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

Y'know, that is exactly why said battlestation was originally disarmed.

No, because a person does not mean the same thing as a people. The former is a single individual (or, if you stretch the point, a very small group.) A people, on the other hand, is a self-sustaining ethnic and\or cultural community of persons.

This is why most micro-nations are stupid - they can't maintain themselves without external support, in the vast majority of cases.

 

One problem with that is finding someone willing and capable of doing that.

Remember there aren't that many high tier metahumans out there and the tribes people have at least half the strength a Kryptonian does, and there are hundreds of them. so it would be very difficult to find one capable of doing that.

The other reason is what justification do they have for doing that.

Aside from destroying some equipment and maybe injuring a few workers they haven't done anything that would warrant such a response.

Yes their demands may be a bit much, but they are at least open to negotiation.

 

I sorta missed the more interpersonal moments among the team, glad to see them back from time to time.

 

I feel like this is somewhat sidestepping the actual issue I was pointing towards, as well as the fact that Poison Ivy notably doesn't have the support of the Green in this continuity. Nor, I feel, does this discussion need to be made more complex by interjecting about the validity of plants as sentient lifeforms. In that respect, Poison Ivy was a bad example to use off-the-cuff.

Regardless, and for the sake of argument, though, feel free to use someone like Toy Man or Penguin or something. Just because a villain has a disagreement with a government shouldn't entitle them to protected political status on that basis alone.

I'd agree if all superpowers were unilaterally destructive and deployment of super-powered assets automatically meant loss of life, but that's objectively untrue. Whether or not they can be used to destroy doesn't mean they can't also be used for humanitarian or constructive, yes still interventionist, purposes.

Save that at least two security council members: Russia and China, have fairly stringent rules about when, where, and to what extent the Justice League (including Superman) have the ability to intervene. They only want that support when it's convenient for them to rely on it, or there is no other option short of it.

Like, case in point, China doesn't want the Justice League intervening in 'domestic' conflicts, because they're fairly authoritarian and have a long and storied history of suppressing anti-government movements, even peaceable ones. The problem is that they're using a number of very shaky justifications to deny what a large majority of the world recognizes as an otherwise independent, self-governing nation the right to build up their own military forces. If Taiwan didn't have a preponderance of force on their side (via allies), I don't believe China would flinch at launching an invasion to quell what they see as a separatist state, but enjoys a majority support from the local populace and is otherwise well-behaved and broadly respectful of civil rights. That's less 'respecting internal disputes' and more rationalization of a military takeover.

Even given the fact that, yes, many governments try to see their actions in the best light possible for the majority of their citizenry, painting the entire matter as one of subjective decision-making misses out on the very real fact that there are objective crimes against humanity that very explicitly violate a 'reasonable' standard of behavior.

 

Poison Ivy doesn't really have the support of the Green as Swamp Thing, who actually represents the Green, seemed to dislike her as she may have essentially been enslaving the Green to do her bidding, as Euntanthe seemed to dislike Paul's plant control because it isn't the right way to work with the Green and Ivy also may have been using a similar method.

As for using powers that have potential for destruction in a constructive manner, but still using it in an act of secession, we'll there is the possibility of using plant control, which can be used to kill, to grow food for the separatists, who the people they are trying to separate from are trying to starve them out for their secession attempts.

 

Things are going to get wet, aren't they?

They do have moderation, and, they can get quite nasty, on occasion. Or, at least they used to.

On where to go, I suppose AO3 might be a possibility... Or, you can find authors using Wordpress, or Blogger, or... very long list, though, they don't tend to have a community of writers... Or, self-hosting a forum on your own domain... (Maybe using your own software...) Or, set-up a new country for writers, called something like 'Writers Omniversal'.

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If you're responsible for creating somewhere, does that give you the right to rule it? We've got people who could copy-paste the planet Earth, maybe into a new universe which is otherwise to their own design. Or, something more fun, like 'skin' the planet, and lay the counties on a disc world. Now, if you do that, do you get to tell all the people what to do?

