The East Pacific News Service
March 31, 2020
An Interview with East Malaysia and His Thoughts on the Empire Coup of the East Pacific
By Zukchiva Yura
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(Editor’s note: East Malaysia is a Vizier, Magister, and Deputy Minister of Information and Communications. East Malaysia has been part of TEP since 2004, and served as an “Elder” in the aftermath of the Empire’s invasion of The East Pacific, as will be explained.)
Interviewer’s Note: Having played NationStates since 2004, East Malaysia is a current and active citizen of the East Pacific. He was instrumental as a regional leader when the Empire couped the East Pacific’s inactive government in 2008 for a four month period.
The following interview was held on March 24th to March 27th, 2020. The interview’s original topic was about East Malaysia’s service to the region as an Elder during the Empire coup, but it soon turned into seeing what was this esteemed player’s thoughts on the coup overall.
The interview took place in Direct Messages on Discord. Minor edits have been made to fix grammatical errors, but otherwise the content has remained unchanged.
Zukchiva: Hello East Malaysia!
I’ll be interviewing you today about the time you spent as an Elder of the East Pacific, back during and a few months after the Empire Coup of 2008. Not many people know the work you and your fellow Elders did, and even fewer know how it really felt like to be a government leader of TEP during that crisis.
The first question I would like to ask is for you to explain, in your own thoughts, what the Elders were and what was their importance in East Pacifican history?
East Malaysia: The Elders were the guiding hand and rock that the region needed after months under siege by The Empire.
It was a temporary role just to oversee the rebuilding of The East Pacific’s government.
Thinking back to that time, I think the role was minor, in the scheme of everything that was happening at that time.
Now where I believe the role was very important was that the Elders, myself included, didn’t just stay in power but we relinquished our power to the people. We kicked off The East Pacific’s democracy that is still going strong more than a decade later.
It’s unfortunate we don’t have logs from the writing of the Concordat that would highlight the key contributions of everyone and not the few that approved the document.
Zukchiva: I agree, I find myself often wishing I could see the logs from the drafting of the Concordat myself. But at least we got the Concordat!
My second question I’d like to ask is, how did you first think of the idea of the Elders when Citizen Flemingovia proposed it? As I understand, it was a supremely different form of government from the East Pacific’s past two democratic governments of the time.
East Malaysia: Without looking… I believe so. A lot was going on at that time. I was brought in I believe after the role was set up. At this time I was a simple citizen and was probably picked because I had been in the region for what was at the time considered a long time… ha. I was honored to be considered.
The previous government of The East Pacific was not democratic at all. So we went from dictatorship to democracy.
And to perhaps clarify that we did have democratic elements like a legislator and judicial branch but overall the Delegate had the last say.
Zukchiva: Oh! I guess I didn’t research far enough. Guess I’m gonna have to dive back into my research. >_>
I understand that it has been a while since you were an Elder, like many-years while. However, looking back to what you remember and what happened afterwards, do you think you would’ve wanted to do anything different in that role, in hindsight? In other-words, what would you change, if anything, regarding your actions as an Elder?
East Malaysia: Honestly I think keeping logs of the building on the Concordat. That’s the biggest error of the whole process. Or at minimum kept footnotes to help future generations
To understand what something means, why we included it, and who thought of the idea.
Zukchiva: That would’ve been pretty cool! But either way, thank you for your work in forming the Concordat.
Next, based on whatever you remember, how did you feel during the Empire coup itself? Were you stressed, scared, or some other emotions when they were ruling TEP?
East Malaysia: Before we went full resistance, the general feel of the region was, to see if we could work together. Let the Empire take over but still use the forum since it had all the roleplay and historical importance but that didn’t work out in the end.
I don’t remember being stressed or scared. We realized early on that we were in for the long fight. Influence really wasn’t a thing at this time so you had to have the endorsements. It was going to be a war of attrition due to the number of residents and citizens that had been banjected. I vaguely remember it was not easy getting help from the numerous armies of the day and that’s largely due to The East Pacific’s natural isolationism that left us with less friends to work with.
