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Hello Quinsonnia, welcome to Refugia! What attracted you to our region? :)

also have their been issues concerning the Calref Forums? whenever i try to open the page it says that the page may be a security risk and its been occurring for a couple weeks now

well as 4th president of the great United Socialist States of Mowly i be here introduce our great country (maybe not economically tbh) to the welcoming and respectful region of Refugia, and we hope that this gesture would be the start of greater cooperation between us and our comrades in the region to achieve a better life for our citizens and working to push the progress in civil rights, Freedoms, and economic growth (will we are trying to fix what the 3rd president Mahmoud done on cracking on civil rights, and i am talking about Mowly here) in the region.

#NOTE: yes it came too late but you know....... we got out of Civil War that ended in overthrowing the Sultan and installing the Transitional Government and then electing The 1st president saad hessan that died due to "Natural Causes" then followed by degar "temporary" regime then hurried election due to the pressure of civil rights movement accusing the regime in trying to horde power and suppress civil rights, the election ended in landslide win for the 2nd president othman mergani, who dismantled the Socialist state, but he couldn't win second term unfortunately (saying it in sarcastic tune), instead the people have chosen president Mahmoud Nasr as the 3rd President of Mowly, who didn't have a great record on civil rights, but he did restore the Socialist State!! witch is great to save the people from the dirty claws of capitalism, he died due to a heart attack that have been caused by excessive laughing at one of Mowly's greatest Comedians Khalid bogba's shows, and after the 4 day funeral, the temporary government started preparing for early elections were i President Fateh Al-Mohsen The 4th President of Mowly won.

I addressed this in the last cultural report, but I know you've been busy and away. We shut the forums down due to lack of community interest and wanting to focus on building up this region. This seems to be the most promising place to grow and make a difference. We might reintroduce the forums someday, but it'll be a while.

Then welcome, we're glad to have you ^-^

I might suggest that you work on a draft in the appropriate forum instead of just submitting one outright. It would vastly increase your chances of being successful.

GA: https://forum.nationstates.net/viewforum.php?f=9

SC: https://forum.nationstates.net/viewforum.php?f=24

What kind of proposals are you thinking of, Seven Seas? :)

Ooh good policy work. While waiting on the endorsements to gather, and while working out a longer-form document, have you posted it in the ideas thread in the general assembly forum? If you can get some preliminary feedback from the major players, you'll have a good idea of how much resistance you'll face once the actual thread is up.

Not beyond reading a few that already exist, I'm afraid. I'd highly recommend being familiar at least with the title of every one so that you don't step on anything that already exists, but reading them all would be a bit above and beyond.

They fall into very similar styles though, which is what you'd pick up with the reading.

Basically, all resolutions need to be written as law from the perspective of the General Assembly. They have to be mandatory and binding on all members, not conflict with any other existing resolution, and revolve around something substantive that can pass when it comes to vote.

If it helps, you can look at the writing style for this one, which is incidentally the last time an environmental resolution passed, I believe.

https://www.nationstates.net/page=WA_past_resolution/id=473/council=1

Dropping the draft idea in the forum is helpful when it comes to the technical requirements because law nerds, who obsess over everything passed ever, will know if something conflicts in your resolution before it gets marked as illegal on the proposal floor.

k m8

Sure, any Member State has the right to draft and submit a referendum to revise regional law. What sort of idea did you have?

If it helps, I've tossed together the votes that we've had so far in case you want to use anything from what we've done so far:

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=refuge_isle/detail=factbook/id=1316582

On my phone, so limited formatting on this dispatch at the moment.

I think there's a couple things going on in your message.

There's law that you set in your own country, like policies that you establish while answering issues, or things you make up in your own dispatches. That's more RP stuff than legalese.

There's regional law which, in Refugia, is here: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1200707

And it is set and voted on by Refugia Member States. A Member State is a legal term which means a nation that has been in the region for over a week and is a WA member unless exceptions are provided. There are presently 40 people who fit that description, seen here: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1307932

Another level is legislation that happens at the World Assembly. That is international legislation that takes place within their rules.

https://www.nationstates.net/page=un

Anyone can draft a resolution for that on their forums and anyone in the WA with two endorsements can submit that draft to vote.

And I'll be honest, at the moment I don't have any ideas for the GA because I already did everything I went there to do last time XD

A lot of the basic ideas are more or less covered to some extent. So WA resolutions these days tend to be more specific unless there's recently been a repeal-and-replace effort to free up the space for something sweeping.

