[leonidastezuka]

Official Announcement from The League of Free Nations

The League of Free Nations is being attacked for reasons that either have no evidence or cites evidence that is distorted, incomplete and/or fabricated.

LoFN [and its previous incarnation NONE, which we do not deny] stands for sovereignty, freedom of association and the right to the defense of self and others in a manner of our own choosing. We resort to military action only when diplomacy fails and only for defense.

For that we are designated a terrorist organization that is forced to operate in the shadows. All we want is our sovereignty and we are willing to sacrifice everything to win it and keep it.

This latest unprovoked war that has been waged upon us was launched without justification and we will not surrender.

We in fact are the ones who have been spied upon by moles who have infiltrated our forums posing as friendly parties who were considering endorsing our Charter that advocates sovereignty and the use of military for defensive purposes only.

Over a week prior to the war, we suffered numerous in-game spy attacks that among other things, successfully destroyed some of our nuclear weapons. One of them from a current opponent alliance was exposed.

What this war is actually about is long-standing grudges from those who were outraged that previous unprovoked aggression was met with organized resistance. They called in several larger alliances to punish us [including nuclear first strikes against non-nuclear nations] for defending selves and others. Nonetheless, they failed to bend us to their will. We did not surrender in two wars of aggression they launched against us, which left them bitter and vengeful ever since.

This is about a vendetta against a certain member of this community who has been marked as an enemy for telling the truth as he sees it and helping the defenseless defend themselves. Declaring that anyone who aided his nation would be attacked was not enough; anyone who had anything to do with him even after deletion is to be punished.

Also, this war is about making the world safe for unprovoked aggression. It is about it being OK to have organized aggression, but it is not OK to have organized resistance. They insist that everyone on Planet Bob declare openly their defensive ties to facilitate collective punishment and so bullies/robbers can more easily assess who it is safe to victimize. Our opponents are including that in their list of demands.

We the undersigned reject the enemy's casus belli and will not comply with their terms. We will continue to fight, inflicting as much damage to our attackers as possible as we claw our way down to ZI, bill-lock and deletion if it comes to that and will settle for nothing less than unconditional peace.

We ask also that this series of vendetta wars against us come to an end once and for all.

Signed [in alphabetical order]:

Axxendal
Barakady
Blackjack214
Blueland
Cary Grant
Conscience of Zanth
Dave the Wave
Davidius
Dieter Lukas
Doctor Who
El Ricardo
ExplorerAlpha
Fire2100
fred22
Freff
Gome brooi
hazey5463
joanna
Kameko
King Clutch
King Match
kudzu66
leonidas_tezuka
Leonudio
Lord Pimpmaster Fonk
Lord Stilton
Macho999
Matayac
Mommyann
Morath
Morgaine
Nickolas Anthony
Nocode
Onefishtwofish
Pharaoh
Poooos Pod 2
popsbw3
President Strong
Raiden
Revaaron
Rollio
Sgt Alvin C York
sharpshooter
Shewas13
Socratys
Swampfox
The Almighty Snark
TheGlyde
TIMOTHY
Urzu7
Warfunn
Zakalwe
ZOne1Z

This post has been edited by leonidastezuka: 29 May 2008 - 12:38 AM

[leonidastezuka]

Casus Belli Debunked

Let us now debunk point by point the reasons for the enemy's attacks upon us and the historical inaccuracies they used to bolster them. Starting with the slide show:

<a href="http://andromeda.forummotion.com/LoFN-CB-h8.htm" target="_blank">http://andromeda.forummotion.com/LoFN-CB-h8.htm</a>
Slide 1: What is LoFN?

Quote

The League of Free Nations is a secret bloc established by NONE, and organization established by w alford after his expulsion from GATO...

As a condition for GATO being released from GW3, w alford and Chris_Kaos were forbidden from holding any office in that alliance. When he discovered that Ivan Moldavi would consider even ADVICE given to be a violation, w alford decided that his mere presence would endanger GATO and left voluntarily. Chris_Kaos elected to remain behind.

