(1) Yes I did not remove my nation from TNI. No I did not know the password, no I did not have any intentions of attacking it. I frankly did not feel like listening to orders from a military which had just kicked me out. Yes it was petty and stupid. But portraying it as some sort of concentrated attack is incredibly misleading. It was one nation, owned by someone who did not know the password. Don't you still claim that you could contact the founder? That's what you told me.
It is not necessary to know the password to pose a threat to the security of a passworded region if you already have a nation in the region and there are other potential threats located within the region. Among the nations in the region, there are suspected enemy sleeper puppets mixed in among the remaining natives. Depending on the number of native endorsements on the delegate at a given point of time - which always has the potential to go down as nations CTE - defender sleeper puppets could activate WA status and seize control of the region. This could be made considerably easier for them if they had an additional endorsement to use. What is more, you are aware that there are enemy sleeper puppets in TNI, as Roavin told you as much on the day he confided to you on the NSGP server that he was all set to invade TNI at the moment we passworded it. Indeed, on that occasion you even observed yourself that there were likely sleepers in TNI.
When you have been party to discussing the fact that there are defender sleepers located in the region, and you then later refuse to withdraw your nation from TNI when requested, then it is reasonable to suspect intent of a military attack. Your refusal gave us little reason to trust that you had benign intentions.
In any case, the effect of your deliberate refusal was that it was necessary to eject your nation. This wasted influence which could be necessary for purposes such as changing the password (if returning natives are admitted) or ejecting suspected defender sleeper units. In effect, you deprived TNI of essential influence. Moving or keeping nations in places with the effect of wasting influence is in and of itself a form of military action.
There is a line of communication to the founder, which it is important to emphasise in all communications in order to deter attacks on the region, but obviously she is not immediately available or else she wold have returned by now and it would not have been necessary to password the region. Merely because an invasion of TNI would not be permanent does not mean that it is something that it is any less important to guard against.
(2) The entire forum is classified, even the spam boards. Go look at it. The sheer fact of mentioning I was (we were) getting thrown out makes this technically true. For the record, I'm guessing you blame Xoriet, as she was the only NPO'er I spoke to in any real capacity and no I did not give her any leaks or any specific information as to what the LKE was doing. We weren't doing much that wasn't publicly known.
You are correct that nearly all of the LKE forum is not open to unauthorised individuals. That being the case, you should have known that it is unacceptable to share any information from it with a member of an actively hostile regime.
Xoriet is indeed a senior member of the New Pacific Order. Her statements revealed more than knowledge than simply that you were "getting thrown out" (something which was not actually stated until you were banished), but rather indicated specific knowledge of the arguments which occurred between you and the LKE Monarchy. In particular, she was aware that you had been accused of circulating Defender-Francoist propaganda. Severisen also made comments reflecting knowledge which at original source depended on knowledge of what was said in the LKE.
(3) Linkin literally DM'ed me and asked me to join Balder. You guys import people, don't pretend otherwise. I was also horribly inactive and violated that 15 day inactivity window so often, yet my citizenship was never cancelled until EMN happened. The same with Mega.
This is a misleading account of your conversation with Linkin. Since you first made this allegation to me, which I was initially slightly surprised at, I have followed this up with Linkin. He contacted you on 1 April 2018 to ask if you would be interested in becoming more involved in Balder, because he knew your record of ministerial service in the LKE and thought that you would be a hardworking junior minister in Balder. This was
after you applied for and were granted citizenship in Balder on 4 March 2018, without any preceding contact from Linkin or anyone else as far as I know.
Linkin cannot have asked you
join Balder, as you allege, after you had already joined it. He can only have asked you to become more involved - and correctly so. If Linkin merely wanted to import you to Balder for your vote, then why ask you to participate on 1 April when
you had already become a citizen on 4 March? If you are going to join and gain citizenship in Balder, it is not unreasonable to ask you to become more involved.
At that time, Linkin was the then Statsminister (Prime Minister) of Balder. You were a new citizen of the region who had recently joined, but had not really got involved. Your attempt to paint the Statsminister of Balder asking a member of Balder to help out in Balder as nefarious or improper is ridiculous.
While the legal cut-off point for inactive citizens in Balder is 15 days, citizenship inactivity checks are only routinely performed by the Government once every two months. This means that some individuals lose citizenship immediately if they are inactive for 15 days and some individuals may keep citizenship for longer, depending on when they are inactive and when the checks are performed. Perhaps it would be more efficient if we had a more organised system for immediately detecting whens someone hits 15 days as you suggest, but there is no conspiracy of the kind you imply. When your citizenship was terminated in Balder, it was not due to inactivity, but due to the Storting's proscription of Mare Nostrum.
