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Post by Tana Nile on Mar 31, 2007 12:31:46 GMT -5
Here is a plausible storyline. Some third-world country comes out with a powerful superbeing. The U.S. feels its interests threatened in some way and sends in a super police unit. And right here it stops being plausible. Right, because the US would never invade a third world country that had a resource they wanted. The US would never invade this country and claim it was a pre-emptive strike. And they certainly would never try to prevent other countries from developing resources comparable to their own.
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Post by The Night Phantom on Mar 31, 2007 12:55:49 GMT -5
Much more misinformation and fact twisting to sift through. Thanks for the heads-up!
If they've registered, then they are 100% allowed to use them in emergencies and whatnot. So in this case, someone could see the super-human but not licscenced hero save Miriam, report it, then the records would be checked and it would be established that this person is registered and used their powers because it was an emergency. No problem, end of story. Source, please. My understanding was that the point of superhero licensing was to outlaw superhero activities that occur without legally mandated training and other designated safeguards. To okay unlicensed superhero activity in emergencies (let alone “whatnot”) is a tremendous loophole, for the classic core of superheroism (and, arguably, “just plain” heroism) is to act in emergencies.
If they save them, then they are heroic and I'd say they would have done so with or without a SHRA. If someone says "Hah! Not saving them, I might get arrested!" Then they're clearly not heroic, very selfish and would thus would not have samed them anyway even without an SHRA. If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that the SHRA is utterly useless in modifying superbeings’ behavior. It's useless in modiying the behaviour of stubborn reckless unregistered heroes. Of course—since they are a subset of all the superbeings whose superhero behavior or lack of same, according to the theory you advanced, is unaffected by the SHRA. And before they can save more lives, naturally, just as they have been, unregistered, for years—hence my hypothetical example: OK, how about this scenario. Miriam’s superpowered neighbor illegally saves her from some peril. The next day, the peril returns or a new one arrives, and Miriam dies. Her neighbor would have saved her life that second day, but he couldn’t because the cops threw him in jail. SHRA to the rescue!! Well then I'd say her remaining neighbours should complain to their local FSI team for not foreseeing it. If there's been a metahuman crime in an area, you really don't think they'd look at it an OUNCE more closely? Hard to determine; life’s complex. In real life, repeat dangers (criminal and otherwise) do occur. Sometimes law enforcement has been looking into it, and sometimes not. In the above case, complaining to the authorities after the fact might do some good in the long run ( if there are any neighbors left to complain), but the damage to Miriam has still been done. (Of course, since this is a comic, she could be resurrected. ) My point was that the SHRA crackdown can, in some cases, thwart the good-Samaritanism that might otherwise thwart perils. And that point was made to illustrate that Balok’s “ironic” scenario is a plausible one. Yes, quite sad. However, I have no idea as to what your purpose in putting this scenario forth is. Has this pre-FSI story been published? If so, please cite and elaborate. For me to find this story plausible, I would need some reason to accept that such widespread disaster would occur without earlier intervention by the superhuman community and/or more conventional authorities (example reasons: the various massacres occurred simultaneously or at least with blazing rapidity; the authorities and heroes were distracted by other events, such as invasion by Kang, arrival of Galactus, or a superhero civil war; the events took place in a “primitive” era such as the 1850s; a quasi-omnipotent being interfered to make counteraction or access essentially impossible). In any case, I’m not seeing the bearing on the issue of the posited ironic event we’ve been discussing. If there is none, then I suppose my questions don’t matter.
