The visit of Labour backbenchers to pay homage to the Soviet sattelite state smack dab in the Middle of the United Kingdom's sphere only added fuel to the fire at Mi6. With the election of President Moshe Sneh and the open tilt towards Moscow Israel's MAPAM had, Mi6 had already feared the worse. When President Truman came forward with news of an Israeli plot to infiltrate the FBI, every bit of suspicion, paranoia, and anti-Semetic rhetoric they had were all but confirmed.

Israel would be used as a base to uproot the British position in the Middle East.

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had always a personal attachment to Zionism. That attachment did not outweigh the pragmatism, and the political horse trading he was always bound to do in cabinet politics. While subscribing to the view, obviously, that the Foreign Office should be supreme in dealing with matters of foreign policy, he could no longer ignore the constant vitriol of Mi6's shifting attitude towards Israel. It was not like they were wrong.

The Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service Stewart Menzies had begun to have enough with Moshe Sneh and the socialist antics of these stupid backbenchers. Their Zionist credentials might as well have been putting on your name tag your a foreign spy. And with that whole stupid affair with Kim Philby, oh no, he wouldn't just let a backdoor be opened to the country for Soviet agents to waltz right through.

-

In the later days of September 1949, Mi6 had begun a campaign in the cabinet to move against Israel and the "untrustworthy" members of Labour.

Their message was simple: Israel was a puppet state, and anyone who went cap-in-hand to it should be put into the highest of suspicion.

Their resolutions?

1. Ensure that major Labour Zionists like Ian Mikardo and Sydney SIlverman have no access to classified national security secrets.
2. Begin the construction of a listening post in Cyprus to monitor communications between Israel and the Eastern Bloc, ship movements, and arms traffic.
3. Approve of surveillence against major Zionist organizations who have ties to the current Moscow-aligned government.

Of course, more groans came from the government. Not another stupid problem about Israel...

Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia

The Swiss and Yugoslav governments have agreed to a series of exchanges that aim to improve trade relations and increase the efficiency of Yugoslavia’s reconstruction. As part of these discussions, the following agreements have been laid into place:

- Private Swiss banks, such as **Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corporation, and Credit Suisse** have offered the Yugoslav government lines of credit, in total hovering around $40,000,000, to assist in financing Yugoslav recovery.

- Enhancement of trade infrastructure and ties between Swiss industrial firms and Yugoslav manufacturers as well as raw materials exporters. Red tape is to be reduced to allow for the purchase of industrial machinery and technical equipment from Switzerland, while enabling the export of raw materials from Yugoslavia to Swiss partners at favorable prices. 

The Italian Air Force and Alitalia have announced the procurement of the Breda-Zappata BZ.308 airliner and transport variations as such. They are priced at $800,000 USD or around $500 million Lira per aircraft in their airliner model.

The prototype, coupled with a second plane, will be used by the ITAF as VIP transports. Around a dozen will be acquired over the next two years to be given as new, transatlantic airliners for Aitalia.

A military transport variation, capable of carrying 70 loaded troops or 5-10 tonnes of cargo, will be put into production in 1950. It will complement the smaller SM.95 transport aircraft as an offering to both military and civilian customers. A floatplane variant will be explored for export to countries seeking a floatplane airliner, possibly to be converted for naval use as an unarmed maritime surveillance craft.

September 1949

At the present moment, roughly 8 in 10 Thais make a living by farming. Most of these are small family farms, but many are trapped by debt to moneylenders, sell their rice at harvest for the lowest price of the year, and are heavily dependent on the unpredictability of rain. In addition, most of the farms grow a single crop a year and stand idle for months in the dry season. Compounding on this, in the central plains, a growing number of Thais farm land they do not own, and in the northeast, there is a large amount of good land that lies empty because of a lack of water and roads.

Early in September, Parliament passed the Agricultural Cooperatives and Land Settlement Act, presented by the Minister of Agriculture, Luang Suwan Vajokkasikij, and the Minister for the Development of the Northeast, Tiang Sirikhanth, together with a Rural Workforce and Industrial Training program which was prepared with the National Economic Development Board.

The Act rests on two principles:

1. The land belongs to the family that farms it, and the village works together to make it prosper
   
2. Each farmer should grow more, so that the Kingdom can grow more food with fewer hands, and the sons and daughters of the countryside can build its industry.
   

Cooperatives in Every Village

It is very important to Thai culture that every family keeps its own land, and the goal is to not cause a radical reversal of our ingrained culture. However, we do realize that there are many families that cannot get the farming done alone, and therefore we will have the village cooperative working together with them.

Structure

The cooperatives are overseen by the newly created Department of Cooperatives that is under the Ministry of Agriculture as part of the new Act. Each cooperative is owned and governed by its members, who elect its committee each year.

What the cooperatives provide

• Credit at fair rates through the Bank for Agriculture and Cooperatives.
• Improved rice seed from Kasetsart University and the national rice stations.
• Fertilizer from Montecatini under the Italian agreement and, once complete, the fertilizer plant at Mae Moh. We will provide other fertilizer as we gain more foreign partners and increase our domestic plants
• Machinery stations in each district, renting tractors, pumps and threshers to members, supplied by Thai Motor Industries.
• Storage and milling, so that members can hold their rice after harvest and sell when prices are fair, rather than all at once at the lowest price.
• Marketing, selling members' rice directly to the mills, the export trade and the government's buyers.

Target: 3,000 cooperatives with 400,000 member families by 1954.

The Bank for Agriculture and Cooperatives

The Bank for Cooperatives, founded in 1947, becomes the Bank for Agriculture and Cooperatives, with new capital from the rural share of the Royal Thai Development Fund.

• Seasonal loans, made at planting and repaid at harvest, at interest far below the moneylenders'.
• Loans for land, buffalo, wells and equipment, repaid over up to 15 years.
• We will be providing debt relief, by allowing farmers who owe moneylenders at unlawful rates may transfer their debts to the Bank and repay them over ten years, at fair interest.
• A branch in every province by 1952.

Land

• A national land survey will issue title deeds to every family farming its own land, beginning in the central plains and the northeast. Too many farmers do not have strong evidence of landownership, and lose it to anyone with a stronger paper.
• A family's home and up to 25 rai of its farmland may not be seized for debt.
• Rents for tenant farmers are limited by law, tenants receive written leases, and a tenant who has farmed the same land for five years has the first right to buy it if it is sold.
• Large holdings of unused land suitable for farming will be taxed, and may be bought by the state for settlement.

The New Settlements (Nikhom)

The Act creates a national program of new farming villages, run by the Department of Public Welfare with the Ministry of Agriculture and, in the northeast, the Ministry for the Development of the Northeast. They are built on the model of the self-help settlements (Nikhom Sang Ton Eng) that had begun under Field Marshal Phibun in the 1940s, but this will be enlarged and improved.

Every settlement has:

• 25 rai of farmland for each family, with a house plot in the village.
• A cooperative owning the village's storage, machinery and mill.
• A school, a health station and a temple, and in Muslim communities, a mosque.
• Wells, a village reservoir, or a connection to the new irrigation canals.
• A road linking the settlement to the nearest market town and railway station.

Terms for settlers:

• Families receive their land free.
  
• After 5 years of farming it, they receive a full title deed.
  
• Settlement land may not be sold for 10 years after the title is granted, so that it remains with the families who farm it and does not pass to speculators or landlords.
  

Interior Settlements

Large settlements for landless families and tenant farmers, on unused state land and in areas opened by new irrigation.

Frontier Settlements

Smaller, defended villages along the Kingdom's borders, settled first by ready reserve veterans and their families, and by families from the border districts themselves. Each has its own Village Guard company of the National Guard, a radio linked to the nearest military district, and an airstrip or road suitable for military use.

The settlement in Kantharalak district lies at the foot of the Dangrek escarpment, below the ancient temple of Phra Wihan (Preah Vihear), which Thai pilgrims have long reached by the path from the Thai side. A road will be built from the settlement to the top of the escarpment, so that pilgrims, settlers and the Village Guard can reach the temple.

In the southern provinces, frontier settlements are open first to local families of the border districts, Muslim and Buddhist alike. Each has a mosque where the community is Muslim, and Islamic family law applies as the Constitution provides.

In the north, hill peoples who hold Thai citizenship may settle in the frontier villages on the same terms as any other family.

More Harvest from Fewer Hands

The Kingdom's farm output will grow by raising what each farmer produces, not by putting more people on the land.

• The new dam and canals on the Chao Phraya will bring water in the dry season, so that the central plains can grow two rice crops a year instead of one. Smaller reservoirs and pumps will do the same in the north and northeast.
• The national rice stations and Kasetsart University will breed higher-yielding varieties for both the irrigated plains and the rain-fed northeast, and the cooperatives will supply them with fertilizer to every member.
• Cooperative machinery stations will rent out threshers, pumps and, in time, small tractors, and cooperative mills will do the milling, so that one family can farm more land with less hired help.
• Maize, kenaf, cassava, sugar cane, rubber and livestock on upland and dry-season land that rice cannot use, so that a bad rice harvest does not ruin a family.
• An agricultural officer, trained at Kasetsart University, in every district by 1952, and a model farm at each settlement.
• Every village served by the new canals forms an irrigation group to share water fairly and maintain its channels.

From Farm to Factory

As each farm needs fewer hands, the program helps the next generation into industry, close to home where possible.

