NationStates Jolt Archive

Wanting to try my hand at drafting a 'Free Trade' resolution again, I looked around for a topic that I didn't recall seeing attempted recently and came up with the idea of guaranteeing some reasonable rights to ship goods through "third party" nations.
The original draft that I typed-up from my rough notes was just a little bit (about 50%...) too long, but by cutting a few clauses that seemed less essential than others, selecting shorter alternatives for various words and terms, omitting words whose meaning I hoped could reasonably be implied from context, and so on, I finally got it down to just inside the maximum permitted length...
I posted that draft on the ACCEL forum, because Free Trade is one of that alliance’s main principles after all, and made some further changes based on comments and advice that I received from various people there. Now, as it seems fairly ready for submission in my opinion, I present it here for your inspection too_

International Transit of Goods

Category: Free Trade
Strength: Significant

Description: The United Nations,

RECOGNISING that international trade can allow nations and their peoples to benefit from access to wider ranges of materials and products than exist locally,

NOTING that this trade may require the movement of goods through intermediate nations between their origins and their destinations,

RECOGNISING that governments may wish to limit trade in certain types of goods due to reasonable concerns about principles such as public safety or environmental protection,

REGRETTING that some governments may also try to restrict international trade for more selfish reasons, for example to exert undue pressure on other nations,

1. DECLARES that no nation may forbid the passage of any goods through its territory, from a foreign nation to a foreign nation, unless any of the following cases apply:
A. The ban is allowed or required by an earlier UN Resolution that is still in force;
B. The nation is at war with the goods’ nation of origin, the last or next nation along their planned route, or the nation that is their actual destination;
C. Any of those other nations are not in the UN and not voluntarily complying with these rules;
D. The goods are weapons or other ‘tools of war’ and the nation has good reason to think these would be used for acts of state aggression or genocide;
E. Trade in goods of that general type is illegal there;
F. The goods are stolen property, their production breached valid property rights, or the circumstances of that production did not meet UN standards;

2. ACCEPTS that nations have the right to inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, except in any cases where this is forbidden either by diplomatic immunity or by treaties that those nations have ratified, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade;

3. DECLARES that nations may not charge any customs duties, special ‘transit taxes’, or other tariffs, on goods that are only in transit through their territories rather than meant for sale or other use there, unless in Customs Unions with those goods’ actual destinations;

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons;
B. Require the people involved to have adequate training in relevant skills;
C. Require the beasts or vehicles involved to be of general types that are legal there, and to meet proper safety and environmental standards;
D. Require the use of adequate safety precautions, including proper labelling for all goods, by the transporters;

5. DECLARES that nations must not _
A. Set limits based on where the transporters were trained, membership in civilian organisations, special licences, or where their beasts or vehicles originated or are registered;
B. Require the transporters to belong to any organisations;
C. Hold foreign people, beasts or vehicles in this trade to higher standards, or charge them higher taxes or tolls, than they do native people, beasts or vehicles thus employed;
D. Hold people, beasts or vehicles in this trade to higher standards, or charge them higher taxes or tolls, than they do people, beasts or vehicles in import/export trade at their borders or in purely domestic trade within them;

6. ASSIGNS the UN Free Trade Commission the right and duty to judge any international disputes about these rules.


The newest draft, as SUBMITTED, is here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=12652483&posted=1#post12652483)...

http://www.mazeguy.net/animal/penguin.gif

seems like a reasonable proposal for it... i would vot yes.. any body else??

sincerly
embasador obdu mogoshi
the peoples republic of zeroina

looks good. I've tryed submitting a few of these myself, so i thought i'd show it to you to give you a few ideas. if you like something, feel free to use it. just slip me a Co-Authored by in there.
RECOGNIZING the detriment of tariffs in our society

COGNIZANT OF the positive impact that regional free trade agreements have had

CONVINCED THAT free trade will increase the economy of every participating country

SEEKING to take the global economy to another level, both increasing the economy of economic giants and pulling third world countries out of the gutter

HEREBY:

1) DEFINES a tariff as any duty imposed on traded goods from one country to another by the government of either country.

2) EXTENDS this definition to cover any charges for arbitrary charges ex: “security checks, etc.”

4) MANDATES that all member nations must forthwith eradicate all tariffs from their countries trading system

5) ENCOURAGES member nations to engage in diplomatic discussion with non-member nations with the aim of eliminating their tariffs

I rather like it. Trade is good all around in most cases. We support this.

Rex Smiley, UN representative.

Has this proposal been submitted yet?

The Blue Eyed Man
UN Ambassador

I like this proposal, but I have some questions.

What about economic sanctions and embargoes? I don't think those fall under the category of "war" but are often essential in avoiding one.

Also, would illegal immigrants/insurgents/stowaways/etc. be considered illegal "goods"?

looks good. I've tryed submitting a few of these myself, so i thought i'd show it to you to give you a few ideas. if you like something, feel free to use it. just slip me a Co-Authored by in there.

Thank you for the offer, but I'd rather concentrate on the transit trade here and leave tariffs for other resolutions to handle: Apart from anything else, it wouldn't be possible to add more than another 6 characters to this draft without hitting the maximum length allowed...

Has this proposal been submitted yet?

The Blue Eyed Man
UN Ambassador

Not yet, no: I decided to get a bit more feedback first.

I like this proposal, but I have some questions.

What about economic sanctions and embargoes? I don't think those fall under the category of "war" but are often essential in avoiding one.

Also, would illegal immigrants/insurgents/stowaways/etc. be considered illegal "goods"?

As far as sanctions and embargos are concerned, national governments would still be able to ban the importing of particular nations' products into their own territories but wouldn't be allowed to block the passage of those goods to yet other countries unless they could justify doing so under one or more of the specific exceptions listed in clause #1: One of the main aims of this proposal was specifically to deprive national governments of the ability to block trade as an act of economic warfare, because that power is so easily abused...

As for illegal immigrants, I refer you to exception '1.E': Presumably the "trade" in them wouldn't be legal, by a simple matter of definition, so their admission could still be banned...

Nice try, but there are a couple of deal-breakers here that my government won't accept under any circumstances.

1. DECLARES that no nation may forbid the passage of any goods through its territory, from a foreign nation to a foreign nation, unless any of the following cases apply:
A. The ban is allowed or required by an earlier UN Resolution that is still in force;
Delete the word 'earlier'. Otherwise you are sneaking in a ban on bans, and that's not going to get my support.

B. The nation is at war with the goods’ nation of origin, the last or next nation along their planned route, or the nation that is their actual destination;
"Last" is a bit ambiguous; "previous" would be better.

C. Any of those other nations are not in the UN and not voluntarily complying with these rules;
Let me get this straight; we can do what we like if the first, last, next or previous nations in the chain aren't in the UN and haven't subscribed, but not if any of the others are like that? So if we're the second nation in line and the first, third and last are all UN members but the fourth isn't and doesn't agree to play by the rules, we don't get the exemption? That doesn't seem fair.

D. The goods are weapons or other ‘tools of war’ and the nation has good reason to think these would be used for acts of state aggression or genocide;
E. Trade in goods of that general type is illegal there;
F. The goods are stolen property, their production breached valid property rights, or the circumstances of that production did not meet UN standards;

You missed: "G: You hate the source nation, or any other nation in the chain." Seriously, this just prevents one kind of alledged economic bullying by legitimising another.

3. DECLARES that nations may not charge any customs duties, special ‘transit taxes’, or other tariffs, on goods that are only in transit through their territories rather than meant for sale or other use there, unless in Customs Unions with those goods’ actual destinations;
Taxes on the vehicles involved, however, had damn well better be still an option. We sure as hell aren't about to let anything onto our roads that doesn't pay for the wear and tear it's own transit will cause.