This gets more interesting if you've got immense virtual world servers somewhere under your control, and you stick a country's worth of people you've mind-uploaded onto there, where you've done a somewhat credible job of faking-up a virtual copy of their physical country, with high-grade simulated physics... (I'm assuming here that mass editing of mind uploads for loyalty isn't feasible or desirable for some reason.) That 'country' has no physical continuity with anywhere, so, ignoring whether you'd pull/push the Big Red Switch, and power-down the world-servers, do you get to tell the people what to do?

 

But the tribes want the total landmass of the entire Amazon plus the underlying plains and savannas. To the point a few territories (French Guyana, etc) will literally stop existing. They aren't a majority of the people on the territory they wish to control and are willing to use violence and terror tactics to drive out the people that doesn't want to leave these lands.


The children of the dawn are an unrecognized state claiming to be the successor of the native states that existed before colonization/genocide, thus they would gain a claim on the territory when they are actually recognized as such by the international community, not before. Until then they don't have a legal claim to anything beyond due compensation to the land that was given to them by past Brazilian administrations that has been unduly taken from them by private interest and enabled by corruption in the Brazilian government.


People have absolutely no inherent right to territorial claims, nation states do, when there is a disagreement between states as to what their territorial claims actually are the disagreements are solved by diplomacy (in all its forms). Thus "Civil wars" are actually a disagreement between the established nation state and the new nascent one and all the rules of war would thus apply.

Edit: The use of super powered troops would constitute WMDs deployment in my books exactly when these people start to cause destruction en mass and would thus warrant a proportionate response in kind.

The Brazilian government can absolutely deploy WMDs and chemical weapons when the Children of Dawm start to target the infrastructure necessary for civilian life.

 

The SI has had a law passed that declares all sentient's human the parliament of the green is a thinking body that receives thinking information form many if not all plants ergo plants should receive human protections under the law (from a legalistic standpoint most judges would likely find it morally unconvincing).

I don't know much about toy man other than he killed superman at one point and Penguin is a gang boss not a revolutionary. I picked Ivy because there is an inherent political motive in her actions rather than simply "I committed a crime", the best pick would be Anarky or Azrael followed by Red hood but they don't exist yet. (the real best pick would be magneto but he isn't DC)

Unilaterally of destruction is not the determining factor of what a WMD is, the determining factor of what a WMD is being a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous humans or cause great damage to human-made structures, natural structures, or the biosphere.
As such most superpowered individuals count as they have the potential to cause the same or a similar level of damage. In this context, These superpowers are intended to be used as unstoppable weapons of mass destruction and should be classified as such.

What I meant was by enforcing the laws of a nation one gives defacto support to the existence of said nation, The fact that the justice would support the Chinese government defeat a supervillain if they requested it give them support and furthers their legitimacy.

If the league want to maintain being a non-political entity they need to see it from a legal perspective: What we have here is a superpowered group of people who have committed vandalism (yes with arguably laudable motives) and have a willingness to cause widespread social disruption through illegal means, as you stated simply because a villain has a disagreement with the government does not entitle them to political protections nor should it.

I appear to have been unclear here reasonable behaviour is subjective and not a good measurement for the legitimacy of government since although some government operate with the consent of the masses (broadly) the ultimate source of legitimacy is the monopoly of violence and use of force. If a government is unable to maintain that control they lose it, the justice league appear to help states maintain it by cracking down on super-powered criminals.

In short, helping to prevent outright anarchy gives implicit support to the local government even if you only do it because it's better than the alternative.

EDIT:

Why? you're simply deploying effective weapons against a military target that's resistant to most conventional weapons?

 

Everyone has absolute majority in some areas. I currently hold absolute majority in the bathroom and my family as a whole has absolute majority in my house.