At the end of the day, I have no love for The South Pacific or The Pacific. We did not push any of their rhetoric we said what we saw as true, currently The Empire stands closest to Osiris, another former friend which the "Ondersphere" lost due to their own actions.
The issue is not whether you have any "love for The South Pacific or The Pacific", but whose interests your actions and arguments served. Since that dispute, as you highlight, Osiris has launched attacks based on the idea that Balder is under "Userite" occupation, but in August 2018 that had not happened yet. At that time, those attack lines were most prominently espoused by The South Pacific and The Pacific, most notably by Xoriet.
While it is a reasonable point of analysis that our enemies use the word "Ondersphere", it
does not exist. No one with any serious knowledge of Balder or Europeia (which is sometimes included) would think that it did. The world view that says there is an "Ondersphere" is one derived from the
NPO's Retort - the propaganda screed that NPO senator A Mean Old Man put out in the September 2013 coup of Lazarus to justify purging Viktoria Gryfynn, Charles Cerebella, North East Somerset and Apollo from Lazarus. That document is where the very silly term "Ondersphere" originates from.
Both Balder and the LKE, separately and for different reasons, chose to terminate their alliances with Osiris, not the other way round, as a result of dissatisfaction with Osiris's actions towards Balder and the LKE respectively.
Finally, on the topic of Sopo. Yes, we did think he was an import vote. Now we realize that we were wrong. Emotions ran high, paranoia ran high, and when we saw a peer(?) or at least what we perceived as someone close to the machinations of Onder joining, we lashed out in a method that was unfair. Our apologies to Sopo for mis-characterizing him in that way.
Frankly, it is symptomatic of the wider approach you took to the situation - full of assumptions that the worst-possible explanation was true, without seeking to verify the facts or raise your concerns directly with me or anyone else in the LKE Monarchy.
For the record, Mega convinced me not to quit the LKE back in March/April; and it was only through his doing that I stayed as long as I did. Mega was incredibly committed to the LKE, frankly to a fault. We stuck around in the LKE way longer than we should have.
You say that you "stuck around in the LKE way longer than we should have". On this we are agreed. I would have much preferred you to leave quietly and honestly when you felt you could no longer continue, rather than telling others you were so dissatisfied that you wanted to leave and organising yourself as a group with them over a matter of months. I have no objections to individuals leaving. I object to plotting against us.
Megaleiotha Eirhno was not "incredibly committed to the LKE". I have seen hundreds of players go through the LKE from 2006 to the present day and Eirhno's record does not compare to the most committed to the region or even those who I would put in the middle of the range. Players who are "incredibly committed" to the LKE do not betray it or form splinter regions, no matter how dissatisfied they are regarding good or bad periods of activity that come with being an NS region or whether they feel they have been rewarded sufficiently or not. They work hard and persevere until better times.
During my own longest continuous period as Emperor from December 2010 to January 2018, the region had ups and downs, from highs in activity to lows in activity (just as it experienced in 2018 under the reign of Emperor Theoden). Despite those ups and downs, no matter how encouraging or bleak the situation, loyal Prime Ministers remained committed to the region. Theoden Sebastian, Linkin Talleyrand and Akillian Talleyrand were examples of such Prime Ministers, which is they hold their current positions, but there were others such as James Pigeon, Valfor Talleyrand and Nick Powell. They stood by the region through thick and thin, in the face of domestic ups and downs and external strife worse than 2018.
Emperor Theoden put it best in his reply to Eirhno on the LKE forums:
I was prime minister before. I was head of government when we produced some of the most active months in these forums, led negotiation of treaties with GCRs (prior to then the LKE had none), presided over the largest population growth for the region and the mission which saw the largest deployment of LKE-flagged units in a military operation. I had back to back premierships and am still, the longest serving prime minister in number of days served in office. That’s on top of serving as a multiple-term Senator, Minister of Exterior, Interior, Chief of the Imperial General Staff etc. But my ascent to power was gradual. I rose through the ranks. I had more executive experience and international exposure compared to the person who I ultimately replaced as Prince Imperial and then heir to the throne, but only became an Imperial House member after him. [...]