Nice try, but there are a couple of deal-breakers here that my government won't accept under any circumstances.

Delete the word 'earlier'. Otherwise you are sneaking in a ban on bans, and that's not going to get my support.

"Sneaking"? Was I really that subtle about it? ;)
I knew that that wouldn't please every nation represented here, and will just have to hope that -- if this ever reaches a vote -- the ones whose leaders agree with you on this matter are outnumbered by those who favour freer trade.

"Last" is a bit ambiguous; "previous" would be better.
That's a valid point: I'll see whether I can find enough spare characters to make the change.

Let me get this straight; we can do what we like if the first, last, next or previous nations in the chain aren't in the UN and haven't subscribed, but not if any of the others are like that? So if we're the second nation in line and the first, third and last are all UN members but the fourth isn't and doesn't agree to play by the rules, we don't get the exemption? That doesn't seem fair.

Umm. It seems that when I cut this proposal down to a legal size I might have changed the sense of this clause from what the original draft said: I'll take another look at my notes. On the other hand, there are obvious reasons (Well, I hope that they're obvious, anyway...) why the behaviour of the goods' nation of origin & destination should be considered more relevant than the behaviour of any countries that those goods might simply be passing through before or after yours, and (to a lesser extent) why your relationships with nations that actually adjoin your territories might be considered more relevant than your relationships with those other, further-away ones, so maybe this is what I intended to say...
(*Goes to check this*)

You missed: "G: You hate the source nation, or any other nation in the chain."
I din't "miss" it, that was just the sort of attitude that this proposal was intended to hinder...
Seriously, this just prevents one kind of alleged economic bullying by legitimising another.
Where? Surely any "bullying" that would still be legal with this in place would already be legal now, without it, too?

Taxes on the vehicles involved, however, had damn well better be still an option. We sure as hell aren't about to let anything onto our roads that doesn't pay for the wear and tear it's own transit will cause.
Of course they are, that's why the clause you quoted refers specifically to the goods: Take another look at '5.C' & '5.D', which say that you can't charge people/beasts/vehicles that are involved in this trade taxes/tolls at higher rates than you do people/beasts/vehicles involved in other forms of trade and therefore should clearly imply that you can charge them taxes/tolls at any levels up to & including the same ones that you set in those other cases...

Where? Surely any "bullying" that would still be legal with this in place would already be legal now, without it, too?
No, under this a nation would be able to force passage through another's land, without any benefit coming to the other nation at all, whereas before the only forcing that could be done was the other nation forcing the first one to find a different route. Frankly, the one is as bad as the other.

Arguably this way round is anti-sovereignist. Suppose we trust the hypothetical nation of Aggressors about as far as we can throw their collective population, and we don't want to let their people drive through, happily stopping for lunch breaks near sensitive military bases and generally spying out the lay of the land. Paranoid I know, but that's what you get for having royalty in charge. Under the current (lack of) laws, we can solve this by simply bouncing all Agressorians at the border. Under this resolution, we can't. As long as they claim to be transiting and we aren't actually at war, we don't have control over our own borders.

We have some few reservations.

What if the tiny mountain state of A controls three mountain passes, which are the only routes to countries B and C. All are members of the UN, and country B and country C have a booming trade, which passes through A. A, however, being high up in the mountains, historically depended only on transit taxes on caravans and loads passing through the passes in its control. If we were to implement this, surely country A's economy would get destroyed.

We at the Holy Republic of Saint Bryce are of the thinking that roads through a country are built by the money of the citizens of the country so that they may use it. Therefore, the citizens of the country, represented by their government, certainly have a right to ask for fees/compensation from foreigners who did not contribute to the building of the infrastructure.

Caolh O'Brannadhllwygh
Ambassador from the Holy Republic of Saint Bryce

Regarding ‘1.A’, and the “Ban on future bans”: Thinking about this, it doesn’t really ban that much… As this proposal is purely about the transit trade that clause would still leave both nations and the UN free to ban actual imports and/or exports, whilst the clause allowing you to block the passage of goods if trade in them would be illegal within your nation means that you could still ban the passage of anything that your government considered extremely objectionable and that if the UN outlaws the trade in any type of goods within/between member-nations then it could require all member-nations to block such goods’ passage through their territories too. All that it would really make impossible would be for the UN to instruct its members to block non-members’ trade whilst still permitting them to trade in the relevant goods themselves… No?

Regarding ‘1.C’: I’ve checked, and the original reference was just to the goods’ nation of origin and the nation that’s their actual destination. That makes sense, because of course the trade concerned would matter much more to those nations than it would to any of the ones through which the goods were simply passing so that they would have much more to lose by the trade being blocked and thus more incentive than any of those other nations to comply with these rules. Letting UN nations interfere with the trade because any other nation along the route was doing so would probably have very little effect on those other interfering nations, but would be punishing the origin & destination nations for something that wasn't actually their fault which doesn't seem fair to me. I must have altered it into saying “Any of those other nations” in order to save a few characters, so now I'll have to see whether I can manage to switch it back without going over the allowed length…

Regarding ‘1.A’, and the “Ban on future bans”: Thinking about this, it doesn’t really ban that much… As this proposal is purely about the transit trade that clause would still leave both nations and the UN free to ban actual imports and/or exports, whilst the clause allowing you to block the passage of goods if trade in them would be illegal within your nation means that you could still ban the passage of anything that your government considered extremely objectionable and that if the UN outlaws the trade in any type of goods within/between member-nations then it could require all member-nations to block such goods’ passage through their territories too. All that it would really make impossible would be for the UN to instruct its members to block non-members’ trade whilst still permitting them to trade in the relevant goods themselves… No?

No. This forbids the UN from banning transit of goods across a nation without making "trade in goods of that general type" illegal. At least that's the only plausibly legal wriggle out of (1) that I can see. It doesn't matter whether the UN wants to make goods of that specific type illegal, their transit will still be completely unbannable.

I assume that the weasel word "general" is there to stop the banning of (say) Gobbannaen pizzas, while still allowing the banning of pizzas?

No, under this a nation would be able to force passage through another's land, without any benefit coming to the other nation at all, whereas before the only forcing that could be done was the other nation forcing the first one to find a different route. Frankly, the one is as bad as the other.

Ah, I see, that ‘right’: Well, I suppose that technically you’re correct about this proposal “legitimating” it, although I don't think that it would (as it seems you might be assuming?) actually give those foreigners a right go wherever they wanted in the nation being crossed, but there are several reasons why I disagree with your suggestion about it being “as bad as the other” _

Firstly, both I and and my government have very strong suspicions that the number of nations wishing to block the passage of foreigners (whether of a specific nation, or regardless of nationality) altogether, on truly justifiable grounds, would probably be significantly lower than the number of nations that would otherwise be tempted to impose limits on that passage as a form of economic warfare, and feel that that probably very considerable imbalance in the number of cases involved should also be an important factor to consider in any judgement on practical terms about which of those legal situations would really be the worse.
Secondly, there’s the fact that there simply might not be another route available for the movement of those goods: Consider the possible situations — which I am sure the sheer size and diversity of the UN’s membership means would all exist somewhere or other within the nations affected by this proposal —of one nation being completely surrounded by another’s territories ( Examples from RL: San Marino, Vatican City, Lesotho…), of one nation having a detached section that is completely surrounded by another’s territories ( Examples from RL: Spain has an enclave within the French ‘department’ of Roussillon, Germany has one that’s surrounded by Swiss lands, and Belgium has a village — possibly itself divided into several detached sections — that is surrounded by Dutch lands, and then there is — or, at any rate, was — the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan…), of goods whose bulk means that they could really only be moved by ship but whose route would have to pass through a narrow strait that is fully under one other nation’s control ( Examples from RL: At one time or another this has applied to the entrances to the Baltic, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, and even the Mediterranean as a whole…), of a nation being completely surrounded by two or three neighbouring countries whose governments join forces to put pressure on it ( Examples from RL: What alternative routes for trade could Mongolia find if Russia and China both got awkward?), or of a nation whose other neighbours — apart from the one through which it wants to ship goods — are all involved in a devastating war…
And, thirdly, if this ‘United Nations’ (which your nation presumably joined of its own government’s own free will, no?) is actually “about” anything then isn’t that something ‘international cooperation’ — which this proposal would promote —rather than ‘isolationism’ such as you rather surprisingly seem to be espousing here?

