Hi folks. I'm proly new to most of you, except for Bjorn who's been around a lot of the same parts of micronationalism as me, and Fish who might remember me as the guy who was really grumpy at him about founding the OAM about five minutes after he announced it . Well, I told Fish I'd be keeping an eye out for what you're getting done, and so far it's not bad at all... but, er, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, yeah, I'm ari, Minister of the Interior of the Imperial Republic of Shireroth since mid-2008, citizen since 2001-ish or late 2000, I forget. Shireroth's an online simulationist micronation focused mainly on community, but also on fictional worldbuilding, micronational politics, legislation and economy, and general taking-over-the-worldness, founded in April 24th 2000 (we're having a ten-year birthday party meet in London on April 2nd-4th, and possibly another at summertime in the US!). Since I'm not an agent of our Ministry of the Exterior I'm obviously representing Shireroth in an unofficial manner here, but don't let that stop you from asking about anything you want to know .

I like what I'm seeing here! The OAM seems to have been pleasantly active for a good few months now, and the quality of debate and reasonable decisionmaking in the Council is quite high. Reading the MNN news feed earlier on I was a bit apprehensive about this whole rivalry thing you had going on with the GUM, but now that I've gone through your forum I can see you got all reasonable and mature about it when I wasn't looking. I don't really agree with all of the things I'm seeing, but that's OK - I'll be posting about my ideas in the relevant places later on. (it's nothing big, just stuff like disputing a few definitions in the micronational dictionary and tuning the openness of the forum settings a bit)

Anyway, yeah, since this seems to be the forum where people post about their micronations, I guess you can consider this to be the semi-official unofficial thread about Shireroth . I'll proly see if I can introduce the MCS and see if I can entice a few nations to join, too, but there's enough stuff going on in this post already so I think I'll be doing that at some later date. Just to make sure there's an answer to the obvious question: No, I'm afraid we're very likely not interested in OAM membership - I haven't actually honestly asked people about this, but the truth is we're very wary of intermicronational organisations these days, to the point that the last time I brought up the possibility of even joining the LoSS, the response was largely neutral or negative until the whole thread devolved into Khan puns . Furthermore it seems many of us have forgotten what it was like to have old micronations around being all disrespectful of you and not understanding your potential in the first place, so I'd have a hell of a time convincing Shirithians that there's anything worth looking at in here in the first place...but, hey, that's their loss. So, yeah, uh, hi!

Shireroth? Dear mother of God, no. MCS? Bwaaaaa

Welcome, I guess.

So much for a pleasant welcome...

Welcome! We do have some tweaking issues with the forums. They were only put up around a month ago, and there's issues of permissions, group colours, avatars, and other essential items

Still, thanks for fixing things up so I can at least post . The mysteries of phpBB permissions have been known to confound many...



Oh, come on, man, you can't leave me hanging like that. You know how hard it is to find people with an honest revulsion toward Shireroth in micronationalism these days? Even the Anticans, the Anticans who we actually really did screw over once, are just taking it everything we do in stride now. Some of them even like the really funny/embarrassing things about Shireroth, like our old ugly flag. So let's hear it from the loyal opposition for a change: You don't like Shireroth. I want to know why. Really, I do. I spend enough of my time not knowing why I personally do like it, maybe understanding your position would enlighten me about mine

Okay, you asked for it:

1. "Shireroth". Look at the name. Sounds like a bad addon for World of Warcraft, and is about as inventive as "Bananawick".
2. Your Flag. Definitely. I do not harrass people because of their monetary situation, and for young small micronations with one or two citizens that cannot afford a computer with the ability to run a hi-end graphic program like Photoshop or the GIMP, a flag like yours is acceptable. But where you claim so many citizens and such a great history, surely at some point at least one of your citizens must have possessed the GIMP and/or Inkscape.
3. You are Imperialist and not very democratic. Micronationalism is the chance to move something, to show the bigguns how it's done. And yet you choose to throw away that chance and become even worse than the Federal Republic of f*ing Germany. And believe me, it sucks here. Worse than you could imagine. Politically, not because of poverty or such. We are more or less walking towards a Fourth Reich.
4. Heard of the word seriousness before? Doesn't look like it.
5. Arrogance is another key word, but this time you don't lack it. It's rather superfluous! From all I have seen from Shireroth it is as bad as Tallini's doings, and Tallini has been diagnosed by an independent psychologist as to being narcissist and profilic. No that's not prolific. Google 'profile disorder'.
7. You are very inward and not a very social nation, when it comes to Foreign Relations. I have never once seen you approach a fledgling micronation and lending a helping hand. Need I compare you to a macronation, you would be the People's Republic of China: Undemocratic, blatant, and ignorant of everything happening in the outside world.

