The Economist ~ Defence is not an option

Day 2,359, 06:21 Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom by Spite313





Dear friends,


I spent over a year in sole control of UK citizenship. The general procedure was that all congressmen referred applicants to me, I checked the person’s country of origin, history, credentials. If they seemed non-threatening and from a friendly country, I let them in. I stopped a lot more players than I allowed, simply because with a country the size of the eUK, it was better to be safe than sorry. Of those I did let in, most (three quarters or higher I’d estimate) did not stay long and eventually returned to their home country.


At the time the fear was always of an EDEN sponsored Political Take Over (PTO), so we watched citizens from Croatia, Romania- even America. Some of those countries are now allies, and thus of a lower threat. What isn’t mentioned much however, is that even then the Shoe People and certain other PTO groups from allied countries were blacklisted. I actually wrote an article condemning the group whilst they were attempting to PTO the USA, even though arguably the USA’s misery at the time would have been to our benefit. That’s because PTOers are not constructive players, they’re destructive players. They don’t play for their own sense of accomplishment but to ruin it for other players, and thus they’re a two edged blade that can turn against the one that uses it- as Serbia found out when the PTOers robbed Serbia a while later.


Toward the end of the period when I was citizenship ‘Czar’ there were steadily increasing calls for the position to be abandoned. Players from UKPP and later New Era simply began ignoring procedure and nothing was done by their party leadership to stop it. To this day, with the threat of PTO looming, nothing has been done to put a system of citizenship approvals in place. In the fights to remove me from my position, I was called paranoid, scaremongering and deluded. There was no threat of a PTO and congress should be able to decide as they like. They let in a number of people who were blacklisted as traitors and though that was bad (since it removed the only punishment we have as a community for betrayal) it wasn’t the worst part.





The worst part came when citizenship became weaponised. Realising that they could not outright win an election with every hand against them, New Era’s leadership decided that instead of following the moderate path UKPP followed and working with other parties they would sign a deal with the devil. Their justification for their actions is that TUP has let in foreign citizens to be members for years. This however is a major misapprehension- although TUP does have foreign citizens, they are a tiny minority as a percentage of the party. Most of them are senior citizens in foreign countries who, like me, move for diplomatic reasons to establish closer relations with allies. There is and never has been a mass movement of the ordinary citizens needed for a PTO.


Now that New Era has begun to allow PTOers into the country both individually and by allowing them congress seats, they’ve weaponised the situation. This is because the golden rule of PTO is you cannot defend against a PTO, you can only attack it. By killing the source of citizenship approvals, you kill their ready supply of labour. Every month the pool of votes available to the group gets more reliant on bots as the real citizens return to their home country, or to aid in PTOs abroad. Bots are vulnerable. Once it becomes apparent victory is impossible, they give up.



Still a long way to go


This is the harsh lesson America learned, as it tried to defend at first before simply systematically PTOing every party that broke a very harsh set of rules. They laboured for a year with little to no democracy because of this. The worst part is, we didn’t learn their lesson. When I brought up the USA again and again as an example of a worst case scenario, I was ignored or patted on the back like an eccentric uncle. Now we actually have a PTO active in the country, and to me it is absolutely inevitable that one of our great parties will fall on the 15th. It could be ESO, UKPP, UKRP, PCP. They have the numbers. With enough division from other domestic candidates, even TUP could fall. New Era would I think willingly embrace it.


At times like this it’s hard to forgive and forget our petty disputes, but that’s what we have to do. Doing this however does not mean that every native eBritish citizen is on our side. The Serb PTO got a hold on our country through the actions of New Era’s leadership. Those people are on a par with Ajay Bruno in the eUSA as traitors and manipulators, and they cannot be part of any solution. Although Don Dapper and his “friends” are primarily responsible, perhaps the most dangerous domestic threat comes from Goku Jones. Probably the UK’s oldest and most successful manipulator, he’s spent year after year conning people into believing he’s sincerely concerned about their welfare, when ultimately all he cares about is himself. Self-aggrandizing in the extreme, he will present logical arguments to win you over, but you can’t expect him to follow that logic himself. He’ll do whatever he wants in the most vindictive way possible.



Clever guy, Teddy. Rode a mean horse too.


So what now? A list must be drawn up of dangerous individuals, a watch-list. That list has to contain all of the British collaborators who let in PTOers and those that they let in. The people on that list must be prevented from becoming PP or congressmen. As they currently control New Era, that means that party has to be taken away from them. It’s a brutal thing to lose your party- I know better than anyone since my own party has been out of TUP hands this month. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But that list of traitors can no longer be considered British or working for the interests of Britain. As such it makes no difference what their RL or ingame nationality may be. They are all to be viewed as Serbian PTOers now and have to be stopped.


As a final aside, I’d like to say I’ve spent five and a half years playing this game and in that time the alliances have shifted more times than I can count. I began allied with Croatia in ATLANTIS, and now I’m back with them in Sirius. I think without ever once fighting against a UK MPP I could have got the Mercenary medal five times over. We were allied with Serbia for a great deal of that time, and I found the Serbian people IRL to be intelligent, harcore gamers who you can rely on to get your back when you need it. I don’t want to suggest by any means that all Serbs cannot be trusted as a general rule. However people don’t carry ID badges with their honest intentions, so for now unfortunately we have to make that assumption. Don’t take it as a slur against Serbia or Serbians, it’s simply a necessary precaution brought on by the actions of a bumptious minority.



Iain