Arguably this way round is anti-sovereignist.

Arguably so, yes… If one takes the extremist view that the UN should not pass any resolutions that would have any binding effects at all on national governments.
That is not, however, the position of my own government: What we hold is that_
1/. Because the United Nations is an alliance of separate nations rather than a single, federal nation, and the General Assembly is not some supra-national legislature in which the nations’ political sub-units and/or peoples are directly represented, it is the rights and wishes of the whole nations (as represented by their governments) — rather than those of their political sub-units or peoples —that the UN should primarily be considering.
2/. Because the UN’s own core rules forbid it to impose or ban the use of any political or socio-economic systems by the member-nations, any attempts by the General Assembly to try and set rules about how those nations’ governments should manage any other (and ‘lesser’) aspects of how their countries work seems decidedly presumptuous.
3/. However, although those first two points mean (in our opinion) that the UN should refrain from legislating about any types of situation for which a national government’s own decisions would normally have no direct effects on any countries other than their own, the simple fact that the United Nations is an international organisation gives it a right to legislate — within the limits set in its own core rules — about types of situation where the actions of a national government probably would have direct effects on other countries too such as International Trade (as in ]this proposal) and other international travel, the Rules of War, the practice of diplomacy, some environmental matters, and (of course ;) ) international cooperation in important fields of research (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_past_resolutions/start=147)…

In fact I was quite surprised to see such a strongly 'National Sovereigntist’ viewpoint being put forwards by you, because in various previous discussions here your predeccessor actually seemed to favour a rather more ‘International Federalism’-based approach to UN resolutions than either I or my government supports: Would you care to clarify your government’s policy on the whole idea (if it actually has a coherent & consistent policy, which I presume is the case…) here?

Suppose we trust the hypothetical nation of Aggressors about as far as we can throw their collective population, and we don't want to let their people drive through, happily stopping for lunch breaks near sensitive military bases and generally spying out the lay of the land. Paranoid I know, but that's what you get for having royalty in charge. Under the current (lack of) laws, we can solve this by simply bouncing all Agressorians at the border. Under this resolution, we can't. As long as they claim to be transiting and we aren't actually at war, we don't have control over our own borders.

Oh dear. I dislike the idea of suggesting that such an obviously-intelligent ambassador as yourself has “failed at reading, but if that wasn’t the case then that could only mean you were deliberately misrepresenting this proposals’ contents in the hope of stirring up more opposition to it… which surely couldn’t have been the case (or could it?)…
Leaving aside the simple point that nothing in this proposal would give the people transporting goods any sort of immunity to your laws on espionage (or to your law-code in general, either, anyway), please take another look at clause ‘4’ which would definitely still allow nations to Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons
This clearly means that you would NOT have to let any of those hypothetical ‘Aggressorians’ travel anywhere near any of your “sensitive military sites”, let alone to stop near them whether for lunch breaks or for any other reason, and that if their reputation is as bad as you’re implying then the UNFTC would probably accept that fact as an adequate justification for you continuing to exclude them from your territories altogether…
Furthermore _
It doesn’t define any minimum radius for whatever detours you might set required around ‘sensitive’ sites, as long as you can convince the UNFTC that your reasons are “genuine”, so you could actually exclude foreigners from relatively wide areas in order to avoid pinpointing those sites’ locations: All that you would effectively have to provide is just one route between each reasonable combination of border-crossings, which could be a narrow corridor with severe penalties for any foreigners who strayed further afield, if you have a lot of ‘sensitive’ sites… or if you’re worried that contact with outsiders might provoke too much discontent amongst your people. ( My original, far-too-long-to-be-legal draft actually had two complete clauses, inspired by the routes that used to exist across East Germany to West Berlin, oon this aspect of the topic…)
If your nation contains such a high density of ‘sensitive’ sites that providing even narrow corridors in that way would be too difficult then maybe it’s your own government, rather than those hypothetical ‘Agressorians’, about whom other people should be getting paranoid? ;)
You should be able to justify keeping a complete border area closed-off if it’s heavily militarised, as your border facing those ‘Aggressorians’ presumably would be, which would at least require those foreigners to go around by a longer route… and might make any subsequent detours harder for them to justify as legitimate trading activities.
For that matter, although this proposal says that you wouldn’t be able to prohibit the passage of foreign goods (except under specified circumstances) it doesn’t actually say that you have to assist that trade: If your relationship with the ‘Aggressorians’ is so bad then why have any roads connecting to their own ones across your shared border at all? No roads across the border => no legal access by road => a lot less trouble: No?
And if you don’t have a peaceful relationship with the ‘Aggressorians’ then why not pull all of your civilian settlements back a bit from the border, and establish a National Park there within which all commercial traffic — of any nationality, including yours — is banned for environmental reasons, which nothing within this proposal would forbid you to do ( Although, unlike the original draft, the current version doesn’t specifically mention that possibility…) and which would also restrict the access of Aggressorians bearing goods?

Regarding ‘1.A’, and the “Ban on future bans”: Thinking about this, it doesn’t really ban that much… As this proposal is purely about the transit trade that clause would still leave both nations and the UN free to ban actual imports and/or exports, whilst the clause allowing you to block the passage of goods if trade in them would be illegal within your nation means that you could still ban the passage of anything that your government considered extremely objectionable and that if the UN outlaws the trade in any type of goods within/between member-nations then it could require all member-nations to block such goods’ passage through their territories too. All that it would really make impossible would be for the UN to instruct its members to block non-members’ trade whilst still permitting them to trade in the relevant goods themselves… No?
No. This forbids the UN from banning transit of goods across a nation without making "trade in goods of that general type" illegal. At least that's the only plausibly legal wriggle out of (1) that I can see. It doesn't matter whether the UN wants to make goods of that specific type illegal, their transit will still be completely unbannable.
I assume that the weasel word "general" is there to stop the banning of (say) Gobbannaen pizzas, while still allowing the banning of pizzas?

Other ways around clause '1'? Don't forget that '1.F.' allows for bans if the circumstances of the goods' production didn't meet UN standards... which means that the manufacturers would effectively have to be in compliance with (to quote three fairly obvious examples) the existing resolutions on 'Child Labour', 'Workplace Safety', and 'The Right To Form Unions' at least, and probably with a number of other resolutions too...
Yes, the use of the term "general" was meant to prevent nations discriminating against the products of any specific nations (or, for that matter, of any specific multinationals): That being so, and given the UN's rule that propoals cannot target specific nations, how could the UN ban goods from a more "specific" type anyway?


* * * * *


We have some few reservations.
What if the tiny mountain state of A controls three mountain passes, which are the only routes to countries B and C. All are members of the UN, and country B and country C have a booming trade, which passes through A. A, however, being high up in the mountains, historically depended only on transit taxes on caravans and loads passing through the passes in its control. If we were to implement this, surely country A's economy would get destroyed.
We at the Holy Republic of Saint Bryce are of the thinking that roads through a country are built by the money of the citizens of the country so that they may use it. Therefore, the citizens of the country, represented by their government, certainly have a right to ask for fees/compensation from foreigners who did not contribute to the building of the infrastructure.

