Things You Should Know About The “EDEN PTO”
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by Rod Damon
Things You Should Know About The “EDEN PTO”
There had been a lot of press released after the election regarding the so-called “EDEN PTO”. Unfortunately due to a few hundred Trojans on my computer I was not able to respond at that time. A lot of claims were put out there offering “proof” or “evidence”. I do want to set the record straight on a few things though. I will try to keep it focused on Belgium and the Free Belgium party. Both alliances have a history through the game world that can be cited, but this is not about that. I also apologize for the length in advance.
MYTH: The Free Belgium party used their US and EDEN backing to increase the EDEN share of congress to 50%.
FACT: After the January election, the so called EDEN parties had an 11-9 majority in Congress. The current election had similar results.
CONCLUSION: No real change
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MYTH: The Free Belgium party got more votes then they have members
FACT: Four out of the five parties received more votes then they had members. Elections are not just for party membership. The BfB party got 300 more votes then they had members, the Free Belgium got 250.
CONCLUSION: Both parties had the same benefit.
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MYTH: Many Free Belgium candidates did not have presentations so their getting many votes is wrong.
FACT: Of the 21 candidates who got 25 or more votes, four were from Free Belgium, four were from BfB. One of the Free Belgium candidates was a Congressman running for reelection, so had a history to run on.
CONCLUSION: Both parties are equal in getting votes to candidates without presentations.
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MYTH: The Free Belgium candidates had a lot of unknowns.
FACT: Not exactly sure how to quantify “unknowns”. If you look at the number of posts and belonging to the forum as a guide to determining being “known” and look at the BfB party, according to a list I ask someone to make before the election; 7 candidates were not forum members, two had never posted, three had less then 5 posts, and two more less then 10 posts.
Name - forum Member - # of posts
Manong Rizal - yes - 410
Jofroi - yes - 171
Mike Woolridge - yes - 34
thedragon - yes - 34
Hugo Lilly - yes - 27
Gibberish45 - yes - 24
Baab - yes - 22
Blejk - yes - 9
Elynea - yes - 6
Murena - yes - 4
Triskadecaphobia- yes - 4
Charles Breydel- yes - 2
Archoz - yes - 0
mattinounet - yes - 0
Batant - no
Blackshark - no
ego_zero - no
Francois Vandermeersch- no
General Melchett - no
LeValeureuxLiegeois- no
Mitschel - no
Peter Doombringer- no
Tung - no
CONCLUSION: Both parties had numerous candidates who could be considered unknowns.
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MYTH: Only EDEN is presenting players for congress, not Phoenix or Hungarians and Russians did not run candidates.
FACT: Based on my current review of candidates, I do agree that Russia and Hungary did not run any of their citizens as candidates. But those two countries are not the only members of Phoenix. Many of the BfB do have strong ties and histories with Phoenix countries.
CONCLUSION: It is not inconceivable to presume that the 600+ “Belgians” in Hungary and Russia felt comfortable supporting Phoenix candidates who may be claiming to be neutral.
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MYTH: The Free Belgium Party proposed “bad” laws like http://www.erepublik.com/en/Belgium/law/25169 - Maxing out the food tax
http://www.erepublik.com/en/Belgium/law/25221 - Minimum wage set to 200BEF
FACT: Neither law was proposed by a member of Free Belgium. The minimum wage law was defeated with support of Free Belgium candidates. The food tax law was repealed the following day with support of Free Belgium candidates as shown here http://www.erepublik.com/en/Belgium/law/25232.
Conclusion: While the two laws cited were proposed by a Pole and a Croatian, neither was a Free Belgium member and Free Belgium supported the repeal of the one law and help defeat the other.
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MYTH: The BfB kept its promise of not asking for help
FACT: The BfB got 415 votes in total. According to erep today, there are 694 citizens in Belgium. Keep in mind, erep’s definition of a citizen means a player, not someone with citizenship. Prior to election, ereptools listed the number of Belgians in Belgium as 492. But when you started to factor out the ones who were unable to vote because they were new or who were likely abandoned characters and dying off, that number drops to 222 (150 under wellness 20, 120 between 20-40)
While they may not have “asked” for votes, we should keep in mind posts like these; ”Phoenix votes go for BfB. So you want to keep Belgium free of Belgians? And full of Americans...” and “native Hungarians aren't live in eBelgium. We just vote for BfB candidates.” The aid may have come unbidden, but the aid was there.
