Sigrun Vapneir

1. Let us address this adage that "revenge is a dish best served cold" first. This is a Klingon adage, and while they are perhaps not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of revenge, cuisine was never their strong suit and it would be wise in general to disregard all klingon advice thereto pertaining. In point of fact, revenge is much more palatable with a reheat, garnishes of fresh guacamole and sour cream, and of course a good beer to the side. 2. The Narn are NOT "lizards." FFS they arent even close. They are Marsupials. Things *have* changed, I dont even see how one could possibly miss that. They havent changed as much as you'd like to see? I agree. But that's up to you and I and everyone else to make happen. The opportunities are finally here, that doesnt excuse people from putting forth the effort to make use of them.

Even in the War against Peace the Illuminati did attempt defense as well. And long before that there was Walford... None of this is new. What's new is that for once the decentralised defenders, working together because of the situation not "deep eternal bonds" of the GGA-NPO variety, finally managed to reach critical mass and win one. That is all. Depending on who you are talking about, there is or is not evidence of sincerity. Did they withdraw from that treaty afterwards? Did they put a new emphasis in their FA on making certain their treaties could NOT obligate them to join an unwarranted attack in the future? If they made real changes that is evidence of their sincerity. If not then it may be in question. Simple as that.

From my pov it more resembles Ingsoc but at any event... QFT

In fact, they have been important all along. Even if the NPOs only concession was to *pretend* to be ethical I remember a lot of work being put into it back in the day. Sure, they played the bad guy, but were also careful to be seen as trustworthy and honourable which means ethical. This was important in developing the FA clout to conquer the world to begin with. Yes, it's probably true that "most players" dont follow things closely enough to know on their own what's going on, but that makes no difference at all. The others follow the ones who are, in your alliance the same as others.

Good luck to you.

A big congratulations to Nemhauser and Zeppelin! Skál! Whichever beer you like is fine

I was a GPA member at the time, middle rank for about a year also MoD for a little at the end of that period after everyone popular left. It would not be fair to say that all internal problems were caused by the heat, but you bet your butt they spiked nastily in frequency as the heat kept getting ratcheted up. The periodic self-decapitations I mentioned are also apropos. Any attempt to do that would have resulted in either massive defections or straight out civil war or both, and the destruction of the alliance as an apparent first tier power overnight. I think it had more to do with there simply being no other juicy targets that were "doable" at the moment, but you are entitled to your own opinion. Each of us knows only what we witnessed ourselves and has to guess at the rest. To be fair, there was something to the latter, though little brother is the one laughing now. But Sponge made enemies he didnt need to make too. I *hope* this is not aimed at me. I do not hate and am not trying to demonise. I do think it's important that people know what happened, and I think in a nutshell it is that they ruled the world and fell primarily because of their own arrogance and duplicity. Even their own allies expected to be rolled for no reason eventually. That wasnt all paranoia and anti-pacifican propoganda. Pacifica was much better once, and like it or not they dont appear to be going anywhere, so it's only rational to want to see them learn something at least. If Worldconquerer is any indication they are just sticking their fingers in their ears and humming while plotting their revenge. Somehow I dont think that is going to work out so well for them.

As others have pointed out, UJW had proper approval. We almost agree. I think the only difference is you are somehow buying the idea that Pacificas underlings led her around and drug her into things she never approved of, and I'm just pointing out that's hogwash. Every one of their allies ultimately answered to Pacifican chain of command, and none of them had the balls to do squat without knowing Pacifica had their back. We havent travelled in the same circles, so that may well be true, but two places I could tell you a member who spent some time reading back through the earlier era of posting would see it fairly often would be MHA and Citadel. With a time machine I'd recommend certain IRC channels as well but it was long ago.

I do not misunderstand you, I consider the thought that we were an *ideological threat* delusional as well. Quite the opposite. Until that war, anyone that claimed the NPO was so evil would meet the instant retort "then why havent they rolled the GPA". Great PR value. Other variations I heard at one time or another cited GUARD instead, but again, those points were eventually removed with the footgun. EDIT: Since no one else pulled it out I grabbed the link to Kuru's confession myself, enjoy: http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=26226

