The End of the Rump: ‘What shall we do with this bauble? Here, take it away.’

The Spontaneous Military Coup

Cromwell dissolving the Rump Parliament. Source: Alamy Stock Photos

THE COMMONWEALTH forces soon reduced the remaining resistance in Scotland. In short order, George Monck defeated the scattered remnants of Royalist, Engager and Covenanter opposition to the effective imposition of an English settlement in Scotland. That settlement was the same one as introduced to England: religious toleration for all but Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. Although the Church of Scotland loathed an arrangement that allowed Independents free worship, they had no choice. The taking of Stirling, Perth and Dundee (the latter with much slaughter, including of non-combatants) by the New Model Army throughout the late summer of 1651 followed by the news of Worcester, ended the last resistance of the Scottish government. With its final defeat, the Solemn League and Covenant also disappeared as a viable religious or political prospectus. During 1652, the Rump Parliament in England prepared legislation that effectively unified Scotland and England into a new Commonwealth. In March 1653, the Scottish General Assembly was suppressed: there was now only one, republican, government for both countries.

Similarly in Ireland, Sir Henry Ireton and later Edmund Ludlow, slowly took the remaining Confederate fortresses one by one, and by spring 1653, the organised Irish rebellion was finally over. Ireton himself did not see the final victory as he died of the plague during his ill-advised siege of Limerick. The settlement was harsh. All who had supported the rebellion, which included a substantial proportion of the Old English, had their lands confiscated and handed over to loyalists or Protestant settlers. Ireland became, in effect, a province of the Commonwealth: Charles Stuart’s three Kingdoms were no more.

With the fighting over, the Council of State, the Rump and the Army needed to decide what form of constitutional settlement now should be introduced following the final crushing of Royalism. The existing Commonwealth had been a pragmatic response to the monarch’s execution, continued warfare and the questionable legitimacy of the Rump Parliament, but now there could be no deferral of the debate as to what type of government should replace the Stuart monarchy. When the conflict began, the majority of Parliamentarians had no intention of replacing the king with some form of republicanism. Even Cromwell was a late convert to the cause, initially taking the view that a reformed monarchy could be preserved, perhaps under Henry Duke of Gloucester, Charles I’s youngest son, but as with so many of his Parliamentarian colleagues, the second civil war turned Cromwell to the view that monarchy itself was the problem, not simply the individual who wore the crown.

The starting point however was the Rump Parliament itself. Compromised though it was by Pride’s Purge it was nonetheless the linear descendant of what was still, technically, the Parliament of 1640. In early 1652, the Rump voted for its own dissolution from November 1654 and then set about attempting to deal with the backlog of legislation shelved for the duration of the civil wars. This included legal reform, debt relief, the establishment of a new national church to replace Episcopacy and the sequestration and sale of Royalist property. In addition, the Rump was tasked with producing propsals for the post war system of government - major questions such as parliamentary terms, the extent of the franchise, whether or not there should be a second chamber now the Lords was abolished, and should there be an equivalent senior governor of the nation to replace the office of King. These tasks were gargantuan, but the Rump’s efforts to address them seriously were half-hearted at best. Rather than deal with issues of reform and principle, the MPs of the Rump preferred to delve into matters of citizens’ personal behaviour, such as adultery and blasphemy, and obsess about the appropriateness of traditional Christian feast days and their possible pagan origins. It was in the early 1650s that the Commonwealth’s dour reputation as the Puritan regime that took down Maypoles, closed theatres and banned Christmas, took hold.

In the meantime, the Army was becoming impatient. Despite the Commonwealth having embarked on a needless naval war with Dutch Republic, the Army was idle, outside residual fighting in Ireland and northern Scotland, and remained radical in its political thinking. In August 1652, it issued a petition to the Rump that called for the dissolution of Parliament, early elections, the abolition of tithes, the settlement of military pay arrears, and the establishment of a National Treasury accountable to the new Commonwealth government. The difficulty for the Rump, and to some extent, Cromwell, was that the Army no longer spoke with one voice. Only Cromwell remained of the former Grandees and the coming men were John Lambert and Thomas Harrison, the victors of the third civil war. Whereas Lambert espoused a constitutional egalitarian republicanism, familiar from the Putney Debates, Harrison was a Fifth Monarchist and as such wished to see the Parliamentary system abolished altogether and replaced by a small conclave of the godly who would ready the former Kingdoms for the Second Coming, due, in the view of the Fifth Monarchists, at any time. What united the factions however, was their contempt for the Rump Parliament.

The Rump’s policy of sequestering Royalist lands to pay for the Dutch war, particularly irritated the New Model Army’s officer class, who had made frequent promises during the wars to Royalist hold outs that their continued ownership of their lands would be guaranteed, in return for a surrender. This apparent reneging on that promise offended military honour. This added to a general sense of self-serving indolence and drift associated with the Rump and led to a gathering of officers in London who requested Cromwell that he support the petition and forcibly dissolve the Rump. Cromwell was open to such an entreaty. He could see little benefit in maintaining the Rump Parliament any longer, and was tempted by the thought of assuming an overall role as “Protector”, either as the constitutional head of a republic or to usher in in a constitutional monarchy under Henry of Gloucester. However, what happened next did not have the appearance of a premeditated move against Parliament.

