alternatehistory.com
McCain Administration Summer 2012
Summer 2012
"What the heck is going on in Egypt?"
"Well, at least the Summer Olympics should cheer us up"
"Praying for everyone in India..."
With the successes of Spring regarding the Middle East and the Arab Spring, things began to slowly die down. The events of Syria and Iraq sent a pretty clear message to the authority figures over in the Middle East along with what happened in Libya. The ruling powers need to stay in line and listen to the people or else they won't survive the decade. McCain used the successes there to tout the need for a firm hand against groups that would threaten democracy and to stay strong during tough days. While the economy was still quite sluggish, it did assist in trying to push the message forward. Of course, there was still plenty of issues that lies. And that was in Egypt. The 5th president would be elected after a contentious election and the person was none other than Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, given the mixed reception and protests, it was not exactly something that brought reassurance. The main reason was on how utterly close the election was. While many predicted it would be close, the margin was still quite surprising to say the least. And the response was not comforting given the controversy behind the Muslim Brotherhood to begin with. Of course, the new President was doing his best to reassure the skeptics abroad and within, along with establishing new ties with the new nations. People were holding their breath in regards to what could happen.
Egyptian President-elect Mohammed Morsi speaks to newspaper editors in Cairo on Thursday, June 28, 2012. (photo credit: Egyptian Presidency/AP)
However, there was some optimistic matters to look into and those were the 2012 Summer Olympics. Held in London, many people were looking forward to the event and served as a good break from the ongoing Recession and the growing social issues going on. While Assyria and Kurdistan were unable to participate (being so new as to unsure whether had anyoen that could qualify), they were invited to be in support of it. Shaam and Iraq meanwhile did sent representatives along with Palestine. Overall, after all the tensions and the catharsis brought on by the Arab Spring and the troubles of the Great Recession, they were gonna take the time to try and enjoy themselves with some friendly competition and for the most part, did serve as a legitimate morale booster for a lot of people involved. Of course, it wasn't without its issues. While the sustainaility and renewability issues were welcomed, there was still the looming troubles of the austerity measures that hung around the United Kingdom at the time and the Tories were doing little in regards to it. And of course, other controversies and concerns were being held such as regarding sponsors, ticket distributions and so on. Other scandals would develop such as drug usage, predominantly among the Russian athletes. Despite this, it was a good time to be had by all and the last day saw the Olympic Hunger Summit to discuss further reducting world hunger and the connections it had in doing so. Unsurprisingly, sustainability and climate change were big discussions about it and moreover were delving into the details, such as the observation of how much decent food gets thrown away within restaurants and stores, especially in the US, which served as a stinging yet accurate remark, especially as social media began spreading the stories of workers in the food industry confirming this. Overall, it was quite an eventful Olympics that signaled some changing times yet continued to promote positive feelings.
London Olympics 2012 logo
Of course, not everything was happy. There was the death of Neil Armstrong, the growing troubles regarding Armenia and Hungary and so on. However, perhaps the biggest issue was on the massive blackouts that were going on over in India. At the end of July, two severe power blackouts affected most of northern and eastern India. The 30 July 2012 blackout affected over 400 million people and was briefly the largest power outage in history by number of people affected, beating the January 2001 blackout in Northern India (230 million affected). The blackout on 31 July is the largest power outage in history. The outage affected more than 620 million people, about 9% of the world population, or half of India's population, spread across 22 states in Northern, Eastern, and Northeast India. The entire issue brought back the discussion for power grids, their distrubtion and the concentration of electric power. Further notes was unsurprisingly on renewanle energy as some places with things like solar panels and so on were a bit better off. Having such a large democracy go through such trouble did bring concerns in and the government needed to step in and invest the funds to get everything back up and fix it. This did bring back other matters such as folks wanting to be more independent from the grid along with the production and distribution of electircal power.
View attachment 531518Map and legend of the blackout
...
...
"Whatever happened to alot of the forces of Saddam and Assadand the other Baathists, anyway?
"Well, they likely would've been chased out and headed down south, about the only place they could go anyway..."
...
...
"That's mainly Saudi Arabia though...
...
...
"And what about Russia? What happened to them with their deal with the Assad administration?"
