Mesa occupation

WHILE THE treatment of slaves is covered in the constitution, is the suppression of those descended furom slaves an actual law or is it just how it is done.
The slaves anf the descendants do make a majority, so if they can get their view rscognised pegally, they can build a new government.

SYED wrote: The slaves anf the descendants do make a majority, so if they can get their view rscognised pegally, they can build a new government.

So democracy is a lion, a wolf and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch?

SYED wrote:WHILE THE treatment of slaves is covered in the constitution, is the suppression of those descended furom slaves an actual law or is it just how it is done.

It's in their constitution. The term "seccie" is short for "second class citizen."

kzt wrote:

saber964 wrote:The MOF would only need to occupy the citizen areas and protect them from vengeful slaves ala Verdant Vista aka Torch and the citizens only account for 30% of the population. With the Seccies acting as liaisons and screening force to the slaves.

What makes you think the citizens need protecting from the slaves? They saw the Torch snuff porn movies that got distributed across human space and are likely to take appropriate steps to prevent that.

"Appropriate steps" is what the various security forces are for. I'm not sure if they're going to get disbanded or what, but their current attitude of how to keep control by maximum terror isn't going to wash with Admiral Gold Peak.

I suspect that the current system just got scrapped. What replaces it is a tarbaby that the GA, the Torchies and the Andermanie are going to have to deal with and its going to take boots on the ground to avert chaos and anarchy.

One thing seems certain: the slaves will no longer tolerate their lords and masters continuing to be lords and masters.

Nor should they...

Don

hanuman wrote:What Michelle can and should do is to issue a decree that the entire institution is a violation of interstellar law on human rights, and that anyone on Mesa who owned or employed a slave will be liable to prosecution for violating that slave's human rights. Individual slaves should be allowed to enter additional charges of maltreatment, but humane treatment should be considered for possible reduction of sentences. That, I think, would be a fair resolution.

Michelle can't/won't impose any ex post facto laws. If slaves have any case for mistreatment, it has to be judged under the laws in effect when the mistreatment occurred -- eg the Mesan Constitutional Protections for slaves.

Michelle can impose new rules under Martial Law guaranteeing human rights for everyone (by Manticoran definitions) but she doesn't have the trained police forces to enforce any such ruling.

The interim "government" is going to have to be the formerly most fair and effective peace keeping force and the "Law" is going to have to be the "rules" enforced by those same forces -- The Crime Lords and their gangs.

Thandi and Victor started that process before they even knew who the fleet in orbit belonged to. Without the Gang Lords cooperation any attempt to restore order is going to fail, with their cooperation the change from caste system to equality will go as smoothly as possible.

[Slavery is a sufficiently emotional issue that such a move could very well lead to the fall of the Grant ville government.
[/quote]

I disagree. Vehemently.

As I said toward the beginning of this thread, nothing with the slaves will be settled until Jeremy X arrives on scene. Anybody with two brain cells more than God gave a hexapuma understands that - including most of the population of Manticore, Haven and Beowulf.

What Gold Peak will do is:

1. Isolate Manpower's off-world operations by destroying all slave ships and taking other actions.

2. Immediately honor Victor Cachet's promises by eliminating second class citizenship (seccies) and bringing the crime bosses into the interim government.

3. Announce that, as an interim measure until Jeremy X and the Beowulf delegation arrives, the provisions in the Mesan constitution guaranteeing good treatment for genetic slaves will be enforced to the degree possible. The interim government will be charged with making it happen.

4. Once she discovers that there are about a million "Mesan Alignment" members who have nothing to do with the Onion or the Detweiller Plan, she's going to task them with spearheading the necessary long-term cultural changes. They're basically the only group of free citizens who think the genetic slaves are human and deserve whatever civil rights they can handle.

The thing that hasn't been discussed up front is that Mesa, as a society, is based on genetic inequality - different lines are capable of doing different things well. It's even worse than most Mesans think, because they don't know about the clandestine "uplift" program that resulted in the Mesan alpha, beta and gamma lines. Trying to impose a government and political ideology that doesn't take this into account is not going to go well. That's why she's going to wait until Jeremy X, the Ballroom and the Torch delegation arrives. They grew up with that as a background cultural assumption, they'll have a much better idea how to handle it than anyone who is essentially an outsider to Mesan society.

It's a mess, and the worst thing will be to let the ideologs handle it. That goes nowhere, at high velocity and extreme loudness.[/quote]

What are you disagreeing with? Let me respond point by point.

1. Mesa might be the central node of the slave trade, but it is by far not the only place where slaves were bred or 'warehoused'. There is an entire network of 'breeding stations' and distribution points throughout the Verge and even in the Shell, which doesn't even take into account all the slavers who operate independently from the great Mesan corporations. It will take literally decades to shut down the network, and even then, the market will still exist, if on a much smaller scale, because demand will still be there for pleasure slaves and other varieties. The best Michelle could do right now is to shut down the entire operation in the Mesan system itself.

