As reported by Scope, RSS has started to round up people in what they call “counter-terrorist” operations.
Many - though probably not all - of these so-called arrests are illegal. It is the purview of the RSS to protect the tribes from threats and treason, and in that “counter-terrorism” sounds grand. It is essential that events such as the Deathglow attacks on Mikramurka get investigated and the responsible parties be brought to justice.
But you cannot just slap a convenient label on something and make it so. Great power is easily abused, and this has always been the worry with how RSS operates. It’s well-meaning right hand can be incredibly ignorant of what its clandestine, self-centered left one is doing. (Trust me, I know - I did not get my 9.43 for nothing, even if it was before the Purges and weighs nothing now.)
The Amo demonstrations were not terrorism. Turf wars in the Heath between RSS’s pet criminal warlords and those not so much in their favor are not terrorism. And Sebiestor Marshal investigations into criminal organizations sure as hell are not terrorism.
RSS does not have the legal authority to:
arrest and accuse a person of the tribes of terrorism or treason without informing their registered family and clan, latest immediately after arrest
hold members of the tribes without clearly specifying what supposed crime they are being held over
prevent detained members of the tribes from communicating with representatives their clan, tribe, and legal representation
interfere in crime proceedings that fall under the sole jurisdiction of a registered clan or circle, or constitute an intra-tribal matter
interfere with ongoing investigations by other organizations into corruption and/or crime
restrict movement of independent capsuleers or try to force access to independent capsuleer facilities that fall under international CONCORD / SCC law
More over, RSS does not have the moral authority to use its influence and power for or against a domestic political party, to stifle legal demonstrations, or to favor any particular tribe in a jurisdiction battle or inter-tribal investigation.
If you have had a son or a daughter missing or taken:
demand you are informed about their whereabouts and can maintain contact through the proceedings
demand to know what exact act of “terrorism” they are accused of
demand they are tried and judged in a fair court that has jurisdiction over them, either through their own connections, or those of the specified victim
if your demands are not responded to, escalate the matter to your chiefs, to their chiefs, and up the tribal pathways, until you get answers
Even if you think your son or daughter is a bad egg, had it coming, should have kept their mouth shut, remember that your kin is yours to judge. If a member of your circle has wronged someone, that is primarily your concern and that of the party who was wronged. Honor demands you do not simply leave it to an outsider to handle based on a vague accusation of ‘terrorism’. Even Karishal Muritor, having as a Fleet officer illegally conscripted Fleet ships for his own personal war, was dealt with by the Fleet themselves.
If you are or think you might become a target of illegal persecution by officials, regardless of where you reside:
inform your kin, circle, and trusted friends that this is the case, making it harder to make you simply disappear
make and prepare for a GTFO plan
keep money and any necessary legal documents with you at all times
seek help from a circle that cannot be directly traced to you but owes you allegiance, or in the absence of one, a neutral party refugee center that can provide you asylum
All support to legal counter-terrorism;
None to Purges without trial.
I can’t claim that the ongoing conflict on Skarkon, nor the Heath at large is enough of a destabilizing force to pose any significant threat to the RSS as an institution. However, our war in the Heath has uncovered many of the systemic issues with the RSS that many Matari have turned a blind eye to until now. While we are not in open conflict with the RSS their support of the Krullefor and their Seykal allies in the Heath has devastated the region. Their support for these rogue warlords are just one facet of their corruption, but one that the Bosena Accords and our allies have become intimately familiar with in the last several months of conflict.
The Skarkon War might not threaten the RSS permanently outside of the Heath, but it has been enough to destabilize them and make them sweat. This is latest crackdown is a pathetic act of despiration. They are clearly on the back foot for the first time when it comes to managing the situation, to the point that they are now openly taking the opportunity to seemingly “clean house” against any opposition within the Republic under the guise of “counter-terrorism” before things start truly turning against them. As a survivor of Heth’s warclone purge within the State, it’s all too unsettling to see the same pattern play out for the RSS that took place among the Templis now that their power is finally wanning.