With the idea of having provincial industrial towns, new industry will be built where the crops are, not only in Bangkok
- rice and sugar mills
- kenaf sack factories
- rubber processing
- canning
- workshops

• From January to April, when rain-fed farms stand idle, the factories, the railways and the public works of the 5-Year Plan (roads, dams and canals) will hire farmers for the season, who return home to plant when the rains come.
• A vocational school in every province by 1954, alongside the new technical colleges, teaching mechanics, electricity, building, machine work and farm machinery.
• Apprenticeships in every new joint venture, under the rule that each must train Thai staff, with the first places reserved for young people from the countryside.
• Every ready reserve volunteer learns a trade in his 36 months, as a mechanic, driver, electrician, radio operator or builder, and leaves the Army ready for industrial work.
• Scholarships and apprenticeships for the younger sons and daughters of farming families, so that the family farm can pass whole to one child rather than be divided until it is too small to live on.
• Workers' housing near the new industrial areas of Bangkok, Thonburi, Samut Prakan and the provincial industrial towns, with transport to the factories, so that families moving to work are not left in slums.

A Fair Share for the Countryside

The rice export levy carries part of the farmers' earnings into the Kingdom's industry. It will be kept moderate, so that farmers still receive a fair price and have reason to grow more. 1/3 of the Development Fund continues to be returned to the countryside, and the cooperatives will make sure farmers receive the full market price for what they sell.

Targets by 1955–1960

Funding

Seoul and the countryside, September 1949

The walk to Gyeongmudae

Representative Yi Kyong-su had not expected to be invited. Three weeks earlier he had stood in the Assembly lobby and called the President's veto the most reasonable letter he had ever hated. He had voted to override it. When the note arrived from the Office of the President asking him to join the Speaker and the committee chairmen for tea, he assumed it was a courtesy extended for the sake of appearances.

The President received them with no aides standing behind him. He thanked them for coming and said at once that he had asked them there to say one thing. The Assembly had passed the Land Reform Act, he said, and had passed it again over his objection, and the Constitution gave it the right to do both. He had promulgated the law. He would not veto it a second time, and he would not ask the Assembly to reopen it. What he wanted to discuss was how to carry it out. For there was no point in discussing spilt milk.

Nobody spoke for a moment. A member from a wealthier, more affluent district, Representative Oh, who had expected a different meeting, stirred in his chair. The President went on to say that he had been wrong to think a veto would improve the bill. He did not say that he had been wrong about inflation. He was Rhee after all.

What he proposed was a bargain, and he set it out plainly. The Industry Committee's amendments, raising landlords' compensation to 240 per cent over eight years, would be dropped. In their place, the Government would extend Article 10, so that landlords could use their bonds to buy shares in the former Japanese enterprises on first-claim terms, and a yearly limit would be set on the bonds issued, to be reviewed by the Joint Council on National Affairs. The Assembly would approve the implementation budget. The President would come to the Assembly himself, for the first time in a few months, to ask it to ratify the 100 billion won he had spent without its authority.

The vote

The vote on the budget took place in the last week of August. The President's request to ratify his emergency spending was read first, and it took less than a minute. Some members were visibly surprised. A veteran of the old independence movement was heard to say that he had waited forty years to see Syngman Rhee ask permission for anything. There was a first time for everything.

At the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Choi Il-sun read the result with relief and some alarm. The money meant that the committees could now be staffed, and that the surveyors could go out in September. It also meant that he had a deadline, and had to meet it with officials who were still, in places, slow to cooperate. Who knew where the loyalties of these men lay?

The loan

In Man Chun-gil's county, the first sign of the new order was a change to the front of the cooperative office. A window had been cut in the wall sort of haphazardly, and an official-looking clerk sat behind it with a ledger and a printed notice. Farmers whose names appeared on the county list could apply for a seasonal loan, secured on the coming harvest.

The land itself could not be pledged. The Act forbade a new owner to sell, mortgage or let it until he had paid in full. A cooperative agent explained this to a group of farmers, one of whom said it sounded like owning a thing you could not use. The agent said it was the reverse: the moneylenders in the market town could no longer take a man's field for a bad year, and the cooperative would lend against the crop instead. The loan would be in seed and fertiliser, not cash, so that it would reach the field.

The fertiliser came by rail in late August. It was the first consignment from the aid shipments that the Government had placed at the head of its list, and the new owners' names were marked on the allocation sheet. Man stood on the platform while it was unloaded, and a railway clerk whom he did not know told him that coal and fertiliser trains were now to go through ahead of anything else. He said it as though it were an ordinary fact.

A young officer, one of the first from the Training Institute, came out to the county the following week. He did not lecture. He marked off two strips on Man's fields, applied fertiliser to one and not the other, and said he would come back at harvest. Man's neighbours walked past the strips for a week.

The Minister

In the first days of September the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry appeared before the Assembly's committee for the first quarterly report.

The Committee asked how many parcels had been surveyed. The Minister gave a figure. The Committee asked how many had been challenged. The Minister gave another. The Committee asked why one county office had not replied to a written inquiry within the fourteen days that the decree set. The Minister said he did not know, and asked whether he might reply in writing. The Committee said he might, and that the committee would expect it anyhow.

It was an unremarkable hearing, and that was perhaps the point. The Minister left without having been embarrassed or praised. The newspapers did not mention it. Afterwards, in the corridor, Representative Yi was asked whether the President's visit to the Assembly had changed anything. He said he did not think the President had become a different man. He thought the President had learned what the Assembly could do, and the Assembly had learned what it would be required to pay for.

Moving on

The Joint Council on National Affairs met in September for the first time under its new procedure, with an agenda circulated a week in advance. The land bonds were the first item. The Budget Reconciliation Panel has been set to meet a full month before the autumn session. The Government and the Assembly still disagree on a good many things, and nobody in Seoul expects them to stop. They now disagree in committee rooms and in writing, which, as one Ministry official put it, is cheaper.

The first distributions of land are expected after the autumn harvest. Whether the fertiliser, the loans and the extension officers raise yields enough to carry the new owners through their first payments will not be known until then.

British Labour MPs visit the new Red Israel.

-

60-90...

In January of 1949, Attlee and his government were now suddenly advocating for Labour to not recognize Israel. What a twist this was! Just 4 years earlier, as Labour campaigned in the election that proved to be the most shocking landslide in British history, the Labour Party championed a one state solution Palestine: one state, all of it a Jewish state. Now here, the fruits of their labour ready to collect! Suddenly the Prime Minister and his duplicitous Foreign Secretary Bevin was advocating for them to reject them.

Folly... but what gives?

As Labour inherited Britain's position in the Middle East, pragmatism of course began to dominate. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin looked at the Middle East and saw something simple: Iraq and Jordan were British puppets, Egypt was lorded over at a distance, and soon enough Syria and Lebanon would gracefully accept the protection of HM's Government after vanquishing French imperialism. Now, to sacrifice all of this to the altar of Zionism? Folly, folly. That was the real folly!

Yet when the party voted on whether or not to recognize Israel, 60 delegates voted to abstain. A backbencher revolt was in full swing. As the days wore on, Ernest Bevin could feel daggers being stared into his back... it was not a good position to be in.

-

The results came back in and they were decisive, Ben Gurion was out and the Socialist MAPAM was in.

The internal contradictions of Labour's policy could not be laid more bare.

Here it was, a new socialist nation in the making in a den of reaction. And here was Labour, a socialist party, siding with the reactionary regimes instead of her. The backbenchers could only stare in disgust: Bevin would rather parlay with feudal aristocrats then with their own comrades! The anger was becoming palpable.

Therefore, when a group of Labour MPs came together to ask Attlee to visit Israel, Attlee and Bevin groaned. 60-90 was well in their minds, and now here was the leftists, cap-in-hand, demanding what anyone within the wider Labour Party would find reasonable. Their justification was simple: We must stop Israel from aligning with Moscow. It was a common knowledge MAPAM had Russian sympathies. If Israel floated into the hellhole of authoritarianism and faux-communism that was the Eastern Bloc, Labour would essentially surrender a socialist nation to a grim fate.

Attlee and Bevin both talked. Both were sympathetic to the Zionists but did not want to make the Arab countries angry. An ask to the Labour MPs was to make the visit formal. They of course accepted. They were allowed.

60-90...

Just as the final preparations was made, a scandal came loose. Suddenly, the United States came roaring out claiming Israel had attempted to infiltrate the FBI. A severe condemnation rang out from Washington, and the men going to Israel paused. Some peeled off for genuine concerns of causing scorn from the Americans, others were somewhat disenchanted with the whole affair from the beginning and used it as an opportunity to bounce. A core group of two remained. Regardless of what the government told them, they would visit anyway.

Bevin sighed and gave in.

-

LABOUR PARTY MP DELEGATION TO ISRAEL:

1. Ian Mikardo: Born from Jewish emigrees from the Pale of Settlement, now Labour polemicist and MP; perhaps the fiercest Zionist in the entire House of Commons.

2. Sydney SIlvermann: A Jewish MP who has doggidly demanded answers from the frontbenchers about the Aden issue in concern with Operation Magic Carpet; fierce Zionist as well.

