The Europeian Standard, An Interview with Griffin

[Numero Capitan]

What does any of this have to do with Europeia, keep your boring vendetta (edit: that would require someone to have recognised or reciprocated your tedious 'war' in seven years) to their rightful place so the rest of us can ignore your intolerable rambling

[Onderkelkia]

What does any of this have to do with Europeia, keep your boring vendetta (edit: that would require someone to have recognised or reciprocated your tedious 'war' in seven years) to their rightful place so the rest of us can ignore your intolerable rambling

I am a long-standing citizen of Europeia who was invited to write for its newspaper, which is an inter-regional publication rather than domestic in focus. This is the second time I have been asked to write for The Europeian Standard, having also authored a piece for the preceding issue. I had no role in determining the timing of the issue and I did not seek an invitation to write an article. I simply wrote this article in response to a request to contribute.

Considering that the article is a wholesale critique of the FRA, TRR and Lazarus, it is unsurprising that their members have reacted unfavourably to it.

The LKE's war with the FRA has been recognised by the FRA on the two occasions when it sat down for peace talks - on neither occasion at the instigation of the LKE and in the second time as part of an initiative announced without consulting us by the FRA Arch-Chancellor. In any case, the FRA has not got much of a choice regarding whether a war exists; the LKE is pursuing a political, military and intelligence campaign against it whether it chooses or not.

No one was forcing you to read or comment on this "intolerable rambling". You chose to do that yourself because you found it interesting:

Regardless of the weirdness of Onder writing that article at this time, it's actually one of the better things he's posted on here, was an interesting read and has prompted some interesting discussion which deserves some recognition, even if most are here just to bash it.

Onder you severely overestimate the power (political or otherwise) of The FRA, lol.

I acknowledge and expose the FRA's weaknesses in my article, to a greater extent than the FRA members who have posted here would care to admit.

Yet that does not meant that the organisation is irrelevant. An organisation which has two game-created regions, even if nothing else, is not irrelevant. As someone who has always disputed the idea that GCRs re the centre of NS politics, I would not go so far as claiming they are unworthy of discussion.

[The Church of Satan]

The purpose of The FRA (defending, regional sovereignty, security, etc) is something I support. I believe in it too, very strongly, even if The FRA isn't nearly as strong as it once was. I'm sure several others believe in The FRA for the exact same reason. Whatever this preposterous political agenda is you keep going on about, if it exists I'm sure it's not even close to whatever dastardly deed you think it has in mind and is largely (at the very least) your own fabrication. :-/

[Almonaster Nuevo]

<snip> the LKE is inflicting retribution for the May 2010 invasion of United Kingdom of Britain.

That's quite some time ago. As an interested bystander, can I ask when this motive will expire? Are you measuring the quantity of retribution involved? Do you have a target which will satisfy you?

I understand your following point about an ongoing threat, but the revenge justification is rather different. What (if anything) would lead you to consider that this cause has been exhausted?

[The Church of Satan]

Onder made it clear that LKE won't stop until The FRA doesn't exist. Contrary to popular belief, countless wrongs do make a right or so Onder believes.

[Onderkelkia]

That's quite some time ago. As an interested bystander, can I ask when this motive will expire? Are you measuring the quantity of retribution involved? Do you have a target which will satisfy you?

I understand your following point about an ongoing threat, but the revenge justification is rather different. What (if anything) would lead you to consider that this cause has been exhausted?

There is no statute of limitations on invading an LKE colony. Nor is there an expiry date when we forget about it. The price for violating LKE sovereignty is not quantifiable. If a foreign state makes the mistake of attacking the LKE, it will be our enemy until we have either totally defeated or forgiven them.

Declaring war was a conventional and proportionate response to an invasion of our territory. The way that a formal state of war (except those confined to a particular locality) concludes is either the final defeat of one party or a negotiated settlement. Neither of those things have happened yet. Until they do, a war will exist as a matter of fact. The LKE has demonstrated its superiority through many victories, but that does not mean the FRA is totally defeated.

