Y’all need to stay out of my old neighborhood. Those of us who spent our formative years love our trailer park just the way it is,
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Has there ever been a more tragic, inert class than the people of the Intaki Syndicate? Even the frogs have the illusion of class organization, forever chasing the specter of democratic reform in a system forever dominated by their liberal elite. The people of the Syndicate don’t even have that, forced to live with the indignity of being little more than serfs to their station master’s personal fiefdom. When they do resist, Intaki Space Patrol have always maintained a reputation for brutal oppression against their own people-- irrespective of who the station manager is or if the workers of the station had legitimate grievances. It doesn’t matter, because ISP is little more than a gang of deputized thugs enforcing a power sharing agreement between crimelords that recognize that resistance against one of them inspires resistance against all of them. All the while peddling in drugs, flesh, and vices too upsetting to mention enabled by the Intaki Bank. Their primary export isn’t black market goods, but protection for the worst corruption and depravations among the political elite across the entire cluster. Were there any justice we would seize their assets too and divide its liquidity between the State and Region Bank and Caldari Funds Unlimited so it can help pay for the pensions of the Caldari workers harmed by their actions. But for now we will settle for the scrap metal and personal effects we scrape off the asteroids when we bring these criminals to heel.
The people of Syndicate don’t need to wallow in this state of barbarism suborned to sadistic tyrants. The state of anarchism found there isn’t freedom, its neo-feudalism designed to keep you atomized like crabs in a bucket rather than developing any sense of class or national consciousness. It’s ill-suited to the security and development of the Intaki working class. Look outside your windows at the State warships anchored there and rejoice at the gift you are being given. It represents the progress, the Union, and the mechanisms of true statehood that you have been denied since the exile thrust upon you by the Federation. Let us enter this new future together, as fellow workers and kindred spirits.
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To believe the so-called State has anything in mind but opening another front in their war against the only democracy in the cluster is absurd. You speak of the oppression the Intaki lived under, but it is not so different to the corporate dictatorship the megas wield. The Home Guard and Spacelane Patrol are no less thugs than the ISP. At least the Syndicate was honest about their depravations instead of hiding them under a veneer of “duty” and “honor”.
I am not unaware of the Syndicate’s dark proclivities, (who can forget that affair with the senator’s son), but this is a matter of self-determination. I have long hoped that the Intaki of the Syndicate, undoubtedly harmed by the Federation under U-Nat terror, would one day come home but it was their choice to build their Syndicate. The Caldari kidnapped their leader under the guise of a diplomatic meeting and has given no proof that the Syndicate was responsible for the unquestionably cruel attack on Jita, no proof that the people of this region want to replace their native government with a foreign boot.
I will fight to defend their right to choose, even if I don’t agree with their choice. That is the Gallente way.
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Saying it is the Gallente way to defend someone’s right to self-determination in the same breath as an admission of the Federation’s history of ultranationalist terror and forced exile is crazy work but we both know there’s little to be gained from relitigating the Caldari-Gallente War in the modern era.
No, far more important is the fact that there is a material difference between the social squalor of the Syndicate and your alleged “corporate dictatorship.” I would ask you to point to where it is codified that the Syndicate has ever had a centralized workers union baked into their societal structure, as the Caldari State does. The average Caldari worker has a greater degree of agency within their worker classification and job role than anyone in the Syndicate, or indeed the Federation where the Gallente Franchise System has enabled one of the largest caste systems in the cluster.
As an avowed supporter of the Mountain Faction, I will always advocate for exporting that freedom of workers association and economic liberation.
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And as one of the Ocean, a rising tide lifts all vessels at sea…
But this is more akin to the retreat before a tidal wave.
I will admit, that was put beautifully and articulate. Perhaps we will carve it on the traitors’ gravestones.
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Then pick up a chisel and do so yourself, if you’re so blindly certain in the assertion being truth.
I have no defense for the actions of the U-Nats. It was a dark time, and their response to the Caldari crisis was wrongheaded and created the rift between our peoples.
Do not get me wrong, I am not blind to the broken promises of the Federation. However I put the blame for these squarely at the feet of people like Roden who are interested in perpetuating the sort of radical capitalism familiar to any Caldari.
I also harbour no fundamental ill will against the Caldari people, wayward brothers of the Gallente that they are. In fact, until very recently, I found my dedication to the Gallente vision being tested. The form of capitalism Roden and her ilk promote is cruel, perhaps even more cruel than the Ocean faction’s depredations. The Mountain way didn’t sound so different from what my preferred candidate in Tenzin was promoting.
But this? This is imperialism. It’s a return to the iron fisted moves of Heth and the terror he wrought in my home system, the terror that drove me to become a Capsuleer in the first place. The Caldari have once again shown their true face and my tested faith has been replaced with resolve. I’d rather fight alongside scoundrels than occupiers.
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I do feel it necessary to point out, that, ‘Radical Capitalism’ is more a feature of the Gallente market structure.
The Caldari do indeed practice capitalist designs but in a much different manner and with different priorities than the likes of the Rodens and Duvolles of the cluster. The Caldari Megas care about returns on the decade and quarter century scale, not yearlies and quarterlies.
