Press release from The Syndicate on Alpha and recent events

[Valakias]

snip

 

Gracefully ignoring the part where Alpha was found guilty of smearing t$ in back channels and spreading lies to create friction with our allies in the months succeeding the war.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Valakias

[fistofdoom]

Gracefully ignoring the part where Alpha was found guilty of smearing t$ in back channels and spreading lies to create friction with our allies in the months succeeding the war.

uhhh well he did say hes been inactive

[Valakias]

uhhh well he did say hes been inactive

 

There's plenty of catch up info on the first page

[Boony]

Sheepy can confirm from my inactive nation which was about to delete today, I log in to see a log dump from my name after prefontaine messages me to ask about them. I see it and then i remember what it's about, it's a log dump from right after last war when eumir was handling milcom in rose and wanted to be more involved with rose. I guess I was discussing rose fa with the wrong person, This is a slack conversation between Eumir and I discussing how to handle rose FA and how to raise up spirit in rose cause of the demoralizing war we had recently come out of. This took 3 months too late to leak so I guess it's all good to post now since we are looking for anything that sticks. I have resigned from my position over 2 months ago and none of the things mentioned in the logs ever happened cause they couldn't mainly due to the over exaggeration of plenty of claims made in those logs, even at the time of this conversation I wasn't active and just talking with eumir to get him more involved and active.

 

 

As far as this whole ts-alpha show is concerned, you guys were very close and this is not how I imagined this relation will look months down the road but if this is how you guys wanna deal with the post war drama then it's very petty. Alpha helped the side it closely associated with, they didn't know who was the winning side or the losing side, they just went with the side they felt was more right than the other. tS was made fully aware of how rose wanted to deal with the whole vanguard issue and they even knew when rose was suppose to go in which kudos to them they took full advantage of in oAing us massively. I don't see how you guys want to gun for alpha now when looking back at the owf I only see constant alpha bashing. You want to roll them cause they chose the other side over you? If that's the only reason you have for rolling people than I am sure all our mutual allies will be concerned about this behaviour. We still haven't managed to conclude that Alpha was even indirectly planning to hurt tS.

 

 

As for the whole rhetorical you have managed to maintain during my inactivity, tS didn't demilitarize from the tlf issue until you showed up after tlf paid over 150 million in reps. Those reps were largely paid by rose since we recognized that what tlf did was an act that required reparations to be paid. Your alliance leadership ignored tlf for over 2 days and everyone knew tlf was getting rolled all the way in arrgh. The Rose-tS nap was still in effect and target lists were already made about bk and tkr attacking ve. When tim felt this was the wrong way to go about things right after she had stopped smearing rose in front of our mutual allies and friends, Booty had contacted her to seek a more diplomatic route. Rose itself was already involved in trying to negotiate vanguard's war and the rampaging raiding mensa was performing. So we honestly believed resolving the tlf issue peacefully while mensa issue is ongoing would help get a swift diplomatic resolution for vanguard. Mensa's reply to vanguard to end the war was to go treaty tS and get allies. After partisan came online and sorted things out, tim resigned and partisan settled in his previous position, everything was explained to partisan regarding the mensa issue. I am not going to e-lawyer my way into claiming how rose attacking mensa was defensive or offensive. Everyone in orbis witnessed it and is quite aware that Vanguard and Rose shared a long history since their foundation, even your own foundation. Rose coming in to defend vanguard from unnecessary and bullying provocations from mensa was in my own opinion one of the biggest things we have done. Rose has owed it's survival and it's loyalty to the membership of vanguard for their efforts in defense of Rose. For us to leave vanguard hanging in a time when they needed us most would be disgraceful on our part. If someone is gonna argue rose pursued no diplomatic measures to resolve this then I would say they are lying since there were over a week long discussions with not just tS members but other allies of mensa to resolve the issue peacefully. Rose in the end after a lot of diplomatic head banging, with the blessing of it's allies concluded that the best way to go forward would be to do a limited strike on mensa and no one else. We had good relations with sk and ve-ts relations were great, we had no ambitions to drag the whole circus out and when tS did bring everyone to the party, we called on our allies and friends to help. All i see tS doing now is posturing and diverting the conversation back to alpha when they were only secondary elements in the last war. The only involvement they had was after rose came to them for help. To claim there is a grand conspiracy to take down tS at the cost of it's allies is absurd and baseless. Diplomatic venues are still open but since we are posting everything in public now, let's make this clear here.

