Six Contentions

The Conclave Delegate Election
1

SEE ABOVE FOR SERIOUS STATEMENT. SEE BELOW FOR JOKE CAMPAIGN.

Hey gang. It’s me. Aivintis. Your favorite TEPer. You know, these campaigns are always so official. Let’s just have a talk, you and I.

I’m concerned about the state of NationStates Gameplay. I mean, look around you. Defenders blackmailing feeders. Raiders breaking ties with each other. Independent regions being caught in the middle of this Forever War of ideology, being forced to take a side or suffer natural isolation by taking a reasonable center.

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of TEP being driven from our allies by scandals and invasions and bids for power and influence over us. I’m tired of our allies thinking they can dictate what we can or can’t do. I’m tired of our embassies getting raided by defenders and our allies’ frontiers potentially coming under the threat of raider attacks. I’m tired of the Security Council being weaponized to target raider condemnations. I’m tired of our friends and allies getting targeted by raiders and raider-aligned independents.

The world around us has proven a toxic and hostile place. There is one solution. If I am elected Delegate I will repeal all our treaties, close all our embassies, and delete the Foreign Affairs server. TEP will enter into a state of isolationism. Furthermore, I will take steps to bar cosmopolitans from holding citizenship in the region. People from other regions are shifty and inherently untrustworthy. I will not appoint any Minister or Advisor who was not founded in The East Pacific and a continuous resident of The East Pacific for all their time.

This is not to say I will ban immigration. Nations may move to our paradise from their hellhole regions if they please. But they must endorse the Delegate and all Viziers and they may not be a part of my Executive. And, if I have my way, they may not be part of any part of our government. We need an age of TEP First. These untrustworthy infiltrators cannot conceptualize our glory and our supremacy. Their foreign ideas are poison, be they raider- or defender-leaning.

Our military will cease all operations. We are above the conflicts of petty GPers, and so we will not bother to contribute valuable endorsements to assisting foreign raiders or defenders in their operations, nor will we waste their WA membership holding a region abroad which we do not care about. All TEPers will keep their WA in The East Pacific.

Our news service will be maintained, but it will only be published on TEP forums, in a thread visible only to citizens. I don’t want any foreign subversives spying on our current events. I’ll also lobby to lock all our forums to outside prying. We don’t need nosy neighbors peering over the fence. What we bury in our backyard is OUR BUSINESS, god damn it.

In World Assembly Affairs, the vast majority of TEPers will be happy to hear that I will vote against every GA and SC proposal that isn’t a repeal, and for every repeal. In addition, I will put my WA Minister on the task of repealing EVERY RESOLUTION. Even GA#1. You can do that, yk. I know there’s no repeal button, but there’s a link to do it. GA repeals are easy, I’ll just have my Minister use the NatSov argument. SC repeals are more tricky. I’ll start with the raider ones because those repeals are always gonna pass anyway. Then the defender ones. A little tricky, but I believe we can get it done. The raiders will probably even help us. Then the rest - RP and issues and cards and whatnot. I’ll only leave one commendation, Sammy’s, and only because I WROTE IT. I don’t care about the other TEPer commends. I DIDN’T WRITE THEM.

I’m just a concerned citizen. Of course, the world will make me out to be a villain, like the last Concerned Citizen we had in TEP. But I’m just a simple, humble, loyal citizen. I’m just a little guy. And you all know I’m right, deep in your hearts. Because your hearts are green. And your veins are yellow. You don’t need to see a doctor. That’s how it should be. Because of your healthy green hearts, you all know isolationism is the only way to preserve our region. Let entropy claim the User Created Regions. Let conflict claim the other Feeders and the Sinkers. Let the Warzones fall. We. Will. Still. Be. Here. AND THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED INSIDE OUR PILLOW FORT!

3 Likes
2

3

let us defend our pillow fort with our dignity and our lives

4

real

1 Like
5

My heart is red and my veins are blue.
I will vote and it will be for you.

6

We shall build a great pillow wall to keep all of the raiders and defenders out.

7

Got my vote.

I didnt read 80% of that copy pasta but still got my vote

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  1. What is MGC and what does it stand for?

