BEOWULF - THE KARMA SUITSYA

cthia wrote:

Joat42 wrote:No.

The League was founded ~310 years before the MWHJ was officially discovered by Manticore. So no one at that time thought anything at all about the MWHJ which means ZERO impact on the story.

BUT! Beowulf was a founder. And if the League had been aware of the strategic implications of Beowulf's junction - AND SEIZED IT - there's a very good chance they'd have made a play for the MWJ when it appeared over the hyper limit err horizon as well. Especially since then they would have had those same 300 years to think about the implications and game out wormhole assaults against an otherwise unprepared entity at the time.

You are saying that the SL at that time (1585 PD) could take the MWHJ from Manticore and then game out wormhole assault for 300 years so they can attack Manticore?

That doesn't make any sense at all. Not one iota, because if the SL had control of the WHJ Manticore wouldn't exist as we know it and everything that has happened after the MWHJ discovery would not have happened.

cthia wrote:

And I can't for my life understand why you still try to argue that distancing yourself from a corrupt and abusive entity is treason when the terminology is a political smokescreen invented by the Mandarins and they are fully aware that it is a total lie and they know they are in the wrong and they are only doing it to save their own hide.

*sigh - exasperating sigh*

It ISN'T treason. I agreed straightway that it wasn't treason. I was pointing out that the Mandarins will consider it treason! The Mandarins and many of the arrogant officers under their command will consider secession - and in the middle of a war - treason, and that they will act accordingly! Gees!

If you don't agree that the Mandarins and many of the idiots they command will consider it treason, then troll your friendly neighborhood author about it and tell him you think Case Buccaneer is an unrealistic mindset to attribute to the Mandarins and the officers under their charge. I can pass the buck now, it doesn't stop here. This junction now exits deep in the heart of South Carolina. LOL

The Mandarins specifically know it's not treason since they invented that smokescreen. We have stupid people in the SL that swallowed the political shenanigans as truth but from the Mandarins viewpoint there is no treason.

cthia wrote:

And comparing the situation to a marriage is a very poor and tasteless analogy.

Yet it worked for some of the posters. They get it. I don't know what they have on you.

Tasteless? So be it. However, if this Mandarin truth is tasteless, I am not to blame. A tasteless Mandarin truth called for tasteless measures to facilitate delivery by the messenger charged with getting the message through. The Mandarins set the stage, I'm just trying to explain the tone.

Besides, nothing else was working to convey a truth as obvious to me as a full moon against a clear night sky.

I have helped people out of abusive relationships, and I know how they would react if they had read your post in the context you gave:

cthia wrote:Some wives are guilty of making the same mistakes that Beowulf did. She proceeds to file for divorce on the grounds that it is her right. But her best friend warns her that it isn't about rights. "It is about what you know the kind of man you married expects out of you and what he will do when he finds out. He's gonna kill you!"

You start with laying the blame on the victim and then you are more or less arguing that it's better to stay in an abusive relationship rather than take a chance and leave it. That's why I find your analogy poor and tasteless. You then go and post that you are proud of your analogy - bleah.

About This Analogy of Marriage

The analogy of marriage to help understand the League's actions.

About this analogous thing called a marriage between the League and its members. Some of you are put off by my analogy. I don't exactly understand why it rubs you the wrong way, since it's only a comparison thought up to explain why the Mandarins and many officers in the League would be so pissed. Perhaps your resentment is attributed to the very personal and lingering memories of broken marriages in your own world or whatever, in which case I apologize for drumming up long repressed memories which I assure you I don't take lightly. However, I think it is an absolutely brilliant analogy which I came up with on-the-fly to help facilitate understanding the Mandarins' reactions.

First, we need to agree on some naming conventions which I used in the past that confused many of you. But only because I knew where I was going, and being a passenger from the back seat doesn't afford one the best view.

Specifically, in this discussion as also reflected in many of my past posts in this thread, I use "League" where many of you felt should have been "Mandarins." Although I thought the reason would have been obvious then, it certainly should be obvious now. The Mandarins have not cornered the market on the arrogance on Old Earth and I also suspect as much of the coddled complacent core worlds of the League. They are accompanied by many officers who undoubtedly share their exact same sentiments, rooted mostly in fertilized hatred for, and resentment of, all things Manticoran, and may even be fueled by a little of sitting in Mesa's pocket - a vantage point that can be very persuasive against even one's own native sensibilities. This does not mean that the average innocent Solly in the street should be associated with the corrupt, arrogant and misled thinking of those who would misrepresent them. Albeit, their blindness and affinity for being brainwashed is also subject to consideration in this matter. After all, their indoctrination is contracted out to that altruistic paragon of the Solarian League government - Education and Information.