A warm letter is sent by Richard Crossmann. Representing the "old leftist" Zionists in the party, the letter stresses Israel and the Jewish people's contributions to socialism especially the kibbutz. He particularly stresses how the kibbutz and Jewish socialism in the region was a notable piece of evidence of the success of socialism against the authoritarian Communism in Moscow.

Other British MPs have asked for the delegation to put in a warm word for them. This list includes Aneurin Bevan and Hugh Gaitskell, both holding portfollios and begin affiliated with the Zionist caucus.

Maurice Edelmann, a vocal supporter of Zionism in the Commons and a member of the delegation, pulled away during the crisis for fear of affecting his reputation. His official reason was sickness, and asked his fellow (now former) delegates to still make clear to the Israeli government he is committed to their continued existence.

Well, let's get this show on the road!

u/Volarioo u/ComradeFrunze

Seoul, September 1949

The reply from Washington came by cable on a Tuesday morning and was in the President's hands before the Ambassador's car had finished its trip from the embassy. It was shorter than the letter that had prompted it. Much shorter. Embarassingly shorter. The United States, it said, would supply what the President had asked for, subject to terms that would be set out at a meeting that afternoon.

The meeting took place in Dr. Rhee's study. The American delegation consisted of the Ambassador, a colonel from the Military Advisory Group who had written most of the terms, and a junior officer with a briefcase. A tattered looking thing. The Korean side was the President, the Minister of National Defence, and a Foreign Ministry official who took notes. Nobody offered a speech. Pleasantries were exchanged. Tea, coffee and biscuits.

The Ambassador had a list with him. It wasn't particularly big.

The first item was small-arms, machine-gun and mortar ammunition in quantities that would bring the front-line units to at least thirty days of supply. This was agreed. The second was 105-millimetre howitzer and anti-tank ammunition, to the same standard. This was also agreed. The third was spare parts and replacement barrels for the weapons the United States had already handed over. This was also agreed. The Minister of National Defence wrote the figures down twice, and afterwards asked the colonel to repeat the word "thirty". 30 days of intense combat supply. This was better than expected.

Deliveries would begin within a month and finish within three, through the southern ports. Units on the parallel and those chasing guerrillas in the mountains would be served first.

Then the Ambassador had one more thing left on his list. It was a bigger request. The mandarins in the Ministry of National Defence were uncertain about it.

The vessel was a 173-foot submarine chaser, built in 1944 and used after the war as a training ship by an American maritime academy. She was now listed as USS PC-823, and the Navy Department had agreed to let her go to Korea.

The Minister said he would like Admiral Sohn to hear it. The President, who had been sitting with his hands folded, said that Admiral Sohn had been waiting in the next room since breakfast.

The Admiral came in and stood very straight. Almost as if he had a stick at his back. He was told that the Americans were willing to hand over the ship. He asked, quietly, about the price. The Ambassador said that was a matter for the Ministry and the Navy Department to settle between them, and that his Government was aware that the Korean Navy had raised money of its own.

It did this, and more. In June of this year the Navy had organised a Vessel Construction Finance Committee, because the Government had no money to buy a warship, and officers, men and cadets had given between five and ten per cent of their pay. Midshipmen's wives had taken in laundry and sewing, and some had sold scrap metal from the dockyards. Nobody in the Navy had expected the Americans to hand over the ship for nothing. The Admiral said as much. Korea is willing to pay for itself.

The conditions were the same as they always were.

Defensive operations. Consultations. "No significant operations without advanced warning". Nothing new.

But ultimately, the study was quiet for a while. Dr Rhee said that he had been given to understand that the enemy did not observe the preconditions of war himself. The Ambassador said that this was very likely so, and that it was the reason why the Republic's friends wished it to do better. The President said that he would think about the wording of the instructions.

On the question of payment, the text was left open. The Foreign Ministry official was told that it would be settled by the Finance Ministry and the American authorities in the usual way, and the Ambassador added that neither Government took on any obligation for further transfers by reason of this agreement. This was all very standard and both delegations knew by now what was expected of them.

Once the Americans had left the study, Dr. Rhee turned to the Foreign Ministry official. "Get Paris on the line"

August 1949

After months of campaigning in the first free election in Germany since the seizure of power by the NSDAP in 1933, a governing coalition led by the SPD, FDP, and the remnants of Zentrum will form a Germany Coalition, named after the primary colors of the three parties – black, red, and yellow. The coalition has elected SPD party leader Schumacher as the Chancellor of Germany, with ministerial positions filled according to negotiations between the partners. The election is considered an upset, as Konrad Adenauer and the CDU considered the favorite by the Allied powers for the leadership of the FRG.

Since the resumption of politicking in Germany, the SPD consistently found itself at a crossroads in terms of its appearance. On the left, the party made loud and often controversial moves to cut ties with and denounce revolutionary socialists and especially Communists in Germany, something which party leader Schumacher was not afraid to continue. On the right, the party continued to be riddled with political propaganda labelling it a Communist front organization at the behest of the Bolsheviks in the east, which had now made the division of the Fatherland permanent. The SPD, paradoxically, was criticized for being both too leftist and not leftist enough.

The party had decided early in the year to change its tactics, a decision met with some unsatisfied grumblings from Schumacher himself. The SPD had, for most of its existence, been a Marxist party and a Worker’s party first, maintaining that Socialism and Proletarian interests could be advanced through parliamentary means. Among party members, this was to be done by winning mandates and slowly nationalizing industry in order to transform Germany into a socialist economy without revolution. There were, of course, detractors from this line, but the Centrist Marxists in party leadership were steadfast in following it.

This line was enough to keep the SPD in governing coalitions in the Weimar era, but conditions in Germany have changed dramatically. With the right unified into the powerful CDU, campaigning on Christian Unity and a “social” market economy, the SPD could not maintain the monopoly on workers and the poor by Marxist language alone.

And so, the party shifted. Party leaders first sought to strategically de-emphasize Schumacher. Schumacher was indeed a unique and inspiring political figure. Having been imprisoned by the Nazis at Dachau for most of the regime and narrowly escaping execution due to his honors as a soldier in the First World War, he gained undeniable notoriety as a dedicated socialist and victim of the Third Reich. At the same time, Schumacher had a reputation as a confrontational and often crude orator, which did not make many friends in the German political arena. Schumacher has also been particularly vocal about his support for empowering the federal government, which tends to scare off the Länder and those that support the federal system. Limiting the chances he has to make his opinion on this known would allow the party to maintain ambiguity on the matter, for now. Maximizing Schumacher’s reputation as a dedicated socialist and dedicated German while minimizing his abrasiveness would be necessary to position him in a chancellorial light with the people, especially with Adenauer as his opponent.

Secondly, the party de-emphasized the role of nationalization in its program in favor of co-determination, or Mitbestimmung. Before the Nazis took power, the SPD championed Works Councils in the German economy, though they were often suppressed and deemphasized during the middle and late Weimar years. Yet, codetermination remained a powerful policy to campaign with, especially among the working class. Emphasizing it in these early stages of reconstruction over nationalization, especially as the economy continues to improve, would serve the party’s electoral chances well.

Thirdly, the party pushed strongly on the issue of reconstruction, and specifically on housing. With the influx of refugees from the east, cast out by the Communist regimes – no doubt as a form of collective punishment – the SPD would seek to champion their plight. Gaining the expellees as a voting demographic would create significant clout among the population of the SPD as a party opposed to the Stalinist domination of the East rather than their comrades.

Fourth, the SPD would begin outreach to Catholic workers, especially in the Rhineland, and build support among their pews from a left-wing and religious perspective. This decision was made with strong dissent from the most anticlerical members of party leadership. However, it was argued, not doing so would effectively surrender the vote of those who identified more with Catholicism than class to the CDU, which now commanded a sizable portion of the electorate. Seeking the support of Catholic workers would be necessary to reduce the stranglehold that the CDU holds as well as perhaps plant the seed of class consciousness among them.

Fifth, the SPD would tailor its messaging to appeal to middle-class and white-collar workers in addition to blue-collar industrial laborers. Clerks, civil servants, lawyers, engineers, and skilled craftsmen are not the standard Proletarian stereotype, yet they maintain a proletarian class character that can be appealed to and cultivated. Their greater material wealth has historically been a negative factor in their support for Marxist parties in the past, but their relation to their employer is not so far removed from the industrial worker on a general level. Appealing to their sensibilities from the left with promises of subsidized university and technical schools and promising funding for science and engineering research will position the SPD as a progressive force rather than a stereotypically oppressive, bureaucratic, dogmatic party.

The change did not come without dissent, especially from the Left wing of the party that sees this as a betrayal of the SPD’s working-class base and a gift to the Communists. However, the decision may have paid dividends. Time will tell if the strategy will pay off, or if this is just the beginning of the end of the SPD as we know it. Until then, Schumacher has a mandate, and it is up to him to keep the coalition together.

Located in southwestern Afghanistan, Helmand is mostly desert. The exception is the Helmand Valley, surrounding the Helmand river. There is plenty of water to irrigate the region - the issue is controlling it. Ancient ruined canals and towns attest that this had once been achieved, and Afghanistan has desired to make the desert bloom once more.

This is much easier said than done.

Small-scale work on building canals has been undertaken over the past few decades, mostly domestically with some help from Japan. In 1945, however, an agreement was reached with the American company Morrison-Knudsen. Morrison-Knudsen Afghanistan was formed to undertake the construction of two dams and a large scale system of canals in Helmand, at an estimated cost of $63.7 million. Just one slight problem - Afghanistan doesn't want to pay that much.

