Ethnebdomon: the Seventh Union

To the free Matari tribespeople; to the overlooked, the disenfranchised, and the dispossessed classicists of the Federation; to those who have lost family, friend, and colleague alike in the plutocrats' pursuit of power: greetings from Verge Vendor.

Let us be brief, as we are at an important crossroads, and time, as ever, is of the essence.

Some few among us may be aware that we are in the midst of an important Presidential election wind-up. Those who are not aware should not be chagrined, because throughout our pervasive and ‘open’ media there is a deafening silence on this most crucial of elections. The Scope, along with various less well-funded independent media corporations, have yet to utter word one about this election, about your right as Federation citizens to determine the program and composition of the Executive Office. Let us not equivocate: this silence is not accidental.

It is in the interest of the plutocrats now commanding the Executive and Legislative Federate that the many voices in the margins of our society remain there, that the many disenfranchised peoples of our society endure their impotence quietly. So the forces at their command, be they media, militia, or industry, are turned to maintaining the Sixth Union of the Federation as a vehicle for profit, profit which benefits they themselves, profit in which we have no voice and no part.

As much as our continued campaign of direct action in opposition to those forces that co-opt our government is of critical importance to the well-being of present and future citizens, the asymmetric approach is only part of a grander narrative, one in which we must step-up to a greater role as commanders of our shared destiny. Therefore, a new and accelerated campaign begins in earnest today: we must mobilize the voting public in the most underrepresented segments of our society toward making a firm determination of self-governance instead of plutocratic rule. We all must be empowered to have our voices heard not solely in our local districts, but throughout the entire Federation.

It is for this reason that I relinquish all directing roles in association with Operation Slow Burn and Operation Velvet Rope to Calairis Abai. She has been a brave and vocal critic of the current administration, and as many already know, one of our most dedicated participants in direct action in the CEMWPA combat zone. She is capable and cunning, and will continue to direct the work which we have started. We are in good hands.

That work goes ahead. We must now legitimize the voice for national self-governance of the many peoples, Federation citizens, which have been cast aside in the name of bureaucratic and economic self-interest. We must entrust our peoples and our progeny with a Seventh Union worthy of both its most noble and its most humble citizen.

Onward in solidarity.

Regarding the Adaptive Response to Contretemps

To the overlooked and dispossessed patriots of the Federation; to the free people of the Tribes of Matar; on behalf of those who have given all for the sake of our society's return to the Constitutional criterion; greetings from Verge Vendor.

It has been a month of preparations, logistical transitions, and the recasting a more streamlined agenda. We’ve faced setbacks, and confronted them, bringing us closer to achievable measures of progress toward our aim. The central tenet of the Federation has always attracted the resourceful and the adaptive, and we continue to exhibit those qualities, as we must, while retaining our vision of a Federal society worthy of its founding principles.

While we were endeavoring to lay the groundwork for a more just Federation, there was a notable reaction in response to the FDU earning complete control of the CEMWPA combat theatre once again. There has even been a suggestion that, due to FDU dominance, sovereign systems should be 'renamed' in order to bring them more in line with the reality of Federation hegemony. Yet even amongst the raucous milieu of the capsuleer class, the fanfare surrounding this development died quickly, replaced by the grim recognition of the hollowness of the pursuit. There are those among them who see that this conflict has no value.

Perhaps fewer than we first expected. In our employment of the Velvet Rope doctrine, we miscalculated the FDU capsuleers’ patriotism.  We overestimated their commitment to the fundamental ideals of the Charter and Constitution, which is distinct from saying that they are unpatriotic. Our fellow citizens have been lied to by our own administration in complicity with CONCORD. Some experience an indoctrination so deep that to question the value the FDU truly provides the Federation is a treasonous act. The Velvet Rope was developed in response to this, to prevent the deaths of comrades who fought and died to perpetuate the control of the plutocrats over Federation citizens.

