GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions

cthia wrote:Our illustrious Duckk made a comment that got me to thinking along certain lines. He said that the SLN were not murderous idiots. Yet, if there is indeed no legal leg for them to stand on in opposition to Beowulf seceding, then on what grounds does the SLN attack Beowulf? If they are not murderous, then does that suggest that they might have found legal reasons that Beowulf are in the wrong? Because if they are legally in the wrong then does that not make Beowulf traitors? (And attacking traitors is not murderous.) Or does it suggest something more sinister like continued MAlign intervention?

Also, if the League can pull legal justification of Beowulf's intransigence out of its 800# ass, then would that fact incriminate the RMN in some way and suggest that they owe the League reparations for meddling???

Just asking.

The League doesn't need any more legal justifications. As soon as Filareta crossed Manticore's hyper limit, the Star Empire explictly declared war. Beowulf is clearly intending to join the GA. Now, the Mandarins may have difficulties finding political justifications to keep fighting the war - but that's a whole different kettle.

Beowulf will no longer have legal standing within the League, nor any protection and its presence in the core of the League is more of a threat than Trevor's Star in Manticoran hands was to Haven. It's a legitimate military target for the League now.

Reparations? To the League? I think you're being a tad optimistic about the League's odds of survival, never mind even being in a position to demand any, once the shooting stops.

cthia wrote:Our illustrious Duckk made a comment that got me to thinking along certain lines. He said that the SLN were not murderous idiots. Yet, if there is indeed no legal leg for them to stand on in opposition to Beowulf seceding, then on what grounds does the SLN attack Beowulf? If they are not murderous, then does that suggest that they might have found legal reasons that Beowulf are in the wrong? Because if they are legally in the wrong then does that not make Beowulf traitors? (And attacking traitors is not murderous.) Or does it suggest something more sinister like continued MAlign intervention?

Also, if the League can pull legal justification of Beowulf's intransigence out of its 800# ass, then would that fact incriminate the RMN in some way and suggest that they owe the League reparations for meddling???

Just asking.

I'm sure their plan (as opposed to the plans of the MAlign agents that are influencing them) is to use the threat of military force to strong-arm Beowulf into declaring (or at least acquiescing to a declaration) that their plebiscite was invalid and they should not have informed the League that they were seceding.

Or as they'd put in sending sufficient strength for neutral (yeah right) observers under the experienced auspices of the OFS to ensure the integrity of this momentous Beowulfian plebiscite and it's freedom from Manticoran military coercion.

Which makes them idiots, but not murderous ones. (Now once the MAlign sticks their hidden oars in and the whole thing goes pear shaped...)



Or munroburton covers what happens if they simply attack Beowulf after it secedes and obviously begins working with Manticore. At that point even a non-biased outside observer would say that they forfeited their neutrality and became an at least defacto (if not actually declared) combatant (and thus a legitimate military target)

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:Our illustrious Duckk made a comment that got me to thinking along certain lines. He said that the SLN were not murderous idiots. Yet, if there is indeed no legal leg for them to stand on in opposition to Beowulf seceding, then on what grounds does the SLN attack Beowulf? If they are not murderous, then does that suggest that they might have found legal reasons that Beowulf are in the wrong? Because if they are legally in the wrong then does that not make Beowulf traitors? (And attacking traitors is not murderous.) Or does it suggest something more sinister like continued MAlign intervention?

Also, if the League can pull legal justification of Beowulf's intransigence out of its 800# ass, then would that fact incriminate the RMN in some way and suggest that they owe the League reparations for meddling???

Just asking.

The League doesn't need any more legal justifications. As soon as Filareta crossed Manticore's hyper limit, the Star Empire explictly declared war. Beowulf is clearly intending to join the GA. Now, the Mandarins may have difficulties finding political justifications to keep fighting the war - but that's a whole different kettle.

Beowulf will no longer have legal standing within the League, nor any protection and its presence in the core of the League is more of a threat than Trevor's Star in Manticoran hands was to Haven. It's a legitimate military target for the League now.

Reparations? To the League? I think you're being a tad optimistic about the League's odds of survival, never mind even being in a position to demand any, once the shooting stops.

Legitimate?, military target, because of intentions?

"Legitimate" infers official. Intentions may be real, yet not official. Therefore not legitimate. IMO

Yes, I do feel that some vestige of the League will survive. They'll only weigh in at a few hundred pounds at that point, but will survive.

Call it... the Salamander diet. Jenny Craig will be proud. LOL

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Our illustrious Duckk made a comment that got me to thinking along certain lines. He said that the SLN were not murderous idiots. Yet, if there is indeed no legal leg for them to stand on in opposition to Beowulf seceding, then on what grounds does the SLN attack Beowulf? If they are not murderous, then does that suggest that they might have found legal reasons that Beowulf are in the wrong? Because if they are legally in the wrong then does that not make Beowulf traitors? (And attacking traitors is not murderous.) Or does it suggest something more sinister like continued MAlign intervention?

