I cannot honor you brave men and women enough. You are true heroes of the Federation and I would personally shake your hand and salute each one of you if I could. Your defense of the our home system and the effort you made for the reintegration of Luminaire VII into sovereign Federation territory will be in history books all over New Eden.

I must admit I had my doubts about your ability but am I glad you proved me wrong! I must thank especially Hjalta Bebemangeur for her undying loyalty to the Federation and for representing us in such a way that would make the most mild of Gallente proud. . You are a true champion of freedom. I consider you both a friend and a brother in arms. If I ever catch you planet side, I own you several drinks if you happen to be off duty.

This is more like enjoying the shade.

This is more like enjoying the shade.

This is more like enjoying the shade.

The very majority of innocent people planetside are Gallente citizens being opressed by the Provist tyrants. Don't you think I have forgotten about these people but unfortunately they are beyond my reach and all I can wish for them is another victory for the Federation planetside.

Mekhana, shut up, and let me break it down for you why it's a terrible idea to be saying what you're saying right now.

The Caldari have quite definitively lost the battle for Caldari Prime itself - their fleet was utterly shattered and despite the fact that (as far as I heard) a large amount of our own fleet didn't make it out, there's really no way the State can claim they won the war for space superiority. They might win the ground wars for now, but without the Titan or any other staging platform enabling orbital power projection the presence of Provist occupation forces is completely unsustainable. They can't hold Caldari Prime, so the battle now moves to hearts and minds. The State's morale - at least along the baseliners - will be at an all-time low right now, and the State's going to need to motivate them to continue fighting. Caldari Prime is not a topic that can profitably be used to motivate them right now, because its second loss will be far too bitter and sad. What they can use to motivate people is anger at the people who did it, and for that, they need people willing to make arrogant, poorly-thought-out statements that the State propaganda machine can use to fan the flames.

In the next few days, you will - and I pretty much guarantee this - see both capsuleers and baseliners attempting to goad the more outspoken members of the Federation into some indiscretion or another. A lot of the State's capsuleers will, after a fashion, be hoping that the Federation does its absolute worst and glasses Caldari Prime or starts indiscriminately bombing civilians, because that's good for propaganda purposes. What we need - what we in the Federation really need right now - is for calmer heads to prevail, and for our nation's partisans and outspoken proponents to just... wait and see.

I don't give a damn about what you think.

The State's morale - at least along the baseliners - will be at an all-time low right now, and the State's going to need to motivate them to continue fighting.

The Federation doesn't need people like you, Mademoiselle Mekhana.

Your disregard for anyone and everyone that isn't a member of the Federation is in stark contrast to who we are and your words are poison injected straight from the bite of a viper.

It pains me to see this.

Congratulations to the Federal Navy, her governing body, and her allies. You have accomplished that which you had set out to do. Regardless of my position, this is worthy of acclaim.

It is rather commonplace to express the interest about offering negotiations before being able to actually start them.

Well, this Patriot spent the last hours before he rejoins the CEWPA war evacuating your people off the planet that your Navy was stupid enough to drop a Titan on.

Really? Because you were using the lives of Gallente citizens that way for many years.

Luminaire VII is just a rock and rightfully part of Federation territory as it is within the Luminaire system.

So tell me, how does it feel?

I mean, really, the FedNav is to blame for the titan dropping onto Caldari Prime? After the State brought it in, dropped it to low orbit, and begun attacking surface targets? After threatening the population of Caldari and Gallente Prime for the better part of a decade with its superweapon?

I can't take any more of this. If you, of all people on the Caldari side, are unwilling to face reality, there's no hope at all for the State. Hopefully it can be destroyed or changed for the better before it takes the Caldari people down with it.

I'm stunned by your assertion.

I mean, really, the FedNav is to blame for the titan dropping onto Caldari Prime? After the State brought it in, dropped it to low orbit, and begun attacking surface targets? After threatening the population of Caldari and Gallente Prime for the better part of a decade with its superweapon?

