Did the MBS corner the market on trade?

Connect the dots ...

Diplomacy->Geneva Convention->Rules of War-> Diplomacy

cthia wrote:Connect the dots ...

Diplomacy->Geneva Convention->Rules of War-> Diplomacy

Here I thought you were saying “Rules of War? We don't need no stinking Rules of War!”.

PS. In the Honorverse, it is the Deneb Accords; not the Geneva Convention.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Connect the dots ...

Diplomacy->Geneva Convention->Rules of War-> Diplomacy

Here I thought you were saying “Rules of War? We don't need no stinking Rules of War!”.

PS. In the Honorverse, it is the Deneb Accords; not the Geneva Convention.

I thought it'd be easier to grasp if you could understand the same principle here on Earth. Remember the analogy of marriage I used as it applies to the League and Beowulf?

As far as Beowulf sitting on the DB, I covered that specifically for YOU as the fourth thing Beowulf could have done.

tlb wrote:Here I thought you were saying “Rules of War? We don't need no stinking Rules of War!”.

He got it! He finally got it! I preached that all throughout the Karma thread and all everyone wanted to argue is rights, Constitutions instead of constitutions, and legalities. In the face of a dying Superpower.

As I stated before, they usually come around.

tlb wrote:Here I thought you were saying “Rules of War? We don't need no stinking Rules of War!”.

cthia wrote:He got it! He finally got it! I preached that all throughout the Karma thread and all everyone wanted to argue is rights, Constitutions instead of constitutions, and legalities. In the face of a dying Superpower.

As I stated before, they usually come around.

I understood that was what you were trying to say, but I do not agree. What you were claiming in the Karma thread has NOT come true.

Note that the text you presented about stopping the DB is from someone that has no first hand knowledge of how the decision was made.

cthia wrote:I agree with you for the most part if applied to any other situation but here. You cannot go on turning the other cheek so your opponent can slap the hell out of that side too. I tried to tell Honor that during some intimate moments of pillow talk about her Doctrine. Sometimes you have to abandon the rules of war when dealing with a bunch of savages who've totally thrown the rules of war in the shredder anyway! You're talking about the act of seizing a DB (which may or may not have enjoyed diplomatic immunity) as if it would be an atrocious act of murder. In the face of an enemy who has committed atrocious acts of murder against you.

Agreed, partially. However dirty your enemy is playing, you still have your own population to answer to. Some things it will accept, but there is a line you can't cross.

Please note I am talking in generic terms here. I am not referencing any specific situation during the war. I am not talking about whether the RMN should have seized a specific Solarian D.B. or not.

You're worrying about whether THIS enemy will capitulate and start violating your diplomatic immunity as well, if you violate theirs?

Nope.

WHAAAAA? IINM, that's a moot point. This whole war was instigated because of a diplomatic incident. That bridge had already been crossed by the SLN when it fired on hapless ships with their wedges down! And you're telling me at this point in the war, in light of everything else the SLN heaped upon this already huge pile, that the RMN should worry about galactic opinion about it seizing a frickin diplomatic boat??? Really?

The RMN, SEM and GA were upholding all the niceties of the Rules of War and diplomacy. They sent diplomats to Old Chicago to ask for repudiation of Byng. They tried to resolve the escalation diplomatically. They tried to get Filareta turned away before more Solarian personnel got killed. They were showing the Galxay they were the good guys and the Solarians were the ones committing atrocities and violating the rules.

So should the RMN violate diplomatic immunity of a diplomatic courier (assuming that was the case)? They could, but they shouldn't. And because they had a choice, they simply didn't.

Well, if you still feel that way, mind you. Do read the rules of diplomatic immunity. Which reads somewhat like so ...

"A foreign diplomat may be detained IF his actions is endangering himself or those around him."

That frickin' DB was about to endanger the entire lives of the cavalry is was tasked to summon. LET ALONE lives of the host nation.

If that isn't enough, consider that the RMN was GOING to seize it anyway. Beowulf's crazy decision is the only reason it didn't! So apparently, the RMN agrees with me.

AND, AND, we don't know for certain the DB even had diplomatic immunity. Although I can't imagine the League being dumb AND incompetent enough to use one that didn't.

