Balder - State Opening of 19th Storting

[Onder Kelkia]

No regions have been proscribed based on lies and no persons have been declared persona non grata due to personal dislike. Such external controversy as has followed such decisions has come after the deterioration of relations with the parties concerned, not before. All regional proscription decisions are taken by a vote of the elected Storting, in all cases so far with unanimous support, and should not be presented as a personal decision of one individual.

EMN had existed for 2 weeks and had 10 citizens at the time of our proscription by you, based on our, what was it again? "Defender-Francoist propaganda". We didn't even have a bloody GP thread yet. We hadn't even released any official communique of ANY kind. But yes. Tell me more again about this "deterioration of relations with the parties concerned".

This is deliberately obtuse. The statements that were accurately described before the Storting did not come from an official publication of Mare Nostrum, but from the statements of Mare Nostrum's founding members pertaining to Balder in private conversations and The Land of Kings and Emperors. You appear to believe that we should have acted only on official statements, but the Storting is entitled to rely on all relevant evidence in making an assessment.

Regardless of whether you think the interpretation and decision adopted by the Storting was right or wrong, it was not based on lies as you alleged.

The Queen is not mixed up on her history. The dismissal was far from uncontroversial, to put it mildly, and had adverse long-term consequences.

A decision being controversial does not make it bad, Onder. You may not be aware after having surrounded yourself with so many yesmen for so long.

On the contrary, for a constitutional monarch, involvement in political controversy is inherently undesirable. Constitutional monarchs take care to avoid it. That is not to say that there are never circumstances where controversial royal decisions are appropriate, but a decision being contentious is a downside.

I don't surround myself with "yesmen". You know nothing about any of the people I work with with in this game, anymore than you know anything about the politics of the Realm of Balder. I am fortunate to have many loyal colleagues who voice disagreements honestly and frankly in the appropriate setting.

Please address our Queen with greater respect.

She is not my Queen and I give respect where it is due. I will address her as I please as I am not one of your cronies to boss around. Thanks for your concern, though, aziz.

Your refusal is noted.

[Sahansahiye Iran]

EMN had existed for 2 weeks and had 10 citizens at the time of our proscription by you, based on our, what was it again? "Defender-Francoist propaganda". We didn't even have a bloody GP thread yet. We hadn't even released any official communique of ANY kind. But yes. Tell me more again about this "deterioration of relations with the parties concerned".

This is deliberately obtuse. The statements that were accurately described before the Storting did not come from an official publication of Mare Nostrum, but from the statements of Mare Nostrum's founding members pertaining to Balder in private conversations and The Land of Kings and Emperors. You appear to believe that we should have acted only on official statements, but the Storting is entitled to rely on all relevant evidence in making an assessment.

It is based on lies. Or at least deliberate disingenuousness. Your motion said, and I quote, "...a new region calling itself the Empire of Mare Nostrum has decided to engage in hostilities against the Realm of Balder. Specifically, it has adopted and spread the Defender-Francoist [our independent UCR is Defender-Francoist lel] propaganda that we are unusually inactive... It has also accused Balder's dual citizens in other regions of being more dedicated to Balder than to those regions..."

EMN has at no point in time officially adopted or even expressed the stance that Balder is inactive or that it is negative for Balderites (I'm rolling with this) to be more dedicated to Balder in any form at all. The personal opinions of select members of our region, as expressed in private as you specifically mentioned, have no bearing on the region itself or as a whole. For you to repeatedly refer to EMN itself as such, is complete horseshit, to be frank. If we held the entirety of every region accountable for the private words of prominent members of it, every region would have every other one proscribed. Anyone with sense can see past your attempts at flowery language and half truths. Nice try, though, bud. You can continue to try to say you act only in Balder's best interests but that is empirically false.


Screenshot of the proscription:

[Consular]

Yes those are lovely words you're putting down there but we're not talking about IRL nations, Solorni. We're talking about Balder. "But Balder is based on my favourite real life democracies!!" is not an answer to "When was your last election?". Does always dodging the actual question with pseudo-academic political babbling ever get exhausting?

