July 1998 issue

Table of Contents ** Cover Story: War With C.O.S. averted? ** Election Special ** The End of Cyberland? ** Fascism Revisited ** Cyberia vs. Rosario ** Site Renovation ** MicroParliament ** Sementia is Born! ** Our Awards

Some strange foreign policy challenges occured in the month of June. Possible war with C.O.S., vast intermicronational news, and possible peace with Cyberland are just some of the challenges that faced the Kerns Administration in June.

Actually, all these challenges are tied together. President Kerns sought dual citizenship with C.O.S., a micronation who sought to annex other micronations into its organization, and so signed on without acknowledging his residence in Cyberia. He found out that he couldn't dual reside unless he gave Cyberia's soverignty up, and he didn't want that, so he left COS.

However, President Pro Tempore of COS, Bad Dream, already knew of Ken, and decided to deceive Ken into thinking he didn't know. Then, when Ken left, he declared Ken's actions "treasonous," that Cyberia had been annexed and couldn't legally rebel against the "confederation."

The President announced the situation to Cyberia, and many prominent Cyberians came to his defense (although Rosario painted a picture of an unsupported President, which harmed the situation). Also, many micronations came to our aid, although one whom we never met listened to COS's side of the story and supported them in the pending "war."

Finally, the pressure on COS to end this silliness came to great and Bad Dream consented to private negotiations, which have ended in the President signing an apology which recognizes his mistakes and recognizes the soverignty of COS.

However, that wasn't the end of it. Cyberland got involved on our behalf, after trying to play the Switzerland in this conflict. They were attacked with an "ignore" nuke, and they retaliated by hacking into the COS homepage and "liberating" the country from Bad Dream. They finally returned the password to Bad Dream, although the damage to COS/Cyberland relations has been done.

War was averted, we gain fame throughout the microworld, and Cyberland's pro-Cyberia stance brought them one-step closer to peace with us.

Last issue, we discussed the possible end of Cyberland. In the aftermath of recent elections, it appears that the end is indeed coming, with a mass exodus (that was once speculated to occur here by this time).

The opposition, hoping to push Skinner Layne out of office, lead by the Natural Rights and Soverignty Party (NRSP) and the Libertarian Party, and furthered by a dissident sect of the Conservative government lead by Deputy Prime Minister David Oatney, found that their plan had failed.

Frustrated, and defeated, they gave up. One by one, the opposition resigned in disgust of the Layne government. Ceres and Oatney apparently were the only opposition leaders to stay, until Layne has a hissy fit.

Facing strong criticism over the war with COS, Layne decided that no opposition was better than a weakened one. He booted Ceres and Oatney out, as long as the rest of the anti-Layne forces.

Now, most people concede that Cyberland's "democracy" was a sham for an unofficial Layne monarchy, which has been furthered by Layne dismissing the government (and the Constitution). The fate of Cyberland is in the hands of Layne-appointed Executive Committee members, who just elected Layne leader.

But where did the opposition go? Many, mostly those who never joined Cyberia, decided to retire from virtual politics. Others, like Scott Rosen, left for other virtual nations. One, Matt Wilkins, decided to move to Cyberia in the effort of revitalizing the libertarian movement in a free democracy. Recently, he stood for election against Rosario as Deputy of Menet.

Cyberland's fall has come. And it will never be the same....

David McNamara and George Holland tried everything to disrupt Cyberia last fall. What we didn't know was that what they did then was not all. Now, we'll look back and see what they did this time to derail Cyberia.

They tried virtual and email bombs, and annoying us with an offensive platform last year as the leaders of the Fascist Party of Cyberia. Now, they have returned, as Independents (or Republicans), to threaten our leaders with impeachment, viruses, and more. McNamara, whose has tried running against Heather Moore (SP) for the Deputy slot in Bava, decided to give a staunchly Fascist platform calling her, amongst other things, a lesbian and (oh no!) a socialist.

He has a court order to not participate in Cyberian politics until he faces charges for treason, and rebellion. He has failed to do so, despite evidence from former Cyberlandian Tim Dunkin that shows him conspiring to committ these acts.