2. Absolutely agreed. The Seccie bosses are the only representatives of the majority population that are in any way or manner capable of governing. What form such an interim government might take is difficult to say - maybe on a regional or municipal basis with regular meetings at higher levels to coordinate and resolve disputes? Anyways, one thing that won't happen is that the current Mesan government structures will be allowed to remain in place.

3. I refer to my previous post. Politically impossible, morally distasteful and illegal to boot. Won't happen. What might happen is that Michelle and the interim government will declare that the Mesan Constitution's civil rights provisions for Mesan citizens will henceforth apply to Seccies and slaves as well, and that the institution of slavery will no longer exist.

4. Excuse me if I sound confused, but that's because I am. First, the entire Mesan population and sociopolitical and economic system forms the first layer of the Onion. Second, agreed that many active members of the MAllign's outer layers were left behind, but that they think the slaves are human? Really? Where do you get that notion? The entire MAllign enterprise is built upon the premise that its genetic lines are superior to normal, unimproved humans, and the belief that slaves are the lowest of the lowest is a deeply entrenched part of that belief system. There might be a handful of Jack McBrides among them, but all of them? Really?

5. Jeremy, the Ballroom and the anti-slavery movement as a whole has NEVER accepted the Mesan notion of genetic superiority/inferiority. The movement's entire reason for existing is that slaves are human beings, deserving of the same rights, legal status and treatment as any other human being. No one in the movement will agree to give legal recognition to the MAllign's enterprise to divide the human species on the basis of genetic variation, and neither will anyone in the Grand Alliance. To do so will validate the MAllign's goals and will invalidate any targeted effort to undermine or resist those goals. This is one instance where ideology will uncompromisingly trump pragmatic 'reality'. Whatever political system arises in future, I can guarantee that - just like on Torch - it will in no way or manner contain any provisions to give legal recognition of genetic variation.

Weird Harold wrote:

hanuman wrote:What Michelle can and should do is to issue a decree that the entire institution is a violation of interstellar law on human rights, and that anyone on Mesa who owned or employed a slave will be liable to prosecution for violating that slave's human rights. Individual slaves should be allowed to enter additional charges of maltreatment, but humane treatment should be considered for possible reduction of sentences. That, I think, would be a fair resolution.

Michelle can't/won't impose any ex post facto laws. If slaves have any case for mistreatment, it has to be judged under the laws in effect when the mistreatment occurred -- eg the Mesan Constitutional Protections for slaves.

Michelle can impose new rules under Martial Law guaranteeing human rights for everyone (by Manticoran definitions) but she doesn't have the trained police forces to enforce any such ruling.

The interim "government" is going to have to be the formerly most fair and effective peace keeping force and the "Law" is going to have to be the "rules" enforced by those same forces -- The Crime Lords and their gangs.

Thandi and Victor started that process before they even knew who the fleet in orbit belonged to. Without the Gang Lords cooperation any attempt to restore order is going to fail, with their cooperation the change from caste system to equality will go as smoothly as possible.

In that case I don't see the Grand Alliance - including Torch and its representatives - becoming involved in any way or even recognising the legality of any prosecutions. None of them recognise slavery as a legitimate institution. In fact, all of them are prohibited from doing so by the Cherwell Convention and their own national law.

hanuman wrote:In that case I don't see the Grand Alliance - including Torch and its representatives - becoming involved in any way or even recognising the legality of any prosecutions. None of them recognise slavery as a legitimate institution. In fact, all of them are prohibited from doing so by the Cherwell Convention and their own national law.

The situation is much like the prosecutions against malefactors on Hades. Honor couldn't try them under laws they were not subject to, but they were in violation of the laws they were subject to. It has nothing to do with recognizing slavery as legitimate, and everything with prosecuting malefactors who couldn't even follow their own rules.

The can free the slaves, and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of slavery, and still prosecute people for violating the Mesan Constitution.

Another, RW, example would be the prosecution of Al Capone for tax evasion while ignoring the source(s) of the income he didn't pay taxes on.

Weird Harold wrote:The can free the slaves, and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of slavery, and still prosecute people for violating the Mesan Constitution.

Another, RW, example would be the prosecution of Al Capone for tax evasion while ignoring the source(s) of the income he didn't pay taxes on.

Sure, and they can deal with a generations long insurgency campaign. A few hundred million Mantcoran troops should be able to bring that under control in a decade or so, with only a few million dead Manticorans, and a few tens of millions of dead Mesan's. If Manticore had a few hundred million troops, which they don't.

You might notice that there were no huge trials after the US Civil war. Why was that?