Anyway -- what you're saying with that wall of irrelevance is you're unelected, right? That's what you're saying. You're a dictator.

Oh, unfortunately discussing Locke et al is not pseudo-academical! You can actually read their books if you'd like; York University actually has a PDF of Two Treaties of Government. Also, let's be honest... a lot of features of NS regions are based upon RL nations. If you think about it, we actually replicate real life nation concepts even when it does not fully make sense. The whole concept of elected legislatures, monarchies, presidents, constitutions, many cabinet positions and much more are all based on real life far more than a concept that was developed to govern regions. That is, we imitate real life for the sake of it than to develop systems 100% to deal with NS problems efficiently.

Thus, I think it is perfectly valid to compare Balder to real life nations since this is where 90% of a region is actually based on rather than in game. I'd recommend researching what concepts like "dictator" or "autocracy" are, since it is very clear that either you do not understand what they mean or are purposefully misusing them. The separation of power and a system of checks and balances are important features in both real life democracies and in Balder as well as other democracies in the game. By that very definition of separating power and having checks and balances, Balder is inherently not a dictatorship nor an autocracy.

In fact, the power of the Balder monarchy and in particular the conventions I am bound to are stricter than say HEM's in Europeia when he was the Supreme Chancellor. I have not served in the legislature or the cabinet or as statsminister since becoming monarch. My proposals for changes for the region, such as directly electing the Statsminister or having a two house Storting where the new house would be for regional WAs are not approved of by the regional populace as a whole and the government. This is the antitheses of dictatorship or autocracy. It would be like calling the Queen of England a dictator and similarly it would make as little sense in real life.

You might call what you do not understand "pseudo-academic", but I do feel like these concepts are applicable to the game and one of the most academic things one can do is to take concepts and ideas from one field and apply them to other fields. It is what makes for example the study of history when you apply economic ideas and theories to it, quite special. Or when you apply the close reading you learned in University English to History. Or when you take the concept of logic and apply it to other fields. This concept of applying Locke's ideas is a very old one for me and I do greatly believe in it. When you look at how destructive purges can be or when leaders are too heavy handed, the damage that can be done... it is something I never wanted for Balder.

Particularly back in the beginning of my current term, I was happy with how former elected delegates were not purged or pushed out with the exception of one who couped. That has not been the case in all Game Created Regions. Similarly, the concepts of the Locke and Constant came out of a recognition about the mistakes made during the English Civil War, the French Revolution while still preserving the liberty that they espoused. In fact, it was different from Hobbes since Hobbes lived through the English Civil War similar to how Machievelli had lived through a very violent part of Italian history and their solutions were much more heavy handed.

I was always cognizant of that and the political environment that Balder grew up was very violent for GCRs and often quite horrifying for communities that had been effected by that. Especially since in one of my previous UCRs, when the founder couped... a lot of my friends from that community never came back to the game. Even if they tried, they just couldn't get back into it. So as corny as it sounds, it was important for me to try to create this balance where you could have a region without purges while still being democratic and it just seemed to make so much sense to approach it from a Locke sort of perspective.

Obviously it is not always perfect but a lot of it reflects my own style of being a consensus builder and trying to build solutions that work for as many people as possible. But that in many ways is the nature of democracy and trying to build an active and stable sinker with a vibrant and healthy community. It's boring but I've always been into boring stuff and I get that it's not for everyone. But hopefully this clears stuff up for you. I'd really recommend checking out some of Locke's works and reading about the Glorious Revolution.

Do you ever wOnder how much more vibrant Balder could be without you?

[Onder Kelkia]

This is deliberately obtuse. The statements that were accurately described before the Storting did not come from an official publication of Mare Nostrum, but from the statements of Mare Nostrum's founding members pertaining to Balder in private conversations and The Land of Kings and Emperors. You appear to believe that we should have acted only on official statements, but the Storting is entitled to rely on all relevant evidence in making an assessment.