Caolh O'Brannadhllwygh
Ambassador from the Holy Republic of Saint Bryce

I must admit that the possibility of a nation depending on transit taxes for such a major proportion of its income does seem to have been overlooked by my government’s proposal-drafting staff… and the limited length allowed for UN proposals means that inserting special rules to cover such a special case, without leaving loopholes that other nations might then exploit with significantly less reasonable justification too, would probably be very tricky…
H’mm.
Let me start by discussing the second part of your comment first _ As I have already explained to the ambassador from Gobbanium, clause ‘3’ of this proposal would only apply specifically to the goods in transit rather than to the vehicles or beasts carrying them as well, so that as clauses ‘5.C’ and ‘5.D’ effectively allow nations to continue charging those vehicles or beasts taxes and tolls as long as they only do so in a non-discriminatory manner the government of that country would still be able to collect at least some money from the foreign transporters to support its roads & related infrastructure…
Now, as to the larger problem of the nation actually depending on transit taxes_ The first thought about this that crosses my mind is that they should seriously consider diversifying their economy, because relying so heavily on a single source of income seems highly risky: Even if this proposal doesn’t get passed, can they really count on that level of trade between nations ‘B’ and ‘C’ through their territory continuing indefinitely? What if those nations develop viable substitutes or alternative sources for the goods that they’ve been importing along that route, or one of them actually bans some significant element of that trade (such as, hypothetically speaking, alcoholic beverages) altogether? What if those nations become annoyed enough at the level of transit taxes to decide that conquering nation ‘A’ would be a better long-term prospect than continuing to pay them? Given what you’ve said about the location of ‘A’, some obvious possibilities for economic diversification occur to me: Tourism and winter sports (possibly including mountaineering), cuckoo-clocks, and the provision of secure & confidential banking services would seem suitable concepts…
If they really must depend on the transit trade for their income, however, then maybe they could persuade the governments of nations ‘B’ and ‘C’ to replace the lost income with direct government-to-government grants “for infrastructural support” — even if that isn’t how the money would actually be spent — whose values those governments could then recover by placing higher taxes on those of the relevant importers, exporters and shippers who were based in their territories themselves? I realise that the governments of those nations might initially consider any such payments unnecessary, considering the rights of transit involved in this proposal, but the terrain-based limitations on routes through ‘A’ means that the latter nation’s government would only need to place a few defence-related establishments in those three passes in order to justify threatening their closure to foreigners under the National Security exemption allowed under clause ‘4.A’… so that if the governments of nations ‘B’ and ‘C’ were previously willing to have their people pay the transit taxes, instead of forcibly annexing nation ‘A’ to stop this, the provision of reasonable levels of grants in replacement of those should probably be acceptable — instead of an expensive war to seize the passes in this situation — too…


* * * * *


Alfred Devereux Sweynsson MD,
Ambassador to the United Nations
for
The Protectorate of the St Edmundan Antarctic
(and still required to wear this confounded penguin costume…)

Draft #5 _

International Transit of Goods

Category: Free Trade
Strength: Significant

Description: The United Nations,

RECOGNISING that international trade can allow nations and their peoples to benefit from access to wider ranges of materials and products than exist locally,

NOTING that this trade may require the movement of goods through intermediate nations between their origins and their destinations,

RECOGNISING that governments may wish to limit trade in certain types of goods due to reasonable concerns about principles such as public safety or environmental protection,

REGRETTING that some governments may also try to restrict international trade for more selfish reasons, for example to exert undue pressure on other nations,

1. DECLARES that no nation may forbid the passage of any goods through its territory, from foreign nation to foreign nation, except in any of the following cases:
A. Bans are allowed or required by earlier UN Resolutions that still apply;
B. The nation is at war with the goods’ nation of origin, the previous or next nation along the planned route, or their actual destination;
C. Either the nation of origin or the planned destination is not in the UN and not voluntarily complying with these rules;
D. The goods are weapons or other ‘tools of war’ that this nation has good reason to think would be used for acts of state aggression or genocide;
E. Trade in goods of that general type is illegal there;
F. The goods are stolen property, their production breached valid property rights, or that production’s circumstances did not meet UN standards;

2. ACCEPTS that nations have the right to inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, unless this is forbidden either by diplomatic immunity or by treaties that those nations have ratified, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade;

3. DECLARES that nations may not charge any customs duties, special ‘transit taxes’, or other tariffs, on goods that are only in transit through their territories rather than meant for sale or other use there, unless in Customs Unions with those goods’ actual destinations;

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons;
B. Require the people involved to have adequate training in relevant skills;
C. Require the beasts or vehicles involved to be of general types that are legal there, and to meet proper safety and environmental standards;
D. Require the use of adequate safety measures, including proper labelling of all goods, by the transporters;

5. DECLARES that nations must not _
A. Set limits based on where the transporters were trained, membership in civilian organisations, special licences, or where beasts or non-‘rail’ vehicles originated or are registered;
B. Require the transporters to be in any organisations;
C. Hold foreign people, beasts or vehicles in this trade to higher standards, or charge them higher taxes or tolls, than they do any native counterparts that exist;
D. Hold people, beasts or vehicles in this trade to higher standards, or charge them higher taxes or tolls, than they do people, beasts or vehicles either in import/export trade at their borders or in purely domestic trade within these;

6. ASSIGNS the UN Free Trade Commission the right and duty to judge any international disputes about these rules.

= 3’499 characters?

Gobbannium’s suggestion about changing clause ‘1.B’ to refer to the “previous nation” rather than the “last nation” (in the goods’ route) has been adopted.
Clause ‘1.C’ has now been altered — as I said would be the case, if that proved possible — so that only the goods’ nations of origin and destination, rather than the previous & next ones (from the one acting here), need to be in compliance with these rules.
And, clause ‘5.A’ has been altered: Nations would now be allowed to restrict access by foreign vehicles to their ‘rail’ networks, for the purely practical reason that the potential scheduling problems otherwise seem significantly worse for those than for any other [reasonably likely] form of transport...
And, of course, I have also made various minor adjustments in wording & phrasing, just to free-up enough characters for use in making those other changes…

Valuing the use of intellectual power as we do, the nation of Intellect and Art would like to congratulate you on creating a seemingly airtight proposal while barely squeaking by the legal length limits. Our community and its elected officials are thoroughly impressed by both the proposal itself and your anti-loophole linguistic skills and would like to extend our support. Our President, as UN Delegate for the esteemed Region of Rayne, shall be informed that we shall require her to add her vote to the pool of support this worthy and intelligent proposal requires to reach the public eye.

-A missive from the populace of Intellect and Art

As President of Intellect and Art and UN Delegate for the esteemed Region of Rayne, I appreciate the enthusiasm of the people of my country, and I wish to inform you that, had they not voted for me to do so, I would have supported this excellent piece of legislation anyway. I wish to extend my personal congratulations on the superb drafting of this well-written, well-thought-out proposal and assure you that it will receive no end of support from all those in my region should it reach public vote as it deserves.

-Akia Liam, elected President of Intellect and Art and UN Delegate for the esteemed Region of Rayne

*Ambassador O'Brannadhllwygh head ached. The twenty-five-year-old delegate from Saint Bryce trips on the podium. Some laugh.*

"You know, it's hard being alone in your delegation! Quit laughing! Most of you prolly had your minions understand these!"


Let me start by discussing the second part of your comment first _ As I have already explained to the ambassador from Gobbanium, clause ‘3’ of this proposal would only apply specifically to the goods in transit rather than to the vehicles or beasts carrying them as well, so that as clauses ‘5.C’ and ‘5.D’ effectively allow nations to continue charging those vehicles or beasts taxes and tolls as long as they only do so in a non-discriminatory manner the government of that country would still be able to collect at least some money from the foreign transporters to support its roads & related infrastructure…

"Uh, I am of the impression that under the non-discrimination part of clauses 5C and 5D, a nation is not allowed to levy toll fees for foreigners if it does not levy the same on its inhabitants... but we believe that the citizens of a certain country already pay them - in the form of taxes. Thus, there seems to be justification in levying some transit fees to foreign vehicles passing through the country. I don't know if I am making sense, but..." *winces in pain* "Oh God..."

