Join the new world

Well, it is good to be back. Germany is always something special and important in my heart and I am happy to be back here. I am happy that my eHusband Critically came along the trip and I hope he will find the appeal of eGermany like I did. My plans as of now is to be semi active in politics and to re-familiarize myself in eGermany.

I officially resign my post as ambassador of eGermany to eBelgium. I do not know does the MoFA team find a replacement yet but I really want to write a final report on the current situation in eBE and in many ways, why I am back in eGermany. I hope this wall of text will help the eGerman community and the future ambassador to understand eBelgium.

For a few months now, eBelgium enjoyed relative peace. Not much really happed other than the fact that they joined the Circle of Trust (CoT) alliance. Things started to heat up when Shadowukcs (a real life Flemish Nationalist) returned back to eBE. While most congress members would not likely grant Shadow CS, one of the forum admin Pieter, enjoys drama granted him CS to make the forum "more lively." Shadow is a controversial figure for he has stolen a state MU as well as defaulting and refuse to pay back government loan. Due to this, while he as BE CS, he has extremely limited forum access. This became problematic when he became a congressman (very easy to get into congress in eBE). He demanded access and wrote many trolling and populistic articles against the Belgian Establishment. In the process, he reestablish his anti-establishment followers.

The anti-establishment camp tends to lean to the political right. While it is hard to clearly state what their political ideology is, they just do not want government. They believe in only game mechanic rules and that the eBE forum constitution, tradition, and laws are stupid and pointless. They often dismiss the forum rules as "role play".

In contrast to the Anti-Establishment camp, the eBE Establishment tends to be moderate. They enjoy the status quo and tends to focus mainly in the forum community. They support the eBelgium National Army (BNA) and many of them at times use their RL cash to sponsor social programs. The Establishment pride itself in the progressive nature of their policies in that any eBE citizens can get a citizen's package which consist of 20 Q5/6 food plus 4 Q7 weapons a day for free (no commune membership necessary). Due to recent tensions which I will discuss below, the Establishment itself is fractured. There is an increasing disgruntled and disillusioned numbers of the Establishment with the problems and toxic environment of the environment, many are either becoming less active or they move.

eBE is not a Bipolar community. There is a third element, the LCC. The LCC is a communist party that strive for power. They want to PTO the country and to spread their warped view of communism into the community. They are supported and funded by the Greek communist MU, Libertad and at times 7nisa. The LCC does not offer anything of real substance. They shout communist rhetoric like "We must crush the bondage of the Elites," etc. They also are anti eBE forum and wants policy decision to be made via in game articles in a referendum format. The most troubling aspect of the LCC is that they do not believe in the immigration policy of eBE and believes citizenship is a right no matter what. The LCC was responsible for the G50 and Libertad PTO attempts in eBE. Some of the LCC members sent spam PM's harassing people of the community. He sent others PM with commie rhetoric and that the Establishment are corrupted people who needs to be destroyed. He sent me homophobic rants like for "50 Euros you can suck his _______!" I am happy that this person is banned by the admins but it is the combination of the radicalism, the trolling and harassment as well as the total disregard for eBE laws especially the immigration procedures that people hates the LCC and Libertad. People views them not as the liberators of the "Clicking Class" but opportunistic PTOers.

This month is a particular hard month for eBelgium. Two person ran for the position of president, Shadow and NLSP. Both of these people are highly controversial. Despite the wrong doings of Shadow in the past, Shadow is a well known troll. He is problematic for he likes attention and purposely acts out to get attention. He wants people to know him as the community badass and has huge personal grudge with many members of the community. NLSP on the other hand is a really complicated person. He is a good person with good intentions but he has many personality flaws which makes him not ideal for leadership. NLSP is not a flexible person. He has his own version of ethics and he expects and at times demand others to follow his standard of ethics. He is an absolutist and does not understand the concept that social issues comes in shades of grey. Despite his intentions, many people have issues with him and views him as a power monger and despotic.

