Even as a candidate for the Federal presidency, it is safe for me to observe any ordinary person with a billion ISK of expertise in their head is objectively better off inside an Angel, Serpentis, or Gurista station than they are in the hold of a space potato flying around the Outer Ring. Vampire and Zombie stations… less so.
Now, I fully intend to build a wall to keep out ethnically intimidating boogeymen. They are murderers and sexual deviants and drug dealers, after all. But sexually deviant murderous narcoboogies know how to have a good time. What I mean is they can be relied upon to handle assets that maximize indecent returns properly. It will be a beautiful wall. The most beautiful. You won’t believe how beautiful the Great Wall To A Greater Future will be! Believe me. What else you won’t believe is how fast I drain the Deep Bureaucracy Bog. The Deep Bureaucracy set all this up to maximize shareholder returns. A router in The (sic) Syndicate proves it.
Human trafficking? No, I haven’t. There is no gain from it I can’t get through other means, conviction or principle. I’m not going to pretend what I do isn’t monstrous, but I do rest comfortably in the knowledge it isn’t borne from weakness and incapability of principled or honest enmity.
Again, having empathy is no barrier to achieving what one seeks out to achieve. If anything, it allows you the understanding of your enemy and others required to achieve something lasting and worthwhile.
What do you expect to achieve Mizhara? Do you think you’re going to persuade us to change our ways with a few “well crafted” insults? Some mockery? Impugning our honour?
By the spirits, have I disappointed Mizhara Del’thul? What am I to do with myself? I shall simply have to declare myself inconsolable with guilt, renounce all claims of loyalty to the Cartel, and spend the rest of my days in quiet penitence hand-mining veldspar for the Republic Fleet.
Your whining insults are as ineffectual as your constant rehashing of the same tired point, and if it didn’t work the last six million times why do you think it will this time?
Or are you just so incapable of self restraint that you simply cannot let a single opportunity to stick your nose in and yap pass you by?
If you haven’t got anything interesting to contribute, ■■■■ off.
This being one of many public fora, it’d be kind of silly to assume you and yours is the intended audience, rather than merely a convenient place to bankshot one’s words to others. What you think is rather inconsequential, as you’ve long since made your choices and picked your allegiances, and which lines you’re willing to stagger across in search of whatever it is you wish for.
In this particular case, one of yours made a rather nonsensical claim about empathy, and a dissenting notion needed to be placed on the table for consideration. That this also means I get to mock those without the strength of principle is merely just a nice little personal bonus and enjoyment.
I think not. Especially not when you make it this easy. If you want to be immune to public scrutiny, praise, condemnation or mockery, you should hide from the public eye rather than invite it all.
If you are simply splurging your vapid opinion across the boards in the vain hope that somebody, somewhere, gives a ■■■■, I’m sure I can find some lonely hearts hotline for you to inflict yourself upon and spare everyone else the experience.
That you are incapable of recognising any principles beyond whatever you consider valid is once again already well known. It doesn’t need reiterating.
I’m sure it’s none of my business, but I do recall, on many occasions, my associates in the cartel talking about their contacts in the Republic navy, the tribes, the Parliament, the Security Services, the Justice Department, ect.
The cartel is so big and has such deep ties, an outsider like me sometimes wonders if there’s even a difference! Oh, but that’s just talk, right? What do I know?
Personally I operate on a preference of honesty by taking ownership that the misery and cruelty I inflict is reprehensible. That the power and privilege I enjoy is premised on the predation upon the weaknesses of my fellow human beings.
But that’s late-stage capitalism for you, and I hold by my preference for personal honesty when exploiting other human beings for my own self interest. Preferable at least to the alternative of obfuscating human exploitation and commodification with the usual diatribes of politics or religion.
I’d take the honest depravity of the Cartel and all it entails over being lied to my face.
It disturbs me how the people I’d probably be perfectly justified in killing are the ones I’d also tumble given half a chance.
Stop being likable. It makes things awkward when the guns start barking.
I’m confident the answer is “yes.” A solid follow-up question might then by “why?” The answer to that would probably be some combination of value judgment, assumption, and moral calculus.
Speaking of assumptions, if we assume the “abducted” researchers are devoted to !SCIENCE!, then would they not find the opportunity to tinker with the rotting carcass of Jovian Empire >~ 2.0 (as the Cartel itself has done for years) more fulfilling than shrinking rocks? Of course they would. I dare say researchers all around the Cluster would be getting themselves kidnapped by daredevil spice addicts if they thought things through dispassionately.
I’m willing to bet that being an expert on “shrinking down rocks” -science doesn’t automatically make you qualified in tinkering with Jovian technology, assuming any of it is still left to tinker with. Unless of course they have jovian mining equipment somewhere, they might be able to help you there.
It is a good point that folding rock electrons up into uncollapsed states does not necessarily translate to building curvey-spikey-zoom-zoom ships. However, I am confident the Cartel has applied its Jovian(ish) technologies to industrial pursuits. Daredevil spice junkies don’t always see obstacles in time (or recognize them as obstacles at all…), and low-gravity impacts are a form of resource extraction.
If I were a Cartel research program manager, I might suggest looking for efficient ways to capture the exotic materials produced by daredevil asteroid interactions.
It’s not trading in people if you are compensated for their return to where they were kidnapped from, for gods’ sake. Not any more than taking a criminal to justice for a bounty, incidentally.
If I were the type to engage in technicalities, I could say that prior to falling into my hands they were kidnapped from an Angel Cartel research facility in Anoikis