Anyway, I still think what OL did in Venturia was an idiot ball level move. He should have known that to everyone, friend or foe, it looks like he is not only endorsing, but enforcing Venturian independence. Sure, bla bla he isn't NEMO, and bla bla he doesn't care about politics, but come on. Let's be serious. OL is the sole NEMO representative of the planet. OL was pivotal in founding NEMO. OL could have asked any other Atlantean polity for temporary use of their archmages, including Poseidonis, since all the KordTech magi would have been okay with helping out with a crisis even when busy. OL knows that this is a direct afront not only to a JL member in good standing, but to his supposed friend Kaldur'an.
This is the first time in human history that an alien space fleet gets involved in internal Earth politics and does so with the implicit threat of military violence. And OL is the sole reason for that. If Batman doesn't tell him to cut this shit out then Batman is an idiot. The UNSC should start thinking of allowing space warfare just to repel NEMO and prevent this from becoming precedence. Hell, the Green Lantern corps was formed in part exactly to prevent this shit from happening. Reach gets away with a lot, but they would not get away with this. Let's hope for OL's sake that the Snake incident and the Guardians' reluctance to antagonize a Controller-backed organization still mean that they give him the hands off approach.
So either OL has a convoluted plan that takes all of this into account, or I'm sorry to say that this would be an idiot ball plot. OL has not been shown to be ignorant of politics, nor is he generally an idiot.
Let's see what he's trying to pull I guess.

 

Actually, I think I'm the one who chose Poison Ivy as an example, hence why I said she was a bad one.

Whether or not plant life is sentient and what type of sentience it possesses, if it does indeed possess it, is just confusing the issue, though. The thrust of the point was that [Criminal Insert Name Here] doesn't get to just say they're a revolutionary and benefit from that title without checking all of the other boxes. Public support, formal assumption of governance duties, open dialogue with the international community, etc... The point was that there's more to the matter than a criminal being entitled to protection just because they disagree with the popular politics of a regime.

I still think it's an apples and oranges comparison, though. Regardless of the scale of death able to be caused by a WMD, their use can only inflict suffering or death.

Framing the use of superpowers, especially in DC where we have copious examples otherwise, comes across as misleading and frames capes/supers as only instruments of violence when that capacity is highlighted in such a way.

I'm not going to argue about whether or not the Brazilian tribes broke the law. They did break Brazilian law.

The inherent problem, though, is as I've said before: they have locally popular support, they have a preponderance of military force, and they are negotiating before moving to violence to address their grievances.

Whether or not they broke the national law of Brazil is, in this instance, irrelevant. The Justice League interfering in this situation obligates them to a political stance against a nominally self-governing people comprised of a structured government. Again, there is delineation between a simple criminal and a group of people who have organized themselves against a national government to formally secede. The Brazilians are very much the latter, not the former. If the Justice League intervenes in civil political dispute like this, that opens the door to a wide array of potential weaponization as regards their organization. Given your espoused opinion on the matter of superpowers as WMDs, it's admittedly a bit odd to see that you'd argue for interventionism to a greater extent, not a lesser. Especially when much of the value of WMDs is in their threat, to keep the peace, and not their use, which invites reciprocal violence on the same scale.

Entire books have been written on the matter of what concerns "Reasonableness" in local, national, and international law. Inasmuch as it is subjective to a degree, there is a significant body of learned work regarding the logical underpinnings of what that standard should be held to. Reasonableness is not actually a wholly subjective rule.

Beyond speaking of "reasonableness" in a purely academic sense, though, it's also important to consider the term's meaning on the international stage. Seeming to be 'reasonable' in your approach to problem solving means that other groups can see you as a rational polity which will hold to agreements made with you. In turn, this means that other groups will not unite against you for the simple reason of being a rogue actor in international politics. As you say, this is important to keep a monopoly of violence. "Unreasonable" governments quickly find themselves suffering from alliances of foreigners to challenge their domestic monopoly of force. All of these decisions being discussed aren't made in a vacuum, after all.

