It's not about Egwene. I made a seperate sub-thread for you people to carp about my personal bias in. Shoo.

Yeah, shared by 99.95% of the population who are also outsiders. But no, why don't you tell me how the privileges of that elitist minority supercede the interests of the rest of the world that ARE outsiders.

How Egwene perceives it is irrelevant to the reality. I am not denying she has her reasons that are quite valid from her point of view. That does not make them right. It IS to her benefit to have the Tower united, so she can hardly be blamed for wanting that. I am saying that regardless of her wishes, that is NOT for the best. I can see why Tuon wants to conquer the wetlands, and from her perspective, she is not wrong, but that does not mean I have to approve of the effort.

You are missing the point. It is not about how well the WT weilds its authority, but whether or not they should have it. I don't care if they are going around being the most altruistic and charitable channelers ever. That still does not give them the right.

Prove that would not have happened without them! They didn't even get together until almost 100 years after the Breaking ended. The Aiel & Sea Folk did just fine without Aes Sedai help. The ancestors of the Cairhienin founded the city and established the beginnings of a nation without the Tower's help. Yes, maybe their Aes Sedai advisor was of critical assistance, but she is more akin to the private channelers or ruler-serving channelers Egwene so deplores.

Prove that was a good thing. And if it was, prove it would not have happened without Aes Sedai, or that it could not have happened with a multitude of Aes Sedai organizations.

You mean those wars where the Tower misused the human resources in order to carry out the Amyrlin Seat's petty personal vengeance, and they pulled such stunts as removing a sister from the front lines to work in the kitchens for a couple of years, rather than Healing injured soldiers, or fighting Trollocs and Dreadlords, because she broke a petty regulation? Normal people did the bulk of the fighting and dying in the Trolloc Wars. Who is to say they would not have done better without the Aes Sedai running things to suit their own agenda? And as for the aftermath, the Tower came out with an enlarged chunk of territory. That irregular border of their lands strongly suggests they aquired it in the usual way of nations aquiring lands - by scheming, fighting and grabbing it! This strongly suggests their role in those days was not one of benevolent nuetrality, but rather that they were right in the mix, plotting and manuevering for their own territorial advantages. And I would have no complaints against that, if not for the fact that they refused to let anyone else compete on their terms either. They are basically telling the nations "We'll play your territory and rulership game if we want, but you may not play our training channelers game."

Oh, the hell they did! After Ishamael, they are the prime suspects in exacerbating the chaos! They had both motive and opportunity. In the first place, Hawkwing far outstripped them in the providing peace, stability, unity and justice department. There is not the slightest indication in the books, anywhere that the Tower's assumption of temporal authority was accidental or filling a vacuum the way the BWB explicitly states Hawkwing rose. By all we have seen of the Tower, it is certain that they were just the opposite - grabbing at whatever they could with both fists, no matter how great a dignity they projected while doing so. Secondly, with Hawkwing having been their greatest threat (through their own fault), you KNOW the Tower was dead set against allowing anyone else to have such power, lest he turn it against them. 1,000 years later, Moiraine hastily reassures the Amyrlin & Keeper that none of her companions aspire to be another Hawkwing (yeah, that unity, peace and order and leadership against the Shadow are the LAST thing this world needs ). Anyone who slipped through Ishamael's implied machinations to come close to re-gaining the whole empire was no doubt whacked by the Tower to prevent reunification. How do we know the countries would not have settled down sooner without the Tower interfering to make sure the new nations had friendly rulers who were acceptable to the Tower's interests? Much is made of Ishara's wisdom in establishing Andor and making her alliance with the Tower, but she had to promise them her children to be hostages and brainwashed into friends of the Tower. No woman with nation-founding ambitions and a legitimate blood-claim to authority is going to so prostrate herself unless it was the only way to get what she wanted. Plainly the Tower was charging a high price for its friendship or non-interference, even to the woman responsible for lifting their siege.

