Vladimir

[quote name='Stumpy Jung Il' timestamp='1295929662' post='2598221']Everyone wanted this game to be exciting again and they cry when we make it so. Keep crying: You're next.[/quote] This isn't about making the game exciting. It is explicitly stated in the declaration that this is about pre-emptively crushing all potential political competition so that we can all sit and collectively stagnate, whimpering about the good old days as mould slowly envelops our entire world. Paradoxically they have declared war in order to ensure that the future is as boring, predictable, repetitive and just downright unplayable as possible, through the medium of their unchallenged and unchallengeable domination. You may argue that it is a political move or a military move, but please, spare us the cringe-worthy attempts at claiming it as anything grander than that.

[quote name='Bob Janova' timestamp='1295385126' post='2581993']Indeed, an honourable alliance like the NPO would never declare a war over spying. Give it a rest, Vlad ... I know you'd like to find something terribly wrong with PB's behaviour but declaring war over someone spying on you is one of the oldest and best CBs there is.[/quote] As has been pointed out quite a lot already, the Order's declaration over accepting screen-shots was what led to the Karma war (and ours was a lot more solid than this sad excuse), which included a declaration and much propaganda by VE and yourself! I don't need to find anything wrong with PB's behaviour, you have already spent years condemning it yourselves. And that's before we even get to the issue of the prolonged negotiations that we entered into with OV, the fact that we actually reached an agreement with them that avoided war (which OV accepted and VE rejected), or the issue of this so obviously being a set-up that even you are effectively forced to concede it. I used to think that you were one of the genuine moralists around here, but you've really let the mask slip on this one.

Rarely have the defenders of a war looked so ridiculous. I don't even know why you're bothering with this farce, to be honest. Those who want the war for political reasons will support it regardless, and the CB chosen is so bad that it won't bring in any additional support (which is really the only reason for a public CB). The only thing that this accomplishes is that you lose your dignity in the process.

Odd definition of nation. There have been and are a lot of nations that are not nation-states. I'm living in one.

While I yield to your expertise on Marxist theory, it should noted that Marx and Engels were German.

Basically, yes. Not without massive changes to the laws of our physical universe. What gave Bob its massive surge in growth between the GPW and GW3 were invasions from other universes (GOONS, FAN, Genmay, Fark, etc, etc). These have now largely exhausted themselves and they won't reinvade the same space twice so long as it stays broadly the same. While I concur with your premise that I am awesome, I do not currently have the means to provide an audio version of my wisdom.

You are simplifying the past and complicating the present in order to view a political progression where none exists. What you describe of the modern power-seeking alliance has always been the case. Even in early 2006 politics and allegiances were in constant flux. Who can forget Legion's sudden change of side in the Great Patriotic War, for example, or GATO's oscillations prior to that. The same was true throughout the following 5 years, as no power structure was without the constant threat of alliances or groups of alliances switching allegiance or conducting some other power-seeking behaviour (FAN throughout early 2007, the UjP prior to the UjW, etc). You smooth over all of this to view previous eras as full of the primitive politics of unity and 'lapdogs', but in reality this was never more than propaganda from both side. All alliances have their own interests and the means for achieving them can change in an instant. You ignore these perhaps because they are single alliances, but back then an alliance was as significant as a bloc is today, due to the smaller numbers and thus greater political and military weight that one could hold alone. And so we get to the heart of the matter -- what has actually changed is simply the number of alliances. This has necessitated bloc politics (as the number of voices increased one had to become louder) and has, as I noted all the way back in 2008, made war more difficult to come by. Thus while more moving parts necessarily means less wars, the underlying principles of political discourse and activity remain unchanged. No political progression, just a slightly different context within which they operate.

[quote name='ArneS' timestamp='1294098018' post='2562397'] So you list the members of the major blocs, a couple of their allies, and write "Hegemony" next to it? Thanks for the insightful analysis! [/quote] Isn't that all any hegemony is?

Weakest log/screenshot dump we've seen here in a while. If anything such things paint a positive picture of the alliance you are targeting, since they're clearly up to nothing worse than some minor foreign affairs banter.

Being a Pacifican.

[quote name='White Chocolate' timestamp='1292343269' post='2539502'] Yeah, that could have been interesting. The politics would be different, with a lot more emphasis on color unity. It would also be a lot harder for multi-colored alliances to get anywhere. Personally, I would have enjoyed a system like that. So, I'm curious, why do people think that didn't happen. I wasn't around until 2008, and things were fairly set at that point. [/quote] At first people toyed with geographic areas on the ingame map (GATO was CATO (Cross-Atlantic) and NAAC was obviously Arctic). Colours came in with the NPO when we concentrated our membership on red to secure the senate, and for a while each colour only had one alliance. But as the world grew there was really just no basis for colour unity to take priority -- if two people on a colour dislike each other or have different goals what incentive was there for them to cooperate? Thus the issues pushing people apart on colours -- relationships, cultures, objectives, proliferation of 'leaders' -- were far greater than anything pulling them back together, which was really just the vague feeling that colours were meant to mean something. [Senators had no power until later on, and they're still a weak pull.] If memory serves I posted quite a few suggestions back then, including giving Senators power (though the fact that I was all 3 of red's Senators may have tainted that suggestion a bit in some minds), to try and make colour spheres a more significant factor.

English was one of my worst subjects in high school and my worst subject of the 6 I took to a higher level -- I only just (and I mean just) managed a C. My spelling was atrocious, my style clichéd and ineffective, and my research near non-existent. I like to think that I have improved a lot since then, and the feedback I receive seems to confirm that (though some may disagree), but it was down to time spent writing in places like this, my openness to criticism, and my increased reading that did it, rather than any pre-existing talent.

I wasn't.