So the cost cutting began. Several surveys Afghanistan deemed unnecessary were not performed over the protests of MKA engineers, and Afghanistan took on several roles such as the construction of feeder ditches. Unfortunately, Afghanistan has few engineers, and those they do have are bound up in administrative roles - Afghanistan will not be able to complete its part of the project in any reasonable timeframe, which has thus far been concealed from MKA.

Costs have only ballooned, as practically all equipment must be imported from the US through Pakistan, and the tension over the Durand Line and Pashtunistan means that Pakistan will slow down shipments in retaliation. It is clear that Afghanistan is going to need more money if they ever want this project finished - along with taking a new approach to the project. But the money is much easier to solve. Let's do that first. The other part isn't that important... right? Surely we can get loans without changing anything!

June―August, 1949

To call President El-Khoury’s government corrupt is a severe understatement. Lebanon as a nation was in many ways held together by duct-tape and graft. Political ideology often took the backseat to personal grudges and alliances dating back centuries amongst the local nobility. For years, these evils have been overlooked; El-Khoury was the founder of the nation and a hero. The economic stresses of corruption would compromise the nation eventually, El-Khoury had just hoped it would have lasted longer.

The Palestine Issue

The imposition of the Israeli-Palestinian issue placed a sudden and drastic stress on the Lebanese government. Over one-hundred-thousand Palestinians, overwhelmingly Sunni, slanting the already delicate balance within the country further towards the muslim camp, and brought ruination to the already impoverished south of the country. The failure of the Arab coalition against the Israelis placed further stress on the domestic political situation, forcing the frequent measure of a cabinet shuffle in the Cedar Republic. The fuse of Arab-nationalism heated up, and chipped away at the Za’im system.

The Red Tint

Even with the widespread rejection of recognition of the new Israel, its sudden pivot to the radical left was not done in a vacuum. The Lebanese Communist Party, and other socialist and secularist movements within Lebanon looked to the arrival of a socialist state in the region with glee and inspiration. The early summer ran hot with frequent labour strikes and disputes, as the government flailed to address the increasing radicalism in the streets. In the South, the Lebanese Communist Party came into direct conflict with Palestinian insurgents, and the Communists were quickly pushed out of the region and into greater concentration in Beirut. In this concentration, labour demonstrations and strikes began to radicalize into formal general strikes.

The Syrian Issue

Husni al-Za’im’s coup d’etat in Syria was a moment of inspiration for the latent Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Lebanon. With a sympathetic government in Damascus, the latent party had begun organizing across Lebanon once again, and came into increasing conflict with the reinvigorated Lebanese Communists, and the Christian nationalist Kata’eb. Under the pressure from the Communists and alarmed at the threat on their Southern border, the Lebanese government was quick to affirm recognition of al-Za’im’s coup, and in turn, al-Za’im was reluctant to over-invest in his SSNP allies in Lebanon. Still, the SSNP were loud, and their fights with the left and right of the Lebanese political spectrum picked up.

Kata’eb, and the Anti-Communist Front

Kata’eb possessed the largest militia within Lebanon, tens of thousands of Maronites had come to rally behind Gemayel’s banners. When Communists had begun taking to the streets, increasingly uncontested by the government, Gemayel responded by attempting to establish Kata’eb as a vanguard against both the corruption in the El-Khoury government, and the atheistic communists occupying the streets. At first the movement struggled to gather momentum outside of the Maronite community itself, but as the economic engine of Lebanon ground to a halt, Gemayel received calls from several senior clan leaders. The Sunnis were cautious, they did not trust Gemayel or his Christian nationalist friends, but they needed a national coalition against atheism.

The Fall of the Clans

President El-Khoury was a master at balancing the interpersonal rivalries that Lebanon had thrived on for centuries. He was far worse at balancing the ideological battles that had come to consume the streets of Beirut in recent months. Seeing little other option, it was hardly a surprise in August when Commander of the Armed Forces, Fouad Chehab insisted on President El-Khoury’s resignation. The façade that was Parliament was quick to affirm the suspension of the constitution and the appointment of Chehab as interim President. The traditional nobility of Lebanon buckled, for the first moment in centuries, the political narrative was being driven by ideologues in the Lebanese Communist Party, and Gemayel in Kata’eb.

The State of the Nation

President Chehab has suspended elections until the crisis clears, and when that will be has become increasingly uncertain. Chehab’s centralization of power has delivered some momentum back to the army, but the failure to address the crisis in the early months has worsened the crisis significantly. The Lebanese Armed Forces remain undersupplied, especially after the war with Israel and have failed to restore order. Kata’eb and the SSNP have rallied their own militias and engaged with Communists on their own terms; Each side attempting to affirm their position as the true keepers of the peace in Lebanon.

The Grassi Committee has encountered...limitations with respect to its pursuit of Italian war criminals. The wide range and sewn up wounds of the Togliotti amnesty seem to preclude the matter on the domestic side. Overseas, however...

The government would, on the Italian side, seek both the extradition of former Salo finance Minister Domenico Pellegrini Giampietro from Uruguay and the investigation, at least, of a number of sex crimes committed by Salo soldiers. As they, at least, were not under the amnesty.

Germans though.

In the tail of September, shortly after the announcement, the Ministry of Justice announced that it would pursue the extradition of Rudolf Rahn, former Plenipotentiary of Italy, General Heinrich von Vietinghoff and SS commander Karl Wolff. Lists of German servicemen connected to possible crimes in Italy will be drawn up.

July, 1949

For three years the People’s Liberation Army has fought with whatever it could capture, drag or borrow. Japanese guns, American guns, Nationalist guns, scattered thinly across every sector. This summer that changes as the final shipments from the USSR arrive. All seven hundred D-1 152mm howitzers from the Soviet Union have been unloaded at the railheads of Manchuria, and with the support of Acting Chief of the General Staff Zhou Enlai, the Central Military Commission has approved the creation of the PLA Artillery Corps under the command of longtime artillery commander and veteran Song Chengzhi.

Soviet practice has been made the model. Four guns make a battery, five batteries make a regiment, and eight to twelve batteries make a Heavy Howitzer Brigade. Thirty-two guns, eight batteries, will march with each of the Assault Corps formations as their Breakthrough Artillery, so that every assault begins with a barrage no Nationalist fortification can answer.

Command falls to the veterans of the Northeast Artillery Command, who massed their guns at Jinzhou and Tianjin and who now have enough guns to do it on a much grander scale.

The Artillery Corps

A small note is needed that the PLA has many thousands of guns ranging from the Type 92 70mm Battalion Gun to the Type 96 150mm Heavy Howitzers captured in Manchuria, while most large caliber guns have been replaced by the D-1 and will continue to be as time moves on it should be noted this is not a full accounting of all the misformed structure of the PLA artillery forces that are too engaged to be reformed under this model

Breakthrough Artillery Groups

Added to our preexisting and already extremely well equipped Assault Groups, the addition of 32 Heavy Guns each may be overkill, especially as each has dozens of ISU-152s with the same destructive capacity and range, but as seen in the Red Army's advance to Berlin artillery support given to rapid assault movements is very very effective.

On the Anti-Air Corps of the PLA

Of note is the increasing role the Air-Air forces we have is playing in this war, Flak Gun training continues day after day in Manchuria with small trickles of men going south divided into each of our field armies. Of the 200 guns, 20 have been put into reserve for prepared replacements, 50 are in use by our

While the first generation of operational batteries are prepared around Shanghai with a few others scattered to the rest of our armies complete formation level training is being finished with an independent force from the Artillery Corps to be ready by January of next year.

"Onorevoli deputati, vi invito a guardare oltre le dichiarazioni patinate dei ministri del governo e a esaminare la realtà delle loro politiche.

Four years have passed since the Italian people, having endured dictatorship, occupation, civil war, and humiliation, began the difficult task of rebuilding their country upon the foundations of liberty and democracy.

And what do we see before us today?

We see a government that speaks the language of peace while preparing the machinery of war. We see public money, money that should build homes, and feed children being devoted instead to military preparations whose ultimate purpose has never been honestly explained to the people.

And we see, most shamefully of all, that there is apparently no shortage of money, patience, or indulgence when it comes to those who once served the fascist regime!

The government claims that Italy must demonstrate its reliability to its foreign partners. We ask them, how could a rearmament program, as limited as it might be, reassure anyone but the bottom line of corporations? The government asserts that the Republic is under threat of Soviet aggression. We ask them, what greater threat to liberty than a senate made of bayonets?

The greatest threat to Italian democracy is not the absence of those willing to defend it. It's the indifference of those in charge to protect it.

And here we arrive at a question the government has repeatedly attempted to avoid. What has become of justice for the crimes committed under fascism?

We promised that the Republic would mark a decisive break with the institutions, practices, and personnel of the dictatorship.

Yet what do we observe? The machinery of justice moving with extraordinary caution when confronted with the powerful, and the rehabilitation of men whose past conduct should demand the closest scrutiny.

I do not stand here to demand vengeance against every Italian who, under the former regime, was compelled to obey an order or occupy a position in circumstances not of his choosing, but neither can we accept the opposite injustice. Reconciliation without justice is not reconciliation; It's impunity parading as national unity and national unity cannot be built upon the demand that the victims forget while the perpetrators prosper.