I don’t speak for Balok, but what I got out of that scenario was that a person who’d trade the freedom of others for her own security ended up with neither freedom nor security for herself—or anyone else, really. she's willing to trade a limited amount of the "freedoms" of a phenomenally dangerous group of people- and only those who are willing Uhh, no. The restrictions of the SHRA apply to people whether they are willing to be restricted by it or not. Laws tend to be that way. I don't think Iron Man would say he has any less freedom than before. Well, if a demagogue doesn’t say it (or if you think a demagogue wouldn’t say it), it must not be true!! Because we all know war veterans never lie. Sorry, I don’t know what you think you mean by that statement at all; and that ignorance is contributing to my not fathoming the purpose in your saying it. I think it’s fairly clear that superhero-civil-war veteran Iron Man does lie some of the time. But I’m not sure that’s even relevant. Look—in the context of Balok’s scenario of Miriam Sharpe’s essentially being endangered by the very “pro-safety” route she took, I was just trying to explain the irony of Miriam Sharpe’s getting the opposite of what she sought. I suspect that this statement which you think Iron Man would not make is not relevant to that irony. (I’m sure I could trot out a hundred quotes that Iron Man has never made, but so what?!?) Those persons may have chosen to do things and not do other things, but what I was responding to was your claim that Sharpe is “willing to trade a limited amount of the "freedoms" of a phenomenally dangerous group of people- and only those who are willing”. No, the SHRA also applies to people who are not willing to be subjected to its restrictions. (Haven’t you noticed?? There was a civil war about it! The Avengers split into two factions over it!!)Yeah, but it's still their choice. The Avengers could have all spontaneously announced their retirements and they don't get deprived of any "freedoms" at all. And I'm still not entirely sure it's a colossal sacrifice we're talking about here- and being a hero requires you make sacrifices. Always. I think it requires choosing to make those sacrifices, and the SHRA takes some formerly lawful choices away from actual or potential heroes. The legal license to make choices is what legal freedom is about. Now, you might feel that the choices taken away by the SHRA do not qualify as “natural” or inherently moral rights. Fine. But if the choices were legal before and are not now, then obviously some legal rights a.k.a. legal freedoms have been taken away. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, but it would seem to be an inescapable conclusion that a loss of legal freedom has occurred. And an understanding of the relationships between forms of security and forms of freedom, regardless of the specific forms’ merits, is key to understanding the irony of the scenario under discussion.
Here is a plausible storyline. Some third-world country comes out with a powerful superbeing. The U.S. feels its interests threatened in some way and sends in a super police unit. And right here it stops being plausible. In my opinion, it’s quite plausible. (We’re talking about a Marvel Universe situation, not the real world, right?) It’s analogous to the real-world US-Afghanistan situation in 2001. There were no superbeings in that scenario, of course; but there was an extraordinary threat posed by a third-world country, the US felt threatened, and it responded with a high-powered “police action”.
just so we're clear, there's no such thing as a private citizen with super powers, right? They can just quietly register and go back to a normal life and never see the government again. Why should they get all the luck?!? Non-superpowered folk have to deal, one way or another, with the government all the time!!
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Post by von Bek on Mar 31, 2007 13:11:39 GMT -5
Here is a plausible storyline. Some third-world country comes out with a powerful superbeing. The U.S. feels its interests threatened in some way and sends in a super police unit. And right here it stops being plausible. Right, because the US would never invade a third world country that had a resource they wanted. The US would never invade this country and claim it was a pre-emptive strike. And they certainly would never try to prevent other countries from developing resources comparable to their own. Great answer, Tana Nile ;D And that story´d already been told, and by Maevel, it´s the first arc of the Squadron Supreme series.
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Post by balok on Apr 1, 2007 21:22:09 GMT -5
Right. And of course, it's foolish to think that if "cleaning up SHIELD" is on the list of priorities, "Cleaning up the CSA" is, right? Given that Tony and the pro-reg boys devised the nanomachines that let the CSA control these villains, you're assuming that he thinks it needs to be cleaned up. Also, as you have pointed out in the past on at least two occasions, neither Tony nor SHIELD has the authority to do anything to the CSA. If they are, then they'll save Miriam and damned with the conseqeunces, or save her and suck in their pride and register. If they're not heroic, they won't- and they wouldn't have done so anyway. You're assuming black and white motivations in people. Specifically, you're assuming that there exist no people who might like to be heroic, if they can do so without ruining their own lives, and who believe that registration would ruin their lives. In the Rust Age of Marvel, which seeks to emulate the real world and its many shades of grey, such people exist. The Marvel heroes don't know they employ Bullseye, and they technically don't deploy the Goblin- plus Moonstone