Matters reached a head in spring 1653. On 19th April, Cromwell, Harrison and Lambert met with sympathetic MPs and insisted the Rump needed to develop an immediate succession plan under which it should should dissolve itself rapidly, set a date for elections and hand over power to a transitional committee of forty godly men. To his alarm, Cromwell later heard Parliament was indeed debating succession, but not the plan put to MPs by the officers. The Rump’s apparent intention was to continue in place indefinitely. Cromwell and Harrison immediately attended the House of Commons and took their seats. After listening to the debate, Cromwell eventually rose and made a furious speech condemning the continuance of the Rump with words that have since become famous: ‘it is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately… how can you be a Parliament for God’s People? Depart I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.’ With that Harrison brought in thirty or so musketeers who, amongst much protest, cleared the chamber. The mace, the symbol of the Speaker’s authority, was removed from the Commons, contemptuously dismissed as a “bauble”. Cromwell and the Army had dissolved the Rump by force.

Essentially the Long Parliament had been terminated by a military coup. Although the forced dissolution gave every appearance of being a spontaneous act, Cromwell moved swiftly to consolidate his position by informing the Council of State it had no further business to undertake as the legislature had been removed. A bloodless revolution had occurred that had removed the final element of the pre-war monarchical settlement - King, Lords and Commons - with no opposition or complaint from the country at large. The Rump, ineffectual and unpopular, passed from British history with barely a whimper.

Oliver Cromwell, once an obscure country MP and, in the early days of the civil wars, a cavalry colonel among many, was now master of all he surveyed: victorious general, regicide, breaker of Scottish Presbyterianism and the Irish Rebellion, and now a morally upright revolutionary too. The political future of the former three Kingdoms was now, effectively, in the hands of one man.

23rd December

The Year They Cancelled Christmas

Source: schools-history.com

On this day in 1652, the so-called “Rump Parliament” of the English Commonwealth, dominated by austere Puritans under the watchful eye of Oliver Cromwell, issued an ordnance to ban the Christmas holiday. Having already got rid of celebrations the Puritans deemed as having pagan origins, with particular reference to May Day, they then turned to Christmas. The ordnance declared ‘No Observation shall be had of the five and twentieth day of December, commonly called Christ-mass Day.’ Enforcement was not easy amongst a population already wearying of the joyless rule of the Commonwealth. Riots broke out in towns where Roundhead officers attempted to remove greenery from churches and other public places. However Parliament, backed by the no-nonsense force of the New Model Army, had their way and the twelve day festival disappeared from England for eight years, and was never restored to its medieval glory.

Christmas was reclaimed in 1660 when the Commonwealth fell and Charles II finally regained his throne. Although this must be considered a good thing, it is a shame some of the alternative names for the Day the Puritans came up with are no more. These include gems such as: The Old Heathens’ Feasting Day, Multitude’s Idle Day and, my favourite, Satan’s Working Day.

Today in Christian History

Today is Thursday, April 20th, the 110th day of 2023. There are 255 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

1479: Death of Alexander who founded the Orthodox monastery of Oshevensk, experienced miracles, and was a notable spiritual counselor.

1529: At the Second Diet of Speyer, the term “Protestant” is first applied to participants of the Reformation. The term was taken from the Protestatio, a statement by the reformers challenging the imperial stance on religion.

1558: Death of Johannes Bugenhagen, a leading Lutheran reformer, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, and the pastor of the city church there. Bugenhagen had helped Luther with his German Bible translation as well as translating the Bible into Low German himself.

1653: Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament, so-called because it consisted of only a few representatives who still remained. Cromwell lectures them on their vices and their uselessness, saying he is doing this at God’s command: “Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. Go!”

1676: Death of Baptist minister John Clarke, a founding father of Rhode Island, and the agent who obtained the colony’s charter from King Charles II in 1663.

1898: C.H. Spurgeon’s London tabernacle burns down. Efforts to rebuild it commence at once.

1962: Theologian Karl Barth is featured on the cover of Time magazine.

1988: Wilson Rajil Sabiya, a Lutheran theologian, writes a letter to General Ibrahim Babangida, President and Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, alerting him to Muslim efforts to make Nigeria an Islamic country by infiltrating the police force.

2001: A Peruvian Air Force aircraft shoots down a private airplane carrying missionaries, killing Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter, Charity.

so evil that i have to write essays when i have a cold

i love how they give historical events sick ass names sometimes, like The Great Heathen Army, The Harrowing of the North, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Pride's Purge, The Glorious Revolution, the Reign of Terror, etc. I also love when they give them extremely silly names removed from context, like The Diet of Worms, the Pig War, the War of the Golden Stool, and the Rump Parliament

1650

Aziraphale: they are still closed.