Realizing that to be in an alliance he only had the options of joining the enemy or endangering new friends, he saw no choice but to become non-aligned. So he then decided to organize those who were willing to make the sacrifices with the object of providing an alternative to their status of Designated Victims. Thus NONE was born.

Quote

...which was created in an attempt to fight the practice of tech raiding.

That is not true. It was established to enable those who do not want to join alliances under the current system [collective punishment for the real or imagined offenses of a few] to organize for the purposes of trade help, mentoring, aid and defense. NONE was not created to fight tech-raiding; it was created to facilitate independent nations and small non-partisan alliances to pool their resources for mutual benefit.

They were evolving a project that had never been attempted before -- at least not at that scale. Turnover was high in their first months of existence, half of the nations that had joined them had either quit or allowed their nations to be deleted.

So they formed into squads of about a dozen each so they could have an alliance affiliation displayed and still retain their independence. This allowed them to grow in size and number. But the small size of the squads looked inviting to some and they were still attacked; but not as much.


Slide 2: NONE cells in LoFN.

NEAT, AHEAD, The Red Rose and The Triple Entente were organizations that were formed outside LoFN. All they are guilty of was endorsing a Charter that supports sovereignty and pledges that militaries will only be used for defense.

The editing date indicates that the mole took the screencaps on May 10. That was when we got word that someone was taking screencaps and passing them to those who mean us harm, so the suspect, Lord Boris was cut off from access. But apparently he was not the only mole because screencaps from as recently as May 26 continue to be fed to those who mean us harm.

Slide 3: The Red Rose Joins LoFN

First of all, endorsing the Charter is not "joining." And what is exactly wrong with that? Anyway, on May 11, The Red Rose withdrew their endorsement. This part was conspicuously omitted from the slideshow:


Slide 4: AHEAD involvement in LoFN

That slide shows Jerdge's last post in the Charter thread. It does not show him endorsing it.

Slide 5: AHEAD involvement in LoFN

That chat includes Jerdge referencing FEAR, so apparently the chat is with a senior member of that alliance. Lord Boris was admitted into the LoFN forums as an alliance head considering endorsing the Charter. Perhaps this was meant to impeach Jerdge for suspecting that w alford was involved in LoFN, but not doing the smart thing and running away in horror.

One thing that "blacked out" said that w alford did not self-delete and was instead banned due to 100% warn level. Not true:

http://forums.cybern...showtopic=20446

Slide 6: AHEAD involvement in LoFN

The infamous recruiting for AHEAD incident. We are having trouble finding that thread, but do not deny it exists. We just do not remember the context for that recommendation. Suggesting that a registrant on a message board for multiple alliances join a particular one because it seemed to be most compatible amounts to...what bad thing?


Slide 7-end: What did they do?

Quote

[* Committed acts of war against our allies in the 1V coalition fighting GATO

One person said he launched in-game spy attacks against their attackers. He could have been just saying this. No screencaps of exposed operations have been posted. It is up to the offended party to deal with this anyway.

Also, scrupulously omitted from the slideshow was that the person saying he did the in-game spy ops wa admonished to stop it:



It has then been said that LoFN should have expelled him. If he had one of his alleged spy ops exposed, he would have been left to deal with the consequences. To expect us to take any action based upon private conversations that were screen-capped as a product of espionage is unreasonable.

Quote

[* Encouraged the nuking of ArGO and GOD nations

The screencap scrupulously cut off the part demonstrating why the decoration was proposed.



The medal was awarded because RicoVacilon did something that he knew risked the severest of consequences and did so with open eyes. " I wish EVERYONE would respond to being tech raided the way I did. That way these punks would stop doing it. That was awfully expensive tech they got from me."

Our assessment of this was that he served notice to those who would beat and rob others that they would not always face a victim who would be intimidated from fighting back with everything he has regardless of the consequences. This would benefit all non-aligned and members of small groups like his 5-man alliance.

That was brave and admirable to us, so we offered him a medal.