War in NationStates is not a matter of winning a couple of battles. To be effective, it has to be a long-term, strategic effort to undermine an enemy.

You say that "the revenge justification is rather different." While a distinction can be made, retribution for the FRA's invasion of United Kingdom of Britain is complementary to countering the threat which they pose to the LKE in future. When the FRA invaded UKB, their Minister of Intelligence made clear that that they did so because of their hostility to Imperialism in all forms. The invasion stemmed from the Defender sphere's hostility to the tenets of Independence and Imperialism. Thus, addressing the invasion of UKB also requires us to address the threat posed by the FRA to the Imperialist sphere (and vice versa).

The purpose of The FRA (defending, regional sovereignty, security, etc) is something I support.

You are sorely mistaken if you think the FRA is a bastion of regional sovereignty. As a super-regional alliance which is engaged in a military and political effort to oppose the prerogative of individual regions to pursue military action in their own interests, it is almost innately opposed to the concept.

If the FRA supported regional sovereignty so much, it would not have embraced a coup of Lazarus simply to create a new Defender regime.

As for "security", the only thing which the FRA offers a founderless user-created region (which intends to stay founderless) is a massive target sign.

even if The FRA isn't nearly as strong as it once was.

Lazarus and TRR, with their natural recruitment, are the last regions which are actively contributing to the alliance. Militarily, the FRA Rangers are hopeless to the point that they are no longer a functional entity. I would suggest that "isn't nearly as strong as it once was" may even be an under-statement.

[The Church of Satan]

Oh please, founderless regions are a massive target even when not in The FRA and you know this to be an undeniable truth. And if LKE is so unwilling to compromise how on earth can any negotiation take place? What would be your terms for such a negotiation? Total surrender? Dissolution?

[Onderkelkia]

Oh please, founderless regions are a massive target even when not in The FRA and you know this to be an undeniable truth.

All founderless regions may be targeted, but each founderless region is able to make choices about its level of security and which other regions it chooses to associate with. These choices affect how likely it is to be selected as a target. Joining the FRA is one of the single worst decisions they could make.

And if LKE is so unwilling to compromise how on earth can any negotiation take place? What would be your terms for such a negotiation? Total surrender? Dissolution?

If there are no negotiations, the only way the war could end would be final defeat of the FRA. With negotiations, other outcomes might be possible. Terms quite different to the dissolution of the FRA were discussed in the negotiations instigated by Europeia in August 2011 and the FRA in September 2013.

Beyond that, we are not going to get into specifics about what a deal might involve, because the LKE has no reason to seek settlement. We are winning decisively. The LKE is not going to conduct negotiations over hypothetical terms in a hypothetical settlement with you as part of a Gameplay forum thread.

[The Church of Satan]

Good to know you're going to be completely unreasonable. >_>

[Guy]

The difference is that you care about your region. For me, the FRA is only a platform by which my and my region's values are pursued -- defending, regional self-determination, all that. We can never lose, so long as those ideals persist.

[Onderkelkia]

The difference is that you care about your region. For me, the FRA is only a platform by which my and my region's values are pursued -- defending, regional self-determination, all that.

You are exactly right. The difference between the Arch-Chancellor of the FRA and Emperor of the LKE is that the latter cares about their region.

Instead, you care first and foremost about the defender political project. Nominally, this is an ideological commitment to the so-called "values" of "defending". Yet in practice these "values" are a rhetorical cover as you essentially adopt the position that the ends justify the means. So if Lazarus being turned into a dictatorship through an illegitimate purge is necessary to serve "defending" by getting it into the FRA, that is what you will support.

[Guy]

The difference is that you care about your region. For me, the FRA is only a platform by which my and my region's values are pursued -- defending, regional self-determination, all that.

You are exactly right. The difference between the Arch-Chancellor of the FRA and Emperor of the LKE is that the latter cares about their region.

