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mfb
the Israeli Defense Force has taken an important step in the search for a way to wage war while hiding under the bed, sucking their thumbs! and, at the same time, they've managed to recreate an SR concept--the "zero zone", an area where any intrusion merits lethal response by automated drones.

the article is somewhat repetitive somewhat, and some of their information appears to be faulty (0.5-caliber machine guns!?), but it's still an interesting read.
Backgammon
Reminds me of the Aeon Flux wall between those two cities, with the automated defences and all. Aeon Flux the series, not the movie.

Or the sentry guns they want to put in the DMZ in Korea. Except those were funnier and seemingly useless. These seem to be more of the deadly variety.
ethinos
Cool. Like it was taken straight from the movie Congo.
Kagetenshi
The zero-zone is a matter of policy. Sentry guns are likely, but the key part is "zero intrusion, zero escape" or something along those lines, not the actual specific method of execution.

~J
kigmatzomat
Not exactly a new concept. The Berlin Wall had zero zones and I think the Maginot Line was built with the intent of being a zero zone.
mfb
yeah, but none of those had robots.
Slump
Unless they move (without rails) or are under some pretty heavy bunkers, sentry guns won't last long, and won't be cost-effective for long.

As anyone who has played Team Fortress can tell you, if you know where it is, you can kill it without it seeing you. If nothing else, mortar fire from over the hill ought to be able to take it out.
hyzmarca
One of these days, Israel will wise up and figure out that it is just best to reduce the rest of the middle east to a single sheet of highly radioactive glass.
They can get away with it. We still owe them a free genocide.
Kagetenshi
When do the Romanies get their free genocide?

~J
mfb
they'd better hurry up. with any luck, we're about to get four (maybe eight) years of cooler Israeli relations. i don't think it'd work anyway--too many 'stans. if they glazed Saudi Arabia, they'd prolly wipe out a lot of the funding, though...

gypsies? those are just a myth, like eskimos.
hyzmarca
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Jun 6 2007, 05:52 PM)
When do the Romanies get their free genocide?

~J

No one cares about the Romanis. Sad, but true. If people did, they'd have their own country, too. And the homosexuals, for that matter.
mfb
hey, Cal Free is a separate country in SR, anyway. (oh snap i din't just go there!)
hyzmarca
San Fransisco is the Gay Jerusalem.

But, seriously, the IDF's very confusing and contradictory position regarding civilian casualties may completely mess up this plan. It only works if one is willing to accept any number of civilian casualties without the slightest remorse. It will result in some bad press, but that won't really hurt Israel. The problem comes if they choose to tone down the system in response to bad press, as the article states. A zero-zone only works if you really are willing to kill anything that moves.

Unless they are really willing to throw down the gauntlet and accept potentially massive civilian casualties and the bad press that accompanies it, there will be no way this can work. And, if they are willing to throw down the gauntlet and set up automated kill zones, they are one step closer to a devising final solution to the Palestinian problem.

When you premise a country around an ethnic identity ethnic conflict is inevitable and ethnic conflict always leads to genocide.
mfb
well, to be fair, it's not like ignoring ethnic identities when drawing national borders has worked any better.
hyzmarca
QUOTE (mfb)
well, to be fair, it's not like ignoring ethnic identities when drawing national borders has worked any better.

The key to drawing national boarders is to unite people under the banner of a political ideology or national identity rather than an ethnic identity.

Look at the United States. Back in the 60s and 70s we came very close to full-scale race-war but we were able to avoid it because all Americans are united by the basic principals of human freedom and those few who wish to deny that freedom are far easier to marginalize than an entire ethnic group is. South Africa had the exact same issues but devolved into a horrific cluster-fuck because it was based around the premise of white supremacy and the government couldn't make concessions to the marginalized black community without totally collapsing.

Israel, likewise, can't integrate Palestinians because Israel is based around the concept of a Jewish state. If it were a purely humanist state based around the ideals of human freedom and equality then there would not be such a problem. All that would be required is to give the Palestinians equal participation in the government rather than relegating them to the status of foreigners with a government of their own. It would certainly require work and not everyone would accept it, but it is very rare for a comprehensive, capable,and stable representative government to fall due to ethnic warfare. When truly representative governments do fall, it is usually due to their own impotence.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
No one care about the Romanis. Sad, but true. If people did, they'd have their own country, too. And the homosexuals, for that matter.

The Communists got theirs (well, between 1919 and 1921), but what about us Anarchists? frown.gif

~J
2bit
I'm surprised hyz you didn't mention how Israel is doubly polarized in the region by being an ethnic and religious state.
Iraq is a good example of what happens when you remove the thing uniting different groups in a nation wink.gif
mfb
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
South Africa had the exact same issues but devolved into a horrific cluster-fuck because it was based around the premise of white supremacy and the government couldn't make concessions to the marginalized black community without totally collapsing.

yes, but there are also plenty of nations that have torn themselves apart along ethnic lines despite being founded on central principles. the US itself did so, with repercussions that only really began to be resolved a century later--and may never be fully resolved. and let's not even mention the US's own genocides. Yugoslavia was originally intended to unite the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, but strangled itself with race tensions before it ever really got started. many ex-colonial African national borders were drawn along purely non-ethnic lines, and most of them are now and will for the forseeable future remain low-level war zones.
hyzmarca
The US Civil War wasn't an ethnic conflict. It was, in fact, an economic conflict. Since the US was divided into two separate economies, the industrial factory economy of the Northern States and the agrarian plantation economy of the Southern States. The plantation economy depended on a particular type of property right called Slavery, which quite a few people in the North wanted to abolish, though this would obviously devastate the Southern economy. For the most part, it was a war of rich white factory owners vs rich white plantation owners.
Had the US Constitution mandated a uniform property rights system (one way or the other), rather than allowing individual States to decide to permit slavery or not, the Civil War could have been avoided.