Quote

[* Attempted to get sanctions on ArGO and GOD nations

AFTER the aggressors succeeded in persuading a corrupt Senator on the victim's color team to sanction HIM for fighting back. A clear case of dishing it out, but not being able to take it.

And for merely requesting that the aggressors' Senators consider a retaliatory sanction, non-nuclear Conscience of Zanth resigned from The Corps. He was soon gang-attacked and nuked. So he has been punished and yet this is being cited as part of cassus belli?

Quote

[* Spied GOD nukes

Do you have proof of this? We haven't seen any.

A week or so before the attacks of May 25, Several members of The Corps and Hell-Fighters were having their nukes and other assets spied away. Only one was exposed:



When asked about this, CIS officials said it was not allowed, but offered no explanation nor compensation.

We have had some dealings with them before.


This is the sole remaining screencap, but at that time The Buccaneers [which had about a dozen members] were under general attack from CIS and they were never told why.

This post has been edited by leonidastezuka: 28 May 2008 - 07:14 PM

[TheGlyde]

Historical Animosity Leading to Conflict

Xiphosis said:

The history is important to understand here as it directly relates to why we decided to get involved in this operation. Back then ONOS, CSE, and DLP were all tech raiding alliances and it's how our friendships grew - we'd exchange targets, tips and such. Back then, our targets were always inactives. One day, CSE hit someone who had a message in his biography - "Protected by friends." Whatever, right? Turns out that was the "thing" members of a certain somone's NONE wore.

And this CSE should have taken seriously. Some have said that NONE and its successor LoFN lies in wait to pounce upon the poor unsuspecting tech-raider. In that incident of about a year ago, we messaged the aggressor demanding peace and reparations. This was mockingly rejected and our reaction was no different from yours would have been. We counter-attacked and they defended the aggressor. It soon escalated into a full-scale war, in which they called in 4 or 5 alliances including nuclear first strikes against non-nuclear nations.





Also nuclear first strikes were launched against defenders by Xiphosii and The Big Bad. All of this to defend a tech-raid gone bad. They demanded the usual apologies, extortion, POW status, military emasculation that only bores us now. We refused and were resolved to keep fighting to ZI and beyond.

Eventually they tired of bleeding for nothing and withdrew.

Another skirmish with elements of our former enemies that split off from CSE and formed Avenguard Crusade took place a couple of months later. They got the same result -- unconditional peace/no surrender -- and were very bitter about this indeed.

Since then, Guffey in particular was apparently resolved to find someone large enough to help him exact his revenge for us fighting back and not bending to his faction's will. Apparently he found one.

________________________________________________________________________________
_______________

Let us explore the timing of this particular attack. We had just come out of a war with a certain AGW Overlords who had attacked nations bearing the alliance affiliations of a couple of our squads several times before.





A 2 or 3 day war ensued ending in a White Peace. Note that the wiki can be changed by anyone.
http://cybernations....ki/AGW-Axis_war

During the war, there were some discussions in the publicly accessible parts of their Usenet group:
http://agw.bombs-awa...ad.php?p=997533

http://i288.photobuc...ons/AGWO-33.gif

They alluded to a second phase of the war that would commence on Saturday:

http://i288.photobuc...ons/AGWO-39.gif

And noted that help would be sought from Avenguard Crusade:

http://i288.photobuc...ons/AGWO-64.gif

Apparently AGC was not up to the challenge, so they got some other factions to do their dirty work instead.

This post has been edited by TheGlyde: 28 May 2008 - 07:16 PM

[TheGlyde]

Edit: double post...

This post has been edited by TheGlyde: 28 May 2008 - 07:03 PM

[leonidastezuka]

Edit: double post

This post has been edited by leonidastezuka: 28 May 2008 - 07:00 PM

[TheGlyde]

Miscellaneous (in no particular order)

• One of the accusations is that we were constantly attacking tech raiders (that we were anti-tech raiders); which is taken completely out of context. We only retaliated against tech raiders that attacked us first, AFTER negotiations/diplomacy failed. We do not defend non-members.
  