Now, as to the larger problem of the nation actually depending on transit taxes_ The first thought about this that crosses my mind is that they should seriously consider diversifying their economy, because relying so heavily on a single source of income seems highly risky: Even if this proposal doesn’t get passed, can they really count on that level of trade between nations ‘B’ and ‘C’ through their territory continuing indefinitely? What if those nations develop viable substitutes or alternative sources for the goods that they’ve been importing along that route, or one of them actually bans some significant element of that trade (such as, hypothetically speaking, alcoholic beverages) altogether? What if those nations become annoyed enough at the level of transit taxes to decide that conquering nation ‘A’ would be a better long-term prospect than continuing to pay them? Given what you’ve said about the location of ‘A’, some obvious possibilities for economic diversification occur to me: Tourism and winter sports (possibly including mountaineering), cuckoo-clocks, and the provision of secure & confidential banking services would seem suitable concepts…
If they really must depend on the transit trade for their income, however, then maybe they could persuade the governments of nations ‘B’ and ‘C’ to replace the lost income with direct government-to-government grants “for infrastructural support” — even if that isn’t how the money would actually be spent — whose values those governments could then recover by placing higher taxes on those of the relevant importers, exporters and shippers who were based in their territories themselves? I realise that the governments of those nations might initially consider any such payments unnecessary, considering the rights of transit involved in this proposal, but the terrain-based limitations on routes through ‘A’ means that the latter nation’s government would only need to place a few defence-related establishments in those three passes in order to justify threatening their closure to foreigners under the National Security exemption allowed under clause ‘4.A’… so that if the governments of nations ‘B’ and ‘C’ were previously willing to have their people pay the transit taxes, instead of forcibly annexing nation ‘A’ to stop this, the provision of reasonable levels of grants in replacement of those should probably be acceptable — instead of an expensive war to seize the passes in this situation — too…
*recovers composure*
"I appreciate the suggestions, but diversification of an economy (which is good, by the way) does not happen in a snap. Implementation of this resolution happens just like that - in a snap. We cannot accurately know which nations are in that situation and have not diversified, or are in the process of diversifying, their passes. Who knows if they are already producing those annoying cuckoo clocks in banks that once been owned by a skier and-"
*pauses*
"What was I saying??? Darn!" *grabs a fistful of his hair and hangs down head* "Pardon me... I've had an incredibly bad day with my migraine, but oh well...
"Let's continue... Similar situations exist for another country whose seaports are being accessed by one or more landlocked countries... Ah, what I was saying before was that we do not know whether they have finished that diversification by the time this would be implemented.
"Persuading neighboring governments to pay for some infrastructure support is not likely to succeed, of course. It is even more unlikely if private companies are the ones who used to pay the transit fees.
"Well anyway, since you have given folks here a loophole to exploit, and reasons for war... aaaargh..."
*falls down, unconscious*

Caolh O'Brannadhllwygh
Ambassador and the lone(ly) representative from the Holy Republic of Saint Bryce

Hey guys, we've got someone here who's actually more of a windbag than the Prince.

(OOC: I'll get back on the points when I'm awake enough to find them without the extra line break between paragraphs.)

A slightly revised version of this proposal, with the anti-discrimination clauses rewritten to close a couple of potential loopholes (one favouring the transporters, the other favouring restrictive governments) that I'd spotted has been sent on a test-run to see how well it does without a TG campaign.
So has another Free Trade proposal that I've drafted recently, 'Commercial Law Agreement'.
My thanks to Intellect and Art for their kind words, and for their having already approved both of those proposals.

(I have to go offline now, and won't be back until Monday evening GMT: I hope to get back in time to see how well the proposals did before they [probably] run out of time...)

I promised, so here it is. So it's your fault :-)

Firstly, both I and and my government have very strong suspicions that the number of nations wishing to block the passage of foreigners (whether of a specific nation, or regardless of nationality) altogether, on truly justifiable grounds, would probably be significantly lower than the number of nations that would otherwise be tempted to impose limits on that passage as a form of economic warfare, and feel that that probably very considerable imbalance in the number of cases involved should also be an important factor to consider in any judgement on practical terms about which of those legal situations would really be the worse.
So economic warfare isn't OK to do in defence, because other people might do it, but is OK to do in offense, because honestly nobody would? Brilliant, Holmes.

Secondly, there’s the fact that there simply might not be another route available for the movement of those goods: Consider the possible situations — which I am sure the sheer size and diversity of the UN’s membership means would all exist somewhere or other within the nations affected by this proposal —of one nation being completely surrounded by another’s territories <snip>, of one nation having a detached section that is completely surrounded by another’s territories <snip>, of goods whose bulk means that they could really only be moved by ship but whose route would have to pass through a narrow strait that is fully under one other nation’s control <snip>, of a nation being completely surrounded by two or three neighbouring countries whose governments join forces to put pressure on it <snip>, or of a nation whose other neighbours — apart from the one through which it wants to ship goods — are all involved in a devastating war…
I note that in all cases apart from the last one, the availability of transit is a resource of the nations concerned that you are forbidding them to benefit from at all. Stopping them taking unfair advantage of a monopoly is one thing, but this goes far beyond that.

And, thirdly, if this ‘United Nations’ (which your nation presumably joined of its own government’s own free will, no?) is actually “about” anything then isn’t that something ‘international cooperation’ — which this proposal would promote —rather than ‘isolationism’ such as you rather surprisingly seem to be espousing here?
This isn't about cooperation. This is about the will of certain nations that others shall not hinder them, even if they have good reason. It promotes conflict and envy, not balance and recompense.


Arguably this way round is anti-sovereignist.
Arguably so, yes… If one takes the extremist view that the UN should not pass any resolutions that would have any binding effects at all on national governments.
Er, no. Now read the argument.

That is not, however, the position of my own government: What we hold is that_
<snip>
2/. Because the UN’s own core rules forbid it to impose or ban the use of any political or socio-economic systems by the member-nations, any attempts by the General Assembly to try and set rules about how those nations’ governments should manage any other (and ‘lesser’) aspects of how their countries work seems decidedly presumptuous.
And yet you presume to do precisely that. Clever.
3/. However, although those first two points mean (in our opinion) that the UN should refrain from legislating about any types of situation for which a national government’s own decisions would normally have no direct effects on any countries other than their own, the simple fact that the United Nations is an international organisation gives it a right to legislate — within the limits set in its own core rules — about types of situation where the actions of a national government probably would have direct effects on other countries too such as International Trade (as in ]this proposal) and other international travel, the Rules of War, the practice of diplomacy, some environmental matters, and (of course ;) ) international cooperation in important fields of research (http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_past_resolutions/start=147)…
Or in short, you'll make an exception for your hobby-horses. You'll be unsurprised to learn that my country's list of reasonable interventions has a whole different set of emphases, some of which you ignore and some of which ignore you.

In fact I was quite surprised to see such a strongly 'National Sovereigntist’ viewpoint being put forwards by you,
If you think that's a strong viewpoint, that doesn't auger well for the clarity of expression of the NSO. Since I have heard NSO members do better than that, I'll chalk it up as a cheap debating point.

because in various previous discussions here your predeccessor actually seemed to favour a rather more ‘International Federalism’-based approach to UN resolutions than either I or my government supports: Would you care to clarify your government’s policy on the whole idea (if it actually has a coherent & consistent policy, which I presume is the case…) here?
If you'd actually paid attention to what the old windbag said I wouldn't have to. Yes, we are federalists. It comes with the territory of being a nation formed from city-states, if you're going to be at all logical about things. That doesn't mean we're 'anti-Sovereigntist', just that we think you venerate the idea too much. That also doesn't mean that I can't demonstrate that I think your proposal is a bad thing from your own viewpoint, never mind from mine.