Exhibit A:

A Rising Thunder Ch. 29 wrote:Lyman Carmichael, who’d never expected to replace the assassinated James Webster as Manticore’s ambassador to the Solarian League, stood at a fifth-story window and looked down at a scene out of a bad historical holo drama. His perch in one of the Beowulf Assembly delegation’s offices gave him a remarkably good view of it, too.

Frigging idiots, he thought disgustedly. Only Sollies. Nobody else in the entire galaxy would’ve swallowed that line of crap Abruzzi’s passing out! But Sollies? Hook, line, and sinker.
He shook his head. In a reasonable universe, one might have thought continual exposure to lies would instill at least a partial immunity. Looking down at the sea of angry, shouting humanity clogging the plaza outside the Beowulf residence seemed to demonstrate it didn’t. In fact, he was beginning to think continual exposure actually weakened the ability to recognize the truth on those rare occasions when it finally came along.

You’re being cynical again. And unfair, he admitted unwillingly. But not too unfair. It’s not like these morons hadn’t heard both sides of the story—or been exposed to them, anyway—before they decided to go out and demonstrate their stupidity.

For the moment, Carmichael was relatively safe in a personal sense, here with the Beowulf delegation. That shouldn’t have been a significant consideration, but it was in this case. Under interstellar law as accepted by most star nations, his person was legally sacrosanct, no matter what happened to the relations between his star nation and another. Even in time of war, he was supposed to be returned safely to his government’s jurisdiction, just as any ambassadors to the Star Empire were to be repatriated under similar circumstances.

So, when it appeared to many of you that I mistakenly used "League" to represent the GA's enemies, there was a bit of method to my madness.

Solely as a convenience in this discussion, I will use League to represent both Mandarins and affected officers, because those two entities, in tandem, are who will be represented by the ships carrying their flavor of human element. And I'd either have to use the less efficient "Mandarins and officers and affected Solarian citizen," or I can simply elect to substitute "League" - which simultaneously references all parties concerned, per this discussion. Since I favor the latter construct, I'll use it. Where I might encounter the need to generally reference the League, I'll simply refer to "League proper."

Now, before we start, pour yourself a cup-o-Joe. Joe always seems to relax my friends, male and female, somehow. I wish I knew his secret, but Joe's a miracle worker when it comes to soothing the savage beast lurking in humanity. I hope to truly help get a feel for the Mandarins' and the many officers' disgust. I think it is important to storyline that we fully understand human nature, which isn't always black & white.

At any rate, there aren't many things more personal to us than our own relationships. Most of us can understand the excrement that can come out of letting our guard down and trusting our heart to someone else. Almost every human being on the earth has, or will experience this kind of joy and pain. Even a preschooler isn't immune to it, which is partly why it's such a poignant analogy, other than for its psychological truths.

Beowulf is a founder. Consider that fact in the light of a pact made between you and your best friends as adolescents. As kids, we pledge to always be there for each other. We even adopt disgusting rituals like spitting in our hands then shaking on it to seal the deal. That was our version of blood brothers. If one of us were to become traitorous down the line, it would cut us clean to the bone. This disgusting ritual certainly isn't legally binding, or would even come close to standing up in a court of law.

But! Transgressions are made against people, not against laws. Laws don't kill. People kill. Crimes of passion are a result of disrespected sensibilities, oftentimes exacerbated by carelessness, ignorance, irresponsibility, and dispassionate inconsideration.

In light of this even more fleshed out analogy, let's open up with Tsang to really get the ball rolling. But as a lead-in, let's consider another passage later on in the chapter of Carmichael's reflection. . .

A Rising Thunder wrote:He couldn’t hear the individual chants or shouts through the background surf of crowd noise, not from the fifth floor through a hermetically sealed window. But he knew what they were screaming. And even if he hadn’t known, he could read the placards and holo banners.
MANTICORAN MURDERERS!
BUTCHERS!
HARRINGTON + TREACHERY = MURDER!
REMEMBER FLEET ADMIRAL FILARETA!
ASSASSINS, NOT ADMIRALS!
THIEVES, LIARS, AND MURDERERS!
And there was equal time for Beowulf, of course.
TRAITORS!
MANTICORAN PIMPS!
WHO’S KNIFE IS IN ADMIRAL FILARETA’S BACK?
WHERE’S YOUR THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER?
BEOWULF HELPED MURDER ELEVENTH FLEET!
WHERE WAS ADMIRAL TSANG WHEN ELEVENTH FLEET NEEDED HER?

