Ah. So, in other words, ‘you do it without understanding what you are doing, in which case you are indeed the fool’?
Jesting aside, thank you. I generally find your people’s customs rather baffling, so I appreciate the honest attempt to make them a little less obtuse.
If you are ever Unsure how to Address Captain Elsebeth Rhiannon, you could Try using All her Titles until she Tells you to Stop.
No.
Those were the actions of a cabal of thieves and murders, stealing funds that lawfully should have gone to the Republic Fleet and RSS. They illegally diverted those funds into the hands of more criminals outside of the Republic, in order to build warships for the purpose of undermining the Midular regime.
Then they used that illegally-funded Thukker fleet to attack the Empire, and your clone Empress used a weapon no less illegal under Yulai’s technology-sharing requirements. This means that she had that illegal weapon well in advance of the attack. That fact, in turn, makes any claims of the Empire adhering to the Yulai treaty farcical at best.
Any claims that the Republic acted to damage international efforts for diplomacy are just as farcical, and are born either of ignorance of the Midular government’s efforts, willful misrepresentation of the facts, or sheer stupidity. As you do not seem stupid, I sincerely hope it is the first.
That the ‘Elder fleet’ was pressed into service to save the Starkmanir does not change the criminal origins of the fleet. It does not change the fact that that fleet was one element of a conspiracy expressly intended to paint Karin Midular as weak and ineffectual. And it does not change the murder of countless loyal Minmatar public servants by the same criminal cabal in order to secure the ascension of their public front-man, Malateau Shakor.
All of these things remain true. And all of these things pale in comparison to the threat levied openly through the repeatedly-avowed goal of the Amarr Empire to see the inhabitants of every star system in the cluster subjugated or killed.
Oh, we’re pretending the giant ■■■■-off Elder Fleet and the staggering funding, coordination, manufacturing capability, logistical support and all the other things required for such managed to happen without the explicit approval of Republic officials on a wide scale again?
Spirits above, just stop it. There is no one left in New Eden who would buy that, and it’s just pathetic to maintain that farcical claim.
The Republic knew. The Republic is morally and ethically culpable, even if legally it’d be a nightmare to prove.
It’s fine. It was the right thing to do. Slaver fleets in our space, supported even by Caldari Navy. Trillions of our people in slavery. Countless little acts of war from every side. The Elder Fleet was necessary and just. Trying to run propaganda narratives on the subject does nothing but diminish you, our people and the sacrifices made.
Whilst your conclusions are ultimately disagreeable, this is a more genuine attempt to engage in productive dialogue than many of your kin tend to be willing to engage in, so I do appreciate that.
An important thing to note is that I deliberately stated that ‘your people’ responded, rather than ‘the Republic’. I am indeed aware that the legitimate Republic government of the time claimed no knowledge of the Fleet’s funding, construction, and mobilisation. While such a claim does suggest an incredible lack of oversight bordering on both gross negligence and incompetence (putting it lightly), I do generally agree that the claim was likely genuine and that, frankly, the Republic goverment of the time was undermined far more egregiously by Minmatar conspirators from within than it ever was by the Empire post-Yulai under Heideran or Doriam. Still, the fact remains that those same conspirators today control that Republic, venerate those that took part in the conspiracy and ensuing coup, and for all intents and purposes rule unopposed as heads of a terrorist state. The Republic of today exists and is controlled by the same people responsible for the Elder fleet’s invasion, and they carry its legacy with them.
You seem to agree that the Elder fleet invasion was indeed a grossly illegal act, so I am confused that you consider Amarr’s necessary defensive actions to be equally as illegal. If one is not acting in accordance with an agreement, they frankly lose the protections of that agreement in that circumstance. I would be very surprised if the accords did not give signatories that are victim of significant agreement-contravening aggressions the right to defend themselves as necessary until the status quo expressed within the agreement could be restored. Furthermore, since the superweapon in question was utilised solely in the context of necessary defence from that illegal invasion and in no other circumstance - it seems disingenuous to accuse the Empire of acting in bad faith here. We can muse over intention all we like, but we are all guilty in the court of unrealised histories; only the actual history experienced can be fairly judged, and Amarr did no more than was necessary to remedy the Minmatar people’s illegal aggression.
See, @Arsia_Elkin See how Merdaneth addresses you as:
He calls me “Valerie, Heretic Valate”.
Which means he doesn’t like you as much as he likes me.
So Nyeeh.
I’m happy to grant you that.
First, no. If, for example, one civilian commits the crime of assault by shoving another civilian, the second individual is not, as a general rule, empowered to kill the perpetrator. They are within their rights to prevent further assault, but are not within their rights to escalate: the perpetration of a crime does not automatically revoke all protections of the law, which is the common agreement in this case.
Similarly, if the two of them are in a location where personal weapons are legal, but weapons of mass destruction are not, and the first individual draws a stolen knife, their intended victim is not suddenly within their rights to start throwing anti-matter grenades around (or even to own them).
Was the Empire within its rights to defend itself? Legally, yes. That does not, however, change the fact that possessing the superweapon violated the Yulai provisions on technological exchange. Much like the current stellar harvesters, the technology should have been given to CONCORD to be reverse-engineered and disseminated among the signatories as required by international law. That’s not just ‘to the Republic’, either. The Federation and State also had claim to that tech being shared, and neither offered any action you could use to justify the Empire’s failure to honor its treaty obligations.
