[grid_roamer]

 

So in the Shadowrun world it is not a coincidence that the regulation of the Matrix and Awakened persuits parallel the individual nations forming a web of dependence with their neighbors, loosely based on the corporate courts whos influence they continue to lessen.

The shadowrun world is literally a safer place if only a little.....

[Black]

Dependence on others is a condition of Sovereignty. International Trade is almost wholly regulated by Treaties, in turn regulated by the U.N.
Peace treaties and regulation of Armed Forces is only regulated by the U.N.
And very few countries even bother to pen the responability to do the same.
No nation can say they dont rely on others for trade, some more than others. And no nation can say that they dont rely on the U.N. as the governing body.

Treaties are not regulated by the U.N.

'Regulation' of armed forces are not controlled by the UN.  A few treaties are around which seek to limit/control the use of certain weapons, and the Geneva Convention and subsequent agreements do seek to regulate the 'rules' of war.  But not all of these are via the U.N. and most agreements have limited agreement power due to key stakeholders not being signaturoies.

The U.N. is not a governing body.

Trade agreements are often between two or more nations, with no U.N. involvement.

International Law, such as it exists in any enforceable manner, is often administered via the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, neither of which are part of the U.N. 

The exception to this is the Geneva Convention and its 'enforcement' by the United Nations Security Council (enforcement is rarely actually undertaken).  The U.N. body used for International Law matters is the International Court of Justice aka the World Court. The World Court decisions are only bindng if both parties submit to its judgement and even then, Security Council members can veto cases and decisions.

The U.N. is a membership organisation which promotes and facilities co-operation between member nations (which is far from every nation-state). 

[Silence]

Dark has a point.  The Geneva Conventions (there are several) are the original basis for international law.  They are a set of what is an is not allowed in warfare.  One of the biggest sticklers with international law is that while most countries consider WMDs to only be nuclear weapons, the US considers the full NBC spectrum to be WMDs.  Basically, the UN inspectors were only looking for nuclear weapons, while the US teams were looking for the full spectrum.  By the UN definition, Saddam did not violate the treaty, as he did not make any nuclear weapons.  By the US definition, he did violate the treaty by making nerve gas to use on the Kurds.

[Reaver]

this is straying a little close to the line here guys

Try to bring it back into the 2070s 'Kay? 


Have to remember, there was a LOT of little stepping stones to how the megas got the power they did:

Seratech:

Shawaise 1:

Shawaise 2:

Corp Court "Edicts"  (Basically a thinly veiled threat behind a list of Corp/State Rights and priviledges that, if countries want the better world interest rates... better think about strongly...)


Then add in the turmoil of VITAS 1, VITAS 2, CRASH 1.0...UGE, Goblinization, then throw in the Awakening!! Governments are slow to change, political opinions and expectations even slower.... Entire countries fell in the upheaval....

and through it all...
No Matter how dark things got..
No matter what was happening on the streets...
You know...
You just KNOW, that at Shawaise, everything is all right. Eveyone has a place, and are valued all the same principiles as the Kami of the Corporation... and is thus both Just, and Holy.

And you.
You get stale, mostly moldy bread, and soup made from gutter water and the remains of 11 other soup cans.....

[Nath]

...and then what? Does the world police appear and put the corporation (the legal entity) into prison? Because anything else is the same which might happen to a real nation, which you insist are completely different...

If you want to use legal terminology, then it goes with a functional legal system. There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.

Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves, and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.

Megacorporations joins the Corporate Court, and are granted the right to ignore national authority inside their facilities. It's the Corporate Court that forces nations to recognize this right. No corporations ever individually established itself as the sovereign authority over a track of land. They can have as many security guards and military troops inside their facilities, the surrounding nation is not going to try to exert their authority inside anyway. You may say this grant them a de facto sovereignty. But if one corporation was to openly claim that its authority over one facility only derives from its military might and not from the Business Recognition Accords, that would be questioning the Corporate Court own authority. And the keystone to SR corporate system as it existed so far is that the megacorporations are willing to unite behind the Corporate Court to defeat any single megacorporation that don't play by the rules.

