NationStates

Bears Armed wrote:

Verdant Haven wrote:OOC: When fully lethal methods are used for those scenarios, it tends to go down in history as brutality, and leads to major civil unrest - for example, the Boston Tea Party, or the Kent State Massacre.

OOC
Law enforcement, of any kind, did not take place during the 'Boston Tea Party'. You're probably confusing it with the so-called 'Boston Massacre' -snip-

Damnit it, yes. I know the difference well, but had to re-post the reply I was making about half a dozen times because the login server was screwing up. I'd actually corrected that multiple times, but was copy-pasting my draft text by this point, and naturally the one that finally worked had that brain fart in it still unedited. C'est la vie. I'll edit the text above for posterity.

Would you consider the 'Sand Creek Massacre' to belong on this list or examples, too?

I am less familiar with the Sand Creek Massacre, but I believe I would categorize that more as a war crime. It occured during a period of armed conflict between the groups, and the perpetrators set out with deliberate intent to slaughter Innocents. The previous examples were cases of civilian crowd control gone bad, with government forces acting against their own citizens in non-military contexts.

Araraukar wrote:OOC: The author doesn't want to live as a cripple, so they think it's better people die than live with injuries.

You yourself wrote this in a draft, Araraukar. For context, this was in the draft "Ban on the involuntary administration of drugs".

Too many RL patients suffer needlessly because their pain isn't believed by the decision-makers to be great enough to want it to end permanently. Or who think that just because you're able to stay alive, despite looking forwards to withering away slowly even with the best care, you should stay alive, rather than be allowed to choose your own time of death.

Discarding the section about them choosing whether or not they should die, this is precisely my argument - except it isn't; it's yours.

The COT Corporation wrote:

Araraukar wrote:OOC: The author doesn't want to live as a cripple, so they think it's better people die than live with injuries.

You yourself wrote this in a draft, Araraukar. For context, this was in the draft "Ban on the involuntary administration of drugs".

Too many RL patients suffer needlessly because their pain isn't believed by the decision-makers to be great enough to want it to end permanently. Or who think that just because you're able to stay alive, despite looking forwards to withering away slowly even with the best care, you should stay alive, rather than be allowed to choose your own time of death.

Discarding the section about them choosing whether or not they should die, this is precisely my argument - except it isn't; it's yours.

OOC: (If you're quoting a post that's in another thread, include the quote header so the post gets linked to, and it's easier to check you're quoting truthfully.) You realize I was talking about terminal disease and euthanasia/assisted suicide, yes? And that a progressing terminal disease and a disability resulting from an injury are two very different things? And that YOU are the one saying being physically disabled means not having life worth living?

Here's what you quoted:

Araraukar wrote:OOC: No support as long as euthanasia isn't available at the request of the individual to be euthanized. Too many RL patients suffer needlessly because their pain isn't believed by the decision-makers to be great enough to want it to end permanently. Or who think that just because you're able to stay alive, despite looking forwards to withering away slowly even with the best care, you should stay alive, rather than be allowed to choose your own time of death. "Debilitating" is also way too vague.

Relevant. Your argument is that such a choice should be taken away from the individual by ensuring that weapons are always designed to be lethal.

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Verdant Haven wrote:

Araraukar wrote:OOC: So please lay out a scenario where that is the case? When are lethal weapons (in a situation where weapons need to be used) not an option?

OOC: The majority of law enforcement (both civil and military) would fall under that scenario. Crowd control, riot response, and prisoner management/transport are all situations where the use of weaponry may be warranted, but it would be a violation of law to use lethal force in all but the most exigent circumstances. Tear gas, truncheons/batons, water cannons, sonic cannons, dazzlers, and stun guns are all LTL technologies that can be (and are) used for the aforementioned situations.

OOC: So why do you want to take those methods away? Telescopic batons are a great example of a weapon that can and often does cause permanent injuries (or at least permanent in terms of broken bones and such, though those can heal with care). Sonic cannons (if we're talking of the same thing) can cause permanent hearing loss and have been designed to cause at least temporary and long-enough-term damages to hearing and cognitive functions to incapacitate. So you would be banning them too. The only other option would be to use actually lethal weapons. I'm not sure what a dazzler is, but if it's a visual thing, it's meant to impair your vision to lead to partial incapaciation. I can only imagine that it, too, carries the chance of permanent vision damage.