Interestingly, I was prime minister when this region experienced some of its lowest points as well; when this region was slapped with a recruitment ban which halved our population more than half, at a time when most of the senior leaders then have left, at a time when we were being written off, even by our allies. I had every reason to abandon this community, move elsewhere or even start my own one. But I did not. I buckled down and did what was necessary, what was asked of me and what I thought best for the LKE. Despite the seeming hopeless situation we found ourselves in, we survived. The fact that we are even having this discussion is a testament to that.
That is how this region has kept going. Loyal members deciding to rally behind the LKE banner, whether the Emperor was present or not, whomever was the Prime Minister, whichever party or faction was in power, no matter the number of nations we had in the region or the number of members posting in the forums. We knew what needed to be done and we did it.
That is the attitude of someone incredibly committed to the LKE.
If we evaluate his commitment to the region, Eirhno should not be mentioned alongside the names of the Prime Ministers I mentioned above. Out of 24 premiers, the only Prime Ministers in my long reign who recruited the region's population to other regions were Charles Cerebella and George Hanover VI - and they are the exceptions that prove the rule, because neither of them was loyal to the LKE in the first place. If we compare him to the Prime Ministers of my reign, Megaleiotha Eirhno's loyalty and performance as Prime Minister can only be compared to those two individuals.
Our perspective was and remains that the LKE suffers from an unwilling executive. If you are to put all the power in the hands of a few, at least make those few active and willing leaders. If they want to dick around in Balder, close down the LKE and focus on Balder, stop wasting the time of UCR players. It shouldn't be that hard, we shouldn't be ran around in circles. The Imperial Family stood as 4, yet none of them could even mask people when forum issues were happening? We understood the Emperor himself was suffering internet issues, we understood that X, and Y, and Z, were all happening and etc. But when X, Y, Z keep happening and nothing changes, we get tired. At the end of the day, we were on the ones driving activity and building up the region, while the Imperial Family were ignoring the region.
The LKE certainly suffered from an "unwilling executive": in the form of the then Prime Minister, Megaleiotha Eirhno, and the Imperial Council under his tenure. That was the LKE's executive. Excluding specific powers of the Crown, the executive of the LKE is the Prime Minister and the ministers they appoint to the Imperial Council. The Constitution is specific that the management of the region's domestic affairs is vested in the Imperial Government, barring matters related to administration of the forum or the on-site region. There is a constitutional division of responsibilities which empowers the Government to run the region internally (as well as possessing some external responsibilities). That is why we have elections for Prime Minister rather than the Prime Minister simply being selected by the Emperor. If the Crown was accountable for the performance of the Government, then there would be no need for an elected Prime Minister; the Emperor would be entitled to choose the PM. If the Prime Minister and some cabinet members were unhappy with doing their jobs, then they should have resigned. They should not have stayed in their jobs while plotting to create another region. They should not have tried to pin responsibility for doing their jobs onto others because they were discontented with the inevitable ups and downs of NS life.
The LKE operated with on a constitutional model which gives the elected government primacy for domestic affairs throughout my reign in 2010 to 2018 and indeed before that. Since the region began, there has always been an emphasis on political accountability for government performance resting with the Prime Minister and the Government. Since the Emperor banished the plotters behind Mare Nostrum under Lettre de cachet, the region has resumed functioning as usual on this model.
In ascribing responsibility for running the LKE to the Imperial House as a collective group, you misunderstand what it is. The Imperial House is not a body responsible for the performance of the executive government and does not have any direct powers. Constitutionally, the role of members of the Imperial House is to advise the Emperor. Beyond that advisory role, the Imperial House is largely ceremonial and honorific in character. The Emperor Emeritus has some additional individual powers/privileges, but these do not relate to the internal executive government of the region.
It is the not the Imperial House collectively, but the Crown, in the person of the Emperor, which has powers, principally granting citizenship, command of the Imperial Army, granting peerages and honours, signing legislation, approving treaties and running elections. This does not include responsibility for managing domestic activity fluctuations. That is a government matter, although of course the Emperor will assist and advise to the best of their ability. The Emperor is permitted to delegate their constitutional powers to the Crown Prince and the Prince Imperial (though not the Emperor Emeritus), which he does, but they individually act as his delegates, not as part of a collective unit called the "Imperial Family".
