Intergalactic Summit

I'll take a stab at this.

Entities in nullsec can actually feasibly kill off the entire enemy alliance, or destroy the trust between alliances in a coalition. Often that's not how it pans out, but it does happen somewhat commonly. We all can point to examples.

The Pendulum Wars are the meeting of an immovable object and an unstoppable force. Neither side dies.

Just ask Spacemonkey's.

@Miz: Fair point.

You probably could have guessed it, but I'm skeptical about this, doing +1 on the violence mathematically should not lead to 0 or even a decrease.

Maybe you should have spend some time debating this externally. It seems you're not aware of how successful peaceful actions have been in the past. I think my own peaceful actions alone have had a more positive effect on Caldari-Gallente relations than this initiative of yours could ever hope to achieve, even if you had a hundred times more pilots.

Peace,

-Ché Biko

Casserina Leshrac:

I appreciate the missive trying to explain away, again without actual substance, your statements. I'm going to respond to it here, because I find the idea of you sending me this in private to be fundamentally dishonest, in context. I'll explain why in my response.

I will not, however, reprint your missive without your permission. That doesn't mean I'm not going to point out that all you basically said in it was 'it's noble because it's about a principle, and that principle is Anarchy' and 'the Nihils are my friends, I trust them to see this as righteous, so I support it'. There's one other relevant bit, but I'll address that in time. So. On to the reply.

To be blunt: it makes no difference if your support is of a personal friend or an abstract principle.

A principle is a wonderful thing to have, but just slapping a label of 'it's a peinciple' on a complex socio-policial proposition like anarchy is facile, irresponsible, and foolish. Anarchy must serve a purpose. If you claim the purpose is 'freedom', then you ignore the entire nature of society and human neurology. Absolute freedom has never existed in human society. Human society is directly based on the rejection of absolute freedom.

The concept is simple: each party naturally has the right and freedom to do whatever they are capable of doing. Including killing one another for no reason. We give up that right in order to secure the agreement of others to do likewise. Without this basic agreement, society itself falls apart into individuals, raping one another to propagate.

In service of this basic agreement, the collective, the society, establishes that there will be consequences for actions that violate the common good. To establish clear guidelines and prevent accidental violations of this compact, standards of behavior are laid down. These are laws. In order to allow the majority to conduct their affairs without needing to always be looking for violations of the public trust, agents are empowered to act as the will of the society, both in creating and in enforcing these standards of behavior. This is government, and law enforcement.

Your statement defining your version of 'anarchy' is 'no body of authority having no[sic] power over the capsuleers'. And yet, that's exactly what Fading Light is attempting to assert: do it our way or pay the price. If you truly espouse a principle of each capsuleer being free to choose their own course, then it follows that you must allow capsuleers who freely choose to engage in the Pendulum to do so. It is their right, according to your philosophy. By attempting to force them to stop, you violate your own principle—you become a self-appointed body of authority, attempting to exert power over them.

These are concepts any member of my Clan knows before puberty. To espouse anarchy is to say 'I am more important than everyone else, and I don't want to opt into the social framework'. And that's fine. If someone doesn't want to opt into the social framework, they are free to get the hel out of it. They should not expect anyone else to treat them as anything but the entitled little children, throwing a tantrum, that they are. The last time I checked, that's neither noble, no righteous, no matter how much the toddler really wants that cookie.

What is being espoused in that proposal is an effort to end the CEWPA by force.

The CEWPA is a proxy war—at least in that capsuleers are being employed to fight on behalf ot the empires. It is also a hot war, in that there is active shooting going on. Neither of these two things has any bearing on the matter, either.

The CEWPA is a system designed and implemented specifically to avoid the kind of carnage and loss of civilian life that was saw in the fighting in Luminaire, and with the Elder Fleet incursion. It has been less than a single generation since either of those events. The underlying causes behind those events remain just as potent and pervasive as they were at the time. Nothing has changed. Return to the pre-CEWPA state of affairs, and you will return to the pre-CEWPA results. This would bring injury to untold numbers of non-combatants.

