Intergalactic Summit

Miz, I'm surprised that you don't share the view that death is a coin one uses to buy something that one values. You're missing the point when you think that there is only death, surrender or victory.

Your heroes of the past didn't break their chains and then go for the Empire's throat - they rebelled, grabbed as many people as they could and grabbed some territory that they could hold. They didn't just en masse charge the defences of Athra - because that's suicide and if suicide is your goal, you might as well eat a bullet in the comfort of your quarters.

Arrendis is right when she says that you can't defeat the Empire - but you don't have to. You've got two thirds of your population away from slavery. More than that, a full third of that population lives under the Aegis of another nation - the Federation. The Matari people are going nowhere. They'll be around until the heat death of the universe, barring some 'outside context problem' level event that can't be foreseen.

But if you attack the Empire head on, they'll burn your fleets, burn your worlds and subjugate what's left. You have zero chance of winning that fight. Your military objective ought to be ensuring that they have zero chance of attacking your worlds and winning - which is a whole load easier than fighting a successful invasion campaign.

And you haven't even addressed what you'd do if you actually managed to win. Free your people? Sure. What about the Amarrians? You going to keep them subjugated - become that which you fought? You going to wipe them out - become a worse monster than they ever were? You going to take their worlds - what would be left, anyway? Or would you take your people and return to your own space, leaving behind an intractable enemy who would live for the day they recovered their strength sufficiently to strike at you?

Never mind the fact that by launching any sort of a unilateral war, you'd be making the Minmatar people target number one of the State and the Federation. Weakening yourself at the same time as announcing to the cluster that you're a bunch of expanionist warmongers who won't hesitate to commit gigadeath crimes to get whatever you want, the moment you feel strong enough to take it.

Winds, we'd have to put you down like rabid dogs. It would be like Sansha all over again.

I'm more than happy to hear your ideas, Miz. And sure, let's both pretend I have never fought the Matari. I would prefer it.

I have made no claims I can't back up here, Arrendis. You have. I have given no guarantees other than what our people would become if we surrender, and surrender it would be. You sorely under-estimate what the Tribes can do in a real war when we're not limited by the constraints of technological inferiority or absolute objectives like getting a lost Tribe home.

The Empire has never been in such a poor state as it is now. Loyalists themselves are privately marveling that it hasn't torn itself apart. Bloated and stagnant Empires like these facing a determined and quick enemy that strikes quick mortal wounds and constantly harass and harangue them as they ponderously try to throw their weight around have never fared well in recorded history.

There's not even a need for total victory. There's only one criterium that needs to be achieved: Sufficient pressure that it's not worth the fight anymore. The Empire stands poised to crack apart under enough pressure, while a total war would unite the Tribes like nothing before. Oh yes, if the Empire was willing to fight to the last, it could win. It's even got a fair shot at it. It does not have the will for it, because they too know that any victory they would have would be so pyrrhic and devastating for themselves that they couldn't recover from it.

They would abolish slavery of our blood for peace. Perhaps even of their own blood. It'd be the only certain path forwards for them, and the only way to achieve that change would be the pressure of a war applied to the cracks in the Empire's walls.

Failure to take this opportunity would be far more damning. It'd be the end of our people, because the enemy would have no reason to change. No reason to do anything but grow stronger. Mend the cracks, forge their war machine and use it. Your path is a sure end of our people, while rising up and leveraging the fire that still burns within us now is the only path that has a chance of success, and eventual peace and security.

What our ancestors rebelled to secure is more than blood. That is what you would abandon and without which you would be reduced to something that certainly would not be Matari.

Cower before them, Arrendis. Preach surrender. Preach abandonment. Live on your knees.

I won't.

History disagrees with you. This is exactly how these Empires lose. They get hit when they are bloated, stagnant and the cracks are in place. The practicals will start clamoring for abolition and peace. The traditionalists will fight them over that. The insiduous will take the opportunity to set up a powerbase for their ascent when it's all over and done with and their rivals are weak. This is when we can win.

Without the external enemy keeping up the pressure, they can just sit back and mend their issues and then they will inevitably come when they're at their strongest. I'd rather take on what they have today, and some day in the future whatever they rebuilt from defeat some later day than the Empire that would soon come for the broken and wilted who already surrendered.

We can take a shot at success, or go with your plan of guaranteed oblivion.

Like I said, cower before them. Preach surrender. Preach abandonment. Live on your knees until they finally come place the collar on your neck, unopposed, because that is what you are calling for. For our people not to fight for the rest of our people. To abandon them. To surrender. If you will not fight for them, why would anyone fight for you and yours when it's your turn?

The line was drawn even before the Day of Darkness fell upon our world. If we surrender before the job is done, they'll have won. Total victory. It'll just take a while longer, and what you would preserve would die with a whimper and a sigh, to be forgotten and gone.

We have a chance to push them back across the line and set it in stone and blood. A chance to give our people a chance. In surrender... there is none.

There have been some fascinating if predictable positions articulated in this thread. I think looking at everything that has been said it fairly sums up the current set of circumstances.

What has more virtue, a total war where billions if not trillions perish, deciding the issue once and for all, or allowing the slow bleed of lives and material that we find in our current state of affairs. It is true, that there may never be peace until someone wins. But I fear it equally true, that victory in the absolute since is unattainable.

The affairs of the Republic and the Empire are particularly thorny and as I have ‘no skin in the game’ I will refrain from commenting further.

The situation between the State and the Federation is in my estimation substantially different. I think most of ‘us’ frankly want an armistice. I use that term specifically, as I am unsure if ‘we’ are collectively or individually ready for peace. Recently there were undertakings that lead to greater understanding and yes, the development of some semblance of trust between our societies. That died quickly enough. I won’t comment on it further to avoid any recriminations.

