Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

ldwechsler wrote:Agreed. But finagling records to look better MAY not be illegal if there are no tax or regulatory consequences.

kzt wrote:If I get you to buy next quarters purchase this quarter I'm not breaking the law. And if that means I get a bonus for exceeding my sales goals, well, I did exceed my sales goals.

advance purchases/preorders. Dubious morality, definitely legal. Heck there is even GAAP principles to apply. It is still cheating. However once we start manipulating the records beyond what GAAP allows, the technical name for that form of theft is embezzlement.

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ldwechsler wrote:Let us also note that Mesa was NOT in the Solarian League although it did have a lot of leverage. And the attack on Manticore was planned long before Green Pines. Keep in mind as well that the Detweilers knew that it was not Zilwicki who did the bombing.

kzt"By that standard bin Laden wasn't responsible for 9/11, Tojo didn't have any responsibility for bombing Pearl Harbor, Hitler had no responsibility the Holocaust, and Churchill and Roosevelt had nothing to do with bombing German and Japaneses cities.

After all, they weren't there personally, so clearly it can't be their responsibility. Right?[/quote]
Your reasoning is faulty in the extreme.

[quote="Joat42 wrote:On one hand you have people doing tough choices out of necessity and on the other hand you have people initiating violence because of ideological or political ambitions.

Green pines is morally and legally shaky. There were 3 explosions, 2 of them Zilwicki was definitely responsible for;perhaps not the placement of the one that was detonated in the park, but he used the stolen nukes and gave the last one to the idiot.

The Detweillers would be clutching at straws for legal cover on retalliation against Grayson, and possibly Manticore, since, according to their theory Mesa was supposed retalliation for attacking Torch. And Zilwicki is officially the spy-in-chief of Torch.

Additionally, the MAlign planners deliberately took steps to avoid the appearance of an Eridani Edict violation. Yes we reallt don't care how many civilians we kill planetside, its a drop in the bucket compared to our utimate solution, But, yes conventions should [ ] be followed.

pappilon wrote:..snip..
Additionally, the MAlign planners deliberately took steps to avoid the appearance of an Eridani Edict violation. Yes we reallt don't care how many civilians we kill planetside, its a drop in the bucket compared to our utimate solution, But, yes conventions should [ ] be followed.

I would say the reasoning behind not to cross the line into Eridani Edict violations was more of the kind 'don't stir up the bear that sleeps' because if there would have been clear Eridani Edict violations the League members would most likely start an investigation to find the violators - which isn't what the MAlign really wanted.

Joat42 wrote:

pappilon wrote:..snip..
Additionally, the MAlign planners deliberately took steps to avoid the appearance of an Eridani Edict violation. Yes we reallt don't care how many civilians we kill planetside, its a drop in the bucket compared to our utimate solution, But, yes conventions should [ ] be followed.

I would say the reasoning behind not to cross the line into Eridani Edict violations was more of the kind 'don't stir up the bear that sleeps' because if there would have been clear Eridani Edict violations the League members would most likely start an investigation to find the violators - which isn't what the MAlign really wanted.

"Good one, Goyle!" Like the League (1) believes in the existence of the MAlign (2) Knows of the existenceor location of Darius (3) The MAlign even cares at this point if Mesa gets "Torched" (4) Could actually make its way through Daruis' defences to carry out its promise of death and "devastation the likes of which you cannot imagine."

Joat42 wrote:

pappilon wrote:..snip..
Additionally, the MAlign planners deliberately took steps to avoid the appearance of an Eridani Edict violation. Yes we reallt don't care how many civilians we kill planetside, its a drop in the bucket compared to our utimate solution, But, yes conventions should [ ] be followed.

I would say the reasoning behind not to cross the line into Eridani Edict violations was more of the kind 'don't stir up the bear that sleeps' because if there would have been clear Eridani Edict violations the League members would most likely start an investigation to find the violators - which isn't what the MAlign really wanted.

pappilon wrote: "Good one, Goyle!" Like the League (1) believes in the existence of the MAlign (2) Knows of the existenceor location of Darius (3) The MAlign even cares at this point if Mesa gets "Torched" (4) Could actually make its way through Daruis' defences to carry out its promise of death and "devastation the likes of which you cannot imagine."

Your missing the point entirely. If a clear Eridani Edict violation happen don't you think the League members would clamor for an investigation?

And it doesn't matter WHO did the violation, but from the MAligns standpoint any League investigation into violations of the Eridani Edict that MAlign initiated is a bad thing since it spreads the awareness there is an unknown entity around that isn't afraid of the SLN or any repercussions from violations.

The Leagues response to the attacks has mostly been so far 'Meh.. Neobarb infighting..'. The MAlign doesn't want that to be 'Someone is going around violating the Eridani Edict among the neobarbs, we better look into it.'

The end result could be that the League starts looking into things the MAlign would rather not the League take seriously because there is a slim chance it could galvanize the League to pull together or at least making more members sit up and take notice that things are going to shit.

pappilon wrote:]

Green pines is morally and legally shaky. There were 3 explosions, 2 of them Zilwicki was definitely responsible for;perhaps not the placement of the one that was detonated in the park, but he used the stolen nukes and gave the last one to the idiot.