We see incidences of deliberate crippling and maiming of peaceful protestors today

Yeah, and they manage that without inhumane weapons (as defined), too! So what exactly would your thingy change? Can you give RL examples of inhuman weapons (as defined) that exist and are used often for that very purpose? Much of this particular line of resistance would fade if you downgraded to Mild, because I don't think the kind of weapons you seem to be after either 1. exist in RL (which is what the majority of voters are getting their references from, because if we're going to pull from IC, then "so we'll just use lethal weapons then" becomes a valid argument, and you don't want that) or 2. are used often enough to warrant Significant strength.

Araraukar wrote:

We see incidences of deliberate crippling and maiming of peaceful protestors today

Yeah, and they manage that without inhumane weapons (as defined), too! So what exactly would your thingy change? Can you give RL examples of inhuman weapons (as defined) that exist and are used often for that very purpose? Much of this particular line of resistance would fade if you downgraded to Mild, because I don't think the kind of weapons you seem to be after either 1. exist in RL (which is what the majority of voters are getting their references from, because if we're going to pull from IC, then "so we'll just use lethal weapons then" becomes a valid argument, and you don't want that) or 2. are used often enough to warrant Significant strength.

Frankly, you would have to go back to before these weapons were banned RL, as the ban resulted in, guess what, less weapons! Seeing as we don't have a resolution on this in the WA, they would be much more common. Plus, you can't accurately predict where most voters get their motives from.

If you provide a good argument that the resolution hasn't covered, we may consider changing it from significant to mild, but as it stands, due to the lack of legislation, there is no reason to do so.

Araraukar wrote:snip

I don't know if you've read the current draft, but it says "Prohibits the use of inhumane weaponry in all situations where lethal force would also be prohibited, and where the necessary effect can be achieved without the use of said weaponry;" Rephrased, this is translates to: "Inhumane weapons can only be used when lethal weapons can also be used, or when they are needed to achieve the necessary effect;". Of course, that sounds less law like so it isn't used.

Excluding the euthanasia part of the quote, you expressed your opinion; "Too many RL patients suffer needlessly because their pain isn't believed by the decision-makers to be great enough to want it to end permanently". Why is a terminal illness that causes immense pain any different from a weapon that does the exact same? Surely extreme pain is not acceptable? And no, we didn't mention pain in the draft, but why need to, when being maimed or incapacitated by a weapon already causes pain?

Verdant Haven wrote:

Bears Armed wrote:Would you consider the 'Sand Creek Massacre' to belong on this list or examples, too?

I am less familiar with the Sand Creek Massacre, but I believe I would categorize that more as a war crime. It occured during a period of armed conflict between the groups

OOc
However, despite the colloquial reference to those campaigns as "Indian Wars", the US government did not actually issue a declaration of war against those (or any other) Native American peoples; Its policy was that it was the rightful government of those lands (through treaties with other 'civilized' nations), so that making the tribes there follow its orders was just law-enforcement (albeit in the form what would nowadays be labelled 'police actions') instead.

"This is an admirable goal. However, an omnibus weaponry ban is unlikely to succeed. A better approach would be to break each category of weapon into it's own resolution with its own policy justification and list of exceptions as needed. That this debate seems to have strayed into the difficult scenarios involving certain armaments and their use against noncombatants is an excellent example of why a broad law will fail to account for the myriad situations facing combatants."

Bears Armed wrote:

Verdant Haven wrote:I am less familiar with the Sand Creek Massacre, but I believe I would categorize that more as a war crime. It occured during a period of armed conflict between the groups

OOc
However, despite the colloquial reference to those campaigns as "Indian Wars", the US government did not actually issue a declaration of war against those (or any other) Native American peoples; Its policy was that it was the rightful government of those lands (through treaties with other 'civilized' nations), so that making the tribes there follow its orders was just law-enforcement (albeit in the form what would nowadays be labelled 'police actions') instead.

