Oh, good. A this rate we can just dissolve CONCORD and enter a period of heavily-militarized nationalistic retrenchment.
Who wins: probably the Angels and Serpentis. Hopefully not Sansha’s Nation.
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Don’t drag us in to this shitfest. We have enough problems.
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Oh, I completely agree with what Kala’s actually said, too: The Federation got off easy.
As I’ve said: we all did. Because yes, the Republic could have used more force. Yes, knowing what I know now, I’m pretty shocked we didn’t (at the time, after all, I was at PTS). I’m kind of surprised we didn’t see supercapitals involved. It certainly would’ve fit the mood of the day, even outside the capsuleer community and the Fleet.
I meant it when I said ‘we went mad’. We did. That we showed any restraint at all surprises me. It’s not a surprise I find to be unpleasant, mind you, but it’s still not what I would have expected. At the time, I remember thinking mostly ‘Yeah, go show those drone-lovers they can’t treat us like slaves’.
I was, you know, kind of a hothead back then… like a whole lot of us were. I’ve mellowed. A lot.
I’ll leave it to you to whether or not that idea should be comforting… or scare the daylights out of you.
Eh, probably some massive, self-sufficient organization that doesn’t actually rely on the Empires for much of anything. 
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When your nation has been invaded on three separate occasions by each and every other CONCORD signatory, then the utility of CONCORD to prevent such attacks on the Federation in future remains circumspect.
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Well, if you want to be what you’ve said you want to be, you need to learn to put that impulse aside and be a heck of a lot more clinical and precise in what you read into things. Get the whole picture before you rage. Don’t, if you will, make the very same mistake we made at Colelie: think before you react.
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This rings true for me. In two and a half weeks it’ll be the fifth anniversary. Five years on I still get this blood rushing, twisting, boiling, feeling just to think of it.
I mean no insult when I say, we’ve not all mellowed.
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Huh. Weirdly this makes me feel a little better about the international balance of power. The State and Empire have always been kind of friends because it was convenient rather than because they’re hugely sympathetic to each other. If things are the same between the Federation and Republic, the prospect for peace seems … weirdly, a little better.
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I think you are failing to understand or appreciate the present Federal zeitgeist currently. If a Federal citizen looks out among the stars, what do they see?
There is the Caldari State which is premised on ethnic nationalism, in which if you cannot be Caldari you face potential persecution or as the case with the Intaki at Waschi city, an actual pogrom.
There is the Minmatar Republic which is also premised on ethnic nationalism, in which if you cannot be Minmatar you face potential persecution such as with Abel Jarek.
There is the Amarr Empire which is premised on an authoritarian theocracy, in which if you cannot be Amarr, you will be forced to be Amarr through slavery, and which as with the Starkmanir, has a long and sordid history of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The Federation is a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic union, and it is not democracy that truly binds it together, it is a fundamental self-interest: that we remain stronger together than we do apart. The varied peoples of the Federation have a deep and unbridled vested interest in keeping the Federal union together because while it is imperfect, and at times flawed, it is the best system so far to keep such a varied collective of people together and to defend their interests.
You put twenty trillion disparate people together and threaten them with violence and destruction, with invasion and death, while offering them the only alternatives of persecution and discrimination if they don’t happen to be Caldari or Minmatar on the one hand or slavery and genocide by the Amarr on the other and think the reaction won’t be absolute vehemence to defend their lives and livelihoods against those who would seek to deny it?
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No, there is the Minmatar Republic, which is founded on ‘DAMN YOU WE WILL NOT BE YOUR MINIONS.’.
As for this:
So, if that’s been the outlook since Colelie… welcome to 1/200th of the Minmatar mindset.
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Trust no one
NPSI
Pew pew
Screw CONCORD
Free for all
Bring Drifters and Triglavians
Bring pirate Factions
There can be only one
A shame the Jove observatories are down, they could have very interesting logs with the current events.
Perhaps they should call it quits with this simulation and start another in their other pockets.
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Mr. Vausienne, I’m not actually all that enthusiastic about the Caldari State’s ethnic policies, but this is …
… well, awful of you.
The Waschii Uprising was a pretty nasty bit of civil conflict-- and the Caldari State was more with the Intaki than not. The enemy was a Templis Dragonaur-inspired revolt. It was the birth of Mordu’s Legion, and the Legion has really good relations with the State to this day.
If you’re looking for an example of State ethnic awfulness, try their marriage policies.
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Yet the Templis Dragonaurs held de facto power in the State for over five years. Trying to say that instances of ethnic violence in the State exists as isolated incidents really does not hold true to me given that.
