Intergalactic Summit

I received this official request from Imperial Armaments, Amarr's largest weapons manufacturer. It is a commentary on slavery from within the Empire. It is also a commentary on slaves and their attitudes toward slavery. I'm sure there are opinions to be expressed on this. Oh yes, I refuse such missions. If they didn't wish this information to reach the media, they should not have shared it with me. Illamur 3 Expert Distribution Retail Center is where the uprising is occurring.


Imperial Armaments Warehouse mission offer:

There has been an uprising at one of our slave Labor Reeducation Centers, or LRCs, near a rather large ore mine. The slaves are almost wholly Minmatar, so we cannot afford to have this incident continue for even one more day. The longer it goes on, the greater the chances that some reporter or news agency will get wind of this and splash the story all over the region. Given that the Minmatar Republic may feel compelled to take action to aid their brethren, this can only lead to dire consequences. That, of course, is unacceptable. We do have a plan in place, however, that should end this uprising before it has a chance to truly take root. We need you to transport a large contingent of Riot Interdiction Team (RIT) personnel to a designated station. From there the assembled security teams will join up and embark a small fleet of frigates and cruisers to race to the prison, where they will use all necessary force to terminate this uprising before it gets completely out of control.

Amarr Labor Reeducation Centers (LRC)
The Amarr Empire, realizing many centuries ago that it could not simply work slaves to the point of death, instituted a number of improvements to worker conditions in an effort to prolong the usable lifespan of its slaves. These changes were not universal across the Empire, due in large part to the Empress’s unwillingness to create what might have amounted to significant friction between slave -based companies. Therefore, these decisions were largely left to the Five Heirs and their subordinate regional offices. Thus, we can state here that history has shown a lack of consistent application of these worker improvement programs across the Empire. Those Amarr systems that have chosen to incorporate these adaptations have, however, consistently derived greater revenues due to these enhanced and ongoing pacification efforts.

These shortcomings led directly to the establishment of Labor Reeducation Centers (LRC). An LRC is designed much like a multilevel prison, with facilities for low, medium, and high risk inmates. The inmates are those slaves who consistently exhibit defiance or even outright hostility towards the managerial staff at the mine, construction site, or other location to which they are assigned as slave labor. Once we have identified these persons they are immediately removed from their job site and taken to the nearest LRC for corrective behavioral conditioning. This conditioning can include a wide variety of attitude modification methodologies, from intensive drug assisted counseling, to religious indoctrination, and from advanced torture techniques and a concurrent system of rewards - the so-called “carrot and stick approach” - and any number of programs in between. In this way, we break the individual slave’s will so that he may be returned to the workforce as a docile and useful component in the labor pool.

So...

...okay, I am going to try my hardest to be tactful in my presentation here.

Not to disregard the information you've shared above (although I think most people already knew most of the details apart from the individual riot), but if you truly oppose slavery and the conditions under which slaves live why are you even doing work for a company that openly uses slaves?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it the Disciples of Ston that have repeatedly and consistently accused others of being guilty of supporting slavery simply by their silence and inaction? Further implication has been thrown towards those who work for Empire aligned companies and corporations that make use of slave labor or fund slavery-using establishments.

You are choosing to assist a corporation that clearly makes use of (if not at least supports) slave labor and is willing to engage in the above mentioned tactics that you found distasteful enough to betray their confidence and broadcast over these public forums.

I have to admit I am a bit disappointed, I thought you had more integrity than this on many levels. You have violated trust placed in you and have been supporting, through your efforts, a corporation that those you fund and support (namely the disciples) would openly and vehemently oppose and criticize for the use of those methods.

While I, myself, may find such practices as those above to be abhorrent and dishonorable, I also realize that in my position there is little I may do about it. However, one of the things I can do is not lend my services or support at all to such companies. I challenge you to do the same.

This seems like a dangerous situation, but one which is being dealt with effectively... well, other than your refusal to assist.

I suspect the original post was an attempt to expose the hypocrisy with which some Amarr on these fine forums tend to try and present their Empire as a benevolent nation who has been respecting the Republic's border for the last hundred years and now have been cruelly attacked by the evil Minmatar. Fact of the matter is that the Amarr have been raiding Republic space for slavery regardless of any law, have not done anything to stop it, and their corporations have broken Republic law while in the Republic as well. But hypocrisy is an Amarrian virtue, as I mentioned before. One of the reasons I respect PIE: They do not try to hide their opinions and ideals behind facades of lies and self-delusions.

On the other hand, I doubt this thread will - or a better-presented one would - change anything. Memory tends to be short, and there will soon be new claims of the Empire's benevolence, there will be people who believe those, and there will be discussions on how we all could live in peace if we'd just stop fighting.

Wishful thinking works really well until it meets reality.

I find this odd. Are you convinced that Imperial Armaments is giving you genuine missions even though you publicly announce that you are unwilling to work for them and that you are in fact trying to work against their interests?

Maybe you should get your head screwed on straight?

I would suggest you contact a news agency as suggested in the briefing and let them check it out if you honestly think there is something to expose and leave the journalism to those who are actually proficient.

Out of curiosity, does anyone have actual facts about this?

For example, I'm not sure I would go as far as to say that the Empire "permits" the Republic Security Services to operate freely in their space and have them hand out missions to free people from the Amarr or to sabotage imperial infrastructure, especially considering we are at war, so I guess this is another case of the Yulai Convention overriding territorial interests?

In that you might be correct, Sadik. I am not entirely sure about whether or not such a company is permitted to operate within the Republic's borders, but I doubt it could do so openly without their intervention if something were not holding them back. Perhaps that "something" is the Yulai Convention?

As it stands, the fact that such stations exist within Republic space leads me to believe that on some level, it is permitted to be there. If I have spoken inaccurately and it is revealed that the Republic is arm-barred into allowing the continued existence of such a station, then I retract the above statement. It should more accurately read "The fact that this corporation operates within Republic space..." anyway. I would be interested in learning more about it as well, personally.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Mr Numenor, I find this odd, since you have given us nothing more than your opinion until now.

Just typing something up and saying it is fact because you believe some else who told you that it is fact doesn't make it so.

Fact of the matter is more that both of the Amarr and the Minmatar authorities are not doing their job in their own respective space. The former when these rogue slavers come back in the Empire (which is not always the case), and the latter when the same rogue slavers enter their space.




I am not sure it is a really good idea to fall into the usual blanket statements and generalisations. Especially in pot and kettles situations.

Yes, indeed. The Amarr do not do anything against their main armamanets producer utilizing slave labor in the Republic, they do not do anything against the slave raids, and the most I see about this from the Amarr is that they talk about how this is totally not legal. Can you give me examples of what the Amarr have done to stop all of this? Because so far, this looks to me awfully much like the Amarr pretending to have certain beliefs that they do not actually have.

Likewise, the Amarr like to talk about how they do slavery only to educate the poor souls of the goodness of their god, while most arguments about abolishing slavery quickly reveal that they couldn't stop slavery without a significant hit to their economy, if they could survive it at all - so they need to retain slavery for that reason alone. Again, talking one thing while doing another.

These are concrete examples of hypocrisy. Which means that this:

... is not a blanket statement, but a well-founded opinion based on observation.

I also note with amusement that it took exactly five minutes between me predicting that there will "soon be new claims of the Empire's benevolence" and Merdaneth implying that the Imperial Armamanets offer in the original post would not be "genuine" and hence totally not a reflection of Imperial doctrine.