Also, if the League can pull legal justification of Beowulf's intransigence out of its 800# ass, then would that fact incriminate the RMN in some way and suggest that they owe the League reparations for meddling???

Just asking.

I'm sure their plan (as opposed to the plans of the MAlign agents that are influencing them) is to use the threat of military force to strong-arm Beowulf into declaring (or at least acquiescing to a declaration) that their plebiscite was invalid and they should not have informed the League that they were seceding.

Or as they'd put in sending sufficient strength for neutral (yeah right) observers under the experienced auspices of the OFS to ensure the integrity of this momentous Beowulfian plebiscite and it's freedom from Manticoran military coercion.

Which makes them idiots, but not murderous ones. (Now once the MAlign sticks their hidden oars in and the whole thing goes pear shaped...)



Or munroburton covers what happens if they simply attack Beowulf after it secedes and obviously begins working with Manticore. At that point even a non-biased outside observer would say that they forfeited their neutrality and became an at least defacto (if not actually declared) combatant (and thus a legitimate military target)

I C.

Yet, even if they secede that still does not make them a military target unless and until they officially join Manticore.

As a contingency, my apology in advance if munroburton was indeed speaking of a future timeline wherein Bewowulf has joined Manticore.

[/quote]

The League doesn't need any more legal justifications. As soon as Filareta crossed Manticore's hyper limit, the Star Empire explictly declared war. Beowulf is clearly intending to join the GA. Now, the Mandarins may have difficulties finding political justifications to keep fighting the war - but that's a whole different kettle.

Beowulf will no longer have legal standing within the League, nor any protection and its presence in the core of the League is more of a threat than Trevor's Star in Manticoran hands was to Haven. It's a legitimate military target for the League now.

Reparations? To the League? I think you're being a tad optimistic about the League's odds of survival, never mind even being in a position to demand any, once the shooting stops.[/quote]

You forgot the part about the League in the form of the SLN deliberatly attacked a sovereign Star Nation (Star Empire of Manticore) and attempted to violate the rights of one of a League Member System (Beowulf) by trying to force it's way though the Beowulf side of the Sigma Draconis Terminus and objecting to- and threatening the destruction of Beowuf's SFD when it told the SLN fleet to break off or it would be fired upon. We have clear discription that as, at the time, the League was NOT at war with anyone, it could not order the Bowulf SDF to stand aside and could not demand access to the terminus.
There is the complicating fact that, also at the time, the League was about to commit a surpirse and unprovoked attack on Manticore of which the SLN task force near Beowulf was a critical component and, probably, Beowulf would have later been judged complicit in the attack if it had meekly stood by.

Yes, I know, RMN had captured and rendered mostly usless Byng's force and then smashed Crandall's fleet. Neither of those things were instigated by RMN. Byng murdered the crews of the RMN DDs on a peacefull mission and then Crandall, in a fit of pique, attempted to attack the Talbott Sector goverement headquaters system of Manticore.
And there is the little matter of the pre-positioned fleet of Fillerta which "just happened" to be within striking distance of the Manticore Home System with the largest group of SLN in several hundred years to go outside SLN space to attack something. Fillerty had lousy security......well, the SL had lousy security....and even when he KNEW the attack was no longer a surprise he kept going, having been told that if he crossed the hyper-limit into the Manticore System he would be declaring war by the SL on SEM.

On a slightly different approach, Beowulf is a treaty partner of Manticore. There are LOTS of treaties in effect. While Beowulf might have been required to render the assistance demanded by the SLN fleet that wanted to access the Sigma Draconis Terminus IF the SLN had been in a declared war with SEM, there was no war....yet.

I don't have any documentation but with existing military treaties between Manticore and Beowulf including the agreements and coporation set up to manage/operate the Sigma Draconis Terminus end, Beowulf PROBABLY had an obligation to do AT LEAST what it's SDF did in telling the SLN fleet to break off and to engage as nessisary if they did not.

That the SLN politicians (hauk- spit) and bureaucracy NOW claim that Beowulf is engaged in treason against the SLN is intersting since Beowulf was acting to PREVENT a war and from letting the SLN from committing an act of unsanctioned (by the SL Assembly) war.

There was NO FORMAL or INFORMAL notice to the government of Beowulf that the SLN was going to attack Manticore without a prior declaration of war.
[Yeah, again, the SLN military and politial security sucked but so far the SLN and SL doesn't seem to have any actual knowledge that their info was leaked except that Harrington & Co was waiting for Fillerta].
Has NOBODY in the League asked the question of just why all of these attacks were pre-positioned months before they occurred and that until they happened the SEM was not, in fact, fighting the SLN.

