In my previous article I outlined how blatantly terrible the misinformation propaganda from Goonswarm Federation [CONDI] (via their media mouth piece, Imperium News Network [INN]) has become. Despite lacking much credibility or truth, such misrepresentation still needs to be challenged and the record set straight. Today we’ll be looking at the “Traitor narrative” the Goons have been pushing.
First I want to clarify that when I refer to “The Goons,” I generally mean the leadership. General line members are no different than most other people in other alliances. They have their friends, their bonds, and relationships which they value. I’m pointing this out because their leadership has a way to galvanize their members into focusing their negative sentiments on some external force in order to distract from internal failings…usually by lying.
INN media is working very hard, pushing to name the current conflict as “The Traitors’ War.” Of course, nobody else names it as such. This follows in the spirit of Goons calling World War Bee the “Casino War”; yet another parallel reality narrative brought to you by the Mittani. The “Traitors’ War” name is aimed at a number of entities fighting against them currently but is primarily directed at Circle-Of-Two [CO2]. The basis is of course the story of CO2 defecting from the Imperium and siding with the Money Badger Coalition (MBC). The reasons given by the spin master generally range from “piles of ISK” to “RMT” to “wanting to keep their territory”.
Who am I to challenge this narrative regarding Co2’s defection? This is the part of the article where I have to make a decision. I either don’t give enough background and get accused that I’m not qualified to do what I do, or if I do outline my qualifications, I get accused of bragging. I’ve decided it’s better to give people the full information rather than try to avoid my detractors’ claims of arrogance. “Oh you’re bringing this up again” is going to be uttered, I’m sure. Well yes, and it will continue to be brought up as long as people attempt to misrepresent history.
You can read the full account here (Check links at the start of the article)
The tl;dr is that I was a diplomat in Psychotic Tendencies. [TISHU] on the MBC side. My position didn’t actually mean much of anything aside from this one thing: I contacted CO2, specifically their diplomat at the time, Da Winci, sometime in December of 2015 and established the relationship that would culminate in CO2’s departure from the Imperium. Since then my corp has joined CO2 where I served the alliance as a diplomat. It’s fair to say I probably had the highest level of access to both sides of the story as it developed.
The major claim is that CO2 defected for “The Lenny bux.” No proof is ever offered. When I was given the “Give us an offer in the next 24 hours” comment from CO2, I actually asked Lenny Kravitz2 to provide some funds in order to ensure the defection would occur. I mean, this was the Goon’s strongest ally that actually held their part at the front the best. Why not throw some ISK their way to make sure it happens?
[3/27/2016 7:44:08 PM] Seraph Basarab: Hey are you around?
[3/27/2016 8:47:33 PM] Lenny Kravitz2: I’m here
[3/27/2016 8:48:07 PM] Seraph Basarab: What do you think about 800 bil for Co2?
[3/27/2016 8:48:15 PM] Seraph Basarab: It’s part of the possible agreement
[3/27/2016 8:48:47 PM] Lenny Kravitz2: umm no
[3/27/2016 8:49:03 PM] Lenny Kravitz2: right now they have all of the lowsec powers and the vale front on their doorstep
[3/27/2016 8:49:06 PM] Lenny Kravitz2: and Venal
[3/27/2016 8:49:22 PM] Lenny Kravitz2: if they had taken the offer like….2 months ago probably
So no money was used to buy CO2 off like Mittani likes to claim. If Lenny’s not willing to pay ISK, I certainly doubt he’s willing to use real money either. And unless actual evidence shows up proving both in regards to CO2, all we are left with is the mad ramblings of Mittani. The last claim is that CO2 “took the deal to save their space because they’re cowards.” CO2 were aware of the possibility that Northern Coalition. [NC] and Pandemic Legion [-10.0] (known together as NCPL) would attack them after World War Bee (WWB) and were more than willing to fight them for almost 3 months, something the whole of the Imperium coalition was unwilling to do. At the end of the day, CO2’s defection had nothing to do with money or space. It had to do with one simple thing: Respect. Goon leadership talked down to their allies, undermined their capabilities, and treated them worse than the “BoB leaks” which prompted Haargoth to pull the plug on his alliance.
