[PASSED] Repeal: "Military Identification Tag Act"

[WA Kitty Kops]

A dark grey kitten dozing on a desk cracked open one eye and then stretched thoroughly. "You's left out how the soldierrrs don't needs to be even wearing the thingsies," it remarked, "'cause it's not displaceded if it's just not carrrried but is left at home."

Jonathan stares at the kitten with a shocked look, "Who let the cat in here?"

The kitten turned its head to give him A Look. Who's let you in? I lives here."

[Godular]

A dark grey kitten dozing on a desk cracked open one eye and then stretched thoroughly. "You's left out how the soldierrrs don't needs to be even wearing the thingsies," it remarked, "'cause it's not displaceded if it's just not carrrried but is left at home."

Jonathan stares at the kitten with a shocked look, "Who let the cat in here?"

Zodiac chuckles. "There's at least five representatives in the chamber that are potted plants, three different species of telepathic bat," he waves in another direction, "and I'm fairly certain I saw a Rubik's Cube with a nameplate on the way in. It even said 'hi' when I walked in!"

"But one cat pipes up to contribute and OH NO THERE WAS A MISTAKE SOMEBODY CALL SECURITY. RUDE!"

[Morover]

OOC:

This has failed to reach quorum, ultimately gaining 63 of the 77 required approvals.

In the meantime, I encourage others to try their hands at repeals - if it is not repealed by late June/early July, I will likely resubmit.

[Araraukar]

OOC: This has failed to reach quorum, ultimately gaining 63 of the 77 required approvals.

OOC: Did you campaign for it?

[Morover]

OOC: This has failed to reach quorum, ultimately gaining 63 of the 77 required approvals.

OOC: Did you campaign for it?

OOC: Yes, and someone else sent a secondary campaign quite a bit in.

[WayNeacTia]

if it is not repealed by late June/early July, I will likely resubmit.

Why? It is a harmless resolution that doesn't hurt anything. Are you really this desperate to pass yet another resolution?

[Honeydewistania]

if it is not repealed by late June/early July, I will likely resubmit.

Why? It is a harmless resolution that doesn't hurt anything. Are you really this desperate to pass yet another resolution?

I think you know the answer

[WayNeacTia]

Why? It is a harmless resolution that doesn't hurt anything. Are you really this desperate to pass yet another resolution?

I think you know the answer

Sadly enough, I do. It's a shame that authorship badges, trump actually resoultions that do more harm than good. Either way this failed to make quorum even with a couple campaigns for it, so that SHOULD be a sign to the author, but I doubt it will be picked up on.

[Morover]

if it is not repealed by late June/early July, I will likely resubmit.

Why? It is a harmless resolution that doesn't hurt anything. Are you really this desperate to pass yet another resolution?

OOC: From an IC perspective, it does hurt things - I suggest you actually read the proposal. And no, I'm not desperate to pass another resolution - if you'd noticed, I invited others to repeal it before I actually got back around to it. I even considered saying that they could use the exact text of this proposal to pass it if they wanted, I didn't care too much - but that felt intellectually dishonest so I refrained from that specific offer.

I think you know the answer

Sadly enough, I do. It's a shame that authorship badges, trump actually resoultions that do more harm than good. Either way this failed to make quorum even with a couple campaigns for it, so that SHOULD be a sign to the author, but I doubt it will be picked up on.

I believe it failed quorum because I had submitted another proposal very recently, and there comes a point where it looks like spam. Additionally, considering the proposal had just passed, people were probably more hesitant to approve a repeal of it.

Also, if you legitimately think I'm badge-hunting, you obviously don't know me very well. The only tangible benefit that authorship badges actually give are boosting card rarity, which is cool, I guess, but it's not actually something I care too much about. Really, the only thing I feel about authorship badges is that it is super surreal for me, as it's a constant reminder that I wrote something that a whole lot of people saw and voted on - that's not badge-hunting, that's just me naturally being inclined to feeling like NationStates is farther removed from the real-world than it actually is. For all I care, authorship badges could be taken away and I would not lose any sleep over it. Even if I was a badge-hunter, though, who gives a shit? So long as the proposals are good, I don't think anyone actually cares why they wrote it. Personally, I write for the WA because I enjoy roleplaying and it's a sort of creative outlet for me, but I really don't care if the reason for someone else writing is to get the most badges in the game.

[Morover]

OOC: This shall be resubmitted on June 27th, provided no other repeal attempt has been submitted (and is reasonably likely to reach quorum) by that point.