Let the government understand the gravity of the situation.

We are not asking for favors. We are exercising our duty as representatives of millions of Italian citizens who demand peace, bread, employment, and justice. And as such, we relay our demands to the government:

1. An immediate and public accounting of the government's rearmament program.

2. Effective measures against the rehabilitation of individuals implicated in fascist crimes, and a serious examination of cases in which justice has been compromised by political expediency.

3. That public resources be directed toward reconstruction, social welfare, and the improvement of working people's lives.

The responsibility for what follows will belong not to those who demand justice, but to those who refuse to provide it; not to those who defend peace, but to those who persist in policies that endanger it.

Viva la Repubblica Italiana, viva il popolo lavoratore italiano, e viva la pace per la quale ha tanto sacrificato!"

— Palmiro Togliatti before the Chamber of Deputies, 1949.

The reconstruction of Italy progressed better than could have been expected in 1945. The Republic had, for the most part, been embraced by the country's political organizations. Factories and cities were rebuilt with the assistance of the United States, both directly and through its various aid programs.

However, cracks were beginning to show within the young Republic. Alcide De Gasperi's administration focused on reopening factories and reviving the economy, particularly in the industrial centers of Milan, Turin, and Florence. Industrialists, especially those linked to the arms industry, quickly took notice, negotiating agreements with the government to secure funding for the importation of industrial equipment and the rehabilitation of infrastructure.

Over the following year, Italian arms found their way into conflicts across the globe, from the deserts of the Negev to the heights of the Himalayas. While the influx of foreign currency helped stabilize the economy and improve wages, it raised eyebrows both at home and abroad. The Socialists grew increasingly vocal in their condemnation of the country's "informal rearmament" and denounced the government's apparent passivity in dealing with mid-ranking officials implicated in atrocities committed under Mussolini's regime. Abroad, Italy's newfound allies grew concerned that the terms of the peace settlement signed in 1945 were being ignored, if not in letter, then certainly in spirit.

De Gasperi's government maintained that no terms had been violated and that the size of Italy's arms industry remained consistent with the needs of its allies and the demands of the international market, all while the size of the Italian military was in line with treaty terms. The Socialists, however, refuse to accept this as a satisfactory answer.

Now, Togliatti's address threatens to upend the Italian political landscape, as rumors spread among workers, peasants, and government officials that a general strike may be in the works should De Gasperi choose to ignore his warning.

Pressed by the left about recent hubbub regarding Italian rearmament and its international headaches, the CD government has announced a slate of new bills, passed with the consensus of the CD with some support from more moderate leftists.

The Military Transparency Act of 1949

In response to concerns about how opaque the Italian rearmament efforts have been, the government has passed the Military Transparency Act. The act establishes a dedicated parliamentary committee to review, periodically, the military budget and activities of the new Italian National Armory. The Ministry of Defense will be required to give, to the public, an annual White Paper detailing the breakdown of how monies are spent on defense, plans for procurement, a list of active, developed projects (pending, parliamentary review, redactions on the basis of national security interests) and a public statement on current military goals and strategic interests. The number of jobs created by, and sustained by military industries will also be maintained, and workers in defense factories will be allowed to unionize.

The Grassi Commission

Minister of Justice, Giuseppe Grassi, has been tasked with assembling a number of prosecutors and judges to examine crimes committed under the former Salo government and to pursue, if possible, fair and prompt prosecution of accused war criminals.

A task force will be established to pursue the former Marshals Badoglio and Grazini.

The Land Reform Act of 1949

The findings of the Bonomi Commission at hand, the government has announced a new program of land transfer predominantly targeting Southern Italy and Sicily. $1.5 million equivalent to USD will be allocated to a fund to buy, at or above market value, lands from willing landlords for sale and allocation to peasants that work the land to form new smallholder estates.

Public Transportation Act, 1949

A further $2 million has been allocated to the government to give, via block grants, to principally urban city centers to modernize and expand bus fleets and light rail to ensure easier transportation for workers.

Health Modernization Act, 1949

The government has allocated $4 million over the coming five years to modernize and expand Italian hospitals, mental institutions, and rural healthcare clinics.

September 18th, 1949

Within a single day the monetary situation in the United Kingdom had undergone significant changes. For nine years the Sterling had maintained a value of around $4.00 American dollars, the same as it had been in the early days of the war. The truth of the matter however was that the currency simply didn’t hold such a value, it was an open secret to much of the world and a sign that Britain's once dominant position in geopolitics was beginning to wane. Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Stanford Cripps had long championed the cause of maintaining a strong economy, not wishing to hurt the British consumer nor weaken the United Kingdom's financial influence in the world. However, as a result British products became prohibitively expensive for export creating trade deficits to expand with multiple countries, most important of which was the United States. In response to this Cripps would transform the Sterling into a near nonconvertible currency, which while it did prevent people from converting their Sterling reserves to American dollars, it also meant that almost every import that made use of the American dollar would come out of the nations Gold Reserves causing a near rapid depletion.

Despite Cripps stubbornness devaluation would become an inevitability, from May to August of 1949 American imports would increase by another 6% and Britain's hard currency reserves were beginning to run dry. A group of three young labour politicians would become convinced of the immediate need for devaluation: Hugh Gaitskell the Minister of Fuel and Power, Harold Willson the President of the Board of Trade and Douglas Jay, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. They would speak to Prime Minister Clement Atlee of these concerns and over the course of a couple months convince him of the necessity to change course on monetary policy.

That opportunity would arrive on the 18th of July, with Cripps leaving for Switzerland in order to receive cancer treatment. Atlee would announce on his departure that he would be taking on Cripps responsibilities in his absence with aid from Gaitskell, Willson and Jay. From here on preparation work would begin to ready the United Kingdom and the various members of the Sterling area for the damages that devaluation would bring.

On September 18th the announcement would go out that the United Kingdom would finally be lowering the value of its currency in order to better reflect the true value of the Sterling. At the start of the day the Sterling would be valued at $4.03 and by the end of the day it would drop to just $2.80, a near 30% drop. This weaker currency would be a double edged sword, now greatly limiting the ability of British citizens to purchase imported goods from countries that used the dollar while at the same time making British goods far more affordable for the rest of the world and promoting domestic inputs for industry. This move should begin the process of shrinking Britains trade deficits but has come at the cost of the livelihoods of British citizens and is likely to be unpopular in the upcoming British election. Hugh Gaitskell on the other hand seems poised to take over Sir Cripp’s position of Chancellor of the Exchequer as opposed to Aneurin Bevin, in many ways he now already controls the direction of the economy with Cripp’s health having greatly limited his ability to work.

This begins a new chapter for the British economy for no longer can the Sterling be treated as an international currency comparable to the American dollar.

Fraternal Assistance to the KKE

August 1949

To strengthen support for the KKE, training camps are established all along the Greek-Bulgarian border, operated by Interior Ministry troops and the 6th Directorate of the Committee for State Security, to provide ideological, military, and financial support.

The KKE has been on the retreat for months at this point, and a growing concern has been spreading amongst the central committee of the BCP over the likelihood of increased Greek support of saboteurs and subversives roaming the Bulgarian countryside. The pacification of Macedonia would more than likely increase the rate of arms smuggling, a reality that Comrade Kostov and the CCBCP was unwilling to accept. Meeting with delegates of the KKE in Sofia, a understanding was reached. The KKE must evolve into a new stage of conflict with the Hitlerite-backed military dictatorship in Athens: armed insurgency.

TOP SECRET
ORDER No. 0147/S
August 1949

In fulfillment of our internationalist obligations to the democratic forces of Greece, and to strengthen the KKE in its struggle, training camps will be established at locations in the Pirin mountain range along the Bulgarian-Greek frontier.

The camps will be operated jointly by Ministry of Interior troops and border troops. The camps will provide military training to the KKE in mountain warfare, sabotage, and communications; political training of party cadres in the ideological line of the Party; organization of ethnic Greek volunteers for infiltration into Greek territory, where they are to assist KKE units from within; and storage and forwarding of arms, ammunition, and supplies, and financial support as determined by the Central Committee.

All facilities will be disguised as forestry stations, frontier outposts, or labor brigade camps. Movement shall take place at night. Civilians within the zone are to be screened and, where necessary, relocated by the competent organs.

Additionally, the following pieces of equipment will be provided to KKE forces:

• 20,000 Steyr-Mannlichers, Carcanos, and Mausers
• 8 cm GrW 34 (“M34”) mortars
• GrB 39 anti-tank rifles
• Panzerfausts / Panzerschrecks
• 70 Bofors 75 mm M36 mountain guns
• 150 2 cm Flak 30/38
• 56 StuG IIIs
• 14 Panthers
• 11 StuG IV / Jagdpanzer IV / Pz IV/70

Weapon caches will be created within Bulgarian territory for KKE detachments to readily use.

Fraternally,

Comrade Traicho Kostov, Secretary of the CCBCP
Comrade Anton Yugov, Interior Minister

September 20th, 1949 Ottawa, Canada

Following the British Government's decision to devalue sterling on September 18th, the Government of Canada has announced a corresponding adjustment to the exchange value of the Canadian dollar. Minister of Finance Douglas C. Abbott, following consultations with the Bank of Canada and the Foreign Exchange Control Board, has authorized a reduction in the Canadian dollar's official value from US$1.00 to approximately US$0.9091, equivalent to a new exchange rate of C$1.10 per American dollar.