I'm left gasping for air here people!

Indeed. They wanted the D.B. to go through.

cthia wrote:And the whole damn court room is filled with witnesses for the defendant. Even those nations formerly belonging to the claimant, who are simply to be considered as hostile witnesses.

Even then, you may want to consider which lines you want to cross. Even if everyone around says you were justified in crossing that line, you have to think about the future. You've set a precedent. If the good guys can do this, then the bad guys who will do it in the future will point to your precedent and claim that as a justification. This limits the ability of future good guys to bring the hammer down on them.

I am talking in general as well. And, specifically. The general rules covers that specific case.

It would not have been a violation of diplomatic immunity. Regardless of whether it is insane to think that a nation at war would give aratsass about it in the face of mortal danger. Of its people. Of it's nation.

1. "A foreign diplomat may be detained IF his actions is endangering himself or those around him."

2. “The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations does not provide for immunity of jurisdiction for acts committed outside the exercise of consular duties (Article 43).”

The point is moot.

3. A nation's war powers enables it to seize ALL avenues of communications. That means TV, Radio, Media, Internet, smoke signals, and Dispatch Boats.

WE LOST THE WAR, but heeeey, we upheld their right of diplomatic immunity.

****** *

Something I never got a chance to broach in the Karma thread. Had Tsang ignored Beowulf because she was bad, very very bad, and proceeded to have her way with Beowulf and the junction, that would have forced her boyfriend to "illegally" protect her honor.

The RMN had no business interfering in a "domestic" dispute. Something the League had been doing for centuries. Like husband. Like boyfriend. Man, can Beowulf pick 'em.

cthia wrote:Something I never got a chance to broach in the Karma thread. Had Tsang ignored Beowulf because she was bad, very very bad, and proceeded to have her way with Beowulf and the junction, that would have forced her boyfriend to "illegally" protect her honor.

The RMN had no business interfering in a "domestic" dispute. Something the League had been doing for centuries.

Why "illegally"? Why "domestic"? The Harrington Plan was to split off planets from the Solarian League and is a proper exercise of wartime strategy. The GA could easily observe all the diplomatic and Rules of War niceties and still do maximum damage to the Solarian navy, including the units under Adm. Tsang.

So far you have been wrong about the "karma" that will befall Beowulf and you are wrong about the need to throw away the rules of war and diplomatic usage. Even if the DB had diplomatic immunity, it could have been delayed (without violating that immunity) until it could only report that the SLN fleet at Manticore was destroyed.

Why write as though the GA would lose unless they threw away all civilized restraints when fighting against the Solarian League; when we know that the fight against the SLN is essentially over?

The DB used by SLN to attempt to summon the SLN fleet sitting just out of the territorial space of Beowulf and the Sigma Draconis wormhole was a SLN operations posing as a news DB.

Since we already know that the information about the Fillerta plan and the reenforcemtns via Beowulf was leaked to Beowulf which promptly told their long term allied Star Nation and major traiding partner, a DB if not that particular one would have been an obvious way to pass the word to the forces waiting near the Bewoulf terminus. That the dam thing had been more or less just hanging around the terminus and knowing what was comming (remember the SLN had already sent an Admiral to Beowulf to tell them what they were going to do and the SLN commander of the reenforcments had already been warned off by the commander of the Beowulf SDF--specificaly hammering the point that THERE WAS NO STATE OF WAR AND WHAT THE SLN WAS TELLING BEOWULF TO DO WAS NOT A LEGAL REQUIREMENT UNDER THE TERMS OF THE CONSTITUION. Said SLN commander chose to ignor the illegality of her orders but when confronted by the RMN task force- decided today was not a good day to die. I believe there was probably some little tiny glimmer of sanity that popped in there- more like self preservation- in that if SEM had this large a force specificaly dedicated to "blocking" her, that a fully alert and weapons hot defence system at the other end was going to turn what might make it thorugh that RMN task force just so much incandecent vapor since they would be getting hit before they could even see what was shooting them post transit.

Make up your mind which side of the fence you're on. Delaying a Diplomatic Courier violates it's diplomatic immunity too, by all of your rules.

I know you still don't think Beowulf looked her Karma in the eye. S h r u g.