Yugoslavia did alright for itself until the fall of Communism. That pretty much screwed everything up. Many countries broke apart after that little fiasco. The 1974 revision to the Yugoslav Constitution declaring Tito President for Life didn't help, since it resulted in a rather screwed up succession and allowed for stacked election. A representative cross-ethnic government simply cannot work in a one-person = one-vote system because it ensures the tyranny of the majority. An electoral college or similar system is necessary to ensure equality of representation.
And the whole Kosovo thing did not help one bit.

Likewise, many African governments have failed because they were poor, weak, and/or run by people of questionable sanity.

In order to remain stable a national government needs six things: a strong, fairly regulated, economy; a well-defined electoral system that provides the potential for equal representation for all people and all groups; sufficient powers to maintain the national order and the national economy; proper delegation of powers between the branches of government and between national and local governments; a mechanism by which all people and all groups may petition their governments without fear of retaliation along with the ability for all people and all groups to assemble, communicate, and debate any topic without fear of retaliation; and codified Constitution which is simple, succinct, and amendable but not easily amended, which provides for all of the above and general rights and privileges for the people, and which is fully separate from the general body of national law.

Edit: And mainstream ethnically integrated political parties are very important. It is important to separate political ideology from ethnic identity.

For the most part, failed democracies have failed because they lack one or more of these things, either by design or because they have been co-opted by self-serving people. Things like Presidents changing the Constitution to give them a lifetime job do not make for strong stable republics. It isn't that the general idea of a non-ethnic national identity tends to fail. It is just that these nations are haphazardly designed. The actual economic conditions of much of Africa don't help very much. Poor uneducated individuals do not make a very good electorate.
Fix-it
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
QUOTE (mfb @ Jun 6 2007, 06:28 PM)
well, to be fair, it's not like ignoring ethnic identities when drawing national borders has worked any better.

The key to drawing national boarders is to unite people under the banner of a political ideology or national identity rather than an ethnic identity.

Look at the United States.

the united states had the advantage that we didn't have the USSR looking over our shoulders, selling AK-47s to everyone and hoping we'd kill ourselves.

the collapse of the Soviet Union made it even worse. every arms dealer in the world went to make a quick buck off of tribal rivalries. throw in heavy-handed (and ineffective) attemps by the UN, and you have the current viper pit.

stupid british/dutch/french colonialism. it's farking us all over now.

with the hundreds of individual tribes in the mid-east/africa, it's practically impossible for them to sit down and play nice. what happened in the rest of the world is we warred our way down to a few dozen, with plenty of space for each.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
Likewise, many African governments have failed because they were poor, weak, and/or run by people of questionable sanity.

While there certainly have been people of questionable sanity running African governments, remember, rationality and sanity are not the same thing.

~J
2bit
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
A representative cross-ethnic government simply cannot work in a one-person = one-vote system because it ensures the tyranny of the majority. An electoral college or similar system is necessary to ensure equality of representation.

I don't understand this. For one thing, whether or not the tyranny of the majority is ensured seems independent of whether or not government functions to me.

Secondly, it's actually drawing political lines around ethnicity that ensures a certain ethnicity will be represented in government. I don't understand what an electoral college has to do with equality of representation in this regard. In addition, the tyranny of the majority can be abated by setting the threshold for, say, passage of laws, to something higher than simple majority. Something that requires the majority to get buy-in from other groups under the nation's umbrella.
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
When you premise a country around an ethnic identity ethnic conflict is inevitable and ethnic conflict always leads to genocide.

...one of the underlying themes to the campaign I have just started.

QUOTE (hyzmarca)
The 1974 revision to the Yugoslav Constitution declaring Tito President for Life didn't help, since it resulted in a rather screwed up succession and allowed for stacked election. A representative cross-ethnic government simply cannot work in a one-person = one-vote system because it ensures the tyranny of the majority.

...agreed.
mfb
QUOTE (hyzmarca)
The US Civil War wasn't an ethnic conflict.

i know, but it was a conflict--my point is that there can be enough internal and external strife to destroy a country whether or not that country is based on ethnicity or not.

QUOTE (hyzmarca)
Yugoslavia did alright for itself until the fall of Communism.

well, yeah--it was ruled by a well-funded dictator who enjoyed the mutual support of both of the world's superpowers at the time. in that respect, it's really not much different from Israel. as soon as he died, the country started trying to tear itself apart again--just as it had been doing since its inception. heck, their sense of national identity during WWII was crappy enough that they had two separate resistance movements.

my point is that not drawing nations on ethnic lines is as dangerous and likely to fail as drawing them on ethnic lines. if there's strong ethnic conflict, it's likely to tear a nation apart whether it's internal or external.
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