The Big Seven wanted to decide, through the Corporate Court, which corporation gets extraterritoriality, and which does not. Not because it sounded fun, but because it was power. If they let corporations decide to get extraterritoriality on their own, they lose that power.

If you want to switch directly to "might makes right" and that the only legitimacy comes from the effective use of force and not the mere threat of it, then there's no point in saying that corporations are "sovereign national entities," because you're ruling out that sovereignty has any meaning whatsoever for neither nations nor corporations.

While I agree with Nath that Corporations are not sovereign entities... corporate citizenship does cloud the issue.  Does a nation entity which recognises the the citizens of another entity,also recognise that the 'nationality' of the entity exists and therefore the entity is in fact a nation-state?

In otherwords, if UCAS allows for Renraku employed wageslaves to renouces their UCAS citizenship and take up Renraku citizenship, isn't the UCAS actually acknowledging Renraku as a peer and fellow nation-state?

The UCAS can accept renunciation of citizenship, but it has no business in checking what other citizenship the person may be seeking. However, most countries actually don't even allow their citizen to renounce citizenship (the US is one of the few that does, allowing people to stop paying US taxes that otherwise must be paid by every US citizens).

The idea of dual or multiple citizenship is also pretty misleading. As far as the UCAS is concerned, you're either one of its citizen, or you're not.
One good example of this are consular assistance and extradition cases. Say you have someone arrested in Washington for stealing classified documents. If he only has Israeli citizenship, he can charged for spying and can require consular assistance. If he has Israeli-UCAS "dual citizenship", he can be charged for treason and cannot require consular assistance, as he's detained by his own country. But if he flees and moves to Israel, he won't be extradited because Israel, like most countries, does not extradite its own citizens.

As far as I know, foreign citizenship is only legally recognized for crossing borders and consular assistance (plus some bilateral agreements regarding military service for dual nationals). I know off precedents of recognized non-state citizenship for international organizations.
Members of the United Nations must accept diplomatic and service passports issued to UN personnel, even if they don't recognize the person's citizenship. I think the Holy See can also issue diplomatic and service passports, which are not the same than Vatican citizen passports. So I guess it's the same for other international organizations that don't belong to the UN, like Interpol. Citizens of European Union countries also have "EU citizenship" that allow them in some countries outside the EU to benefit from consular assistance of another EU country (while inside the EU, they're just a foreigner, who can be extradited and charged for spying).

I don't think there's something against accepting corporate ID documents when issuing visas, nor against allowing people legal assistance from their employer. It's calling it a citizenship that may be the biggest problem.

[grid_roamer]

Dependence on others is a condition of Sovereignty. International Trade is almost wholly regulated by Treaties, in turn regulated by the U.N.
Peace treaties and regulation of Armed Forces is only regulated by the U.N.
And very few countries even bother to pen the responability to do the same.
No nation can say they dont rely on others for trade, some more than others. And no nation can say that they dont rely on the U.N. as the governing body.

Treaties are not regulated by the U.N.

'Regulation' of armed forces are not controlled by the UN.  A few treaties are around which seek to limit/control the use of certain weapons, and the Geneva Convention and subsequent agreements do seek to regulate the 'rules' of war.  But not all of these are via the U.N. and most agreements have limited agreement power due to key stakeholders not being signaturoies.

The U.N. is not a governing body.

Trade agreements are often between two or more nations, with no U.N. involvement.

International Law, such as it exists in any enforceable manner, is often administered via the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, neither of which are part of the U.N. 

The exception to this is the Geneva Convention and its 'enforcement' by the United Nations Security Council (enforcement is rarely actually undertaken).  The U.N. body used for International Law matters is the International Court of Justice aka the World Court. The World Court decisions are only bindng if both parties submit to its judgement and even then, Security Council members can veto cases and decisions.

The U.N. is a membership organisation which promotes and facilities co-operation between member nations (which is far from every nation-state).

Every peace treaty written over the last  150 years is documented within the U.N. and were used give legality to UINCEF, Pececorps, IAEA, IEA, ec....
The formation IEA for example is a condition of the treatied surrender of Germany and Japan after world War II.

