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What, no planet kablooey?

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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by cthia   » Wed Sep 12, 2018 5:40 pm

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Something has been bugging me for quite some time. I'm iffy around the edges. Okay, in the middle too.

The SLN was the force tasked with enforcing the Edict. The Edict was written as the 97th amendment of the Constitution.

How was the SLN able to adopt contingency plans that would okay bombardment of planets, simply by labeling them terrorists? The SLN tore a lot of the clauses in the Edict to shreds.

What I'd like to know is whether their contingency plans were official. Also, why didn't Beowulf publish those contingency plans if they were not official. The officers aboard ship acted as if they were official, seeing that they were disgusted with the KEW strikes in SoF. Yet they capitulated, seemingly, because the loophole was official, I thought. What other reason would a decent officer go along with, murder? They seemed to be decent. They were disgusted with the order.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Wed Sep 12, 2018 7:23 pm

TFLYTSNBN

cthia wrote:Something has been bugging me for quite some time. I'm iffy around the edges. Okay, in the middle too.

The SLN was the force tasked with enforcing the Edict. The Edict was written as the 97th amendment of the Constitution.

How was the SLN able to adopt contingency plans that would okay bombardment of planets, simply by labeling them terrorists? The SLN tore a lot of the clauses in the Edict to shreds.

What I'd like to know is whether their contingency plans were official. Also, why didn't Beowulf publish those contingency plans if they were not official. The officers aboard ship acted as if they were official, seeing that they were disgusted with the KEW strikes in SoF. Yet they capitulated, seemingly, because the loophole was official, I thought. What other reason would a decent officer go along with, murder? They seemed to be decent. They were disgusted with the order.


I don't think Beawulf had access to the EE violating contingency plans until the RMN started kicking SLN ass. By that time the RMN was implicated in EE violations on Mesa.
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by Kael Posavatz   » Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:04 pm

Kael Posavatz
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cthia wrote:How was the SLN able to adopt contingency plans that would okay bombardment of planets, simply by labeling them terrorists? The SLN tore a lot of the clauses in the Edict to shreds.


They did it the same way Eisenhower was able to label surrendered German soldiers 'disarmed enemy forces' to get around having to treat (principally feed) them as per Geneva Convention of 1929. As a senate-ratified treaty GC1929 had the standing of legal US law, by calling them something other than Prisoners of War he was able to do an end-around.

(okay, yes, there were other issues, Stalin's desire for 4million german laborers for an indefinite period of time, etc.)
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by Joat42   » Thu Sep 13, 2018 4:40 am

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cthia wrote:Something has been bugging me for quite some time. I'm iffy around the edges. Okay, in the middle too.

The SLN was the force tasked with enforcing the Edict. The Edict was written as the 97th amendment of the Constitution.

How was the SLN able to adopt contingency plans that would okay bombardment of planets, simply by labeling them terrorists? The SLN tore a lot of the clauses in the Edict to shreds.

What I'd like to know is whether their contingency plans were official. Also, why didn't Beowulf publish those contingency plans if they were not official. The officers aboard ship acted as if they were official, seeing that they were disgusted with the KEW strikes in SoF. Yet they capitulated, seemingly, because the loophole was official, I thought. What other reason would a decent officer go along with, murder? They seemed to be decent. They were disgusted with the order.

As with all other cases when someone go looking for a way to enforce an agenda they find a flimsy legal fiction to hide behind.

In the SLN case it was so much easier because the amount of graft, nepotism and "business as usual" that pervaded them and had been going on for hundreds of years. We also know that there are honorable people in the SLN but most of them seem to be in the lower ranks which means if they rock the boat their career is over.

Considering what the OFS has been doing for a long time the erosion of the law isn't very surprising, and when they are in bed with the transtellers and the local dictators it's very easy to label people terrorists that want change.

Most armed forces have contingency plans but that doesn't mean that the civilian side of the government knows all about them. And from what we know of the Mandarins and the former head of the SLN, I doubt they felt inclined to keep the assembly informed about some of the more unsavory contingency plans and in general about things that would impact them negatively.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by tlb   » Thu Sep 13, 2018 8:53 am

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Kael Posavatz wrote:They did it the same way Eisenhower was able to label surrendered German soldiers 'disarmed enemy forces' to get around having to treat (principally feed) them as per Geneva Convention of 1929. As a senate-ratified treaty GC1929 had the standing of legal US law, by calling them something other than Prisoners of War he was able to do an end-around.

(okay, yes, there were other issues, Stalin's desire for 4million german laborers for an indefinite period of time, etc.)