Dixi.

You know, I must have been spending too much time on #micronations, micronationalism's premier place for demanding changes that there's no chance anyone would agree to, since I really expected a more scathing review... but in truth I actually agree with you on a lot of those points, and not just that, but we're actually making changes on some of them precisely for the reasons that you gave in your critique.

I'm gonna take this on over a couple of days, posting about each issue separately, because I will need some space to make proper arguments about the things we disagree with. I suppose I could have just gone with a brief retort to everything, but you compared us to Tallini, and I don't really take kindly to that, so you'll have to suffer me coming back to be all reasoned about everything you said .

There's not really any reason to do these guys in order, though, so let me start with... number three: Democracy! This is one of the points I disagree with you about, FWIW.

Y'see, we have this system called the kaisership. The Kaiser is the supreme leader of the nation, with only some very minor limitations on his power. Who's the Kaiser, you ask. Well, since December 22nd, it's been Leto III, aka Jonas, a Belgian guy who spent a good while as the head of our legislature and as a duke, and who has been incredibly loyal to the nation. His Kaisership has, in my opinion, been characterised somewhat by rash decisions and some Kaiserial inactivity, but I think he's doing his best and has matured as a leader somewhat during the month already. The Kaiser before him was Aurangzeb (aka Ardashir, a pseudonym-using Brit who's been flitting about for longer than I can remember), an IMO fairly even-handed if Babkhan in style leader, remarkable for opening up the archives of our secret forums. The one before that was me as Gaelen III, an experimental roleplaying-based kaisership, with most of the actual work of running the nation done by Ardashir as Imperial Steward. Etc.. Each Kaiser selects their successor by means of adoptive heirship.

We have had dozens of citizens as Kaisers over our history, and they've all left their mark in the nation. Wyltheow I is remembered for the struggle for succession after he abdicated the throne without naming an heir (the usual method of succession is adoptive, though we do have a law these days to handle things if a Kaiser doesn't adopt an heir), but he also founded the Order of the Griffin, which honours and celebrates excellent micronationalists who don't have Shirithian citizenship. Aure I is remembered as an overreaching reformer whose attempts to change the imperial government (and their rejection by the citizenry, and repealment by the next Kaiser) might have been what really spurred the nation to adopt traditionalism as a significant point of its culture. Yarad I's New Feudalism was repealed in itself, but the county structure it founded still remains.

See where I'm getting at? I could go on talking all day about the things our old Kaisers - citizens who were chosen to be Kaiser by their predecessors - did. I've had the honor of being Kaiser thrice myself, and I can tell you, it's a unique experience. Completely different from the democratic nations I've been a member of where you're constantly struggling to get your opinion heard and your vote is just one among many. When you're Kaiser, in Shireroth *everybody* listens to you. You don't just get to move something and show the bigguns how it's done, you actually *are* the guy in charge. It doesn't mean that everyone will do everything you tell them to, but it does mean a hell of a lot. You've probably had to climb up the feudal hierarchy a bit to get there, but it's a rare case that a single citizen of Shireroth (i.e. someone without other micronational citizenships) who's spent a while making contributions to the nation doesn't get there within a year or two.

I move that Shireroth does a better job letting its citizens wield power, meaningful power that actually feels like power, than a democratic micronation with traditional separation of powers would. I yield the floor .

You raise an interesting point there. With regards to the model that I have been developing (Communalism), I have attempted to give individual citizens as much clout as is possible, by using a system of small community parliaments that have a significant amount of control over their immediate geographical area's wealth and territory, rather than just one or two huge National Parliaments. For instance, they can make by-laws that apply only to their judicial area, within certain restrictions.

The thing with this model is that the local community has almost complete control over their collective wealth, making it infinitely easier for the community to fund local organisations and projects, say a Transition Town group or a community owned wind turbine. As the parliaments are small, a person's voice is not lost in the crowd, and people feel as if they can actually make a difference. To use an analogy, a small canoe is much easier to influence than a huge oil tanker.

My personal take on the same problem.

Yes I also agree with that point.

The big problem with democracy in micronationalism is that most of the time there aren't enough people to make it work like a democracy should (e.g. political parties & a decent opposition). That's why when we started A1, one of the first things we thought absolutely necessary was to have a leading figure with almost supreme power over governance and the micronation to avoid red tape and ensure that things actually got done.

Come on Ari, next point

No wait, I'm still working on my reply for the first one. My time is a little limited currently.