CONCLUSION: If there were only 222 Belgians in Belgium, how did 415 votes get cast without outside help? Now the claim can be made that they were only countering US votes, but I was watching the vote count during the day. US votes were NEVER greater then other votes. I had made a post on the US forum advising people of Olv007’s pledge to keep the outside voters away and had advised people to watch the counts. They saw the numbers going up beyond what it should have been and responded. Free Belgium got 270 votes in total. If the additional votes cast for BfB were after the US votes, wouldn’t the 415 votes have been sufficient to defeat Free Belgium?
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MYTH: The shout of "The Party to Keep Belgium free of Phoenix" is proof of a PTO.
FACT: A shout is designed to get people on your friends list to take notice of something. In the case of an article, to get them to read, vote, and possibly subscribe. The majority of people on my list are members of EDEN. To get someone’s attention, making a shout like that is not an unheard of practice. Anyone familiar with US late night evening news is quite use to commercials that run along the lines of “There is something in your house that will kill your children. Tune in tonight at 11 for details.”
CONCLUSION: It was an advertisement to get people to read an article.
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MYTH: The Free Belgium Party is a group of EDEN oppressors.
FACT: Just yesterday I saw a comment by President Olv007 in support of legislation proposed by a member of Free Belgium. http://ebelgium.forumotion.net/congress-debate-area-f8/minimum-wage-change-t254-30.htm Hardly seems the work of oppressors.
CONCLUSION: Don’t let propaganda (and sometimes poorly written propaganda) give you the wrong impression. The Free Belgium party may have members from Belgium, the US, Poland, and elsewhere, but we are not here to take over the county. We may come from different places, but that is a strength, it allows us to be open to different views and come to common understanding. We are looking forward to working with ALL the people of Belgium and to help build a strong independent Belgium.
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I'm Rod Damon and I endorse this message
I agree with this.
lol oh the swing of politics 🙂
thank you for laying out the lack of any logic in the propaganda...
how much members of eden in the forum. 4 or 5 ?
Stop your strategy, put the confusion in a country. It will not work Rod. And for information, I joined the last minute because you had put 23 members on 30. Unacceptable thing.I observ your votes in the night, funny, a lot of americans in wallonia and flanders. Fews are working (i agree), the others are one as several dolls.
Make the complete list and after you can talk about it.
thanks
also, im sorry i didnt have my presentation up. 🙁 by the time i realized it on election night, it seemed kind of late, as well im not sure if you can edit one in. anyone that visits the forums could clearly see my passion for 'getting it right' instead of 'shooting first and asking questions later' of those who criticize me, for belgium.
And for information your list is wrong !
Myth: whether a group are a PTO group depends on what they do
Fact: a PTO is a group of citizens originaly all from another country, voted in by people living in another country
I said that some candiates got more votes than you have members, which is true, and that you currently have over 50% of your party in congress, which is also true.
I am not trying to put confusion anywhere. I am responding to allegations and misinformation.
Yes, you are correct, there were a lot of votes cast toward the end of the erepublik day for Free Belgium. Just as there were a lot of votes cast for BfB early in the day.
I believe it has something to do with timezones and when people log onto the game in real life. Nothing sinister about it.
Yes, Anyone running in Wallonia did not have to get as many votes to win. I am not sure how that is a criticism of Free Belgium though.
I have been making sure that the price of moving tickets has been coming down steadily in Belgium. This helps everyone by allowing them to get to the hospital to heal after participating in the Training War and it also allowed for parties and people to purchase tickets to move voters.
I can't take the blame that the BfB with over 50% more votes could not organize its campaign. If you want to hire me as a campaign manager, I would be willing to discuss.
As for my list being wrong, I know you are referring to an old forum that does not exist anymore. I am referring to the current forum, where today's Belgium and today's players are suppose to exist. How active one was a year ago has little bearing on today, and if that is all one has, it shows a disconnect with caring about today's issues.
daniecox
By strict definition then, I think almost everyone in our current government is part of a PTO group. And again, the Free Belgium party is not doing anything against Belgium interests and is working to strengthen Belgium. If having a different point of view or opinion is so scary, perhaps that shows a shortcoming on those who are constantly attacking our actions.
Fact: Belgium with Free Belgium is neutral and likely to stay that way.
100% agree with this article
VOTED REALLY HARD!!!
Ben ik het 100% mee eens
goed artikel
Good article
bon article !!!