Crowley: I did tell you.

Aziraphale: but it seemed like such a lovely idea! Everyone voting on everything! And they’re very god-fearing, this lot.

Crowley: sure, but—

Aziraphale: besides, a ‘Rump Parliament’! Honestly, it feels a bit jolly, doesn’t it?

Crowley: more like a Sunday Roast maybe…

Aziraphale: and Lord Protector! Sounds like such a nice thing.

Crowley: yes, Angel, but—

Aziraphale: *sigh* but as you said, they closed the theatres, and they are not reopening.

Crowley: …Well?

Aziraphale: …

…

…you were right, you were right, I was wrong, you were right…

~ Andrew Carrick Gow, "Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament" (1907)

As far as I can tell, this painting either depicts a dramatised version of Pride's Purge of the Long Parliament (7th December 1648), which was actually conducted by Col. Thomas Pride; or Oliver Cromwell angrily dissolving the Rump Parliament (1653). You can read more about both here

via wikipedia

#OTD in 1661 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is ritually executed more than two years after his death, on the 12th anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.

On 20 April 1653 Cromwell dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as the Barebones Parliament, before being invited by his fellow leaders to rule as Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland from 16 December 1653. Oliver Cromwell’s skull has changed hands many times since the Lord Protector lost exclusive use of it in 1658. After the…

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can’t believe they sincerely and honestly named a parliament “the Rump”

The Cybergod

The Cybermen, cold, logical, unfeeling, yet they have a concept of God.

Now what sources suggest this

Let’s start with the comic story “Conversion” in which the eleventh Doctor forces the Cybermen to see a vision of a “fearsome Cyber-god”

Whilst this may be fictional (as suggest by TARDIS wiki) to me as the Doctor also conjures up a vision of a Roman god for the Romans they are fighting, it is reaching into there inner mind.

Now on to the Next Source, the Video Game “Edge of Reality” in this we meet the Cyberreaper

A Cyberman who seems to have no physical form but instead forms it body from the destroyed Cybermen which surrounds them. They Travel through time nullifying the Cybermen enemies by sowing chaos in there timeline. And is described as Mythical

Now my Third Source in the Cybermen Comic Strip from DWM which reveals that Mondas also had it’s own Silurians and Seas Devils, know as Lizard King’s

They ruled as God-Kings of Mondas’s past and where worshiped by their ape slaves. And these apes where partially cyber converted and the technology used to create the apes and the Cybermen came from a Time Paradox.

Now onto the final and in my opinion most important source, the Book of the War. Now you may be thinking to yourself what does Faction Paradox have to do with the Cybermen? Well we have the Silversmith Coteries and the the Order of the Iron Soul both of which to me seem like the Cybermen, but I am Talking about a Cyber God, and so I will bring up Godparent Pinocchio a being who is clearly a Cyberman who has been infected by the Faction Paradox’s Biodata virus. They take the form of skeletal machine as they have cast of their outer armour, their insides and remaining biological components visible, and upon their face a doll like mask. They are described as having spent sometime among their people trying to convince them to join the Faction. And their appearance is we are told is that of their peoples god. The elusive Cyber God.

The Cybermen having a concept of God across several sources seems to suggest that they have a mythology and a religion of some, weather they admit to it or not the evidence is there. And one theme seems common Paradox. So perhaps the Cybermen don’t worship a physical god but they worship Paradox, something which is describe in Alien Bodies and Being “Divine and Perfect” and we all know the Cybermen seek perfection. So perhaps the Cybermen themselves are just another agent of Paradox, that would explain there contradictory backstory, not to mention that the Order of the Iron Soul (the Cybermen in the afterlife) act as the enforcer’s for the Rump Parliament (the Faction in the Afterlife). So may I Tentatively suggest that the Grandfather Created the Cybermen as a kind of Joke, they have the cool logic of the Great Houses but the Relgion and beliefs of the Faction (or then House) Paradox. We know that the Drashings where created by another renegade Homeworld who joined the Faction (and may be the Doctor). So there is a precedent for the Faction creating whole races as a kind of cruel joke.

The Contested Commonwealth: ‘Freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down,’

Radical Challenge to the New Regime

Cromwell Suppressing the Mutiny. Source: Alamy Stock Photos

THE KING was dead, but so then was political legitimacy. In some respects, the execution of Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy was a product of Parliamentary frustration and Charles’ own obduracy. There had been no plan or programme on the part of Parliament to suppress royal rule: the motivation of the House of Commons had been to restrict the power of the King, not to destroy it. Charles was not a tyrant but he was unnecessarily inflexible in his determination to implement the Book of Common Prayer and anachronistic in his adherence to absolutism. Unable to understand, let alone control, the nascent democratic forces facing him, the King by his own actions, drove his opponents to the ultimate action of “cruel necessity”.