No one "just happened" to be MADP partners with Pacifica. And no one got to drag Pacifica into something without ultimately answering to Dilber and/or Moo. Whatever their AA. I have said repeatedly I am talking about enabling, and the only response you seem to have is "they didnt do it directly." Even if that is true, enabling allies to do the stuff still makes you culpable. Also there werent two alliances who attacked GPA. It was 9 alliances at update. One of those alliances was Pacifica. I dont believe the other gentleman actually made that claim, though he makes some that I believe are delusional. In particular, whether or no ONOS for instance dared dream of one day threatening Pacifica, Pacifica itself was clearly the only one capable of threatening Pacifica by the time of GWIII. Even in the abstract sense he is talking about. Thus I agree that there is no basis for the claim, in two senses at once. As I repeatedly tried to remind the other poster, Swampy was the centrepiece of "justification." Read the announcement, yes, read what it says. It says that Swampy was offered protection. The fact is he was not, and the fact that he was even masked as an affilliate (who gets no protection and is not guaranteed membership) for a few hours was due to Kurushio who worked for Chefjoe who worked for Dilber and NoWedge (the latter was removed early in the war leaving Chefjoe answerable only to Pacifica.) If that's a crime any democratic alliance in the game can be induced to commit a crime just about at will by someone in the position Pacifica was in. If you call that a solid CB so be it, I'll just shut up and let that affirmation stand for itself. It's fundamentally incompatible with all the nonsense about how the NPO is honourable or can be trusted.

He's right. They werent attacked because they were a threat. They were attacked simply because it was "doable" and Pacifica + favoured allies were bored and felt like taking some tech. Some alliances you expect that from. But Pacifica always made a great show of being honourable, of keeping her word. That show was a large part of her spectacular comeback from humiliating defeat in GWI to unquestioned global supremacy in GWIII. Pacifica is not supposed to declare for lulz. This is the kind of behaviour that wound up alienating so many potential or formal allies that she finds herself where she is today. Also, to Halflinger, I finally figured out what you were talking about here: Sorry, I was dog tired half asleep and in pain last night. I should have realised you were looking at Bobby Fischer. This is just one more of these voluminous circumstantial bits. He also left and joined Pacifica shortly after embarrasing us and shortly before attacking us. Although best I remember he wasnt top .gov and wasnt one of the ones I mentioned earlier, IIRC he was actually an assistant MoFA at the time. He was GPA when he posted that.

I know you believe this but I would really appreciate you leaving out the agency as you have no idea what you are talking about. The GPA was not outside of the Pacifican system until Pacifica expelled her. Sure, some in GPA were former and future enemies rebuilding. The Agency neutered a percentage along the way, and they would have rebuilt somewhere else had it not been there. Another faction practically worshipped Pacifica, while the third and by far largest group were just plain pacifists. Back before we became a target this was a running joke between some of us. The GPA was really the NPOs unique and secret ally, the only one that would never turn against them, and the only one that couldnt fight.

I should. I know what was posted about it on the GPA.gov boards. I know who pushed hardest for an aggressive stance on it and kept feeding really bad ideas on it in the cabinet, when they left the GPA, and where they went at that point, and I'll tell you that particular bit of information is certainly interesting. In short, I know what the gpa.gov knew at the time. Great, however you want it. We threatened LSF but the moment NPO indicated we shoudnt we backed off in such a hurry we probably gave someone whiplash, that was my point. Yes, and I remember that this was because the government had been trying to get ahold of their government for some time. After initial contact was made and the issue broached, they just buggered off and in essence quit answering their phone calls. I also know that the demands were meant to be cartoony crazy, because he had learned from the NPO that you always demand a lot more than you really want. The intention of the entire exercise was simply to get them to remove our guides from their board and maybe apologise. Everyone knew we'd never get any reps out of them, we were hoping to get some kind of leverage is all. No, that is not to the best of my knowledge true. The excuse that hackers had taken over their board and there was no one left in the actual alliance who had control of the board was given, later on AFTER a splash was made to get them to start answering their phone calls, IIRC. Also... this is the LSF that we are talking about here. They had no .gov exactly, which made them impossible to deal with, as you should probably realise yourself I would think. This is the reason I argued for simply ignoring them at the time. And I certainly agree that the GPA disintegrated over that period of time, it "flopped around headlessly" because it kept chopping off it's own head in desperate attempts to appease. Which is exactly why there is no way Pacifica could have possibly deluded herself into thinking we were some kind of threat, or that we had ever deliberately provoked her in any way.