We have been hard-pressed to find CEMWPA partisans willing to embrace a commitment to the Federal ideal, and so we are in a transition where the doctrine itself will see a reduced role within Operation Velvet Rope. We will continue with our efforts to hinder the logistical capabilities of FEDEF along with the ongoing campaign to discourage and demoralize line pilots of the militia. We are reading the development of the situation and formulating reactions accordingly.

Operation Slow Burn continues in a throttled capacity while we observe the characteristically volatile market reaction to our tactics. There will be opportunities in the near future for more intensified activity along the front of market manipulation, and rest assured that we will not let these opportunities go to waste. The benefit to the overall program that is generated by these activities cannot be understated, and so we commend our comrades serving the ideal from within the halls of finance.

There have been some questions about organizational challenges and the structure of our operations, so I would like to address these questions directly. While there were some reassignments among veteran agents, there will not be a shift toward consolidation. Our organization, indeed the enterprise of our asymmetric response of direct action, operates best based on the decentralized model: it minimizes our disadvantage while delivering disadvantage to our adversaries, which raises another point.

Above all things, we must commit to memory the truth that our adversaries are Federation citizens, though misguided, who deserve the Federation that was envisioned within the Federal Charter. It is imperative that we do not mistake their passion for treason: our adversaries want to believe in a Federation worth defending. The militia crewman, the line pilot, the combat-zone manufacturer, the logistics officer, the station laborer; all these citizens have been sold a carefully-crafted deception marketed as a Federal ideal. It is up to us to reveal the deception, and through our program, dismantle it.

Amended directives are imminent, and we are prepared.

Regarding the Incremental Attainment of Progress

To the dispossessed and disenfranchised patriots of the Federation, and to the free peoples of the Tribes of Matar: greetings from Verge Vendor.

Word has travelled on GalNet that our compatriots among the Minmatar have struck new blows for freedom, with member corporations of the Ushra’Khan alliance enacting surgical strikes on Amarr slaveholding assets deep within Empire space, beginning a new push for the liberation of their people. Additionally, the Intaki Prosperity Initiative continues to advance their program of self-determination and resistance to unjust Federation policy, providing both security and economic stability to the Intaki peoples on the Intaki homeworld and vicinity.

These struggles are notable and worthy of support not solely because of their focus on the values of liberty and autonomy, but because of their successful application of direct action in accordance with their principles. While they act in their own ways, in their own communities, for the benefit of their own people, so too must we act within the Federation. Their successes will be the model for our successes, though our ends and our means are our own.

Our comrades here in the Federation have spent the past few weeks deploying our tandem programs throughout the systems apportioned by the CEMWPA, as well as in our most high-volume centers of trade. In that short time, our financial agents attached to Operation Slow Burn have acquired and sequestered over 2.5 billion ISK in Roden Shipyards construction assets, bolstered by an additional 140 million ISK worth of blueprint copies that have been destroyed. As the bulk of the remaining assets we control are components necessary to blueprint reproduction and research, we have begun to apply pressure to the cluster’s ship manufacturers and researchers. The resulting cooling effect we anticipate for RS’s profile within the military theatre will only be temporary, and as the market responds to changes in RS manufacturing, our strategy will respond in kind.

Within the operational area of the FDU and Federation Militia, agents attached to Operation Velvet Rope have distributed 26 containers of agitprop throughout 15 systems under the auspices of the FEDEF ticker. They have contributed to FEDEF materiel losses of over 200 million ISK and have engaged in the misinformation of FDU pilots with regard to enemy fleet composition and whereabouts. While our agents have suffered losses to their logistical capabilities in recent days, they should return to operational status before month end. The Velvet Rope doctrine itself remains in its final testing phase, and we expect to see chasseurs on hot sortie in the coming days.

With this humble gambit, we have initiated an overall program of non-compliant participation in the systems which have subverted the values upon which the Federation was established. Our actions in turn subvert those systems themselves, reversing and diluting their intended functions, proving their corruptibility, demonstrating the folly of acquiescing to the institutionalization of plutocratic governance. In turn, through the public estrangement of these offending parties, we make it known to the citizens of the Federation how our government has failed us, and call for redress of their dereliction of duty.