I can't take any more of this. If you, of all people on the Caldari side, are unwilling to face reality, there's no hope at all for the State. Hopefully it can be destroyed or changed for the better before it takes the Caldari people down with it.

it all comes back to the fact that the Caldari quit the Federation, were bombed off our homeworld, and ever since that moment the Federation has repeatedly refused to pursue the most obvious and effective avenue for reconciliation.

You forgot Nouvelle Rouvenor in that timeline.

If any mistakes were made, it was by the Administration not the military.

Throw in the reported fact that DUST mercs are operating down there under the banner of the FDU (or FEDEF as they're calling it now) and have been since before the assault on the Shiigeru and the only conclusion I can draw is that the FIO have been at work down there laying the ground for this day, probably for months. Which suggests given president Roden's stated views on the matter of Home, that this has been an ongoing executive project quite probably since he first took office.

Congratulations to the Federation Navy for their victory against tyranny.

Through the entire incident, the admiral of the Federation Fleet kept spewing lies about their intentions for the planet. The claim that was made was that the fleet was there for the Titan, and while that was certainly ONE of the objectives, the overall goal of the operation as a whole was to land and support troops on the surface of Caldari prime.

This is not a special operation highly secret and classified. it was a straight up fight, so to lie and try to hide your intentions is reprehensible and would seem to indicate a lack of integrity.

Don't **** in my ear and tell me it's raining.

You forgot Nouvelle Rouvenor in that timeline.

I don't expect any of you to understand but I made this thread to honor what I consider heroes to me.

People that gone above and beyond the call of duty and followed the orders that were given to them and completed them with as much professionalism and ability it was possible for them at the time.

The Federation Navy had been a slump for far too long this victory is a tremendous boost to their morale. A well deserved boost.

You do realize her positioning was a result of Federation actions planetside don't you?
Whether the orders were right or wrong, you are fooling yourself if you try to claim the State instigated the chain of events that lead to this.

Heth's actions are reprehensible, but the Gallente share the blame for landing troops and instigating terrorist acts on the surface. The Federation is equally responsible for their efforts in escalating the conflict.

The old apologetic and bitter responses that I get from Caldari capsuleers here in IGS are all too commonplace. All you do is embaress yourselves with your childish and spoiled attitudes. As much you people enjoy judging me I have the emotional maturity to at least to know the place I should stay quiet.

Escalating the conflict? The conflict that the Caldari State clearly started when they put a titan in orbit of a Gallente planet? In an entirely unprovoked attack on an empire that has been at peace for two hundred years?
CN Shiigeru was preparing to glass civilians. The Federation Navy could not stand by and do nothing when many, many millions of their people were at risk.

If I recall correctly, Caldari Prime was signed over to the State by your President Foirtran a few year ago.

At gunpoint, no less.

The Federation only had that world because THEY took it from US at gunpoint FIRST.

You know what though? Our retaking of our home planet didn't involve us bombing your home planet for months on end.

Given what we saw on Friday, one suspects it's only because there was a CONCORD around to stop them.

Read your goddamn history books once and a while.

When State forces retook Caldari Prime, CONCORD was NOT around to stop them from doing anything.

I remember watching the SURVIVING Moros class ships fleeing the field after the main meat of the engagement was over, yes.

If Concord hadn't removed their suspect flags, I doubt they would have made it.

Sure, however you wish to word it to heal your bruised ego. Considering that those ships weren't at risk of you shooting them, it's odd to word it as fleeing though.

That would be like saying how you fled the scene afterwards yourselves. The Caldari fleet had been removed from the field, they had no further reason to stay.

This type of chest-beating and posturing is the arrogant ego-driven attitude that started this mess.

With all appropriate sympathy and respect for the dead of Nouvelle Rouvenor, the sustained orbital bombardment far exceeded that bombing in scale, death toll, human misery and echelon of approval. NR was an extremist minority - the bombardment was Federal government policy with popular backing.

If the war was an avalanche, then NR was the night's snowfall that finally set off all that accumulated weight of snow that had been building up for some time.

Small crimes don't warrant the death penalty. there is no crime anywhere ever that warrants genocide in my opinion. Genocide, however, was one of the two acceptable outcomes for the Federation back then, the other being compliance.

this is entirely symptomatic of the problem that exists between us, however. Whenever the Caldari dare to claim that we have been wronged, the immediate response is "well you're not completely innocent either."