No one can enforce trade tariff except the U.N. No one wants too...
Nobody's law is binding if the parties don't want to comply.The would just accepts the U.N. peaceful role in their daily functioning.

[Crimsondude]

My International Law grade retroactively fell a grade reading this thread.

[Silence]

Correction Fenris:  What give the UN the teeth to enforce anything is the United States Military 80% of the time.  The remaining 20% of the time, the UN is effectively useless.  While every treaty for the last 150 years may be documented within the UN, Trade tariffs are enforced by the individual countries.  The last war the US got into that was purely trade related was when we invaded the Phillipines, because we wanted to stop them from shooting at our ships.  Since, while trade may be a part of why we get involved, it's usually remembering treaty obligations that the State Department would rather forget.  See Desert Storm.  The US had a standing treaty to provide military aid to Kuwait, should somebody attack.  Saddam Hussein's people called the State Department to ask permission to invade, and received it.  Desert Storm was not a UN op, but they were allowed to join in.  Operation Iraqi Freedom was most definitely not a UN op, though members of the UN were involved.  The last two major UN ops were Somalia and Sarajevo.  Both were disasters from the operational standpoint, due to a lack of a clear chain of command, poor intelligence, and no clear rules of engagement.  Those were also the absolute last times US soldiers were placed under UN command.

Most of what the UN does is further an agenda that does little to nothing involving the actual charter.  The Human Rights Commission is filled with the worst violators of human rights, the Trade Commission does not include the United States, one of the largest customers of the world,, and the Secretary General is usually from a small country nobody cares about.  The ICC is not the UN, and the US has little to nothing to do with it, due to the Nuremburg Trials,  The ECHR, however is listened to by everyone BUT the State Department, because one of the main legal documents they reference is the US Constitution.  By the way, one of the first legal documents to address human rights for everyone, not just the nobility.  The "human rights violations" at Guantanamo Bay are illegal combatants by the definitions of the Geneva Conventions that the US has signed.

That right, we could have just killed them all, and been well within our legal rights.  That is the main issue when talking about International Law, and the UN as an enforcer of it.

[Angelone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCpjgl2baLs

Am I close?

[Silence]

Pretty much.  And my the US definition, the use of biological and chemical weapons earn a nuclear surprise.

[FastJack]

Dark has a point.  The Geneva Conventions (there are several) are the original basis for international law.  They are a set of what is an is not allowed in warfare.  One of the biggest sticklers with international law is that while most countries consider WMDs to only be nuclear weapons, the US considers the full NBC spectrum to be WMDs.  Basically, the UN inspectors were only looking for nuclear weapons, while the US teams were looking for the full spectrum.  By the UN definition, Saddam did not violate the treaty, as he did not make any nuclear weapons.  By the US definition, he did violate the treaty by making nerve gas to use on the Kurds.

Talk of real world politics is NOT allowed on these forums by the Terms of Service. Even if the politics is pseudo-historical by nature of the game, it is still NOT allowed. Please stay on topic, or this topic will be locked.

[Sengir]

There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.

Court = Judiciary
Police = Executive

Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.

And what precise act do they perform to "establish their authority" which differentiates a nation like, say, Poland, from a megacorp? Also, not being internationally recognized does not mean the country disappears in a puff of smoke or gets annexed. The ROC (Taiwan) got formally booted from the UN and only a handful of minor states formerly recognize it, they're still around.


As for some side points being mentioned in this thread...
- WMDs being commonly, and especially by the UN, understood to only refer to nuclear weapons? Bullshit, the very first UN resolution already referred to "atomic weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction"
- The ECHR cites the US constitution and is respected as law everywhere? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Council_of_Europe_(blue).svg
- "The UN" can impose tariffs? Sure, and then those will have to be paid when entering the territory of the UN...which is where exactly?

Seriously, reading this thread is like reading sourcebooks (esp. the older ones) on extraterritoriality: Not even knowing the difference between the Vienna Conventions and real Extraterritoriality, but wanting to explain the world how it works.