NLSP won the election with a huge margin of error. In many case, it was not because the community wanted NLSP to be CP, but it was the lesser of the two evils. Immediately after the election, the Anti-Establishment camp launched a new offensive against the regime. Goopypants (a member of the Anti-Establishment camp)started a bombardment of attacks against NLSP saying NLSP is lazy and he does nothing etc. A former eBelgian leader now an eUS congressman but part of the community of eBE got his special Friends of Congress forum mask removed because he wrote Fail eBE, Fail NLSP, Fail CoT in Goopy's article. NLSP was the main reason why Fhaemita why his mask was removed as he actively pushed for its removal. While the congress support the removal, but a good amount of the community, both neutral and the Anti-Establishment group views this is lame, immature, and petty. (I am one of them.) It is a fact that NLSP and Fhaemita does not get a long and with the mask removal which limits Fhae's access in the forum is seen as NLSP using his political power to remove not only a political but a personal rival from more important areas of the forum.

There are many more problems for the NLSP administration. The community wants a Training War. For many many months, eBE did not have a training war and many people wants to have a TW so they can get a True Patriot medal. TW is a huge issue in eBE and they tried to get one with the British but with no success. Some of the Anti-Establishment people (Goopy) started a NE without permission but failed. NLSP is getting a lot of pressure and heat for his failure (albeit not his fault) to obtain a TW for the eBE community.

To show the dysfunction of the current eBE situation is best if we look at the finances and the Belgian National Army (BNA). The total monthly income of eBE is 40k BEF. The Belgians spend 30k on MPP's and 15k on the Belgian Training Army (BTA), a rookie army for new players. The current administration just sign new spending law that the current spending on the BNA is 250k. This was a long political battle that took weeks. NLSP and his government wants to spend 250k a month on the military and to maintain a very generous supplies for the army. They view that the economics would only get better and they will and must continue to provide huge generous amount of tanks and supplies to the BNA. NLSP and his government believes that it is ok to dip into the treasury to cover the difference. The Anti-Establishment took the opposite extreme in that they say the math does not compute so they want to cut most if not all social spending and end the BNA and citizen packs etc. They want no or as little gov spending. There are also the Disgruntled/Disillusioned Establishment that agrees that there is no justification to spend 250k just on the MPP while total income is 40k. Unlike the Anti-Establishment people, the Disillusioned people wants to reduce BNA spending so while there is a need to dip in the treasury, it is not a huge dip and can prolong our BNA (albeit less generous) until the markets gets better. If the market rebounds sooner, they can always increase spending when it is ideal. The last group is the LCC who believes in maintain the current spending but all MU's including the non-state MU's like the eBE Libertad should get an equal share of state funding. They claim that they pay taxes and taxes are the peoples' money. The funniest thing is that they (the whole MU) pay less taxes a day than a single worker with a wage of 20 BEF. The bill was passed in favor of the president but it was a painful process. NLSP tried to get this law passed without proper debate. The Anti-Establishment camp started an SC case against the law. I was one of the justices and I offered a compromise suggested by one of the disillusioned (MaryamQ) but NLSP's pride and inability to compromise caused him not to take a compromise which would of worked in his favor much sooner. Instead the court did find him in violation of following procedure and he must start a new debate. This time since the community sees in much greater details of his plans he faced much more difficult questions and opposition. In the end people voted for it not because of the economics but because they fear if they do not spend the money, the young and weak players will not grow. The eBE gov is in a process to reduce and eliminate support for players above the level of 35.

Despite all of this dysfunction and problems with eBE. eBE is something special. Do not look at this country via stats. eBE is small, weak, and outright poor for econ and military etc. While there is no quantitative reasons to like eBE, there are a lot of normative appeals to it. eBE is much less a country but a pub or a family unit. The bonds are much closer and when things are well, it is really warm and cozy. But like a family, when there are tensions, it tends to be a lot worst as well. But it is this pub/ family dimension of eBE that makes it special. It is a small community with very caring people. Many players like MaryamQ and Elynea who spend RL cash to help new players grow strong quickly. It is the only country I know that gives gold to players to use the strength boosters when they train. While the financial realities hinders that aspect now, it is the thought, the ideal, the intensions of its members that made eBelgium unique and special.