[Stellonia]

OOC: I see that Stellonia has another draft for repeal up, but I wrote this before I saw it and waited on comments from somebody, so I'm a little behind the game. That being said, however, I don't feel that Stellonia's repeal adequately addresses the problems with the soon-to-be-resolution, so I've decided to proceed with this nonetheless.

OOC: Your draft is better than mine. The only recommendation I can make is that you drop the second-to-last line, as it would alienate a few people who would only vote for this if it could be replaced.

[Morover]

OOC: I see that Stellonia has another draft for repeal up, but I wrote this before I saw it and waited on comments from somebody, so I'm a little behind the game. That being said, however, I don't feel that Stellonia's repeal adequately addresses the problems with the soon-to-be-resolution, so I've decided to proceed with this nonetheless.

OOC: Your draft is better than mine. The only recommendation I can make is that you drop the second-to-last line, as it would alienate a few people who would only vote for this if it could be replaced.

OOC: I appreciate it. I changed up that clause.

[Morover]

"I have made a few edits to this. Further feedback appreciated. This will be submitted on Saturday."

[Honeydewistania]

Why can’t member nations just have some sense to exclude religion, especially in cases where Creative torture methods are likely to happen? You have the full name, it’s not that hard to find out what religion they are.

[Morover]

Why can’t member nations just have some sense to exclude religion, especially in cases where Creative torture methods are likely to happen? You have the full name, it’s not that hard to find out what religion they are.

"The preamble of the target resolution explicitly states 'the bodies of deceased military personnel must be correctly identified in order to... properly bury or cremate deceased combatants based on the wishes of the deceased' - one of the utmost intentions that it had. While this is honorable, oftentimes religions will have specific burial practices that are associated with said religions. Some member-states (and especially those with a strong religious population) may put the religion of the combatant on the tags, in hopes that any belligerent who stumbles across a potentially deceased soldier will go through with the burial rituals of their religion."

"Of course, there will be many states who do follow through with this in good-faith, making such information useful in some circumstances. However, unless tags are to be reissued for every conflict (which is an unreasonable request), there remains the opportunity for bad-faith actors to take advantage of this information to do misdeeds - some states will remain on top of it and negate the risks, but I don't think it can be reasonably expected for all nations to do the same - especially given the lack of common sense shown by many nations in these halls alone."

[Honeydewistania]

Those are fair points.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Why can’t member nations just have some sense to exclude religion, especially in cases where Creative torture methods are likely to happen? You have the full name, it’s not that hard to find out what religion they are.

"The preamble of the target resolution explicitly states 'the bodies of deceased military personnel must be correctly identified in order to... properly bury or cremate deceased combatants based on the wishes of the deceased' - one of the utmost intentions that it had. While this is honorable, oftentimes religions will have specific burial practices that are associated with said religions. Some member-states (and especially those with a strong religious population) may put the religion of the combatant on the tags, in hopes that any belligerent who stumbles across a potentially deceased soldier will go through with the burial rituals of their religion."

"Of course, there will be many states who do follow through with this in good-faith, making such information useful in some circumstances. However, unless tags are to be reissued for every conflict (which is an unreasonable request), there remains the opportunity for bad-faith actors to take advantage of this information to do misdeeds - some states will remain on top of it and negate the risks, but I don't think it can be reasonably expected for all nations to do the same - especially given the lack of common sense shown by many nations in these halls alone."

It would be better to make that argument in full than to assert that some clause does it alone, as was made in a previous version of this draft.

[Morover]

"The preamble of the target resolution explicitly states 'the bodies of deceased military personnel must be correctly identified in order to... properly bury or cremate deceased combatants based on the wishes of the deceased' - one of the utmost intentions that it had. While this is honorable, oftentimes religions will have specific burial practices that are associated with said religions. Some member-states (and especially those with a strong religious population) may put the religion of the combatant on the tags, in hopes that any belligerent who stumbles across a potentially deceased soldier will go through with the burial rituals of their religion."

"Of course, there will be many states who do follow through with this in good-faith, making such information useful in some circumstances. However, unless tags are to be reissued for every conflict (which is an unreasonable request), there remains the opportunity for bad-faith actors to take advantage of this information to do misdeeds - some states will remain on top of it and negate the risks, but I don't think it can be reasonably expected for all nations to do the same - especially given the lack of common sense shown by many nations in these halls alone."

It would be better to make that argument in full than to assert that some clause does it alone, as was made in a previous version of this draft.

OOC: I've changed the clause to give a more in-depth argument.