You need to add some additional support for these statements: how did Stalin's desires influence Eisenhower's decisions? I am not aware that Western forces starved German prisoners and I believe that Stalin did what he wanted without regard for Western opinion.

I assume this is what you mean, from the Wikipedia article on the aftermath of World War II:
Germany
In the west, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. The Sudetenland reverted to Czechoslovakia following the European Advisory Commission's decision to delimit German territory to be the territory it held on 31 December 1937. Close to one-quarter of pre-war (1937) Germany was de facto annexed by the Allies; roughly 10 million Germans were either expelled from this territory or not permitted to return to it if they had fled during the war. The remainder of Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, coordinated by the Allied Control Council. The Saar was detached and put in economic union with France in 1947. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was created out of the Western zones. The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic.

Germany paid reparations to the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, mainly in the form of dismantled factories, forced labor, and coal. German standard of living was to be reduced to its 1932 level. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the US and Britain pursued an "intellectual reparations" program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. The value of these amounted to around US$10 billion (US$125 billion in 2017 dollars). In accordance with the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, reparations were also assessed from the countries of Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.

US policy in post-war Germany from April 1945 until July 1947 had been that no help should be given to the Germans in rebuilding their nation, save for the minimum required to mitigate starvation. The Allies' immediate post-war "industrial disarmament" plan for Germany had been to destroy Germany's capability to wage war by complete or partial de-industrialization. The first industrial plan for Germany, signed in 1946, required the destruction of 1,500 manufacturing plants to lower German heavy industry output to roughly 50% of its 1938 level. Dismantling of West German industry ended in 1951. By 1950, equipment had been removed from 706 manufacturing plants, and steel production capacity had been reduced by 6.7 million tons. After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Generals Lucius D. Clay and George Marshall, the Truman administration accepted that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously been dependent. In July 1947, President Truman rescinded on "national security grounds" the directive that had ordered the US occupation forces to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." A new directive recognized that an "orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany." From mid-1946 onwards Germany received US government aid through the GARIOA program. From 1948 onwards West Germany also became a minor beneficiary of the Marshall Plan. Volunteer organizations had initially been forbidden to send food, but in early 1946 the Council of Relief Agencies Licensed to Operate in Germany was founded. The prohibition against sending CARE Packages to individuals in Germany was rescinded on 5 June 1946.

After the German surrender, the International Red Cross was prohibited from providing aid such as food or visiting POW camps for Germans inside Germany. However, after making approaches to the Allies in the autumn of 1945 it was allowed to investigate the camps in the UK and French occupation zones of Germany, as well as to provide relief to the prisoners held there. On 4 February 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to visit and assist prisoners also in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food. The Red Cross petitioned successfully for improvements to be made in the living conditions of German POWs.

But was this situation directed by Eisenhower or his political bosses and did the West have any control over Stalin's use or misuse of prisoners?
Last edited by tlb on Thu Sep 13, 2018 1:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by JohnRoth   » Thu Sep 13, 2018 11:33 am

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I've thought for a long time that one of the better ones was the scene in Backstage Lensman where Shadrach tows three planetary mass negaspheres behind his speedster into a gigantic cloud with only one entrance in order to trap one of his foes (boo, hiss) by destroying his planet.

He used one to destroy the planet, and then put the other two in orbit where the planet used to be. Then he waited to pounce on his foe.

When Gimbal Ginnison later asked Austin Carbarn (who only spoke in the language of pure mathematics) how it worked, Sir Austin said:

-1 * -1 = +1
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by Kael Posavatz   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 11:25 pm

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tlb wrote:You need to add some additional support for these statements: how did Stalin's desires influence Eisenhower's decisions? I am not aware that Western forces starved German prisoners and I believe that Stalin did what he wanted without regard for Western opinion.


The whole situation was vastly more complex than I wanted to get into, but I'll try to flesh it out some. A few of the factors (in no particular order) are:

1) General post-war food crisis, caused in part by:

2) expulsion of ethnic Germans by soviet forces from eastern Europe, and partitioning of Germany split western Germany from its agriculture centers east of the Oder-Neisse line (Potsdam conference)

2) Devastation of Germany to both transportation networks and agricultural processing facilities (those still in operation), made it difficult to distribute what food was available to cities

3) US/UK drastically underestimating both (#2 above) and numbers of soldiers that were surrendering (in part these were units expected to surrender to soviets, but even without these the numbers were way off).