The Solarian League's citizens are like an old indoctrinated hog that can easily be force fed slop and led to slaughter.

This truth is part and parcel to why so many Solarians deep throated Mesa's rhetoric that the SEM was complicit in the Green Pines atrocity.


Onward march to the depths of the human element surrounding poor old Tsang's despair. . .

Tsang had been given Operation Arbela, the supporting thrust of Operation Raging Justice into the heart of the Manty Home system. I imagine she was proud and ready to stick it to those upstart, arrogant neobarbs causing so much trouble for the League. The League is always right on all matters. After all, they are the invincible Solarian League, and if there is a problem in some system on the peripheral of human existence, then those neobarbs should go through proper channels, but never ever take matters into their own hands and challenge the League. The only reason these neobarbs are alive in the first place is because of the good grace and mercy of the mighty Solarian League.

To be sure, this is not the reality this messenger agrees with, nor is it the absolute reality existing in the galaxy, but it is the indoctrinated reality of most Solarians that we, and the GA, have encountered. It is simply sacrosanct Solarian truth. You can bank on it. Solarian arrogance has been traded as a viable commodity on NASDAQ for centuries.

Tsang hypers in-system and had to confront her own founding cavorting with the enemy during an operation of war (niggling details). She finds out that Beowulf will not allow her to support her comrades - Solarian officers - against a neobarbaric enemy, just because they were in bed with them. Then Beowulf proceeds to show Tsang technology that is obviously developed by the enemy. Akin to the wife showing an abusive husband a ring she got as a gift from the new suitor. Do you think that would be advisable or smart on her part?

Then later, Beowulf reveals a hidden enemy force hiding in stealth to Tsang. Akin to the wife saying, "Let me introduce you to my new bf. Come out from hiding in the closet honey, so I can introduce you to this idiot husband of mine."

Do you really think that's a smart thing to do to the sensibilities of a husband you know is abusive? It wouldn't be a smart thing to do to a husband who isn't abusive, let alone to one who is. It certainly wouldn't be nice. Or advisable.

Alas, the revelation and twisting knife in the heart of the husband isn't quite over yet. He realizes that the activity at the back door of his gfs home (activity at the junction) was actually her allowing the new bf to sneak in right under his nose. Now, I'm going to leave you to contemplate on your own what an abusive husband would say and do as a result of that one.

Poor old Tsang had to be livid! I wish I could hear her uncensored cuss words behind the spittle issuing from the vitriol finally escaping her lips, when she wasn't choking on her own words from sheer shock.

Tsang turned her fleet around because she had to. But I wonder just how much cussing she did all the way back to Solarian space. And all through the debriefing.

Before anyone play that same old record again. No, Beowulf wasn't legally married to the League. But they did have a legal relationship with them, which is why they had to go through preliminary proceedings and proper protocol to end the relationship, the same as any wife must do too. Beowulf certainly didn't think of the relationship as the League did. But many women find out that the few dates she had with some guy has become more to him than she bargained for. And if the creep is an obsessive, abusive jerk, she's in for a world of hurt. And all from what she thought was simply a casual relationship without any emotional entanglements or intimate bindings.

It may offend some of you, but please do not shoot the messenger who simply informs you that oftentimes art imitates life. Rather, use this knowledge to protect yourself.

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Joat42 wrote:I have helped people out of abusive relationships, and I know how they would react if they had read your post in the context you gave:

I've been there quite a few times myself Joat. Went so far as putting up a woman and her three kids for almost a year and a half while I was fresh out of college. It strained my own relationship too, to the point of breaking. I lost that gf. But I'd do it all over again.

I also know how the many women I've been involved with who've found themselves in this predicament would react to what I said as well.

As humans, we have all experienced the ugly side of marriage. Either our own, our parents, our friends or our associates. Or simply seen it on the street or while innocently shopping in a market while going about our daily lives, because confrontation can crop up anywhere.

These are ugly truths for certain, but pointing these truths out is hardly in bad taste. Many women would love for man - and his legal system - to put a finger on and get a handle on it. It is certainly a man's world, and his laws aren't exactly geared to protect the innocent, helpless and abused wives. Are they? This is changing thank God, albeit much too slowly, witnessed by the fairly recent laws that now require an automatic 24hr incarceration for assault on a spouse.

A woman must be armed with certain truths so she can learn to protect herself. There are certain dos and don'ts while in an abusive relationship. Sugar coating it is not helping the victims. They need truth, as well as, understanding. The law can't do much to the idiot until she's maimed or dead. (The GA can't do much to the Mandarins until many Beowulfans and more are dead. Revenge is little consolation to the dead and gone.)