CONCLUSION: It is not inconceivable to presume that the 600+ “Belgians” in Hungary and Russia felt comfortable supporting Phoenix candidates who may be claiming to be neutral.
But it is an assumption none the less, and the unknown BfB candidates DIDN'T WIN! The unknown EDEN candidates however....
Actually Gibberish, if you looked at the list and compared it to the winners you would see that SIX of the BfB who had no forum presence each got over 25 votes and were elected.
But don't let facts stop you from creating a new Myth.
The confustion before election is another strategy. You write a lot newspapers, but never you answer.
When you write an article, it's normal to continue debate.
Rod : strategy or not? we wait and see 😁
Actually Elynea I thought I was doing a reasonable job of answering back at things. Part of why I had been writing as much as I did.
I will be trying to clarify response articles like this one by using the silhouette shot above as opposed to new topics where I will use new pictures. I tend not to continue a debate in comments once it goes too long, mostly because I doubt as many people bother to read much beyond the first page.
Certain responses are still in the works, such as BLT and that may include an answer to some of the more trollish responses as well.
Regardless Rod, BfB=Belgians and Free Belgium=EDEN
If Phoenix supports neutral real Belgians and EDEN supports its own, who has the moral high ground? Seriously, when I lived in America I believed the whole "EDEN is the good alliance" hype but now I see EDEN is no better than their enemy
I do support BLT though, that is an excellent idea you have proposed and you deserve praise for it. I don't troll for no reason I actually believe what I;m saying 🙂
I want to make a long article as a reply to this but I fear it is quite redundant since it would just prolong the argument.
This, however, I can assure you:
IF WE, the BFB asked for help, then we would've swiftly won majority in that election.
Gibberish,
You keep trying to follow their lead though and couch this in terms of alliances. The Free Belgium party is not just the US or EDEN. Yes, many of our members are, but we are not turning anyone away who wants to join us.
You look at the work we have done, and no one can honestly say that we are not working for an independent Belgium.
The problem is there is a vocal group that keeps trying to paint the picture the way they want it and ignores things like facts.
The funny thing with EDEN PTO-ers is that they are in fact so stupid that they believe their own propaganda 😃
Manong,
I tend to believe you and Olv on not asking for the help. I find you to be straight forward and only slightly skewed in your perspective on certain issues 🙂
Olv, slightly more skewed 😉
But numbers are numbers and the votes that were cast do tell the story of support that did go to your party from outside.
Blackshark, LeValeureuxLiegeois and General Melchett are known members of our community. Blackshark often comments on IG articles and LVL and GM both registered on the forum.
It's funny to see that in the Free Belgium party, RL Americans have been elected over palodigon, a known RL Belgian.
I will admit that we had a little miscommunication with a few of our members. As Party President the responsibility falls on me. I had not clearly established procedure for handling candidate submissions and their approvals and had presumed people would do one thing as opposed to another.
Lol, I loled at your reply. Good one, but on a serious note, we shouldnt argue anymore about what's done. It's done... let's move on. 🙂
Oh, and Rod, please ask your voting force to vote for this:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/technical-guide-to-ebelgium-updated--1225307/1/20" target="_blank">http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/tech[..]1/20
^I think that's more important than our public squabbles here. 😛
Voting force do as I command 🙂
Don't confuse me for a bot master
The fact is that PHOENIX SUPPORTS BELGIANS. EDEN SUPPORTS EDEN PLAYERS.
Therefore EDEN are the PTOers and the 'BAD GUYS'.
@Rod
“ What would be the problem for you if BfB got majority in congress?”
I have no problem with that. My worry is the silent majority of Russians and Hungarians.
________
You didn't really answer.
What is the problem with BfB getting the majority in congress ? Do you think they are a threat for Belgium ?
The voters can't be a threat, only the one who ge elected can be one.
Where is the threat for you if you let BfB win the elections ?
Talions,
I said I had no issue with BfB winning a majority. I don't think I ever have. I believe I have been pretty consistent with my concern over Phoenix attempting a PTO.
If I am going to be on watch to counter 600+ Phoenix voters, I am not the type just to sit by idly. My party is here to help build up Belgium. Despite all rhetoric and propaganda to the contrary, my party's members are working to promote Belgian interests.
Why is everyone so afraid of that? And please don't use the same tired responses. Give me facts not myths.