But if the killing of Charles was unplanned and a result of the logic of renewed war, this did not make the business of replacing the centuries-old English monarchy any more straightforward for the Rump Parliament or the New Model Army. The Rump had declared the establishment of a “Commonwealth” to replace the monarchy as early as 4th January 1649 although in truth, this was chiefly the means by which Parliament could claim an authority by which to execute the King. However the effective destruction of the monarchical regime thereafter was swift: first all pro-Engagement MPs were excluded by statute from the Commons on 1st February, and then on 7th February, the ‘useless and dangerous’ House of Lords was abolished. On 17th-19th March the office of King (and therefore the automatic succession of Prince Charles) was disbanded and then the English monarchy was declared to be no more. With the removal of the Lords and of all pre-existing offices of state, England no longer possessed a government in traditional terms, so a Council of State was formed, with John Bradshaw at its head, and sub-committees formed to administer the armed forces, foreign affairs and Ireland.

Meanwhile Prince Charles and what remained of the Royalist court had gathered in the Dutch town of Breda. The news of his father’s execution understandably caused the prince much personal distress, but also posed a constitutional difficulty for him: if the Commonwealth had indeed abolished the monarchy what status did Charles now have? Luckily for the royal exile, there were parts of his father’s realms that did not accept the regicide. In Scotland, the Parliament in Edinburgh crowned the prince as King Charles II in absentia on 5th February 1649, but made their loyalty contingent on the new king signing the Solemn League and Covenant. In Ireland, James Butler, Earl of Ormrond, still officially Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, maintained his truce with the rebel Catholic Confederates and declared for Charles. This gave the prince two options - either to embrace Ormrond and his Faustian pact with the Irish rebels as his springboard to attempt to claim his throne, or to accept the offer of Scottish support despite this meaning the end of Anglicanism if an assault on the English Commonwealth was successful. Prince Rupert urged linking up with Ormrond despite the price being the extension of religious toleration to Catholics, given that Ormrond’s Irish army was 2,000 strong. However Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland to suppress the rebellion soon put paid to the notion of an Irish alliance to propel Royalism back into contention. The crowned heads of Europe, appalled as they may have been by the execution of the English King, offered no more than warm words to the prince: after all the Thirty Years War had only just concluded. Therefore like his father, Charles was forced to look to Scotland for support, despite the court in exile’s aversion to Presbyterianism.

Royalism in England however was undeniably dead: Preston and the execution of the monarch both demoralised and frightened what remained of the King’s party. With the fall of Pontefract Castle, the last Royalist hold out was gone. In the country at large there was no love for the Rump and little support for the abolition of the monarchy, but the overriding wish of the common people was for peace and stability, and the opportunity to repair the shattered English economy. If the Council of State could bring that about, then most would be willing to at least accept the new regime. Opposition to the Commonwealth came not, therefore, from a revanchist Royalism, but from the Radicals within the former Parliamentary coalition itself. The Levellers remained strong within the New Model Army and were deeply suspicious of the Council of State which, as far as they were concerned, had failed to deliver the Agreement of the People and had simply created a new non-democratic Parliamentary settlement without even the counter-balances of the authority of the Lords and the King. On 26th February John Lilburne put together a further polemic called England’s New Chains Discovered that demanded the abolition of the Rump Parliament and called for new elections based on universal male suffrage. Lilburne’s tract found a ready audience in the Army, who remained disgruntled at the continued absence of wartime pay arrears and at the prospect of having to fight again, this time in Ireland. Lilburne was arrested but made a passionate defence of his principles to a sitting of the Council of State. Cromwell, fearing another Leveller-incited mutiny, saw the danger of “Honest John’s” oratory and urged Bradshaw to ‘break’ Lilburne and his followers ‘or they will break you’.

Leveller discontent swelled as the Council of State began to crack down on their leaders, and Cromwell was asked to lead a 12,000 strong force to Ireland to defeat the Confederates (Fairfax turned the commission down). He proposed selecting regiments by lot and this process provided the pretext for a second Leveller-led mutiny in the Army. On 17th April, two regiments rebelled and refused to serve in Ireland. Although the mutiny was driven primarily by grievances about pay, there was also a stated reluctance to fight the Irish who were seeking their own freedom - an astounding position of political solidarity in extremely sectarian religious times. Cromwell and Fairfax both addressed personally the mutinous troops and succeeded in turning them around, recalling their battles together of old. The following month however, rebellions recurred, possibly provoked by the putting of John Lilburne on trial (he was later acquitted) and efforts were made by mutinous junior officers to consolidate the discontented regiments into a single rebel army based around Bristol.This was Cromwell’s worst nightmare - a return of civil war to England, but this time fought between former comrades of the New Model Army itself.

