meant little though. The real aftermath of the arrest of McCleary after calling for a Second Republic (to replace the first: the United States of America) came on the streets. President Walsh and the federal government had hoped by locking her up, over the holiday season too, they could shut her up: those seeking to form the country which McCleary had spoken of had pushed for her to get herself detained to make her a symbol and for her words to spread further. The latter got their wish.

[James G]

36 – Sit-ins

The lawyer who moved to represent McCleary was Lewis Neville, AKA ‘Hellfire’. He’d been given such a sobriquet after – reportedly – telling a previous client ‘I would walk through the fires of hell for you’. Neville revelled in notoriety. The Los Angeles-based attorney had been involved in many high-profile legal disputes on behalf of clients yet had avoided entangling himself with the wrong sort of people: he turned down clients where he thought there was too much public anger against them or their politics were not to his taste. He only took the ‘good’ people who needed defending. Fighting the criminal justice system, especially the federal government, was a talent of Neville’s. He took on McCleary pro bono… unaware that there were many wealthy supporters ready to pay his full fee should he have asked. As he always did, Neville gave it his all. The fight for his client’s freedom would be won in both the courts, he believed, but also the court of public opinion too. At the first press conference he arranged when he turned up in Las Vegas, he echoed what several overseas distasteful regimes had said about McCleary’s detention. He called her a Political Prisoner and said that, in America, that should always be opposed. Criticising her arrest, the charges and her detention, Neville spoke outside the court where she was making her first appearance. There was a huge media crowd gathered, including journalists from aboard. He gave a speech to them worthy of his ‘hellfire’ legend and then marched inside to face down the unjust justice system.

Appearing in federal court at her arraignment, McCleary – whom Neville declared was a ‘prisoner of conscience’ and held because of her political beliefs before being slapped down by the judge for his remarks – was denied bail. District Attorney Babcock was in that court in Las Vegas and successfully argued that McCleary was a flight risk. Her history of doing so, many years ago on state charges in both Idaho and Montana when she was protesting against abortion restrictions, was presented as justification for her continued detainment. Neville said that she was willing to stay in Nevada and wouldn’t run but instead remain to fight her case, but the government’s argument won the day. McCleary was returned to custody with the next appearance by her scheduled for the New Year due to the Holiday Season. Outside the courthouse, Neville spoke to the waiting media. He attacked Babcock’s case and the jailing of his client. Next he did the rounds at the local affiliate studios for CNN and MSNBC before then appearing on the internet news channel Look Left. He saved most of his bluster for that appearance. Savaging the federal government, President Walsh, the Republicans & Babcock, Neville lived up to his Hellfire nickname. He gave it all that he could. McCleary was a political prisoner and he wanted everyone to understand what that meant for America. Only the worst regimes, the undemocratic ones with awful human rights records, he said when on Look Left, jailed political opponents for speaking up for democracy and the will of the people. That was what the United States had become now: one of those terrible regimes.

Protests took place across not just Blue states in the West but in two of the Red states too: the latter being Idaho and Utah. These went on in the days leading up to Christmas and past that too. Violence wasn’t initially a key component of the demonstrations and rallies against McCleary’s detention. Revolución arranged for peaceful gatherings and the message to keep them free of violence was repeatedly urged by senior political figures who came out in support of the gatherings which took place. There was some trouble seen – in Portland and Seattle – but it was far less than might otherwise have been expected. When those calling for McCleary’s freedom gathered in Boise and Salt Lake City, there was the fear that the authorities or right-wing militia might intervene. That didn’t happen though. The detention over Christmas and the week leading up to the start of 2029 had been believed by Walsh and the Acting Attorney General to allow for less of an uproar on the streets. They thought that many people would be too busy with family gatherings and vacations. Alas, that wasn’t the case. McCleary had a bigger following than thought. She also had the strongest support available from figures such as Vice President Padley, Governor Pierce and Maria Arreola Rodriquez. They kept on calling for people to come out and protest – peacefully – until McCleary was released from federal custody.

Organised by Revolución were not just people on the streets but the invasion of federal buildings by flash mob crowds. Hundreds, even thousands of people in a few cases, turned up across California, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico & Oregon in the ‘flash mob’ fashion where they used the weight of numbers to enter them. Courthouses and office complexes housing various branches of government witnessed those who entered them then sit down. Protesters joined hands and started singing or chanting for McCleary’s arrest. There were some fisticuffs and vandalism done yet, in the main, strenuous efforts made by the organisers to limit violence paid off. The disruption at such a time of year was less than it would have been at another. However, it couldn’t be ignored. Workers were sent home and the business of government was caused problems in day-to-day operations. One of the senior-most organisers, almost at the top of Revolución, had been in Scotland back in 2024. Doing a college year abroad at St. Andrews University, he’d witnessed such behaviour organised there when the UK Government moved to shut down the Scottish Parliament in a massive dispute between London & Edinburgh. The whole of Scotland had been gripped by protests with the sit-ins having a major effect on gaining wider public support when broadcast on the news… especially when the police came in to remove them. Other voices in Revolución had retorted that, in the end, that had all failed and London had won out, but that was countered that it hadn’t been as well organised as it could be in America. It was done in Western states on a far bigger scale than had been seen across the ocean too.

Another series of actions copied from Scotland four years previously by those in America was the personal harassment of those involved on the other side of the cause which they were fighting for. Babcock, staff from her office, the FBI agents involved in McCleary’s arrest, the judge at her arraignment and the warden of the facility where she was being held found themselves under siege by dedicated protesters who turned up everywhere they went as well as followed them around. Abuse was shouted at them and chanting took place when they managed to get inside a building. Babcock unwitting opened an email attachment on her phone which seemed innocent enough. It allowed those harassing her – not doing so with official Revolución backing but via a nod-&-a-wink allowing them to – to know all of her movements. She tried everything to avoid those following her about and shouting abuse but without success. When she went over into Utah on Christmas Day, to see her brother and his family, there were people outside the house there making a noisy protest; she was followed back into Nevada the day afterwards down the highway by a procession of cars with beeping horns. It was psychological warfare to cause her mental angst.


Revolución wanted the protests to remain peaceful. That failed after a few days though.

The building invasions continued even when they were closed down due to the Holiday Season with only security & janitorial staff in them. A courthouse in Salem (Oregon’s state capital) was broken into with vandalism first before things got out of hand. Those working there, and the police who responded to their calls for assistance, were attacked by a violent mob: Revolución organisers backed away when the crowd was no longer recognisable as fighting for McCleary. A fire started either by accident or design and the building went up in flames. Two people died in Salem. Down in San Diego, where protesters were outside of an office building for the US Customs & Border Protection service, two men drove past slowly in a car with one of them holding a submachine gun. Eight deaths were recorded there in San Diego with the suspected attackers being right-wing militia members. In Carson City, protesters who’d come up from Las Vegas as well as across from California, broke into the DA’s office in the early hours of the morning after Christmas Day. A couple of them, separate from others caught up in the moment who started smashing things, planted a bomb. They shouted for people to leave because there was going to be an explosion. Not everyone took notice. It was either a case of the warning not being heard or thought to be some sort to ruse by the authorities to get them to leave. That bomb went off, killing six people all of them being protesters. Rumours ran rife afterwards that that blast was caused by federal officials seeking a ruse de guerre for a crackdown. That wasn’t true but the story took on a life of its own. Other violent events elsewhere were tied to alleged false flag actions to discredit protesters and also kill them. Antifa members turned out en masse in a few locations to ‘defend’ protesters. Those claiming allegiance to the Black Liberation Army showed up in Albuquerque to do the same. These were members of the Juggalos trans-national crime group though: Caucasians as well as African-Americans. Protesters in that New Mexico city were attacked by them with assaults, robberies and rapes occurring. Looting and arson was done in the middle of Albuquerque with the local police being unable to get after those criminals effectively due to the mass numbers of people, most of whom suspected the police of being out to attack them.