Direct action based on principle - our principle - as adherents of the Federation Charter and the Constitution, is the work that must be done. There is much of it yet undone.

Regarding the New Crepusculate Era

To the free people of the Tribes of Matar; to the overlooked, the disenfranchised, and the dispossessed classicists of the Federation; to those who have lost family, friend, and colleague alike in the name of our government’s ruling profiteers, I send greetings from Verge Vendor.

Like many of you, I have been in a dark mood of late. The pomp of the Federation continues unabated while the crimes committed in the name of her citizens go unpunished. The interminable game of bloodsport-by-proxy grinds into the abyss, as millions of the desperate and misguided face annihilation in the defense of pantomime ideals, ideals in which our government holds no faith. When confronting these realities, the intractable nature of an artificial stalemate where so few reap so much from the sacrifice of so many, yet further still, weighing the magnitude of the war machine which bears down on the cluster, one cannot help but feel powerless. Like some of you, I too have felt this, and my mind has turned to the consideration of grave measures in order to effect a change of the Federation’s course.

While we are at a dim crossroads, we have not yet reached the rubicon of ‘lesser evils’.

Arguments within the realm of direct action against the governmental bodies of the Federation, some which have been couched to me by comrades, are worthy of discussion and should be articulated at least in brief. In the interest of promoting dialogue between parties of like mind, parties who feel the urge to act on the formative ideals of the Federation against the present encroachment of corporate power, I will offer a few kernels which may be expanded upon as the agenda matures.

“If you’re opposed to the Federation government, why don’t you simply strike at their interests?”

A government is a body comprised of individuals, and the Federation set out, at least in part, to give all individuals a voice in determining the operation of their government. In spite of shifting and conflicting priorities as well as a wide variety of beliefs, consensus can be reached through application of lawful processes within the framework of the founding principles of our government. Yet regardless of the democratic format of member states today, as many as one half of Federation systems do not have full and total access to actual, meaningful Federal representation through the combination of adequate infrastructure and elected citizenry. Further still, the individuals now comprising the Federation government do not always represent their citizens: in an increasing number of notable cases, their constituencies are limited to the shareholders of the corporations in whom they are heavily invested and by whom they are chiefly backed. While this exploitation is reprehensible, we must remember that the individuals responsible are themselves Federation citizens. By extension, then, physical violence against the Federation government actually serves these plutocrats in a number of ways:

• Violence draws public condemnation and delegitimizes your ideological mandate
• Open-market replacement of destructible assets, when coupled with insurance and subsidies, leads to increased profits for the entities you oppose
• Advances the perception of corporation as victim rather than perpetrator

The destruction of ships and installations carrying Federation citizens is an unacceptable loss of life that serves only to isolate the agenda from the populace. The Federation’s real power comes from its people, and it is this power that we must bend back upon the government. Alternative to violence, I encourage citizens, members of the alternative media, capsuleers, and their associated partners, to seek out and expose those corrupt relationships between corporate interests and Federation policymakers. The proliferation of this information works to apply the greatest potential pressure we have at our disposal: public demand for justice and accountability.

“If you’re opposed to corporate influence in the Federation, why don’t you attack corporations directly?”

Due to the nature of exchange, investment, and acquisition, a targeted act of violence against the peoples and properties of corporations engaged in corrupt political practices would achieve, most prominently, harm to life and limb of Federation citizens, and secondarily, windfalls to the elites of these corporations as any losses are leveraged downwards against less privileged civilians. What’s more, for every strike against a major corporate holding, there are a hundred capsuleers willing to contract to their agents for their own ends. Once again, these actions bring about result counter to the agenda. There are a number of means of taking direct action against the corporate backers of policy manipulations and bogus representation, such as embargo, asset redistribution, and market manipulation. Taking these collectively, a concerted program to inhibit or destroy these corporations’ capacity to function with profitability within Federation space should be employed. Such a program is now in the latter stages of development. Alternate to this, I encourage the brokerage professionals within Garoun Investment Bank, in particular those Jin-Mei relegated to a less-than-equal or non-represented citizenship status, to advise their clients to pursue more long-term, grass roots approach to capital infusion, or to move money to more promising ventures elsewhere in the cluster.