Zukchiva: From the records of the time it was shown that TEP saw itself as an inactive community. Do you think TEP would be as vibrant as it is today without the Empire coup?
East Malaysia: Probably. Because if they didn’t coup the region then someone else would have.
Zukchiva: If you were able to name the most important person responsible for helping TEP survive the coup, who would it be and why?
East Malaysia: It’s honestly impossible to name one person. We, the community, collectively did our part to fight against them in our own ways.
Loop was willing to work with them but that obviously failed. Pack was Delegate-in-Exile. I remember approaching two regions seeking their help.
Zukchiva: What was the strongest moment/event you experienced during the coup?
East Malaysia: ASBS becoming Delegate. We could finally take a take a sigh of relief. Holding out for four months is years in the way NS moves.
Zukchiva: I’ve noticed that the Empire adopted nobility names in a form of role-play, and spoke disparaging comments against the community of TEP at the time (like one couper calling TEP her “property”. How did you, specifically, feel about those remarks, if you remember anything?
East Malaysia: It made us work harder to remove them from power. That’s part of the reason titles of nobility not being allowed was included in the Concordat. It was the belief that even if someone is Delegate they are still equal to the citizen. They simply have more responsibility to the region. That’s still the belief today I think.
Zukchiva: Besides ASBS and Daanistan’s legendary unendorsemsnt campaign, how did you guys and gals fight against the Empire? What methods did you use?
East Malaysia: I remember early on trying to get support from various defender groups of the day, I might have been in exile, that seems familiar. But honestly, I don’t remember all the methods.
Zukchiva: Well, thanks for sticking with me so far, Em. 
One last cliche question. Is there anything you’d like to add? About being an Elder, or the Empire or what happened after they left. Any sort of message or thing you believe the younger readers of EPNS should know of that time?
East Malaysia: This is what makes being a citizen and being an active member of the community by participating in government or roleplay so important. An active community can easily combat outside threats. NationStates is a very complex game when you break it down. The East Pacific is The East Pacific’s because of the community and government. It’s our own virtual country and it should be the duty of everyone to keep The East Pacific strong the beautiful.
Zukchiva: Thank you for your time, East Malaysia!
It was extremely appreciated.
East Malaysia: 
The Conclave Rolls Out Reforms
By Zukchiva Yura
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(Editor’s Note: This article is written as a firsthand account by the Viceroy, Zukchiva, hence the use of first-person words like “I”.)
If you read the East Pacific News Service’s Edition published for January 2020, you’ll know that the Conclave has already begun reforming itself as part of the massive post-coup East Pacific reforms. The aim for the reforms are to make the Conclave a more accessible place for everyone, and in this way ensuring more transparency and fairness in East Pacific justice.
As Viceroy, I instituted the following “steps to reform”, or in other words a small to-do list to assist us Arbiters in changing the branch for the better. These steps will be explained in detail in the order listed below in order to help increase understanding of the changes going on, despite many of them being unseen.
The Steps to Reform:
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Come up with Election Law [COMPLETED]
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Set guidelines for precedent usage [COMPLETED]
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Reform the Standing Orders of the Conclave [COMPLETED]
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Create new guides for the Conclave [IN PROGRESS]
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Reorganize Conclave Forums [IN PROGRESS]
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Create table consisting of precedent for easy access to legal rules [IN PROGRESS]
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Implement an attorney system [IN PROGRESS]
Completed Steps
These are steps that have already been completed. (Yay us!)
Step: Come up with Election law
For many years, the Viceroy of the East Pacific has been the sole administrator of Delegate Elections, one of the most important events in East Pacific government. However, no law was ever enacted for elections, with only unwritten norms and traditions, along with the Concordat, guiding election procedure. This obviously often caused confusion and tension during election processes, along with many mishaps in election occurrences.
In order to rectify this, I proposed to the Magisterium on February 14th, 2020 the “Delegate Elections Act”. Due to complicated issues involving a llama and a lawn that took up my time, A Mean Old Man was brought in as a co-sponsor for the bill. Following debate with insightful comments by A Mean Old Man, the proposal was motioned to vote on March 15th and came into law on March 24th, 2020!