In fact, he has tried to have the President hold early elections, and even tried creating an armed militia and a provisional government.

The debate over the rights this time around was less fractious. The debate in December nearly tore Labor apart. This time, the only person advocating McNamara's right to rebel against the government is Rosario, on the basis of freedom of speech, and not the crime bill he supported.

We'll keep you informed of what happens at the Court, and if it results in reporting him to his Internet Service Provider.

The Menetian Governor finally went to court over stock fraud. Here is what happened and its impact.

Well, actually it started out over stock fraud. Now it includes criminal negligence, obstruction of justice, and manufacturing evidence.

How did it get to this point?

Well, it would take to long to discuss it all. Essentially, TDI and Menet were fighting over unions and other things, and MCG (a front company operared by Menet's Governor) decided to sell off it's TDI stock, but forgot how much it had, so sold ~35,000 shares. The President called MCG on it, MCG collapsed, and Rosario began a month-long campaign to defend himself over the charge of attempted stock fraud.

The President, wondering why the Governor spent so much time defending his actions, decided to investigate, since the fight had resulted in Thacker's leaving and the President's inaction nearly caused an exodus of PFP members from Cyberia.

Rosario, deeply annoyed by this, sued the President and the special prosecutor. The first for "guilt by association" over something that didn't directly affect Rosario, and the second for "blackmailing" the president. These cases and the time spent to defend his right to make them drew the country's attention off the investigation, until Hickey decided that this was obstruction of justice.

In his lawsuits, Rosario came up with evidence that was refuted by the alleged providers of the evidence, adding the charge of manufacturing evidence.

Also, full knowing attempted stock fraud may not be criminal, Hickey added the charge of criminal negligence for the bad book keeping at the MCG HQ.

The Court case was still going on at this magazine's deadline, but no matter the results, it will have an impact not just on Rosario's ability to be a Deputy, but on Rosario's presidential bid, and on Cyberia, for months to come.

It was badly needed, and greatly changed Cyberia's presentation. We'll take a look at the changes made to Cyberia's website.

Well, first, we got rid of the picture of the capitol. Another micronation said we pirated the graphic, so we chose not to continue using it. Second, we returned to the cyberian graphic of a vertical picture of skyscrapers (from above) on a dark purple background. Yet another was that we placed direct links for our forum and citizenship there.

The biggest change, however, was the layout design. Without Key's Graphics, the President decided to make a standardized layout for each of Cyberia's main pages. It included red title font with a lightblue line under it. Then, a paragraph of introductory text, and then a series of links next to a column of red arrows. This new layout made Cyberia much easier to navigate, and less cluttered.

Of note, the main pages reflected subject areas, which included: government, news, media, business, and politics. We moved the new ticker to the news media page, and the poll to the politics page. We also broke up the omnibus page of cyberian laws into several pages, to make it easier to find what you're looking for.

The feedback about the new design were highly positive. In fact, many people said they couldn't offer any criticism (mainly because they themselves couldn't do the basic design, let alone make changes). The President likes the new design, and said the only thing that would change his mind about the design would be if there were any graphics (such as image maps) that could be added to the website. Overall, it was a necessary and good improvement.

The MicroWorld webmaster is sponsoring an initiative called the MicroParliament which is designed to bring other micronations together to discuss the inherent problems with micronationalism, and ways to improve it.

The President and two others are currently participating in the interests of discussing micronationalism and other issues. We'll report the MicroParliament's results in our next issue.

Sementia, the second Cyberian spin-off, lead by former CP leader and PFP Deputy, Ken Thacker, was born on July 1st. The President already expressed interest in at least diplomatic relations, and possible a defense alliance with the new nation. We'll keep you posted on Sementia's developments.

Cyberia Today would like to congratulate Mike Key and Mike Jones for their tremendously great work. The Great Provincial Website Award and Great Magazine Publication award goes to the two of them for their graphical work, as well as their mastery in HTML. They had this to say: "We both want to thank you for the awards, and it feels good to receive recognition for all the work we have put into the sites." We thank the two of them for the great contributions to Cyberia and its growing web of homepages.