Instead, you care first and foremost about the defender political project. Nominally, this is an ideological commitment to the so-called "values" of "defending". Yet in practice these "values" are a rhetorical cover as you essentially adopt the position that the ends justify the means. So if Lazarus being turned into a dictatorship through an illegitimate purge is necessary to serve "defending" by getting it into the FRA, that is what you will support.

It's a nice way to take what I'd said out of context. You care about LKE as its own end, whereas for me, the FRA is a platform by which to pursue TRR's values. As long as those values persist, I can't lose, no matter what happens in your purported but non-existent "war".

As for Lazarus, your allegetions are entirely baseless. When the (lawful and democratically authorised) purge had occurred, there were absolutely no indications that Lazarus was to join the FRA. We supported it just as we support every other region's power to pursue its own pathway.

[Onderkelkia]

It's a nice way to take what I'd said out of context. You care about LKE as its own end, whereas for me, the FRA is a platform by which to pursue TRR's values.

The argument I made directly follows from what you stated.

With the LKE Emperor, you can simply say they care about the LKE. With the FRA Arch-Chancellor, what you said was that you cared about "my and my region's values" of "defending" and "self-determination". You can qualify this by noting your values are the same as "TRR's values", but no set of values can lead to precisely the same practical decisions as following a region's own material interests. Decision-makers in both the FRA and TRR are both nominally committed to defender ideology. In practice, this ultimately makes them servants of whatever advances the political interests of the Defender world.

As long as those values persist, I can't lose, no matter what happens in your purported but non-existent "war".

For those "values" - to the extent that they have meaning - to persist there needs to be tangible political forces acting on their behalf.

If you are saying those forces are broader than any one region/organisation, you are ultimately talking about the defender political project.

If you believe that the war is "non-existent", then you need to pay more attention - not least to the FRA's own decisions. We know that the FRA has spent time talking about the threat posed by the LKE and TNI. The FRA has also attended two peace summits, one started by Europeia and one by the FRA itself.

As for Lazarus, your allegetions are entirely baseless. When the (lawful and democratically authorised) purge had occurred, there were absolutely no indications that Lazarus was to join the FRA. We supported it just as we support every other region's power to pursue its own pathway.

The purge was not lawful or democratically authorised. To attain these epithets, the removals would have required the support of 75% of the Emerald Council. Even if we count the members of the FRA - including the current Delegate of TRR - who were ushered into the Emerald Council between August and September 2013, the only way that 75% approval could have been obtained is if every single member of the Emerald Council (other than the individuals who were removed themselves) had voted in favour. The removal vote did not get those 15 votes and therefore it was entirely contrary to Lazarus law.

It was perfectly apparent that Lazarus was going to become a Defender regime following Feux's purge in return for defenders supporting the move. That is why it was thought necessary to remove members of Lazarus who were also members of TNI - Funkadelia has explained that the Defender Harmoneia and the NPO's Feux both resolved that if "they wanted to make the radical change that they were about to, they could not have people so diametrically opposed to them." They were removed because it was believed that they would disagree with reforms intended to turn Lazarus into a defender dictatorship.

Funkadelia has been similarly helpful on why the wider Defender world accepted this transformation so enthusiastically:

It was accepted by defenders who were not really in cohorts with the NPO in the way that you frame it, which is willingly, but mostly out of necessity. Having two defender GCRs is, and I am sure no one in the FRA will deny this, very important for the FRA. Defenders were willing to work with the PRL simply because it was defender. That's pretty much what defenders do... Work with other defenders..

In other words, the unlawful transformation of Lazarus into a dictatorship, leading it into the FRA, was accepted in the name of "defending". Really, it had nothing to do with "defending" in the abstract at all. It merely served the political interests of the Defender sphere: the FRA establishment's true concern.

