Jelbe

[Reddy]

Security Forces Disperse Protesters
July 4756

The Jelbek government has cleared city streets of thousands of suffrage protesters. The streets of major cities such as Baofluz, Vrnestrap and Amsadomura had been choked with protestors demanding the extension of suffrage to all adult Jelbeks. The new premier Taj Kezkai Nubajrka declared the operation a "tremendous success" and praised the valour of the men of the Great Jelbek Horde, the Mounted Police and allied militia. Rejecting any suggestions of concession, he drew his sword at the press coverage nference and exclaimed, "this is my only concession to raggedy thugs!" Nubajrka coldly refused to release figures on the number of casualties stating that he was "not in the habit of following up on the pointless fates of thugs and serfs" A local affiliate of the Human Rights Foundation claims to have evidence of at least 600 deaths and ten times as many injuries.

[Liu Che/Zhuli]

Yingdala-Vanuku-Jelbania Ties Strengthened, Conduct Defensive Military Drills in Majatra

[Liu Che/Zhuli]

Yingdala Offers to Jointly Develop Military Equipment with Zoo Alliance

[Reddy]

Legislative Rebellion Sinks Nubajrka Mnistry

Dec 4759
Jelbania's wonderboy premier Taj Kezkai Nubajrka has driven his ministry to a collapse. Taj Nubajrka took a gamble and tied confidence in his ministry to a Kurultai motion to lift the four year long state of siege. The bill passed by a vote of 68 to 43. The reaction which catapulated him to power four years ago sharply turned against him as the legislators found themselves more fearful of his ambitions than the rabble.

The rebellion in the Kurultai began three months ago when the Khan was admitted to hospital for a routine procedure. The Taj tastelessly attempted to assure the populace that all was well and he was in charge. Rumours about his plans to restore a powerful Khanate under himself spread and the Kurultai soon voted to create a Public Security Committee to scrutinize emergency measures. A majority of Committee members recommended lifting the state of siege and the knives were out.

Upon the Taj's resignation, the Kurultai chose Merlkai Grakkrt a Baofluzian patrician to form the next ministry. Famed more for his geniality rather than political acumen, Grakkrt has very limited political experience having been elected to the Kurultai just two years ago. This however makes him the perfect premier for the leaders of the various cliques within the Kurultai who fear the rise of a "Czar Premier" above nearly everything else.

[Reddy]

"Super Highway" Project Kicks Off
April 4761
Jelbania's new government has secured a major victory in persuading the Kurultai to fund the so called "super Highway" project. The 10 year, 16bn LODconstruction projects aims to create a cohesive national road network connecting all the Free State's major population centres. Jelbeks tend to have considerable trouble travelling from any part of the country to another unless it is located on the Great North-South Road, a project which was itself driven by its neighbours Vanuku and Deltaria .

Merlkai Grakkrt shocked many observers as few would have believed that soft spoken Premier could have achieved what had eluded previous governments for close to two decades. Jelbania had won Dorvik's pledge of technical expertise to assist in the project. The Kurultai, ever suspicious of grandiose government projects refused to even consider the bill; legislative floor leaders simply refused to schedule it on the floor agenda. Sources in Grakkrt's office say that the premier used stone cold realism and flattered the legislators by promising to allow them to name "local" sections of the super Highway , offering them a share of the patronage opportunities involved in the hiring of the massive 200,000 labour force required and support of numerous private bills each legislator has sponsored.

[Reddy]

Jelbek Government Furious At "Slanderous" World Congress Report
January 4763

The Jelbanian government has dismissed a World Congress report on economic inequality in the country as "utter hogwash. The report compiled by WC special representative Juliana Jayalalithaa paints a very bleak picture of economic inequality in the Free State naming it the worst offender in the Old World.