Many women who have gone through the ordeal hold support groups for other women who are just beginning the journey. . . or considering it. They tell them the very same things I have shared in this forum. And they sure as hell don't sugar coat it. THESE ARE TOOLS FOR SURVIVAL. Know your enemy. Know the psychology of the human element driving his insanity.

A woman can't just choose to leave an abusive relationship and not properly prepare for it. Leaving an abusive relationship is like preparing to go on a long vacation that calls for lots of packing and planning. The woman can't simply leave if she has children. She must think of their safety too. Beowulf had children to protect - her citizens. The husband has rights as well. They aren't automatically stripped because he is abusive. It is illegal for a woman to simply run with a husband's kids. She must follow through with formalities to get out of a marriage, and in the interim she is still charged with carrying on her wifely duties, because she is still his wife. Beowulf has to suffer these same formalities by holding a referendum. That is why it was once prudent to be counseled before marriage. It is a serious commitment. And Beowulf will still be held accountable to the implied responsibilities they had to their own founding. Certainly as far as the League is concerned.

Consider that a woman has to remain in the home of an abusive husband while she goes through legal motions to divorce him. All the while having to endure continuing to sleep with him while his anger builds up to what he knows is inevitable divorce. The intimacy becomes more and more brutal. It becomes a weapon to be used against her. And the intimacy is his right. He has a right to what has now become a weapon to punish her. There's a gray area existing around the idea that a man can't be charged for raping his own wife. Unbelievable, but true.

Under these circumstances, do you believe it is prudent for a woman to make things worse on herself by sleeping around and throwing it in the face of this very abusive man? Do you think that it is prudent to poke the gorilla or prod the hornets nest on the way out the door? Every opportunity she gets?

cthia wrote:Some wives are guilty of making the same mistakes that Beowulf did. She proceeds to file for divorce on the grounds that it is her right. But her best friend warns her that it isn't about rights. "It is about what you know the kind of man you married expects out of you and what he will do when he finds out. He's gonna kill you!"

Joat42 wrote:You start with laying the blame on the victim and then you are more or less arguing that it's better to stay in an abusive relationship rather than take a chance and leave it. That's why I find your analogy poor and tasteless. You then go and post that you are proud of your analogy - bleah.

No Joat. I really place no blame at all, because it isn't about blame, or faults. It is about sensibilities and discretion and handling the situation properly, in consideration for your own safety. This charge is directed to those women who knowingly poke and prod the abusive firecracker. You do not sleep around in the face of your abusive husband. You do not date other men in the face of your abusive husband. You do not flaunt your new beau, or the gifts of which he has showered upon you, in front of your abusive husband. You shouldn't do these things even if he isn't abusive. And all before the divorce is final??? You might even want to consider NOT doing so even after the divorce is final. He's still a loaded weapon of mass destruction.

Beowulf did all of those things.

I simply said that karma is a MF!

Perhaps you don't understand karma.

Even in the face of all of this, nobody deserves what could happen. Neither did Beowulf. But an abusive, scorned spouse or person is hardly concerned with what you think you might deserve.

At one of these support groups one woman said. . .

"If you don't want to become a victim, at least act like it!"

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Joat42 wrote:The Mandarins specifically know it's not treason since they invented that smokescreen. We have stupid people in the SL that swallowed the political shenanigans as truth but from the Mandarins viewpoint there is no treason.

This rope is hanging many people.

The Mandarins know it is legally not treason. They know that Beowulf has not legally transgressed against the law! But it doesn't have a damn thing to do with the transgressions Beowulf made against the implied and perceived relationship made between people!

"The law supports you, Beowulf. But you know what you did! And we're gonna get ya. Look out suckers, 'cause we're gonna get ya!"

Crimes of passion are not transgressions made against the law. Crimes of passion are transgressions made against people.

The law isn't the one stabbed 99 times long after the victim is dead!

What did my Driver's Ed. teacher say again? Play it again Sam. . .

It doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong. Dead right or dead wrong, you are still dead.

Drive for the other idiot on the highway too.

This also applies to the highway of life.

cthia wrote:What did my Driver's Ed. teacher say again?

It doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong. Dead right or dead wrong, you are still dead.

Drive for the other idiot on the highway too.

This also applies to the highway of life.

I understand that you are very happy with your terms and analogies, but one thing I do not understand is what you, as you alone, think that Beowulf should have done.

Could you please state, or restate, your ideas for the path best taken? Your prescription, suggestion, what have you in a clear, concise way that I can try to follow and perhaps understand. Inquiring minds want to know.

I understand that you are very happy with your terms and analogies, but one thing I do not understand is what you, as you alone, think that Beowulf should have done.

