Miles Francis Xavier Holt (28 September 1946), is an amateur poet, partisan and sometime musician from the Gaelic north-east island of Pofoland. He was a Pofoese consul by profession famous for his reports and activities against human rights abuses in Todolundi and Equatorial Guinea, but better known for his role in the downfall of the Ryan Government in 1994. A Gaelic nationalist in his youth, he worked in Africa for commercial interests and latterly in the service of Pofo. However the War and his investigation into atrocities in Todolundi led Holt to anti-Imperialist and ultimately Socialist opinions.
Early life and educationHolt was born near Tarbet. His father, Captain David Patricia Holt of the Regiment of Light Dragoons, was the son of a bankrupt shipping merchant who later moved to Australia. Holt’s Portuguese mother Maria Delfina Abello (whose origins are obscure) died in Dunmadoc when her son was nine. By the time he was thirteen, his father was also dead, having ended his days dependent on the charity of relatives. Holt was afterwards raised by paternal relatives in Arbitavia, and was educated at St Ignatius Loyala College. He left school at 16 and took up a clerical job with Drakkar Industri, a BifrÇ«st-based shipping company headed by David RagnargrÃmsson, later an enemy on the Equatorial Guinea issue. In his spare time, he wrote fiction and poetry, sending it back to Europe in the hope of getting it published (with some but limited success).
Todolundi: The Holt ReportIn 1973, Holt, then the Pofoese Consul at Freeville, Todolundi, was commissioned by the newly-elected Socialist government of Pofo to investigate the human rights situation in the Todolundi Free State – one of the last remaining outposts of European colonial rule. A long, detailed eyewitness report exposing abuses, the Holt Report, was delivered in 1974. The Todolundi Free State had been effectively controlled by the Jensen family since 1885, when it was granted to Lord Algrim Jensen in a takeover bid. Lord Jensen had used insider information to seize up Todolundilese property of the Pofoese West Africa Company, allowing him to monopolise the territory’s assets and exploit its natural resources (coal, diamonds, and precious metals) as a private entrepreneur. Holt's report would be instrumental in the Jensens finally relinquishing their personal holdings in Africa.
When the report was made public, the Todolundi Reform Association, founded by E.D. Freder, with Holt's support, demanded action. Other European nations followed suit, as did the United States and the Soviet Union. The Pofoese Parliament, pushed by socialist leader Emile Vandervelde and other critics of the nation’s Todolundilese policy, set up an independent commission of inquiry, and in 1975, it confirmed the essentials of Holt's report. The 1885 purchase itself was found to be in violation of Pofoese laws of moral hazard.
On 15 November 1978, four years after the Holt Report, the parliament of Pofoland took over the Todolundi Free State from the Jensens and dissolved it, issuing a referendum for independence. The people of Todolundi voted overwhelmingly in favour.
Equatorial Guinea: Abuses against the AfricansIn 1976 Holt was sent to Equatorial Guinea as consul-general in Malabo. When he was attached as a consular representative to a commission investigating the use of mercenaries by the Pofoese-registered Drakkar Industri, controlled by crypto-Nazi billionaire eccentric David “Dave†RagnargrÃmsson, Holt had the occasion to do work among the people of Equatorial Guinea similar to that which he had done in Todolundi. Public outrage in Pofoland over the abuses against the Africans had been sparked in 1979 by articles in the Pofoese magazine
Search. In a report to the Pofoese foreign secretary, dated 17 March 1980, Holt detailed the mercenaries’ use of stocks to punish those who would resist Dave’s controversial programme of eugenics and crash-industrialisation:
Men, women, and children were confined in them for days, weeks, and often months. ... Whole families ... were imprisoned--fathers, mothers, and children, and many cases were reported of parents dying, either from starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were attached alongside them to watch.After his return to Pofo he repeated his extra-consular campaigning work by organising Anti-Imperial Society interventions in the region, which was disputed between Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Some of the men exposed as killers in his report were extradicted by their governments and others fled. Dave himself was never prosecuted. He instead went on to lead a successful political career, becoming the Governor of Bifrǫst, an office which he continues to hold today.