The arrogance in your claim that you were "the ones driving activity and building up the region" is unjustified. The expansion in forum activity in the first half of 2018 drew upon a much wider array of individuals, including Emperor Theoden himself, going beyond the later members of Mare Nostrum. By the time that Eirhno succeeded Sir John as Prime Minister, the region was already propsering, and it was under Eirhno that it declined. I do not attach particular blame to Eirhno for that outcome. Such fluctuations in activity are normal and I saw them many times during my reign as Emperor. It is disappointing that you have attempted to turn such normal variations in activity patterns into justifications for diminishing the contributions of others.
Your allegations that members of the Imperial House ignored the LKE for any period of time are completely unfounded. The Emperor has been unavoidably absent due to weather-related issues affecting his internet access. The Crown Prince and the Prince Imperial faithfully covered his constitutional duties. Unlike Eirhno, who failed to log-in for a continuous period of 9 days when he was Prime Minister, they consistently logged in on a daily basis. No work in any other region, whether Balder or, in the case of Akillian, United Kingdom, detracted from their roles in the LKE. The majority of your complaints relate to routine administrative tasks which were overlooked for a few days, as inevitably sometimes happens. With my retirement and Emperor Theoden's absence, the Crown Prince and Prince Imperial had a bigger workload than they otherwise might have done.
In the course of July and August 2018, both I and the Crown Prince sent messages to the Prime Minister and to the Cabinet as a whole which were unanswered. In that context, where our attempts to engage government members are ignored, it is galling that you now accuse us of neglecting our duties. This represents nothing more than a pitiful attempt to deflect responsibility for the performance of Eirhno's administration. If the Prime Minister and the Cabinet had used the channels available to make specific requests of the Crown Prince, they would have been dealt with.
Your statements pertaining to Balder are particularly revealing of your mindset. You say that if we "want to dick around in Balder, close down the LKE and focus on Balder", and that we should "stop wasting the time of UCR players." The suggestion that the LKE should be closed down over this nonsense is preposterous, as is the suggestion that participation in a GCR and a UCR is incompatible. I approach my involvement in Balder in precisely the same way I approached my involvement in TNI while I was Emperor of the LKE from 2010 to 2018 and Crown Prince of TNI from 2010 to 2013, as well as holding various other senior positions in TNI from 2008 to 2015 alongside my roles in the LKE. I don't see my involvement in Balder any differently from my involvement in TNI just because it is a GCR. Balder functions as a constitutional monarchy in much the same way as TNI or the LKE. Players in GCRs and UCRs alike are NationStates players. Perhaps there are some GCR elites who don't recognise that, but I am opposed to the mentality that the two are separate and that GCRs or UCRs are superior. I've spent nearly all of my NationStates career almost exclusively in UCRs, but I don't see any significant change from participating in a GCR. I remain opposed to a GCR elitist or a Francoist mindset of the kind perpetuated by the NPO and TSP.
Remember how not a single one of you had more than 200 posts in the public Discord channels in the months which it existed? Remember how half of your posts in those channels were during the final argument between you and Mega? That's the type of shit we don't like.
This line of argument constitutes a complete misunderstanding of (1) the fundamental purpose and nature of the LKE throughout our 13-year history, (2) the range of metrics on which contributions to a region can be judged and (3) the meaning of dedication to a region.
The contribution of government officials is not measured by the number of messages in Discord social areas (or even the number of spam posts on the forum, though forum posts are more important, particularly in governmental areas). It is measured by governmental service and performing duties competently and loyally as Emperor, as a Prince, as a Minister, as a Senator and in the Imperial Army. There is nothing wrong with socialising on Discord and it is a nice thing to have, but it is secondary to the internal and external politics of the region. There are multiple ways in which members can contribute. Helping facilitate activity on Discord is one, but only one, and ultimately not the most important.
The suggestion that you can measure my contribution to the LKE, or that of any other person, according to the number of Discord messages posted is as absurd as it is insulting.
The Discord server is purely an add-on for communications purposes that was permitted (perhaps against my better judgement) and implemented as an add-on in November 2017. It is not a core part of the region. It was never decided that number of messages on Discord would therefore become a metric on which someone's contribution would be defined. Your attempt to use it in that way ascribes undue importance to it. Discord activity is ultimately secondary to the business of the Crown and the state. It is something which citizens can and should participate in if they wish, but it not fundamentally what the LKE is about. The LKE went from 2005 to 2017 without having any kind of IRC or Skype collective group "chat" set up. We decided to experiment with the Discord server, but the value/significance of such a "chat" facility to the region has not fundamentally changed.
