With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Where would He even go? I guess fanfiction. net doesn't really have any moderation for Zoat to get banned by...

 

Sure, if the supervillain was supported by a majority of the population who also wanted to succeed from the state. Yeah, that'd count. But an individual wanting to just kill people to get money isn't really someone in rebellion. Even if they say they are.

 

Yeah, if a supervillain managed to gain the favor of majority of the population who want to succeed from the state without mind control, and they don't commit atrocities like slavery, they wouldn't be supervillains, anymore.

 

This reminds me of a lot of the conversation around the Responsibility to Protect and the idea that the United Nation could violate sovereignty in order to oppose genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

It seems like this provides a precedent that allows for a reasonable argument that the Justice League should be willing to involve itself in the affairs of other countries in situations where the highest levels of the Responsibility to Protect would come into play.

 

Doesn't need an orbital battlestation to relinquish UN oversight. Just need to keep doing what they were doing before. Without their oversight. I imagine that most nations in the UN would still want their assistance, and would work out other treaties, or just the same treaty, as an individual nation.

 

Is the supertribe in brazil a majority of Brazil's population? rebellion takes many forms and can be comprised of a relatively lower per cent of the population.
The best example would be poison ivy (currently depowered) who wants to protect the green as such all her crimes are a part of her plant revolution, therefore, the league stopping her was suppressing the revolution.

lot's of supervillains have infrastructure and support networks (joker gang, league of shadows, vandal savage etc)

Do you have any idea how many governments the league would have to overthrow?
EDIT: FICTIONAL GOVERNMENTS IN THIS FICTIONAL VERSION OF EARTH SET IN THE DC UNIVERSE

 

Hmmm. About the title "Low Politics", could it be that Paul just doesn't think these discussions are all that important, from his interstellar point of view?

 

"I am declaring this abandoned warehouse, that I bought with my own money, to be the Independent Nation of FuckAmericastan. All in favor? Aye! The motion carries; Justice League go fuck yourself."

 

Since the American civil war came up I feel the need as a history buff to point out two things about that war, first is that Lincoln wasn't interested in ending slavery until after the war started and second that the South Fired the first shots rather than really trying for a peaceful separation.

 

It's seemingly got the support of quite a few tribes from the Amazon Jungle, and there aren't any city folk living in there. They're a region of their own, that another region claims power over.

Well, the people living there disagree, and they've got the power to tell this 'foreign' government to fuck off.

 

I mean, theoretically? If they were able to actually run their government without any human right violation? Why not?

 

Aw, you dealt with Tilletit's situation off-screen? Boo! But now we know it's not a major part of the episode...

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

I'd be impressed if it did. OL might be talking in the metaphorical, not-actually-sticky sense.

Good question. Did you ask it, OL?

No, seriously, if it turns out the eyeball 'god' was protecting the people from some demon that wants to eat (or do something worse to) women with eyeballs...

Ah, here comes some teasing, I bet.

It's been what, a couple of weeks in-universe? I suppose it took them that long to read the reports and discuss them.

It's China, isn't it?

Because of course they're swinging their metaphorical, political dick about... Perhaps they're feeling a little uncertain about their superpowered countrymen's loyalty?

Wow, OL can connect cause and effect! He's not as oblivious as he looks!

Pfft! You know, there is still that Kryptonian super-battleship under Texas...

Smart guy! He seems to be the only one concerned about it, that we've seen.

Burn! You want some Aloe for that one, OL, or has your ring got it handled?

A very good question. And one I hope they think about.

That barely even knows it's a military, too. Many of its members look at it more as a club than an army... Gods only know what they'd make of the JLU of Earth-12 (The DCAU.)

Oh, look, prime example of denial.

Maybe he wanted to be special?

Too true. Just look at the reactions people have in the movies towards Superman... Or the comic version of Batman's various takedown plans.

I would hope it's something big...

World War One was a political poochscrew of alliances, each one dragging country after another into that 'damn fool mess in the Balkans', as Bismarck put it.