To those within the Republic that continue to see the RSS as a necessary evil, I ask you; necessary for what? When the Republic Security Service drags your kin, your people, away in chains labeling them as terrorists to maintain their control and stifle any opposition how does that serve the Republic’s goal of creating a free state for your people?
My heart weeps for all people affected by the criminal actions of the RSS, but I am overjoyed that many within the Republic are waking up to the extent of their corruption. I encourage others, both in the Heath and across the Minmatar Republic, to continue the fight for justice and to work to fully uncover the extent of the RSS conspiracy.
Which specific arrests are being labeled illegal, and on what grounds? I have not been following situation closely, so I suppose there is some context or other information I am missing here—but to me that headline appears like it could correspond to all manner of operations against all manner of targets. The Republic spans many systems and billions of people, after all.
No doubt some of this is legitimate and well-meaning. Other parts, such as RSS siding againts Angels in an Angel-Krullefor turf for, or legitimate demonstrations in Amo broken down, most definitely are not.
Isn’t this the correct couse of action? The Angels are the more powerful of these two criminal groups, so by evening the playing field between them and the Kruellfor, the RSS ensure that both groups remain occupied fighting each other instead of dealing with Amarrian slavers.
As for the situation on Amo, I admit total ignorance—I will have to do my research.
No. The correct course of action is not to side with (and thus, give even tacit approval to) either criminal organization, but to strike both while they’re occupied with one another.
@Arrendis That seems like a good suggestion. Maybe once the RSS has finished dealing with
A mighty empire with hundreds the times the population and resources of our Republic, a burning desire to grind us into dust, and weapons so powerful that a single shot from one of them annihilated the greatest military force we have ever assembled, held at bay only by our tenuous alliance with the Gallente Federation,
An ancient, mysterious race with incredibly advanced technology emerging out of Abyssal Deadspace to lead a ruthless campaign of conquest and “extirpation” that will likely hugely intensify in the very near future, even though we are barely holding them back today, and
Continuing incursions by forces hell-bent on abducting the entire populations of our planets to turn them into mindless drones in the army of a mad Caldari scientist, and with the technology to do so,
then they will have the resources and time to implement it properly. Until then, they can be forgiven for choosing the quick and dirty temporary stop-gap solution to a gang war in an outlying border territory, while they prioritize dealing with the imminent existential threats to our people and the Republic.
Gosh, if only there were a Republic Fleet to help deal with that hostile military power and the one-shot superweapon they didn’t build or retain. Hm.
Gosh, if only there were not just a Republic Fleet, but CONCORD and a new inter-empire EDENCOMM specifically tasked with doing that.
Wow. This once again sounds a lot more like a Republic Fleet issue, since the RSS is primarily a goddamned intelligence agency and secret police force and isn’t actually a major military force. That would be the Fleet. While the RSS does have some space-borne assets, it’s not the Fleet, and shouldn’t be off trying to do things the Fleet is better suited to, like repulsing space-borne incursions and fighting wars.
Instead, the RSS should be, y’know, disrupting friggin’ criminal organizations they’re supposed to have infiltrated extensively.
I have no idea what happened to that weapon and I doubt you do either. But even without it, the Amarr are still vastly more powerful than we are, and they have an extensive spy network which it is most definitely the job of the RSS to deal with. In addition to that, they need to manage an extensive spy network of their own, so as to inform the Republic and the Fleet of enemy tactics.
Somebody has to deal with Intriguerre and other Triglavian loyalist organizations. Also, EDENCOM is led by a certain Provost Marshal Kasiha Valkanir—a “loyal” Ammatar and avowed supporter of the Amarr Empire who rose to the rank of Captain in the Ammatar Marines for her prowess in slaughtering our Minmatar brethren. The Fleet needs to know how much they can trust her and EDENCOM—another task for the Security Services.
Again, the Fleet is most effective if it knows enemy plans well—and that’s a job for the RSS.