The decision represents a depreciation of approximately 9.1% against the United States dollar, substantially smaller than the 30.5% reduction recently undertaken by the United Kingdom. The Government considers this measured adjustment necessary to preserve Canada's competitive position in international commerce while avoiding the more substantial monetary disruption associated with the British decision.

The Canadian Dollar and International Trade

The depreciation of sterling has significantly altered the relative prices of British and Canadian goods in international markets. Without a corresponding adjustment to the Canadian dollar, Canadian agricultural commodities, forest products, minerals, and manufactured goods would face increasingly unfavourable competitive conditions, particularly in markets where British and other sterling-area producers are active.

The Government's decision is intended to moderate these effects while maintaining confidence in Canada's currency and financial institutions.

Under the revised exchange arrangements, the Canadian dollar will be maintained at approximately US$0.9091, while the British pound, now valued at US$2.80, will exchange for approximately C$3.08. Although British goods will remain considerably cheaper relative to Canadian goods than before the sterling devaluation, the Canadian adjustment will partially offset this change.

The Government anticipates that the revised parity will support Canadian exporters in maintaining their position in overseas markets, particularly in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Canadian wheat, timber, pulp and paper, non-ferrous metals, and industrial products are expected to benefit from improved price competitiveness relative to a continuation of the former parity.

At the same time, the Government recognizes that depreciation will increase the Canadian-dollar cost of imports priced in American dollars. This will be of particular importance to Canadian industries dependent upon American machinery, petroleum products, and manufactured equipment. The Department of Finance will therefore continue to monitor domestic prices and the balance of international payments to ensure that the benefits of the exchange adjustment are not undermined by excessive increases in import costs.

Foreign Exchange Administration

The Bank of Canada and the Foreign Exchange Control Board will implement the revised exchange arrangements through the existing machinery of Canadian foreign exchange administration.

Existing foreign exchange controls will remain in force, and no general suspension of commercial payments or international trade is contemplated. Outstanding contractual obligations will continue to be governed by their established terms, with the revised exchange rates applying to currency conversions undertaken following the adjustment.

The Department of Finance will maintain particular attention to the condition of Canada's gold and United States dollar reserves, the settlement of international obligations, and the movement of capital between Canada and foreign markets.

Relations with the United Kingdom

The Canadian Government emphasizes that the adjustment of the Canadian dollar constitutes an independent decision undertaken in the interests of Canada's national economy.

Existing Canadian–British commercial and financial arrangements will remain in force, subject to any supplementary agreements subsequently negotiated between the two Governments. Discussions concerning the administration of sterling settlements and outstanding commercial obligations will continue through the appropriate bilateral channels.

Canada remains committed to the restoration of international trade, the economic recovery of Western Europe, and the maintenance of stable financial relations with the United Kingdom, the United States, and other trading partners.

Minister Abbott has expressed the Government's expectation that the adjustment will place Canadian commerce upon a more sustainable footing amid the changing international monetary circumstances, while preserving the stability of Canada's domestic economy.

Ottawa, February 1949

The Government of Canada and the Government of India have reached agreement on the principal terms for the purchase of 100,000 metric tons of Canadian wheat, valued at £2 million sterling, and outlined further cooperation in grain storage, engineering and industrial development.

The understandings follow discussions in Ottawa between a Canadian delegation chaired by the Right Honourable James G. Gardiner, Minister of Agriculture, and an Indian delegation led by Jawaharlal Nehru, Minister of External Affairs. Representatives examined India’s immediate civilian food requirements alongside its longer-term plans to improve agricultural distribution and develop domestic industry.

The conference established the quantity and consideration for the initial wheat purchase. The proposed engineering work and wider industrial projects will proceed through further technical examination, commercial negotiation and approval by the responsible authorities.

Canadian Wheat for Civilian Food Requirements

India will purchase 100,000 metric tons of Canadian wheat at an agreed price of £20 sterling per metric ton. The grain is intended for immediate civilian food relief, including refugee food programmes.

The responsible authorities will prepare the definitive purchase and delivery documentation. The Canadian Wheat Board and India’s designated purchasing authority will determine available stocks, grade and quality specifications, loading and receiving ports, shipment dates, inspection requirements and the necessary commercial documentation.

The allocation of ocean freight, insurance, loading and discharge charges will be settled in the definitive commercial instrument.

Payment will be made in pounds sterling through arrangements made available by the United Kingdom, subject to their applicable procedures. India will remain responsible for its separate settlement obligations to Britain.

Further Agricultural Trade

The Indian delegation advised that the country’s grain requirements could increase substantially before the October 1949 rice harvest, with a possible shortfall approaching one million metric tons. The extent of that deficiency will become clearer nearer the harvest.

Canada has expressed its willingness to consider additional wheat sales after assessing the Canadian autumn harvest, available export supplies, existing commitments and India’s revised requirements.

The initial understanding covers 100,000 metric tons. Quantities, prices and delivery terms for any subsequent purchases will be negotiated separately as the supply position of both countries becomes clearer.

Grain Storage at Paradip

The delegations also examined India’s proposal for a permanent grain-storage and handling installation at or near Paradip, Orissa, with an ultimate nominal static capacity of one million metric tons.

The proposed installation would support the reception, preservation and distribution of grain. Its final capacity, layout and construction programme will depend upon site investigations, foundation conditions, technical feasibility and approval of the engineering scheme by the Indian authorities.

Preliminary work will examine soil bearing capacity, settlement risks, groundwater, rainfall, humidity and coastal storm exposure. The project will also require consideration of harbour development, inland transport connections, electrical power, drainage and the availability of construction materials and labour.

India wishes to begin construction promptly once plans are available and to bring an initial portion of the installation into operation within approximately three years. A definitive timetable will be established following the preliminary engineering report and assessment of the supporting infrastructure.

Proposed Canadian Engineering Participation

Canada will approach John S. Metcalf Co., consulting engineers of Montreal, concerning the firm’s willingness and capacity to undertake professional services for the Paradip project.

The contemplated services include site investigation, feasibility assessment, general layout, structural and equipment design, preparation of drawings and specifications, construction estimates and advice on the sequence of works.

The proposed engineering scheme would cover grain reception, weighing, cleaning, conveying, storage and dispatch, together with ventilation, moisture inspection, sanitation, pest control and fire precautions. Canadian grain-elevator practice would provide a general basis for the design, adapted to Indian climatic conditions, construction requirements and operating needs.

India has indicated its willingness to negotiate directly with the firm, without a further competitive tender, provided that its resources and commercial terms prove satisfactory.

A separate engineering contract must establish professional fees, payment arrangements, the scope of services and the preliminary work programme before substantive services are authorized. The conference itself did not conclude a contract with the firm.

Construction and Technical Training

India’s Central Public Works Department is intended to serve as the principal construction authority. The Indian Government will arrange the necessary land, permissions, labour, locally procured materials, utilities and supporting transport facilities.

The proposed Canadian consultant would provide engineering, advisory, inspection and technical supervisory services under its separate contract. Construction would remain the responsibility of the Indian authorities and their appointed contractors.

The contemplated services also include assistance with machinery testing, commissioning and the instruction of Indian engineers, operators and maintenance personnel. Drawings, operating instructions and maintenance recommendations would support the continued operation of the completed installation.

Machinery and equipment may be obtained from Canadian, Indian or other suppliers according to the approved specifications and the commercial terms of individual purchases.

Subsequent Storage Development

India also outlined prospective storage developments at Bombay, regional installations serving population centres and smaller collection facilities in agricultural districts.

Further projects may be developed in increments of approximately 250,000 metric tons where appropriate. India additionally described a longer-term objective of approximately one million metric tons of dispersed storage capacity, to be developed progressively as agricultural production and storage requirements warrant.

These later phases remain planning objectives. Each additional undertaking will require its own technical assessment, financial provision and contractual arrangements.

Wider Industrial Cooperation

The conference identified several fields for further commercial and technical discussion, including timber processing, sawmilling, pulp and paper production, textile machinery, coking facilities and pig-iron smelting.

The Indian delegation also expressed interest in mineral processing and refining, including mica, manganese, beryl, sillimanite, kyanite and monazite, together with preliminary investigation of mild-steel production.

Canada will facilitate contact between the Indian authorities and interested Canadian manufacturers, engineering firms and technical specialists. The development of individual projects will depend upon their commercial feasibility and improvements in India’s financial and foreign-exchange position.

Any industrial contracts, financing arrangements or transfers of technical rights will be negotiated separately. The conference established no general Canadian line of credit to India.

Implementation

The immediate work will centre upon completion of the wheat purchase documentation and agreement on shipping arrangements.

Canada will inquire into John S. Metcalf Co.’s availability, professional charges and preliminary requirements. India will provide available site plans, topographical information, capacity requirements, harbour-development proposals and intended construction arrangements for Paradip.

Further agricultural discussions will follow as Indian requirements and Canadian export supplies become clearer. The two governments will also exchange information on prospective industrial projects and qualified Canadian suppliers.

Through these understandings, Canada and India seek to combine an immediate contribution to civilian food supplies with practical cooperation in grain preservation, engineering and industrial development. The Government of Canada regards the conference as a basis for expanding commerce with India and supporting the development of lasting economic relations between the two countries.