Into Arizona, Colorado and Washington state more of the violence spread to them. There were multiple shooting incidents against federal government employees with deaths occurring as perpetrators unknown shot at them away from their places of work. One of Babcock’s staffers, a young woman who lived alone in Carson City, was kidnapped; so too was the husband of the special agent in-charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas field office. Held by unknown hostage-takers, demands were sent for the release of McCleary to be made immediately or those innocents would be killed. Revolución wasn’t behind this and neither were her backers such as Padley, Pierce & MAR. Passions had been inflamed beyond their immediate control to such an extreme. Before any negotiations could begin (ones which wouldn’t have seen McCleary released), that second hostage was found dead. A huge hunt was on to try and find the first one less she suffer the same fate. Calls unauthorised by Revolución nor McCleary’s backers were made for a general strike. These went out across social media platforms from Marxist organisers who put McCleary’s detention not at the forefront of their message. Instead, they were ‘fighting the feds’. This didn’t get the response which they hoped for yet marches occurred in several Western cities where organisers brought out people. Violence came with these events with those on the streets starting the trouble at the slightest provocation.


Walsh had remained at Camp David throughout the start of the Holiday Season with the intention of staying there. He returned to Washington on December 28th though. The political outcry against what was happening on the other side of the country brought him back to the capital. He went to Blair House rather than the White House: his concerns over his safety there were irrational but he wouldn’t budge. The violence was all over the media and he wanted to project an image of strength as he moved to act against it. No plan of action had been formed though when he returned. He went into meetings with advisers and senior officials to decide what to do. A call came to Blair House during the night from the Acting AG. Walsh had his head in his hands when he was told what had happened. The shocking news which came from Las Vegas left him dumbstruck for how to respond. He took a few moments to compose himself, alarming so many around him as to his mental state, and then announced that that news needed to be made public.

Early the next morning, coming from the Justice Department in DC was a statement informing the public that the prisoner Shauna LeAnn McCleary, aged forty-four, a mother of two, had been found dead in her cell at the North Las Vegas Detention Centre. The cause of death was unknown and an investigation was underway. Absolute chaos then ensued.

[reichsfuhrer54]

Wow James G! Fantastic cliff hanger! Now the crazies have their martyr! I think you're about 6-years further in the future with this one of several possible timelines stemming from today's political unrest. I see this type of thing happening by the end of 2021 the way things are going!

[James G]

Feb 11, 2021 21:48:26 GMT reichsfuhrer54 said:

Wow James G! Fantastic cliff hanger! Now the crazies have their martyr! I think you're about 6-years further in the future with this one of several possible timelines stemming from today's political unrest. I see this type of thing happening by the end of 2021 the way things are going!

Thank you.
Well... I hope not that it is the case!
Only fiction here and not something I would like to see. There will be bad things in America and shocking ripples overseas too.

[James G]

37 – Martyr

McCleary had been housed on the Vulnerable Person’s Block in the Women’s Wing of the North Las Vegas Detention Centre. She had been among those on suicide watch and who were informers, sex offenders & murderers of children. ‘Celebrities’ such as her were placed there less they end up in danger in the General Population. There were extra guards on watch with tight security. Having been in jail before, when McCleary had been asked by Padley & Pierce to become a ‘martyr for the cause’, she had agreed to do it because she had long gotten over her fear of being locked up. Federal, state and local prisoners were all in the same detention centre as she was. Those people hadn’t frightened her too much, especially since she had been on that particular block. Access to her lawyer had been given though her ability to make a call out had been limited. The food had been terrible and the prison smell was all prevalent. Still, she had grinned and beared it for what she had believed would be the greater good. There was meant to be a court case in the end.

What she hadn’t signed up for was to die there though.

A guard found McCleary’s body within her cell with a bed sheet tied around her neck. At once, something inside him said that the prisoner hadn’t done that to herself. It just didn’t look right. Unable to tell what exactly gave him that gut feeling, when the guard tried to explain it to his superiors, he failed to make them understand what he had meant. Moreover, their primary concern was that the highest profile prisoner in the whole detention centre had died and that guard, plus the others on shift that night, were those ultimately responsible. A sh*tstorm was clearly coming down and everyone quickly tried to pass the buck onto those below them. The guards were at the bottom of the pile with that. Upon being found, revival efforts had been tried on the cell block and also in the infirmary. There was no chance of bringing McCleary back though. She’d been dead for at least an hour before being found. What hadn’t she been kept a better eye on? What hadn’t she been found earlier? Who was to blame? The focus in Las Vegas was on trying to find a suitable answer to those questions. In Washington, the Justice Department made that announcement of McCleary’s death the next morning without anyone there either knowing the answers to such questions. Of course, they wanted to discover what exactly had happened, but there were bigger problems ahead of an inquiry result: the public reaction to the death of (as her lawyer had called her) America’s only ‘political prisoner’.


Upon hearing the news, the personal opinion formed in the minds of so many Americans, no matter where they sat on the partisan divide, no matter in which part of the country that they lived, was that she had been murdered. That was a gut feeling – like that guard in Las Vegas had had – and one which wouldn’t go away afterwards. Her death in custody brought about that reaction. Who was responsible for her death was a different matter when it came to that consideration. A lot of ideas were had and many wild accusations thrown about. A strong belief was fast apparent among those in the West, especially among those who had been protesting at her detention, that the federal government had had her killed. That ‘made sense’ to a lot of people, even if they couldn’t explain why that had been done. McCleary had been making the case for secession first, arrested for sedition when arguing for a Second Republic next and then killed to shut her up due to the strong following that her ideas had managed to gain. Various political figures and troublemakers encouraged such a belief to serve their own ends, even if those were contradictory. There was always something to be gained in chaos, they concluded, no matter what the cost to others.

Rioting rocked the West through the last three days of 2028. There were outbreaks of civil disorder after McCleary’s death greater than had been seen during her week-plus detention. Peaceful protests were planned but those rapidly went out of control. Mayhem rocked cities and urban areas on a scale which no one had thought possible. Plenty of those who took part in it had not been supporters of McCleary yet out onto the streets they came. They rioted alongside others who were enraged at her ‘murder’. In addition to the immense protests-cum-riots, there were deliberate acts of political terrorism which took place among the violence. A Republican congressman in California (one of the few left) had called McCleary ‘trailer park trash’ and said that she ‘didn’t deserve to live’ in broadcast comments the night before it was announced she had died. Those remarks had brought him scorn from some of his fellow Republicans – including the president-elect who had disowned them – because they were considered going too far but others had welcomed them. He left his home in Redding the following morning to go San Francisco with his wife to the airport there. They were taking an unplanned vacation with the congressman realising that things were going to get really crazy after McCleary’s death. His car pulled out of the driveway and was sprayed with bullets. He and his wife died there before his corpse was afterwards dragged out of the vehicle, strung upside down from a streetlight and set on fire. The whole thing was livestreamed across Facebook. That company, and other social media networks, had promised in the past to be proactive in ceasing to broadcast ongoing acts of political violence when shocking events had taken place during the Years of Lead. They weren’t quick enough off the mark when that murder happened though. That young aide of Nevada DA Babcock, who’d been kidnapped by persons unknown demanding the release of McCleary, turned up dead on December 30th. She was dumped in public with her body having shown signs of torture. Babcock’s apartment in Carson City was burnt out after arsonists shot two sheriff’s deputies guarding it. Babcock was elsewhere, at an FBI safe house, but didn’t feel very safe at all.

Federal buildings were the focus of the rioting across Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington state. Nearly all were closed with court sessions suspended and office work being done from home in many cases among employees of government agencies. Some remained open though and surrounded by security personnel. The FBI, the DEA, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Customs & Border Protection kept operations running. Getting staff in and out was difficult and dangerous. Huge crowds gathered and there was a gauntlet to run. Deliveries and mail were unable to arrive: lunchbreaks couldn’t be taken off the premises. They were besieged with shots fired against them and attempts made to commit arson. The Federal Protective Service, plus private contractors, aided the efforts to protect those buildings and workers against the mobs which gathered. There was intelligence gathering done against those being behind the ongoing protests. This took place online with the identifying of Revolución and BLA key players keeping people riled up. There was also aerial surveillance done too using drones in the service of federal agencies. One of them was shot down in New Mexico – above Albuquerque – and another badly damaged when flying above protesters up in Portland. Video, audio and electronic surveillance packages within those low-flying aircraft were being gathered aplenty and feed into federal databases. When a drone overflew an ongoing riot in downtown Los Angeles, a shot rang out and a protester fell dead. Immediately, rumours ran rife that the drone had fired upon the crowd. The federal government was killing people in America with drones now, not just doing that overseas in foreign countries! Someone else had fired that shot though when aiming for the drone: his bullet missed and came back down to earth to kill an innocent. Such a truth wasn’t known nor was interested in by those seeking to inflame tensions even further than they already were.

