Sadinoelus

All goods things must come to an end - Citadel's time has come and passed. So must it be. For the final time... o/ Citadel [img]http://ordoparadox.com/top/style_emoticons/default/CitadelPatriot.gif[/img]

If any of the buyers drop out, I'd be happy to pick up the slot.

I've only been here for a quarter of TOP's existence, but I've loved every second of it. Paradoxia Vult!

This issue was resolved pages ago, but if you must, I'll respond. My point was that the OP would have been a lot less provocative had Gen Lee just popped out the number (3B/50k) and could have requested somebody from IRON collaborate, rather than insinuate that this might be a propaganda campaign by Bama/TOP/IRON. In the end, these numbers were caused by a misunderstanding created when a trusted source made a human error - LM apologized for making the error, Bama and a couple others apologized for spreading claims, and I apologized for overreacting to the OP itself. Now we're all having a heated debate on whatever Chill did and the general hostility that has pervaded between the two camps. And fairness of reparations is incredibly dependent on personal opinion. You're never going to get all people to agree on it, so I'm not even going to touch the subject.

It's not exactly as if we had a nice easy choice - it was a lose-lose-lose situation. We join Hegemony and we're puppets of the evil NPO. We stay out of the war and we're infra huggers whose treaties aren't worth a damn. We join Karma and we're bandwagoners who only fight on the winning side. As far as nuclear policy, as far as I'm aware we fought nuclear fights when opponents went nuclear and we fought conventional fights when opponents fought conventionally. How that policy could have greatly contributed to the number of nukes other Karma alliances took is a connection I don't see.

Indeed. In retrospect, I took "a few TOP and IRON members have taken the task of smearing Rok" a touch too personally, overreacted quite a bit when I first posted and blew things out of proportion. For someone that accused Gen Lee of throwing too much of an agenda into his grievance, I did plenty of that myself. For that, I would myself like to apologize for being a hypocrite as well as throwing fuel onto a fire unnecessarily. Let's let this die then, shall we?

I'm calling it meaningless to emphasize my distaste for it. Entire point of adjectives. Curiosity may kill the cat, but the cat will never kill curiosity.

I'm calling it meaningless because it was meaningless - there was zero chance of anything actually changing with regards to IRON. They might stop if there was more to go on than bits and rumors. EDIT: Thanks, Hal.

So the answer is to call people smear artists and show off a bunch of meaningless bravado? I think being less vague on what the terms actually were might resonate better.

The time spent on the post is completely irrelevant to the point. And if you would care to point out the nice, big, shiny post with the prominent topic title where he proclaimed to the world what the exact starting reparations were to prove these claims wrong, I would be most appreciative.

I don't deny he has a legitimate grievance - what I can't stand is that there's a layer of bollocks placed right over it. All he needed to do was post that there were incorrect claims on what the initial reparation statements were, and prove why said claims were wrong. He didn't need to pull a useless stunt he has no commitment to fulfill.

I love this OP - but not for the reasons most do. It's a masterful example of modern propaganda. First, our dear Gen Lee portrays Ragnarok under attack. Here, he casts Bama, TOP and IRON as shadowy agent provocateurs, smearing the just and honorable relation of Ragnarok. For you see, in public relations, sympathy is almost always cast with the defender, and with the increasing role of public relations within the politics of Planet Bob, one must always make sure to convincingly play the victim in order to get broader support. Secondly, he demands that the accusing party provide the proof. Now, this seems perfectly reasonable, but it's also a ploy. You see, there's a much simpler solution - he clearly knows what the initial reparations were and could merely show us right here and right now and that would be that. But there's always a slight chance that some might see the actual initial reps as too high, causing negative feedback. And you never want negatives in a good propaganda piece. But finally, he claims that should these unjust claims actually prove true, he shall swiftly take action to rectify it. Here again, he appeals to one's sense of justice, but again, things are not what they seem. It is all merely a shell game - there was a precisely 0% chance Ragnarok would release IRON from reparation payments before and there is a precisely 0% chance Ragnarok would release IRON from reparation payments now. But the point is that there is an appearance that you might just free them from their reparations, even if you are just tauntingly jingling the keys to the prison cell right in front of the captive prisoners. So bravo, good sir, I would recommend this to anybody new to playing the PR game on Planet Bob. You risk nothing (except perhaps people like me calling you out on it) and gain a broader support base. Or would you perhaps like to prove that this is not just some big bit of bravado?

The Order of the Paradox doesn't have an image because we haven't made a final decision on what to submit yet. We're almost there, though - I think we're on our last poll. At least, I sure as hell hope we are.

To be honest, we were waiting until the end of the war to cancel in respect of the history the treaty has as our first mutual defense pact, even though most of us had come to agree that we should drop it right after the war started. However, eventually, there were enough people asking 'why wait?' for us to cancel it now instead of later.

I never really did like black-and-white reasoning. So you're saying we shouldn't try and make the best out of a bad situation? I'd like to think it too, yet here we are. ...and you think people remain static over time? This war in and of itself proves things change. *sigh* Is it pointless to be civil?