Cromwell and Fairfax again worked together to defuse the situation. At the head of 4,000 loyal troops the two Grandees marched on Bristol but let it be known they would support the mutineers’ demands to see the end of the Rump Parliament and, crucially, would make good the pay arrears. The commitment to the radical cause therefore began to waver and after a brief night-time skirmish on 13th May between die-hard Levellers and Fairfax’s troops, the rebellion collapsed. The action represented the last military involvement of Fairfax, an increasingly war-weary commander-in-chief. Perhaps this fight against his own soldiers convinced the the general that the time had come to step aside. His last service to the Army he loved was to deliver on his promise to pay the soldiers their arrears in pay. Three Leveller ringleaders were brought to court martial and executed but the majority of the mutineers were pardoned. With the end of the mutiny, significant Leveller influence within the Army dissipated and the group never regained significant political stature.

Further opposition to the Commonwealth was to be found from two utopian groups, the Diggers and the Fifth Monarchists. The Diggers, a millenarian communist group, led by a visionary pamphleteer name George Winstanley, preached common ownership of land and the group established a series of “colonies” at St George’s Hill, Windsor and Cobham, effectively occupying a number of free holdings without their owners’ consent. These colonies were run as agrarian communes, with land and produce held in common, decisions made by democratically elected leaders and a welcome extended to the dispossessed and fugitives from justice. The Diggers were also pacifists and believed in sexual equality. It became easy therefore for local landowners to portray the groups as lawless heretics and sexual deviants and in time the Rump authorised militias to put the Digger collectives down, drive them from the land they had appropriated and cast their agrarian social experiment into oblivion.

The Fifth Monarchists were very different to the Diggers whose religious principles were comparatively lightly worn. The “Fifth Monarchy Men” as they became known, believed that the end of days was at hand, signalled by the execution of the King, and that a fifth realm of latter-day saints was prophesied to take over the world (after the previous monarchies of the Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians and the Romans). The Fifth Monarchists believed themselves to be the vanguard of this divinely ordained new order. This belief made them implacable opponents of the Commonwealth, which they viewed as worldly and corrupt and, with the demise of the Levellers, the group developed a strong presence in the Army from whence they became a thorn in Oliver Cromwell’s side.

As for Cromwell himself, with the suppression of the mutinies and the grant of the command to re -conquer Ireland, he now became the pre-eminent political and military leader in the country, eclipsing in influence both the official heads of government and army, Bradshaw and Fairfax. The forthcoming Irish campaign was to cement both Cromwell’s power and his notoriety.

“A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses": Colin Powell.

With this quotation in mind let us look at the company Nigel Farage keeps.

Close to home is his French girlfriend Laure Ferrari.

Ferrari, who Farage met in 2007, is a French politician who has worked for “several right-wing to far-right political organisations." She was head of the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe, which was accused in 2017 of having illegally diverted public money to UKIP, the anti-European party of which Farage was a founding member.  She ran for the European Parliament as a candidate for the far-right  French party Debout la Republique.

Farrari is also a founding member of “The Mouvement" alongside Steve Bannerman. In Europe The Mouvement has attracted the attention of the right-wing Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungry. Orban has been condemned for his racist remarks, which were described as “pure Nazi text worthy of (Nazi propagandist) Goebbels.” (reported by CNN World:27/07/22)

Meanwhile in America, Steve Bannerman, at one time Donald Trump’s chief strategist, has been accused of being anti-Semitic, racist and making bigoted statements against women and Muslims. After a Unite The Right rally - led by   "white-supremacists, neo Nazis and alt-right atavists” - degenerated into violence Trump was forced to sack Bannerman. He was later jailed for contempt of Congress after refusing to provide information concerning Donald Trumps involvement in the US Capitol Riots and Trumps alleged attempts at overthrowing democracy.

Farage has described the convicted Trump as “a true friend" and as “the single most resilient and bravest person I have ever met in my life". Right-wing Trump has been  convicted on 34 separate felonies  after falsifying business accounts. On hearing the news Farage said he supports Donald Trump “more than ever."

Trump, as we know, is in turn a supporter of the right-wing dictator Vladimir Putin, a man who is sacrificing his fellow countrymen in an illegal war he started when he invaded Ukraine.  The Atlantic (01/03/24:

“Adoration of the Russian leader, who murders his domestic opponents, kidnaps thousands of Ukrainian children, and interferes in American presidential elections, is so hard to comprehend..." 

Some explain this friendship as part of Trumps desire to conclude business deals with Putin’s Russia. The Atlantic has an alternative, more convincing explanation:

 “there’s a deeper, more nefarious truth about people on the right’s baffling unwillingness to criticize the Kremlin: They actually share its worldview.”

Like Putin, Trump has vowed to imprison his political opponents:

“Trump defends Vow To Prosecute Rivals Saying ‘Sometimes Revenge Can Be Justified.’ “ (New York Times 07/07/24)

Farage's friend rump has a total disregard for democratic elections and has now been indicted on charges relating to the January 6th Capital Riots when he refused to accept the verdict of the American people in the US Presidential elections of 2020.