OOC:

A very fair point, but I do not believe a Declaration of War by the US is a reasonable measure of whether or not an engagement was part of war. The US Civil War had no Declaration of War, and was fought under similar terms (we are the rightful government of these lands). Neither did Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, nor in fact any of the armed conflicts in which we've engaged since WWII. While these are all technically "police actions" or some other such euphemism, I think it would be entirely incorrect to say that they are not "war" just because our particular machinery of politics has some curious technicalities for utilizing the word. Certainly we still consider certain actions taken during some of these conflicts to be war crimes and have called them such (ex: Mai Lai Massacre), and the international community categorizes our actions as those of war.

Separatist Peoples wrote:"This is an admirable goal. However, an omnibus weaponry ban is unlikely to succeed. A better approach would be to break each category of weapon into it's own resolution with its own policy justification and list of exceptions as needed. That this debate seems to have strayed into the difficult scenarios involving certain armaments and their use against noncombatants is an excellent example of why a broad law will fail to account for the myriad situations facing combatants."

"I am deeply concerned that a former draft may somehow still be being promulgated as if it were the present version of the document in question. When first I became acquainted with this materials, I shared similar concerns, but it was partially based on my feedback (and prior to my joining as a co-author) that these concerns were addressed. It has been days since any version of this document would have touched on military usage, and it is only due to the persistent arguments of an individual who is ignoring this fact that any discussion on this matter has arisen. The document as written at present is very specific in that it applies only to:

1) Weapons designed solely to maim or inflict permanent major disability
- It does not cover those designed to kill but which sometimes leave survivors
- It does not cover those designed to temporarily incapacitate but which may occasionally have more severe consequences

-AND-

2) Situations where lethal force is not permissible
- It does not cover any military scenario that would be defined as warfare
- It does not cover any law enforcement scenario where lethal force is warranted

Furthermore, an exception has already been written in to permit the use of this weaponry in a situation where lethal force would not be permitted, if the weaponry is the only way to bring about a necessary result.

The fact that a debating party has begun wagging the dog with false claims that this resolution would limit traditional less-than-lethal technologies, unrelated topics such as euthanasia, and flat-out ignoring of replies to their questions is frustrating to me, but I do not believe it actually speaks to the resolution itself so much as a form of filibustering to disrupt the attempt by distracting the conversation in to territory unrelated to the actual text as written. An attempt which seems to be working."


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OOC:

Like, I'm seriously wondering if the server is dishing up a cached version of the draft for some people? Literally nothing brought up in the entire last page of the forum is actually in the present draft - it all sounds like responses to very early drafts before I joined as a co-author. It is all things that would be entirely valid concerns with the early versions, and I myself brought up similar ones when I first saw this resolution, but all of those parts were removed or edited days ago. I am both curious and concerned about this - sufficiently that I have read the text as written in the current draft out loud to multiple other people in real life, and explained the concerns brought up, and they have all concluded that they don't understand how people are drawing the conclusions they seem to be drawing.

Verdant Haven wrote:

Separatist Peoples wrote:"This is an admirable goal. However, an omnibus weaponry ban is unlikely to succeed. A better approach would be to break each category of weapon into it's own resolution with its own policy justification and list of exceptions as needed. That this debate seems to have strayed into the difficult scenarios involving certain armaments and their use against noncombatants is an excellent example of why a broad law will fail to account for the myriad situations facing combatants."

"I am deeply concerned that a former draft may somehow still be being promulgated as if it were the present version of the document in question. When first I became acquainted with this materials, I shared similar concerns, but it was partially based on my feedback (and prior to my joining as a co-author) that these concerns were addressed. It has been days since any version of this document would have touched on military usage, and it is only due to the persistent arguments of an individual who is ignoring this fact that any discussion on this matter has arisen. The document as written at present is very specific in that it applies only to:

1) Weapons designed solely to maim or inflict permanent major disability
- It does not cover those designed to kill but which sometimes leave survivors
- It does not cover those designed to temporarily incapacitate but which may occasionally have more severe consequences

-AND-

2) Situations where lethal force is not permissible
- It does not cover any military scenario that would be defined as warfare
- It does not cover any law enforcement scenario where lethal force is warranted

Furthermore, an exception has already been written in to permit the use of this weaponry in a situation where lethal force would not be permitted, if the weaponry is the only way to bring about a necessary result.