You ignore the fact Alpha told us, their allies, that they would be staying on Roz Wei.

 

You lie and say we oA in when we didn't. Our treaty was activated, yours wasn't.

 

You ignore the other countless lies Alpha has told which are present in Partisans post.

[Hooves]

I keep forgetting every time someone mentions that tS is using oA.. When their treaty was activated? I'm getting confused what type of treaty Mensa HQ & tS to which I actually had to go back and look. Can someone educated in treaties please explain this whole accusation of oA talks?

[Abbas Mehdi]

Alpha did mention they would be staying on Roz wei even to rose, after Rose started losing score fast and needed help when our upper mid tier were basically sitting ducks, we called on alpha to defend us against other alliances since they were the only alliance in our coalition that was putting up a good fight. 

 

The oA is referred to the 6 other alliances that attacked Rose who weren't treatied to mensa. 

 

The lies alpha told is what I am catching up on as we speak. Still not sure how most of it is not reactionary to the constant back and forth bashing happening already. 

[Valakias]

Alpha did mention they would be staying on Roz wei even to rose, after Rose started losing score fast and needed help when our upper mid tier were basically sitting ducks, we called on alpha to defend us against other alliances since they were the only alliance in our coalition that was putting up a good fight. 

 

The oA is referred to the 6 other alliances that attacked Rose who weren't treatied to mensa. 

 

The lies alpha told is what I am catching up on as we speak. Still not sure how most of it is not reactionary to the constant back and forth bashing happening already. 

 

Because there was no real bashing from our part, relations were sour but there were no plots on this side, we were pretty content with just dropping them and staying as far away as humanly possible from them. Didn't work out it seems.

 

Alpha was also our ally, they had an obligation by treaty to tell us they were about to intervene more on your end, we would have hated it, but we wouldn't have reacted the way we did.

Alpha choose an ally over another, but the issue here is they witheld information and lied about it. Big difference. What they did after that, its even worse.

[Spaceman Thrax]

Alpha did mention they would be staying on Roz wei even to rose, after Rose started losing score fast and needed help when our upper mid tier were basically sitting ducks, we called on alpha to defend us against other alliances since they were the only alliance in our coalition that was putting up a good fight. 

 

The oA is referred to the 6 other alliances that attacked Rose who weren't treatied to mensa. 

 

The lies alpha told is what I am catching up on as we speak. Still not sure how most of it is not reactionary to the constant back and forth bashing happening already. 

 

I'll summarize. iIt's a skill of mine relative to Partisan.

 

So you called on them to lie to us, and they did. That's pretty much the genesis of our conflict right there. Steve never took ownership for the fact that he was willing to put one of his allies above the other, and he has attempted to schizophrenically weave a narrative around the fact that he simply did not care to enforce the partnership we had rather than tell us about it upfront. The attempted coalition building came after the fact: we were utterly content to ignore Steve aside from when he was outright lying about our intent, but our patience in the last two months was simply not rewarded in kind. These logs were not our first, second, third, or fourth recourse: hence the fact that many of them are older.

 

Your own bias in this is clear from your own log. I'd suggest you play catchup on what has happened since. While your own viewpoint is clear irrespective of the truth of the matter, you may as well be making informed statements.

 

Edit: Vala snaked me, and was slightly more brief. Rats!