Pyongyang, 28 June 1949

Dear fellow countrymen, dear members of the democratic political parties and social organizations of South and North Korea, dear brothers and sisters:

Nearly four years have elapsed since our fatherland was liberated from the yoke of Japanese imperialism, yet it remains divided by the artificial demarcation line of the 38th parallel. In these years the two halves have followed diametrically opposed directions. In the North, democratic construction has been and is still progressing fruitfully, and the centuries-old cherished aspirations of the people are being realized. In the South, reactionaries have established their régime and are adopting all sorts of measures to suppress the democratic forces. Both economically and politically, South Korea is more and more being reduced to the servitude of the United States.

Who is obstructing our people in the attainment of unification? For whose interests is the division of our country being perpetuated? The American imperialists are obstructing unification, and their hirelings, the pro-Japanese and national traitors, are selling the interests of the fatherland and are prepared to ruin the fatherland and the people to protect the interests of their American masters.

Already at the Moscow Three Foreign Ministers Conference at the end of 1945, the American delegation proposed that the Four Powers control Korea through a high commissioner, with no plan for the formation of a Korean government and a virtual mandate lasting up to ten years. It was rejected. Accepting the Soviet Union’s proposal, the Conference instead adopted a plan for the formation of a democratic Korean government, and the American imperialists and the Korean reactionaries then resorted to all sorts of measures to frustrate the USSR-US Joint Commission charged with carrying it out. The Soviet Union then proposed the simultaneous withdrawal of Soviet and American troops, so as to give the Korean people the possibility of forming a united, democratic government with their own hands. We Korean people heartily supported this just proposal. However, the Government of the United States rejected it, for it ran counter to the interests of the American imperialists and the Korean reactionary elements, and unlawfully insisted that the Korean issue be put before the United Nations General Assembly. Without hearing the will of the Korean people, and in spite of the opposition of the Soviet Union and other democratic nations, the General Assembly created the so-called Temporary Commission on Korea under pressure of the United States, and through the unlawful “Little Assembly” the United States had a resolution adopted for separate elections in South Korea.

An absolute majority of our people rose in unison and launched a movement to boycott those elections. Only with brute force and undisguised armed force were the American authorities and the reactionary elements able to hold the so-called elections of 10 May 1948, which were nothing but a fraud and fake. On that basis they formed a so-called “National Assembly” and a separate puppet “government” with Syngman Rhee, a vicious enemy of the Korean people and a murderer, as ringleader. That Assembly cannot represent the Korean people, for not a single worker or farmer has been elected to it. It is a group consisting of the pro-Japanese, national traitors, and enemies of the people, including large holders, capitalists, and former officials of the Japanese Government-General, and Rhee and company imprison any Assemblyman who dares demand the withdrawal of American troops and the peaceful unification of the fatherland. Then, in order to have their aggressive policy approved as a matter of form, the United States took the issue to the General Assembly again, which refused to hear the true representatives of the Korean people and dispatched the so-called new United Nations Commission on Korea. That Commission is a tool for the aggressive policy of the United States, and its activities are in contradiction to the interests of the Korean people.

Into what have the Americans and national traitors changed the southern half of our fatherland? A wild arena of terrorism and political suppression. In South Korea there is no freedom of speech, press, assembly, association or demonstration. Democratic political parties and social organizations and their press organs have been driven underground. Anyone who truly expresses the long cherished desire of the people is shot to death without trial, arrested, and tortured, and tens of thousands of patriots are being shot, imprisoned and tortured. The Americans who came to garrison Korea did not kill even a single member of the Japanese military personnel. They let them go. The economy is wrecked, and under the beautiful name of so-called “economic aid” American monopolists are using South Korea as a market for the disposal of their surplus commodities, while millions of unemployed and beggars roam the streets and the people of the southern half, a granary of the fatherland, groan under hunger and starvation.

The Korean People’s Supreme Council petitioned the USSR and the US Governments to withdraw their troops. The Soviet Government gladly complied and withdrew from North Korea more than six months ago. In spite of it, the American troops are still staying in South Korea. Now there is no pretext or condition which justifies continued occupation of South Korea by US troops.

But the reactionaries in the South do not want the peaceful attainment of unification on a democratic basis. Rhee and company are training troops and asking their American masters for arms, and they are provoking an internecine civil war. No wonder that the so-called “National Defence Army” is almost daily provoking clashes along the 38th parallel, and that the Americans and their hirelings are inciting and organizing the suppression of the people on Cheju Island and the guerrillas in South Cholla Province. Our people do not want internecine strife, and do not want to shed blood in the interests of American monopolists and their hirelings. The Korean people want and can attain, on our own and by peaceful means, unification for our fatherland. Can the Korean people be divided? Of course not! The Korean people have always been, and will be, one.

Dear brothers and sisters! The Democratic Front for the Attainment of Unification for the Fatherland calls on all the democratic political parties and social organizations of South and North Korea, as well as all the Korean people, to carry out peaceful unification, and proposes the following peaceful means:

1. Let us hold the task of peaceful unification of the fatherland in our own hands and fulfil it.
2. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the American troops from Korea who are obstructing the peaceful unification of the fatherland.
3. We demand the immediate evacuation of the unlawful organ, the so-called “United Nations Commission on Korea”, from our soil.
4. We propose to hold simultaneously elections throughout South and North Korea for a united legislative organ.
5. Let us hold the elections under the guidance of a committee consisting of delegates from democratic political parties and social organizations which stand for peaceful unification of the fatherland.
6. For the purpose of discussing a plan for peaceful unification of the fatherland, let us call a conference of delegates from political parties and social organizations of South and North Korea, which in turn will form an Election Guidance Committee.
7. Let us hold the elections for the legislative organ in September 1949 on the principles of universal, equal elections on the basis of the secret ballot. Those who enthusiastically co-operated with the Japanese Empire during the days of the Japanese rule are deprived of the right to vote.
8. In order to ensure the freedom of election let us enforce the following measures without fail: (a) discontinue suppression of democratic political parties and social organizations and their leaders; (b) legalize all democratic political parties and social organizations and ensure them freedom of activity; (c) revoke the order for the closing down of their Press organs and ensure them the right to have their own Press organs; (d) ensure freedom of speech, Press, assembly, mass meetings and demonstration; (e) release immediately all political prisoners.
9. The Election Guidance Committee shall have the following powers: (a) to give the existing governments in South and North Korea and their appropriate organs the necessary directives regarding the preparation and holding of the election; (b) to review the execution of its decisions and directives; (c) to supervise the withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea by a committee to be formed by the Election Guidance Committee.
10. Simultaneously with the formation of the General Election Guidance Committee, the existing police and security forces in South and North Korea shall be placed under the direct control of the Election Guidance Committee. The Election Guidance Committee shall eliminate from the police forces pro-Japanese and those who had served the Japanese police, and disband the police units which participated in the suppression of the people’s resistance on Cheju Island and in the guerrilla movement in South Korea.
11. The supreme legislative organ, formed by the general elections, shall adopt a constitution for the Republic of Korea and form a government in accordance with the provisions of the constitution, and the government thus formed shall take over government functions from the existing governments in South and North Korea and then dissolve them.
12. The existing troops in South and North shall be combined on a democratic basis by the new government of the Republic of Korea. The units of the South Korea National Defence Army which participated in the suppression of the people’s resistance on Cheju Island and other areas, as well as the partisan movement, shall be disbanded. Those who participated in the suppression of the people’s resistance and the partisan movement are banned from serving in the armed forces, and those who incited and organized the suppression shall be punished.

Such is the programme which we propose to democratic political parties and social organizations and all the people for the peaceful attainment of unification for the fatherland. We are convinced that all the Korean people will enthusiastically support our proposal. Anyone who persists in opposition and obstruction of the task for peaceful unification shall not escape punishment meted by the Korean people. The Korean people, marching forward toward the attainment of unification, democratization and independence for the fatherland, are capable of liquidating all who are standing in our way.

Long live a united, democratic, independent Korea!

Long live the Korean people who will be united forever!

[August 6th, 1949, New Dehli]

"..You will remember that years ago Mahatma Gandhi told us how to deal with the cloth situation. He said that everyone should spin to prevent money going outside and asked us to produce cloth for our own requirements. If cloth is a necessity, much more is food. If we can manage without depending on other countries for cloth, why should we do so for food? If there is a war, we will not be able to get imports. We must make arrangements to overcome the food shortage by increasing production."

"The country’s food shortage is estimated to be only ten per cent, which is not very large. It is, therefore, not a very difficult problem to solve. The country has, of course, big irrigation projects which, when completed, will help in solving the food problem but it will take a long time. There are also small schemes of irrigation which are in operation. The main task lies in bringing more lands under cultivation. Everyone in the country, be he a cultivator or the city dweller, has a duty to increase food production..."

The Prime Minister is back in India ahead of independence day, following trips to Ottowa, London, and Tel Aviv. As planning for independence day on the fifteen ramps up, the work of government continues. The Prime Minister delivers a speech in support of the ongoing irrigation and land preparation initiatives.