Just like it was obligated to share this current technology with them, too, and did not.
Is that supposed to do anything more than illustrate that Elkin is clearly a more morally worthwhile individual than you are?
Well articulated. This feels, however, like somewhat of an unfair representation of events. If a civilian unlawfully tries to kill another, that second individual is most certainly within their rights to kill them in self-defense, if that is the only feasible way to defend themselves.
There is an interesting irony, here, however, with regards to your point on the mere possession of the weapon constituting an example of the Empire betraying its word. Your initial defense of the Republic in the face of the Elder fleet invasion (despite me not explicitly blaming the Republic for it directly) was that the Republic could not be held culpable as the funding, manufacturing, and deployment of the fleet was enacted without its knowledge - which I concur is a likely if unforuntate truth. However, you simultaneously hold the Empire guilty of breaking its word due to Jamyl, unbeknownst to the Empire at the time, holding a supposedly-illegal superweapon in her possession at the time of the invasion. This is despite the fact that a nation being unaware of the existence of one individual (believed to be dead, no less) being in possession of a previously unknown superweapon is a far, far more plausible scenario than a nation being unaware that massive amounts of its funding were being routinely siphoned from right under its nose to build a gigantic invasion fleet. It is a curious inconsistency.
As for the matters of today, I’ll defer to experts from the appropriate authorities as to whether the deployment of the stellar harvesting technology consitutes a violation of international law in itself. I do believe it to be worth notng, however, that the Empire would in fact have been guilty of hoarding the technology far more had it built these harvesters within its own non-CEMWPA contested territories, rather than in building them in locations that it recognises the Republic is legally allowed to contest control over.
Certainly. I was merely drawing the distinction that violating the agreement doesn’t free the other party from all of the terms of the agreement, only the immediately-relevant ones (unless that’s written into the agreement).
Ah, so now it’s not just Jamyl, but her entire ship, that was divinely conjured from the aether? All those baseliner crewmembers, too?
Or was House Sarum, and through them, the Empire, in possession of the weapon prior to its arrival on the battlefield? If it appeared with her, then it needed to be installed in the ship before it could be fired. If they had time to install it, they had time to meet their treaty obligations and turn it over to CONCORD.
But again: it’s not just about us. Building these things in the Republic warzone doesn’t do the State or Federation a lick of good as far as the legally-binding treaty obligations on tech-sharing, does it?
Turning to ifs and conjecture when accusing another of acting in bad faith is a dangerous approach, pilot. I concur that the legitimate Republic government of the time likely did not know of the Elder fleet’s existence prior to the invasion in part because I want to see the best in those I wish for peaceful dialogue with, and believe doing so to be the best way to bring such dialogue about. I would hope that you can find it within you to reciprocate.
Would I be correct in assuming, therefore, that you support Captain Marshal xer Qosh’s comments that “EDENCOM proposals for a neutral observation team to facilitate the continuing peaceful development of this technology have some merit”, and openly call for the Republic to share the technologies it has acquired in Egmar and Vard with all other signatory states, therefore setting the example for other nations to follow?
It’s not conjecture. There are a limited number of possibilities:
That’s it. If you’ve got a third option, let’s have it.
I don’t know that the Republic has the capability to share that technology yet. If it’s well-enough understood by Republic engineers that they can safely allow CONCORD personnel access to it, then yes. I do know that if the Empire built these things, then they definitely do have the capability to share the technology. And not just at a ‘here, we’ll let you poke at one and hope it doesn’t explode’ level, but at the ‘here are the blueprints, and copies of our research into the physics behind it’ level. And they haven’t.
Thank you. Then through that agreement, may more reasonable minds than those of many of your compatriots work towards sensible de-escalation.
I am saddened that you don’t seem to be willing to approach the Empire’s behaviours optimistically, in good faith, judging from the way you chose to respond in the first half of your post. I believe there’s still some work to be done there. However this has been a far more productive and well-intentioned conversation than most I have with your kind.
I have more than three times as many centuries of bad faith examples counterbalancing any good faith behavior since the Rebellion.
And I have every single moment of those ‘good faith’ behaviors, that include the Empire continuing to wage relentless cruelties and psychological warfare on those of my kin still in bondage, to call them hypocrites.
Nor am I inclined to believe a known capsuleer, with all of the implants needed to make use of cloning facilities, functionally limitless funds at her disposal, and a will to become Empress, simply poofed back into existence when her homeworld was under attack. Surely, the omniscient deity with the power to create the entire universe could have conjured her back into existence with her superweapon when it would have, I don’t know, prevented all of the loss of innocent Amarr lives? Or even just… made the Elder Fleet explode all on his own?
Her story stinks worse than Shakor’s insistence that there was a conspiracy of tens of thousands across the whole Republic that somehow nobody except him and his network of trained assassins knew about.
And who might you be… ? I don’t think we’ve met.
It’s all about winning friends and influencing people.
One of Arrendis’s clanfolk, I believe. Shows a bit, no?
Someone who’s read enough to know you’re Sani Sabik, and knows enough of Elkin’s activity to make an informed judgment.
More relevantly, one of Elkin’s ‘Clanfolk’.
Oh, has she been adopted in? Through a bond to Arrendis or strictly on her own?