Yes, I understand that may seem odd, considering the tenor of my postings of late. But one often uses a flash of the lure to mask the hook. We all try to score the cheap point by using vailed insults or accusations to … what exactly, win?

Two examples in this very thread, from those exposing further accommodations between our factions, keeping in mind I myself am guilty of the same behaviors.

Followed shortly after by;
What were your motivations when you added the quoted text? When you say these things how do you think ‘we’ will respond? What do you think ‘we’ hear when ‘we’ read the quoted text? Do you even care?

Again, and in this alone, there are no hidden agendas. We bait each other, then stand astonished when trust and peace allude us.

As I seem to be foolishly disclosing my feelings on the matter in full, I will add a personal note. Ms. Priano. I respect your recent efforts and have perhaps been too harsh in my assumptions about your intentions. But in me, you find an adversary born of your own words. How can you expect ‘our’ trust when you speak thusly?

Pieter, not so long ago I believed you to be an honest warrior who sought an honorable peace. But you like myself make such an eventuality less likely with your choice of words. While your culpability is limited, recent events have again reinforced in me the belief rightly or wrongly that any peace with the State is tactical, a ruse to gain time considering the acute vs chronic nature of State military projection.

If there is going to be any progress, that doesn’t set us all adrift on a tide of blood we are going to have to foster some measure of trust in one another. We all make this less possible in the manner of our mutual conversations.

I am not asking anyone to abandon their positions or opinions. But our discourse needs to change, mine included.

Oh, and forgive me Ms. Arrendis for my wordy reply.

A true believe in what, though? A true believer in the ideals of Federation, in self-determination and egalitarianism? Or a true believer in the Federation's right to hold onto part of a planet in the Luminaire star system that they took by force, and settled as an occupation tactic, centuries ago?

I'm not asking that to be imflammatory—though I'll openly admit, my first impulse is to be relentlessly antagonist toward you just for the amusement factor—but rather because some within the Federation hold to each of those views, and some to both, strongly enough to kill over it.

Not all true believers are a threat to civilian populations. But the last time I checked, an Erebus doesn't care what the egger inside believes.

Actually, it was working just fine until a zombie attacked the fleet with a Jovian super weapon. If we take steps to ensure mutually assured destruction (such as poisoning entire planets), then it's a fight even the Amarrians would be loath to take. We have proven our resolve to do it before, and the Amarrians know we will do it again if push comes to shove... and they are out one Jovian super weapon, if I recall.


We may be out gunned, but the tribes are rarely out maneuvered.

Then are you your own enemy? For from my perspective that is exactly what your statements indicate that you are? Perhaps I am wrong.
Many who fired on that structure Ms. Priano… well let me just say that I took it in some cases to be a personal betrayal by people I had grown to trust. To be honest, it would be best not to mention it at all, if you intend to make light of it, or to make excuses for it.
Oh I do acknowledge my own guild Ms. Priano, that is why I have made this overture.

But in honesty, I wonder which one of us will find it harder to ‘humble ourselves’? While I admit to making ‘unprovable’ claims, I am not alone in that. Indeed, I seem to remember being… well, your displeasure at me when early on I suggested the possibility it was an attempt to weaponize the pathogen by the State was palpable. But see how easy we fall into the old pattern, accusation, counter-accusation, justification and counter justification.

Can we do better than this?

And just to be clear, this isn't a rhetorical game. It's a discussion. You say the current state of affairs isn't acceptable, but really, what alternative is there? Negotiated peace will not happen. There are too many zealots on both sides to pull the dangling carrot out from in front of them now. You need more time spent living in relatively cooperate peace, time to defuse the cultural stresses that drive both sides toward mistrust and war.

It's not as impossible as a true peace between the Empire and Republic... but it's still going to take a long time. Probably long enough for children to be born who've never known wider conflict between the two nations... to be born, to grow up... and to take the reins.

Can protecting people lives be in vain?

There is a point of view, that everyone will eventually die. So why should we lift hand and cover those, whom we can save? Maybe its better to just put arms down and sit in corner idling and watching how hordes of gallente occupants swarm your homeworlds uncontested, blow up baseline vessels, that we, capsuleers, tend to save when we push occupants away from military outposts; shoud we just sit and watch how gallente death squads land on planets and murder colonists. How they take everything you have collected, destroy everything you constructed, and kill everyone you knew and cared about?

Why not, if everything eventtually be destroyed and everyone will die?...

For me, because it is not Caldari way, it is not in our tradition to put hands down and let things go by themselves. It is not in our tradition to submit to bullies and bend to those, who raised hand on us. We don't wane. We aren't minmatar to let ourselves be enslaved. We raise up and fight as one, shoulder to shoulder with our kirjuun, we stand as impenetrable wall. We protect our corporations, and we hunt down every son of a fedo who dares to attack our State. We are soldiers, and we are hounds of war, who guard our homes with our lives.

And if we kill at least one occupant, at least one enemy ship that was murdering our baseline ships and will stop the massacre, at least for an hour - then it wasn't in vain. I have been talking before about people who sacrificed their lives for their nations - but now I am talking about those, whom we have saved. Have you seen faces of baseline ship that you saved after you destroyed hostile ship that was killing it? Have you been welcomed by people liberated from gallente oppression? Have you read the hope in their eyes?

These are the moments that are worth living for, these are the moments that are worth fighting for.

And be damned these jackasses who call these wars "Pendulum", for they just open their mouths to say something pseudo-intellectual without knowing anything about wars, sacrifices, suffering and hope. All that they deserve is shame and disgust.