Step: Set guidelines for precedent usage
Precedent is a bit confusing of a confusing matter, and the Conclave went into disarray for a tiny fraction of time as we were trying to find out how precedent worked and how it would function in the court. (Note: Aelitia was the only Arbiter with more than a year’s worth of experience when he left, so we’re all pretty new at our jobs!)
However, after a quick Discord discussion on the matter, Arbiter Pakitsk drafted the Procedural Rules on Precedent, which were quickly reorganized and then passed through vote. You can read them at The East Pacific - Tapatalk - Login.
These guidelines clarify into procedural law what precedent is and how it will be used in the drafting of verdicts! These guidelines will also help citizens to understand precedent, so that judicial functions and the way Arbiters reach verdicts makes more sense.
Step: Reform the Standing Orders of the Conclave (SOC)
The Standing Orders of the Conclave had become slightly outdated and open to interpretation since they were redrafted in 2014. So we, the Arbiters, met in Closed Chambers to edit the SOC, then made a public convention (in which only one citizen showed up :<) to allow citizens to provide their input. After a month or two, we voted the final draft into action.
In the end, not much was changed besides clarification on trial procedures and the formalizing of the ability of the Conclave to raise an advisory question to a Judicial Review. While not the most life-changing of reforms, these small changes will help the Conclave run trials for years to come.
Steps In-Progress
These are steps to reform that are currently being done or haven’t started yet. 
Step: Creating new Conclave guides
Viceroy Barb was one of the Conclave’s most notable Viceroys, leading the court into its first few landmark trials and drafting up the first rendition of the Standing Orders of the Conclave along with Todd McCloud, in 2010. As part of her work, Viceroy Barb created two guides: A Viceroy Tutorial plus a guide on Trial Decorum. The Viceroy Tutorial explained what Barb learned about doing the job of Viceroy and wanted to share with her successors, while the Trial Decorum explained the trial processes and expectations of that time.
Overtime, these tutorials became outdated as trial procedures, Arbiter duties, and Viceroy duties changed over time. Thus, as part of the Conclave reform, new guides are being created by me! (And can be checked over by the Arbiters if they feel something should be changed.)
The current goal is to create four new guides stemming from Barb’s idea of tutorials: A Guide to Being a Presiding Arbiter (it’s a confusing job), A Tutorial to Being the Viceroy, A Tutorial to Being An Arbiter, and A Guide to Trial Procedures (the only one out of the four guides that will be made public).
These guides should prove as helpful resources in the future, or at least that’s our hope!
Step: Reorganize the Conclave Forums
The forums for the Conclave have been a little bit complex for some time. While this had not been an issue for the past few years, some forums of the Conclave hadn’t been used since Yuno’s Delegacy, and the Closed Chambers subforum is overflowed with unarchived posts.
As part of reforms, a request has been submitted to forum administrators for simplifying The Library of the Court subforum (currently closed to the public but will be released in the future) into a single subforum containing all of East Pacifican judicial law, along with other more minor changes.
This important resource will aid all those seeking to delve into judicial matters when the request is completed. On a side note, I was almost offended when I realized it wasn’t public (being such
Step: Create table consisting of precedent for easy access to legal rules
At the Conclave, we understand that precedent is a confusing matter (as elaborated on earlier). And given that it can be used to charge a criminal crime and dictate court procedures, we decided that precedent needed to be listed out clearly in a simple forum thread, with a table.
The plan is to go over all Judicial Reviews and trial verdicts, and to record any precedent they set and place it into said nice table.
This will help further simplify how our court works and further turn the Conclave into a more accessible legal branch.
Step: Implement an Attorney System
During the case of TEP v. Fedele, an Arbiter was forced to become an attorney for one of the accused based upon a series of mishaps (and my suggestion to the accused to get an Arbiter as an attorney). Afterwards, I realized my mistake but it was a bit too late in that regard.