“If you’re opposed to Federation participation in the CEMWPA theatre, why don’t you fight the FDU?”

The CEMWPA serves both to legitimize CONCORD authority and to provide Federation war profiteers with incalculable wealth, all while sending millions to their deaths. What’s more, militia crews are seldom the naval academy-trained professionals who comprise the administrative wing of the Federal Defense Union. Rather, those members that are drummed up, typically out of our society’s poorest socioeconomic strata, are lured by the promise of serving our noblest democratic and egalitarian ideals. The media servants of commerce are quite skilled in the selective distribution of this class of propaganda, and refugees in particular have been subjected to joint efforts in recruitment. Committing violence against the crews of FDU militia vessels thus also serves the plutocrats in a number of ways:

• Loss of life to Federation citizens and Minmatar Tribals delegitimizes your ideological mandate
• Open-market replacement of destructible assets, when coupled with Pend Insurance and CONCORD ‘loyalty rewards’, leads to increased profits for the same interests you oppose
• Legitimizes CONCORD authority, encouraging increased war profiteering and bloodshed

To recapture the primacy of Federation ideals throughout our homeworlds requires one to reject the legitimacy of the CEMWPA on terms of principle. It follows then that the course of direct action in opposition to the CEMWPA is a concerted program to undermine and disrupt the fundamental functions of the FDU militia forces within their theatre of operations. Such a program is now in the latter stages of development. Alternative to this, I encourage the young idealists of the FDU, aspirants to the Constitutional guarantee of liberty, to reconsider their involvement in a fraudulent pammachion contrived for the entertainment of belligerent speculators.

The Federal Charter guarantees that Federation citizens must be represented by a democratic government, but set your eyes away from Luminaire and Dodixie to see how many lack a voice at the Federal table. The Constitution guarantees for Federation citizens the rights of self-determination, just governance, equal opportunity, and a political corpus essentia. When consolidated business and financial institutions can impose policy upon sovereign peoples, that is a failure of both the government and the governors. When a citizen asks you, “don’t we have Dignity,” ask what of the official treatment of the Mannar states? When a citizen asks you, “don’t we have Freedom,” ask what of the Minmatar refugees wishing to practice their Tribal way in the only home they now know. When a citizen asks you, “don’t we have Equality,” ask what of the peoples of Mei-Ha. When a citizen asks you, “don’t we have Justice,” ask what of those multitudes who were sacrificed for the surplus of shareholder margins. When a citizen asks you, “don’t we have Solidarity,” ask what of the divisive media empire which both glorifies and deplores loss of life. When a citizen asks you, “don’t we have Citizenship,” ask what worth is it to be a citizen subject to fiat by dividend.

The claim of confronting the Federation government on like terms is disingenuous to say the least, but when one rejects outright the legitimacy of certain elements of that government, it is important to frame one’s resistance in both the proper scale and the proper context. It requires a targeted, measured asymmetric approach. To resist these forces for the sake of the ideals upon which the Federation is built, one must first embrace the spirit of the law, of the Federal Charter, and the Constitution. In so doing, the transgressions that litter the Senate chamber floor and the halls of Ladistier VI-4 become obstacles which must be rectified.

When we are viewed as an amusing distraction, they will call us harlequin. When we become a nuisance, they will call us turncoats. When we begin to achieve our intention, they will call us terrorists. Make no mistake, until the hidden will of those who have been wronged in the name of the unfettered avarice has been recognized and recompense made, we serve notice to the Federation Senate and Jacus Roden that we will not shrug from the pursuit of this vindication.

On to the work that must be done.