[Morover]

OOC Response to Alba and Cymru's counter-campaign:

Alba and Cymru have recently put out at least one (and probably two, more on that below) counter-campaign to this proposal, leading this to likely fail to reach vote. I find this to be fairly disingenuous for several reasons. Firstly, as the author of the proposal, Alba and Cymru obviously have a fairly biased view of the target resolution - this in itself is not bad, but the failure to comment on this thread before the first submission, during the first submission, in between the two submissions, or even now, leads me to believe that they do not have the best interests of the General Assembly in mind, as the rather secretive nature of the counter-campaign without any formal notification of myself of their issues with the repeal, even after the counter-campaign has been sent out, leads me to believe that their sole interest is to maintain the continued use of their resolution in the World Assembly. This may be a minimal issue if the points they raised within their counter-campaign were genuine, but instead, it's written more to appeal to delegates who have little interest in the General Assembly, or who lack proper information and research regarding proposals in general.

I have been informed that Alba and Cymru sent out two counter-campaigns, which is in fact against the rules - normally I would not mention this publicly, as it has been properly reported through the channels of GHR (and, frankly, I have to go off second-hand knowledge, given the fact that I'm not a delegate myself) - but it appears that the second campaign has done an effective job. Whereas following the initial campaign, approvals continued to roll in at a steady rate, they halted nearly entirely following the second campaign. Unfortunately, while I have been given the contents of the first telegram, I have not received the contents of the second one - meaning I have no actual proof that it ever happened, but given the timing of my being told of it existing and the subsequent halting of approvals, I must assume that the information I have been given is correct. If someone who had access to it would like to post the secondary counter-campaign below, I will respond to that as well - but, for now, I will respond specifically to the points raised in the first one.

---

In this introduction, Alba and Cymru opens their post by referencing the margin of passage of their proposal - a move that I only can assume is to invoke an initial response regarding the legitimacy of my repeal, basing it off of the popularity of the target - this is an inherently flawed argument, as margin of passage is not an adequate indicator as to quality of the proposal, and their continued use of hyperbolic language ("sweeping support", "overwhelming number") furthers this view of an incorrect argument against the proposal.

This holds many of the same issues as the previous section - it's an effort to discredit my proposal and my character, by claiming that my intentions are not conducive to "promoting social progress and global peace" - a claim that is easily disproven, but holds heavy weight to those who don't know me (and yes, they are referring to my "ambassadors" in this section, but in the General Assembly that is an extension of my own self - especially when it comes to actually writing proposals). Additionally, calling this second attempt "hasty" is a miscategorization of the repeal - it has been up for over a month now, which isn't necessarily an extensive period of time, but is adequate time to write a relatively simple repeal of a flawed resolution such as the target. I also must emphasize that their reference to the margin of passage of the target is not actually an argument, but instead appeals directly to the idea that popularity is the same thing as quality - a drastically incorrect sentiment that should not, under any circumstances, become the norm of the General Assembly.

Several things here. Firstly, the assertion that Morover doesn't have a military force is an irrelevant spin on the flavor text I put in the introduction - you and I both know that this was drafted by me, a real person, and not Darin Perise, a fictional character I made up for the purposes of furthering a story, so don't try and act like that story is an adequate argument against my qualifications to write such a proposal. Furthermore, our assertion that most of the clauses are "honest mistakes" is once again an appeal to emotions as opposed to an actual critique of the proposal - if you were actually concerned with the legitimacy of my arguments, you would have filed a legality challenge as opposed to just sending out a telegram in an attempt to sway public opinion on the matter. The reason you didn't do this, I assume, is because you aren't actually interested in furthering the interests of the World Assembly, either in-character or out-of-character, and instead are interested in your resolution continuing to be extant, regardless of the actual quality it has or flaws which are pointed out to it. Regardless, I will respond to the following miscategorization of my arguments below, just to humor you.

This fails to address the argument adequately. However, I would refer you to my response below, which addresses what I think you're trying to get at.

Why can’t member nations just have some sense to exclude religion, especially in cases where Creative torture methods are likely to happen? You have the full name, it’s not that hard to find out what religion they are.

"The preamble of the target resolution explicitly states 'the bodies of deceased military personnel must be correctly identified in order to... properly bury or cremate deceased combatants based on the wishes of the deceased' - one of the utmost intentions that it had. While this is honorable, oftentimes religions will have specific burial practices that are associated with said religions. Some member-states (and especially those with a strong religious population) may put the religion of the combatant on the tags, in hopes that any belligerent who stumbles across a potentially deceased soldier will go through with the burial rituals of their religion."

