(06-09-2019, 05:15 PM)Imperial Frost Federation Wrote: If this were to hypothetically be brought to a vote which version would it be?
The original with Roavin's amendment or Glen's proposal?

Whichever is motioned, though I'd go for Glen's proposal or some modification thereof at this point.

My resolution is definitely a draft people are free to propose changes to. But it's also just a resolution-- we would ideally be editing our military code and such to conform with it.

Survey V2, because I made the answers Yes and No instead of In Favor and Opposed

May I make a suggestion?

It seems that a big concern of Belschaft's is the supermajority. How about we pass a non-Constitutional law instead? That way, if a majority of TSP decides to change in future then they can do so.

I am not sure what the non-constitutional law would look like. However, I imagine this all would still require the Charter to be amended. Otherwise, the Charter's permissive language towards the military might render any non-constitutional law void. Something like below would suffice to allow a non-constitutional alignment law:

The Charter, Article X Wrote:(3) The military may engage in any offensive or defensive operations permitted under law without fear of political reprisal. However, it may not colonize or annex any region without the express permission of the Cabinet and the Assembly. Nor may it destroy innocent regions. When permitted under law, it may engage in the destruction of regions with which the Coalition is at war, and regions espousing hateful ideologies.

Anyway, I thought this might be a compromise that people may be interested in considering.

I would be most inclined to vote for such a proposal

(06-09-2019, 08:37 PM)Nat Wrote: May I make a suggestion?

It seems that a big concern of Belschaft's is the supermajority. How about we pass a non-Constitutional law instead? That way, if a majority of TSP decides to change in future then they can do so.

I am not sure what the non-constitutional law would look like. However, I imagine this all would still require the Charter to be amended. Otherwise, the Charter's permissive language towards the military might render any non-constitutional law void. Something like below would suffice to allow a non-constitutional alignment law:

The Charter, Article X Wrote:(3) The military may engage in any offensive or defensive operations permitted under law without fear of political reprisal. However, it may not colonize or annex any region without the express permission of the Cabinet and the Assembly. Nor may it destroy innocent regions. When permitted under law, it may engage in the destruction of regions with which the Coalition is at war, and regions espousing hateful ideologies.

Anyway, I thought this might be a compromise that people may be interested in considering. 

When you say "permitted under law", do you mean it has to abide by actual laws, or by simple permission from the government? If the former, then this would not change much unless another law is passed or amended, and if the latter, then the wording has to be changed.

(06-09-2019, 08:37 PM)Nat Wrote: I am not sure what the non-constitutional law would look like. However, I imagine this all would still require the Charter to be amended. Otherwise, the Charter's permissive language towards the military might render any non-constitutional law void. Something like below would suffice to allow a non-constitutional alignment law:

The Charter, Article X Wrote:(3) The military may engage in any offensive or defensive operations permitted under law without fear of political reprisal. However, it may not colonize or annex any region without the express permission of the Cabinet and the Assembly. Nor may it destroy innocent regions. When permitted under law, it may engage in the destruction of regions with which the Coalition is at war, and regions espousing hateful ideologies.

This is a absolute no-go. We're not about to change long-standing law prohibiting region destruction.

Viet also makes a good point. This doesn't actually change anything. We're already talking about changing laws, and the resolution that would declare us defender doesn't have to be a constitutional law-- it's just a resolution-- though I would argue it should be. (Not that Bel's concern here is actually about threshold requirements.) What follows from that is whatever changes are necessary to promote the spirit of the resolution, which is adopting a proud defender stance. Your rewording of the first half of that clause doesn't really change the overall meaning, because the military by definition cannot engage in any acts at all that aren't permitted by law. It's redundant. The second part of that amendment would allow region destruction, which is both the diametric opposite of what we're proposing in adopting defending and is a massive reversal of long-standing existing law and military policy. So, at the end of the day, the amendment you're offering here is... the status quo plus movement in the opposite direction.

Belschaft's main concern is not that a constitutional law would require a supermajority to reverse at some point in the future. As has already been pointed out, his argument that it would be anti-democratic to pass a constitutional law that would require the same threshold to repeal as it did to pass... is nonsense. His objection is to identifying as defender. After all, those of us who favor TSP going defender are currently needing to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the "raid and defend when in our interests" ideology that's hard-coded into that Charter article, and nobody saying that that's anti-democratic or saying we shouldn't have to need a supermajority to adopt defending.