To make matter worse last month this statement was posted  on Trumps Instagram account:

“WHAT’S NEXT FOR AMERICA?....INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH SIGNIFICANTLY DRIVEN BY A UNIFIED REICH”

Such language and sentiment is a clear reference to fascism and the German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Talking of Adolf Hitler brings us back to Nigel Farage.

On the BBC Election debate last Friday night Nigel Farage, along with all of the other candidates, was rightly critical of Rishi Sunak for leaving the D-day Memorial Commemorations early. But in the case of Farage’s condemnation there  is a glaring irony.

The D-day Memorial Commemorations were held to honour and remember the bravery and sacrifice of the men who risked and gave their lives for freedom and peace. Tens of thousands of men landed on the beaches of Normandy as part of a campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied Northern Europe. Their heroic actions and sacrifices marked  the beginning  of the end for Adolf Hitler and his fascist followers. We owe our freedom of today to these selfless individuals.

Farage told the nation that Sunak leaving the D-Day commemorations early “says a lot about him”. I would agree. But the irony is Mr Farage, the company YOU keep, and the friends YOU choose says volumes about YOU. The men on the Normandy beaches died to rid Europe of a right-wing dictatorship. Your right-wing friends show as much respect for democracy and human decency as did past European dictators. To misquote the Bible:

“Beware of false profits, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but are inwardly ravenous wolves. You will know them by their friends". Matthew 7:15-16

The Socialist Party (PS) – a heavyweight party of government just a few years ago but now a rump of its former self – voted overnight to "suspend" participation in the NUPES alliance with hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), Greens and Communists.

Its board accused LFI of "constantly stoking conflict" within the alliance, after former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon and his leadership circle refused to call Hamas's bloody October 7 assault on Israel a "terrorist" attack.

The largest left-wing party in France's 577-seat parliament, with 74 MPs, LFI's hard-charging style of total opposition to Macron and sometimes controversial stunts and remarks has often left its allies grinding their teeth.

Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure "is breaking up NUPES" over "a personal issue with me about Israel (and) Palestine," Melenchon wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday morning in a message that later appeared to have been deleted.

Faure had earlier told Socialist leaders that Melenchon "had been a unifying force, but today he has become an obstacle", calling for "radical change in the way we think about uniting" the left.

Yannick Jadot, former Greens presidential candidate, said that "we have to suspend our ties with LFI so long as they haven't strongly clarified their basic values".

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Tuesday LFI lawmaker Daniele Obono should face a criminal investigation on suspicion of justifying terrorism after she described Hamas as a "resistance" movement.

NUPES was formed last year after Macron failed to secure a majority in parliament despite being re-elected to the presidency.

But tensions quickly became apparent, including over an admission of domestic violence by a close Melenchon supporter, strategy to oppose the government's widely-resented pension reforms, the war in Ukraine and this summer's riots.

The Communist Party already had one foot out of the door, voting a resolution Sunday that said NUPES was at an "impasse" and calling for a "new type of union" on the left.

Some voices within the PS and Greens have sought to keep the alliance alive, echoing arguments from LFI that the left has little chance of success if it does not stand together.

(AFP)

any recommendations on comedic mods for new vegas? like quest/companion mods with a light tone since most mods wanna go the NVB approach. only one i've been able to find is the "new world parliament" series which is also kind of a horror mod by introducing a new terrifying species called "british people"

I know of some, but I don't play quest mods very often (since, y'know, they tend to go the NVB approach). But here are all the light/comedic ones I know off the top of my head/have in modlists that aren't edgy/super serious/dark;

MODS I HAVE PLAYED:

Benny Returns - The one and only Benny companion mod. Comes with a side quest. About as light in tone as the vanilla Benny sex scene but it deserves an obligatory mention from me.

Among Us But It's Fallout - Okay, this is literally a murder mystery. It can get kinda creepy. But like... it's Among Us.

The Caravan Tournament - A must-have mod for all Caravan enjoyers.

Boom to the Moon - Just as a heads-up, there IS some heavier content via terminal entries and the main quest revolves around finding a missing person, but overall this is one of the most fun mods I've ever played and the mod never takes itself too seriously.

Benrey Companion Mod - Brand new simple companion mod of Benrey from HLVRAI. I've only had him following me around for like a week and he's not even voiced nor does he have a quest but I fucking love him already.

Minimus Lanius - The Little Butcher - Imagine if Legate Lanius was like 3 feet tall and followed you around and he was being bullied by a 3-foot-tall General Lee Oliver. That's it, that's the mod.

Slimbo's Grand Day Out - Help a talking Centaur rescue his favourite teddy bear and acquire him as a companion. Very silly and one of the more entertaining mods I've streamed.

MODS I HAVE NOT PLAYED:

Rump's Presidential Race - I watched Zach and Mike at mikeburnfire play this mod and it's the first one that came to mind when you mentioned New World Parliament. I might not have included it on this list if it wasn't made by Jokerine, the creator of Boom to the Moon along with several other favourite mods of mine. I trust her with my copy of New Vegas and also my life. Anyway, this is a short satirical quest mod.