 

I think I brought up Poison Ivy as an example of a supervillain in open rebellion against the US government

While I'm not sure about the qualifiers you put on it such as I do agree that there is more to a revolution than simply disagreeing with the popular politics of a regime.

That's a fair interpretation that I think boils down to a difference in outlook.

From what I understood the tribesmen were going to continue with their violent actions (which they had already moved to via vandalism) instead of negotiating with the Brazilian government and only decided to negotiate when Orange lantern and god-emperor Munro arrived, however, given the nature of your arguments I am beginning to believe I may have misinterpreted the update in question.
From what I understand I'm arguing from two scenarios concurrently.
1: The Tribesmen's continue on their current trajectory and continue committing vandalism and terrorising the local population in which case they are acting in a criminal capacity rather than a civil one, therefore, the league has grounds to intervene
2: Civil war breaks out, in which case as WMDs are the only effective weapon the Brazilian government has and the use of superpowered individuals invites reciprocal action. (entirely domestic situation assumes no league involvement)

Reasonability shifts with the personal opinions of the current population and is therefore subjective, however, you're correct in that it isn't entirely subjective as a group of people (or in this case nations) have a common agreement on what is acceptable decorum.

 

What's the cutoff point? Because on the one hand a farmstead can be self-sustaining and if they are a family they are ethnically distinct and if they are a cult they are a culture. On the other hand many modern nation-states aren't self-sufficient and rely on outside trade and sometimes even foreign aid.

On a different note, Mr Zoat how does the Brazil situation look in Rene!Grayven's world?

Edit: DAT_NOOB the rebels didn't officially resort to vandalism (yet). That was a single member going rogue.

 

For the same reason that he went to Venturia last time: they're so separated from the Atlantean mainstream that they're not taking part in the arcanotechnological revolution and as such are 'spare'.

OL knows that this is a direct affront not only to a JL member in good standing, but to his supposed friend Kaldur'an.
This is the first time in human history that an alien space fleet gets involved in internal Earth politics and does so with the implicit threat of military violence.[/quote]
How are you classing Green Lanterns?

No, Batman would be an idiot to give him an ultimatum like that.

I read that as 'United Nations Space Command', and honestly wondered if that was something that really existed.

The Reach canonically did get away with this, and a whole lot more.

More or less as it was in the SI timeline prior to the team's arrival.

 

That is exactly what the lawyers and diplomats have been arguing about for the last...two hundred years? Maybe more.

 

To my knowledge none of the green lanterns have used their powers to support or join any revolutionary organisations

 

Except the obvious one.

 

Ah. I can't believe it took me so long to recognize that you were talking about Treason Day^tm.

 

A better example would probably be Plastique. She is... or was, I'm not actually sure what she's been up to in more recent years, a Quebec Separatist, a movement that actually has a fair bit of support, and isn't itself illegal. She's a criminal not because of her politics, but because of the actions (bombings, attempted assassinations, etc) that she takes in the name of them.

 

I hope we actually see Aquaman and Aqualad have their conversation with Paragon instead of the time-skip when he was having his mandatory League-conversation with the former about Nabu.
I wonder how they'd react if they saw what things were like for Atlantis and Venturia in the Renegade-timeline- all the separatist political will, but with Clea in perpetual command and the locus of magitechnological advancement instead of Poseidonis.

 

You mean Killowog with the whole Rocket Red thing?

 

USA could be considered a revolutionary organization, due to its origins. "Treason Day", remember?

 

it was a nice departure... but i'm glad we're back to normal

 

I nominate The Question.

 

I recommend you read 'But Doctor I am Pagliaci' on SB by Acyl.

It's a really great fic that has the Question take on the role of Batman on the League, though with some twists.

In another note there is also 'A Cell of a good time' that also has the Question in it.

If you weren't a fan of the guy before then this fic will change your mind.