I tried submitting a draft, but it wouldnt go in. I have 3 endorsements... help

anyway, vote for Active Environmental Protection On the High Seas

Having read the proposal, I'm afraid that as WA Delegate I can't support it 😅 sorry, friend. The main problem I've found (and I imagine the proposal will be declared illegal for this reason) is that it doesn't actually do anything to define or create boundaries for what constitutes as overfishing, nor does it make a solid argument for how that affects the environment. Therefore, it doesn't live up to the topic under which it's been submitted. All the proposal addresses is defining national waters and grants WA nations the right to impose inspections on ships that don't belong to them.

For the record, I think you have a solid idea behind this proposal. I think, to hammer out the details and refine your messaging, you should withdraw your submission and instead post it as a draft on the forum, so that more experienced WA authors can help you hone it.

I've seen resolutions get approved by 1 or 2 people and then struck down by a bunch of others later once more people get a look at it and realize problems. Not saying that'll happen to you but don't think that means your resolution is going to be put to a vote sometime because of Timhampton approving it.

I just hit 69 million population.

Giggity.

Sorry for the interruption, You may all return to what you were previously doing.

but I just got two more approvals on my proposal...

what's so bad about the proposal? :(. And there are laws defining and constraining overfishing. My proposal is perfectly legal. Do people just not like what it says? I thought this was and environmental friendly region :/

Literally no one said it wasn't. That doesn't mean that everyone's going to be lock-step with you on a proposal you came up with in twelve seconds and submitted with no collaborative help on from anyone in the actual GA community. I'm not upset with you, I'm informing you why your proposal won't be passed. WA legislation needs international consensus, most especially from the large regions of the world that have 40 times the power of Refugia.

You do that in drafting, not by abruptly submitting your idea.

so i'm a little fish in a big pond of bureaucracy... kind of disappointing. Not mad at any of you, just kind of upset with the system. For now I will stick with answering issues and honing my proposal righting skills and wait until I can do something.

There are significantly less hurdles to writing legislation that affects 100 people that there are that affect 22,400 (the current population of the WA).

You can make a 10/10 WA resolution, but that typically takes input from other people who have done it before to make a piece of writing that's bullet-proof.

Yeah, I'm basically comparing an amendment to the RRS to a resolution in the WA. I've been watching WA politics for a year and a half as delegate, and the last two resolution drafts that I've tried to do have just been impossibly difficult due to the personal politics of it. But in Refugia, how things run are up to the people who live here and nowhere else, so we have all the say.

This is our regional law: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1200707

Here are some past referendums to amend it that I threw together on my phone a couple days ago: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1316582

I gave you the reasons I couldn't support your proposal and was subsequently ignored. You're not going to magically change my mind through persistence and force, lol. I'll support proposals that I think are effective and work toward things I believe in. You still refuse to pull your proposal and instead draft it in the forum with help from other people who can help you make your case with stronger language and actual measures to improve things.

We all want better fishing regulations to protect the environment better here in Refugia. We're just concerned that your resolution is ineffective and not as concise as it could be. All they're trying to say is that you should've listened to the advice you asked them for and sought input in the forums. With input from others in the forum and input from us in Refugia it would increase the chances your resolution is passed. I think there is no purpose in this debate here on the message board anymore.

Baiting me simply isn't going to work, friend. I gave you reasons before that had nothing to do with this, and I stand by them. Your proposal is toothless and doesn't actually establish or regulate anything. It doesn't set numbers for what counts as overfishing, let alone provide definitions beyond what constitutes territorial waters. It doesn't set punishments for countries caught ignoring those nonexistent regulations, let alone punishments for fishing in waters ruled over by another country. It doesn't connect the actions it proposes with any actual environmental benefit or goal. It's seriously lacking in content and what's there is far from good enough to have an effect. Let me provide some examples:

"Any country can stop and subject any countries fishing vessel to inspection to make sure the vessel complies with international regulations. The inspecting country may detain the vessel if it has infringed on international laws."

Any country can stop any fishing vessel, anywhere. That's absolute insanity and will 10,000,000% be exploited by countries experiencing hostilities or aggression toward anther country. They'll stop their ship in international waters (because you didn't specify this was within territorial waters), spend ages "inspecting" it, and inevitably plant evidence of overfishing so that they can detain ships that don't belong to them and who did nothing wrong. The victims won't be able to prove they've acted within regulations, because the law never supplied numbers or percentages.

"Citizens of any nation are urged attempt to take direct and hindering, but not violent, action against fishing boats infringing on world fishing regulations and report the vessel immediately."

How will they know that the vessel is infringing? What will happen after this report? Is there any sort of investigation process the WA is supposed to engage in, or punishments for... the vessel's country of origin? the vessel's crew? the captain? How do we deter troublemakers from just calling in every ship they see? How is the organisation to which this report goes set up, and how does it actually police these regulations?

These are questions that 100% would have come up if you had submitted the draft to the forum first. And a thousand more besides. And you would have come out better for it and submitted a more complete and effective product.