  2. What alignment is Europeia?

  3. What are TEP three closest allies as of current?

  4. What is Frontierism?

  5. What was the previous iteration of Carcassone and why is this region relevant to TEP history?

  6. How does Ministry of Foreign Affairs make decisions and what is the hierarchy within that ministry?

  7. What is cultural neutrality? Can you name any other region than TEP that supports this stance?

  8. Which region, during TEP coup, asked all its WAs to move immediately to TEP to help save it?

  9. Which alliance prohibits TEP from raiding allies’ embassies?

  10. What is the most stable raider relation with TEP - which organization?

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is this a competency test? gimme a sec to write the answers

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1… Modern Gameplay Compact, an alliance between NPO, TNP, TWP, Europeia, and Balder which arose in opposition to BOM.

2… Defender.

3… IMO, Thaecia, FNF, Alstroemerian Commonwealths.

4… The belief that inactive frontiers should be griefed to funnel their spawns to active frontiers and Feeders.

5… Not a “previous iteration”, just a project by the same guy iirc, but Tajitu, and because it had historically positive relations with TEP.

6… Very carefully. Kidding. The Inner Circle/FA Council makes decisions by group consensus and occasionally, an internal vote, although in recent times, the Delegate has asserted his supremacy over the Council more and more. Current hierarchy is Delegate —> Vice Delegate —> CMoFA —> FA Council —> FA Watch.

7… I fucking wrote the resolution, dude. Fine, I’ll explain it. Cultural neutrality is the idea that GP conflicts belong outside of cultural events, and the petty politicking of opposing states should not prevent the having of a good time in a festival or event. The Free Nations Federation supports this stance as well to a degree, as might Thaecia, but the Alstroemerian Commonwealths is the best example of it so far.

8… I don’t know.

9… 10000 Islands.

10… Either Lone Wolves United or The Black Hawks, but both were also largely beneficial because of the efforts and support of one passionate individual in their respective leaderships who has recently stepped down.

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Six Contentions

  1. The passive, reactionary appointment of Ministers needs to change. Informal staff structures only work with a driving force behind it. News has this. Outreach has this. No efforts have been made to acquire this for Culture or Education. As such, Culture is a sagging weight and Education is completely non-existent. This, I must note, is contrary to the Executive Act, if not explicitly against it. If we keep waiting around for someone to turn Culture or Education into powerhouses completely on their own without any prompting, we will wait forever. In Education, we already have two people, God-Emperor and myself, who have lobbied for educational reform. Neither have the power to enact it on our own. Neither have been offered the Chancellorship. It doesn’t have to be us, and it certainly doesn’t have to be me, but it has to be someone, because no one will do it unless the Delegate lets them.
  2. The RMB and the Forum RP need official ambassadors. After I was implicitly fired from the former position, all representation of the RMB community has been informal, through the advocacy of myself and Merlovich. Merlovich, of course, was the only one ever actually consulted. I simply continued to insert my opinion where it wasn’t solicited, because that’s the only way the RMB has ever been represented in the past. The forum RP hasn’t been considered in anything in a long time. Shadow has been fulfilling this unofficial duty for a little while, through their contribution to EPNS. There needs to be institutional representation. If Merlovich, Shadow, and I became too busy to act in these capacities, there would be no replacement. This needs to change.
  3. We need to stand in support of our diplomatic relationships. When The Communist Bloc and The Brotherhood of Malice violated the sovereignty of The North Pacific, we made no official statement. When The North Pacific and its defender allies griefed our embassy region, Warzone Trinidad, we made no official statement. This is not about legal obligations. This is about a duty to our allies, formally allied or not, and a respect for their sovereignty. We must stand in support of those who violate the sovereignty of our allies. We must stand in opposition to the poison of extremist ideology in raiders and defenders alike.
  4. We need a reconsideration of the Executive’s relationship with the other branches. We need more structure from law. We need a skeleton of law with which our Delegate can layer the muscles of tradition and the skin of revolution. We need direction. We need formal Executive Orders. We need formal transparency requirements. We need a more interconnected government.
  5. We need to project more influence in the World Assembly. We need to support and lift up fledgling resolution authors. We need to push for activity in the Heroes of Valhalla project. We need to contact allies to gauge their propensity for supporting our resolutions and their misgivings with them. We need an environment within our region where new authors can rise to prominence. Many TEPers remain uncommended. Staynes. Libertanny. Zukchiva. East Malaysia. Packilvania. They deserve recognition. Our region deserves its place in the annals of great deeds alongside the defender titans and the UCR region builders.
  6. We need to recruit from frontiers. Our Magisterium and our citizenry has supported this initiative, and our Executive has fallen short of implementing it. It is true that we are pursuing close relations with Frontiers, however, this should not bar our survival. We are declining in endorsements and WA members. We are declining in government participation. We are declining in fresh faces in the Executive. If we can maintain relationships with the Strongholds that recruit from us we can maintain relationships with Frontiers while sending out general recruitment telegrams. Nothing targeted, and certainly no poaching of existing members. API- and stamp-based tag:new and tag:refounded telegrams.
1 Like
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I agree with a whole lot of what you have to say here.