Sugarloaf's Christmas Adventure - Another Jokerine mod. I haven't seen anyone play this so I have no idea what it's like but it seems like a small, light-hearted holiday themed mod.

Buddy Chicken Companion - Gives you a tiny robotic chicken companion. Another Jokerine mod.

Dustworth - Classy Eyebot Follower - Another Jokerine companion mod featuring an eyebot wearing a top hat and monocle.

Bees For Sale. A Quest For Bees. - Short quest mod where you [checks notes] go on a journey to buy bees. I have no idea what this one's like but it's been on my To Stream list for ages.

This House Has Quests In It. - By the same creator as the bee quest I just mentioned, this quest is meant to be played in one sitting and features talking furniture. And that's all I know about it.

The Big Rescue - Another Jokerine mod where you rescue a stolen puppy.

Cooking in the Sand - Okay I have no idea if this one is actually light in tone or not. All I know is it's one big Breaking Bad reference.

Russia’s poor performance on the Ukrainian battlefield, and the growing belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat shouldn’t be taken at face value, has emboldened Western analysts and Russian dissidents to publicly call for “decolonization” of Russia itself. They are referring here to the vast Russian Federation, the successor of the Soviet Union that consists of 83 federal entities, including 21 non-Slavic republics. 

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an independent U.S. government agency with members from the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate, and departments of defense, state, and commerce, has declared that decolonizing Russia should be a “moral and strategic objective.” The Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum, comprising exiled politicians and journalists from Russia, held a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels earlier this year and is advertising three events in different American cities this month. It has even released a map of a dismembered Russia, split into 41 different countries, in a post-Putin world, assuming he loses in Ukraine and is ousted. 

Western analysts are increasingly pushing the theory that Russian disintegration is coming and that the West must not only prepare to manage any possible spillover of any ensuing civil wars but also to benefit from the fracture by luring resource-rich successor nations into its ambit. They argue that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the West was blindsided and failed to fully capitalize on the momentous opportunity. It must now strategize to end the Russian threat once and for all, instead of providing an off-ramp to Putin. 

But many others see a rump Russia as a more severe threat to global peace and security and warn against emasculating an enemy that, even when weaker than the West militarily and economically, still possesses almost 6,000 nuclear warheads, armed militias, and vast resources trapped in a sparsely populated landscape bordering China. 

Janusz Bugajski, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, has recently written a book called Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture. He argues that Western sanctions have squeezed Russian economy and there is a “disquiet in numerous regions over their shrinking budgets.” He advocates against providing security guarantees to Putin. 

Others who agree with this thinking say Putin’s defeat in Ukraine will destroy his strongman cult and expose him as a weak leader. Once the elites in the non-Slavic republics sense Moscow is neither rich enough to fill their pockets nor militarily strong enough to crush their dissent, they will rise. 

Sergej Sumlenny, director of the European Resilience Initiative Center in Berlin, and a former chief editor at Russian business broadcaster RBC-TV, said Putin has controlled the diverse nations by corrupting their elite and by instilling the dread of a Chechnya-style conflict. 

In 1991, after the Soviet Union crumbled, 14 of Russia’s nations declared sovereignty. The bloody campaign in Chechnya a few years later was designed to discourage and dissipate independence movements, while Putin’s heavily centralized policies brought the supposedly autonomous republics firmly under Moscow’s control. 

But the war in Ukraine has exposed Putin as a disillusioned, feeble man not worthy of the image he had cultivated, Sumlenny argued. 

“He was seen [in Russia] as a leader who could defeat anyone, and Ukraine was seen as so weak that it would be defeated without any effort,” Sumlenny told Foreign Policy over the phone from Berlin. “But now, everyone, including the ruling elite in republics and regions, can see that Moscow neither has the money nor a strong army.

“If you are a mafia boss the worst thing that can happen to you is that your subordinates suddenly realize that you are not as strong as you claimed to be.” 

There have been murmurs of discontent and resentment in parts of the Russian Federation for years. Five thousand miles away from Moscow, thousands in the Khabarovsk region in Russia’s Far East protested for months on end in 2020 against the arrest of their governor on spurious charges. They said the Kremlin stole their vote when it ordered the apprehension of Sergei Furgal, the man they elected to lead, and replaced him with a puppet.

The same year, protesters in the Republic of Bashkortostan agitated against limestone mining of what they deemed sacred hills. In 2018-19, people of the Arkhangelsk region, 700 miles north of Moscow, blocked roads and pitched tents to stop the Russian government from using their territory as a dumping ground for Moscow’s garbage. 

In the Republic of Tatarstan, a slow-burn nationalistic movement has been growing over the imposition of Russian language and being forbidden to switch to the Latin alphabet from Cyrillic script, as Tatars fight for more cultural autonomy. Bashkortostan has also protested to protect their local language and used slogans such as “No Language Means No Nation.”