It appears Seven Seas left for a region called Thorossia.

That's probably the best way of looking at things

It seems most nations are CTE at this moment D:

Still sad Ath is gone. That was a huge loss.

On a related note, I’d love to know how everyone found this website. For me, a gaming YouTuber (who I no longer particularly enjoy) made a community post mentioning it - and asking his fans to join the region he’d made. I made an account, but got the Refugia recruitment telegram and came here instead.

I’m still pretty new compared to a lot of y’all, but I’m planning to stick around

I discovered NationStates through a Minecraft YouTuber on one of his side channels. He made a joke nation where he tried to make it a pure communist nation and it made me interested in NationStates. I tried to find the actual video but I couldn't.

General information: I'm closing down the Refuge Pocket Dimension, since I'm more or less ending my obsession with cards. Anyone who is still using the region can continue to do so (which means Karteria, but I've ejected all of my puppets to kinda shake up the stuff I'm doing.

This was a game some of my friends had just discovered in 2012. And I sort of had no idea what I was doing, which was apparent immediately when I registered Refugian Empire and the name didn't make sense (who could guess pre-titles were a thing!). Skyvale and Nethergate more or less threw together a region so we wouldn't have to deal with any strangers and that's where we hung out for the next seven or eight months. When Skyvale CTEd and executive powers automatically passed to me (the delegate at the time), we were raided into oblivion, I dealt with it badly and was banned from the WA~ Wheeee.

I came back last December because I vaguely had a fleeting memory from back then as I was going through old stuff and I thought I would see how it went for a month or two, at least until the issues started to repeat. Little did I know that basically a thousand new issues had been added and there were seasonal events and the like. I felt more like exploring the communities on this site and tried actually making an impact on the WA. Eventually I got obsessed with cards and met some of the nicest people in the world there, and all of that is what's kept me around up to this point.

Here's a telegram I received from Kuriko, who wrote the current security resolution at vote:

"Greetings my fellow Delegate's. As many of you know, my name is Kuriko and I'm the author of the current SC Resolution at vote. I would like to ask you to please vote against my liberation proposal, since the invading force within Pars retreated from the region and removed the password they placed on it. Defenders are now in control of the region, and the need for the liberation is no longer there.

So please, vote against Liberate Pars since it is no longer necessary. Sorry for wasting your time on an un-needed vote, and have a wonderful day :)."

I have voted against as requested and I recommend everyone else does as well.

Aww, hi Cas! Did you feel the love we were pouring out over you and the rest of our fallen friends? :P

We've been downsizing a lot, recently. I addressed this a bit more in depth in the pinned cultural report, but essentially the site was shut down because even after the discord server went away, there was no community interest in the forums. Since we had a lot of other things on our plates at the time, we also decided that it might be better to just focus on growing a nice, pleasant community on NS, since we had a growing population and people were interacting here. For the amount of people we had actively participating in things, we were spread way too far and those active people were getting worn out 😅

If you're going to stick around NS for a bit, we could certainly use a helpful and wonderfully wholesome presence <3 same goes for Sam, since she hasn't moved from Osiris since founding lol.

Oh damn. That's a lot to unpack. Are the forums (specifically roleplay) archived somewhere, or are they lost to the limbo of the Internet's Elysian Fields? I feel so bad for being away. Maybe I could have helped prevent this. Whoa. I'm really shook to be honest.

If there's nothing left but NS I suppose I really must stick around. Is there any way I can make myself useful most immediately?

Damn.

/C

Hey gang, I’m back. Missed ye!

Ah, not the best, but we’re moving to better days!

Hey, Wu Nation! Welcome back!

Also, Virandon, I still use tumblr myself <3

I'm actually from France. Literally one of the two founding nations of the predecessors of the European Union.

Dude, I literally said there was a shift taking place in European politics.

To be fair, I did say that Green parties generally perform well in proportional elections such as the EP. Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, which indeed is a very strong Green party compared to others, only received about 8% of the popular vote in the last Bundestagswahl in 2017. In that same election, establishment parties suffered a combined loss of 105 seats out of 709 while the nationalist far-right AfD won 94 seats.

As for the 2015 elections to the Folketing in Denmark, though the Socialdemokraterne won the most seats, they only effectively gained 3 more seats, while the populist, nationalist Folkeparti won 15 more seats than in the last election. Even though some European states (not to say, but Portugal and Denmark aren't exactly the driving forces of the European Union) are currently dominated by left-wing parties, you can't deny that there's a general trend towards populist movements, both to the left and right of the political spectrum.

That sounded pretty condescending in context, but sure.

Welcome back, by the way Athidill and Wu Nation, you're two of my favourite people and I hope live has been alright while you've been away.