It is based on lies. Or at least deliberate disingenuousness. [...]

EMN has at no point in time officially adopted or even expressed the stance that Balder is inactive or that it is negative for Balderites (I'm rolling with this) to be more dedicated to Balder in any form at all. The personal opinions of select members of our region, as expressed in private as you specifically mentioned, have no bearing on the region itself or as a whole. For you to repeatedly refer to EMN itself as such, is complete horseshit, to be frank. If we held the entirety of every region accountable for the private words of prominent members of it, every region would have every other one proscribed.

Firstly, we disagree that "[t]he personal opinions of select members of [y]our region" are irrelevant in characterising Mare Nostrum's behaviour, when those statements were made at a very early stage of your region's history by your region's founding members (most particularly, its Emperor and its "Legatus Prefect", the head of its foreign affairs and military). When a region is very new, its identity is inevitably bound up with that of its founder or co-founders. Mare Nostrum had no reputation or external government activity of its own to trade on. At that stage in its existence, when Mare Nostrum "had existed for 2 weeks and had 10 citizens at the time" as you stated earlier, Mare Nostrum was effectively a plan or plot of the participating members, not an entity in its own right, as far as we are concerned. It is therefore entirely reasonable for Balder to decline to draw the distinction you are seeking to draw.

You are not going to convince us to ignore the words of your most senior executive officials and founding members and that, when your region was 2 weeks old, we should have treated it as if it constituted a corporate entity distinct from them. We do not recognise you as possessing that degree of legitimacy.

Secondly, the statements concerned occurred on the forums of the LKE and, indeed, in private - but not just in private among themselves or else we would not know about them. If the statements had never been spoken among anyone outside Mare Nostrum's inner group, then you might have had a point.

[Balder Communist Party]

A message from the President of The Party

---

Members of The Balder Government,

After the ejecting of our ambassador, I and the leading members of the party have decided to bring you ugly authoritarianism to an end. As this message is being read by you, our members are taking actions to ensure political freedom in Balder. I give this warning in the hopes that you choose to reinvite our party's ambassador, should you choose not to you I will be forced to take measures that I never thought I would be using against my region... a region I have been in for close to a year. This is your final chance for redemption.

signed,
The 52 voting nations of the Balder Communist Party

[Balder Communist Party Ambassador]

I support my president's statements and while I did not want it to come to this I know this is necessary for the freedom of Balder.

May we prevail.

[Indo-Malaysia]

I support my president's statements and while I did not want it to come to this I know this is necessary for the freedom of Balder.

May we prevail.

I have a feeling you and the 'party president' are both the same person :/

[Solorni]

It's not a good sign for this other region that they could not read the rules against RMB spam. All if not nearly all GCRs ban recruitment spam on their RMBs

[Glacikaldr]

Now that everyone has seemingly gotten bored of Onder, I just want to say that I'm glad I could be the catylist for your pseudo-power to go ham. I hope you all had fun.

"Oh, by the way, you got me - I had to move all 500 of my puppets out of Balder "

Congrats to Balder on this decisive ideological victory.

I anxiously await Balder implementing an Osiris PNG for the same reasons you now choose to justify the TRR PNG. May we all so soon quiver in fear before defying you again oh great ones.

[Unibot III]

The best part of this academic “debate” is Locke and Balder have nothing in common. It’s Hobbes, not Locke - you’ve got your classics mixed up. Bah. If you’re going to waste everyone’s time at least waste it responsibly.

[Syberis]

The best part of this academic “debate” is Locke and Balder have nothing in common. It’s Hobbes, not Locke - you’ve got your classics mixed up. Bah. If you’re going to waste everyone’s time at least waste it responsibly.

I'll take your word for it, my knowledge of philosophers has a massive gap between Rome and the mid-1800s.