In order to ensure that defendants are properly represented in future trials, Arbiter Pakitsk drafted up a resolution for the establishment of a Public Attorney Office to the Magisterium. The Resolution came into effect on March 28th, 2020.
New Administrative rules, mostly following the opinion of the Magisterium as set in the resolution, are now being debated by the Conclave in Closed Chambers. They are expected to go to vote soon. With the establishment of this Office, trials are expected to run more smoothly in the future, and without delay.
In the end, the reforms simply aim to make the Conclave a better place. With a new dedication to justice and simplicity, the changes being made should ensure that everyone can understand judicial processes, their place within it, and judicial functions they can perform in their positions.
If anyone has ideas on reforms or wants to learn more, please feel free to contact me as derp#9479 on discord, or my NS nation, Zukchiva for telegrams. ^-^ Stay safe, and have a nice day!
FA is Not Dead (Yet)
By Libertanny
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For the past few weeks, since Minister Libertanny came back from LOA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been experiencing a total revamp, reorganization, creation of new plans, ambitions, ideas and targets.
Many things changed and happened. In order to increase security of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but also to make role assignments easier, Discord server of Foreign Affairs went through a total revamp.reaction-roles, new masks and verification process have been added (using Pancake and Reaction Roles bots). For more intuitive and easier use, Foreign Affairs subforums (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Embassy Row) of The East Pacific Forum were reorganized by East Malaysia. New Google Documents and Sheets were created, to keep track of diplomatic missions, tasks assignments and staffers.
Foreign Affairs Policies, after vivid debate within Platinum Hall - Cabinet of Foreign Affairs (consisting of Zukchiva, Libertanny, Marrabuk, A Mean Old Man, Tretrid, East Malaysia, Sedequia and The Atlae Isles), have been liberalised. That action caused The East Pacific to reach out to new possible friends, resulting in establishment of relations between The East Pacific and NationStates | The Free Nations Region, https://www.nationstates.net/region=social_liberal_union and NationStates | League of Conservative Nations. In the meantime, Embassies with NationStates | Thaecia and NationStates | The Union of Democratic States have been estabilished, whilst Embassies with NationStates | Equilism, NationStates | Greater Dienstad, https://www.nationstates.net/region=europe and NationStates | Gay were closed.
Survey in a form of Google Forms was created, in order to analyze opinion of TEP’s friends in several areas. As of now, a total of 7 regions rated cooperation between The East Pacific and their respective regions 9/10 or higher, namely: (1) https://www.nationstates.net/region=the_pacific [10/10], (2) NationStates | 10000 Islands [10/10], (3) NationStates | The Free Nations Region [10/10], (4) NationStates | Eientei Gensokyo [10/10], (5) NationStates | Thaecia [9,67/10], (6) NationStates | The West Pacific [9,67/10], (7) NationStates | Balder [9/10].
“The East Pacific seemed quite friendly and open-armed just from my first interactions with a few of its members. The Foreign Affairs Department has been especially cordial to foreigners, and I look forward to meeting more people from TEP” - comments NationStates | The Nihilistic Pity Pit of Terranihil, Director of Foreign Affairs of NationStates | League of Conservative Nations.
“We were very interested to say the least when we found out that TEP was considering relations with our region. It’s not everyday a GCR even talks to a UCR. The FA Ministry has been very friendly and reminds me of the ministry I’ve been building for years here in there SLU. I look forward to continue building relations with TEP and have our members get to know each other.” - says NationStates | The All-Saints Paradise of Goncar, Minister of Foreign Affairs of https://www.nationstates.net/region=social_liberal_union.
“Our Experience with The East Pacific has been great so far. They are very friendly and are actually pretty dedicated towards the regions having consulates with them compared to other GCRs. Their Foreign Minister Serge is doing a fantastic job with the consulates and Consul Aivintis (TEP’s Consul to FNR) is very active, dedicated and friendly.” - comments NationStates | The United Nations of South Asians, Vice President of NationStates | The Free Nations Region.