The difference in scale is akin to telling somebody who was beaten unconscious by a mob and had their possessions stolen that there will be no investigation into the assault because they were convicted for possessing a controlled substance as a teenager. Our grievances are valid no matter the existence of our own shortcomings.

NO, you know what. I am tired of talking to a wall. In the face of undisputed facts you refuse to believe the truth that the Federations actions were just as wrong and just as reprehensible, and are just as responsible for the current events as our own. You also show a complete disregard to your own past.

But no, apparently you still cling to the belief that your vaunted Federation can do no wrong. They always stand for truth and liberty and never their own petty personal interests; they're too superbly superhuman and perfect to have petty human weaknesses. It MUST be somebody else's fault.

No the Gallente Started it two hundred years ago when they bombed our civilians and attacked our evacuating transports, then tried to claim Caldari prime themselves.

If I recall correctly, Caldari Prime was signed over to the State by your President Foirtran a few year ago. Recently Federation troops and mercenaries employed by the Federation were landed on Caldari prime which is State property by your own nation's declaration. Said landing of troops garnered a response. Had those troops not been sent, and had the Federation not incited and sponsored civil unrest there would have been no reason for naval forces to do anything. The threats made by Heth are abhorrent, but the Gallente directly incited that chain of events.

So, taking some time to understand Tuulinen's viewpoint and applying a little tact in your wording instead of firing from the hip might have gone a longer way towards actually reducing the amount of posturing and arrogance going around.

The Gallente bombarded Caldari Prime following the destruction of Nouvelle Rouvenor. They didn't randomly wake up and go 'Oh, let's blow up some Caldari!'
The Gallente did not incite the civil unrest - due to your blockade they were unaware of how serious it was until recently. The ship they sent to scan the planet nearly got shot down by Shiigeru, as well.
The Gallente did not incite this chain of events. This chain started when Nouvelle Rouvenor was razed. It continued when Tibus Heth threatened to glass Gallente planets.
Luminaire VII is Gallente. There can be no civil unrest without civilians on the side of it. The people chose freedom over oppression.

Nouvelle Rouvenor was the final straw in a series of offences against the ethnic Gallente civilian populace.

Before the terrorist attack, the Caldari army was already targetting towns and villages. Nouvelle Rouvenor was not an isolated incident.

In response to the violence, disenfranchised Gallente members of the Caldari Army banded together to form the rebelliously-titled Free Caldari Army, to defend the local Gallente from their hostile neighbors. The situation escalated into all-out hostilities[5], with atrocities being committed by both sides. Entire towns and villages inhabited by the Gallente were leveled by the Caldari Army, while Gallente guerrillas made gruesome examples of captured Caldari soldiers. The speed at which the situation deteriorated, all in the space of less than a month, was alarming to both the Federation and the Caldari State. There were thousands of casualties, particularly those of Gallente ethnicity.

Your no more a victim than we were.

You can't attempt to scold us and add weight to your own perspective and then turn around and claim indifference. This is my complaint.

Alex. there are two possibilities.

Either the Federation's democracy works, and reflects the majority will of the people, or it does not. It's a Boolean function - if it only reflects the collective will of the populace some of the time, when it is convenient then it doesn't work.

So you have to decide which of those two realities you think is true. Either...

1) the Federal democracy does not work and never has and you are just as much in the grip of the whims of persons of power and influence as we are, with the difference that we openly understand, accept and embrace that reality and seek to work with it, or...

2) the Federal democracy DOES work and everything I've ever said about its dangers - mob rule, populism, myopic short-sightedness, giving equal weight to the voice of the competent and the incompetent - is entirely and horribly accurate.

I think the system of democracy does work. I think the government that gets in truly is the one that accrues the most votes and reflects the desires of the largest minority or even the majority of voters. Popularity may be a highly manipulable thing, but the fact is that the U-Nats were simply the unfolding of the policies expressed by the very people who had legitimately been voted into office. Any anger expressed when they went ahead and wildly overreacted boils down to "I can't believe I was so stupid as to vote for that guy".

