GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions

Fox2! wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:
Ship the big shots out to the worlds they've destroyed as their reparations.

Does RH still maintain that prison on Charon? Perhaps for the worst of the SS/Committee for Public Safety types who couldn't/didn't want to hack the new program? Or weren't even offered the opportunity?

Wouldn't be surprised at all if some of the StSec were given the option of being colonist on Hades or spending there prison terms in the top five worst prisons in the Republic

saber964 wrote:Wouldn't be surprised at all if some of the StSec were given the option of being colonist on Hades or spending there prison terms in the top five worst prisons in the Republic

I don't think you can't colonize Hades, it can't grow food that people can live on.

kzt wrote:

saber964 wrote:Wouldn't be surprised at all if some of the StSec were given the option of being colonist on Hades or spending there prison terms in the top five worst prisons in the Republic

I don't think you can't colonize Hades, it can't grow food that people can live on.

They did successfully terraform the one island that StateSec lived on and grew food there for statesec and the prisoners all over the planet.

Hi cthia,

I suspect the incident you refer to of the SL official is either the mandarin MacArtney or Kolokoltsov in chapter 35 of ART.

Nathan didn't make a legal argument, he's just opposed to anyone leaving regardless of what the constitution says then can, and wants to hammer them flat for even thinking they could.

It's Kolokoltsov who proposes using Reid and Neng in a committee to falsely claim that the right of withdrawal etc has lapsed after 700+ years.

They both know they're wrong, but they don't care.

Which were you thinking of?

L

cthia wrote:quote="phillies"Readers wanting to see large number of very sharp minds tackling these exact questions should follow the Brexit debate in the Guardian, complete with the EU request for money.

cthia wrote:What was the final disposition of any legal complications of Beowulf seceding?

I don't mean to sidetrack a very interesting thread, but I have to wonder if the League actually has legal legs to stand on. It seems shortsighted of them not to insist on permanent League status of any system joining, especially if of their own accord. Of course, their arrogance may not have inserted such a clause. Yet, I'm left dumbstruck at how easily a member can secede, legally. I am not in any way on the League's side, but you all know I've always been the voice of reason, or unreason LOL, for fairness and for sake of conversation.

Let's say the League hadn't become the cesspool that they are now. Accepting a new member into League status must consist of a certain investment of League resources and it wouldn't be fair for a system to be allowed to secede after allocation of certain resources without a very good and legally acceptable reason. What if there is some sort of clause? Has textev stated one way or the other?

Legally, it seems possible that the League might have a licit leg to stand on. Not saying that they do, but legal maneuvering may indeed be the answer. On what grounds has Beowulf officially stated that they wish to secede? Could it all be blamed on Manticoran meddling?

munroburton wrote:I was thinking that. It's a can of worms which has been opened, is still opening and the implications are not fully known yet.quote

Indeed.

Sorry I missed this post munroburton. Actually, I recall mention of some exasperated League personality, forget who, who questioned the possible legality of it. I don't recall hearing anything else of it and was waiting with baited breath.

It simply seems much too easy to secede IMO. What prevents systems from taking advantage of the League—in some laughable alternate reality where the League is not so corrupt and many resources are allocated to a world only to see it secede when they deem they no longer need the League?

Reminds me of the many states that petitioned the Obama administration with delusions of seceding.

.

cthia wrote:Indeed.

Sorry I missed this post munroburton. Actually, I recall mention of some exasperated League personality, forget who, who questioned the possible legality of it. I don't recall hearing anything else of it and was waiting with baited breath.

It simply seems much too easy to secede IMO. What prevents systems from taking advantage of the League—in some laughable alternate reality where the League is not so corrupt and many resources are allocated to a world only to see it secede when they deem they no longer need the League?

Reminds me of the many states that petitioned the Obama administration with delusions of seceding.

.

Apparently, no one had attempted to leave before. The closest was Erewhon, which cancelled its application to become a full member and instead joined the Manticoran Alliance.

Someone mentioned Japan and the League of Nations - well, would Japan have been so quick to leave if the League of Nations had direct control of two hundred battleships? Thanks to the Eridani Edict, the League did carry out half a dozen military operations early in its history.

As for the legality of secession, what if the Solarian League constitution has something similar to Article 50 from the EU's Lisbon Treaty?

http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-li ... le-50.html

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

Beowulf's constitution is older than the League's. Beowulf was a League founding member. It certainly wasn't ever subject to whatever loopholes OFS used to take control of independent verge systems, make them protectorates and then eventually members. In other words, any legal objections raised by the Mandarins using those as a basis might simply be invalid, inapplicable and unenforceable.