This is great stuff. ONOS has an NPO guide, deleted but still technically recoverable by an admin, and for this: The Libertarian Socialist Federation had full GPA guides posted openly on their board for use, and when approached about it essentially said 'f off, we got em and we're keeping them.' This resulted in some escalation and threats being made, before NPO suddenly decides to defend this small alliance they didnt have any ties with, and they get to do just that. (A little later the GPA cabinet minister who pushed for the escalations joins NPO just in time to attack us for his own actions as well, just coincidentally I'm sure.) And for this: The spin cycle has completely overbalanced and the pacifican mind is careening off in a reality all its own.

One out of two aint bad? One doesnt have to have some anti-pacifican virus or whatever to see that your alliance has drug it's own name through the mud very effectively. And I have yet to see anyone claim that everything you do is unjustified, or anything close. In fact the closest I can find is someone saying explicitly they do NOT think this is true.

Congratulations! You got one right! We closed recruitment. We didnt want the number 1 spot to begin with, and we gave it back as quick as possible. Like I said, nothing mattered once the decision was made.

Think about that one for a minute if you have to. True enough. Now I gave you two kinds of evidence. Direct evidence (there is a confession) & circumstantial evidence (there are a long string of unlikely events and just straight-up undisguised corruption, such as resigning from the Presidency of one alliance to join immediately at officer rank in another alliance, which declares war on the old alliance based on your own actions there) and what do you do? You hone in on the weakest little bit in that pile of circumstantial evidence and state the obvious. You are absolutely right. That might or might not have been related. About a dozen other members, several .gov included, at that time also may or may not have been part of the big picture. But it doesnt matter, because at the very least Kuru himself was acting directly under Continuum orders at the time. regardless how many and which others were. Umm ignoring an insult? Wow someone worked hard to dress that up. I guess I'm probably not supposed to actually use the "insult" word in reference to this here, so this may make it slightly harder to read, but hang in there. I'll use $snarl for the word that shall not be used. $snarl is a four letter word that could be taken in several senses. It's only interpreted as an insult here because of OOC circumstances of Bilrow's that really arent anyone elses business. But this is important - without knowing that, you might think it was just a bad joke, but it might also be an actual but lesser known alliance tag, or even as in-game begging. Unless you know what I'm talking about that makes no sense, and I'm sorry, but it's all true. Guy was idling in our channel with tag like "Bilrow[$snarl]" late at night. Guy was not Bilrow. Bilrow comes in. Notices guy. Is offended. Demands he be kicked for insulting him. OverlordXenu was the only OP on. Sees maybe impersonation (but that alliance tag makes no sense so looks more like parody really) - but doesnt know the situation, the guy has said nothing, and he gets his hackles up with the aggressive demands combined with their apparent senselessness. Now later things get explained, other people wake up, and it's sorted out quite quickly, with a new even more restrictive irc policy designed to prevent anyone from ever getting mad at us again. The response from you guys? More aggressive posturing. Which resulted in poor OX being expelled, but did nothing whatsoever to reduce tensions. Funny that. Kind of like Dilber had already signed off on the attack so nothing we did mattered at all. Yeah, we couldnt expel members without a trial. A lot of alliances have that rule. The other problem as I recall was that there was no evidence that the GPA member involved had any intent other than to do a tech deal. There was no question of on-going aid or any further damage than had already been irrevocably done. There was an offer of a cash payment. This was hardly the first time someone had gotten suckered into a tech deal with someone they shouldnt have, as you might imagine. I had over the year preceding in fact handled dozens of such cases without any incident whatsoever, including with Pacifica, and it was never so much as a problem. Then one day the same old situation we had been dealing with so easily and succesfuly all this time suddenly becomes a cause for war? Even after the expulsion was demanded and capitulated to? You really think anyone buys this? Ahh, but they were trying to hunt down spies, and spying is bad! Dont you remember? Oh and another funny little coïncidence how the one cabinet member who pushed and pushed to blow that thing out of proportion and managed to make us look bad just happened to turn around and join NPO shortly before the DoW. So he deletes and rerolls and applies and is admitted. He could have applied and been admitted to NPO and you wouldnt have known who he was either. All besides the fact, just distraction. The die was cast weeks earlier. And they chose that as the centerpiece of justification in their DoW. And it still isnt true. He was an affilliate, not a member, and was not protected. Affiliate was a stage where for two weeks an applicant was not protected or given access to member areas of the board, but given course materials and tests, to make sure they understand they will be expelled immediately if they violate neutrality and know exactly what that means. That is also two weeks for anyone that may have a beef with that nation to notice them and get in touch, *before* even the President himself could make someone a member! So he just affilliated him and ran to NATO. Didnt matter anyhow. If Dilber signaled a hailfest a hailfest would occur. I didnt say it was. Do you need to find a dictionary and look up "centerpiece?"