Whatever grounds you claim for 'principle', if your principle enables—let alone directly foments—the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, then your principle, and all those who adhere to it, should be hunted to extinction, and all their protests and justifications should be ignored.

As for your assertion that 'if it does this because of the actions of five pilots'—please. The entire reason to post such a declaration to the IGS, or to any public forum, is to rally support. It is a naked attempt to sway others to your cause—and I say 'your' cause because you clearly and openly say you make common cause with the Nihils regardless of what that cause is, because they are your friends. By engaging in such a public declaration, the Nihils clearly hope to inspire others to emulate them, and as we have seen in this thread, there is no shortage of people willing to fall all over themselves to pledge support to anything labelled 'for peace', without even the slightest comprehension of what the effects 'success' would be.

Time and again, you and the Nihils have failed to offer any substantive justifications for this course, or demonstrate any hope of success, where your intended base of support is watching. To now attempt to do so with admissions that this is really all about self-entitled desires to be accountable only to yourselves, safely away from the eyes of those you seek to influence? That is cowardly, and dishonest. I have no idea why you think the immediate response from any Goon wouldn't be to pull it all right back into the light where your feeble attempt at manipulating and lying to everyone reading your public statements can be exposed.

We are scum. We are scammers. We are dishonorable pieces of trash. But we're sure as hel not your enablers.

Maybe they could do the whole ECM thing. Turn up, ruin everyone's fun, nobody goes home satisfied.

Just like going to a nightclub, flirting with all the guys, then climbing out the toilet window, so they all have to go home unsatisfied. Booyah!

Yup. totally credible to say now 'oh, no, we're totally planning ECM, not killing people'.

Can't you folks even try to be just a little bit competent about passing you nonsense off as consistent positions? Please? Just a little?

When your whole proposal is a sick joke, it makes it hard to tell.

At least we're trying to do some good for the cluster. Why don't you try doing the same thing, then come take a swing at us...

Re-read the original post and get your eyes checked.

The intent of our initiative is to try and disrupt the economics of the warzone by preventing people from making money off of the "capture" of complexes, and to try and make them (in general) off-limit areas to both sides, grinding the conflict to a halt as neither side will be able to control new territory. Will the two sides still fight each other? Yes, and for the moment, there's not much we can do to stop that.

To your charge that we are just adding more bloodshed to the mix, we are not actively going and hunting down militia members. Only when they enter an area that we occupy do we open communications with them and share our purpose, encouraging them to stand down and find somewhere else to go. Sometimes, this works, but nine times out of ten they charge and attack us, leaving us to react accordingly.

In the last several days alone, we've been tangling with pirates, scoring kills, avoiding hostile gangs formed up to kill us, and even making friends and sympathizers out of hostile forces. There is obviously a long road ahead, one that will take years or decades to travel, and it is by that measure that we'll judge our success or failure. You want metrics of success? Give us a few years and we'll get back to you.

Please tell me that you understand the difference between tactics and diplomatic standings, and that you're really not that dense...

The reason we declared our intentions on the IGS in this manner is that we wish to make clear what we're doing, why, and against whom. To give militia folks a heads-up that we're going to oppose them in space, definitely with words, and with force if need be. If we didn't, and just went around hitting them on the head with no cause or no reason other than "they're there", that's piracy.

Tactics are how we engage them in space. We don't actively hunt down militia members like a cat hunts a mouse - instead, we let them willingly come to us, whereby we engage them in a dialogue that starts with words and hopefully doesn't escalate to ship-based weaponry. While we're on the topic of tactics, we also generally don't charge into an occupied outpost, unless there's good reason to, which because you're so fond of numbers is again about nine times out of time.

Arrendis, I've wasted enough time on you. Continue your inane prattling if you must, like you did in the Kyonoke thread, but in the meantime I've got work to do. If I wanted to waste my time with little to show for it, I'd poke Diana.