Highlights include a claim that 40% of the country's agricultural land is controlled/owned by 264 families, of which 81 members of the Kurultai hail from. The other 60% is owned by around 10,000 lesser aristocrats. The rest are composed of millions of so-called koybas (serfs) who either rent small plots or work on the noble estates paying half of the produce or typically earning very low wages while the aristocrats pay no direct tax of any kind. Close to two thirds of all Jelbeks are koybas and live in extreme poverty with few opportunities for advancement. Mrs Jayalalithaa recommended that the Jelbek government consider adopting redistributive policies.

The Ministr for Agriculture, Grzkai Jlekai Knyzong rejected the report describing as a " communist-inspired regime change propaganda" and attacked the WC special representative herself as "an ignorant lady from Vascania who has little understanding of the sophisticated social contracts governing the relationship between lord and servant...it's not quite like the cow worship she is accustomed to."

[Reddy]

The Knitting Of The Steppe

November 4767

Recent advances in Jelbania's infrastructure and economic sophistication are leading to what Jelbek political economist Dr. Jebr Nohe has described as "the knitting of the steppe. According to Dr. Nohe the Jelbek nation is now transforming from a society characterised by very weak national government coupled with powerful clan and kinship networks to one with a small yet effective government, reasonable national infrastructure facilitating easier travel and trade along with weakening clan/kin ties as Jelbeks traverse the steppe in search of what appears to unlimited economic opportunity.

The government's Super Highway project, extensive Majatran Economic Association financial aid and a stable if unrepresentative political system have combined to create what is proving to be the first truly functional Jelbek nation-state. There have been close to no security crises in close to two decades - no coups, assassinations, rebellions or substantial mob violence

The long serving premier Merlkai Grakkrt has guided the ship with surprising dexterity. In his eleventh year in office, he has earned himself considerable popularity with the populace, voters and non-voters. Notoriously tight-lipped, Grakkrt has refused to comment on reports that he intends to reform the voting system and possibly abolish or substantially liberalise the property requirements.

[Reddy]

Kurultai Embraces Universal Suffrage

April 4768

The Kurultai has passed an Amendment to the Constitutional Charter which will effectively institute universal suffrage. With remarkably little controversy, the government's proposal to remove property qualifications substituting them with restrictions on "recipients of public assistance and insolvents", passed unanimously following a passionate appeal from the premier to legislators on " creating a strong conservative democracy on our terms".

According to the Royal Statistics Bureau, just over 90% of all citizens will be able to vote in the 4773 election. The new restrictions are effectively pointless as very little public assistance is available and few borrow money from within the regulated lending sectors of the economy. The reform while notable, bowed to a noticeable trend itself driven by rising prosperity in the country. The number of land and homeowners has increased sharply as increasing industrialisation has enabled many to buy new homes and landholdings.

Another factor is that several local governments had experimented with expanding suffrage and the results so far did not suggest that the new voters were especially irresponsible, in fact many appeared to be quite conservative and skeptical of expanded government services.

The premier announced that he would found a political party the Purple Wolf Party to unite all conservative democrats under one banner and offer the country a more orderly party-based system of government.

[Zanz]

The Jelbanian Purple Stripe is the largest and oldest media outlet in Jelbania. It is written primarily to a foreign and Settled
(Jeztaghényr) Jelbék audience and is often the most critical of traditional Jelbicism.

3 July 4776
Jelbék H'an dead, Kurultai convenes to select successor


BAOFLUZ, Köşpend​ék​stan, Jelbek Free State Late in the evening of 2 July 4776, Juhn of the house Katona, Jelbék
H'an and silent overseer to the recent liberalization of the Jelbek state, has passed, leaving the Jelbek Free State
without a monarch.

Juhn, a practitioner of uncharacteristically laissez faire relative to his predecessors, died childless, leaving the future
of the Free State precariously uncertain. During Juhn's reign, significant social reform was enacted, a process known to
academics as the 'Knitting of the Steppe". This effort culminated in an historically unprecedented universal
enfranchisement, a largely successful and symbolically vital development in the notoriously wild and inequitable Jelbek
homeland.