3a) Geneva29 dictated POWs be fed at the same level as basic soldier, which wasn't possible owing to lack of material and logistics, failure of planning (this happened to allies a number of times, including the rapid collapse of the western front following breakout from normandy)

4) Tehran conference (this is where Stalin's desire for German laborers came into play)

5) USSR's steadfast refusal to sign Geneva29

5a) This meant the European advisory commission (which was supposed to integrate and advise allies after conclusion of hostilities) wasn't able to draft a statement of unconditional surrender (one of its principal tasks) because it couldn't be certain the USSR would honor it if one of their commander's issued it.

5b) partially as a result (also for other reasons) the EAC decided to strip germany of all government. This also meant international protections (including embassies in neutral states) because those are accorded to governments.


#3 was the big one in regards to the point I was making above. Regardless of what Stalin was doing, SHAEF had expected to be feeding ~3 million PoWs and found themselves with over 7. The brits didn't want them in the UK in those numbers, what with rationing still in effect, and shipping them to the US was equally problematic. And when it came down, the food, and the logistical ability to get it to the prisoners, did not exist. It wasn't a matter of want, or desire to punish (really, if you think this is bad, consider Morganthu's brainstorm). The food didn't exist. The ability to get non-existent food to the prisoners didn't exist. So Eisenhower (or combined chiefs of staff, blame whoever you want), called them Disarmed Enemy Forces and did the best they could.

Under the circumstances, was not nearly as bad as it could have been (it was still very bad). It certainly was not the 'death camps' or 'planned starvation' that some have claimed. But the point was to get out from under the burden of Geneva29's legal obligations that could not be met.

As a side-note, Geneva was amended to try and stop a repeat. specifically that soldiers who 'fell into the power' of another were obligated PoW status. Hence, we now have 'illegal enemy combatants' to do an end-around of Geneva49.

Gunter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose wrote a great book on it in the early 90s. "Eisenhower and German PoWs"
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by kzt   » Fri Sep 14, 2018 11:44 pm

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Kael Posavatz wrote: Hence, we now have 'illegal enemy combatants' to do an end-around of Geneva49.

No, that's because we want people to follow the Geneva convention. There are certain things you need to do to be considered a legitimate combatant, which excludes murdering civilians, disguising yourself as civilians, wearing the other side uniforms, murdering prisoners etc, all the things the al Qaeda and ISIS glories in. . What we should do it what Eisenhower did when he caught German troops in US uniforms. Just shoot them.
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by doug941   » Sat Sep 15, 2018 1:30 am

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kzt wrote:
Kael Posavatz wrote: Hence, we now have 'illegal enemy combatants' to do an end-around of Geneva49.

No, that's because we want people to follow the Geneva convention. There are certain things you need to do to be considered a legitimate combatant, which excludes murdering civilians, disguising yourself as civilians, wearing the other side uniforms, murdering prisoners etc, all the things the al Qaeda and ISIS glories in. . What we should do it what Eisenhower did when he caught German troops in US uniforms. Just shoot them.


While the actual words "illegal" or "unlawful" combatant don't appear in the 1929 Third Convention, the idea of them does. The idea for their treatment after capture is centuries old: a soldier captured in his/she own national uniform is a legitimate POW, one captured in civilian clothes/enemy uniform is a trial and a blindfold.

KZT is entirely correct.
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Re: What, no planet kablooey?
Post by Kael Posavatz   » Sat Sep 15, 2018 12:46 pm

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I manage to keep sticking my foot in my mouth this thread.

The idea of unlawful combatant goes back to well before Geneva29. There was considerably disagreement on the point during Hague (1899), mostly stemming from the French use of francs-tireur in the franko-prussian war. And the international consensus is, essentially, put them in front of a wall and shoot them.

I suspect we'll disagree, but here goes

1) nothing required US to not grant PoW status.

2) Certain parties in the justice department found it convenient to not have to accord PoW legal protections for...reasons. (This was what my comment was aimed at, and it's worth noting that State was generally opposed to setting aside Geneva, as were some sections of the DoD).

3) PoW status, among other things, has a definite resolution. That it, it has an end-point that is clearly defined.

4) Unlawful combatant (whatever you want to call it) is also supposed to have a definite resolution: a short, sharp trial, followed by a wall (lots and lots of precedents for this). However, certain parties didn't want them in front of a wall for...reasons. Also, 21st century is not mid-20th century is not late 19th century. Public perceptions change. And, I note, none of the (very few) convicted have been executed.

Finally, remarkable little consideration was given to how and under what conditions 'unlawful combatant' status would be resolved when it first started being applied. This is particularly true of the same aforementioned sections of the Justice Department that thought it up in the first place (and really should have had a Plan for what was naturally going to follow rather than...handwavium). This has resulted in a process that has dragged on and been frequently ridiculed as being made up as it goes along, largely because it has.
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