To protect federal property in Denver, extra security teams were dispatched by the Department of Homeland Security. Governor Rowan got wind of them coming in and discovered that they were contractors from the private military company EXF Solutions rather than personnel from the large but overstretched Federal Protective Service. He called the Acting DHS Secretary and told him to not send them to Denver. Local police, aided by state troopers, had the situation in Colorado’s biggest city under control and didn’t want EXF Solutions in his city in number: there had been ‘issues’ with them before. Regardless of his desires, the private contractors were sent. Rowan couldn’t stop them making that deployment. Governor Pierce called up Walsh when he got wind that the Pentagon was US Army troops on standby to deploy to enforce order in his state. Pierce spoke with General Ferdinand and told the Secretary of Defence not to send the 82d Airborne Division to Los Angeles. Ferdinand countered that those troops were only being held ready for contingency operations and no deployment was in the offing. Still, if Walsh ordered it, the 82d Airborne would go to California whether Pierce wanted it or nor. Furious, Pierce promised ‘action would be taken’ if that happened. Ferdinand replied that any action undertaken to block any deployment as per federal law on the right to do so would be deemed insurrection by California’s governor. The two of them wouldn’t budge on the matter of who was in the right. Their huge blow up was a matter of egos all while troops sat at Fort Bragg unaware with no firm orders to move.

Those leading Democrats in the West who had openly opposed secession talk from others, Senator Dunbar, Congresswoman Sheldon & Lt.-Governor Webb, were all subject to open death threats made against them. Previously-unknown groups made the threats to their lives and those of loved ones. These were not aligned to Revolución and claimed to be speaking for ‘the people of the West’. Like lower-profile figures, others who had spoken out against the idea of West America recently, they kept their heads down during the chaotic days at the end of December. There was a time to be brave and a time to not be so foolish. They regarded the situation as worrying enough to take the latter action. There were other people doing what the 47th President had previously done and that congressman in California had attempted: leave. Longer holidays were taken by some people who had already gone away too. Being known as someone who had spoken out against the crazy concept of the West breaking away from the rest of the United States was regarded as becoming dangerous even for people with personal security. There was anarchy going on yet it was in so many ways targeted. To be a target, to end up like McCleary, wasn’t what sensible people wanted to see for themselves and their families.


Ashby, Carville, Gutierrez and King – four serving or former politicians – made a joint online statement on New Year’s Eve. They were all associated with the West America movement ahead of McCleary’s arrest and subsequent death. They took a step further during the violence. Nevada’s State Assembly Speaker, the former Colorado senator, one of New Mexico’s congressmen and Oregon’s retired governor each called for their individual states to hold plebiscites on whether the people in their states wished to remain part of the United States. Federal deployments of security forces and troops, real and imagined, were used as the justifications for this all… along with the claim that the US Government had committed the ‘murder’ of McCleary. They declared that they knew what they were doing in risking federal arrest yet claimed that their calls were for the greater good. They weren’t looking to be martyrs and so weren’t about to walk up to the nearest district attorney but neither did they go into hiding either.

Walsh at once issued orders from distant DC for their arrests to be made. The Acting Attorney General gave instructions to local DAs and FBI field offices. That was secession they were calling for. The four were to be arrested as McCleary had been. In neither Nevada nor New Mexico, such arrests couldn’t be carried out due to the ongoing rioting and danger to government officials. Oregon’s DA refused to carry out such an order: she was fired at once for that refusal. Governor Rowan intervened when he told Colorado’s DA to not carry out the arrest as he believed it to be unlawful. Federal law was thus something unable to be carried out in certain parts of the West whereas elsewhere, there was open anarchy. Interference from state officials was coming to allow that to continue. Walsh spoke with his Cabinet and members of the Congressional leadership (not in person but by video-conferencing). He proposed a course of action to put an end to it all. His Labor & Transportation Secretaries said they would resign if that happened: neither was from the West yet weren’t prepared to serve in a government which would do that there. Walsh fired them before they could walk. A call from Vice President Padley came to the US House Minority Leader – a fellow Democrat – while he was on the video-conference with the president and others. He took it off-screen and then relayed afterwards the details of what she had said from out there in California. Padley had claimed that those states where political figures had just called for referendums on the basis of possible secession had the democratic right to do that.

Senate Majority Leader Green called that ‘treason’. His description wasn’t argued against by the others. That was what they all thought she was at the centre of. FBI Director Cohen was asked by Walsh about that list of names he’d previously come to Camp David with: had there been additions to it? Yes, there had been though Ashby, Carville, Gutierrez & King were already on it. The president wanted federal warrants for the arrest of all of those people – one hundred and sixty-two by New Year’s Eve – drawn up and ready to be enforced. How was he going to make sure they happened? By doing what he’d just lost two more Cabinet members over.

Just before midnight (Eastern Standard Time), the lame duck Walsh, back over in the White House finally, spoke to the nation in an unscheduled address. He announced he was invoking the Insurrection Act. It would cover six states – AZ, CA, CO, NV, NM & OR – where there was widespread civil disorder and acts of sedition & secession attempts underway. Walsh added that it would be expended if necessary to further states, and his actions as president were additionally being done without the consent of the state governments involved. He told those watching and listening, not just in America but around the world too, that he was doing so to save the United States from those seeking to bring it down all for their own selfish political ends. The law would be obeyed, he finished his remarks with, and those guilty of breaking it punished.


End of Part Two

[James G]

Interlude


38 – What happens in Vegas…

…stays in Vegas.

The death of Shauna McCleary in custody was neither an accident nor self-inflicted. She was indeed murdered. The federal government weren’t behind it though: such claims were complete and utter nonsense. What motive would there be for President Walsh or anyone else in Washington to kill her? Instead, it was a contract hit.

The Californian-based criminal Carrillo – who ran that Vaqueros PMC – called in a favour from the prison gang La eMe who, due to necessity, farmed it out to the Aryan Brotherhood. The former, oft-known as the Mexican Mafia, were unable to get at McCleary in the North Las Vegas Detention Centre themselves, especially in the short time frame which Carrillo wanted them to act. They had a long-standing alliance with the Aryan Brotherhood (one based on mutual enemies and financial crime connections in & out of prisons rather than racial harmony) and the latter was up to the task. Murder-for-hire was something which they specialised in.


A guard on the payroll of the Aryan Brotherhood, Officer Thurman, got onto the Vulnerable Person’s Block in the Women’s Wing without signing in. He’d been involved with interfering with the security cameras the day before the murder and did so again that day. Into McCleary’s cell Thurman had gone and there he killed her. His instructions were to make it look ‘sloppy’, as if someone was trying to suggest she killed herself yet there would be clues for investigators to find to disprove that. Having killed before for the Aryan Brotherhood (he knew nothing about the La eMe nor Carrillo connections), those previous tasks had been to do the opposite: make clean kills which would be attributed to suicide. To do a sloppy job of it all went against all of Thurman’s instincts. He had no intention of ever ending up in prison himself. His connections to the Aryan Brotherhood would mean nothing and he doubted he’d survive a week even in protective custody. If he could get to someone, should Thurman be locked up then someone could get to him! The contact paid well though, well indeed. He did what was asked of him. He did it for the money and told himself that he would get away with it because he would never talk.

