Intergalactic Summit

But... Explosions are so pretty!

As one of those who destroyed that Keepstar and ended those lives... what the actual **** is wrong with you? Don't take the responsibility for choices made away from the aggressors, defenders, victims and instigators in this war, just to make a cheap political point.

Using the deaths of these people so cheaply, transparently and outright dishonestly? Spirits below.

Sure are the ones who ended those lives at fault.
But so is everyone with the capabilities to prenvent such a loss who didn't take action.
And as the largest humanitarian organization in the cluster the Sisters of Eve did nothing, but pick up the remains.
This in my eyes says a lot of the humanitarian intent of such an organisation.

Having a workable evac plan and assets in place is a responsibility that rests squarely on the shoulders of the owners of the citadel. The Sisters of EVE are at core a charitable organization. They may attempt to save you from the consequences of your own stupidity, at their pleasure. They are under no obligation to acquire and risk setting billions' worth of good jump-capable transports on fire just because some nulsec warlords decided to be massively irresponsible.

I have an alternate theory of the case.

The OP is certain 'that if the effort of an SoE evacuation would have been made the combating parties would have allowed such an evacuation'. To that, I would simply point out what every capsuleer in null knows: NCPL, CoTEST, and pretty much everyone else in null who hunts Guristas, Blood Raiders, Serpentis, Angels, Rogue Drones, and anything else that doesn't run away fast enough to keep us from scavenging their corpses would, in fact, have looked at those evacuation convoys and the inevitable escort groups of Stratios- and Nestor-class vessels (if, indeed, the Nestors weren't being used directly as evacuation platforms) as nice, juicy pinatas of whatever scraps of technology, salvage, or just tears could be wrung from them.

Consider: The Scope is making a big deal of the 130-something million people that make up the crew and residential compliment of a Keepstar. Call it 150 million beings if we expand our count from 'human beings' to include household pets, fedos, and TEST. In Delve, our pirate-hunting has slowed down a little. We're only on-track to kill 20,000,000 Blood Raider vessels this month. Who wants to take the bet that they average out to more than 6.5 crewmembers per ship? The Guristas, across all of their space, lose similar numbers to the losses sustained by the Blood Raiders. The Scope doesn't much seem to care about that slaughter, does it?

So what's the difference? Sure, you can claim the citadel's population were non-combatants... except a Citadel is, in fact, a combat structure. It's expressly a defensive emplacement, not an industrial or market structure—though some are configured to provide those services. So each and every individual who was working on that citadel was, indeed, a combatant. Maybe their families weren't. Maybe that's exactly the kind of consideration someone should take into account when deciding whether or not to move their families into a nullsec combat fortification. At the very least, to take that kind of job without researching the situation and the political climate is irresponsible to the point of being suicidal.

This Keepstar was never going to survive. The moment it began nano-assembly, it was doomed. There was never a time when NCPL were not going to evict Circle-of-Two for control of the M-O/Taisy stargate in order to give their recruitment drives for Horde (whether or not Horde itself owns that space) a relatively easy route in from high-sec, and an extremely quick and easy route for access to/from Jita.

More, Gigx is exactly the kind of stiff-necked individual who would eventually have a personality clash with his overlords, most predictably over the sections of Tribute that CO2 has been actively attempting to get control over for years now. Gigx's attacks on MC fall right into this pattern, as MC now holds two of the constellations Gigx spent years trying to force TNT to cede to him. While Corps Diplomatique worked hard to resolve issues through (appropriately enough) diplomacy within the CFC / Imperium, his new neighbors employ a far more direct style of response to this kind of belligerence. Put bluntly, Gigx was always, inevitably going to **** off the people around him, and they were always going to have no patience for his crap. After all, they have no reason to be patient with him. He has, and had, absolutely no leverage, and there was nothing they wanted from him.

So, that horrifically high number that gets matched across New Eden probably twice a week without a single word of notice from the Scope, or any of the fine, wonderful, moral people now taking such pains to be seen condemning the violence... who is to blame?

Who isn't?

Every capsuleer here flies ships built by industrialists who participate in the vast, interconnected pool of monetary gain that drives and enables that kind of bloodshed. Salvage, Tech II modules, Tech III ships, deadspace pieces, price supports for even T1 frigate hulls, it's all driven by murder and savagery. Take away the warfare and watch the economic model that lets people produce the ships you use and the ammunition you expend crumble under the lack of demand.

You want to see body counts like this stop? Stop profiting from it, even indirectly. Stop selling your ores, your PI, your salvage, to people who will build ships for use in war. Stop marketing products that kill, or that support killing. Stop buying weapons, even to use against pirates.

Stop imagining yourself as somehow above it all, and unsullied. Money is fungible—what you spend yours on allows others to make war. You want to know who's responsible for all those deaths?

Look in the mirror. Nobody is innocent.

Don't get me wrong, Utari: The people involved in the attack bear responsibility for their own actions. But everyone else does, too, and nobody should be telling themselves they aren't complicit if they've been a part of the capsuleer economy.

Let's not try and justify what some of us do by trying to equivocate highsec mining with what may be an unprecedented act of massively parallel - as opposed to serial - killing. There's certainly something to the notion that everyone somewhat contributes to the system, but the responsibility for the lives lost in M-O starts and ends with those of us making the choice to launch our cruise missiles at the Keepstar.

It's far from the gravest sin performed in New Eden, even that day alone, but trying to reduce the responsibility by spreading it thinly across everyone who ever contributed to the capsuleer economy through less violent acts is disingenuous.

No miner, explorer or whatever else had anything to do with me contributing to turning however many millions of lives into a brief yet beautiful star. Nor are they responsible for whatever else is done out on the frontiers. The buck will always stop with you.

I'd lay out the critical details that makes up the vast gulf of difference between the two of us, and perhaps make yet another futile attempt to detail nuances you seem to prefer to ignore, but since I've never been in your pants I don't think the IGS is a suitable location for personal interludes. They probably belong in that other thread, for that matter. Let's keep this one on topic.

People leave civilization and bad things happen to them. It's tragic, but hardly surprising.

The fringe barbarians have been committing acts of savage butchery for years. I do not really understand what is so special about this case?

In which case all this hand wringing and chest beating is just part of the spectacle. An empty performance of grief and outrage in a vain attempt to demonstrate to whoever is watching that they at least are not horrible people. Got it.