"What the heck is going on in Egypt?"
"Well, at least the Summer Olympics should cheer us up"
"Praying for everyone in India..."
With the successes of Spring regarding the Middle East and the Arab Spring, things began to slowly die down. The events of Syria and Iraq sent a pretty clear message to the authority figures over in the Middle East along with what happened in Libya. The ruling powers need to stay in line and listen to the people or else they won't survive the decade. McCain used the successes there to tout the need for a firm hand against groups that would threaten democracy and to stay strong during tough days. While the economy was still quite sluggish, it did assist in trying to push the message forward. Of course, there was still plenty of issues that lies. And that was in Egypt. The 5th president would be elected after a contentious election and the person was none other than Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, given the mixed reception and protests, it was not exactly something that brought reassurance. The main reason was on how utterly close the election was. While many predicted it would be close, the margin was still quite surprising to say the least. And the response was not comforting given the controversy behind the Muslim Brotherhood to begin with. Of course, the new President was doing his best to reassure the skeptics abroad and within, along with establishing new ties with the new nations. People were holding their breath in regards to what could happen.
Egyptian President-elect Mohammed Morsi speaks to newspaper editors in Cairo on Thursday, June 28, 2012. (photo credit: Egyptian Presidency/AP)
However, there was some optimistic matters to look into and those were the 2012 Summer Olympics. Held in London, many people were looking forward to the event and served as a good break from the ongoing Recession and the growing social issues going on. While Assyria and Kurdistan were unable to participate (being so new as to unsure whether had anyoen that could qualify), they were invited to be in support of it. Shaam and Iraq meanwhile did sent representatives along with Palestine. Overall, after all the tensions and the catharsis brought on by the Arab Spring and the troubles of the Great Recession, they were gonna take the time to try and enjoy themselves with some friendly competition and for the most part, did serve as a legitimate morale booster for a lot of people involved. Of course, it wasn't without its issues. While the sustainaility and renewability issues were welcomed, there was still the looming troubles of the austerity measures that hung around the United Kingdom at the time and the Tories were doing little in regards to it. And of course, other controversies and concerns were being held such as regarding sponsors, ticket distributions and so on. Other scandals would develop such as drug usage, predominantly among the Russian athletes. Despite this, it was a good time to be had by all and the last day saw the Olympic Hunger Summit to discuss further reducting world hunger and the connections it had in doing so. Unsurprisingly, sustainability and climate change were big discussions about it and moreover were delving into the details, such as the observation of how much decent food gets thrown away within restaurants and stores, especially in the US, which served as a stinging yet accurate remark, especially as social media began spreading the stories of workers in the food industry confirming this. Overall, it was quite an eventful Olympics that signaled some changing times yet continued to promote positive feelings.
London Olympics 2012 logo
Of course, not everything was happy. There was the death of Neil Armstrong, the growing troubles regarding Armenia and Hungary and so on. However, perhaps the biggest issue was on the massive blackouts that were going on over in India. At the end of July, two severe power blackouts affected most of northern and eastern India. The 30 July 2012 blackout affected over 400 million people and was briefly the largest power outage in history by number of people affected, beating the January 2001 blackout in Northern India (230 million affected). The blackout on 31 July is the largest power outage in history. The outage affected more than 620 million people, about 9% of the world population, or half of India's population, spread across 22 states in Northern, Eastern, and Northeast India. The entire issue brought back the discussion for power grids, their distrubtion and the concentration of electric power. Further notes was unsurprisingly on renewanle energy as some places with things like solar panels and so on were a bit better off. Having such a large democracy go through such trouble did bring concerns in and the government needed to step in and invest the funds to get everything back up and fix it. This did bring back other matters such as folks wanting to be more independent from the grid along with the production and distribution of electircal power.
View attachment 531518Map and legend of the blackout
...
...
"Whatever happened to alot of the forces of Saddam and Assadand the other Baathists, anyway?
"Well, they likely would've been chased out and headed down south, about the only place they could go anyway..."
...
...
"That's mainly Saudi Arabia though...
...
...
"And what about Russia? What happened to them with their deal with the Assad administration?"
- CountDVB
- Word Count: 910