I am not saying get rid of the One Power or channeling. You are as deluded as the Aes Sedai, being unable to see the Power existing without the White Tower. Those myriad organizations could handle male channelers as well. Perhaps channelers like Guaire Amalasan and Logain and Taim might have been stopped faster if, rather than having to wait on the Tower's response, and then waiting for reinforcements when the False Dragon bitch-slapped the insufficient first attempt to bring him down, Ghealdan or Saldaea could have the Royal Channeling Force go after him! Multiple Towers competing for influence would have been competing to see who could nail him the fastest, and maybe there would have been a faster response time. My hometown has a major interstate highway running through it. The NJ State Police have jurisdiction on that highway, which means they are supposed to respond to accidents or break-downs, but our local police department, more often than not, gets there first and offers the actual emergency assistance where necessary, leaving the State Troopers with nothing more to do than take the report. We're there already and we are more capable of responding. The troopers have to come from a barracks that is over 20 minutes away. Locals respond better and faster than any supreme governmental body. Look at the problems back during Hurrican Katrina on the Gulf Coast. New Orleans was the place that suffered the most, even though they were not the hardest hit, because they were the most dependant on aid from the national government. The other places that got hit had superior local emergency responses, and the slow and faulty response of FEMA was a national scandal. That's what you get from the White Tower.

All spurious hearsay, and ONLY ever cited in the books by people prejudiced in favor of the Tower. Besides, who says a prevented war is a good thing? In the history of the USA, the largest and most important wars were the Civil War, World War 2 and the War for Independence. Which one of those should have been stopped? The war that actually made our country exist? The War against Hitler? Or the War against slavery? How many such wars were thwarted by the White Tower? How many wars ended with the White Tower forcing the side that initially suffered worst to swallow a defeat and allow their enemy to continue in power, only now owning a chunk of their country, before they could get their act together and fight off the invader. How many Neville Chamberlains has the Gray Ajah counted in their number? At what point would the Tower have stepped in to negotiate a peaceful end to World War Two? October 1939, leaving Poland divided between two monstrous regimes? July 1940, with Eurpoe from the Pyrenees to the Urals under the control of Hitler, Mussolini & Stalin?

By asserting that the Tower was necessary to prevent wars you display a childish & simplistic view of the world, with your implied assumption that nothing is ever worth fighting for.

Speaking as an historian from a world that has seen the use of artillery and explosives and chemical warfare in war, I say, bring it on! First of all, you cannot prove that only the Tower could prevent that. We didn't have nuclear deterrence until both sides had nuclear weapons! If multiple Towers existed, they might have to refrain from using the power, lest another side bring in a rival Tower to counter them. And if rulers had loyal channelers at their disposal, war could be made more humane. The Tower has prevented national militaries from going to war without Healing reliably on their side. Sure the sisters do their parts, but they have other things to do, and who is to say that a sister with Healing ability will be around after the battle? Or perhaps she will avoid coming near the war, because the advisor of one of the rulers is a Gray who cannot Heal very well, but due to her presence, effectively makes the war off-limits to other sisters lest they violate the the strong Tower custom of not interfering in another sister's affairs. Rulers with their own channelers would have the Healers organized to best serve their army, rather than how to best serve the agenda of the channelers themselves. One of the attractions for Mat of artillery is that cannon will not give him any back-talk or try to take over the battle as he believes Aes Sedai do and Asha'man will. Channelers would be a lot more helpful in war if they were subject to military discipline.

Your assertions are meaningless, since in the first place, some of your claims are highly dubious and unsupported by anything other than the Tower's PR department. In the second, you offer no evidence that these things could not have been done just as well, if not a lot better, with multiple Towers or nationalized or private channeling groups.

You're assuming that the Tower's glory is good for anyone but the Tower! What prior glory are you referring to? The glorious days when they betrayed Manetheren? Or when they plotted against Hawkwing? Or when Siuan forced Morgase to betray her people to foreign criminals to further the ends of those criminals' nation? That Tower at its peak is WORSE than its current "fallen" state, because the powerful Tower can cause more trouble.

