The Foreign Farce

Abstract (for those who don't like to read): The GCRs were once thriving, locally-run superpowers, each one with its own community and identity. As time weakened them, they brought in foreigners to fill posts in their governments; before long, our regions were regarded as a sort of public property by the rest of the world and became the primary target of the "cosmopolitan" movement's influence-hoarding agenda. Our regions have been vote-piled, manipulated, and betrayed by this "cosmopolitan" foe; it is time for the local and loyal denizens of The East Pacific and of the GCRs as a whole to band together and isolate our governments from those abroad who would threaten our sovereignty.

For years now the democratic GCRs have been regarded by the outside world as the equivalent of public property. Citizenship is given out freely to practically anyone who seeks it and the ability of foreign organizations to enter and meddle with our governments is utterly unchecked in a number of Pacific states. The East Pacific recently altered some of its laws and established some regulations to help keep the region from being seized from its rightful, local stewards, though this has not been enough to completely secure our sovereignty entirely. Citizenship is still available to outsiders, who, through the abuse of our benevolent system, have the ability to choose our World Assembly delegate, attain positions of power within our government, and drag our region down paths that its true and loyal denizens would rather not follow.

Some of you would argue that non-WA nations have a right to citizenship; they are members of the region and they deserve to have a say in how it functions. Do they really? How easy was it for you to create a nation? It could, realistically, have taken you less than a minute if you did not care about its in-game statistics. Registering in the region's forum is a breeze and ratifying the Concordat took virtually no effort whatsoever (and could easily be done in vain). All you have to do to keep your nation alive is log in once every 28 days (or even more infrequently, depending on your nation's settings). This is all that a person must do to enter our government whilst hoarding their WA influence, their loyalty, and almost all of their activity elsewhere.

There are over four thousand non-WA nations in The East Pacific and there is little doubt in my mind that the vast majority of them are puppet states of WA nations holed up elsewhere. Of course, I cannot be entirely certain of this; but is it not also this ambiguity which makes handing citizenship to these nations especially dangerous? How can we know if a non-WA member nation in our government is not secretly participating in a foreign region or organization and waiting to influence our politics to forward a foreign agenda? How can we tell if they are not members of a hostile force hiding within our borders? We can work with what little IP information we are provided to prevent these people from hindering the sovereign practices of our administration, but that is hardly a bulletproof precaution. The fact of the matter is that we cannot know who is who and what their aims are until it is too late to stop them. We also cannot afford to give these nations the benefit of the doubt.

Even if none of this is the case and most of these foreigners are harmless, what right do they have to influence our politics without truly being a part of the great region we have worked to establish? We should expect them to make the same investment in this region that we are making. I too was once foreign to the GCRs and to The East Pacific specifically, but I realized shortly after I began my career here that to participate in these governments and simultaneously hoard my WA nation elsewhere was wrong. In troubled times such as these, every endorsement our delegate receives is crucial to securing his position in the region and to bolstering his influence and thus his ability to fend off assaults both foreign and domestic. Those who would deny our delegate their endorsement and who thus are not contributing directly to the security of this region should not be allowed to participate in the government of which that is its primary concern.

Now you might ask me: what of those who supposedly have ideological qualms with participating in the World Assembly? Quite simply, these members must overlook this problem with the institution and either join or create a puppet state that joins; they may disagree with the processes of the General Assembly and/or Security Council, but they have a duty to their region to endorse its delegate and bolster its security against hostile takeover. The World Assembly is not simply the host of two international political bodies; it is the tool that we must use to protect our regions from those that would threaten its stability. Even Gatesville, in its perpetual opposition to the UN and now to the World Assembly, has acknowledged this fact; without joining the institution and thus having WA influence to throw around (and to use against the WA itself, in certain instances), Gatesville would never have achieved the renown it retains today. There is no excuse to refuse to join, and I suspect that many who claim to be doing so on ideological grounds are simply lying in attempts to hide their true identity and their foreign-bound loyalties from our governments.

The Foreign Farce

There are a few events in particular within the GCRs that connect to this topic and that have bothered me especially. When TITO appointed me the election commissioner for Osiris in the region's earliest days, proponents of the R/D game expected me to allow them to influence the establishment of this new region while they maintained practically no presence in it whatsoever. They were outraged when I said "no" and tried to label me some sort of oppressive 10kI henchman. I held my ground and forced them to bring WA nations into the region. This did not stop all of them from entering the region and trying to pull it in one direction or another (and subsequently leaving after the completion of the election), but it did prevent a number of them from doing this.

On another occasion, formerly absent members of the UDL with no WA investment whatsoever in the feeder region appeared in The South Pacific to stack a vote on a treaty with The New Inquisition when there were very obvious conflicts-of-interest at play.

Before my recent hiatus (January 2013 - May 2013), there was the madness in The North Pacific during the region's vote on "Condemn The United Defenders League." The following is taken directly from my post in the NationStates forum:

The closing of said doors is long past due.