Juhn's passing will be observed with several weeks' worth of ritual mourning, but the Kurultai, Jelbania's deliberative
body, has been summoned to the capital in order to begin its sacred process to select his successor. Unusually, experts
have few obvious candidates to point to, as the period of relative stability has led to an historically unprecedented
dearth of the traditionally powerful Beks from which H'ans are generally selected.

[Zanz]

The Jelbanian Purple Stripe is the largest and oldest media outlet in Jelbania. It is written primarily to a foreign and Settled
(Jeztaghényr) Jelbék audience and is often the most critical of traditional Jelbicism.

8 August 4776
On the desolate Nemawar steppe, travel on completed portions of the Jelbek
Super Highway comes with risks


Nearly 4.6 million LOD in damage has been done to vehicles on the Jelbek Super Highway's Nemawar sections alone since they were opened
for public use

KSHI JEZTRIDOMURA, Nemawar, Jelbek Khanate The office of claims adjuster Andrj Baokndz in the regional headquarters
of the Baofluz Insurance Corporation here in Kshi Jeztridomura was never quite so disheveled before the
Jelbek Super Highway, he assures me. Back in the heady days of the 4750s, when Baokndz was a younger man, his job
consisted largely of attending conferences in Baofluz, and in wrangling funding from corporate to repair the squat, aging
building, one of the only concrete and steel structures in a city otherwise largely still composed of wood and adobe.

Now, his desk's existence is implied by the piles of paperwork floating at roughly waist height, but no visible surface
area is offered as proof. A chair is suggested to me, but after several seconds of fruitless shuffling and sighing jabs at a
tottering pile of form 57-Bs, he sheepishly suggests we take the interview standing.

"57-B," he breathes the sequence with the exhausted cadence of a man whose gravestone will bear those characters.
Five seven dash bee. The form used to document damage to property, specific to damage caused by man. 57-A is damage
caused by weather, he tells me, reserved for the dust storms and tornadoes of the steppe. 57-B must keep the form
makers in business, he hypothesizes.

The far reaches of the Great Perimor Steppe have been opened, at least in part, by the Jelbek Super Highway, announced
in the early 4760s as the keystone initiative in what is now known broadly as the "knitting of the steppe". Completed
portions of the highway have brought significant increases in commerce to even the most remote areas of Jelbania, long
a thorn in any centralizing effort's side. In Nemawar, though, the highways have brought form 57-B, by the ream.

Nearly 5 million LOD worth of damage has been reported in Nemawar Taghé alone, largely vehicles damaged by the various
projectile weapons (arrows, spears, rocks) traditionally used by the Jeztaghé tribes of the western steppe. As the country's
foremost insurer, BIC has borne the brunt of that economic burden, and premiums for vehicular damage have increased
786% on average in the last decade. Andrj Baokndz takes a moment to lament that his wages have not grown in correlation.

Though hailed in Baofluz and across Terra as an unprecedented success, the knitting of the steppe is much maligned in
Jelbania's traditionally tribal areas, where the benefits of increased commerce must be weighed against the costs of
damage to property and risk to human life. Beks across the steppe have refused to engage with the centralized government
or its corporate outreach, opting instead to ignore or, when anonymity offers safety, to resist violently. Baofluz has largely
proven either unwilling or unable to respond, and attacks on travelers are "part of the commute", Baokndz says, only
somewhat tongue in cheek.

What can be done? As he spills coffee down his shirt, he has few suggestions. "Close the highway down," he sighs, noting
that as drivers and companies choose between the skyrocketing cost of insuring or the risk of driving uninsured, they're
instead choosing not to drive it, opting instead for the slower historical methods of travel - trains, boats, and smaller
roadways. Commercial tonnage transported on the Nemawar sections of the JSH has dropped by nearly 68% in the last
decade, and overall traffic volume is down 49% in the same period. "Or militarize it," he suggests, in traditional Jelbic
fashion. Some more radical members of the Kurultai have suggested that the Jelbanian Army be deployed more
aggressively to defend both domestic and international interests.

Until then, Andrj Baokndz will continue his chant - five seven dash bee, five seven dash bee.