It’s important the right people be put in charge of ministries; without either a defined structure or an exceptionally motivated person in the lead, entire sections of government can and will flounder.

Education reform is definitely a must; as a relative newcomer to TEP, I found the government and forums exceedingly difficult to navigate. While, from a social standpoint, we have a region that is extremely active and welcoming, if we want more people to get engaged in government, then we have to provide them with accessible, understandable, and comprehensive guides and education.

And I definitely agree that TEP’s World Assembly Affairs have a lot of room to grow. It would be nice to see us put together Information for Voters telegrams and dispatches gameside like many other regions do, for example. Also, your words about the Heroes of Valhalla Program ring painfully true. I’ve put countless hours of my time into getting the program on its feet, but since Europeia’s WAA participation collapsed (though this is starting to improve right about now), the program hasn’t been living up to its full potential. A push in TEP to get both more authors and more nominees on board would be a huge win for everyone involved.

But, as much as I agree with, I also have a few questions for you:

You say that TEP needs to stand in firm support of its diplomatic partners. This is absolutely a laudable goal, but in a region such as ours which has cast such a wide net, especially when it comes to embassies, how do we stand in support of all of our allies? We have gameside embassies with XKI and LWU, TL&C and WZT, etc. there are many regions that quite dislike each other, and conflict can and has happened between them in the past. In such a case, how would you decide who gets our support, and who doesn’t? Or would we just remain neutral?

And lastly, how will you reconcile recruiting from frontiers with which we have treaties? For example, in the Treaty of Klunvorden between The East Pacific and Europeia, the following is enshrined:

“Neither The East Pacific nor Europeia will deliberately engage in recruitment from the other, nor from one another’s protectorates which have been established by regional law and communicated to the other signatory. Owing to the status of The East Pacific as a Feeder region, Europeia may send recruitment telegrams to nations in The East Pacific within 48 hours of the nation being founded or refounded. “Recruitment” is defined as the communication with a nation with the intent to encourage it to move regions.”

Do you intend to approach such regions with amendments to existing treaties? Would we make sure to keep certain treatied frontiers out of recruitment batches? Or something entirely different?

I look forward to hearing your answers, and I wish you the best of luck in the election.

13

Thank you for your interest and your insightful comments.

With Education, I did mention guides in Discord at one point, that wasn’t a main focus of my proposal. That said, I can see its importance, especially when we have informal lists of acronyms in the FA Council and I already moved Zuk’s Conclave guides to UTEP back when I was Chancellor. It’s something I think makes a lot of sense. We have STEP for acclimating newcomers, yeah, but more guides for specific positions or institutions, those would be key.

Also, I note with HOV, it seems the new TNP Delegate has been looking at a push there, which is nice, but commitment should come from all sides. TEP should lean into that push as much as possible IMO.

As for the questions.

  1. So I think with how we choose our priorities, that comes first with the severity of the event and next with the depth of our relationship. TNP getting deltipped was a big deal, but I would argue griefing WZT is a bigger deal. But if it was a deltip of TNP and a deltip of WZT, TNP would take precedence, as a treaty ally. And if it was a deltip of XKI and a deltip of Thaecia, Thaecia would take precedence, as a more committed ally. Etc. However, I believe we should only get involved when the sovereignty of our partners is directly violated without provocation. If it’s an R/D spat, a WA spat, or something directly provoked by an equally measured action, then I believe neutrality is key. That said, I don’t believe either the deltip of TNP or the griefing of WZT was provoked by an equally measured action. I think both were overreactions.

  2. Specifically with Europeia, I would absolutely seek an amendment. It’s only fair that, if we allow them to recruit from us with tag:new, they should allow us to recruit from them with tag:new. In general, as we avoid poaching and keep to tag:new, tag:refounded, I don’t see how that can damage our relations with, say, XKI or FNF. Their frontiers are already receiving tag:new from other regions. What’s one more? Not to mention, TEP itself has been extraordinary gracious in this respect. We let Sinkers recruit newly founded nations from us. Our welcome telegram directs newly founded nations to consider moving to our allies’ UCRs.