The Mandarins have a problem and none of the solutions (or results, which are not the same thing) they see are going to end well.

If Beowulf successfully secceeds, then other members will have any lingerging ambiguity delt with and will take that route if they see as a benefit.

If the Mandarins have to use the SLN to "intervene" at Beowulf to invalidate a "fraudulent" and illegal vote, many systems will see it as the SL Buracracy using the Navy to treat a full League Member (and a founding one at that) as little more than just another Verge shithole to be Protected by OFS. That isn't going to make your average citizen of League Member systems happy as will demonstrate that it can happen to them even if their world doesn't activly move to leave the League. The SLN will be openly a tool of the buracrates to force concessions and compliance to League instead of "enforcing the laws".

Even with the vast differences in capablities of SLN and GA navy, the SLN can still show up in strength at all sorts of places and hammer a sucessfull rebellion flat before putting the former government back in power. It can do the same thing by showing up and hanging in the sky close enough to occupy the orbital space as if they had used weapons to beat their way into that posistion to threaten by just being there a world to comply with League dictates if another SL member announces it wants to leave. That almost any such action could be eventually be defeated by a GA force with massive losses to the SLN is almost beside the point. 1st the GA would have to know it is happening, build a responce force and get there and then probably physicaly destroy the SLN force to leave. The probable devistation and political problems of doing that just get worse, particularly if the SLN has people back in control of said planet.

The Alignment isn't worried about the politics or the potential for devistarion and loss of life. The intent is to cause chaos and disruption to soften up all other parties harm and weaken or destroy them so the Alignment can take over. Loss of human life isn't a problem, the Aligment is just going to replace those people anyway.

Getting your enemies to kill each other is a fine thing.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:Indeed.

Sorry I missed this post munroburton. Actually, I recall mention of some exasperated League personality, forget who, who questioned the possible legality of it. I don't recall hearing anything else of it and was waiting with baited breath.

It simply seems much too easy to secede IMO. What prevents systems from taking advantage of the League—in some laughable alternate reality where the League is not so corrupt and many resources are allocated to a world only to see it secede when they deem they no longer need the League?

Reminds me of the many states that petitioned the Obama administration with delusions of seceding.

.

Apparently, no one had attempted to leave before. The closest was Erewhon, which cancelled its application to become a full member and instead joined the Manticoran Alliance.

Someone mentioned Japan and the League of Nations - well, would Japan have been so quick to leave if the League of Nations had direct control of two hundred battleships? Thanks to the Eridani Edict, the League did carry out half a dozen military operations early in its history.

As for the legality of secession, what if the Solarian League constitution has something similar to Article 50 from the EU's Lisbon Treaty?

http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-li ... le-50.html

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

Beowulf's constitution is older than the League's. Beowulf was a League founding member. It certainly wasn't ever subject to whatever loopholes OFS used to take control of independent verge systems, make them protectorates and then eventually members. In other words, any legal objections raised by the Mandarins using those as a basis might simply be invalid, inapplicable and unenforceable.

IOW, Beowulf's constitution supersedes the League's.

However, where does that leave the other systems who cannot claim that fortunate loophole?

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:Reminds me of the many states that petitioned the Obama administration with delusions of seceding.

.

You clearly don't understand the Solarian League and its obvious real world counterpart.

kzt wrote:He doesn't actually read the books. So I can't blame him for not grasping the details. But I have him on ignore because he doesn't actually read the books.

Only book I haven't read is the latest. I keep staring at it, but time, and married life, well...

I need to read them more than once. The in-depth backstory in which you speak, I tend not to assimilate until subsequent readings.

At any rate, I hope you have better success with the ignore list than I. Duckk, please look into it. Kzt has a right not to read any of my posts.

cthia wrote:

munroburton wrote:As for the legality of secession, what if the Solarian League constitution has something similar to Article 50 from the EU's Lisbon Treaty?

http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-li ... le-50.html

*****quote*****
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
*****quote*****

Beowulf's constitution is older than the League's. Beowulf was a League founding member. It certainly wasn't ever subject to whatever loopholes OFS used to take control of independent verge systems, make them protectorates and then eventually members. In other words, any legal objections raised by the Mandarins using those as a basis might simply be invalid, inapplicable and unenforceable.

IOW, Beowulf's constitution supersedes the League's.

However, where does that leave the other systems who cannot claim that fortunate loophole?

Not necessarily. The League's constitution would control how systems can leave. Only if it had wording similar to the EU's current Constitution stating members must withdraw according to their own constitutions would the individual system constitutions matter.