If the democracy works, then the Federation's citizens were ultimately to blame for voting those people in. They didn't take the time to properly evaluate their candidates and see the insane steel lurking under their velvet gloves. Ultimately, they're the ones who gave the tools to the engineers of that atrocity. This isn't equivalent to selling a firearm to somebody for reasons of home defense which that person then goes on to commit a crime with: When they went to the polls they were consciously choosing to elect these people to make government-scale decisions on their behalf and that makes them complicit in those decisions. It's no good regretting and protesting when you dislike what they choose to do, to borrow an old metaphor that's locking the gate after the horse has run away.

I think that the system of democracy works... I think the CONCEPT of democracy is fatally flawed and have always said so.

This might be off topic, but this has been bugging me for some time.

It truly saddens me to see so many Caldari abandoning the wayist beliefs of their ancestors.

---

Seven Tribes.
One Matari People.

Alex, you're repeating history but not thinking about it. In so doing, you didn't actually address my point. Duvalier and the Senators who voted to make him president and supported him throughout his administration had, nevertheless, been democratically voted into office.

If people didn't want a president and senate who would vote to suspend the constitution and declare martial law, then they should never have allowed those people to be in a position to do so.

The citizens of the democracy actively chose these people to make decisions on their behalf. At best, that means that they failed in their duty to seriously evaluate the candidates and try to determine what sort of person they were electing to representing them. At worst, it means they actively endorsed and agreed with that kind of person. The largest minority (or possibly the majority) of voters were either apathetically lazy and easily-swayed, or co-conspirators.

All this "three pillars" stuff doesn't change the basic concept that the person who gets the job is the one with the most votes.

People don't suddenly go from being upstanding paragons of morality to baying for blood overnight. Those politicians didn't undergo a rapid and instant 180 the second the flooding hit NR - people don't work that way. What happened was that the hard-liners, the tough-talkers, the conservatives and the outspoken blowhard patriotic hawks went into overdrive while the liberals, bridge-builders, progressive, empathic doves were forced to do some soul-searching and question-asking in a moment of weakness that made them go quiet and by the time they thought to speak up again it was too late.

The Federation collectively endorsed - or at least enabled - the candidates whose policies and opinions contained the seeds of that extremism. Three pillars or not, they were elected by popular vote.

The citizens did not ask for the Constitution and Charter to be suspended

We're going to keep going in circles here, I can tell. I'll repeat my core point again then leave well enough alone if you don't mind.



I am saying that yes they effectively did because they elected the kind of people who would do that, either out of ignorance or out of agreement.

passive and active culpability are culpability nevertheless.

What beliefs? We believe in ourselves. Hardwork and strength. Anything else simply detracts from survival. Of the four empires, Caldari have the most inhospitable home planet.

The fertile systems of the minmatar homes, the luxurious climate of Gallente Prime, The Amarr did not suffer the technological dark age the same extent as the rest of us.

Even to this day, Caldari Prime is difficult to habitate. I am not supporting the actions of those that sabotaged Novelle Ruvenor. Caldari records of the events are sketchy. We were more concerned with our survival. Was there greater motive behind the terrorist attacks? We know the gallente were extremist in their militay doctrine of the day. Perhaps there was more to the city than is let on. After all, when the gallente took our cities, they took all the info contained within as well.

In particular Markus, The Spiritual beliefs that were born of Caldari prime.

also known as The Way of the Winds, these beliefs are often referred to simply as 'wayism' or 'wayist beliefs'

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Caldari_spirituality

The beliefs of your ancestors show some remarkable similarities to those of my own.
As I say, It saddens me to see so many turn away from them and towards the Amarrian faith.

That you are ignorant of the existence of your own people's historical spirituality speaks volumes on this subject.

We're going to keep going in circles here, I can tell. I'll repeat my core point again then leave well enough alone if you don't mind.



I am saying that yes they effectively did because they elected the kind of people who would do that, either out of ignorance or out of agreement.

passive and active culpability are culpability nevertheless.

There are no winners today, no victors. Everyone involved lost something precious, even if they don't realize it just yet.