[grid_roamer]

There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.

Court = Judiciary
Police = Executive

Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.

And what precise act do they perform to "establish their authority" which differentiates a nation like, say, Poland, from a megacorp? Also, not being internationally recognized does not mean the country disappears in a puff of smoke or gets annexed. The ROC (Taiwan) got formally booted from the UN and only a handful of minor states formerly recognize it, they're still around.


As for some side points being mentioned in this thread...
- WMDs being commonly, and especially by the UN, understood to only refer to nuclear weapons? Bullshit, the very first UN resolution already referred to "atomic weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction"
- The ECHR cites the US constitution and is respected as law everywhere? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Council_of_Europe_(blue).svg
- "The UN" can impose tariffs? Sure, and then those will have to be paid when entering the territory of the UN...which is where exactly?

Seriously, reading this thread is like reading sourcebooks (esp. the older ones) on extraterritoriality: Not even knowing the difference between the Vienna Conventions and real Extraterritoriality, but wanting to explain the world how it works.

I will respond to your post and i will leave the discussion to approved topic matter.....

The topic of tariffs and the U.N.

Someone brought up the operation in Sarajevo.
 The U.N. took over that operation after the European community sent troops to establish peace and ended up fighting and killing local ground troops.
The U.N. peacekeeping  force backed by U.N. Charter and members, intervened and demanded that all participants, the European countries sending combat forces, begin sending relief aid (a tariff). 
Which was denied and sited by most as a reason to withdraw all personel from the area. leaving the U.N. peacekeeping troops to condut police actions....

[Lusis]

So what power do the UCAS, CAS, NaN, etc actually have? Is the point of national gov't to keep the riff-raff (A-rated and lower) in-line?

[Nath]

There actually is a world police, and it's called the Corporate Court.

Court = Judiciary
Police = Executive

If you intend on respecting separation of powers, yes. Which the Corporate Court does not. The Corporate Court is not only an arbitrage body, but also a bank (Zurich-Orbital Gemeinshaft Bank) and a law enforcement agency (Grid Overwatch Division). In 2048, the Corporate Court established a "Pan-Corporate Security Committee" that decided, ordered and planned military strikes on Ensenada. The court also wrote the Concord, which should have been the duty of a legislative powers.

Nations do establish their authority over their territory by themselves and then got this authority recognized by other nations, or get invaded.

And what precise act do they perform to "establish their authority" which differentiates a nation like, say, Poland, from a megacorp? Also, not being internationally recognized does not mean the country disappears in a puff of smoke or gets annexed. The ROC (Taiwan) got formally booted from the UN and only a handful of minor states formerly recognize it, they're still around

The precise act nation perform to establish their authority is enacting and applying their own set of laws. Unless you consider the specific case of terra nullius, this requires the nation that ruled the territory previously and whose laws are no longer applied to either de facto recognize the new nation, or invade/police them to re-establish their own authority.

There is no such thing as "international recognition", as it's just a way of saying "diplomatic recognition by some arbitrarily large number of other nations" or "recognition by enough United Nations members to get a majority vote for adhesion".

By not sending policemen and judges in Taiwan to apply Beijing laws, the PRC is tacitly recognizing it doesn't have sovereignty over Taiwan. It may claim that Taiwan is a lawless land ruled by a corrupt insurgent movement that doesn't qualify as a state or whatever. By not applying its law over this territory and letting local authorities apply their law, it nonetheless opens the way to consider Taiwan as a sovereign territory.

Shadowrun corporations don't enact law and don't apply them before the local government or the Corporate Court give them the right to do so, and they do so in accordance with the limits set by the Business Recognition Accords and the local regulations regarding extraterritoriality (like the rules applied in the CAS, Quebec, Pueblo...).
Violations of these rule are bound to happen (just like crime exists elsewhere), but corporations are still trying to hide them. There are specific examples of Aztechnology in the Pueblo and Renraku in the UCAS submitting to government rulings. This alone establishes that all Aztechnology or Renraku facilities cannot be considered as sovereign and, more important, that they don't consider themselves as such.