But that’s not the end. Ministry of Foreign Affairs has started recruitment, in order to begin a new era of this body - the new form of organization and hierarchy. In the same time, talks within Cabinet of Executive Government and Platinum Hall of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, regarding a new project, have been very vivid. Hopefully, we will be able to share more details in upcoming releases of EPNS.
The Conspiracy behind Pacific-Con
By Inquisitive Examinations
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Note: The following is a work of satire and does not represent the views of The East Pacific.
On March 17th, the Delegate Marrabuk posted an image of a spiral thingy with the caption “April 2020,” introducing Pacific-Con, a gathering of the five Pacific regions, with speakers and events for gameplayers and roleplayers alike. It seems innocuous, but there’s more that’s hidden under the surface.
The five feeders are very large and very diverse, but that diversity presents a huge challenge for unity. Something about “ardee,” I guess. I don’t think it’s particularly important. I think they’re just finding excuses to yell at each other at this point in NSGeePee. But do you really expect these regions to come together when their varying perspectives on ardee? It would take an inordinate amount of friendship and interregional cooperation for that to happen, and events that would appeal to both sides of the ardee spectrum. Would Pacific-Con have that? I don’t know, I’m not much of an ardee man myself. In all honesty, The East Pacific should pull a Lazarus and just declare themselves neutral and opposed to all ardee in general. They all seem to be the subversive type.
Secondly, there’s “arpee.” What even is arpee? In The East Pacific, the people on the forum and the people on the ol’ arembee have two different arpee sectors, whatever that means. All I know is that means my messages on the arembee won’t be seen by anyone. If The East Pacific can’t even agree what arpee is, how will five different regions get together and do arpee? Are they going to merge their worlds together and make a huge amalgamation or something? Personally, I think they should just create a Minecraft server for the whole thing. And then people can play it after Pacific-Con ends and realize that they don’t need NationStates after all. Just kidding, of course, NationStates will suck us all back in.
Then there’s games. Games! The same 50 forum games return! If the Paradoxical event that The East Pacific is hosting along with The North Pacific and Europeia has taught us anything, it’s that NationStates players cannot count in order to save their lives. There’s just something about the game that affects people’s ability to count. But how, and why?
And here’s where I’m getting to the point. Let me ask again, given all these challenges, why would representatives from all five of the Pacific regions plot together and bring us all together? The cabal that runs Pacific-Con clearly doesn’t care about ardee, arpee, or games. It’s just a ploy for what they really want.
They’ve been bribed by Max Barry to advertise his new book. You’ve seen the ads all over NationStates (unless you have a Postmaster-General account, in which case you’ve been scammed into giving Max money). Max Barry shamelessly advertising his new book, like when he created NationStates to sell Jennifer Government? You see, due to the troubling times that the crooked editors have forced me not to name, Max is having trouble selling his book in physical stores due to them being closed. On his website, he says that “the best kind of promotion now, obviously, is online promotion.” His newest book is about humans coming together to face an alien threat. Does that mean that NationStates is about to be attacked by aliens? Who knows, that might be the April Fool’s event this year. But where else is a better place to advertise it than an event where five unlikely regions come together? Perhaps that’s what all the arpee and ardee is about. Pacific-Con will be the epitome of the consumer culture that Jennifer Government was criticizing all along.
But that’s not even the worst part. The new book, which is named Providence, is clearly named after the Eye of Providence, which you will know as the Illuminati symbol. The same eye that was on Jennifer Government! This proves, without a doubt, that the cabal that runs the feeders and all the major, large regions is not the Rahls, but the Illuminati. And they have sponsored the book for this very reason. I bet Max Barry is one of them, using his influence to lure us all into this allure of a game and trap us in this political simulator.
Through my investigative skills, I have determined that Pacific-Con is a scam run by the Illuminati, which controls a large chunk of NationStates to sell Max Barry’s newest book to make money. Whatever you do, do not join Pacific-Con and do not join the Discord server when it comes out. Stay inside and answer your issues and farm cards in peace.
I mean, hell, even Todd McCloud is there. Never trust the fox. He’ll try to sell you his books.