When I read the book, the kids already had the nukes. The kids hadn't selected targets, but would have put all of them in neighborhoods of that sort, because they would not have been able to get through the security surrounding the government in Mendel.

Zilwicki saved the kids lives by disabling the locator beacons. And by directing the kids to use them in the largely deserted area beyond Green Pines, he saved the lives of a lot of innocents who might otherwise have been caught if the kids did take the bombs into the city.

Zilwicki would have moral responsibility if he had given the bombs to the kids; or told them to use the bombs indiscriminately. He didn't have the ability to prevent the kids from using the bombs SOMEWHERE, though. So how is that morally shaky? Unless you are saying he should have turned them into the local cops? Sort of would have blown his cover, and his mission, wouldn't it?

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

pappilon wrote:]

Green pines is morally and legally shaky. There were 3 explosions, 2 of them Zilwicki was definitely responsible for;perhaps not the placement of the one that was detonated in the park, but he used the stolen nukes and gave the last one to the idiot.

When I read the book, the kids already had the nukes. The kids hadn't selected targets, but would have put all of them in neighborhoods of that sort, because they would not have been able to get through the security surrounding the government in Mendel.

Zilwicki saved the kids lives by disabling the locator beacons. And by directing the kids to use them in the largely deserted area beyond Green Pines, he saved the lives of a lot of innocents who might otherwise have been caught if the kids did take the bombs into the city.

Zilwicki would have moral responsibility if he had given the bombs to the kids; or told them to use the bombs indiscriminately. He didn't have the ability to prevent the kids from using the bombs SOMEWHERE, though. So how is that morally shaky? Unless you are saying he should have turned them into the local cops? Sort of would have blown his cover, and his mission, wouldn't it?

Rob

The kids stole them. He could have told them to "put them back where you got them." So killing 6 million in a nuclear detonation is a terrorist attack but killing 600 or 60 or 6 is not? He's the adult, he gave them the targets. Yes not his fault one kid went off the rails. He still said "here, kid, take this bomb and set it off somewhere you might only kill 60 people, because if we kill 600 its a terrorist attack." Said nobody ever.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:Q4 almost didn't exist - about 80% of it's normal volume was purchased on the Q3 books, and that's when the sales leader actively started playing with the numbers, just to reach his sales goals and get another bonus. This all came out at the beginning of the next year, and the leader was quickly fired.

The trick is to get another job before the truth comes out. Make the quarter, make the year, get the bonus, get a new job.

Yeah. I've seen that happen. The smelly brown stuff hit the fan about 6 months after he left.

pappilon wrote:
The kids stole them. He could have told them to "put them back where you got them." So killing 6 million in a nuclear detonation is a terrorist attack but killing 600 or 60 or 6 is not? He's the adult, he gave them the targets. Yes not his fault one kid went off the rails. He still said "here, kid, take this bomb and set it off somewhere you might only kill 60 people, because if we kill 600 its a terrorist attack." Said nobody ever.

Zilwicki was a foreign national who had no authority to tell the seccies anything. If he'd tried that, they would just leave and either ignore Zilwicki and Cachat, or turn them in. It was their fight, their tools. He could, and did, offer some technical assistance; and he used the group assistance to get out of Mesa. But he wasn't the group's leader, or the groups' conscience. Nor does it mean the seccies weren't adult enough to make their own choices. It wasn't up to him to tell them not to use whatever they wanted. Nor did Zilwicki want to give the flake the job of setting it; that decision was made by Carl Hanson, who was the leader of the group.

It is worth noting that these bombs were available to construction companies for what appears to be routine, if very controlled uses. It was the slack security that allowed them to steal them. And, they weren't designed as weapons--they are construction tools in a timeframe when apartment buildings have fusion plants in the neighborhood.

And you can go to almost any country in a civil war, and if such weapons were available, people there would use it. Sinai? Lebanon? Syria? They'd throw them into Israel. Iraq? when I was there, the remnants supporting Hussein, Zarqawi's Al Quaida in Iraq, or any of a half dozen other militias would have used it on us, or on the "interim" government. Or on each other, since all of them seemed to be feuding all the time. Their were constant assassinations. And the PKK would have used such things in Turkey.

The seccies in the book were fighting an irregular and nearly hopeless war on Mesa, just as the Ballroom was fighting an irregular war off Mesa. But it was still a war.

Rob

pappilon wrote:
The kids stole them. He could have told them to "put them back where you got them." So killing 6 million in a nuclear detonation is a terrorist attack but killing 600 or 60 or 6 is not? He's the adult, he gave them the targets. Yes not his fault one kid went off the rails. He still said "here, kid, take this bomb and set it off somewhere you might only kill 60 people, because if we kill 600 its a terrorist attack." Said nobody ever.

Yes, he could have told them to put them back. Would they have listened to him?

It's made really, really clear in the book that Zilwicki wasn't in charge of those kids. He couldn't give them orders. If he had been able to give them orders, the orders would have been 'don't use the nukes'. That's in the book.

Another point would be that 'put them back where you got them' risks one of the kids getting caught, with a nuke (I was putting it back, officer, honest). They'd be interrogated. Zilwicki and Cachat would get caught. Manticore and Haven would never have found out about Mesa, billions would have died and the MAlign would have won.

Would it have been worth the risk?