As long as you wear the outfit... I"m sure you'd look good...

I'm surprised there were no shudders there. Especially if they were imagining just the leotard, not the skirt or armour.

...I'm not sure that's how they intended the law to be read. But hey, if you've got the legs for it...

Besides moral objections to Slavery? Economic and cultural reasons.

Hence OL's suggestion of a referendum of the Venturian people about their opinions on secession.

It's a whole can of big, wriggly political worms, isn't it?

Batman has a plan for everything. He might not mention it openly, but he has a plan. It's kind of his thing, along with brooding, being a cool dad, and bats.

Oh, boy, this might get loud... And awkward, very awkward.

Well, OL's little fun in Brazil has really kicked the ant's nest of politics, hasn't it? I foresee a few bruised egos and stirred tempers ahead...
Both in-universe and out. Let's try to keep our discussion civil?

 

Thank you, corrected.

Taiwan 16 is de facto an independent country.

They have an absolute majority in some areas.

 

As long as said supervillain has the agreement of a portion of the populace and is not trying to mind control them or planning on committing any atrocities on them or the people they are seceding from then OL would probably just let, assuming said supervillain hasn't already committed some kind of atrocity and OL needs to bring them down.

If they are planning on using violent methods to secede then OL may try to take them down, but if the government they are seceding from is committing atrocities against them, like ethnic cleansing, then they don't get to complain when their victims decide to fight back. If OL does decide to intervene in this then it may be to protect the civilians who didn't commit those atrocities while leaving the military and governmental buildings to their fates.

If the government isn't committing atrocities against them and they decide to use violence then he will try to take the secessionists down and maybe try to get them to adopt more sensible methods.

This is possible, yes.

 

I have the absolute majority of people in the area of ‘my study’ ... does that count?

 

Do you have superpowers strong enough to tell our government to go fuck themselves, bring their police and armies, they can't do shit?

And survive, I mean.

 

I mean...sure. If the US (or whatever country this takes place in) just decides not to give them entry into the country and also doesn't send food into the warehouse, I imagine that FuckAmericastan could be bought with a sandwich and a glass of water within a day.

 

They don't though.

That particular formula doesn't make you immune to WMD's after all.

 

Contrary to popular opinion, our terrorists aren't someone else's freedom fighters usually.

The Brazilian tribes got what they wanted mainly because they didn't go through with violence, that we know of... and I'm assuming that if they had done so, we the readers would have been informed if that situation had turned violent. The fact that the tribes didn't resort to violence and bargained the matter like reasonable people makes the world far more willing to not get involved if people aren't actively dying in a pitched conflict. If an actual civil war had broken out, though, I think that the stated tactics of the tribes and the widespread human suffering they would have caused as a result of their destruction of advanced civilian transportation, food production, medical, etc... infrastructure, would have been enough of a cassus belli to force the UN's hand on allowing the Justice League to intervene in some way, even if it was only using them to safeguard major civilian centers as a defensive measure. Such an act would have tacitly put them in the defacto position of fighting against the Brazilian tribes even if their stated position was overall neutrality. That's putting aside the issue that the tribes had planned to make the conflict an international one eventually as well.

I think, though, Paul's admittedly missing the dimension of possessing a preponderance of force, if not to win a conflict, then enough to make it unfeasible to fight it in the first place.

...and, admittedly again, the preponderance of force is where things get very... messy in settings like these. You have specific individuals who, if so inclined, could take on entire governments and overrule them. I think the differentiating factor in regards to whether or not a given super/cape actually has popular support of their region or has been empowered by locals to act on their behalf.

IE: A simple declaration of a supervillain's disagreement with the state shouldn't and isn't enough to validate them as a 'state in rebellion.' It's the idea of a group of supers or a single super acting on behalf of a group's interests which is especially worrying to a lot of governments, because doing so in as reasonable a fashion as possible in the context of your movement can seriously undermine the legitimacy of the extant government.

I think that's in large part what this entire conflict is over, really: whether or not enough amassed support can or should make a region's government, if created in opposition to a national one, legitimate or not.

