Members of the European Union Security Council
2 September 2024
The Californian Government wishes to congratulate the governing coalition of the United Duchies on their electoral win. We hope it can deliver for Duchians and act on its democratic mandate.
Kamala Harris, Prime Minister of California
Breaking: Los Angeles Feels a 4.0 Earthquake
All the News You Need to Hear
VERINTENO - The NGNA, a joint committee of the Duxburian Central Bank and Federal Blockchain Alliance, has now launched their highly advanced DAGK 1.0 consensus protocol. Programmed by world-renowned computer science experts Grandmaster Brandeus Devoy, Grandmaster Andres Marian, and Master Kade Nelson, DAGK utilizes much higher mathematical algorithms than previous partially-synchronus, directed acrylic graph of blocks protocols such as LINK X and Ripple X.
The permissionless, paramaterless protocol's transaction ordering logic is agnostic to its network latency, enabling it to scale to the size of the hardware that runs it, rendering its transactions-per-second cap theoretically infinite. DAGK's capabilities are limited only by the speed, size, and power of the internet itself. The protocol can finalize some closer transactions at speeds under 50 milliseconds vs the 2-5 second window of the older Ripple X network.
DAGK is published as an open source specification that anyone may use free for any purpose. The Duxburian government and financial sector plan on implementing a closed-source version of the protocol for payments processing by the end of the year, while some smaller credit alliances may be up and running with it far sooner.
The FBA will now deprecate the LINK X network, although as a decentralized specification, any entity running it may continue to run it indefinitely.
The Union of Duxburian Dominions always welcomes more competition in payment processing. We tried this in the past with the Eurocard idea, but it didn't gain traction as councillors did not want to use a private contractor. In the time since then, payment processing has really advanced with mobile pay, direct ID card pay, Ripple X, BDAG, and now the cutting edge DAGK protocol. In order to be successful, EuroPay needs to have the flexibility to change and adapt with such massive leaps in technological sophistication. Payments, especially inter-bank, are no longer linear transmissions of money, they are massively parallel transmissions of asset-agnostic, platform-agnostic data. The idea of a consumer-facing retail bank itself is on the cusp of becoming obsolete.
Most of the proposed act does seem to account for changes in technology that would keep the network relevant. That said, I agree that the new technologies clause could be struck since it shouldn't limit itself to anything specific, plus if the network needs updating, it'll just get updated, enumerating such is unnecessary. Councillor Tilkanas holds a very outdated view of what the crypto world actually is these days, but that's a debate for some other act and some other time.
I agree with striking the sanctions clause. My government still holds sanctions as a step akin to declaring war with prejudice, and as it expects full military retaliation for any sanctions issued...it will simply never agree to issue any.
The Union of Duxburian Dominions lacks a conventional "chargeback" system since that would interfere with the infinite outbound scalability of the DAGK protocol, however, the clause allows for refunds to be issued as separate transactions so nothing needs to be amended there.
Chip and pin is far too antiquated to use, but again we don't need an amendment with how it's worded.
I do want to propose some minor amendments:
Amendment Four:
Change all references of "banks" to "financial institutions".
Amendment Five:
V.The network shall be funded by a percentage of transaction payment processing fee up to a cap and per card card issuing an origination fee charged to issuing financial institutions banks for every physical card tradeline number issued on the EuroPay network.
Physical cards aren't really a thing anymore and banks are not the only entities that may be authorized to originate cards, so these clauses should have more flexibility. It's important to note that a "tradeline number" does not include one-time use virtual privacy numbers or the user-changeable numbers on modern card accounts that don't have default card numbers baked in. A tradeline number is the overarching identifier for whatever form their core "card" takes and the fee only needs to be paid again when that overarching "card" needs to be re-issued.
Everything else about the act seems fine to me.
Wesley Greene
Councillor-General of the Duxburian Union
Nik Asgard amte primo mani, Master-General of Land
Nik Asgard finally arrived in Europolis after sailing across the strait and then taking various public transit to reach the city. It took forever and made him arrive later than other dignitaries, but gotta practice what you preach, right? Of course, he had help from random people who recognized him not as a government official, but as a rare descendant of the first men of Azrekko. There was no hiding his visual heritage - the skin complexion of the greatest of all men who built the ancient Azrekkian world with nothing but their hands. Nik's heritage had already helped him become a huge hit among the rural Duxburians he needed to connect with as the new Master-General of Land, the Duxburian equivalent of a Ministry of Interior. Rural Duxburians, so hard for most government officials to reach and understand, practically revered the first men as the ultimate "masculine tough guys" of the desert, and thus they embraced Nik as one of their own despite being young and pretty ordinary all things considered. He alone could persuade them to do various things that liberal nanny men couldn't make them do, and that is why the government had decided to send him to the environmental conference over other, more well-known Duxburians.
However, Nik was far from any kind of tough guy in Europolis, shivering in the temperate air. Gawd, this place was soooooooooo fucking cold. Nik hailed from one of the hottest places on earth, the Valley of the Sun, which sat well below sea level in far southeastern Azrekko. According to legend, the Sun Kings of Azrekko built a forbidden city in the inhospitable valley for safely storing the gold reserve of their kingdom. While the forbidden city did indeed exist, and continues to exist due to an oasis (the invention of air conditioning helped too), the treasury was lost and never found, remaining one of the great mysteries of the country. Nik's Asgard bloodline never managed to leave this place, thus he was born to tolerate its scorching weather.
Layers, layers! Nik put on another jacket. One of the reasons he was here was concern that the climate was warming too rapidly, but now he wasn't so sure! He also didn't expect much from the conference. He was unlikely to see eye-to-eye with the rest of Europe on things like ICE vehicles (when gasoline still cost less than water), or preventing the spread of agriculture (with some of the largest food-producing regions of anywhere), and especially the continued lack of any real transition plan for workers and skills. However, the modern Duxburian Union wasn't all that far away from the European nanny libs in many categories like energy generation and recycling, so signing a deal was a very real possibility. Either way, it was worth his time. If nobody acted, his home of thousands of years would become uninhabitably hot, the desert could expand, and the food supply could be threatened.
Nik briefed his translator on what he planned to talk about. He could technically speak 4 languages fluently on his own, but his 2 best were ancient ones and his English came with an accent some thousands of years older than English itself that probably made it almost unintelligible to native speakers. Ah, the joys of coming from such an isolated time capsule of a place.
It would soon be time to meet the nanny libs and hear what wild ideas they have this go-around...
Commonwealth Bans Private Equity Property Buying
SACRAMENTO---The Commonwealth has passed through the House and Senate to ban the sale of residential properties to private equity firms. this proposal is the governing partner, the Greens in their coalition agreement with the CLP. That proposed bill got enacted with the CLP bargaining power. Prime Minister Harris and the Leader of the Greens, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez championed this policy
08 August 2024
The Commonwealth is planning to streamline our zero carbon energy and public transport agenda. The package of legislative proposals include budgeted bike infrastructure in California's major cities, construction of charging for electric vehicles, mandating all energy being produced by renewable means, the promotion of the development of advanced EV air travel vehicles, increased budget for tertiary and vocational education. This is an important step not only for preparing for a zero carbon future; it also provides the means to create a maintenance industry.
Federal Gov't Works With Independents to Pass Environment Regulations
SACRAMENTO---The Commonwealth Government worked to negotiate in the House with independents to pass more environment regulations. The new regulations, which are bill proposals, are meant to streamline the 2030 zero carbon transition. Those bills now are in the Senate and will need the support of the Liberal Party.
On behalf of the United Kingdom, I vote for the budget.
Caroline Lucas