To be clear, I agree that some elements in the RSS may be incompetent or corrupt. It’s a serious possibility, and further investigation is absolutely necessary. But treating the entire organization as guilty until proven innocent, while possessing only limited secondhand knowledge of the situation, is not just incorrect. It’s an insult to those brave men and women in the Services who put their lives, and the lives of their friends and loved ones, at great risk every day—often in extremely dangerous undercover operations where the slightest misstep is certain death—so that people like you and your friends and loved ones don’t have to live in that same fear.
I was born on Huggar Station, aka Pator III (Huggar) - Moon 2 - Republic Security Services Assembly Plant. My mother and father are still a part of the RSS. So please, continue to lecture me about the RSS. PLEASE.
@Arrendis It seems that I have severely misinterpreted some of your statements, and attributed to you attitudes that you do not hold. For this I offer my sincerest apologies.
Let’s take this bit as it’s own thing, since you’re so worried about the ‘superweapon’.
If the Amarr still had a weapon capable of destroying an entire fleet in one go, wouldn’t they have deployed it during their ‘Defense of the Throne Worlds’ campaign? Or, you know, after the Drifters one-shotted the Empress, andthe Empire pushed CONCORD to declare them a clear threat to all of New Eden? I mean, they pretty much pushed all four empires into developing upgraded capital and supercapital defensive capabilities (capital shield extenders, plates, the EHE, etc), as well as improved triage capacity with the development of the Force Auxiliaries…
But their big boomstick that could’ve trashed a whole deathball in one go… that they made sure to keep secret, even when faced with a much more dangerous opponent than one freakin’ capital fleet of well-understood capability?
If they still had it, they’d have used it. If they knew how to make it, I promise, in the 12 years since, everyone else would know how to make it, too. The RSS, after all, aren’t completely incompetent, and they are an intelligence agency.
So ‘the Empire doesn’t still have that thing, and it doesn’t have the capability to build more of that thing’ is a pretty safe position to take.
If you believe the RSS is not capable of conducting these missions at the same time as their continued operations against criminal organizations they have been targeting and infiltrating for decades, then I really think it’s not me insulting the RSS in this convo.
Whatever it was was small enough to fit in a battleship. And we don’t know how it works. I can pretty easily imagine scenarios where it was tried and failed where no one even knew it was on the field… including the person who hit the button to try to fire it.
Also, if the weapon was derived from Sleeper tech, it may be that the people who made it knew perfectly well it wouldn’t work against them.
Your argument is reasonable, but it is far from the only possibility. And I would generally suggest that it is probably safer to assume that all of the empires have strategic weapons that can be war changers in the right conditions in reserve.
Though I think you are right to not be particularly worried that Amarr will suddenly have them on every battleship. If they were deployable in that general a set of conditions, the basic balance of power in CONCORD would have already shattered.
Continuing the discussion regarding the superweapon: @Arrendis is correct in pointing out that the Amarr have not used it despite ample opportunities to do so. However this does not necessarily imply that they do not possess it; they may simply lack the fuel necessary to fire it.
It has been proposed that the weapon requires Isogen-5 to operate. It has also been suggested that the apparent interest of the Triglavian Collective in invading blue star systems is due to the fact that blue stars may be sources of Isogen-5. If the Collective succeeds in harvesting Isogen-5 from blue stars, and the Amarr Empire steals that supply, or alternatively if the Empire steals the technology needed to obtain the substance, the situation could become very dire very quickly.
Of course, this is all just speculation, and it could be totally wrong. Even then, the Empire remains much more powerful than the Republic, and a existential threat to our people (just ask the inhabitants of Floseswin). And on top of that, Sansha’s incursions are unrelenting.
It is a testament to the bravery, dedication, competence, and persistence of RSS operatives that they have dealt with both of these problems for many years, and still found time and resources to fight more traditional criminal organizations. But now, with the intensifying Triglavian menace added on top of these two pre-existing existential threats, it is no surprise if the Services find themselves having to make difficult compromises to ensure the safety of as many of our people as possible, as they decide how best to allocate their severely limited resources.