More recently, as Putin announced partial mobilization and recruited a disproportionately large number of conscripts from poorer regions, protests flared in different parts of the country. Free Buryatia Foundation has been set up to help reservists avoid the recruitment in the Republic of Buryatia, while the Dagestan and Chechen republics—the latter whose leader Ramzan Kadyrov has pledged loyalty to Putin—have both said they have already fulfilled their conscript quota. Women came out in the city of Yakutsk, in Sakha Republic, and chanted, “Let our children live!” 

Experts cite protests in the past to illustrate that tensions have long existed in the region. Some believe that the current anti-mobilization protests will act as a unifier and galvanize independence movements across the Russian republics. That may be the case, but thus far the belief seems to rest more on hope, rather than on concrete intelligence or evidence of strong underground movements. 

For every argument made by the proponents of imminent Russian disintegration, there are more counterarguments. The truth is that there is an information vacuum deliberately maintained by Russia; and yet absence of information doesn’t by itself justify the theory. 

Experts point out that Russian citizens in the autonomous republics may fear Putin, but being anti-Putin does not necessarily mean being anti-Russia. And even for those states that genuinely desire to leave the Russian fold, there is no guarantee what follows will be democratic or friendly to the West. Experts fear many regions in the Russian Far East already lean toward China. Then there is the concern of civil wars and regional dictators fighting over Russian nukes. 

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former CEO of Yukos Oil Company and then a political prisoner in Russia, dismissed a peaceful disintegration of Russia and warned of regional wars. “First, Russia is tied into a single transport and economic mechanism,” Khodorkovsky said. He added that most of the resource rich regions don’t have access to the sea. “This sets up a potential conflict, between regions that have fewer people but vast resources and those that have a large population and ways of transporting resources.” These different regions will fight over borders and try to take control of nuclear weapons—a nightmare for the West. 

Khodorkovsky added that another dictator will spring in Moscow in place of Putin to reclaim lost territories. “Will the West cope with 15 to 20 new states that are at war with each other and possess nuclear weapons and their means of delivery?” he asked. “Will the West cope with the dictator who will unite the country again, at the request of the army and the impoverished [Russian] population?” 

Even though the Kremlin accuses the West of fomenting trouble inside Russia routinely, talk of Russian disintegration in Western capitals could raise nationalistic fervor and make Russians rally behind Putin. It could also be exploited by far-right supporters of Putin across Europe to strengthen anti-Americanism. Worse, it could feed the disinformation machinery and be quoted by conspiracy theorists online to build a parallel narrative. 

Russia’s disintegration is “highly improbable,” said Joana Deus Pereira, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, Europe. Even such insinuations in the West will increase “Putin’s appeal,” she added, giving some perspective on how nationalists Russians might see them. 

“After the Soviet Union collapsed Russians were told they were going to be closer to Europe,” she said. “That didn’t happen and it hurt Russian pride.

“In that context, look at Putin’s first speech where he said he would raise Russia from its knees, from humiliation. There is huge support for Putin from what we see and follow, and any talk or efforts to split Russia will only help him,” Deus Pereira said. Moreover, she said, the non-Slavic republics and regions don’t really want Russia to disintegrate, but only “recognition of their region, their own flag and more cultural independence within the Russian Federation.” 

Both those who believe a Russian collapse is imminent and those who warn against it agree on one thing: The Russian Federation has never truly been, well, a federation. Decentralization is the key, Khodorkovsky said. Whenever the time comes for the West to lift sanctions, it must negotiate with a government that has received legitimacy from the regions. 

“That will tip the scales in the direction of federalization,” Khodorkovsky said. 

William Dobson - Portrait of sir Richard Neville - 

oil on canvas, height: 114 cm (44.8 in) Edit this at Wikidata; width: 91.4 cm (35.9 in) 

National Portrait Gallery

William Dobson (4 March 1611 (baptised); 28 October 1646 (buried)) was a portraitist and one of the first significant English painters, praised by his contemporary John Aubrey as “the most excellent painter that England has yet bred”. He died relatively young and his final years were disrupted by the English Civil War.

Richard Neville DL (30 May 1615 – 7 October 1676) served in the English Civil War as a Royalist. He came to prominence as commander at the First Battle of Newbury in 1643 when he commanded the Royalist troops.

The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of religious freedom. It was part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648) wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The wars also involved the Scottish Covenanters and Irish Confederates. The war ended with Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

Unlike other civil wars in England, which were mainly fought over who should rule, these conflicts were also concerned with how the three Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland should be governed. The outcome was threefold: the trial of and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England. From 1653 the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland unified the British Isles under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658), and briefly his son Richard (1658–1659).

In England, the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship was ended, and in Ireland, the victors consolidated the established Protestant Ascendancy. Constitutionally, the outcome of the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, though the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty was legally established only as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.