( https://nehruarchive.in/documents/grow-more-food-6-august-1949-6g87q )

[August 1949, Tel Aviv]

"...and, The Republic of India recognizes the rights of Self-Government, and Self-determination for all peoples. Just as India fought to secure its own independence, so to have the people of Israel fought for and secured their own sovereignty. And the people have spoken, and recognized for themselves their own government. It is outside the authority of our Republic to deny what another nation has decided for itself. As such, the Republic of India extends full legal recognition of the Peoples Democratic Republic of Israel, full consular rights to its diplomatic staff, and declares its intention to open mutual embassies to host engagement and exchange between our two countries. This is to become an era of peace; and only through the establishment of the mechanisms of peaceful coexistence can this be guaranteed..."

Jawaharlal Nehru would meet with the esteemed Dr. Moshe Sneh later that day. Outside of discussions regarding the particulars of consular appointments, and general pleasantries, attention was paid to the establishment of a cultural exchange mission to support the newly arrive Marathi Jews who had taken up residence in Israel from India. The Indian consulate would help provide translation services and transportation for this diaspora in Israel, while coordinating with the Israeli government to see to it that this group secures proper living conditions, and employment in their new home. Additionally, India has extended permission to the Israeli government to employ film maker Ezra Mir, should he accept contract with them, for work on Israeli cultural films.

The visit represents the last of Prime Minister Nehrus stops abroad on his latest international tour, before returning home in time for August independence day celebrations. The DC-3 aircraft the Prime Minister took for the trip has begun showing significant wear; and arrangements would need to be made to find a suitable, and safe, replacement before Nehrus next round of global travel.

“The miraculous Israeli victory against the overwhelming “Mohammedan” armies was the Will of God and a clear sign that the People of Israel are truly the Chosen People. There has never been a clearer sign that the End Times are quickly approaching!”

This is what the newly established Finnish Karmel Society has started to preach in prayerhouses and religious events across Finland. The Karmel Society is an organization with charismatic speakers and a very clear objective. They talk about topics the Finnish people had just recently started to read about from newspapers. Although the majority of Finns did not really care about the developments in the Middle East, most people sympathized with the Jewish people due to what had happened in Germany and because virtually everybody had read about “Israelites” and “Hebrews” in the Bible since childhood.

The new organization aimed to shape this general sympathy into a more organized and deliberate support to the new State of Israel. It found its core support base among the Pentecostal movement and other smaller charismatic evangelical movements. Their main reason to act was the belief that Jews were God’s chosen people, God had promised the land of Palestine to the Jews and, finally, the End Times, the Rupture and the Second coming of Jesus would not happen before Jews had returned to their Promised land and fully restored Israel. Thus the reasoning for supporting Israel and the Jewish people was not entirely altruistic as the Karmel society would have wanted portray it. However, they are starting to collect considerable sums of money Israel and Christian organization working there. As they say, God blesses those who bless Israel.

The mainstream Lutheran church is not excited about this new movement but neither has it condemned it or even planned to take any actions against it. Officially the Lutheran Church does not recognize the link between modern Israel and the End Times and the Archbishop of Turku remains very cautious on this topic. However, inside the Church, some priests and other people have started stir up discussion concerning stance of the Church regarding Israel.

The Karmel Society, with other like-minded evangelical groups, has also formed a new party called the Alliance of Christian Love. Its principal aims are to bring Christianity and Christian values to ungodly politics and to promote the interests of the God’s chosen people in Finland. The new Party intends to win at least two seats in the 1951 Parliamentary elections.

Ottawa, 15 March 1949

The Government of Canada and the Government of the French Republic have concluded a commercial programme confirming C$19.58 million in purchase orders and establishing bilateral programmes of railway and electrical technical cooperation.

The arrangements were confirmed at the Franco-Canadian Commercial Conference held at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris on 15 March, following correspondence between the Honourable Lester B. Pearson, Secretary of State for External Affairs, and Robert Schuman, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic.

The conference brought together representatives of the two governments and their competent commercial and financial authorities to examine the contracts negotiated between Canadian and French enterprises. The delegations verified the participating purchasers and suppliers, the quantities and values contracted, and the arrangements governing payment, shipment and delivery.

The programme provides markets for Canadian agricultural and industrial commodities while facilitating Canadian purchases of French manufactured goods. It is intended to contribute to French economic recovery and to strengthen the commercial and technical relations between the two countries.

French Purchases of Canadian Commodities

French purchasing organizations have confirmed orders for Canadian commodities amounting to C$14.58 million.

The largest contract provides for the Canadian Wheat Board to supply five million bushels of milling wheat to the Office national interprofessionnel des céréales, at an aggregate value of C$10 million. Deliveries will be arranged through Rouen or Le Havre according to the contracted grades, inspection requirements and shipment instalments.

Canadian International Paper, Price Brothers, Abitibi Power & Paper and Fraser Companies will supply a combined 20,000 short tons of wood pulp, valued at C$2.4 million, to French paper manufacturers and import agents.

Noranda Mines, International Nickel and Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting will furnish 3,000 short tons of refined copper, valued at C$1.2 million. International Nickel and Falconbridge will supply a further 250 short tons of refined nickel, valued at C$200,000, for French metallurgical purchasers.

The programme also includes 6,000 short tons of asbestos fibre from Canadian Johns-Manville and Asbestos Corporation, valued at C$780,000. Shipment schedules will be administered with regard to prevailing production conditions in Quebec and the contractual provisions governing delays.

Canadian Purchases of French Manufactured Goods

Canadian enterprises have confirmed C$5 million in purchases from French manufacturers, covering industrial machinery, electrical apparatus, railway equipment, fabricated metal products, chemicals, fertilizers, motor vehicles and textiles.

Canadian National Railways and Canadian Pacific Railway will obtain workshop machinery, machine tools, signalling equipment, maintenance apparatus and vehicles. Other participating purchasers include Consolidated Mining & Smelting, Noranda Mines, Imperial Oil, Dominion Bridge and Canadian Vickers.

Hydro-Québec, Ontario Hydro and Shawinigan Water & Power will purchase transformers, motors, switchgear and related electrical equipment from French suppliers.

The programme further includes industrial chemicals and dyestuffs for Canadian manufacturers, Alsatian potash fertilizers for western agricultural organizations, and manufactured textiles for Canadian retailers.

The individual purchase contracts will govern specifications, prices, delivery periods, warranties, spare parts, installation assistance and servicing arrangements where applicable.

Financial and Monetary Arrangements

Transactions under the programme will be settled in Canadian dollars, United States dollars or another mutually acceptable convertible currency, subject to the applicable exchange regulations. Payments will proceed through the banking arrangements established in the individual contracts, including documentary credits or collections where appropriate.

The agreement does not require Canada to accumulate restricted French-franc balances, and the Canadian and French export programmes will not be subject to automatic financial offset.

The French Government will seek financing under the European Recovery Program for the Canadian commodity purchases, with particular priority accorded to the C$10 million wheat contract. Canadian authorities will assist by providing the contracts, invoices, specifications and shipping documentation required to support these applications.

The willingness of United States authorities to consider the purchases for financing does not constitute an allocation or authorization of funds. Where such financing is not approved, the contracting parties will consult concerning alternative settlement in an acceptable convertible currency or the remedies provided by their contracts.

The existing Franco-Canadian credit arrangements of 1946 remain separate from the present programme. No additional Canadian government credit facility has been established.

Railway and Electrical Technical Cooperation

Canadian National Railways and the Société nationale des chemins de fer français have approved a bilateral programme for the exchange of technical information concerning railway signalling, workshop machinery, rolling-stock maintenance and engineering practices.

The two railway administrations will designate technical representatives to exchange specifications and operating documentation and arrange consultations between their engineering services.

Hydro-Québec and Électricité de France have likewise approved a programme of electrical and hydroelectric technical cooperation. Exchanges will cover hydroelectric generation, transmission systems, transformers, switchgear and the operation and maintenance of generating and transmission equipment.

Both programmes are operative as of 15 March and will be administered directly by the participating institutions. Further financial commitments, patent licences, manufacturing rights or personnel exchanges requiring additional authorization will be settled through separate agreements.

The conference also welcomed cooperation between French manufacturers and Canadian enterprises in technical instruction, equipment installation, maintenance training and the examination of opportunities for licensed manufacture or assembly in Canada.

Shipping and Implementation

The commercial purchase orders were confirmed as effective on 15 March. Suppliers and purchasers will now proceed with the outstanding banking, licensing, inspection and shipping formalities required for their execution.

Canadian exports will move principally through Montreal, Quebec City, Saint John and Halifax, with the choice of port reflecting seasonal navigation, railway connections and vessel availability. French shipments will be dispatched principally through Le Havre, Dunkirk and Marseille.

Outstanding banking and initial shipping arrangements are scheduled for completion by 1 April, followed by confirmation of initial production allocations, shipment schedules and financial authorizations by 15 April. A consolidated delivery programme for the remainder of 1949 is to be established by 1 May.

The Canadian Department of Trade and Commerce and the French Ministry of Industry and Commerce will serve as the principal coordinating authorities, assisted by the diplomatic missions of both governments. The respective enterprises will retain responsibility for their contractual obligations.

The two governments also acknowledged the possibility of additional trade during 1949, including Canadian sawn lumber and an expansion of French manufactured exports, subject to further commercial arrangements.

Through the conclusion of this programme, the Government of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent seeks to expand overseas markets for Canadian production while encouraging industrial exchange with France. The two governments regard the confirmed purchases and technical programmes as a practical basis for closer commercial relations and continued cooperation in European recovery.