Edited April 21, 2016 by Manthrax

[jaguar]

Can you stop "he said, she said" thing and actually do something

[Abbas Mehdi]

So Steve's constant reassurances of no hostile actions and your own admission about our lack of willingness to engage in any hostile action is not enough to diminish the rather volatile tone on the owf then please do propose a more reasonable measure to sort this out. 

[Spaceman Thrax]

So Steve's constant reassurances of no hostile actions and your own admission about our lack of willingness to engage in any hostile action is not enough to diminish the rather volatile tone on the owf then please do propose a more reasonable measure to sort this out. 

 

The entire point is that his assurances mean nothing to us because he lied to us and then pulled the rug out as soon as he THOUGHT it would cause us to lose a global war. Do you see why taking him at his word might prove difficult...?

 

In terms of all that has gone on and all that has been laid out, and the comparative lack of substantial content in the replies we've received, I do not think it is on us to suggest alternatives and scenarios at this point. If you want to talk constructively though you know where we live.

[Avruch]

If you're really interested in rehashing that: the actual initial Mensa-Vanguard talks broke off at an impasse so there was no reason to believe raids would stop. You may have decided to stop raids internally after the talks broke off and after Mensa nations had started raiding en masse, but it was only after a bunch of nations were beiged and no communication of it was given so there was no reason to believe they would stop.  No one externally decided to attempt  a diplomatic resolution until the initial week of war was up and the threat of outside intervention by Rose was looming. Given other mass raids have been responded to with recognition of hostilities and weren't perceived as offensive declarations, it's really not as black and white as you put it. If you tell alliances that they are are subject to perma-raids if they don't sign with a top 10 alliance or one of your allies, it's easily perceivable as a de facto state of war.

 

I'm sure by now your policies have been adjusted for handling those situations, but if we're going to be on this subject, it's best to clarify. People who were in Vanguard don't have the OWF presence nor care to come out en masse against the posting gallery out here to constantly repeat this argument, but this has always been the point of view from the other side of that war. It's not particularly relevant to the current situation aside from Steve mentioning that situation briefly, but it's simply not as clear cut as how you were summarizing it.

 

It's clear cut enough. Our attacks stopped. Vanguard responded in the de facto ceasefire with a stack of declarations. Call it retaliation or revenge or a suicide hit or whatever, but it wasn't a defensive action.

 

And as for the comment about threatening NPO or anyone else - no one threatened "perma-raids." You don't see us out "perma raiding" anyone. We just bar raids against certain categories of alliances, and either those categories or post-war NAPs are the only way we prohibit raids. So no one was going to guarantee that NPO or new micros wouldn't get raided unless they fell into one of those categories. That remains the case. 

 

 

So Steve's constant reassurances of no hostile actions and your own admission about our lack of willingness to engage in any hostile action is not enough to diminish the rather volatile tone on the owf then please do propose a more reasonable measure to sort this out. 

 

 

I don't know about everyone else but I'm waiting to see signs of this promised demilitarization. So far it isn't happening. Did Steve lie? Have Sparta members refused his demil order? 

Edited April 21, 2016 by Avruch

[Prefonteen]

Welcome back to the spin machine Abbas. Let's have a look. I notice that you've been inactive for a few months- you might want to play catch up before jumping into this.

 

Sheepy can confirm from my inactive nation which was about to delete today, I log in to see a log dump from my name after prefontaine messages me to ask about them. I see it and then i remember what it's about, it's a log dump from right after last war when eumir was handling milcom in rose and wanted to be more involved with rose. I guess I was discussing rose fa with the wrong person, This is a slack conversation between Eumir and I discussing how to handle rose FA and how to raise up spirit in rose cause of the demoralizing war we had recently come out of. This took 3 months too late to leak so I guess it's all good to post now since we are looking for anything that sticks. I have resigned from my position over 2 months ago and none of the things mentioned in the logs ever happened cause they couldn't mainly due to the over exaggeration of plenty of claims made in those logs, even at the time of this conversation I wasn't active and just talking with eumir to get him more involved and active. 