Viewed in that lens, Paul has an entirely valid point of view on the subject given that he's in favor of it. National governments who want to maintain borders as-is and would like to keep the status quo, obviously, aren't going to be in favor of anything which removes land and people from their administration. Putting aside China being, well... China about Taiwan, governments should be concerned that groups within their own borders are attempting to amass an amount of war materiel (be it guns or superhumans) to make secession a legitimate question in a conflict rather than a foregone conclusion.

Unlike Paul's stance on the issue, though, I think the matter is more complicated than what he lets on in this chapter. Economics, natural resources, infrastructure stability, political revanchism by larger groups against secession... and a lot of other factors make the matter far more complex than a simple yes/no answer. In theory, though, I agree that should a group large enough to form their own society have the means, political will, and legitimacy to do so, they should be allowed to. The devil is in the details.

 

The reason we still have people making value judgements is that rules codified in language are too inflexible to govern every situation.

Wether or not an uprising is truly that or a political ploy will have to be decided on a case by case basis.

Regarding Batman has a plan: Big Yellow just pondered irreplacable personal being a weakness. The JL needs an understudy for Bats in the sneaky bastard category.

 

Well in this specific example the problem is that said warehouse and population are still benefitting from american infrastructure and services. Unless said ware house is set up to be completely self sufficient without drawing upon the local power/water/gas/internet connections or alternatively paying the rates for them associated with a foreign national buying those services. There also needs to be border agreements, extradition rules, import/export taxes, etc.

If you go through the work to set it all up, and do so in a mostly legal manner then sure, OL probably won't give a fuck.

But just buying the land and declaring yourself an independent nation doesn't work.

 

Micro-nations are a thing, but everyone mostly ignores because the population is pretty much always less than a hundred people and they have no military power to speak of.

 

Or chemical/biological weapons for that matter.

The Sons of Dawn did mostly die from exposure to diseases they didn't have resistance to after all .

 

Sure and when the civilians working on that land get attacked and their equipment destroyed by south America's premier supervillain team? Even assuming that's the end of their claims they aren't just claiming the region they live in, they were claiming most of the continent if I remember correctly.

Zoat, you said in the story that the tribes first claim consumed three countries and a lot of cities potentially displacing millions.

So the Brazilian government need merely ignore their demands?

We know they destroyed several foresty expeditions, although they did attack at night to avoid human casualties, I don't remember if anyone was injured.

Why should a superpowered individual not be allowed to be in a valid state of rebellion? or even them and their lackey's? The justice society stopped Munro why should their successors the justice league not stop Munro's successors?

If that's the case the Paul shouldn't complain if non-superpowered governments take radical means to suppress superpowered rebellion, I think Paul mention something about WMD's being used but that may have been conversation surrounding the update rather than the update itself

I'm not contending that last point, any group with the means and will to rebel should what I disagree with is the interpretation of the leagues charter.

 

I don't keep up with all of the different universes, but this is usually one of the reasons Batman takes in and trains the various Robins.

They learn his methods, get trained up to his skill level, and a Robin, usually Dick Grayson, takes over as Batman if something happens to Bruce.

 

Note that I didn't say a superhero, supervillain, or super-powered person in general shouldn't be allowed to be in a valid state of rebellion, I just made the delineation that declaring oneself in rebellion isn't enough. Just because Poison Ivy disagrees with the government's position on conservation shouldn't automatically entitle her to the protection of foreign political recognition when she's running around committing crimes, murdering people, and using violence to promote her own views even if there is a political dimension to them. At best, that's still terrorism because she's making a unilateral judgement that civilian casualties who have nothing to do with her opposition beliefs to the government are valid targets for reprisal. At worst, she's still just a common criminal because her crimes usually have some kind of selfish financial motivation as well.

As far as governments using radical means to suppress super-powered rebellions, and putting aside whether such behavior would engender such rebellion in the first place, if the super-powered individual in question isn't open to reasonable negotiation of the matter at hand then possibly. My answer would rest on whether or not the government or state in question made sufficiently sincere attempts at resolving the matter through non-violent means.

