Diplomatic Conference Channel

[Tenacity]

I think my points here are being misunderstood, I do not disagree with what either of you have said.

All but one ship owned by the Junker's Union - the Midgard - are transport or freighter class vessels. The midgard will be replaced as soon as another ship becomes available for myself, but in the meantime it is a suitable security ship for kreuzberg and bornholme. I did not call this conference to debate what ships we should be flying, however.

I also did not mean to imply that the congress was 'declaring war' on anyone, quite the opposite. It is us - the junker 'factions' - who are the target of these as of yet silent declarations. My point is simply that we must absolve ourselves of responsibility for the actions of junkers who are not under our authority. Many groups, primarily the liberty lawful organizations, see no difference between us and the self-employed junkers who are causing these problems. They target all of us, or they target none of us, there is no inbetween. If they do declare junkers enemies of the house, it will be against every junker, not just those who are unaffiliated.

And yes, I realize that there are back ways into puerto rico for us, but that does not change the fact that we have nothing but a trio of weapons platforms defending the jump hole into that system from liberty space. If they were so inclined, liberty could destroy every one of our stations in that system with little resistance, as we have few militaristic vessels with which to protect ourselves. It is one thing to protect a junker station from the occasional cocky pirate, but it is altogether different having to protect several junker stations from the wrath of an entire naval fleet.

I am only trying to look out for the interests of all of our groups here. The Junker's Union is not having these problems as directly as those within Liberty our. We do have threats to deal with, but they are not what is under discussion at the moment. If we cannot 'force' a code of conduct onto those who fly under a junker flag, we need to - at the very least - find a way to turn the finger of Liberty away from us when they try to point the blame.

A true junker knows that the more allies or agreements we have, the more money we can make - whether it involves contraband or not. The Union does not allow the movement of contraband, but our agreements with Rheinland's unlawful organizations are still valuable to us, and still profitable. If anything causes junkers to be evicted from a sufficiently large area of space - such as liberty - many of our economic balances are likely to collapse.

I just think it's time we start looking at the future of all junkers, and what will become of us if events continue as they have been. I believe it may be beneficial to look at how the houses are viewing us, and how they have viewed us in the past - the change is not for the better. With every passing year they become more suspicious of junker activities, and more hostile towards junker pilots.

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