When McCleary was found dead, her killer was nowhere to be found. There was no record of him being on that block, no camera footage and no physical evidence neither. Thurman had done exactly what was asked of him. His assumption was that it would never be mentioned again and he could continue his profitable relationship with the Aryan Brotherhood afterwards. They always wanted something and he was willing to do their bidding… as long as they continued to pay well. Two days later, as rioting gripped the city outside, and elsewhere across the West, Thurman was back on duty. He was in the general population area of one of the men’s wings. There was a fistfight going on between two inmates and he went towards that aiming to break it up. A trio of other inmates, all Aryan Brotherhood members, ambushed him and dragged him into a cell: the fight was a cover for what was really going on. Thurman had his throat slit in an instant. His body was left on the floor. His killer, and the two men who had held him secure in-place, walked away. They had orders to do that from higher up in the gang leadership yet didn’t know why. What Thurman had done to McCleary had seen his killer’s organisation get paid to eliminate him too later on too. As to those who took his life, they didn’t know of the bigger picture. None asked either because such things were dangerous to enquire after in the violent, hierarchical structure of the prison gang which they had joined.

No one could walk back the cat to discover who was responsible. Thurman was dead. Neither the Aryan Brotherhood nor their Mexican Mafia contact in North Las Vegas Detention Centre were those about to talk to the authorities. More importantly for him, they knew anything about the involvement of Carrillo. He was completely isolated from the killings of both Thurman and McCleary.


The Vice President, California’s governor nor the presidential candidate cheated out of victory knew nothing about all of this. Pierce afterwards suspected that the handiwork of Carrillo might have been involved yet he couldn’t know for sure. To Padley and MAR, Carrillo was a legitimate businessman who supported so many of the progressive causes which they did: his connections to Pierce weren’t known by them. The two of them, even Pierce, and especially all of their supporters across the West, would have strongly objected to any harm planned for McCleary. If they had any knowledge that a criminal such as Carrillo (an unsuspected one at that) had done what he had, a firm break would have come between them and Pierce. McCleary was their friend, their political ally. She was meant to be a martyr to the cause which they were fighting for, yet a judicial one!

As to why Carrillo did what he did, and made sure that his act couldn’t be traced back to him, he acted out of personal greed. The West America which was being sought by those politicians and the crowds of protesters could only benefit him and his interests. He wanted to make money and gain power, which he believed he surely could in the chaos of creation and the aftermath. Should that, and his killing of McCleary, meant that a lot of people would die and suffer all sorts of torment, he cared not one iota about. He had been behind what happened in Las Vegas, where all knowledge of it stayed, all for his own gain.

Such was his motivation for what he had the Vaqueros do where they conducted the shocking yet limited acts of terrorism elsewhere away from that city.

Carrillo’s paid killers slaughtered that congressmen & his wife in California and committed those two kidnap-cum-murders in Nevada as well. Cover names were used for the acts of political violence but Carrillo was the man who was orchestrating it. He sought power and wealth, all with his vice-like grip upon Pierce too. That governor was likely to be if not right at the very top then close enough to the pinnacle of power in what was going to come at the end of all of the troubles. Carrillo looked forward to seizing even more of what was on offer when that happened.

[jedicommisar]

And so all the coming death and destruction is down to the greed and stupidity of one man, I hope this Carillo dies a slow painful death or failing that as humiliatingly as possible

[James G]

Feb 14, 2021 19:25:43 GMT jedicommisar said:

And so all the coming death and destruction is down to the greed and stupidity of one man, I hope this Carillo dies a slow painful death or failing that as humiliatingly as possible

To be fair, while he lights the spark, there is a long line of others opening their matchboxes. He's just jumped the queue.
In the end, Carrillo will not come out of this all well: that's a given!

[James G]

Part Three – West America


39 – Insurrection

The Insurrection Act was a piece of legislation more than two hundred years old. It had been modified many times over the centuries yet remained a powerful piece of law to be used at executive authority: elsewhere, there were plentiful checks and balances on presidential power from a country whose leaders had long sought to avoid the mere whiff of dictatorship. As per the law, when he evoked it on New Year’s Eve 2028, President Walsh had to first issue a proclamation demanding that those committing acts of insurrection cease and disperse. There was no set time-frame from afterwards when action could be taken and specific details on what made the dispersion & cessation of insurrectional activities real though. That was left to the president’s judgement. Walsh needed time to prepare to act against what he and the US Government regarded as ongoing insurrection. An eighteen hour period was judged the minimum. The White House press secretary briefed journalists off-the-record that the fervent hope was that the protesters would go home in that time. It wasn’t thought likely though.

Secretary of Defence presented Walsh and his Cabinet with Operation Restore Order. In many ways, it was no different from what had been done in previous instances where severe public unrest had affected selected regions of the country – during the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 and parts of Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Emily in 2026 – and the Insurrection Act had then been invoked. However, at the beginning of ’29, the unrest was spread over a huge, multi-state area. Almost the entire West of the country was seeing anarchy and political violence. A large force was needed, much bigger than those used in Operations Garden Plot & Secure Peninsula. General Ferdinand and those at the Pentagon had crafted Restore Order to address the trans-state issue. Supporting the FBI and the US Marshals seeking to make arrests of key participants in the violence as well as protect federal property would be federalised national guardsmen along with elements of the US Army and the US Marines. Those National Guard units in the West – already called out by state governments – would be under federal control and subordinated to the command higher headquarters from the professional elements of the US Armed Forces. The latter would move against the areas of unrest from garrisons within the West and also from without. The mission would be enforcing public order for them and the national guardsmen, not fighting a war. Yet, they would bring with them heavy equipment to make that possible. Only a strong showing – tanks and armoured vehicles – was believed by Ferdinand to be enough to bring all of the violence to an end. Once it was, those many arrests for those indicted for sedition and secession attempts could take place.

Walsh had lost two members of his Cabinet on New Year’s Eve to resignations in protests at him invoking the Insurrection Act – and another three members (two of them to terrorist incidents) late the previous year – as well as having his vice president out in the West being one of the leaders of the insurrection. He had with him only those who were prepared to see this done rather than those trying to talk him out of it. That didn’t mean that everyone at the top of the Walsh Administration was happy with what Ferdinand wanted to do. His chief-of-staff (his fourth since he took office back in January 2025) was Park Sung-hee, AKA Sunny Park. Korean-American, she had faced much racism and xenophobia during her time at the White House from outside opponents. Many of those verbal attacks had come from certain Republican figures. Her hatred of that party, and thus all Republicans, was seen by many as a bit of an overreaction yet it was she, not they, who had to face all of that bigotry. Ferdinand was staying at the Pentagon after President-elect Roberts would be inaugurated. Sunny Park saw the fingerprints of the Republicans all over Restore Order, the deployment of the US Army & the US Marines too. It was just what senior Republicans such as Senator Stokes and Governor Cook had been demanding. In her opinion, one which she shared with Walsh, there was no need for the regular soldiers and marines when national guardsmen could do the job. The National Guard were better trained in dealing with civil unrest than others and had plenty of experience. Walsh was talked around by his chief-of-staff when she mentioned his ‘legacy’: her argument was that he didn’t want to go down in history as using troops against his own country, did he? His legacy, as everyone knew would be the defeat to China in the Taiwan Conflict but Sunny Park had long been massaging his ego.

Pretending it was his idea, less Ferdinand and others push back hard against his unelected senior adviser, Walsh instructed the element of Restore Order where the US Army and the US Marines were to deploy to be dropped from the plan. There was strong objection to that. Ferdinand, the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two of his Cabinet secretaries (Energy and Veteran’s Affairs) spoke of how the regular troops had a large number of military police units with them. The Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs tried to get Walsh to agree to a middle ground where the heavy armour components would remain in their garrisons – which Ferdinand objected to – and that there be a limiting of the numbers of regulars rather than see their participation cancelled. The president wouldn’t budge. Walsh, stubborn as he always was, had made his mind up. The Acting Attorney General, regarded by many as becoming a lickspittle since he’d stepped up to take over his dead predecessor’s duties, assured the Cabinet that with all of those extra federal agents made available from Washington & big field offices in the East, the problems in the West would be solved by mass arrests. Sunny Park spoke up in support of the president (as if it was his idea) and then came out with the unexpected remark that the national guardsmen currently being employed by the state’s weren’t doing their job properly: they apparently would do so under federal supervision and therefore there would be no need for the US Army and the US Marines. Everyone else was dumbstruck at where she was getting that from, everyone but Walsh that was. He agreed with her. Having heard enough of such madness, the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs tendered her resignation. She was out of a job in less than three weeks when the new administration moved in yet wouldn’t serve for any longer with Walsh acting like he was. The insurrection needed putting down and it wouldn’t be done just by National Guard units from those states where there was insurrection! She told him that and put that in her resignation letter which she released to the media. And as to Ferdinand… he was straight on the phone to Roberts.