My entire point isn't that superpowers offer a more or less legitimate source of political power, but instead whether or not a rebellion is founded on more traditional military force or exotic force (super powers, magic, alien support), it should be held to the same standards as a rebellion without such advantages. IE: recognition of civilians as noncombatants, restraint of behavior to the rules of war, behavior in line with the good of the society they espouse to govern, respect for general human rights, popular support of the governed, etc...

Whether or not a government has the support of an ALMIGHTY PUNCH WIZARD like Superman shouldn't affect their legitimacy, how they abide to reasonable standards of behavior for a government should. That applies to both a national government and any group which wants to be recognized as a state in rebellion.

 

South America has never really been a bastion of civil rights and good non corrupt governance, and as such many of the countries there tend to ignore the rights of the indigenous peoples and do whatever they feel like doing.

Remember when this case was first brought up in story and the members of the Team said the only reason they were being sent there was because the Brazilian member of the UN is in the pocket of some industry there.

Yeah those industrialists tend to not give a shit about native rights if they don't make some money from that.

The Brazilian government is most likely severely corrupt and in the pockets of the rich who don't care about native rights and the government also wasn't worried about what the tribes would do as they don't have armies or modern weaponry so they thought they were safe from retaliation from the tribes.

Now the governments have to take what the tribes want seriously and will have to give them something that isn't just some minor token, but something actually substantial, because the tribes now have people with super strength who can destroy their military bases just by using one of their enhanced tribesmen and make most of their weaponry useless, unless they use some chemical/biological weapons and that can lead to them getting in trouble with the UN.

Previously they had no reason to consider the complaints of the natives as more than a minor nuisance, now they need to take them seriously or risk destruction.

The best deal that I think both sides could take from this would be the various companies pay the tribes for what they want to do with the land a substantial amount and not just give them some measly pennies even though the money they made can go into the millions at least, or try to bribe some officials to look the other way while they exploit the land and the native population and the government protects the rights of the tribes from those that would seek to exploit them, this also has the benefit of lowering the overall corruption of the government as they would be less inclined to allow violations to occur if they risk having their cities destroyed. Also making sure to lower the pollution that happens in the tribes territory from outside sources.

This can prevent millions from having to relocate from their homes, thus damaging the economy on a potentially global level, and the natives will finally have a say in how they run their land without them demanding millions leave the only homes they have ever known.

 

Yes. Some areas. Not the totality of the area they intended to occupy in the event of an active war.

Of course, now that they're acting openly they're getting plenty of support from other disenfranchised groups.

 

Seriously, the demands of the natives are stupid af. I feel like Paul is acting like a smartass for no reason.
Btw, Brazil can simply hire a supervillain that isn't wanted in their country and have him kill off the tribe.

 

Poison Ivy seeks to represent the green (whether or not she does is another matter), she could claim with a certain amount of validity that most governments have been committing mass murder on her "people" for centuries. In addition, she could claim that those "civilian casualties" have partaken in the murder and destruction of those she represents.

I'd argue the use of such powers in the first place permits a response in kind.
Although your point on resolving the matter through non-violent means holds merit, partaking in open rebellion typically mean non-violent means have been exhausted.

I suppose this is a difference of perspective I believe the utilisation of superpowers or exotic force as military force should be held to the same standard as weapons of mass destruction

All U.N member governments have defacto support of the ALMIGHTY PUNCH WIZARDS since they agreed to a UN charter to super them by suppressing crime and supervillain attacks.
whether a government abides by a reasonable standard of behaviour is a subjective viewpoint few if any governments believe their standard of behaviour to be unreasonable.

if HOI4 has taught me anything its that the land in the justified war goal is substantially less than what you actually conquer

Thereby increasing the land they wish to occupy?

the dumb thing is then the league get's involved against the Brazillian government because it's the action of a (presumably) known criminal/supervillain.