Of course the indignant and self-assured Goon leadership at this point will quickly claim that CO2’s success is owed to their membership in the Imperium. But why is that simply taken as fact? What about the numerous alliances that failed while in the Imperium? If success is owed to the Imperium, surely failures are too. Or perhaps Goon leadership would have us believe they are responsible for their allies success but not their failures. In any case Co2 was not the only alliance that left Goons during 2016. You also have SpaceMonkey’s Alliance [SMA], RAZOR Alliance [-RZR-], Fidelas Constans [FCON], and Executive Outcomes [.EXE].
Goon leadership acts like that girl that gets into a bunch of relationships, treats her boyfriends like shit, gets dumped and then posts on Facebook about how men are all scumbags. Goons literally are “the bitter ex” screaming “nobody would ever love you” as you walk out the door, complete with bitter tweets to follow. If it was just CO2 dumping you, it would be one thing, but if it’s at least four other alliances doing the same thing, maybe consider that the way you’ve been doing things is not the best. The simple truth is that the Imperium is a coalition that expects vassals and subjects, not partners. CO2 valued itself more than that and thus departed from them. No conspiracy or “dirty dark money” or narratives of child gambling is ever going to change that no matter how many times it is repeated.
Despite Mittani’s claims that CO2 would become feeble, weak, with no allies and eventually die, the opposite has happened. CO2’s loss of the Tribute region was certainly a hit; I’m not going to try to spin it as a win as some others would. However, CO2 showed that they would be willing to stand up to arguably the most powerful super capital capable coalition in the game. Because of this tenacity, CO2 was inundated with diplomatic requests even before our arrival to Sendaya. Alliances small and large were excited to work with CO2 from the very start.
On the opposite side you have the Imperium, who is more or less only throwing up token fleets to assist their Stain Wagon (SW) coalition allies after their “victory” at the start of the war. Even though they lost about half a trillion ISK in ships, the Mittani spun this as a victory because the two Fortizar citadels CO2 and Test Alliance Please Ignore [TEST] were anchoring were destroyed. Since then, the attackers have been making mostly unopposed pushes into Catch and attached regions while Goons have been welping Swordfleets. Mittani has also lied on the meta show about the attackers supposedly paying hundreds of billions of ISK to League of Unaligned Master Pilots [LUMPY] for citadels, a laughable claim. When asked by his own members how he knew this, the answer was that he couldn’t reveal his intelligence sources. Hmm…okay. Line members have also been told that “they can return to Delve” if they want to, perhaps signaling the end of any serious commitment to defend their SW allies.
Lastly there has been some misinformation regarding why SW is being attacked by CO2, TEST, etc. I cannot speak for all the attackers involved but as far as CO2, there was some internal debate. When we lost Tribute, our original plan was to foreverwar from Venal striking at NCPL’s renters in their newly acquired regions as well as drone space. With TEST departing to the south we decided to support our ally. My personal initial desire was actually to side with SW, having them serve as a buffer between us and Goons, while we hit NC friendly oriented renters/alt alliances in the east. However once Goons began placing large military assets in Catch and Mittani made it abundantly clear, frothing at the mouth about how evil CO2 is, that there would be nothing but animosity between our alliances. One of the main diplomats of CONDI did contact me late November and we had carried out some discussions on matters. I had no issue doing this and finding common interests. Sometimes you have to work with your enemies. Once it became evident such talks were futile at best, and that Mittani had no intention whatsoever to work in common, this was the message I sent out to the diplomat in question:
Seraph IX Basarab – 12/20/2016
I don’t believe your leadership is willing to negotiate any sort of arrangements in good faith based on recent information. Thus I would say I have nothing to discuss in regards to any of our future plans or interests.
That’s diplo talk… But in the common vernacular that translates roughly to “Get fucked.”
People often say to me “Seraph, if you don’t think TMC/INN puts out good content, why do you read it?” Quite simply because you can learn a lot about what an entity feels by what it puts out. This does not necessarily mean that everything INN puts out is part of some kind of orchestrated plan, but sometimes coincidences sure add up to an interesting narrative. I took some headlines from INN and made a thing:
:HmmThinkingFace:
The entire “Traitors” narrative is completely laughable and ironic considering Goon leadership usually mocks this kind of “Attack” when it comes at them. For some reason pointing out missteps and finding comedy in someone’s loss in EVE is completely acceptable unless it is at their own expense. Then it is a sign of some kind of malice. Every alliance has its own particular story set, its own narrative and so on that they give to their members. There’s no question about that. Pandemic Legion, TEST, The Initiative. [INIT.]; every group feels the need to put brick after brick down to build up a tower of their own. For me the pleasure comes in finding the tallest one and leaning on it until it falls over.