 

 

 

Your log (especially the full log) shows a clear desire to have The Syndicate rolled and a bias against us. The mere existence of the log, and our knowledge of its existence, play a direct role in The Syndicate's decision to guard for further movements of your direct allies. We were correct to be on guard, given the receipt of other logs and intel outlining a structural effort to isolate and roll us *as predicted in your log*.

 

We should add that historically, every time Rose has squared up against The Syndicate, it was during your 'active' tenures in FA. For that reason alone I am wary of you and your leaks.

 

It legitimately does not matter that it was an internal convo, or that it was 3 months ago: It plays a par int and is entirely relevant to the situation at hand. 

 

As far as this whole ts-alpha show is concerned, you guys were very close and this is not how I imagined this relation will look months down the road but if this is how you guys wanna deal with the post war drama then it's very petty. Alpha helped the side it closely associated with, they didn't know who was the winning side or the losing side, they just went with the side they felt was more right than the other. tS was made fully aware of how rose wanted to deal with the whole vanguard issue and they even knew when rose was suppose to go in which kudos to them they took full advantage of in oAing us massively. I don't see how you guys want to gun for alpha now when looking back at the owf I only see constant alpha bashing. You want to roll them cause they chose the other side over you? If that's the only reason you have for rolling people than I am sure all our mutual allies will be concerned about this behaviour. We still haven't managed to conclude that Alpha was even indirectly planning to hurt tS. 

 

 

 

1. You claim that Alpha went with the side they felt was more right than the other. Their involvement on Rose's side is *not* what triggered our cancellation. What did trigger it was them breaking their word to us, as has been detailed time and time again now. You would do good to stop trying to put out a false interpretation of The Syndicate's driving motivations.

 

2. t$ was fully made aware indeed of how you wanted to handle the Rose issue:

- You wanted The Syndicate to stay out of the war and/or cancel Mensa

- You refused diplomatic solutions

- You pressed ahead anyways, pushing a CB which literally revolved around you retroactively escalating an isolated conflict which seemed to have been based on a misunderstanding anyways (as was admitted on the forums by MrHat and Mensa officials at the time. Should I get the quote)?

 

- Just a few posts up, I detailed how your (and steve's) interpretation of your attack on Mensa constituted a trigger of our treaty, and therefore obligated us to defend Mensa. That does not have to do with taking advantage of anything: It is t$ honoring its obligations to its allies. The oA's of select Syndicate allies was the direct result of your attempted treaty trap, again detailed prior in this thread. You're not telling us anything new here.

 

Our reason for moving against Alpha has been documented as well. Please review previous posts to catch up. I reckon you are not up to date.

 

We should note: If t$ had wanted to roll Alpha for their betrayal; we could have done so during the war. We could have voided our treaty (as we had every right to do so) and buried ourselves headdeep into Alpha's isolated upper tier. Instead we let it go and defended our ally in TKR by taking on a much larger UPN. Now yes, we did bash Alpha at the time because let's face it: We felt betrayed and Steve made it a point to ignore our members' questions on our forums, opting to throw sand at our coalition on the forums instead.

 

But I suppose most of that does not matter, as it does not fit in your narrative.

 

 