  We still have non-aligned members and it is handled differently if they are attacked. We have secured agreements with several tech-raiding alliances that if one of our non-aligned members is attacked that no other combatants or aid will be added on either side if the victim chooses to fight it out. If he wants peace, he will get it, but w/o reparations. We do require reparations when members bearing an alliance affiliation of 10 or more are attacked, however.
  
  
  
• We have also been accused of jumping in and out of "legitimate" alliances in order to "scam" aid. There has been no specifics offered, much less any proof. Our membership is certainly no less honorable than our attackers in any regard. That should be plain.
  
  
  
• It is been said that we are nursing grudges and are biding our time until we can exact revenge. The only vindictiveness we are seeing is from the enemy. Our mindset is to put past conflicts behind us and look forward as we develop our project of seeking sovereignty in our own way.

We are all former non-aligned remember and most of us do not care about alliance politics; we care more about game mechanics and helping our friends. We would prefer not to have to deal with political intrigues, personality conflicts, politicians, diplomats, etc. We just want our little corner and to be left alone.

We mean no one any harm and only respond militarily in self-defense. Just as it is outside of Planet Bob, not every gang wears their colors openly. Sovereign nations have the right to associate as they see fit, be they non-aligned or not. Just because one nation with the alliance of "None" is attacked in a robbery and another one comes to his aid does not make them terrorists or rogues.

You have NO RIGHT to force others to play the game the way you do. And if you do resort to violence because you cannot abide another group's sovereignty, prepare to bleed.

[Ephriam Grey]

I've been waiting for this for awhile. You don't disappoint, do you?

[Lavo_2]

Big wall o'text. I highly doubt it will make your attackers stop though.

[GopDrager]

Ok, thanks guys for clarifying. The list is an idea, now I know which targets to continually blow away, once again, thanks.

[Ephriam Grey]

TheGlyde, on May 28 2008, 09:18 PM, said:

You have NO RIGHT to force others to play the game the way you do. And if you do resort to violence because you cannot abide another group's sovereignty, prepare to bleed.

This matter is for the battlefield. We are ready to bleed, and to show you an honorable fight.

Give me no quarter, for I shall show none.

[Alan Shore]

I like how your refutation of 80% of it is simply "nuh-uh!" and the rest is all old news. Bottom line, if they hadn't declared on you, we would have for harboring Walford. Still might.

[Ephriam Grey]

Andromeda members posting in this thread will be demoted one rank per post.

[Degenerate108]

i care not for massive walls of text. laziness FTW!

[Doctor Who]

LoFN members posting in this thread will be given war tacos per post.

This post has been edited by Doctor Who: 28 May 2008 - 07:09 PM

[Delta1212]

I have never done this before but...


This was a brilliant political move.

[Barakady]

o/ LOFN prepare too bleed Thugs !!

[Ephriam Grey]

Barakady, on May 28 2008, 09:29 PM, said:

o/ LOFN prepare too bleed Thugs !!

Bleed me if you can.

[jenkyle]

im finally glad someone else has said The Triple Entente was not a NONE cell. finally someone is here to show some sense.

i have been trying to tell everyone that this war is wrong because even if one signatory did something to an ally of Andromeda, why should that condemn every signatory like it condemened The Triple Entente.

The Triple Entene has now been disbanded after it was left in shambles because of this war.

after all this i would like to say i am proud of our membership in LoFN i only wish we were more active. LoFN was an organization to protect its signatories not to agress against anyone.

[Blackjack214]

Doctor Who, on May 29 2008, 01:28 AM, said:

LoFN members posting in this thread will be given war tacos per post.

MOAR WAR TACOS!!! :jihad:

[Yala Misr]

Delta1212, on May 28 2008, 09:29 PM, said:

I have never done this before but...


This was a brilliant political move.

Not only was it a birlliant political move, but it was also a brilliant political move.

All I'm trying to say is this was a brilliant political move.

Anyways, this ordeal is more trouble then its worth.