As the country waited for Operation Restore Order to go into effect, there was less unrest seen earlier on New Year’s Day then there had been in the days following the death in federal custody of McCleary. A lot of hangovers were being slept off. Perhaps it might have been a case that Walsh’s proclamation had worked? That question was asked by the media and political commentators during the early part of January 1st. That came alongside disputes on whether there actually was insurrection underway in the West. Republicans generally agreed that there was while Democrats were split on the issue. On the latter side of the nation’s general partisan divide, those who said it wasn’t were those siding with those working towards a West America: other Democrats, the majority of them, agreed with the Republicans (through gritted teeth) though didn’t want to see force used to bring it to an end. They urged their fellow Democrats to rein in the secession rhetoric, accept that the presidency had been stolen from them & move on from that and work with them to end the political violence before the nation was torn into two.

The Justice Department’s list of those to be detained on federal charges was then leaked.

There had been mention made of it in the media since before McCleary was arrested with rampant speculation about who was on it. In a race to first get it online, Revolución just beat Slade to the punch there. Media networks shared it after those two websites had it up. The names on the list were a mix of high-profile elected officials as well as relative unknowns. Whether all of them would be arrested – would, could Vice President Padley be detained? – was up for debate yet there was more attention given to how wide-ranging it was. Comments were made that it looked like the United States was turning into a dictatorship with ‘enemies of the regime’ locked up. Two Democrats, Governor Rowan from Colorado and New York City’s Mayor Duke – on opposite sides of the matter of what was insurrection and the notion of West America –, each used similar language to the other where they compared Walsh to be acting like a dictator with enemies to be arrested. Pierce and MAR were on it just as McCleary was (it was a copy several weeks old, not the very latest one). They came out in criticism against it with the California governor rhetorically asking whether the Republican’s Stokes had put it together for Walsh. Stokes did an interview with Fox News where he called for more names to be added and for these arrests to take place at once. There were traitors to the country who needed locking up, he said, and why was Walsh delaying in taking action with Operation Restore Order?

Unrest began once more that afternoon. There was some speculation that the leak of the Justice Department’s so-called ‘Top 100’ (the online news network Look Left used that name) was behind it. That wasn’t the case though. There was still real anger against the death of McCleary, the long-standing grievance over the stolen presidential elections as well as the manipulations of events by those hellbent on trouble. In Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon (the worst-affected states in the West) there was rioting near to and acts of violence against federal buildings & employees. Hotspots of trouble erupted in Arizona, California, Hawaii and Washington state too… plus in the Red states of Idaho, Utah and even Texas. Boise, Salt Lake City and El Paso were soon gripped by violence like other urban areas. Targeted killings and assassination attempts took place late during New Year’s Day: right before Walsh’s ‘deadline’ expired. An FBI agent was shot dead by a sniper near Colorado Springs, a federal judge was badly injured by a car bomb in Phoenix, the (empty) federal courthouse in Santa Fe was blown up and two office admin staff working for the USCIS in Tacoma were kidnapped at gunpoint.

Walsh gave the go ahead for Operation Restore Order to commence. The insurrection underway was supposed to be put down by what followed. It wouldn’t.

[James G]

40 – Human shields

The mass deployment of federal law enforcement officers armed with arrest warrants into the states out West moved with haste once Operation Restore Order began. There were those indicted with sedition and encouraging secession whom the Justice Department wanted detained, put before a judge and held without access to an outside voice. Plentiful information on where they could be found was available to the FBI and Federal Marshal’s Service personnel coming from their internet activities including real-time tracking of their movements via their phones: the Acting Attorney General and his counterpart at the Department of Homeland Security cooperated there (by executive order giving them the ability) to make that happen. Politicians and activists/organisers were sought rather than individual protesters who followed their agitation. Hundreds of personnel, most of them deployed from out-of-state, were involved. They ran into immediate difficulties. That list which had been leaked, despite being out of date, gave so many a heads-up as to what was coming their way when the Justice Department went after them. Some chose to not evade arrest after having already resigned themselves to the fact that the federal government was coming for them. Others opted to try to give ‘the feds’ the slip though. The realisation that their movements were likely to be monitored ahead of arrest made many of them separate themselves from their phones – the heartache! – to not make it easy. More than any of that though, there were those wanted for arrest who were surrounded by civilians either by accident or design.

Federal agents had to wade through a crowd of protesters who surrounded the home of Ben King, the former Governor of Oregon, in Gresham. Just outside of Portland, where there had been so much trouble, more than a thousand people tried to block the way. The FBI officers and the Marshals had abuse hurled at them, were spat at, tripped up, pushed back and then punched. They were armed and drew their weapons but that didn’t intimidate everyone. A few people seemed almost desperate to be shot. They wanted to be martyrs with their shootings being caught on camera from the many phones recording the arrest attempt. King eventually came out of his house and walked towards those who’d come to detain him. He gave a bombastic speech declaring that he was to become a political prisoner and feared the same fate to befall him as had done to McCleary down in Las Vegas. Getting King into the vehicles which they came in proved almost impossible for the federal agents. He was nearly pulled away from them and they again faced physical violence including one young hooligan pouring urine from a water bottle over them. Oregon national guardsmen showed up – late – and finally cleared an exit but the whole experience was one that those involved never wanted to see a repeat of again. Similar scenes were happening elsewhere too. Across in Colorado, right in the middle of Denver there was an arrest made against Elliot Carville, that retired senator (with that 2024 sex tape, he could have been Walsh’s VP) who had likewise been recently calling for his state to secede from the United States. His car was stopped by federal agents tracking his movements. Once removed and while being read his rights, dozens of people showed up to intervene. These weren’t all those who’d been involved in the recent civil unrest, not at all. Other Coloradoans, usually law-abiding ones, stepped in. Spittle, punches and then a gunshot came: that was fired skywards but frightened everyone. Carville was taken away by the FBI and Marshals with their vehicles followed by an unwelcome convoy of private vehicles bleeping their horns, trying to cut them up and causing a huge disturbance in Denver and along the interstate heading northwards into Wyoming where a federal judge was waiting in Cheyenne to lock up Carville there over the state line.

Going after Congressman Ignacio Gutierrez in Las Cruces brought failure for the Justice Department effort in that endeavour. In that small New Mexico city, just up from Texas’ El Paso, a huge riot took place which forced back the federal agents and saw one of them almost dragged away to be lynched by a crowd of protesters who had surrounded Gutierrez’s home. Local police support was inadequate and the national guardsmen didn’t show up as they were supposed to. To defend himself, another FBI agent shot and killed a young man who was coming at him with a gun in his hand. That didn’t disperse the mob: instead, it only incensed them into further violence. The FBI officers and Marshals had no choice but to make a retreat and temporarily give up their attempts to lock him up. The agent in charge, a long-experienced FBI officer flown in from the Chicago field office, stated in his report back to Washington that Gutierrez was surrounded by ‘human shields’. He’d brought them out with the congressman hoping to have many of them killed so as to provide more martyrs. In Nevada, State Assembly Speaker Judy Ashby wasn’t where she was believed to be. Her phone was in the home of a friend next to Lake Tahoe but Ashby was nowhere to be found by the federal agents searching for her. She’d gone into hiding with the friend and everybody else declaring that they had no knowledge of her whereabouts. For many weeks, she’d been at the centre of the first sedition investigation and her movements had been monitored but Ashby had managed, with the aid of supporters, to successfully make a run for it. To the North Las Vegas Detention Centre, where McCleary had died, Ashby wouldn’t be going.