I'd be surprised that you brought up the fallacy of the excluded middle, if you hadn't already demonstrated a propensity for cheap debating tricks.

And by the way, he's not my predeccessor (sic) in anything except standing at this podium.

Oh dear. I dislike the idea of suggesting that such an obviously-intelligent ambassador as yourself has “failed at reading, but if that wasn’t the case then that could only mean you were deliberately misrepresenting this proposals’ contents in the hope of stirring up more opposition to it… which surely couldn’t have been the case (or could it?)…
I however have no compunction whatsoever in calling a cheap trick a cheap trick. Oh look, a cheap trick!

Leaving aside the simple point that nothing in this proposal would give the people transporting goods any sort of immunity to your laws on espionage (or to your law-code in general, either, anyway), please take another look at clause ‘4’ which would definitely still allow nations to
Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons
Ah, but this requires you to have the sort of loose definition of "National Security reasons" that we hate. If we've got reasonable evidence of a risk to national security, then as you already pointed out this clause doesn't even get a look in -- our security laws would apply. However, my example deliberately didn't include any evidence more specific than "they're slimy gits, they must be up to something." While some regimes around here have said that they would consider that to be genuine National Security reasons, we'd laugh anything like that out of court. So either clause 4 doesn't apply, or it's no help.

This clearly means that you would NOT have to let any of those hypothetical ‘Aggressorians’ travel anywhere near any of your “sensitive military sites”, let alone to stop near them whether for lunch breaks or for any other reason, and that if their reputation is as bad as you’re implying then the UNFTC would probably accept that fact as an adequate justification for you continuing to exclude them from your territories altogether…
Which says more about the UNFTC than anything else, and really doesn't make me any happier about your argument.

<snip a whole load of distasteful wriggling around the proposal in the same vein>

Other ways around clause '1'? Don't forget that '1.F.' allows for bans if the circumstances of the goods' production didn't meet UN standards... which means that the manufacturers would effectively have to be in compliance with (to quote three fairly obvious examples) the existing resolutions on 'Child Labour', 'Workplace Safety', and 'The Right To Form Unions' at least, and probably with a number of other resolutions too...
If that's the intention of that clause, you do realise that you are dooming your manufacturers to a bureaucratic nightmare? If they aren't UN nations (i.e. compliance isn't mandatory) they'll have to have documentory proof for every damn shipment they make. If they are UN nations, it doesn't help those of us looking for ways round clause 1 in the slightest. Either that, or we make the buggers produce the documentation anyway, and waste everyone's time.

Yes, the use of the term "general" was meant to prevent nations discriminating against the products of any specific nations (or, for that matter, of any specific multinationals): That being so, and given the UN's rule that propoals cannot target specific nations, how could the UN ban goods from a more "specific" type anyway?
You know, it's usually considered good form for the second half of a logical construct to have some bearing on the first half.

If they really must depend on the transit trade for their income <snip>
It's a resource like any other. Why shouldn't they?

Latest draft, just re-submitted after one unsuccessful attempt _

Draft #6 _

International Transit of Goods

Category: Free Trade
Strength: Significant

Description: The United Nations,

RECOGNISING that international trade can allow nations and their peoples to benefit from access to wider ranges of materials and products than exist more locally,

NOTING that this trade may require the movement of goods through intermediate nations between their origins and their destinations,

RECOGNISING that governments may wish to limit trade in certain types of goods due to reasonable concerns about principles such as public safety or environmental protection,

REGRETTING that some governments may also try to restrict international trade for more selfish reasons, for example to exert undue pressure on other nations;

1. DECLARES that no nation may forbid the passage of any goods through its territory, from foreign nation to foreign nation, except in any of the following cases:
A. Bans are allowed or required by earlier UN Resolutions that still apply;
B. The nation is at war with the goods’ nation of origin, the previous or next nation along the planned route, or their actual destination;
C. Either the nation of origin or the planned destination is not in the UN and not voluntarily complying with these rules;
D. The goods are weapons or other ‘tools of war’ that this nation has good reason to think would be used for acts of state aggression or genocide;
E. Trade in goods of that general type is illegal there;
F. The goods are stolen property, their production breached valid property rights, or that production’s circumstances did not meet UN standards;

2. ACCEPTS that nations have the right to inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, unless this is forbidden either by diplomatic immunity or by treaties that those nations have ratified, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade;

3. DECLARES that nations may not charge any customs duties, special ‘transit taxes’, or other tariffs, on goods that are only in transit through their territories rather than meant for sale or other use there, unless in Customs Unions with those goods’ actual destinations;

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons;
B. Require the people involved to have adequate training in relevant skills;
C. Require the beasts or vehicles involved to be of general types that are legal there, and to meet proper safety and environmental standards;
D. Require the use of adequate safety measures, including proper labelling of all goods, by the transporters;

5. DECLARES that nations must not _
A. Set limits based on where the transporters were trained, membership in civilian organisations, special licences, or where beasts or non-‘rail’ vehicles originated or are registered;
B. Require the transporters to be in any organisations;
C. Discriminate unfairly, on the basis of nationality, against people, beasts or vehicles that are involved in this trade;
D. Discriminate unfairly against people, beasts or vehicles in this trade, as compared to their counterparts either in the import/export trade at their borders or in purely domestic trade within these;

6. ASSIGNS the UN Free Trade Commission the right and duty to judge any international disputes about these rules.


Changes between drafts #4 & #5
Gobbannium’s suggestion about changing clause ‘1.B’ to refer to the “previous nation” rather than the “last nation” (in the goods’ route) has been adopted.
Clause ‘1.C’ has now been altered — as I said would be the case, if that proved possible — so that only the goods’ nations of origin and destination, rather than the previous & next ones (from the one acting here), need to be in compliance with these rules.
And, also[/u], clause ‘5.A’ has been altered: Nations would now be allowed to restrict access by foreign vehicles to their ‘rail’ networks, for the purely practical reason that the potential scheduling problems otherwise seem significantly worse for those than for any other [reasonably likely] form of transport...
[i]And, of course, I have made various minor adjustments in wording & phrasing, just to free-up enough characters for use in making those other changes…

Changes between drafts #5 & #6
Clauses ‘5.C’ & ‘5.D’ rewritten, not only to improve the wording (and incidentally free-up a few more characters for possible use elsewhere) but also to close a couple of potential loopholes — one that could be exploited by the transporters, and one that could be used against them — which had occurred to me.

“I was seriously tempted to not bother answering your latest comments, given the way in which you’ve been making blatantly false claims about this proposal, but here goes (although it seems that few if any other people are actually paying much attention to our ‘discussion’) just for the record…”

So economic warfare isn't OK to do in defence, because other people might do it, but is OK to do in offense, because honestly nobody would? Brilliant, Holmes.“Firstly, neither I nor my government sees how moving perfectly legal goods through a nation – utilising routes that are already open to there, because nothing in this proposal would require any nation to construct any new routes, and paying whatever tolls and taxes are established as normal for all traffic using those routes – could seriously be interpreted as constituting “economic warfare” against that nation… unless your nation is simply so afraid of potential competition in other markets that it’s unfairly trying to shut out those foreign rivals’ legitimate trade altogether, in which case — in my opinion as well as that of my government — it would be you that would be taking the offence and (given your dismissal of those same foreigners as “slimy gits”) being highly offensive about it into the bargain…
Secondly, I would point out that I did not say “nobody”, I said a “significantly lower” number of nations… which is not at all the same thing… so that, again, either you have “failed at reading” or are deliberately misinterpreting this proposal in an attempt to stir up wider opposition against it.
Thirdly, who is the is ‘Holmes’ to whom you refer? My name is Sweynsson, Alfred Devereux Sweynsson…”

I note that in all cases apart from the last one, the availability of transit is a resource of the nations concerned that you are forbidding them to benefit from at all. Stopping them taking unfair advantage of a monopoly is one thing, but this goes far beyond that. “… by stopping them taking unfair advantage of a potential monopoly to put undue pressure on their neighbours, or to eliminate a potential competitor from foreign markets in which their own businesses trade, yes. Which of those blocked types of action does your government specifically support? I will return to your suggestion that the ability to block trade-routes is a “resource” in my reply to one of your later remarks."

