Join the new world

[PREFACE: This is a notice on the resistance war in Argentina to get the Altiplano back in Bolivian hands. Calbe is free to quote me on it, he’s used my name or quoted from my articles no less than twenty times in the last 48 hours.]

I realize there are wargames going on with Australia today, and I know national orders have been given to fight in Tasmania. If, however, you’re looking for something a little more substantial, a battle that means something, I’m hoping you will consider coming along with me this morning to Argentina, where we will fight on the side of the resistance to liberate the Bolivian Altiplano and get it back in Bolivian hands.

http://www.erepublik.com/en/military/battlefield/2229

Bolivia has always been a tender spot for me. As a three-week-old newbie in the US, I was invited by the patriarch of the Bolivian community, Ernesto_Guevara, to come and run for Congress. In two terms as a Congressman and as Ernesto’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, I saw and did a lot. I learned that this world can be cruel and merciless if you’re a country that’s small and struggling, that countries befriending you today will stab you in the back tomorrow, that talk of honor and unity often plays second fiddle to the “lulz”, and that, at the end of the day, such a community ultimately has to rely on its own resources, its own abilities, its own wits. Bolivia has been a constant target of PTO’s and invasions since it was born, and there but for the grace of Dio goes New Zealand, or any other country that’s new, small, or destitute.

The Bolivia community scored a series of significant political victories in September and October, taking back the reigns of government from an Argentine community that did not seek to colonize, did not seek to integrate, did not seek to even rape and pillage for their own merriment, but to destroy; much as in the history of the real world, when Rome defeated Carthage for the final time and established themselves as the singular power of the western Mediterranean, they not only killed and enslaved every Carthaginian, they not only dismantled the entire city brick by brick, they salted the earth so that nothing except the weeds could ever live in that spot again. The Argentine faction destroyed the Bolivian economy, annihilated their trade with the EDEN world by setting up dozens of embargos, siphoned off tax collections, and humiliated those Bolivian citizens with chants of LOLIVIA and worse.

I’ve never seen a country, a PTO group, or a militia act with so little shame. In every other case I can think of, those who took over a country did so with some strategic reason in mind, be it for resources, to steal the treasury, to landswap, something of value. Even in my never-ending criticism of the Theocrats, with how thorough and dictatorial their rule over South Korea was last year, they didn’t decimate the country for giggles; they were obnoxious pricks who made the country the most closed and regimented society I’ve ever seen in this game, borderline Stalinist if you ask me, but even in that, they didn’t try to destroy everything that makes a country functional. They saw it as a blank slate for putting their own vision to practice. The Argentine faction used Bolivia like a toilet.

As such, it’s important for Bolivia to win this battle. The Bolivian Altiplano is the richest of the original Bolivian regions, and it’s always been the target of Argentine hostility. Hence, this is more important than merely restoring national pride and bringing back what was once lost; the Altiplano is vital to the Bolivian economy. Consider if an invader came to New Zealand and took Auckland, our most resource-rich region, our high-grain, the engine that makes our economy go, wouldn’t we fight tooth and nail to keep it, first and foremost, perhaps forsaking the rest of our regions to keep it and thus keep our economy from dying?

For as much as I’d love New Zealanders to jump up, buy a ton of moving tickets, and join me in Argentina today to fight on Bolivia’s behalf, if I get anyone at all to come along and fight the honorable fight with me, I’ll consider it good. The bigger point to be made is, we’re in the same boat, all these countries around the world that are small and struggling. We have far more in common with North and South Korea, Bolivia, Denmark, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Austria, than we do with the two countries most in New Zealand came from, namely, the United States and Serbia. We need to recognize their struggles are our struggles. Fortune placed us in a generally safe place in terms of geography, but it’s only a matter of time before someone plows through Australia or Chile to get to us, and even sooner before another PTO group takes a crack at us. Bolivia is a worst-case scenario, a country perpetually in PTO hell and at the mercy of aggressor neighbors, and the last thing any New Zealander should think is, well, that’s Bolivia, what’s happening there could never happen here.