"Of course, there will be many states who do follow through with this in good-faith, making such information useful in some circumstances. However, unless tags are to be reissued for every conflict (which is an unreasonable request), there remains the opportunity for bad-faith actors to take advantage of this information to do misdeeds - some states will remain on top of it and negate the risks, but I don't think it can be reasonably expected for all nations to do the same - especially given the lack of common sense shown by many nations in these halls alone."

I honestly am very confused as to what this means - in fact, I was arguing that your resolution is a one-size-fits-all resolution - which is a bad thing. Additionally, a proposal being left intentionally vague is one thing - it's an entirely different thing to have no protocol (or even means to establish protocols) for something that is essential for the proper function of the resolution - your argument of "it's up to member-nations what happens with tags following decommission" does not actually address the concern that you're referring to, nor does it solve any of the issues brought up in the repeal at all.

I literally don't know how this is relevant at all, or even true, for the most part. This once more appears to be flavor text to emotionally appeal to players who either don't read the proposal, the target, or understand the nuance behind it.

Awfully bold coming from the author of the target resolution - which you conveniently leave out of the entire telegram.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I see nowhere that you represent Caer Sidi on any official basis, so this signature does seem to be throwing around a big name without any real backing behind it.

Apologies if this message was overly rude or blunt - I feel the circumstance calls for it.

[Araraukar]

OOC: Out of interest, where does it say in the rules that one is allowed only one campaign per submitted resolution? If it's marked appropriately as a WA campaign TG...

I agree that not posting here is a bit fishy, but maybe they don't know they don't lose their shiny author badge if it's repealed?

[Morover]

OOC: Out of interest, where does it say in the rules that one is allowed only one campaign per submitted resolution? If it's marked appropriately as a WA campaign TG...

I agree that not posting here is a bit fishy, but maybe they don't know they don't lose their shiny author badge if it's repealed?

*WA Advertising Spam: Non-natives and region-hoppers are forbidden to post WA advertisements or requests for proposal approval outside of their native region. The game-created regions (Listed above) are no exception to this rule. Requests for proposal approval may be telegrammed to WA delegates, but must be tagged appropriately. More than one request per proposal may be considered spam. WA campaign telegrams shouldn't be sent to non-WA members

[Araraukar]

*WA Advertising Spam: Non-natives and region-hoppers are forbidden to post WA advertisements or requests for proposal approval outside of their native region. The game-created regions (Listed above) are no exception to this rule. Requests for proposal approval may be telegrammed to WA delegates, but must be tagged appropriately. More than one request per proposal may be considered spam. WA campaign telegrams shouldn't be sent to non-WA members

OOC: Relevant. He's not asking for approvals, he's asking for refusal of approvals, and it may be considered spam. Not that it's automatically against the rules.

[Morover]

OOC: Relevant. He's not asking for approvals, he's asking for refusal of approvals, and it may be considered spam. Not that it's automatically against the rules.

OOC:

To my knowledge, what has always been enforced has been 1 campaign and 1 counter-campaign per proposal, per person. If this is incorrect, then it's my mistake, but that's what my understanding of it has been.

Regardless, it's excessive (especially considering the false claims regarding the repeal).

[Araraukar]

OOC: To my knowledge, what has always been enforced has been 1 campaign and 1 counter-campaign per proposal, per person.

OOC: Could be, just first time I ever heard of that. Or so that I remembered it, anyway. (I have some holes in my memory.)

Regardless, it's excessive (especially considering the false claims regarding the repeal).

I think the false claims are called "playing politics".

[Alba and Cymru]

*Deep Breath*

Allow me to put this to rest, OOC.

I apologize for sending a few delegates two counter-campaign telegrams. I had originally sent one to all delegates approximately 24 hours after the repeal had been submitted, and I waited another 24 before I politely asked delegates who have approved to reconsider. In hindsight, this was the incorrect move. I should have had other people have a hand in this campaign. I was unaware that individual telegrams are considered second telegrams on top of a mass campaign. My fault.

Second, for those who are accusing me of badge-hunting, this is not at all true. I already have the badge, so my nation stats have nothing to lose if this repeal passes. The reason why I am defending this proposal is the same reason any other author would. This issue in particular is a special interest of mine both in-game and irl. I'm not defending a badge, I'm defending a position.

Lastly, no matter what I say in regards to this repeal on this thread, we all know that this will be submitted anyways. I could rewrite the Bible itself on why MIDTA should stand, but I'm not ever going to change the flair from "Draft" to "Abandoned". Hence why I have not vocalized my opinion on this particular proposal.

Again, I was unaware that individual telegrams are weighed the same as a mass-campaign when it comes to counter-campaigning. I received a telegram hours ago to not do that again, so I concede. I apologize if I had annoyed anybody, and I apologize for breaking the rules.