Elsewhere across the West, federal agents sought to detain activists aligned to various campaign groups and political organisations. Revolución was targeted first by a federal take-down of its website (the Department of Homeland Security needed another executive order to do that) and then many who worked for it gone after. Sixteen successful arrests were made but fifteen more indicted others slipped the net. In Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico arrests and attempts at detainment of Revolución people brought with it violence directed against the FBI officers and the Marshals. In San Jose and Tucson, there were deaths: a Marshal and three civilians were killed in those two incidents where it came to lives being lost. Promised support from National Guard units those states was either inadequate or lacking. Up in Tacoma, another eruption of violence came when two key figures with the Green Socialist Alliance were detained at the home which they shared. Washington state and neighbouring Oregon were where this political organisation was at its strongest. Marxist in outlook, the Green Socialist Alliance was a significant political force with a strong base of support across the Pacific North-West. They didn’t run candidates for political office beyond the local level themselves and had been big supporters of McCleary’s congressional run and the presidential campaign of MAR too. Those two activists were being put in a vehicle when the growing mob near to the scene surged forward to rescue them. Shots were fired – each side saying the other did so first – and five people were left dead including an FBI officer and one of those arrested activists. Nearby, outside of the main gate to the US Army post Fort Lewis, an activist associated with an Antifa group allied with the Green Socialist Alliance was detained there. A protest had started that morning with far left protesters showing up in an effort to supposedly block the US Army from coming out of there as part of Operation Restore Order. Had that been the case, as planned before the president’s chief-of-staff had changed his direction on it, soldiers from Fort Lewis would have had no trouble getting past no more than twenty people making a lot of noise but not much else. Away he was taken though a slab of concrete was thrown at one of the FBI vehicles as it departed. The arrestee was in another vehicle to the one which subsequently crashed leaving four federal officers badly hurt. Other Green Socialist Alliance and Antifa key figures were detained across the Pacific North-West as well as in California and Colorado. Dozens more escaped the Justice Department though with several of them being linked to small yet extremely violent far left offshoots of the bigger organisations. They wouldn’t all be able to stay on the run for long and there was a readiness in plenty to hit back where they could against this ‘federal invasion’.


The National Guard across the West – ground and air units in eight states including Hawaii – had been federalised when Operation Restore Order commenced. The Pentagon issued orders for them to support federal agents engaged in the process of detaining almost ninety people in the mass round up of those acting against the United States. Each of those states already had their National Guard units at full deployment due to violence before and especially after the presidential election, and then the significant unrest taking place following the death in custody of McCleary. They were already overstretched. In California, national guardsmen were dealing with attacks on federal property, Black Liberation Army activity around Los Angeles & Oakland (criminals claiming allegiance again rather than the real BLA) and standing by in case they were needed to intervene in multiple riots which had hit prisons across the state as prisoners sought to take advantage of the wider situation. Major taskings for National Guard units elsewhere were ongoing with the far smaller available forces in Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada and New Mexico especially stretched. Oregon and Washington state had their own issues though their decent-sized forces had been, at invitation, seen partial deployments out of state into those neighbouring ones as mutual aid was provided.

Alongside this, there was state government resistance to the federalisation. President Walsh had enacted Restore Order against their wishes and sent into them all of those federal agents. It was unknown how far those arrests would go, how high up the chain they would run. Governors Pierce (CA) and Rowan (CO) had been talked about in the national media as possible detainees alongside state legislature figures throughout the West. Only the various governors commanded the National Guard – before federalisation took that away from them – yet state-level politicians believed that the National Guard belonged to the people of their state, not Walsh & the Pentagon. Interference came in how national guardsmen were supposed to support the federal agents making arrests. Some of it was overt, much more covert. It was illegal for that to be done and those in uniform, who’d been warned before the New Year against listening to those outside their command chain, broke the law in allowing for it to happen too. The FBI and Federal Marshals didn’t get the support which they were supposed to due to this subversion taking place.

Far away they might have been, but those in the Pentagon, all the way up to the Secretary of Defence, weren’t idiots. They knew what was happening soon enough. Reports of lethargic responses and apparent communications mix-ups, even National Guard units claiming they had gotten lost, came in thick and fast. Ferdinand relayed to the Chief of the National Guard Bureau the old saying ‘one is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times in enemy action…’ (before adding his own spin) ‘…and a hundred times is a f*cking mutiny!’ The readiness levels and the ongoing deployment structure of National Guard elements had been factored into their participation. No excuses washed with what happened. All across the West, there was an overarching deliberate effort to sabotage Restore Order where national guardsmen didn’t play the role which the operation called for. They were supposed to allow for federal agents to make all of those arrests and bring to an end the anarchy unfolding but, instead, helped allow for it all to continue.

Pierce and Rowan weren’t arrested. Neither were MAR nor Padley either. Walsh didn’t sent the Justice Department after them when so many back in Washington wanted to see the detention of some of the biggest figures with the sedition which was the idea of West America. Operation Restore Order was supposed to work without having them taken into federal custody. As to those he did go after, under half were arrested during the deployment off all of those FBI officers and Marshals. Faced with the opposition which they did, such successes were quite the achievement. Alas, few would see it that way when the criticism came. The circumstances surrounding the detentions and the failures seen elsewhere did the opposite of what Walsh intended. There was no ending of the insurrection, only the heartening of those who held the cause so dear. Moreover, the federal action sent many who had been trying to sit on the fence tumbling either one way or the other. No longer was there the possibly for many to claim that they neither supported nor opposed Walsh on the matter: there was afterwards one side to be on in such an utterly divisive issue that trumped everything else.

[James G]

41 – State’s rights

The morning after, Carmen Espinoza Diaz, Governor of New Mexico, made a televised statement outside the State Capitol in Santa Fe. She told the federal government to ‘stay out of her state’. The people of New Mexico no longer would ‘stand for federal invasion’. Don’t come back, she told Justice Department federal agents, or ‘face the consequences’. Espinoza’s words were carried across the nation, and then around the globe too. She was furious at what had happened the day beforehand and let it all out. It had only been a few weeks back, in early December 2028, that Espinoza had considered going to the Justice Department in DC and telling the then Attorney General Underwood that she had been approached by Padley & Pierce with the intention of having her help pull her state out of the union. She hadn’t been in favour of that at all and regarded what the vice president and California’s governor had been talking about to be the most serious threat to New Mexico imaginable. The talk of secession from them back then had been something which she had been utterly opposed to. Her words on January 2nd 2029 told a very different story. She moved to declare that federal agents were effectively banned from New Mexico at her command. Whether she would enforce that, and what would be the result of trying to, no one knew. It had been said though, openly too, and she was the first governor from the West to make such a statement where there was what many interpreted as her defining her state’s rights in firm opposition to the rest of the country’s rule.

Up in neighbouring Colorado later that same day, Governor Rowan addressed gathered journalists at the Governor’s Mansion. He told them that like New Mexico, his state had seen the entry the night before of an influx of federal agents arresting Colorado citizens on what he regarded as illegitimate charges. There was the ‘invasion’ too which he spoke of where private military contractors engaged by the Department of Homeland Security had arrived to secure federal property. All were unwelcome in his state. Colorado had the right as a ‘sovereign state’, he said, to demand that they leave. That he did: ‘go home’, Rowan declared. His remarks, plus what Espinoza had said earlier, were heard clearly in DC. Neither state had the rights which their governors said that they had and for such comments to be made meant that the two of them were now considered to be joining others engaged in sedition and attempted secession. From the Justice Department, the Acting AG called over to the White House (after being at both Blair House and Camp David for some time, Walsh was back there) and told the president that he wanted to have the two of them arrested. What they had come out with was just as bad as what Ashby, Carville, King, Gutierrez & others sought for federal detainment had said previously.

Walsh gave permission for the process of indicting Espinoza and Rowan to begin. Charges were to be drawn up and readied though there would only be action taken upon his word. The president then had the Acting AG stay on the line while he started a conference call with others at the top level of his administration. The results of the previous day’s activities with regard to Operation Restore Order were gone over with the including of what had been happening that morning as it continued. Ashby and Gutierrez were both still not in custody and there were others still on the run with less of a public profile than them two. Major disturbances had eased off somewhat in the West yet they were still not over. FBI Director Cohen reported that his agents were engaged in the hunt for the kidnappers of a pair of USCIS employees – office staff, not anyone senior at the Citizenship & Immigration Service – but had very few leads to go on. Ferdinand explained in more detail about the complicity suspected with National Guard elements out West when their supporting role for Restore Order had been sabotaged by governors & state political figures.