The fact that a debating party has begun wagging the dog with false claims that this resolution would limit traditional less-than-lethal technologies, unrelated topics such as euthanasia, and flat-out ignoring of replies to their questions is frustrating to me, but I do not believe it actually speaks to the resolution itself so much as a form of filibustering to disrupt the attempt by distracting the conversation in to territory unrelated to the actual text as written. An attempt which seems to be working."


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OOC:

Like, I'm seriously wondering if the server is dishing up a cached version of the draft for some people? Literally nothing brought up in the entire last page of the forum is actually in the present draft - it all sounds like responses to very early drafts before I joined as a co-author. It is all things that would be entirely valid concerns with the early versions, and I myself brought up similar ones when I first saw this resolution, but all of those parts were removed or edited days ago. I am both curious and concerned about this - sufficiently that I have read the text as written in the current draft out loud to multiple other people in real life, and explained the concerns brought up, and they have all concluded that they don't understand how people are drawing the conclusions they seem to be drawing.

Ooc: you say that, but it isn't explicit in the text. Your draft has a lot of ambiguity, and I dont think it addresses this topic effectively. Thus my suggestion to truncate as much as you can.

Separatist Peoples wrote:Ooc: you say that, but it isn't explicit in the text. Your draft has a lot of ambiguity, and I dont think it addresses this topic effectively. Thus my suggestion to truncate as much as you can.

OOC: ^This.

Araraukar wrote:

Separatist Peoples wrote:Ooc: you say that, but it isn't explicit in the text. Your draft has a lot of ambiguity, and I dont think it addresses this topic effectively. Thus my suggestion to truncate as much as you can.

OOC: ^This.

If so, why did you not mention this earlier, and save us all a lot of time and trouble?

The COT Corporation wrote:

Araraukar wrote:OOC: ^This.

If so, why did you not mention this earlier, and save us all a lot of time and trouble?

OOC: Same reason you hadn't done it before; I didn't think it was necessary. I've been questioning the necessity of the proposal, the blanket ban and the existence of these weapons AS DEFINED since like the second post (and almost every one of my posts) of the thread. If that wasn't clue enough that it's not doing what you want it to do, it's hardly my fault. The fact that you edit reactively, doesn't help.

Morover wrote:

The COT Corporation wrote:
A good point! I forgot to include in the definition that the purpose of said weapon was to cause deliberate suffering. Also no, I wasn't trying to search for a problem to solve, I just happened to notice that there was no legislation banning such inhumane weapons that only intended to cause suffering rather than death.

I deliberately didn't include nuclear weapons as their purpose is to cause death.

OOC: Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but it may be worth asking if the intention of death is not a form of the deliberate infliction of suffering.

Well in my Reznoviyan Arc, the Geneva Convention no longer exists because of insane manhating cult. Which Reznoviyan resources from Russian allies allows it to create inhumane weapons and gear for its citizens and military personnels to easily withstand inhumane attacks which said apparels/weapons is Made by The Tesla-Illenyev Corporation (Tesla is owned by the Reznoviyan State now) which said apparel is proven to work, mainly because of constant testing to create the most ballistic gear known to man

"There are several concerns with this proposal as it affects the economies of several member nations that have trade agreements with member nations outside this Assembly."

Jennifer quickly projects the two clauses Aranoff have odds with:

3. Mandates that member nations cease all development of inhumane weaponry which serves no legal purpose under the terms of this resolution;

4. Encourages member nations to withdraw from any arms or trade deals that involves the development, purchase, or funding of inhumane weaponry which serves no legal purpose under the terms of this resolution.