Then there is going to be the not so minor difficulty that WHEN there is an "SLN" attack on Beowulf, RMN & probably RHN will come slamming in on the side of the BSDF and there will be just that much more former SLN junk in divergent trajectorys in the Sigma Draconis System. Another several hundred thousand if SLN's "finest" mostly dead this time and a fast shrinking pool of SLN experience to work with.

I don't think the League will survive at all. Granted, the Sol System(and perhaps a rump 'Sol sector') will still be there in a geographical sense, but it will have virtually nothing to do with the current federal-level League or even just its core region. Think of Rome - it used to be the capital of the Roman Empire, then there wasn't even an united Italy for one and a half millennia.

As for Beowulf - I know the League is blatantly ignoring its own law. I just don't see what difference it makes in the long run - either the League waits for Beowulf to legally secede, attacks, is defeated, eventually loses the war and ultimately destroyed by the Harrington Strategy... or it carries out an illegal first strike against its own member state, is defeated, loses the war faster and destroyed.

Hi cthia,
You may recollect the mandarins' discussion after Felicia Hadley dropped her Beowulf's secession bomb in chapter 33 of ART; Kolokoltsov argued that they couldn't make stomping on Beowulf to be about the secession, but how the wormhole was a potential 'invasion highway' and as such a legitimate security threat to the SL's heart, why they'd be derelict in their duty if they didn't do something about it!

Thus they're responding to an obvious military threat, not any legal questioning of the secession, although everyone else, especially out in the shells etc, will hear it loud and clear.

Until Reid invents his precedents that the guaranteed right to secede has lapsed after 700 years, as ordered, all the EC/AoS members are going to think they have the same privilege.

I suspect the tame members won't be so tame anymore, or if they remain tame, it will indicate to their supposed constituents how much they've been bought and how the SL is such a sham, so why bother staying?

That was back in July, so the results through October are going to make their worst projections look like happy drug dreams, compared to reality's nightmare.

Keep smilin'

L

cthia wrote:Our illustrious Duckk made a comment that got me to thinking along certain lines. He said that the SLN were not murderous idiots. Yet, if there is indeed no legal leg for them to stand on in opposition to Beowulf seceding, then on what grounds does the SLN attack Beowulf? If they are not murderous, then does that suggest that they might have found legal reasons that Beowulf are in the wrong? Because if they are legally in the wrong then does that not make Beowulf traitors? (And attacking traitors is not murderous.) Or does it suggest something more sinister like continued MAlign intervention?

Also, if the League can pull legal justification of Beowulf's intransigence out of its 800# ass, then would that fact incriminate the RMN in some way and suggest that they owe the League reparations for meddling???

Just asking.

lyonheart wrote:I suspect the tame members won't be so tame anymore, or if they remain tame, it will indicate to their supposed constituents how much they've been bought and how the SL is such a sham, so why bother staying?

No, there will be much practice of the art of diplomacy. "Saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

Brigade XO wrote:I would hope that the League would not send OFS to a League Member system to address league political problemsprotect it. That would be a really bad message to send to the rest of the Members.

Would the RMN consider SLN swanning around in Beowulf space to be an imminent Case Zulu, and take appropriate action?

Fox2! wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:I would hope that the League would not send OFS to a League Member system to address league political problemsprotect it. That would be a really bad message to send to the rest of the Members.

Would the RMN consider SLN swanning around in Beowulf space to be an imminent Case Zulu, and take appropriate action?

The problem is a political one and very much the perception of Manticore using military intimidation to go aloing with Manticore's demands to cooperate against the SL.

We know, the Mandarin's know, Beowulf knows that this is going to be danced around with in the court of public opinion which is going to be hammered at by the SL painting SEM (and RH) as bloodthirsty neobarbs which have used gile, somesort of political blackmail and outright military intimidation to cause and now to manipulate the illegal plebecite as a cover for absorbing Beowulf into the Empire. The Mandarins are counting on this to provide cover for thier own manipulations which appear to be focused on, if not stopping the vote though other means, jumping in while loudly proclaiming they have been requested by the ligitmate government of Beowulf to invalidate the manipulated vote and preserve the rights of the Citizens as members of the SL. That this is a whole chapter out of the OFS handbook is clear but it's a fig leaf to cover doing what they claim Manticore is doing.

At this point the only question is how the plot goes to cause those millions of casualties, who actualy did it and how many of the SLN ships that enter the Beowulf hyperlimit survive. I suppose it is possible that the SL will have representatives of various League Members show up with ships of their SDFs to augment formal SL presence with SLN ships as Observers and demand to participate as Poll Watchers and Observers to document the fraudlent goings on in the intent of confusing the issue so they can provide more proof the vote is rigged and provide more points of support to the claims of fraud.