Im going to say its a hard no from me. TSP has always been a welcoming community. Even if someone has wronged us, any ban has rarely been permanent. We've welcomed the likes of Cormac - even after we knew his MO from multiple other regions - into our community, and we welcomed Unibot back on multiple occasions. Even people like Milograd have been welcome to return in some capacity. We're an open community, and to put a hard R or D into law would go against the very foundation of The South Pacific. We've always prided ourselves as welcoming everyone, and I won't stand to see TSP lose that particular value.

If you want a defender region, go find or build one. Leave TSP alone.I couldnt care less about your NSGP arguments, all your friends wont respect us if we dont go defender, or that the whole world will implode... This is our little slice of the NS world... Leave it be.

Glen's resolution is a good starting point, I agree. Regarding your thoughts Nat, I also agree with Glen. The point of the language in the Charter is to set out what ops are and are not allowed. It seems like a roundabout way to neuter the effect of any other law and allow it to be changed at the drop of a hat in the future, which isn't something I'm particularly interested in. 

Rebs, I understand what you're saying. But I also believe a lot of those decisions to let certain people back in were wrong. Yes, we're a welcoming community. But "welcoming-ness" only goes so far. And I'm firmly of the belief that keeping the company of people whose literal goal in the game is to seize power for themselves and cause chaos by subverting legitimate government is not only a bad idea, it's a real security risk for the Coalition. It's a threat to the democracy and community we've worked so hard to build.

I had to respond to those comments first. But now. Here are my thoughts for the Charter encompassing some various ideas from throughout the thread. 

Charter Wrote:

THE CHARTER OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC

...

X. THE MILITARY

Creating an official military for the purposes of regional defense, war, and gameplay.

...

(3) The military may engage in offensive or defensive operations at any time without fear of political reprisal.However, it may not colonize or annex any region without the express permission of the Cabinet and the Assembly. Nor may it destroy innocent regions. It may engage in the destruction of regions with which the Coalition is at war, and regions espousing hateful ideologies. The military shall utilize Defender principles and values as a guideline to its deployment. It shall stand against the willful foreign takeover, griefing, and destruction of innocent regions.  

(4)  The military may engage in defensive operations at any time without fear of political reprisal. This includes both deploying to prevent foreign aggressors from taking over regions and liberating regions from foreign occupants. The military may not engage in offensive operations except against regions with which the Coalition is at war, regions whose militaries engage in the practice of raiding innocent regions, and regions espousing hateful ideologies. 

(4) (5) The Minister of Military Affairs will coordinate with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to ensure that no military activities harm the government’s diplomatic affairs or public relations.

I split 3 and 4 to add Roavin's language from page 2 of this thread about defender principles and restrict where the military may engage in offensive operations.

Now for the Military Code. I want to add some kind of basic mission statement as the first section of the Code to actually codify the basic principles the military stands for since that's something I'm pretty dead set on having written down. I'll add that section tomorrow most likely, or if anyone else has any ideas they can feel free to make that themselves. The section about membership is also very much a work in progress - i'm pretty sure we don't want to allow dual memberships with raider orgs but I'm not sure about people whose orgs fall into a gray area - any thoughts y'all have on how to codify this here would be greatly appreciated.
 

Military Code Wrote:

Military Code
An act establishing the rules and regulations of military forces

1. Mission

(WORK IN PROGRESS. Will add later)

1. 2. General Corps

...

2. 3. Ranks

...3. 4. Rules

...

(3) A member of the military may only be a member of another defender or independent/unaligned military with assent of the General Corps, which it may rescind at any time and for any reason. A member of the military may not be a member of any organization which participates in the willful raiding, griefing, and/or destruction of innocent regions. If the member's other military is on the opposing side of an arbitrary R/D conflict, the member may not change sides for the duration of the operation, and shall be considered suspended from the military for the duration of the operation should they be engaged on the opposing side. If the member participates in any prohibited raid or offensive operation as a member of another military, the member may not participate in the Special Forces for the duration of such operation, and shall be considered suspended from the military for the duration of such operation.  

...
4. 5. Disciplinary Actions 

To that last edit on the Military Code at (3): Fuck that. Just, fuck that. I don't even need to explain myself there. Briefly, I value my independence as an individual, and I will resign on the spot if that is passed (granted, I don't do much, but you get the idea).