As for the whole rhetorical you have managed to maintain during my inactivity, tS didn't demilitarize from the tlf issue until you showed up after tlf paid over 150 million in reps. Those reps were largely paid by rose since we recognized that what tlf did was an act that required reparations to be paid. Your alliance leadership ignored tlf for over 2 days and everyone knew tlf was getting rolled all the way in arrgh. The Rose-tS nap was still in effect and target lists were already made about bk and tkr attacking ve. When tim felt this was the wrong way to go about things right after she had stopped smearing rose in front of our mutual allies and friends, Booty had contacted her to seek a more diplomatic route. Rose itself was already involved in trying to negotiate vanguard's war and the rampaging raiding mensa was performing. So we honestly believed resolving the tlf issue peacefully while mensa issue is ongoing would help get a swift diplomatic resolution for vanguard. Mensa's reply to vanguard to end the war was to go treaty tS and get allies. After partisan came online and sorted things out, tim resigned and partisan settled in his previous position, everything was explained to partisan regarding the mensa issue. I am not going to e-lawyer my way into claiming how rose attacking mensa was defensive or offensive. Everyone in orbis witnessed it and is quite aware that Vanguard and Rose shared a long history since their foundation, even your own foundation. Rose coming in to defend vanguard from unnecessary and bullying provocations from mensa was in my own opinion one of the biggest things we have done. Rose has owed it's survival and it's loyalty to the membership of vanguard for their efforts in defense of Rose. For us to leave vanguard hanging in a time when they needed us most would be disgraceful on our part. If someone is gonna argue rose pursued no diplomatic measures to resolve this then I would say they are lying since there were over a week long discussions with not just tS members but other allies of mensa to resolve the issue peacefully. Rose in the end after a lot of diplomatic head banging, with the blessing of it's allies concluded that the best way to go forward would be to do a limited strike on mensa and no one else. We had good relations with sk and ve-ts relations were great, we had no ambitions to drag the whole circus out and when tS did bring everyone to the party, we called on our allies and friends to help. All i see tS doing now is posturing and diverting the conversation back to alpha when they were only secondary elements in the last war. The only involvement they had was after rose came to them for help. To claim there is a grand conspiracy to take down tS at the cost of it's allies is absurd and baseless. Diplomatic venues are still open but since we are posting everything in public now, let's make this clear here.

 

 

Regarding the TLF issue:

 

You and I had extensive discussions at the time, and we both concluded that the matter could have been solved in a better way. At the time, we believed TLF's payment of arrgh to be pushed by Rose (as TLF is commonly known as a Rose proxy state). This was based on a log circulating which showed you actively encouraging certain raiders to form up and move against 'anyone but Rose/allies' which defacto meant Syndisphere. A raiding spree followed that log, and it resulted in the Arrgh-Mensa war. When TLF was then found aiding Arrgh, naturally we went berserk.

 

Ultimately reps for our allies were negotiated instead of global war. The amount is debatable- we've talked about that and I agreed at the time that yes, I probably would have done differently. Now, when I took over we both had a deal and we were set to negotiate. At that point, the Vanguard issue was *not* a point of contention for Rose.

 

You however, noticed that we were not looking for war, saw the treaties lined up, saw your military capacity/advantage and decided to push as opposed to deescalate. You dragged the Vanguard-Mensa issue back to the forefront and called for Mensa's head. We refused to abide by that and so we escalated despite our following attempts at diplomacy.

 

We kept a white peace offer on the table since day 1 of the war when we stunted growth. You and I eventually came to a preliminary agreement (after 2 - 3 days), at which point you informed me you had to check with your allies. That 'checking'  took 5 days. You got back to me right after SK hit NAC and UPN"s entry was confirmed (and my suspicion, right when you know Alpha would be willing to hit SK as well), informing me that it was 'out of your hands now'.

 

The only reason The Syndicate and its allies survived that war was due to extraordinary military performance by each and every party involved. Numerically you positioned yourself for a victory via a treaty trap and you know it. 

 

Furthermore I should add some nuance:

 

A) The night you informed t$ that you would strike Mensa, you also informed us that you would do so alone, and that it was up to us whether to counter. We made it clear that we would. You brought Fark to the party on an oA. As far as i'm concerned, that makes you free game.

 

Your diplomatic efforts revolved singularly around making t$ sit down and let you roll Mensa. There were no compromises offered by Rose. That is your good right, but do not retroactively claim that you sought a diplomatic solution when you didn't.