She wants a monopoly on the Power. Such a position is wrong in principle. Your counter-argument is basically "No, no. She'll be a NICE absolute ruler." I am against absolute rule and internationalist rule. Egwene's agenda from her first day as Amyrlin has aimed at both.

Yes, including the ones who don't want to be part of the Tower. In any event, you are missing the point. It was not about the Tower accepting all women. From the Tower's point of view that is not necessarily a good idea either. What I was complaining about was their forbidding any alternative, even when they refuse to accept every one. My point is that if you are not an initiate of the Tower, what you do is none of their damned business, but the Tower still presumes to order their lives, even if they claim they do not want these women.

NOVICES. All Aes Sedai do this, as initiates are forbidden from testing their strength against each other, and Moiraine & Siuan required a mental adjustment to start taking strength into account once they were raised to the shawl. If novices and Accepted were judged or ranked based on strength, there would have been no need for such. Meanwhile, back in the rebel camp, she was complaining to herself that Romanda and Lelaine were not giving Theodrin and Faolain employment appropriate to their rank in the strength hierarchy. And AGAIN, this is not about Egwene, but about the Tower and its monopoly. How they treat their novices is immaterial to the discussion. Any reforms Egwene genuinely makes in this area, however welcome, do not change the princple at stake. All she is doing is rearranging deck chairs on a ship that needs to be sunk.

Irrelevant and immaterial bullshit which does not change the fact of Tower policy. If these statements are relevant to the discussion, the above quote from tGS demonstrates that she has abandoned that princple in favor of a Tower monopoly. And in any event, I don't give a damn about the arrangements she generously condescends to allow to exist in cultures that have been outside the claimed jurisdiction of the White Tower for all of its history! So kind of her to permit that which she cannot prevent! Even if she is sincere and genuine, I am talking about extending that permissiveness to the rest of the civilized lands which you cannot remotely claim she has ANY intention of doing!

You are the one blinded by a character if you cannot discuss an issue except in terms of how it reflects positively on her. Even if Egwene is working to the fullest extent of your asserted reforms, she is akin to a dictator who releases people unjustly arrested by the secret police. That's nice, but I am taling about getting rid of the dictator and the secret police, while all you are concerned about is protecting the reputation of the current holder of the office.

That's why you keep it spread out - the more sources there are, the more ways you have of checking such a thing. And as for a channeler taking a throne, what is wrong with that, if they are a good ruler? As long as they are not loyal to an extranational group, there is no reason why a channeler would not be a perfectly acceptable ruler. Keeping channelers from usurping power can be handled the way everything else is - by leveling the playing field and making competition and checks and balances. Channelers have to sleep, after all, and people will find ways to get rid of the bad apples. It is a lot harder if they have a secure island headquarters protecting them with great wealth and political influence to tie the hands of people who would oppose an Aes Seai.

RJ has spoken of the difficulty of maintaining such levels of Compulsion in a single individual. Sammael warns Graendal of the dangers of her pets bringing enemies on her head. You are missing the point that by having multiple channeling sources, by allowing channelers to act openly without being under the authority of a Tower, there are alternatives for people to turn to. If they are not wallowing in the unearned wealth handed over gratis by the Tower, but have to earn a living, it is a matter of time before channelers start selling defensive ter'angreal and the like.

One can say the exact same thing about channelers who abuse their power without a single governing entity.

I disagree. I believe she CAN do it, and THAT is the problem! I do not see a MORE EFFECTIVE tyranny as an improvement on tyranny!

But she is not aiming at anything good! She still wants the Tower to be supreme and still sees Aes Sedai as the top of the societal hierarchy and plans to punish Rand for the bonding, despite her having a pretty much accurate understanding of the situation, because she is trying to uphold the supremacy of the Tower and Aes Sedai. That is even, in a manner of speaking, her job. But I believe such an end is wrong.