This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
There are a lot of Amentan countries. Vanda Nossëo representatives are dispatched to all of them. These Elves (two with black hair, one with silver) take a shuttle down from the lightleaper to a country called Calado, and radio ahead to request permission to land at a elegant modern spaceport.
okay by comparison Voa and Tapa look like thriving modern democracies
"Why is forcible deportation on there anyway, are you supposed to give illegal immigrants a fruit basket?"
"Whole phrase is 'arbitrary deportation or forcible transfer of whole populations'. Deporting people who committed a crime or aren't citizens isn't relevantly arbitrary. Clearing out a conquered province for your people to live there would count, though. - if we'd gotten here forty years ago would you have wanted us to say to the Oahk Empire - 'that looks pretty ugly...it's legal locally? okay, I guess...'"
"Nobody sings the praises of the last Emperor of Oahk except edgy political science students. But I'm wondering what you'd do if you considered local custom and law a meaningful constraint instead of something you can section sixteen according to your own culture instead."
"We'd only make contact with societies that weren't up to things we couldn't overlook. The Federation runs on a model a bit like that. They're neighbors of yours - haven't said hello, obviously."
"I will send you a copy of the Federation charter. They also demand a unified world government, I think just for administrative simplicity?
Honestly the caste system seems pretty strange to us too, but we draw our line about where to stop respecting local culture at rape torture and murder."
"Would you or for that matter the Federation demand a zero rate of unprosecuted murder or are you just making a point of the reds because it's a news item at home?"
"Oh, we've been keeping the reds the hell out of the news at home, that would be a disaster, I guarantee you there'd be university student groups trying to sneak here to take reds home with them. There were journalists on the Rivikni thing but that's because we self-police really strongly on causing crimes here, and I think they're reporting it as some Rivikni eccentricity being appropriately handled. But to answer your question - if another murder came to our attention we'd forward you the evidence from conjuration and trust you to take it from there - you have a really good justice system, and I don't think I'm just jaded by wading through dysfunctional ones. The problem is gonna be when we run across a dead body and no local law to hand it off to. Honestly, if it were illegal to torture reds but the penalty were a week in prison we wouldn't have a leg to stand on, that's an extant system and we defer to those wherever they exist."
"I don't think so. Every now and then one does something outrageous - goes and bludgeons someone half to death and then jumps off a building or something."
"I don't mean 'they keep reaching for armed cops', that's cops blowing off steam, that happens everywhere."
"We don't let them do that here, it does take years to grow a new red and it's almost always the ones with jobs we need done."
"I do think there may be an extent to which you need to decide on a narrative between 'one day, aliens came to Amenta and made things unambiguously better' and 'one day aliens came to Amenta and made demands and wouldn't take no for an answer'."
"We'll never make demands. We'll sometimes arrest murderers if the murder is obviously instigated by our presence and the local government can't or won't enforce the law. Joining is voluntary, spaceport's voluntary, you can tell us all to go away and we will. But 'aliens came to Amenta, people got murdered over it, their murderers got off' doesn't ring to me as 'made everything unambiguously better'."
"I don't think you can assume any given dead red especially in Rivik wouldn't have happened anyhow."
"They were late for work because aliens spooked them into hiding, they got murdered for being late to work. By our standards of evidence that's enough for a strong presumption. And Rivik can't kill two per day on a regular basis, they'd run out of 'em."