No one brought him any good news. All Walsh wanted was for all of the trouble and unrest to end. He sought that conclusion so his term in office would finish with the nation – somehow – in a better state than when he entered the Oval Office almost four years before. What he was told showed that that wasn’t going to be the case unless he would turn Operation Restore Order into the success which it was supposed to be and it lived up to its name. Ferdinand and the Joint Chiefs wanted to do what the plan had initially called for and deploy regular elements of the US Armed Forces into the West: Walsh’s chief-of-staff once more convinced him that that would be a terrible idea. Of his own volition, the president came to the notion of using further national guardsmen instead. Those from other states would enter the West and help enforce order where arrests could be made of those acting against the United States and there would be a complete cessation of political violence. That wasn’t possible, his Secretary of Defence informed him. To federalise National Guard units from other states and deploy them into the West could need the approval of the state governors into where they would be sent. That wasn’t going to come. Espinoza and Rowan, plus Pierce too, weren’t going to give the nod. If it was tried anyway, it would be illegal. Walsh spoke of using an executive order. He and the Acting AG discussed the possibly of doing that but Ferdinand was adamant that it couldn’t be done. What was needed was the US Army and the US Marines, bringing with them their many military police units too, and the issue would be resolved. An exasperated Ferdinand told his president that every hour wasted made the situation less likely to eventually succeed and cost lives. Walsh wouldn’t budge though. He didn’t want to send in troops, not regulars anyway. That was what dictatorial regimes elsewhere in the world did and he wouldn’t follow their lead.

Concluding the tele-conference, Walsh told the Justice Department to keep on adding additional federal agents to those already in the West. He wanted more arrests made including those two governors when he took that step. Ferdinand was instructed to do all that was possible in making federalised national guardsmen in the West follow orders while participating in Restore Order. When Ferdinand later spoke to President-elect Roberts, the Secretary of Defence told him that it was a whole load of nothing that Walsh was doing to reserve the failures met during the supposed crushing of the ongoing insurrection. Both the Secretary of the Army (not a Cabinet-level post) and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau (a member of the Joint Chiefs) later informed Ferdinand that if the president and the Acting AG did try to use an executive order to circumvent the law on where national guardsmen could be sent to, against the wishes of the state’s which they entered, they would each resign. They wouldn’t serve under a president who would be starting a civil war because such actions would cause that if nothing else did.


Images from Operation Restore Order and political commentary about Walsh’s attempt to put down what he had declared to be an insurrection completely dominated the media as January 2029 began. Coverage was all encompassing with everyone’s opinion sought. Patrick O’Shea, Massachusetts’ junior senator, who the DNC had wanted the previous Summer to run as MAR’s running mate in the presidential race (she’d said Hell No to that), made an appearance on the web-radio talk show Connor’s Corner. The subject of what was going on out West was, naturally, all that the two of them talked about. The host attacked what he called ‘Western exceptionalism’ (that had been said before by others) when it came to politicians in California & elsewhere as well as suggesting that what those out there were trying to create was a ‘new Confederacy’. O’Shea – whom MAR and many progressives across the nation regarded as a privileged phony – countered those assertions. He spoke of the founding fathers of the United States and how they had stood up to oppression. They were called traitors by the British Empire, he said, yet had fought for an idea which they had believed was right and one which many in America at that time hadn’t agreed with them on the merits of it. Calvin Connor suggested with horror that O’Shea was defending what was going on. No, his guest told him, not at all. The senator said that he was just explaining the reasoning of those out West: they believed that they had the right to rebel against an undemocratic system of oppression just as the nation’s founding fathers had done so. Denying that he was back-peddling when Connor asked if he was, O’Shea said that he didn’t support the cause of those who wanted to see a West America. They were wrong in their beliefs and were endangering the lives of countless Americans by their actions. O’Shea was just trying to explain things…

Excerpts from O’Shea’s appearance on Connor’s Corner were with rapid haste put to use by the Republicans. They only used the ‘good stuff’, that of a senior Democrat supposedly making excuses for secession, was put into video clips and quotes. What he said won him no friends anywhere. Those out West had no time for someone like O’Shea. He had won office on his family name – who his grandfather and great-uncle had been many decades past – and claimed to speak for the underprivileged. O’Shea had never faced struggle nor adversary in his life and he certainly wasn’t fighting for the causes which they were. He was a fraud as far as they were concerned. Among Democrats elsewhere in the country, they were furious at how he had put his foot in his mouth. His remarks were a gift to the Republicans to take out of context and use against all Democrats with abandon. His fellow Massachusetts senator, Laura Yorke, had been leading the fight in the public arena against support for West America… with some people already talking about a 2032 presidential election run for her. In an off-the-record comment to a journalist, she called him a wholly unrepeatable & hate-filled name. On-the-record, she savaged his arguments about what West America was all about. Those out West weren’t fighting against oppression and for democracy, she said, but rather acting out of a sense of entitlement to the detriment of the rest of the country. Like her, so many other Democrats didn’t want O’Shea to ever open his stupid mouth again!

What Vice President Padley had said to the House Minority Leader on New Year’s Eve about the supposed right of states out West to organise plebiscites on secession came to the attention of the Republicans too. Congress was to open on January 3rd and it was ammunition for a course of action which Senate Majority Leader Green and House Speaker Fraser wanted to follow. There was a recording of those comments and, if he chose to try to not release them, they decided that they would force the House Minority Leader to hand them over. Impeachment of her had been discussed when Walsh was at Walter Reed under observation for suspected poisoning but put off then. What she had said was considered to be finally enough. The two of them, plus further members of their party, prepared comments to make and speeches to deliver as they got ready to begin that process once Congress was in session. She was no longer vice president in a couple of week’s time and impeaching her wouldn’t do any real harm to the cause of West America. Public statements to the contrary on that latter could come but the real aim was to land another strong blow against the Democrats.

In addition, the Republican leadership was also hearing that there would be many, many absences come the next day by Democrats who held Senate and US House seats in Congress. Nothing was confirmed yet it looked likely that the majority of those from the West were organising some sort of ‘boycott’. Green and Fraser waited to see how that would play out and how they could make use of that for their own good: that would really help with making Padley’s impeachment faster and certain to go through. Each agreed that it was a foolish thing for those Democrats to do while seeing the potential for another partisan victory coming. Those Democrats and their infighting & idiocy were the gift which just kept on giving!

[James G]

42 – Boycott

Vice President-elect Mitchell made an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press. In conversation with the host about the situation out West, the former North Carolina governor told her that once President-elect Roberts took the oath of office, there would be an immediate restoration of order. Mitchell criticised President Walsh’s Operation Restore Order and said that the ending of both unrest and rebellion against the United States would be firmly done. There would be no longer ‘any messing around’ and the ‘full force of the law’ would be applied. The host questioned him on the use of the term ‘rebellion’: was that what was happening? Mitchell replied that he had no hesitation in calling it that. Rebellion was underway. Activities of political figures and rabble-rousing activists had moved beyond sedition and advocating secession, he told her and NBC’s viewers. There was insurrection and rebellion going on. That would all be put down with those involved brought up on federal charges and seeing the inside of a prison cell once the new president took office. Asked about the news which had come overnight about a high-profile arrest and whether that meant that Walsh’s plan of action was in fact working, Mitchell shook his head. Judy Ashby, Nevada State Assembly Speaker, was in custody but there were already ongoing issues with her detention and extradition. She had been detained when at MSNBC’s studios in San Francisco and taken to a California holding centre. Charges against her had been filed in Nevada yet the governors of those two states had already said that there would be no cooperation on extradition. Mitchell attacked their actions in interfering in a federal prosecution. In federal court Ashby would be arraigned, he said, and that wasn’t a matter for neither California nor Nevada. As to other activities of those two governors, Mitchell asserted that each of them were guilty of rebellion and had more of a hand in allowing the unrest in the West to continue than Ashby did. In response to a question as to whether the incoming Roberts Administration would want to see that pair arrested too, Mitchell told her that the president-elect would make that decision but, personally, he told the show’s host that he wanted to see the two of them charged.