As for naked imperialism, every Empire practices naked imperialism at scale. Your Federation, The State, The Amarr, and The Republic
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Why, madam, you make it sound as if feudalism (in a modern context I’d call it nobility-based corporatocracy) is always a bad thing and freedom is always what everyone would need. You will not be surprised that I, as a holder in the Kador region, disagree with this very Gallente viewpoint.
That said, I agree with you that a bit of law and order might do the region a world of good.
That too sounds a bit Gallentean but for a very different reason.
Neither the Gallente nor the Amarr have much ground to stand on when it comes to accusing others of imperialism.
I must confess it wasn’t the imperialism part per se that got my imagination run wild, ms. Dyneaux.
It is as unfortunate as it is unsurprising that so many of the independent capsuleer cohort would gleefully throw their support behind a bunch of criminal plutocrats, fleeing justice after murdering thousands of innocents and exploiting the people of Syndicate for centuries.
And for what? Some misguided antipathy towards the Caldari State, strong enough to throw in with the financiers of the Cartel and Serpentis? Some illusion that they are helping innocent refugees, when even the Fed extended amnesty only to the direct descendants of the original 5,000 exiles?
Open your eyes and think of who it is you would actually be defending.
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All the Intaki belong to the Gallente. This is a good time to annex the Syndicate into the Federation
With respect, the entire operation is suspect until the evidence backing it is made public, and able to be scrutinized. Without that, there is legitimate concern as to what the actual justification and goal of this operation is.
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It seems to me that most independent capsuleers are criminal plutocrats.
Great Powers play Great Power games, and they don’t have to do a damn thing. They’re hiring mercenaries for this move in the game, that’s all.
As an official action, on their behalf. Every action taken against the Syndicate should be justified before anyone considers signing on to take action in this blockading.
In the wake of the Caldari occupation of Syndicate, amidst panic and terror, Chairman Akimaka Saraki addressed a conquered people - who no-one, not even the State, can realistically blame for complicity in a nebulous conspiracy against the stargates in Jita still so secret that no-one even knows what it aimed to do - and said the following:
Less than six hours later, Heika Torigo has now utterly betrayed every word of that claim.
Is it acting with honor to incite the wholesale slaughter of a defeated people fleeing their homes and the combat zone? Still having hardly fired a shot, mind, even in their own defense. Some of that fleet are warships, certainly; but the Syndicate has never fought in a war, not even now, and those few vessels are manifestly no real threat to the might of the State. They will have refugees with them, families fleeing everything they have known and now hounded across the starlanes by gleeful butchers summoned by the State. I can hardly think of anything more antithetical to the ideals of honor than the massacre of innocents in the deep void.
Is this displaying loyalty, to a conquered and betrayed people? One who had considered the State their closest friends and allies, and fought and bled together for over a decade to preserve and build the Syndicate into what it is. What it was, now. While Caldari warships menace our stations, while the threat of reprisals hang heavy over our worlds, while our children cry and our people cower, we are forced to watch as the State demonstrates that the only alternative to their heavy yoke is death. That there is no escape. This is not loyalty, nor mercy, nor justice. This is shameful and brutal and cruel, and will be remembered as such.
Is it displaying strength for the State Navy to shirk from such crimes themselves, and instead contract out the massacre to greedy capsuleers? To turn that slaughter into a sick competition amongst these pirates for who can murder the most, the fastest? Who can desecrate the bodies of the dead? There is the flimsy pretext of strained force commitments by the State Navy - itself an admission of weakness - but this is only a most transparent cloak for the abject cowardice of these warmongers. An attempt to keep their hands clean of the slaughter of unknown thousands of innocents. But that blood will stain them, indelibly and forever; and so too for any who answer Torigo’s murderous summons.
I have no knowledge of what truly transpired in Jita - nor truly do any of us, since the State has shared nothing other than broad and vague allegations - but that doesn’t matter to me, right now.
These are my kin. However misguided their flight may be - for the Federation is no refuge for the descendants of the Five Thousand - and whatever crimes some few of their number have been involved in, they do not deserve to be massacred in the black. I know I cannot stop what is to come, and I must make my peace with that. I can only hope those in command of these fleets do not persist in an ill-advised flight that will surely end in their doom.
But I will bear witness to their deaths, and I will not forgive any complicit in their slaughter.
naa jaakrota onaan yudih hianojun komal
Strife never begets a gentle child
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Considering my own reservations, I would not be surprised if this is a diversion intended to create an international incident while the members of the original Old Family blood takes the long way by blockade runner.
I would be unsurprised if they offered a large number of civilians passage on these capital assets to create a catastrophe for the State to clean up.
I have had to deal with the Old Families as is often necessary when one operates in the Region, they were not fond of Neopian ‘encroachments’ despite them never officially laying claim to systems they do not have stations and infrastructure in. They are not above such action.
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You know, when capital ships are concerned, cyno routes out of Syndicate are a-plenty. If someone dies on this op, either their recon teams needs to be fed to a woodchipper or they wanted to die.