[Malphe]

I support my president's statements and while I did not want it to come to this I know this is necessary for the freedom of Balder.

May we prevail.

I have a feeling you and the 'party president' are both the same person :/

Nah, this is an entirely serious organization that poses a real threat to the government of Balder! Fear the, uh, what was their name again?

[The Galactic Liberal Democracy]

I have a feeling you and the 'party president' are both the same person :/

Nah, this is an entirely serious organization that poses a real threat to the government of Balder! Fear the, uh, what was their name again?

The Communist Party is always a fun party and nobody has had a shot of vodka too many. Except the ones that think 99% percent of leaders who call themselves communist are lying.

[Kyorgia]

Dear Balder i am here on behalf of the cat empress. If you surrender your region to the Xoricat we will leave you alone. Thank you so much for your time.

[Xoriet]

Now I see what you meant by that, Kyo. >.>

Anyway, yes, kittencoup still requested.

[Milozoldyck]

Hello. Would it be all right if I posted a handful of questions I have about Balder?

EDIT: Added "hello"

[Devi Vytherin]

If we held the entirety of every region accountable for the private words of prominent members of it, every region would have every other one proscribed.

You must be new here.

[Solorni]

Balder has a new flag for today to mark remembrance day:

[Silitone]

Balder has a new flag for today to mark remembrance day:

(Image)

I must say, I very much like the flag and am glad Balder is celebrating this day!

[The Holy Principality of Saint Mark]

Beautiful flag!

[Lord Dominator]

Flag is indeed very pretty.

[RiderSyl]

Not bad!

[Onder Kelkia]

Termination of Diplomatic Relations with the New Pacific Order

The Realm of Balder hereby announces our decision to terminate all diplomatic relations with the New Pacific Order. We are initiating the process of de-constructing our in-game embassy, and have terminated The Pacific's embassy on Balder's forum. This decision reflects Balder's strong opposition to the ideology of Francoism and its use as an instrument for dividing players and regions in order to serve the New Pacific Order's purposes. Suspicion of "userites" has been invoked by The Pacific and those under its influence as an ideological pretext for seeking hegemonic control of other feeders and sinkers.

Our decision additionally reflects Balder condemnation of the New Pacific Order's subversion of Lazarus, in collaboration with elements of the defender political establishment based in The South Pacific. Powerful elements within the defender world have opportunistically co-opted The Pacific's Francoist narratives and actively participated in the New Pacific Order's subversive actions.

Since the first half of this year, Balder has warned about The Pacific's political activities associated with the rise of Defender-Francoism, a phenomenon founded on the alliance between The Pacific and The South Pacific. More widely, we have been conscious of a deterioration in The Pacific's respect for Balder and our allies since mid-2017. We have taken tangible actions to punish The Pacific for its dishonourable behaviour towards Balder and our allies. Together with The West Pacific, we successfully voted to remove The Pacific from the GCR Sovereignty Accords in May 2018 after it failed to honour the provisions of the Accords. We now note the release of definitive evidence confirming the justice of our concerns regarding The Pacific's pattern of conduct.

On 20 and 21 November, we were delighted to contribute to the earlier operation led by The Black Hawks to free St Abbaddon from The Pacific's grip. As the Chairman of the Independent Joint Command Coalition, Her Nordic Majesty the Queen played a pivotal role in mobilising forces for that mission within Balder, Europeia, the Land of Kings and Emperors, and beyond. The citizenry of Balder is proud of the role that we played in that mission. We will not be deterred from participating in any military operations or diplomatic manoeuvres by the threats of hostilities issued by the then Consul of The Pacific in his statement following the St Abbaddon mission. The Realm of Balder will take further measures to counter the threat posed by the New Pacific Order as we judge appropriate.

[Miss Bad Life Choices]

A textwall I can appreciate.

[Cormactopia Prime]

Strong disagreements with Balder aside, it's good to see Balder taking a strong stand against the NPO's aggression and subversion. NPO delenda est.