Golgothastan

The Nominally Liberal Fluffarchy of Golgothastan is a nation in the West Pacific. A contiguous landlocked country, on the regional map it is on the largest southern continent, surrounded by unclaimed territory. Although the United Nations generally categorises Golgothastan as an Anarchy it much prefers the Civil Rights Lovefest epithet, and characterises itself as a "(mostly) liberal (somewhat) democratic (kind of) republic".

Golgothastan is not a large nation in any sense of the word. Its area is quite tiny - one-fifth of its territorial allowance - and its population of 40 million is small on a global scale. Its economy is chronically underdeveloped and it is generally classified as an LEDC, though generally not as a Third World country. However, Golgothastan generally does well in world rankings based on civil and political freedoms, literacy and the environment; it is also the number one nation in the world in terms of per capita turnip consumption.

Although having a historic acceptance of immigrants and tolerance of diversity, Golgothastanis retain a distinct ethnic heritage. Basically, imagine someone whose diet consists of root vegetables and bread you could crack a diamond with, who lives in a neo-Stalinist high-rise surrounded by neo-Stalinist high-rises, and the highlight of whose week is the latest innovation in tractor technology. Now imagine there's 40 million of the fuckers. Yeah.

The nation has had a short and unremittingly boring history: initially colonised by farmers, these were quickly supplanted by bureaucrats to tell the farmers what to do, and most subsequent developments has involved trying to find a balance (i.e. as many bureaucrats for as few farmers as possible). At one point they thought having a monarch would enliven things, and people always dressed up for the coronations, but after a while they started to want to do things, so they had to get rid of that. Now the political system is a chaotic mess; ok, the political system is still a chaotic mess, just with fewer crowns. The guiding principle of Golgothastani political philosophy is the Nice/Not Nice system of Fluffarchism.

Name

Golgothastan is named after Golgotha, the place where Jesus Christ was crucified (and -stan because all good nations are called -stan; plus one of the Founding Cousins' nephews was called Stan and his parents couldn't get him a new iPod because they hadn't been invented then, and anyway have you seen the price of those things? all for a bit of wiring, silly really, so his cousin agreed to name the country after him instead). This is now seen as a bit nasty really, although generally not as aspiring to the level of Not Nice, because frankly, it's not like Christians have had a perfect record either: as such, Golgothastanis generally mumble something about it being an ancient word for "peace" or "harmony". Unfortunately, some latter generations have begun to believe this, and to dispute whether it is peace or harmony: a recent knife-fight between Peacists and Harmonists left 18 dead.

Geography

Golgothastan is not a big country, though no one has tried to work out its exact area because that's boring. If we had to pick one, maybe...20. Yeah, 20's a good number. It is surrounded by unclaimed territories, though its politicians live in perpetual fear of someone showing up and claiming them (when they really should be living in perpetual fear of the citizenry realizing it can vote them out of office as well as in). It is a contiguous state, though everyone wishes those weird North Golgothastanis weren't quite so contiguous.

The country has a variable terrain, from flat, grassy farmland in the east to slightly elevated, marginally less grassy farmland in the west. In the middle there is a big mountain that everyone is very proud of. Although the nation has no coastline, the heavy annual rainfall keeps the system of lakes and rivers well topped-up, and occasionally engulfs everyone in horrendous flash-floods. But sometimes afterwards, there are rainbows.

Terrain

Ok, so the terrain isn't actually that variable. But all the other nations say that, and it's good for tourism, and besides, a little white lie never really hurt anyone. Most of it does actually consist of fairly flat land. This has the advantage of making it easy to walk and build on, and the disadvantage of being morbidly depressing and conducive to devastating flooding.

Although the flooding can occasionally kill millions and reduce infrastructure to a crumbling, pre-medieval mess, most Golgothastanis are philosophical about this: their infrastructure is already a crumbling, pre-medieval mess, and they wouldn't exactly miss their neighbours, whose garden extension they've felt entitled to a share of for quite some time. The rivers in fact formed an important part of Golgothastan's economic makeup: they supplied fresh water with an efficiency the government could never match, contained many tasty fish, were used for freight transportation, and were useful for drowning excess kittens.

Aside from the odd hill, Golgothastan's only major elevation is the somewhat unimaginitively named Mount Golgothastan. An abrupt pimple in the otherwise serene texture of the nation, most Golgothastanis harbour a secret fear that it is in fact the product of a gigantic, radioactive mole that will one day burst free and devour them all. Interestingly, the government - which conducted assorted nuclear experiments there when they were feeling bored one day - has never denied this rumour's veracity.

Climate

Golgothastan is the only nation in the world that the International Meteorological Organisation has classified as having a climate of "depressing". This does not refer to air pressure, but rather the fact it rains all the damn time. However, foreigners often fail to understand how important the rain is to Golgothastani culture: if it didn't rain so much, the days when it didn't wouldn't be such joyous occasions. Similarly, the nation is carpeted with snow in winter, and it always manages to turn to grey sledge, for a time it covers up the eyesore of turnip field upon turnip field upon turnip field.