"The fact is that PHOENIX SUPPORTS BELGIANS. EDEN SUPPORTS EDEN PLAYERS. "
Funny thing about that. BfB are not the only Belgians. Yet they seem to be the only ones that Phoenix supports.
quote Olv0075 hours ago -
.
"waaaaahhhhh boo hoo"
.
.
"The fact is that PHOENIX SUPPORTS BELGIANS. EDEN SUPPORTS EDEN PLAYERS. "
.
certain belgians anyways. maybe we should check the list of 'also ran'
i can understand why eden is here. Fews work well, but i don't forget this :
http://nsa14.casimages.com/img/2010/03/02/100302121541954830.jpg" target="_blank">http://nsa14.casimages.com/img/2010/03/0[..].jpg
Now Rod, explain me the interest of phoenix in this story ?
Do you know that : the president has the power to attack and to withdraw from battles?
congressmen only have the power to give nationalities to have more voters?
I wait for your answers. why do you really want the majority in our governement?
Only persons that you hurt they are the persons of the other Belgian parties.
heheh funny article
really funny
US go home!
A quote from a Belgian Congressmember of your party Ro😛
"waaaaahhhhh boo hoo"
Very mature...
Elynea,
The majority in Congress was never a goal. My involvement was based purely in response to a Phoenix build up and wanting to make sure that Belgium has a chance to maintain its independence.
Heidar,
I am working on it. Why don't you start getting your fellows to step up to the table so we can work out the BLT and let all the tactical Belgians go home
Olv007,
The emotional responses are always going to be that way. One of the reasons I try to deal with facts.
Seriously Rod, stop suggesting that BfB is working for Phoenix
You should either making an article showing us with proof that BfB is a Phoenix pawn. Which means stating clearly that Olv is working for Phoenix, that Manong Rizal is working for Phoenix, that Elynea is working for Phoenix...
But you can't because you know you will be ridiculous if you do that.
Or you could just stop suggesting that BfB is not a neutral and independant party.
Also, what prevent you to vote for a belgian party too ? you think that BfB is not good for Belgium, vote for res belgica then.
That BLT thing is just bullshit since leaving Belgium only depend on EDEN.
quote Olv007 one hour ago "make him stop! ;_; " but on to actual topics:
"Funny thing about that. BfB are not the only Belgians. Yet they seem to be the only ones that Phoenix supports."
i think this is an issue that should be brought up some more. thre isnt proof that we will show that makes this connection of some sort of collusion, its just all the pheonix people come out to shout down FB and only support bfb. like they have a horse in the race. causation.. correlation. meh, we cant be the only ones that see the connection.
but what cant be argued is how little the belgian administration has done, and how much FB has done for the country. youd think they would have initiative, unless of course, they are just stalling... for other plans.
"Funny thing about that. BfB are not the only Belgians. Yet they seem to be the only ones that Phoenix supports."
______
The best way to prevent a PTO is to vote for one and only one party. That doesn't mean there is any kind of link between that party and the ATO group.
Also, you didn't answer to that:
"Also, what prevent you to vote for a belgian party too ? you think that BfB is not good for Belgium, vote for res belgica then."
jason : you never answer to my questions : few american's want help belgium. Ok Everybody can work for the liberty.
Why the majority at the congress?
You don't see congressmen from phoenix. Right?
You know it's not phoenix that you have stop with your try, but good the other Belgian parties.
I had in the past funny messages.
Spanish asked me for an interwiew, I ask him why, he answers me because everybody knows that you are soon a president of peace. *_*
A the next time, a private message : fast, send your secrete army
It is a game and the imagination is very nice, but, i laughed a lot.
Maybe tomorrow, I shall be Colombo. 🙂
"few american's want [to] help belgium."
thats why with both majorities of congress we have successfully stolen the treasury and destroyed the country...
..oh wait
its the opposite of that.
-Yes, I stole your car but I didn't damaged it. I didn't even took out a weel or two. I even repainted it in another colour.
-Thank you, you are a very nice car stealer after all.
your broken english and example are wrong.
it would be like if i came to your house and left your car in the driveway but gave it 2 coats glaze and 3 coats of caranuba wax, vacuumed under the floor mats, and then put $20 in your pocket. thats what we have done, though unl may come and smash the windows in with a tire iron and then drive it into a pond soon. oh, and then have a wrecker pull it out of the pond and then park it in their driveway and take the 20 bucks i stuck in your pocket from you.