Could you please state, or restate, your ideas for the path best taken? Your prescription, suggestion, what have you in a clear, concise way that I can try to follow and perhaps understand. Inquiring minds want to know.[/quote]
+1.

Especially since the two immediate mass deaths caused by Beowulf's "treason" were the result of actions by the MA. An organization that no one knew about until a few months ago in Universe.

The ships destryoed in A Rising Thunder would still have been alive if the MA had not bombed the Flag Bridge and caused all of the missiles to be fired.

The millions of Beowulf civilians that were killed died not as a direct result of SL actions but were killed by bombs placed by the MA.


Beowulf worked with the GA to offer the fleet in A Rising Thunder a chance to surrender without bloodshed. If not for MA actions that would have happened.

They kept Tsang from committing suicide by attacking a defended Wormhole. Should they have just let her fly her ships into that meat grinder?


They worked with the GA so that when the SL sent ships to attack Beowulf those ships failed in their mission. It was only the MA bombs that were set off using the SL attack as a cover that caused damage. So how does Beowulf's "treason" to the SL justify the MA killing millions of its civilians?

Thunder Child Actual wrote:
They kept Tsang from committing suicide by attacking a defended Wormhole. Should they have just let her fly her ships into that meat grinder?

Well, since they were planning an attack on a neutral star system they were clearly pirates. Sounds to me like Beowulf was protecting pirates! So yes, if they weren't going to apprehend the pirates themselves, I think letting Manticore do it would have been ideal.

Step two would have been apprehending themselves for supporting terrorism.

Your analogy reminds me of a certain Judge who shall not be named also known as "his nameless wife's cuckold." His wife used to be the US Attorney for a certain State who became famous for persecuting a ranching family to enable civil forfeiture of their property. This imbecile judge has such profound discernment that his wife was able to engage in a prolonged and spectacularly indiscrete extramarrital affair that he apparently remained oblivious too until she got herself arrested for stalking her boyfriend. (She must not have been that much fun in bed or her boyfriend wouldn't be complaining about it?) The judge probably believed her when she told him that the case of Syphilliys that pennicillin will not cure which is now rotting his brain is just a little something that he must have picked up from a toilet seat in the courthouse.

Since this judge lacks the testicular fortitude to divorce his phillandering wife, he abuses his authority as a Judge by abusing the citizens of this rural County. He recently gave a marijuana bootlegger a free pass for shooting at his landlord's children with a 12 gauge shotgun in retaliation for the landlord trying to evict him. The ruling appears to be motivated in part by the desire to enable his wife to ressurect her professional and political career by prosecuting the landlord for the tenant's illegal marijunna grow.

The citizens of this rural County are now suffering the consequences. The County is becoming a dumping ground for murdered mothers. The body of the most recent victim who had been beaten to death was discovered in a ditch barely half a mile away from a blueberry field where another murdered mother had been discovered not quite two years ago. Given the incidence of about 100 such murders per year nationally, this county with a population of only 100,000 should not be experiencing this. But why not? The judge is too busy demonstrating their anger at their cheating wife to give a shit.

Does this seem like a valid analogy for the SLN venting its anger with Manticore and Beawulf by committing violations of the Deneb accords and the Erandandi Edict against the innocent people of Hypatia?

Beawulf's mistake was not getting bigger gun and shooting her abusive husband in the back then in the head to make certain that he was dead.

Just send a courier through to warn the RMN that the pirates are coming.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Thunder Child Actual wrote:
They kept Tsang from committing suicide by attacking a defended Wormhole. Should they have just let her fly her ships into that meat grinder?

Well, since they were planning an attack on a neutral star system they were clearly pirates. Sounds to me like Beowulf was protecting pirates! So yes, if they weren't going to apprehend the pirates themselves, I think letting Manticore do it would have been ideal.

Step two would have been apprehending themselves for supporting terrorism.

One particular matter came up already in this thread. I am really trying to see how the fact that instead of the jealous husband - the SLN - actually doing Beowulf harm, it turns out to be the MA using the vengeful patsies, as ultimately affecting the fact that it is all about Beowulf's karma coming home to roost.

I would never have guessed that anyone is as gullible as the League's citizens who are as indoctrinated as any old hog who's able to be force-fed slop and easily led to slaughter.

BUT! There sure as hell ain't no way that I will buy into the swampland that the SLN suddenly found their moral compass and becomes some paragon of unadulterated concern for Beowulf being held against their will with a Manticoran pulsar at their heads telling them to defect, as being the reason they are really in Beowulfan orbit during the referendum.

I'm not going to reinvent this wheel. Nothing has changed.