I'm glad you're thinking and writing about subjects like this; however, it seems to be based primarily on the assumptions of a young male instead of proper research. I hope you'll continue to think and write about feminism, but maybe hit Google for an hour or two first next time.

That isn't necessarily bad news for him. Even half of Republicans support raising taxes on those earning over £250k -- there are worse thing to do than run your election campaign on a wildly popular policy. Of course, by then people might not believe that Obama is strong enough to actually implement any policy that he promises.

So do I. But fortunately I think the Planet Bob Equal Opportunities Act of 2010 requires that Skap Q buy us both US copies so we can compete.

Credible sounding leak. This is almost definitely going to happen.

This reminds me of happier times, when a proud leader would suddenly jump onto the world stage and reveal to thousands of shocked Bobians a great Pacifican conspiracy against their alliance. We had been out to get them since day one the world would be told, so consumed by hatred and evil we were. As he continued his diatribe Pacifican officials would momentarily sneak out from the thread and head straight to government channels to ask if anyone had ever heard of this individual or his alliance, only to find that his fellow officials had all returned to do exactly the same thing, finding only the same heads shaking side to side in bemusement. Happier times.

[quote name='TheNeverender' timestamp='1290910080' post='2525011'] My favorite part about this most hilarious of posts is that it's in an OOC area. When you read it, keeping that in mind, it actually kind of makes me worry about you a little bit [/quote] You weren't the centre of our OOC universes either. Sorry. :'(

I hope I haven't hurt MK's feelings by suggesting that a peripheral alliance like LUE wasn't the centre of everyone's universe over four years ago. If so, I offer my sincerest apologies to Comrade Archon.

I think LUE succeeded in weakening the game to an extent by replying to everything with 'serious business' pictures, but I don't think the NPO itself ever changed as a result (we were never RPers in the sense of the Open National RP forum). Obviously nothing was ever going to top the fire with which the Order and the ODN went at each other in early 2006 which may have given you that impression, but the reasons were far more profound than your arrival I'm afraid.

[quote name='Chief Savage Man' timestamp='1290654755' post='2522688'] Looking at these old threads, I remember that the posting back then was worse than the posting now. There really is a higher standard these days with regards to grammar.[/quote] Be glad you don't remember early 2006, when the NPO arrived to find people posting in AOLspeak (I'm looking at you, NAAC). I like to think we did our part to mock that habit out of them.

Missing-The-Point Champion 2010.

There is no potential other. The alliances in power keep imagining that there is some great bloc over the hill that just needs to be more assertive, but in reality their power structure stretches out to the vast majority of the world, and any talk of an 'other' is just a way of removing themselves from responsibility. If they ask themselves why things are slow, they can respond that it's because the other isn't assertive enough. If they ask why they are not pro-actively advancing their alliance, it's because they need to defend against the other. This is the mindset of stagnation that has swept over them. I fully outlined the politics of change from an historical perspective in a previous article.

This article is best read while listening to the Karma activist's new anthem. Selling the Status Quo "It's better than another treaty announcement thread." So goes out the call of Karma's epigones, characteristically blind to the fact that, far from highlighting the positive aspects of their thread, they condemn the entire state of world politics that they have constructed. So slow, so mundane, so controlled have things become that we are expected to drop on all fours and lick up the crumbs benevolently thrown our way, thanking them for constructing a system where this can genuinely be portrayed as the best we could ever hope for. But only in the most short-sighted and brow-beaten individual, an individual who has become so psychologically dependent on the existing structure of power that they cannot even imagine the slightest systemic change, only they could hold such an excuse in anything but the highest disdain. Our degeneration to this point has become abundantly clear over the past few weeks, as the Mushroom Kingdom carelessly thrashes about in a vain attempt to live up to their former reputation as an 'unconventional' and 'fun' alliance, rather than a status quo power incapable of anything beyond perpetuating what already is. Unfortunately for them their thrashing about only betrays their complete misunderstanding what politics actually is -- the struggle for power. With the global structure ossified to the extent that it is seen as somehow natural they instead begin to tinker around the margins, deeming that doing anything, no matter how contrived or irrelevant, must make them appear once more as the exciting alliance shaking things up. As a result we see them more and more targeting peripheral alliances of minor political importance. They will threaten NSO and express bewilderment when people roll their eyes, then attempt to deflect attention onto the 'evil' NPO and be shocked by a response of yawns and slow head-shakes. But even were they to attack NSO or NPO, what would change on the political scene? They are not challenging a centre of political power, nor risking any of their own in the process. These moves can never be more than an attempt at bread and circuses to the disenfranchised masses, and thus while they are doing something, they are not really doing anything. Grasping at Air This is the mistake that we see so many of the big players make today. Their minds continue to exist in a past where there is MK's side and a competing 'other'. As a result they continue to see the political interplay as being between the strength of their side and a revisionist power that they can attack and engage in political games with. The concern begins to develop when they realise that despite all their fighting they are left feeling empty, the contentment they remembered from days long past and sought to recapture evading them as grasp and catch only air. The simple explanation for this is that there is no 'other' in any meaningful sense of the word. There is no potential political or military challenge, and thus any attack on perceived others means nothing -- there is no political risk and no political victory, only a continuing emptiness as the the form of politics goes through the motions without any of the substance. The only possible outcome from this shadow of what was once politics can be a feeling of 'what has any of this actually meant?' And so the search for politics continues in vain, as those capable of creating it continue to box at shadows, either too blind or too fearful to challenge any of the real pillars of power -- to risk a loss and chase a meaningful win. And this is where we sit, in an apolitical abyss strangled free of oxygen while we bow down in thanks for the poisonous carbon monoxide provided in its place. It's better than boring old carbon dioxide, after all.