History

Native Golgothastanis

The modern state of Golgothastan was colonised in the 1920s; however, for a long time before this, maybe even back to when there were still DINOSAURS! the area was populated by tribes that lived peacefully and worked the land. When the first colonists arrived, the ties of universal love transcended barriers of language and culture, and everyone got on really well. But this meant almost all of the natives then died of smallpox. So, um, sorry about that.

Colonisation

By 1926 colonists had begun streaming into Golgothastan, seeking a land free from persecution. This meant most of the early colonists just ended up lying around all day and getting baked, and it took some while before any real development towards a nation emerged. Archaeologists are still uncovering some of the original bongs used by the first colonists, remarkable finds that strangely get tied up in lab analysis for months on end.

The first major settlement was at New New York, where a farming complex was soon developed to raise cattle and organize land use. Other early settlements included New New New York, New New New New York, New New New New New York and New New New New New New York, at which point the first national congress of delegates convened, coming to the unpopular conclusion that a bit more originality in naming might be required. This particularly annoyed the Mayor of New New New New New New New York, who'd already had the sign for his office door printed off and everything. After a while, networks of communes, towns, farms and leper colonies began to band together to organize a system of government. Then the first Great Reawakening happened, when they realized that instead, they could all just go get stoned again, and thus political unification took a little while longer in coming.

The Golgothastani Republic

In 1933 the Golgothastani Republic was formed as a nation by the Founding Cousins. These were mostly second- or third-generation immigrants who lacked, perhaps, the parental sensibilities of some other nations - explaining why the Constitution's Article 27 was "And we can stay out as long as we want, even on school nights" - and also influenced by the pursuits of the early colonists - thus making Golgothastan's original Constitution the only one in the world to begin "We, the People, in order to get a killer buzz..." At this point, however, Golgothastani historians pretty much run out of cannabis jokes, which weren't exactly gold to begin with anyway. Anyway, the Constitution took care of freedom of religion, speech, assembly, all that shit, and was generally considered to be not bad for a bunch of addled turnip-farmers with yeast infections.

The Founding Cousins gave the central government a lot of powers; this was chiefly influenced by seeing how abysmally run everything had been up to this stage. It did not occur to them that now things would simply be abysmally run on a national level. Which turned out to be the case, as the new nation plunged into economic depression from which it never truly recovered. However, Golgothastani national identity was quick to form, because the emigrants making up the bulk of the colonists were naturally inclined to complain, and complaining about national, rather than local, administrators was like totally a step up.

Middle bit to come.

Recent history

With the monarchy overthrown, Golgothastan returned to a republican form of "government", electing a President and Ministers. Later on, they wrote a constitution, though this turned out to consist of nothing more than poorly transcribed snippets of The West Wing dialogue written on cocktail napkins. Golgothastan decided to reenter the world, but this involved looking at the rest of the people in the world. Mortified, they shrank back and returned to a hermitic form of semi-isolation.

The return of democracy has brought neither stability nor prosperity, and electing a Stability-Prosperity coalition didn't work either. Drat, and we thought it was so clever. The nation continues to struggle economically while crime rates remain high. Attempts to solve either problem have proved unpopular and unsuccessful, and all-in-all, Golgothastanis look around them and see a country not so vastly different from the uninhabitable wreck their ancestors first encountered. Except for the dodgy foreign cable channels, which makes life worth living again.

Foreign relations

Golgothastan is far too busy trying to sort out its internal problems to have many foreign objectives and far too disorganized to have anything approaching foreign policy, though it has somewhat disinterestedly hopped regions from the now-defunct homeland of Noviona to Wysteria to Liberalia to the West Pacific. Golgothastanis have got used to the perpetual hum of helicopters, and fully expect a few further migrations yet. Furthermore, lacking any military power - hell, lacking any military at all - Golgothastan has had little impact on the international scene. They generally welcome open trade relations, however, and maintain embassies with a few nations.

United Nations

Golgothastan was briefly a member of the United Nations but resigned after National Systems of Tax passed, rejoining on actually reading the resolution and then resigning again following UN Biological Weapons Ban. Although this has since been repealed and replaced with the much better UN Bio Agent Convention all the commotion was a bit much and Jack Weisgaarden, the Golgothastani representative to the UN, had to lie down for a long while. Now he rambles around the UN Headquarters unable to find his shoes; he occasionally appears in The Strangers' Bar but no one takes much notice of him.

Mr Weisgaarden's comments have, as with all good observers, been mostly confined to haughtily complaining about how no you're doing it wrong, see if I was doing it, I don't know why we joined this bloody organization in the first place. This has included arguing against Repeal "Legalise Euthanasia", throwing a wobbly about the Abortion Legality Convention, getting into a pissing contest over Developed Economic Advancement, a grumpy rant that kicked off official discussion on Help Prevent Ozone Depletion, and trying - and failing - to get Chemical Transport Standards deleted. However, he spoke in support of Orbital Space Safety Act. Other addresses to the UN have included sarcastic complaints about the rightwards legislative turn, a couple of proposals that never made it anywhere, and an exchange with a fellow Jack about national sovereignty.