Very recently, and possibly worst of all, was the discovery of UDL Lt. Ravania (whose WA influence was not invested in the GCR he betrayed) to be leaking information from the private forums of the North Pacific Army to UDL command, which then tried to use this information to influence the government of TNP. Amusingly, I was supposedly in charge of the UDL's Intel department at this time. As it turns out, Unibot was doing my job behind my back the entire time. He recruited me to that position, I suspect, to collect me as some sort of trophy; I willingly played into this when I accepted the job, mainly out of curiosity and boredom. After a few weeks of trying (unsuccessfully) to find agents within the UDL's dysfunctional ranks, I decided I would simply continue Eluvatar's work (or lack thereof). If nothing else, my brief stint as the UDL's Head of Intel allowed me to witness the hilarious shambles that UDL Command was at the time and could very well still be. Ravania is a prime example of the sly "cosmopolitan" who should not have been allowed influence in or access to the government he betrayed, as are a number of UDL meddlers who have negatively influenced regions such as TSP and TNP to forward their underhanded agenda.

This is not to say that all players involved in multiple regions are bad guys. Our own Todd McCloud administrates a number of forums and holds various posts within the GCRs. I was an election commissioner in The South Pacific when I began this essay (though I resigned after the completion of the elections that were underway as I was writing this). Babiana, one of our former Magisters, is fairly involved elsewhere. Heronlord is involved in several GCRs. What makes us and those like us different from others? Todd is willing to help out elsewhere for the betterment of the other region(s) but does not make attempts to force some kind of foreign and/or ideological agenda on these regions or use his positions for irrelevant purposes. I'm happy to help TSP through its elections, though I refuse to vote in these elections. I've come to the realization that I do not reside in The South Pacific (though there was a time when I was beginning to feel as if I was a part of this intoxicating but destructive "cosmopolitan" dynamic) and that I should not be given the same rights and privileges as those who spend the vast majority of their time, effort, and WA influence within TSP. We respect the politics and the identities of the regions we work in, though I would welcome my own isolation from their politics if it meant removing the "cosmopolitan" worm from their governments as well.

The Position

Citizenship and/or all voting rights within The East Pacific (and within the other democratic feeders, though their legislation and their security is their responsibility) should be restricted to members with WA member nations within the region or WA member nations that are directly serving it abroad. Only brief and anticipated absences of WA status should be tolerated. Honorary citizenship should be given extremely sparingly and deliberately, if even at all. Voting rights should be limited to those whose in-game situation ties them directly to the delegate of the region and, by extension, the government that gave him his power. The GCRs are not public property. The foreigners who treat our regions as such and who call themselves "cosmopolitans" appear to feel entitled to their influence over our politics. This was not always so. In fact, this would have been unheard-of in the early days of the GCRs. The West Pacific, which was once a pillar of strength among the GCR community (and which has since collapsed due to internal strife, "cosmopolitan" politics, and as a result of Punk Daddy's flawed leadership), used to require nations to grow to a certain size and have a minimum post count in its forum before they could even think of attaining citizenship there.

What happened to this period? When did our standards disappear? To make a long story short: activity levels in the feeder/sinker regions dropped and, out of desperation, the democratic GCRs resorted to the NS equivalent of outsourcing to keep their governments afloat. This, as well as the overwhelming surge of foreign participation in GCR government that followed it, ultimately solidified the systems that prevail today. Even the most fleetingly contributive "cosmopolitans" now believe themselves entitled to citizenship and all of the benefits that come with it across the globe and justify this directionless and dabbling behavior by throwing the flaws in our systems in our faces when we attempt to address said flaws.

We must change this. We are at risk, my friends, and we must act. In days past, the feeders were locally-run and they thrived. "But we just don't have enough activity all-around within NationStates to do that anymore," says the "cosmopolitan." Is that so? Or is it just that you believe yourselves necessary for the functioning of all the regions you supposedly inhabit? Are you simply here to spy on us and influence our politics when it serves your irrelevant political agenda? Many of you who are not here for underhanded purposes and truly do believe in the "cosmopolitan" dogma might find (as there are, unfortunately, many of you in existence today) that settling in a particular region and focusing your activity there is more productive and more interesting than flitting about between regions and looking for scraps of activity here and there to engage in a distracted and ultimately unproductive manner. In fact, a number of you appear to have realized this; many who formerly engaged in the activity of almost all the GCRs have now narrowed their scope down to one or two, and the "cosmopolitan" movement that once seemed so strong under the wing of Unibot now slowly shrivels.

Let us finish it off! Unaffiliated "cosmopolitans," find your niche and settle! Legislators, locals, and loyal Pacificans: band together and remove the foreign farce from our regions, lest it make us a travesty!

The Weed-Choked Lawn of A mean old man
Always fighting crime -- especially youth-related.