It was a Sunday morning live broadcast when Mitchell made that appearance. The same day, January 3rd, a new Congressional Session was to open. The host asked him about the boycott which had been announced late the night before by Members of Congress from the West. That had been arranged by a coalition of senators and congressmen/women calling themselves the Campaign for a Democratic America. They were all Democrats from the eight Blue states out in what they referred to as West America. To Congress they weren’t coming, in protest against Operation Restore Order. Mitchell said that they were selfish fools. What about the voters who had elected them? Where was their voice to be heard in DC if those Members of Congress stayed at home? The vice president-elect was asked whether those boycotting the day’s proceedings would regret it. Asked to clarify what she meant, the show’s host explained that was Mitchell expecting his fellow Republicans to take advantage of the absence of so many Democrats from the Senate and the House. Mitchell replied that Republican Members of Congress wouldn’t be ‘taking advantage’ when a large number of Democrats chose to stay away out of stubbornness: his party colleagues were only going to speak and act on behalf of all Americans, no matter where they lived. All those who made an attendance, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, were there doing their constitutional duty in serving their constituents and the country. Mitchell expected them to put their nation first, to remember that the eyes of the country were on them and to serve as patriots.

The Campaign for a Democratic America wasn’t a political organisation nor anything beyond a name. When it was first used, Republicans and the right-wing media jumped all over it though. Attack lines run such as ‘those politicians out West are arguing for a one party state’ (based on the ‘Democratic’ being a partisan term) and ‘America is a democracy & they want to make American undemocratic instead’. No good response was expected by those behind the name. Whatever term they used, such attacks would come. They weren’t aiming to win over that particular audience anyway. What the many Members of Congress involved were seeking to do was to speak with one voice and show their strength in numbers. As far as they were concerned, the name fitted the purpose it was desired for. In press releases and through a newly-created website – the latter with video recordings of individual testimonies as to why they were doing what they were –, it was explained that there would be a boycott of Congress by all of them until Walsh ceased his ‘federal invasion’ of the West. The ‘attack on the people’ must stop, they declared.

No mention was made as to whether those Members of Congress were going to meet elsewhere at any time yet there were many Republicans who started asking such a question. Would that be what was coming next?

The eight states in the West had one hundred and eleven members of Congress between them: sixteen senators and ninety-five representatives. Only fourteen of those elected posts were filled by Republicans with no senators other than Democrats. Two elected representatives had been killed since their election, another was being sought for arrest by the Justice Department and a fourth – MAR – had been declared by the US Supreme Court to be not a citizen. The thirteen Republicans (they’d had one of their killed) all went to DC and so did an equal number of Democrats: all other Democrats, including Gutierrez and MAR, stayed away in protest. Those Democrats that did go were those who didn’t agree with what their colleagues were doing with several having openly spoken up in the strongest opposition to West America. By joining them, their party colleagues who likewise made the trip would be tarred with the same brush by others who didn’t. Senator Tommy Dunbar from Arizona was that lone Democratic senator from the West who went to Washington. He told a journalist upon arrival in DC that he wouldn’t be going back there until the situation was resolved: his life was in danger back in his home state.


Members of Congress were sworn in across both chambers. Hawaii didn’t have a single elected official present while New Mexico & Nevada had just the one: Colorado & Oregon two each, Arizona five, Washington state six and California nine were the other totals. In addition, the vice president, who served as the President of the Senate, was missing too. The first day of a new session wasn’t usually one for much beyond the swearing-in of new members and ceremonial functions. However, in light of the ongoing situation with the Insurrection Act in force, and having control of both chambers, the Republicans moved to see action taken by Congress. There were emergency votes arranged in support of the Insurrection Act. In the House and the Senate, there were huge majorities backing that federal action. Only a few Democrats and a handful of libertarian-minded Republicans voted against what Walsh had done on New Year’s Eve. Big speeches were made from politicians on both sides of the aisle where the political violence, including the assassination of a fellow Member of Congress, was deplored. The Republican leadership then moved to begin the process of having each chamber organise emergency committees to investigate what was called – echoing what Mitchell had said earlier that day – rebellion against the United States. With their existing majorities, plus the absence of so many Democrats, the Republicans were able to set the agenda for how those would function and dominate the membership. Even if those who had signed up to the Campaign for a Democratic America had been in attendance, things would have gone generally as they did with these. However, comments in the media would attack their absence in allowing for the Republicans to do what they did with ease and set what was alleged to be a partisan agenda.

In the US House, Majority Leader Fraser had one of his minions put forward an emergency bill, which was co-sponsored by others at the leadership’s direction, to begin the process of disqualifying the absent representatives. The Fourteen Amendment was invoked by the bill’s authors where it dealt with those ‘engaged in insurrection and rebellion’. The law was clear in some ways but not in others. That bill put one interpretation upon it. Other Democrats kicked up a stink on constitutional grounds. The whole thing looked likely to drag out for some time and commentators thought that, months down the line, it would all end up in the Supreme Court. Whether they would get their way eventually, the Republicans couldn’t be sure. They were starting something though, something for the media to talk about and the country to digest. Another bill was likewise introduced in the House. Articles of Impeachment against Padley were read out by a Republican congressman. The vice president was said to have committed treason, not the usual ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’ alleged in previous impeachments, and the intention as to get the House Judiciary Committee to investigate. Democrats joined with the Republicans in support of this. The former felt that they had no other choice due to what she had said and done since the presidential election. As with the disqualification of Members of Congress, that impeachment wasn’t going to be an overnight thing but it was certain to proceed faster. The numbers in both chambers for a conviction looked sure to be there, especially since a Senate conviction would require a two-thirds majority and there were all of those absences. Fraser would later tell an ABC journalist that he hoped to see Padley removed from the office which she had disabused ahead of January 20th when Roberts was due to be inaugurated.

Dunbar made a speech in the Senate where he criticised those agitating for a West America and that echoed much of what he had said outside of the Capitol. Moreover, he implored the US Government to ‘act decisively’ against those involved in insurrection rather than ‘messing around’. If that wasn’t done, there would soon be civil war. Over in the House, Congresswoman Mary Beth Sheldon told other representatives – plus watching Americans as her remarks went out live – of all that she had faced in the past few weeks while arguing against West America. She was a Democrat representing part of Orange County in Southern California: her constituents wanted to remain part of the United States. The death threats, the burning down of her house and the gunshots fired against the vehicle she had been travelling in had come from those who said they were Democrats like her but who wanted to live in a different country. Sheldon wanted what her fellow Westerner Dunbar did: for Walsh to send in the regular elements of the US Armed Forces and crush what she called a ‘murderous rebellion’. Tears ran down her face as she relayed the story of how the lives of her partner and children had been threatened by those with the means to carry that out. Those people, those terrorists out there, had to be brought to heel. She couldn’t go back because of them. They held hostage the fates of tens of millions of Americans across the West, Sheldon continued, who voted Democrat, Republican & third party, with there not being anything like a majority for secession or even a new country to be formed. It was an undemocratic cliché who had a grip on power. They must be stopped!

[James G]

My notepad, with a detailed plan for update #43, went in the washing machine yesterday. Fun times!
I'll be back writing today.
Same ideas, possibly a new take on things. I guess without this particular butterfly things might have been different from how the story will continue yet, maybe it'll just be the same.

[lordroel]

Feb 20, 2021 15:31:37 GMT James G said:

My notepad, with a detailed plan for update #43, went in the washing machine yesterday. Fun times!
I'll be back writing today.
Same ideas, possibly a new take on things. I guess without this particular butterfly things might have been different from how the story will continue yet, maybe it'll just be the same.

Wait you notepad went in the washing machine, well that is more original then you dog eating it. 

[James G]

Feb 20, 2021 15:38:05 GMT lordroel said:

Feb 20, 2021 15:31:37 GMT James G said:

My notepad, with a detailed plan for update #43, went in the washing machine yesterday. Fun times!
I'll be back writing today.
Same ideas, possibly a new take on things. I guess without this particular butterfly things might have been different from how the story will continue yet, maybe it'll just be the same.

Wait you notepad went in the washing machine, well that is more original then you dog eating it. 

I spent a Saturday afternoon picking bits of wet paper out of my socks. There were other things in there too: ORBATs, ideas for stories etc.
It was no fun.