[Drop Your Pants]

The purge was not lawful or democratically authorised. To attain these epithets, the removals would have required the support of 75% of the Emerald Council. Even if we count the members of the FRA - including the current Delegate of TRR - who were ushered into the Emerald Council between August and September 2013, the only way that 75% approval could have been obtained is if every single member of the Emerald Council (other than the individuals who were removed themselves) had voted in favour. The removal vote did not get those 15 votes and therefore it was entirely contrary to Lazarus law.

Where are you getting those numbers? I'm trying to find the relevant topic (and forum, damn those forum changes).

[Onderkelkia]

The purge was not lawful or democratically authorised. To attain these epithets, the removals would have required the support of 75% of the Emerald Council. Even if we count the members of the FRA - including the current Delegate of TRR - who were ushered into the Emerald Council between August and September 2013, the only way that 75% approval could have been obtained is if every single member of the Emerald Council (other than the individuals who were removed themselves) had voted in favour. The removal vote did not get those 15 votes and therefore it was entirely contrary to Lazarus law.

Where are you getting those numbers? I'm trying to find the relevant topic (and forum, damn those forum changes).

The 75% vote requirement was established under Mandate 7 (the Constitution of Lazarus at the time).

Furthermore, the vote that did happen occurred after the purge had already taken place, so the individuals who were purged were illegally rendered unable to participate in the removal vote despite the fact they had not been removed as members of the Emerald Council until that vote actually passed.

[North East Somerset]

Regardless of the weirdness of Onder writing that article at this time, it's actually one of the better things he's posted on here, was an interesting read and has prompted some interesting discussion which deserves some recognition, even if most are here just to bash it.

That seems reasonable, but then after a rebuttal by Onder you change your tune to:

Its just a shame that someone who lets their personal vendettas and wild sense of imagination get in the way of any rational discussion (which I've never seen anyone seem to back up or support in any way on this forum) was allowed to derail what could have been a good issue talking about a great and unique event that happened in Europeia recently.

Ironic that you think the topic has been "derailed" when you are one of the key people who have pushed the discussion solely on Onder's article.

If you wanted to talk about the Women's Symposium, why didn't you?

How is it the fault of the author or the article that people came in and discussed his article but not the other ones?

Hopefully Kraketopia and Calvin will learn from this

If they learn anything I hope it will be that you, along with other establishment defenders, haven't changed at all since 2009, and your desire to seek out and exploit tolerance as a weakness to interfere in Europeian politics and push the globalist defender agenda is as strong now as it ever was.

As for Lazarus, I've strong memories of a large alliance of invaders seeking to overthrow Northern Chittowa as delegate when he was the elected and respected leader of Laz with the nation -Hellraiser- as lead, and then they come back and complain when the region gradually moves into the defender sphere and claim it as some "defender political project" of which NC was the architect? The invasion was attempted because the invaders believed the FRA was trying to 'control the feeders'. At the time Lazarus had absolutely no links to the FRA other than NC being King of Lazarus and co-founder of the FRA. But that invasion began the process that eventually led to Laz joining the FRA, so keep peddling this conspiracy theory because it's clearly benefitting your enemies Onder.

And as for this, this is the must delusional thing I have read so far.

You obviously have no idea what happenned in Lazarus over the past 7 years to think this is remotely credible explanation of what happened. To suggest that there was a "gradual" movement of Lazarus into the "defender sphere" since Northern Chittowa's delegacy in 2008 is utterly absurd. In 2009 Griffin Somerset was elected delegate, and I was appointed to serve as Foreign Minister. Lazarus went on to secure treaties with TNI (2011), LKE (2011) and Europeia (2012). This was not consistent with Laz "eventually joining the FRA". If anything, the trend was quite clearly in the other direction. Lazarus ended up joining the FRA because of an abrupt change in direction, due to an unholy alliance between the NPO coupers and defenders leading to an unconstitutional purge. Eventually the two unlikely partners fell out and NPO tried to take total control in another full scale coup, but they failed due to the strategic and tactical miscalculations of Feux et al, leaving only the pro-FRA defender element in Lazarus, a position it clings to as one of its last bastions, to this day.