The GPA categorically never posed any kind of threat to Pacifica. But by passing them in the rankings, and making that bloody peace-rune on the top 100 map (which was an unanticipated side-effect of doing it on the alliance map in actual fact,) we just became too visible a target for them to ignore apparently. FAN was re-declared on with pseudo-legalistic hair-splitting technical justification. In the long-term of course they were a threat, in the short-term not so much, which meant that Pacifica could easily have been honourable and given them considerable leeway only to swoop in and arrange their doom with a month or two to spare had they wanted to. I have no idea why they chose to take the low road. In particular since that just resulted in them later getting so hard up for targets they did the GPA... really, make up your mind, are you too secure or too bored? If you are on top and you play it safe you shouldnt complain you're bored cause no one wants to fight you. If you want to fight more you should find excuses to loosen up a little so potential threats can build into real ones. Instead, Pacifica tried to have her cake and eat it too - staying super secure, but staging organised tech-raids on a regular basis, like the fake hunts where stupid rich people have servants groom "game" for them and run it in front of their weapon at just the right moment. All reward, no risk.

Oh no, quite to the contrary. Valhalla and NPO worked hand in glove on it. Its inconceivable that your government didnt know what was done and approve of it. Yes, some of the messages were sent by microscopic ghost nations. Curious that, dont you think? Actually he was the centerpiece. Yet, contrary to the claim, he was never a member of the GPA. I dont believe you are gullible enough to believe this yourself.

Not directly, but as I said shortly before, I consider enabling to be effectively the same thing. And Kurushio has confessed he was an agent of Valhalla. Which was pretty well understood already, circumstantially. He had beaten Great Dzar in the crucial election due to a spam campaign which appeared to have used outside resources. And after giving them what they wanted, masquing Swampy (though only as an affiliate, which is why I say you STILL didnt have a real CB) he resigned and became Assistant Secretary of Defense at NATO almost immediately. He went on to become VP of NATO, and then joined Valhalla with the rank of Chancellor after that. I'm sure someone here can find you a link to where he confessed and named who he had been working for...

GPA was so aggressive you got one of your spies elected President and STILL couldnt come up with a genuine casus belli! Man keep posting. You are the comic relief I look forward to after a long day at work.

Whether or not that's true those alliances were never in the position of power Pacifica was. Valhalla on their own might well be aggressive and looking for a fight, but without Pacifica enabling the damage they could do would be somewhat limited, and they would have to take risks. But Pacifica as an enabler made them effectively invincible, removed most risk and encouraged their worst traits. The irony is that they managed to alienate both sides on that issue. The Continuum didnt stop wars - it just set a handful of people (NPO .gov and a limited subset of leaders from other Q alliances who were in their favour) as the ultimate arbiters of which wars were allowed. They could effectively slaughter anyone, any time, for any reason or no reason, and proved they had no qualms doing just that, which alienated those that had once seen them as being a force for order and generally positive. (I guess I still qualify as essentially a peacenik.) At the same time, all the other warmongers in the game except the group that were in that little inner circle were effectively prevented from playing at all - doesnt take a genius to figure out they would be looking for their chance. In an even-sided fight, or comparing two closely isomorphic conflicts, that would be better. But there are a lot of variables. Larger nations do more damage than smaller ones - doesnt mean the smaller ones arent fighting as hard. A small alliance fighting against a large one for a long period of time might be doing relatively little absolute damage, a larger alliance might do more damage in one week than they did in a year, but which one fought harder? I would have to say the small one.

Congratulations! An awesome milestone for an awesome alliance.

<br /><br /><br />In my case virtually none. There are of course unavoidable overlaps, and perhaps some that are avoidable but not worth avoiding. I am talking large generalities like "doesnt like to be lied to" though. Well, really, who *does* like to be lied to? "Has a long memory, can forgive easily but also can hold a grudge forever depending" - perhaps that doesnt describe everyone but it's not uniquely personal either. Get away from that very vague and general level and there is no real resemblance between my RL persona and my character here though. I think that's as it should be. Portraying my OOC persona inside the confines of the game would just be... stupid, boring, pointless. I can and do express that plenty of other places.