This isn't about cooperation. This is about the will of certain nations that others shall not hinder them, even if they have good reason. It promotes conflict and envy, not balance and recompense.“Really? Encouraging and assisting Trade between nations somehow isn’t about cooperation? Allowing nations to block trade due to personal prejudice rather than for good reasons, as you seem to be advocating, isn’t about “the will of certain nations that others shall not hinder them, even if they have good reason”? I, and my government, strongly disagree with you about which side of this debate’s declared policy most “promotes conflict and envy, not balance and recompense”.”

That is not, however, the position of my own government: What we hold is that_
<snip>
2/. Because the UN’s own core rules forbid it to impose or ban the use of any political or socio-economic systems by the member-nations, any attempts by the General Assembly to try and set rules about how those nations’ governments should manage any other (and ‘lesser’) aspects of how their countries work seems decidedly presumptuous. And yet you presume to do precisely that. Clever.“And on what basis do you regard the flow of international trade as “precisely” a matter of aspects of how individual countries work? ‘Border control’ generally is, I would agree, but nothing in this proposal would require you to stop practicing reasonable Border Control measures — by requiring all foreign visitors to have valid visas, for example, or by excluding known criminals — as long as you were fair about it… Do you not understand, or not believe in, the concept of fairness? I had explained our views about why International Trade is a valid concern for international legislation more fully in the following paragraph, but you chose to insert this jibe here. Not particularly “clever” of you…”

3/. However, although those first two points mean (in our opinion) that the UN should refrain from legislating about any types of situation for which a national government’s own decisions would normally have no direct effects on any countries other than their own, the simple fact that the United Nations is an international organisation gives it a right to legislate — within the limits set in its own core rules — about types of situation where the actions of a national government probably would have direct effects on other countries too such as International Trade (as in this proposal) and other international travel, the Rules of War, the practice of diplomacy, some environmental matters, and (of course ) international cooperation in important fields of research…Or in short, you'll make an exception for your hobby-horses.“No, my government makes an exception for those matters that are logically “international” rather than “national” in scope.”
You'll be unsurprised to learn that my country's list of reasonable interventions has a whole different set of emphases, some of which you ignore and some of which ignore you.“Unsurprised indeed: I was already well aware that quite a few nations here regard the UN as having not just a right but a duty to legislate on a wide range of matters that my own government thinks should be left for consideration at the national level instead, as well as in those fields where direct interactions between nations would be actually involved and we ourselves would consider international intervention at least potentially justifiable… What I can not see, however, is how a government like yours that holds that sort of viewpoint could honestly define any of the fields that I listed here as not appropriate for UN resolutions: To take one obvious example, even if you want to do away with the concept of Free Trade altogether — as your words not only in this discussion but in several other ones about proposals in this category recently leads me to suspect is the case — you could hardly do that right across the UN ( rather than just within your own borders) without using UN resolutions for the job couldyou?!?”

In fact I was quite surprised to see such a strongly 'National Sovereigntist’ viewpoint being put forwards by you, If you think that's a strong viewpoint, that doesn't auger well for the clarity of expression of the NSO. Since I have heard NSO members do better than that, I'll chalk it up as a cheap debating point.“Context, Mr Ambassador, context. As you have yet to provide any attempt at explaining why a matter that intrinsically involves as much interaction between nations as international trade does should be an unsuitable topic for a UN resolution, you seemed to be saying that even matters which do intrinsically involve that much international interaction shouldn’t be tackled by the UN… which would indeed be a very strongly sovereigntist claim. You evidently haven’t done as much research into the NSO as you should have done before trying to raise such an argument, or you would have known that _
1/ The St Edmundan Antarctic is itself, through our motherland of St Edmund, affiliated with that organisation.
2/ The other active members of the NSO normally do accept at least some matters in the fields of activity involving inherently extensive interaction between nations that I listed as appropriate subjects for UN resolutions, and quite often vote in favour of such resolutions, instead of holding that nothing should be handled by legislation at that level at all: The NSO’s general policy is in favour of a limited UN, rather than — like Gatesville, from whom (rather than from most NSO members) I’d more probably expect a claim such as you made about this proposal — a destroyed one.
3/ Quite a few of the successful resolutions on the topics that I said my government would consider suitable subjects for international law, and of the unsuccessful proposals about those topics too, have actually originated from nations that are active members of the NSO: Consider the recent repeal & replacement measures in the field of banning Bio-Weapons, for example, or the ‘Maritime Neutrality Covention’…”

That also doesn't mean that I can't demonstrate that I think your proposal is a bad thing from your own viewpoint, never mind from mine.“In which case, given that I’d actually explained why this proposal was acceptable in my own nation’s viewpoint, you would once again seem to have been reading my words very carelessly…”

I'd be surprised that you brought up the fallacy of the excluded middle, if you hadn't already demonstrated a propensity for cheap debating tricks.“The fallacy of the excluded middle? Oh, you mean like the way in which you implied that my nation holding sovereigntist views about those fields of activity for which national governments’ actions would normally have no direct effects beyond those nations own borders means that it should therefore have to oppose all international legislation in every field in order to be consistent?
I suppose that what you’re suggesting is that my asking how your nation can hold quite strongly federalist views and yet oppose international legislation in this field falls into this category too… Well, I’ve already explained my government’s views about the inherently high level of inter-national interactions that international trade involves being a good reason why it should be considered an appropriate field for international legislation, and I’m still waiting for you to actually try refuting that argument…”

Oh dear. I dislike the idea of suggesting that such an obviously-intelligent ambassador as yourself has “failed at reading, but if that wasn’t the case then that could only mean you were deliberately misrepresenting this proposals’ contents in the hope of stirring up more opposition to it… which surely couldn’t have been the case (or could it?)… I however have no compunction whatsoever in calling a cheap trick a cheap trick. Oh look, a cheap trick! “Let’s see…
I posted the draft text for this proposal, which explained quite clearly how it is supposed to work.
You gave a reply that was clearly based on a serious misinterpretation, either accidental or deliberate, of that text… and given the intelligence that you’d already shown elsewhere, and the dislike of the concept of Free Trade that you’d also already shown, a deliberate misinterpretation in an attempt to stir up opposition to the proposal seemed the more likely of those two possibilities.
I asked you whether the misinterpretation had been deliberate, or was a genuine mistake.
Instead of apologising for the mistake, or trying to justify your interpretation at all, you simply accuse me of a “cheap trick” — thus making it fully clear, in my opinion, that you never had a real justification for your interpretation and that the “mistake” was indeed a deliberate one — presumably in the hope that if you throw enough mud then some of it might stick and deter people from supporting this proposal.
So, if there is somebody in this debate who’s indulging in “cheap tricks” then it’s clearly YOU, you” *(here Alfred remembers that as a professional diplomat now — although not originally trained for this career — he’s supposed to at least try[/I] to be tactful, and[/I] just manages to refrain from uttering the words “Bloody, lying hypocrite”… although if anybody with good lip-reading skills should happen to have a clear enough view of his face…)* “rather than me…”