[Numero Capitan]

Can we make his a debate to have at the Raider Convention? Because it really has nothing to do with Europeia but is worth continuing given the interest

[RiderSyl]

Can we make his a debate to have at the Raider Convention? Because it really has nothing to do with Europeia but is worth continuing given the interest

Thank you. When I come to Europeia's thread, I expect the chat to at least be somewhat tied to the region.

Anyone pointing fingers about the thread's derailment doesn't really change the fact it derailed.

[Cormactopia II]

I do want to point out though that this isn't Europeia's embassy thread, it's the thread for their regional newspaper. They have a separate embassy thread. I suspect if they didn't want a provocative article sure to inspire discussion to be discussed, they wouldn't have published it.

Discussions in The Rejected Times thread rarely had anything to do with The Rejected Realms... unless it was to criticize TRR for the newspaper's content.

[Ananke II]

The Rejected Realms is the only region in the game that can not eject nations from its boarders and is very much reliant on outside protection. In the past this protection came from the Alliance Defense Network, now it comes from the Founderless Regions Alliance. Without this protection, the people in control of TRR would be near totally on their own to defend their region against the countless raiders that are thrown into their borders on a weekly, if not nightly, basis.

From my experience TRR's best defense has always been that raiders get tired of being delegate of a region with no ejection button and aren't willing to put the same amount of work into the region as the native community. You're also rather overestimating TRRs need for ADN to protect them back in the day. Sure, ADN could move a lot of people, but Kandarin was always well liked enough and RRA's connections outside ADN extensive enough that they didn't usually lack help when invaders came calling. Often you'd see people help out Kandarin, who usually stayed neutral or didn't like defenders much.

[Drop Your Pants]

Can we make his a debate to have at the Raider Convention? Because it really has nothing to do with Europeia but is worth continuing given the interest

Possibly not a good idea since we're quite well behaved on the NS forums but this debate will turn nasty on another forum.

[Ambrella]

By all means, carry on. As far as I'm concerned, just more bumps for our paper.

Note: I have no authority to condemn or condone any of this.

[Feux]

It was perfectly apparent that Lazarus was going to become a Defender regime following Feux's purge in return for defenders supporting the move. That is why it was thought necessary to remove members of Lazarus who were also members of TNI - Funkadelia has explained that the Defender Harmoneia and the NPO's Feux both resolved that if "they wanted to make the radical change that they were about to, they could not have people so diametrically opposed to them." They were removed because it was believed that they would disagree with reforms intended to turn Lazarus into a defender dictatorship.

Wow. No. This is entirely wrong. I was against joining the FRA, and protested against Milo's decision when he made it. Furthermore, I had no intentions of "radical change." Look, we know NES was filling the council with friends. I was doing the same thing, and it would certainly take one to know one. NES was removed because hardly anyone in the region liked him to begin with, and he was attempting to stuff the council to win the delegate seat for Griffin or someone that liked him. It had nothing to do with being defender, literally nothing at all. I resigned from the delegate seat after removing NES and friends with the hope that Harm would continue the Emerald Kingdom, maybe even solidify the monarchy under a meritocracy or something like that - which wasn't that radical seeing as the region was an elected monarchy where the delegate served a year term. But Milo changed the direction of the region entirely, and I was not on board with it. I was never a fan of the PRL, or the theme, and was not involved in the government the majority of the PRL life because so. I only got highly involved again when Milo, and Karp both disappeared, and Funk wanted Hobbes removed.

For the record, I have nothing against NES. We were both playing the same game, and someone had to lose. If anything, I am the one that lost, and he can claim victory with the Balder dictatorship.

[Armed Citizens]

NES was filling the council with friends. I was doing the same thing

Ey look it is NS democracy

[Feux]

NES was filling the council with friends. I was doing the same thing

Ey look it is NS democracy

But that's the fun in it. Haha.