Munroburton was speculating that if the League had that seemingly innocuous wording OFS could have perverted it into a loophole by rigging the constitutions of any systems under protectorate status before they were allowed to graduate to full members of the League. If they become members with a system constitution that makes it effectively impossible to request to leave and also impossibly to modify that condition then it doesn't mater (for them) how permissive the League written exit policy is.
But that's a huge "if" - there's simply no text-ev or posts I know of that detail the withdrawal language of the League Constitution.


We can make some assumptions about it based on the situation when the Constitution was drafted. The early League was closer to an alliance than a true government. The relatively few systems forming it realized that the improvements in hyper travel made coordinating possible, and the devastation of Earth's Final War made it seem a good idea. But these were systems that had centuries of stable prosperous independence (League wasn't founded until the 9th century of the diaspora) and would be very gingerly feeling their way towards some level of common action.
They weren't trying to form a centrally controlled single nation, it was very much a conglomeration of independent and sovereign systems who retained almost complete internal sovereignty only agreeing to a common foreign policy and some trade agreements (all subject to veto by any single system -- to further avoid the chance that one's sovereignty could be infringed rather than temporarily and voluntarily yielded)


Given all the work they put into making sure that their sovereignty would remain inviolate I can't conceive of them then putting lots of restrictions on their ability to leave this nascent League - as that's the ultimate exercise of their independence. (When writing the constitution they seem much more worried that they'll be forced into something than that some hypothetical future system might join for a temporarily advantage and then leave; having somehow 'ripped them off')

This League formation is about the farthest thing imaginable from the bloated voracious central bureaucracy that League government evolved into over the roughly thousand years since it was formed. But even so we're told that it still has virtually no power, even in unwritten practice, on the internal rules and processes or full members; that's all focused out on the frontiers where systems become protectorates against their will to be exploited by transtellars.

Jonathan_S wrote:Not necessarily. The League's constitution would control how systems can leave. Only if it had wording similar to the EU's current Constitution stating members must withdraw according to their own constitutions would the individual system constitutions matter.

Munroburton was speculating that if the League had that seemingly innocuous wording OFS could have perverted it into a loophole by rigging the constitutions of any systems under protectorate status before they were allowed to graduate to full members of the League. If they become members with a system constitution that makes it effectively impossible to request to leave and also impossibly to modify that condition then it doesn't mater (for them) how permissive the League written exit policy is.
But that's a huge "if" - there's simply no text-ev or posts I know of that detail the withdrawal language of the League Constitution.


We can make some assumptions about it based on the situation when the Constitution was drafted. The early League was closer to an alliance than a true government. The relatively few systems forming it realized that the improvements in hyper travel made coordinating possible, and the devastation of Earth's Final War made it seem a good idea. But these were systems that had centuries of stable prosperous independence (League wasn't founded until the 9th century of the diaspora) and would be very gingerly feeling their way towards some level of common action.
They weren't trying to form a centrally controlled single nation, it was very much a conglomeration of independent and sovereign systems who retained almost complete internal sovereignty only agreeing to a common foreign policy and some trade agreements (all subject to veto by any single system -- to further avoid the chance that one's sovereignty could be infringed rather than temporarily and voluntarily yielded)


Given all the work they put into making sure that their sovereignty would remain inviolate I can't conceive of them then putting lots of restrictions on their ability to leave this nascent League - as that's the ultimate exercise of their independence. (When writing the constitution they seem much more worried that they'll be forced into something than that some hypothetical future system might join for a temporarily advantage and then leave; having somehow 'ripped them off')

This League formation is about the farthest thing imaginable from the bloated voracious central bureaucracy that League government evolved into over the roughly thousand years since it was formed. But even so we're told that it still has virtually no power, even in unwritten practice, on the internal rules and processes or full members; that's all focused out on the frontiers where systems become protectorates against their will to be exploited by transtellars.

Agreed that it's a huge if.

It's more likely that the Solarian Constitution explictly enshrined the right to secede for legitimate system governments(some of them were not democratic states). No one used it before because there was no compelling reason to ever leave the League, given the near-total autonomy full members get.

Later on, former protectorates which became full members would probably be reluctant to leave - they would risk pushing the reset button on the whole Protectorate process and extending their debt peonage for another two centuries. At which point they become full members again. No, better to stay in and finally get to use those protections in the Constitution itself to restrain the transstellars.

The perceived invincibility/power of the SLN also helped hold the whole thing together. No one wanted to leave the League if an old rival was still a member - those rivals would then have the full backing of the League in any disputes which subsequently arose.