 

Non-interventionary space-police that has in the last decades only assigned natives to this planet.
And yes, I know that that means that they have assigned non-native Earthlings to the whole sector, but I am speaking specifically about Earth politics.

Oh, okay. I didn't know that all of the other Atlantean polities got fully roped into the Poseidonis arcanotech revolution. Still, he could have easily gotten crisis solving archmages among those he already has a connection to and then organized a recruitment source, from Venturia or anywhere else, with actual diplomatic considerations towards everyone involved (which is essentially every UN nation if he invites unilateral defense pacts with extraterrestrial entities that can beat the whole planet in a fight), instead of snappishly dismissing "politics".
And I'm not saying that he should definitely not have done what he did, just that he should not have done it under pressure and on a whim.

The ultimatum of not just nilly willy involving extraterrestrial forces in internal national disputes without talking to anyone or thinking it through? Because that's what I meant. "Cut this shit out" as in don't just fuck around like that. He's being worse than Grayven here. Grayven, when he does this stuff, does it covertly and with a plan in mind.

Ah, okay. I guess I misunderstood. I thought the Reach was more about getting an in through trade, selling brain cybernetics and other tech, getting advisory positions and making people more and more dependent on them until they get invited to "help" by a legitimate government that they have thoroughly infiltrated. If simply choosing a random rebel faction and getting "hired as mercenaries" was enough of a fig leaf, I'd have expected them to work much faster than they apparently do. Maybe I just misremember stuff.

 

Renegade has been generally more involved in politics than paragon, so he has learned some things about how to conduct himself and be more careful with his actions.

He also wants to get recourses from Earth so can fight Darkseid and rifling up the feathers of the various governments would make that difficult.

Paragon on the other hand only has the goal of fighting the Reach and doesn't necessarily need the recources of Earth, unlike renegade who may need some of the schizo tech and magic Earth can provide.

 

The Green Lantern Corps fought in the American Revolution? And not just in canon, but in your more consistent version of Earth 16 as well? Can you elaborate?

 

a) woosh
b) Sinestro:

 

Arguably, the Green Lanterns opposing the Reach would've involved a fair bit of partiality regarding the puppet states of the latter. So, it's less that Orange Lantern is doing it when Green Lanterns usually don't, and more that Orange Lantern is doing it competently.

 

As a comment on the the Brazil issue, there is the modern day arguments over Arctic Sovereignty.

It's a patch of land and ocean that has a local tribal populations that really has very little in the say of who owns it, and is generally claimed by anyone and everyone who can get anywhere near it just for bragging rights. And before the discovery of a truly staggering amount of undersea oil in the region, no one really cared. After that came to light?

"December 10, 1982
The longest-running negotiation in the history of the United Nations culminates in the signing of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, which grants coastal states a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and allows them to assert control over territory beyond that limit if they can prove, geologically, that the seabed is an extension of their continental shelf. The treaty enters into force in 1994 and is ratified by every Arctic nation except the United States." _{(note that the US joined eventually, and China got 'observer status', but that falls within the Rule 8 time frame)}

So, now we have a region with competing claims of sovereignty, with multiple nations touting significant armed forces and interest in claiming resources in the area. We can be friendly about this sort of thing at times. But generally it boils down to who can prove they own stuff under the legal agreement, vs who can actively claim the region by force. Which lead to developments in military ice breakers and an increase in military aircraft patrols in the region, something that had been hoped to stop or slow after the end of the Cold War and you know...the impending nuclear threat coming over the pole.

The local tribes, depending on who's region they fall into, might get some input on local fishing rights or environmental issues, have little to no actual power to make or enforce any international laws in the region. Most of them just keep doing what they've been doing for the last few centuries.

If the DC universe version of the Inuit Tribes in the region suddenly got Danner'ed, or some other super powered faction claimed a chunk of the region (Say who's got that fancy igloo up there again?.....fellow with the cape and underwear on the outside?), I'll go out on a limb and say we'd see a rather different level of interest from the UN.