 

C) Vanguard themselves admitted that this was a Rose powerplay. Pubstomper himself admitted that the war was offensive on radio. Yet here you stand, yelling old and already refuted half-truth.

 

Did you really just rise from your slumber to throw sand in hopes it helps your buddy Steve?

[Prefonteen]

Alpha did mention they would be staying on Roz wei even to rose, after Rose started losing score fast and needed help when our upper mid tier were basically sitting ducks, we called on alpha to defend us against other alliances since they were the only alliance in our coalition that was putting up a good fight. 

 

The oA is referred to the 6 other alliances that attacked Rose who weren't treatied to mensa. 

 

The lies alpha told is what I am catching up on as we speak. Still not sure how most of it is not reactionary to the constant back and forth bashing happening already. 

 

So you're saying Alpha was part of your coalition? Funny. They reassured us on multiple occasions that they:

 

A) were part of no coalition

were not involved in coalition channels

 

This reassurance was made all the way up until the SK hit.

 

The bolded part hits the crux of our issue though: Alpha's mid-war expansion despite their promises directly confirms that they were on Rose's side all along, and ready to intervene at your convenience. That directly goes against all Alpha and t$ discussed during that period.

[Spaceman Thrax]

Told you I was better at summarizing.

[Prefonteen]

So Steve's constant reassurances of no hostile actions and your own admission about our lack of willingness to engage in any hostile action is not enough to diminish the rather volatile tone on the owf then please do propose a more reasonable measure to sort this out. 

 

To answer this: Steve dragged this matter out in the public rather than engaging in diplomacy. That's his prerogative but our volatile, public tone directly stems from that.

 

With regards to suggestions: I have made my concerns well known to those parties who have cared to approach me on the matter, and we have been discussing the situation at hand at length. They know our concern and primary objective moving out of this. If they make an offer that take care of that concern, we have room to talk.

 

But your notion that somehow the onus is on t$ to enter in good faith diplomacy when we have time and time again been antagonized and when we have moved in order to meet a long-term threat to our security is silly. If peace is desired, then the parties who desire it will have to step up and try to legitimately fix it, as opposed to all the posturing we have seen.

 

Instead, Steve's first move upon receipt of logs was to run to any party who would listen in a vain attempt to rally alliances to his cause. He then ran to the public forums to gain the support of the player base of Orbis. It backfired, and now he is backpedaling. That's what i'm reading from his announcements.

[Roy Mustang]

Told you I was better at summarizing.

 

It's okay buddy, at least you got in there before the Dutch wall began.

[Prefonteen]

It's okay buddy, at least you got in there before the Dutch wall began.

 

 

Told you I was better at summarizing.

 

MY POSTS WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU IN A BLAZE OF GLORY

[Etgfrog]

Both alliances involved are doing this because they don't want to be viewed as the aggressor. While I don't think syndicate would be trying to seek reparations if a war was to break out and they win, I am also fairly confident alpha is doing this to get them if they was to win.

[Ivan the Red]

It's okay buddy, at least you got in there before the Dutch wall began.

 

Runs in the blood. They have this thing for building walls to steal land from the sea.

[jaguar]

Both alliances involved are doing this because they don't want to be viewed as the aggressor. While I don't think syndicate would be trying to seek reparations if a war was to break out and they win, I am also fairly confident alpha is doing this to get them if they was to win.

Alpha doesn't want the war, if anything happens, it is because tS wanted it

[Avruch]

Alpha doesn't want the war, if anything happens, it is because tS wanted it

 

Aha, that explains why Alpha's score has been dropping! Oh, wait... 

[jaguar]

Would you drop military if you knew that there's an alliance gearing up to attack you?

[Kastor]

Would you drop military if you knew that there's an alliance gearing up to attack you?

but they've said multiple times that they would be dropping it...

[Prefonteen]

Alpha doesn't want the war, if anything happens, it is because tS wanted it

 

Alpha doesn't want the war *right now* because their efforts have backfired. There's a difference in nuance there.