It is also beside the point that for many in the Federation there exists a deeply held vested interest to uphold the Union because quite frankly, the alternatives are for them far worse. As I said before, the vast majority of those in the Federation cannot be Caldari, nor Minmatar, nor Amarr because the Federation remains unique in the cluster at present in not being premised as a state in which ethnic identity and maintaining that identity is the primary responsibility of the state such as in the Republic, State or Empire.
Now, if the Republic, State and Empire merely held themselves to just criticizing the Federation, I honestly could not care, because they will never be able to match the extent to which Federal citizens criticize the Federation itself. There is a difference however between mere criticism, and actual attack and invasion of Federal territory resulting in the loss of life of Federal citizens, which is something the Republic, State, and Empire have all done in the past decade.
To then criticize the Federation or its citizens for taking the stance that they are under real threat of the hostility of violent action by foreign powers, after having been invaded by each and every other CONCORD signatory in the past decade is absurd. After having our territories invaded, our citizens threatened with violence or outright killed by the armed forces of foreign adversaries, the expectation is somehow we have to accept that we’re the instigators and at fault for such?
If the Republic, State, and Empire hold to the logic that the victim is to be blamed for the crimes that befall them then that is their own concern, but it is not something I, or many others in the Federation hold to.
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Except that again, this is not true. The primary responsibility of the Republic is not ‘maintaining the ethnic identity’ of the Matari people. The primary responsibilities of the Republic government are serving as a unified representation of the Tribes in international interests, and establishing a framework within which to resolve potentially contentious matters (and actual points of contention) between the Tribes. Things like the Republic Fleet, for example, are part of the mandate to represent our international interests (in that case, mutual defense).
And no attempts by you to present xenophobic lies will make your assertions true. At this point, you are becoming as much a walking advertisement for CalMil as some say Kim is for GalMil.
I can’t speak to the other cultures’ needs and purposes of their national governments, of course, but I doubt they’d agree with you, either. Even the Amarr.
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So there exists no ethnic component between the Tribes, and as such for example, Brutor and Sebiestor should be considered functionally interchangeable?
I hold no intolerance to other cultures, beliefs, or civilizations. What I do have an intolerance for is the invasion of my nation and the killing of my fellow citizens by foreign powers.
Within the Republic’s legal and political framework? How else do you imagine it could work? Do you think that Republic law says the Brutor have some special consideration to be soldiers, Sebiestor get the choicest jobs in engineering, or Thukker propulsion and astrometric scientists get paid better?
With all due respect, you clearly do. You imagine our governments to be some kind of paeans to ethnic purity. You display immediate and emphatic belligerence to anyone who so much as says ‘even if—now that I have cooled off—I think they were wrong, we had our reasons to the error we made, and those reasons were powerful and persuasive in our pain’, let alone ‘it could’ve been far worse’.
And let me be clear: it’s that immediacy and verve that you show that makes me see you as xenophobic. You make no effort to get a better picture of things. You make no effort to see if your first interpretation is correct. In a bar-room brawl, your behavior is that of the man who, upon thinking he hears someone hitting on his wife, doesn’t even stop to demand ‘what did you say?’, he simply smashes a bottle and goes for the throat.
I’m more than happy to believe you don’t mean to be displaying xenophobic tendencies. But you are. And maybe you should take a long moment and consider what it means that your behavior does not line up with your stated goals.
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I think our belligerent Federal friend forgets that a large segment of his nation’s population is ethnic Matari and that a good deal of those Federal citizens (myself included as I still hold Federal citizenship) see things quite a bit differently from him.
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On the level of “whose jurisdiction”.
There are other relevant factors here. Most importantly, there was (and thankfully still is) a binding contract of alliance that we broke.
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I think you are reading far too much into things. The Minmatar Republic in my view, follows the same principles of past ethnic based nation-states: the Minmatar have a defined history, culture, and civilization that is all their own and that shared identity is unified with the power of a state. While this serves the Minmatar as a culture, a people, and a civilization, it remains non-inclusive of those who are not born into or identify with the Minmatar culture.
I’m more than able to recognize that my assessments might be in error in this instance. However, I cannot amend potential errors due to a lack of knowledge if I feel there is no desire to pursue dialogue.
I think a lot of that was that it was not the Tribe going. Had Acasta or someone else from the high-ups called, had it been a tribal collection, it could have gotten worse; much, much worse. We would have been completely in the throes of the grief, and we would have not had the context that showed it to us as a breach of the peace agreement between the Republic and the Federation.
The latter context at least was what I think made the capsuleer commanders on the field to attempt to stop. We had the right to ask for justice to our Chief, but we did not have the right to breach that peace, and in no case was there justification for that for all of the Tribes.
Note that I am reconstructing my emotional reasoning five years post-hoc. I could be off by lightyears.
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Hang on now. You asked:
And I asked you how else it could work. Please answer that question. How do you imagine our government wouldn’t consider us ‘functionally interchangeable’?
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