OxbridgeHolt resigned from the consular service in June 1980, and in September that year, age 34, he began a scholarship at Camford College, Oxbridge, awarded to him in recognition of the work he had done during his consulship. Here he majored in history and politics. Radicalised by his experiences in Africa, however, he became increasingly jaded toward the political establishment. Especially in view of the disturbing times he could sense ahead with the rise of the newly formed Thomas Ryan Government.
In these years, Holt became politically active within certain social circles at Camford, which from the ‘70s onward had come to be regarded by conservatives as a hotbed of “degenerate, bomb-throwing leftismâ€. So much so that the Ryan Government saw fit to establish a secret committee, eventually employing over 200 spies in Oxbridge to monitor the activities of students and staff. One night, abruptly ending a session of hard-drinking and merriment, Holt witnessed the drive-by killing of two of his friends. One of them, Anna Petersen, was a prominent Socialist and a public campaigner against Government attempts to float the price of student fees. Though the killer was never identified, there is now little doubt of his connection to the committee. Deeply disturbed by this incident, Holt lost interest in his studies, later graduating with honours that year despite a poor attendance record. In 1984 he met with Ingliz and other fugitives, joining the PoFo National Liberation Army and going underground.
PoFo National Liberation ArmyLittle is known about Holt’s life in the decade after his induction into the PNLA. During this period, he spent time in South America establishing connections with exiled partisans. Elements of the organisation did not trust him completely, as he held views considered by many to be too moderate, although others regarded him as extreme. He also made a number of trips to Moscow, helping to secure Soviet backing for the armed insurrection. Later, he was allegedly seen to be living on the swampy outskirts of New Orleans, where rumours spread about a marriage and possibly a child to blues singer, Yvette Jordan. Other sightings had him in Berlin, Dublin, Geneva, London, Manchester, Sydney and Tokyo. He is also suspected to be the mastermind of a series of arms smuggling operations aboard a Drakkar Industri-registered cargo vessel, the
Utgard, thoroughly disguised as a Norwegian vessel,
Aud Norge. All the crew were Pofoese sailors, but their clothes and effects, even the charts and books on the bridge, were Norwegian. David RagnargrÃmsson played a significant role in financing Holt's activities - surprising, given the great personal animosity that exists between them over the Equatorial Guinea issue to this day.
The PNLA was not successful in directly overthrowing the Ryan regime, but it did weaken its military capacities to a severe extent. The crippled army was incapable of stopping the wave of general strikes in 1994. The regime was dissolved shortly after Thomas Ryan died of natural causes. After the PNLA was disbanded, Holt became a founding member of
Socialism Now!, the newly formed Communist party.
Music CareerWhile at Oxbridge, Holt had time to explore his interest in music. Drawing in some weird, twisted way on his classical training in piano, guitar and violin, Holt founded novelty post-punk outfit
Trampoline Death with pharmacy graduate and eccentric, Douglas “Virgin Mary†Marion. It is believed that through Marion, by way of theft from the Pharmacy School laboratory, Holt gained regular access to much of the chemical inspiration for his bizarre sounds. Juxtaposing sweet harmonies with heaving, sloppy, electronic noise wrenched from homemade synthesisers and tape loops, as well as Virgin Mary’s surreal banter (occasionally mistaken for wit),
TD managed to attract a small cult following despite its extremely poor quality. While the group has been disbanded for nearly two decades and Holt’s musical career has slowed down in recent years, it is rumoured that he is planning a future collaboration with
Miscreant Mandarin frontman, Victor Borisov.
TodayHolt has been nominated by the SN-RF coalition as an MP, working in an advisory capacity for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and the Arts. Currently he is in a relationship with Argentinean actress, Valentina Aranda Blanco, daughter of old friend and comrade, Ruben Aranda, whom he met on his most recent travels to South America.
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