has been missing and when last seen she was almost a hero. So, they kill Jack Flag to keep him from telling the press who crippled him? Unless they do, Bullseye's affiliation is well known. and being a hero requires you make sacrifices. Always. Sure, but there exist people willing to make some sacrifices, but perhaps not willing to rewrite their life around the heroic ideal. Such people might still help, in limited ways. The SHRA actively discourages them from doing so. In that sense, it makes people less secure, rather than more secure. It is certainly possible that its benefits outweigh its drawbacks. What I'm trying to point out, and you're dancing around, is the fact that it does have drawbacks - quite a number of them. Except no, that's not true. Firstly, you're assuming Tony Stark has turned over full control of the FSI to a still-corrupt CSA. Which is lunacy, because whatever you may think of Tony he's not a moron. No, but he believes, and Civil War demonstrates this, that the end justifies the means. So if someone made a good case, he'd hand over those names regardless of what he'd promised his friends. Also, you're assuming that the government people can't simply take them without his knowledge. Tony's quite smart, but he's not the only smart person in the Marvel Universe - and the government can certainly find and hire people to hack his database. Every time large corporations have created encryption standards to protect content from pirates, they've been cracked in short order. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act even makes it illegal to do this and it still goes on. DVD protection: cracked. Blu-Ray: cracked. HD-DVD: cracked. Apple m4p: cracked. Heck, probably within a month of its existence, that database of names would appear on a public website somewhere, cracked by some hacker just to prove he could do it. Sure, the CSA would send in Bullseye to cripple him or have Radioactive Man give him cancer, but the damage would be done. It's also foolish to suggest there aren't dozens if not more of Initiative heroes with the same powers as you. Oh, and of course there is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever that super-humans could be deployed in other nations, they WON'T be as far as we know, and Iron Man, the... waht's the term... DIRECTOR OF SHIELD would oppose it with all his might, which is extremely considerable. You need to think larger than you do. Suppose, instead, that my power is the ability to heal. Very rare, and very much in demand. Now suppose that a powerful politician, let's call him Mick Chainee, has heart problems. Doctors have installed stents and bypassed his coronary arteries, but poor genes and years of stress have taken their toll, and Mick's heart is failing. I can fix it. But I don't really want to. Maybe it hurts me to use my powers, or maybe I just don't think ol' Mick deserves my help, because I think he's a rotten human being and a bad leader. Now tell me the government won't exert every power it can bring to bear on me. Heck, it'll probably take me to a secluded military base, let's call it Mitmo, and there it will subject me to waterboarding, or other techniques, until I agree to do what it wants. Maybe it will kidnap my wife or children and hold them hostage against my good behavior. Absolutely, positively, the only defense I have is if they never even know I exist. Not being a dummy, I realize this early on. And on top of everything else, I dare not use my power on anyone else, because they might tell the government about me. My grief-stricken neighbor tells me what the doctor told his wife, and wonders how he's going to raise their three children alone. He's lost and I could help her - but I don't dare take the chance that someone will figure out what I can do, and then I'll be imprisoned. Your faith in the basic benevolence of government is almost touching, but it is not realistic. SHIELD is not the American Government. The Heroes are under the command of SHIELD mostly, it's the FSI that is being turned over to US control. (As far as I understand it.) I believe the heroes ARE the Fifty State Initiative. Registration doesn't mean you have to serve, but I believe the only way to be licensed is to join the FSI. Battle Damage Report strongly implies this. So, I ask, which group of heroes will the CSA not control once they take the FSI over from SHIELD? And here's a Fourteenth Amendment Question I'll lob out. For this exercise, we have to exempt the "exotic technology users" but that's far from all the heroes in the Marvel Universe. We can even, if you like, exempt all the "science based mutates" who set out to acquire powers and managed to do it on purpose. That leaves all the mutants and accidental mutates. These people have powers through no fault of their own. Now, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the law from treating people differently for things inherent to themselves. Yet for this group of people, the SHRA treats them differently because of something they cannot control - an inherent property. It is no different (legally) than saying "All Muslims must register with the government." Now, you might say "but Muslims aren't inherently dangerous and superpowered individuals are!" I'll bet you could, with little effort, google up a couple of dozen Conservative websites that beg to differ. Most of us realize that the average Muslim is not at all the fanatic who explodes himself at the behest of a spiritual "leader" - just as the average superhero is not a danger. You have to be exquisitely careful when you hand over rights to the government, because it's easy to hand them over, and very, very difficult to get them back. Historically, doing so has required bloodshed...
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