Heft

I only knew you guys through fighting in that last war thing, but you were all really good to deal with despite the rather !@#$%* circumstances you were in, so yea.

Well I think we can all agree on that point.

Congratulations GATO on that "democracy" thing and elections and stuff.

GOONS formally and finally disbanded at some point that I do not recall, June or January or some J....., as I recall. There may be a few people still sitting on the AA, just as there are a few people still sitting on the NAAC AA, and maybe even the \m/ AA, and probably a few other alliances.

I, for one, really don't care about "tarnishing" the reputation of GOONS, and am perfectly willing to give this a chance. I'm curious if any alliance out there that has a claim to being still at war with GOONS (I'm sure there must be one or two left still) will care enough to make that claim. Since everyone is so upset and whatnot.

*cue wild applause etc* Congratulations to all elected.

It's not a word I generally use, so I'm only now adapting to this latest lexiconal fixation of our community (now, "lexicon," there's a good word). In any case, the hegemony would simply be the group of alliances that have been for the last year or so essentially able to do what they want with very little in the way of meaningful resistance. Up until the last week or so, Sparta was a part of that and a full participant of it. Unlike others, I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong with that (I was also a member for a long time, and I never pushed for IRON to leave Q). What I'm taking issue with is how some people in Sparta seem to think that they can act like they've been against that group the whole time while ignoring reality and whatnot. Which is also completely off-topic but I don't think anyone cares much about the topic anyway I don't even remember which announcement I'm in at this point ohwell.

You're my everything.

OOC: Yes it probably is. IC: I like TORN.

Once it was politically expedient? It's laughable to see anyone from Sparta try and criticize the hegemony or whatever, when you were and still very nearly are the hegemony.

Your alliance was a member of Q for well over a year, you really can't turn around now and start bashing it. It just makes people wonder "Well if that's how you felt, why did you stay?"

Granted, my response wasn't directed solely at you yours just happened to be the last post that used that that I could read without responding. Also, yes, full choir wins.

Yea pretty much that.

It sounds like you're asking for mint gum, so it's probably not going to get you the desired responses. Other than that, no, and you should be ashamed.

If this war ever materializes it will be fought for actual reasons. Those reasons will most likely have absolutely nothing to do with the stated CB, of course, and everybody will know this, and everybody will still argue over the CB and its validity as if it actually matters. Unless someone finally wises up and just declares without going through the motions of finding a CB and mocks anyone who tries to criticize them for not having one.

Everybody is planning to at least fight a war, at least on each "side." Trying to act all innocent and "Oh we're not doing anything!" is just silly. I mean I get the entire "maybe we shouldn't tell them ahead of time" thing but seriously trying to lambaste the other side for making military preparations is absurd. If you aren't making military preparations, then your alliance deserves to be rolled (especially if you're in a position like Valhalla, where any war that does come is certain to involve you somehow).

I find this habit of cyberdwellers claiming that a sentence doesn't make sense purely because of one or two minor typographical errors to be incredibly, well, I don't have any polite words for it. If you genuinely can't fathom the intent of a sentence simply because of one or two misplaced words then you just fail at basic reading. That's not something to advertise or try to use as a one-up of your opponent. While we're on the topic of "things Heft thinks are stupid" can we all stop saying ".gov" and just say "gov"? Thanks.

Except that it's generally understood that a large part of GOONS was actually like "yawn whatever $%&@ this" and just didn't care enough to actually fight? And most of those that did want t keep playing eventually left? Sure, GOONS did a good deal of damage, just because of how big they were, but I wouldn't particularly describe them as having gone down swinging.

Personally, I would be disappointed if TORN and co. weren't planning something. It'd just be silly and "lalalala" fingers-in-ears of them not to.

UBD was all MK. We hit CDC. Entirely unrelated events, just happened to be sort of similar.

Careful the path you tread, for it may be like really wet and slippery and you might trip and smash your face and wake up and suddenly we're all sharing a massive database of everyone's IP addresses and credit cards and medical records. Ummm #nso - Heft, Ivan, Dopp, Random

Much congratulations to all involved, most especially GATO (let's face it, I don't much care about the other three things, I'm only here for the cat).

Thankfully, or else I would have had to start hating you as much as some other people. And that's just way too emotionally draining. Assuming this is about X and X is actually true, at least.

IRON has always operated with a certain amount of vagueness in policy. You'd be very hard pressed to find IRON ever coming out and saying "We are going to always do this in this specific way." Just like the last time this came up, the people sitting here criticizing IRON's policies and actions are either ignorant of how IRON has actually carried out those policies, or are just trying to score points by manipulating everyone else's ignorance. All of this complaining about IRON's PZI policies is just ridiculous. How Iamthey just explained it is how it's been done. Criticizing IRON for insisting that individual situations should be judged independent of other situations, or that a single set in stone procedure isn't desirable, is kind of like criticizing the NPO for having an Emperor. Not that this will stop the scaremongering and "argh bad!" complaints, especially after Bak's little rampage through this thread, but, yea.

There are two generally accepted arguments for carrying responsibility of a government's actions to the alliance as a whole. The most obvious and simple is the deterrence argument, already explained by others. The less obvious and more complicated is some variation on a social contract and essentially puts forth that as members of an alliance benefit from its successes, they also suffer for its failures. In either case, an individual nation may have had no influence on what happened, but they still carry the consequences of that act, positive or negative, so long as they choose to remain a member of that alliance. Personally, I consider both arguments to be perfectly valid, but the second one seems more satisfying to me.