"Many nations develop these arms as part of trade deals with non-member nations to help defend them from marauding pirate nations, aggressors, and other terrorists. Aranoff would find this limiting the economies of many members nations, and we don't think these overly broad stipulations are able to be committed at this time.

"These weapons often serve as deterrents from being attacked by other member nations, and you would help to rob these non-member nations access to defense arms. Further, this provides consolidated economic opportunities to non-member warring factions could be dangerous for all nations. We simply don't think limiting these strategic arms is an act that will serve to protect the Member Nations."

Araraukar wrote:

The COT Corporation wrote:If so, why did you not mention this earlier, and save us all a lot of time and trouble?

OOC: Same reason you hadn't done it before; I didn't think it was necessary. I've been questioning the necessity of the proposal, the blanket ban and the existence of these weapons AS DEFINED since like the second post (and almost every one of my posts) of the thread. If that wasn't clue enough that it's not doing what you want it to do, it's hardly my fault. The fact that you edit reactively, doesn't help.

OOC: I'm starting to think that the current draft isn't showing up for everyone, because there is in no way a blanket ban. To put it simply, this resolution prohibits inhumane weapons when lethal weapons are also inappropriate. So, they would still be allowed on the battlefield. Are you seeing the same draft 14 as I am?

2. Prohibits the use of inhumane weaponry in all situations where lethal force would also be prohibited, and where the necessary effect can be achieved without the use of said weaponry;

"The way this clause is phrased means a perfectly reasonable interpretation of your proposal is that the use of inhumane weaponry is forbidden only in situations where lethal force is forbidden AND the necessary effect can be achieved without inhumane weaponry (that is, x is forbidden only when both y and z are simultaneously true, rather than x is forbidden when y is true and when z is true). Perhaps that may be what you were going for in the first place, ambassador, but given that you don't specify exactly what necessary effect you're referring to, this gives member nations a huge interpretative leeway to effectively ignore this proposal in most situations. I suggest some tightening of the language."

The COT Corporation wrote:OOC: I'm starting to think that the current draft isn't showing up for everyone, because there is in no way a blanket ban. To put it simply, this resolution prohibits inhumane weapons when lethal weapons are also inappropriate. So, they would still be allowed on the battlefield. Are you seeing the same draft 14 as I am?

OOC: And is then a blanket ban. Unless you mean that "and where the necessary effect can be achieved without the use of said weaponry" would mean they could be used even in cases where lethal weapons couldn't, if the "inhumane" ones would have, say, a deterrent effect that couldn't be achieved without them? In which case this should be Mild and not Significant, given that you're not really banning the weapons at all in any situation.

Araraukar wrote:

The COT Corporation wrote:OOC: I'm starting to think that the current draft isn't showing up for everyone, because there is in no way a blanket ban. To put it simply, this resolution prohibits inhumane weapons when lethal weapons are also inappropriate. So, they would still be allowed on the battlefield. Are you seeing the same draft 14 as I am?

OOC: And is then a blanket ban. Unless you mean that "and where the necessary effect can be achieved without the use of said weaponry" would mean they could be used even in cases where lethal weapons couldn't, if the "inhumane" ones would have, say, a deterrent effect that couldn't be achieved without them? In which case this should be Mild and not Significant, given that you're not really banning the weapons at all in any situation.

I see your point. I'll converse with Verdant Haven about this.

The strength has been changed to 'Mild'

"This Proposal shall be submitted in 20 Days, unless my fellow ambassadors think otherwise."

“Clause 3 should have ‘weaponry that serves’ rather than ‘weaponry which serves’.”

Kenmoria wrote:“Clause 3 should have ‘weaponry that serves’ rather than ‘weaponry which serves’.”

Good call - thank you. Agreed.

Verdant Haven wrote:

Kenmoria wrote:“Clause 3 should have ‘weaponry that serves’ rather than ‘weaponry which serves’.”

Good call - thank you. Agreed.

OOC: Sorry, I hadn't had time to change the draft. I'm in the process of doing it.

(OOC: I’ve noticed that the draft has ‘co-authored by Verdant Haven’ above it. If you want for that to be on the submitted proposal, it will need to go at the bottom of the draft instead.)