Leaving aside the simple point that nothing in this proposal would give the people transporting goods any sort of immunity to your laws on espionage (or to your law-code in general, either, anyway), please take another look at clause ‘4’ which would definitely still allow nations toRestrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons Ah, but this requires you to have the sort of loose definition of "National Security reasons" that we hate. If we've got reasonable evidence of a risk to national security, then as you already pointed out this clause doesn't even get a look in -- our security laws would apply. However, my example deliberately didn't include any evidence more specific than "they're slimy gits, they must be up to something." While some regimes around here have said that they would consider that to be genuine National Security reasons, we'd laugh anything like that out of court. So either clause 4 doesn't apply, or it's no help.
“So you regard the term ‘genuine’ as a ‘loose’ definition? Well, maybe a bit, but there is a practical limit on how long UN proposals can be so I couldn’t go into more detail after all… and it’s certainly a tighter definition than simply saying ‘National Security reasons’ without applying that adjective would have been. If it doesn’t apply then it doesn’t apply. This proposal is supposed to make international trade easier, not to legitimate nations acting on racist views like ‘they’re slimy gits’…”

Other ways around clause '1'? Don't forget that '1.F.' allows for bans if the circumstances of the goods' production didn't meet UN standards... which means that the manufacturers would effectively have to be in compliance with (to quote three fairly obvious examples) the existing resolutions on 'Child Labour', 'Workplace Safety', and 'The Right To Form Unions' at least, and probably with a number of other resolutions too... If that's the intention of that clause, you do realise that you are dooming your manufacturers to a bureaucratic nightmare? If they aren't UN nations (i.e. compliance isn't mandatory) they'll have to have documentory [sic proof for every damn shipment they make.“If the nation through which they have to pass wants to be bloody-minded about the matter, yes, I suppose so… but more reasonable nations would probably check on which of the other countries wishing to ship goods through their territories had legal standards of their own that were at least equal to the UN ones, allowing shipments from thosesources through with less fuss, and might allow individual firms from yet other nations to demonstrate compliance by an initial investigation with occasional follow-ups too instead of requiring full documentation for every shipment… and this would still be an improvement on the current situation for those manufacturers, where nations such as yours could arbitrarily ban their shipments regardless of what standards they’d been meeting, anyway…”
If they are UN nations, it doesn't help those of us looking for ways round clause 1 in the slightest. Either that, or we make the buggers produce the documentation anyway, and waste everyone's time.
“But then, of course, it’s not supposed to make it easier for you to avoid the rest of this proposal’s terms… And, with regard to your last sentence there, you seem to be overlooking Clause #2 which ACCEPTS that nations have the right to inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, unless this is forbidden either by diplomatic immunity or by treaties that those nations have ratified, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade don’t you?”

[QUOTE=St Edmundan Antarctic]Yes, the use of the term ‘general’ was meant to prevent nations discriminating against the products of any specific nations (or, for that matter, of any specific multinationals): That being so, and given the UN's rule that proposals cannot target specific nations, how could the UN ban goods from a more ‘specific’ type anyway? You know, it's usually considered good form for the second half of a logical construct to have some bearing on the first half.“So you’re not even going to try answering my question about how you would expect the UN to be able to ban the transit of goods that have any specific origin?”

If they really must depend on the transit trade for their incomeIt's a resource like any other. Why shouldn't they?
“A ‘resource’? Well, yes, I suppose it is… but then so would somebody being significantly bigger & stronger than anyone else around be a ‘resource’, but presumably (I hope, anyway…) you wouldn’t therefore suggest that it would be acceptable for that person to exploit that ‘resource’ by using their might to extort money from people?
There are a number of other and more legitimate ways in which a nation could take advantage of its key position on a trade-route, for example:
_________________________________________________________________

Simply charging all of the “transit” traffic comparable tolls & taxes to local traffic could pay a fair share of the associated infrastructural costs, especially if that through traffic was actually quite a high proportion of the total traffic along the routes concerned, and if the vehicles used for the transit trade tended to be larger than those used locally then a reasonable size/weight-based increase in the tolls should be perfectly acceptable to the UNFTC.
Selling various goods & services to the crews of the transiting vehicles seems an obvious possibility, of course.
Depending on the exact nature of the routes involved, it might be worthwhile constructing trans-shipment facilities (including “bonded warehouses” for storing those goods that wouldn’t need to go through Customs) and there’s certainly nothing in this proposal — unless you’re reading something into one of its clauses that wasn’t my government’s intent — to forbid nations from charging fees for the use of such sites.
The nation could help some of its own people to enter the trade if they were otherwise underemployed, by providing help with training or with financing their acquisition of suitable vehicles or beasts (which I think would be perfectly legal, because as this nationality-specific help would be before they actually entered the trade it wouldn’t contradict or trigger any of this proposal’s anti-discrimination clauses), and profit simply by taxing the increase in their wealth at its normal rates.
It might also be worth the nation’s while (depending on the actual nature of the goods shipped along the route) to set up processing plants and/or factories, import some of those goods itself, and turn them into higher-value products that they could then ship onwards for sale at a decent profit.
_________________________________________________________________


However simply extorting discriminatory “transit tolls” from foreign freighters who might have to pass through a nation because of its location astride a trade-route, without providing anything extra to them in exchange for those payments, would be (not only in my own opinion, but in that of my government too) little if any better than highway robbery!”

* * * * * * * * *

“There, that’s it. Given the clear hostility towards not only my nation’s intentions but the very concept of Free Trade itself too that you’ve been displaying, it seems clear that neither of us is going to convince the other of their cause’s rightfulness and I’m not even going to try any more. Nobody else around here seems to be paying any attention to us, so as far as I’m concerned this conversation might as well be closed.
In case you choose to continue posting further deliberate misinterpretations of my government’s words — or of my own words — however, I ask one thing: Who is your ‘second’, and where might that person normally be found, in case my second needs to call on him or her to make the necessary arrangements?”


Alfred Devereux Sweynsson MD,
Ambassador to the UN
for
The Protectorate of the St Edmundan Antarctic
(And still required to wear this bloody penguin costume!)

_________________________________________________________________

*(Alfred turns on his heel and stalks out of the room, muttering vigorously in a language that few if any of the people who might be about are likely to recognise let alone be able to understand…)*

(OOC: If anybody here thinks that they had a character near enough to Alfred’s exit to catch his words, and capable of understanding Carib [or of getting it translated easily], then post a message here if you want me to tell you just what he was muttering… or check in the private section of the NSO forum, because I’ll be posting it there very shortly…)

This proposal contains a number of fine ideas, and, in general, we would probably find it worthy of support. We do have one very serious concern.

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons;

This seems to imply that restricting passage of persons may only be denied for "National Security" reasons, but we see no specific prohibition of denial of passage for other reasons. Is this the author's intent?

We'd like to get our confusion on this point cleared up before discussing the matter further.

Lorelei M. Ahlmann
Ambassador-at-Large

Just as well Sweynsson's waddled off. It'll take a while to work through that tripe sorting the straw men out from the misdirections.

Just as well Sweynsson's waddled off. It'll take a while to work through that tripe sorting the straw men out from the misdirections.

It's a pity that's all you can come up with in response to his arguments. I expected a bit more than offhanded dismissal.

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons;

I honestly have no idea what this means. Can you please clarify?

Most courteously,

This seems to imply that restricting passage of persons may only be denied for "National Security" reasons, but we see no specific prohibition of denial of passage for other reasons. Is this the author's intent?

*(Alfred returns from the NSO saloon, still in costume, carrying a glass with a fairly large drink of whiskey still in it...)*

"Welcome, ambassador. I'm pleased to see a diplomat of such renowned experience as yourself join us here.
Nothing in this proposal is meant to say that sensible 'border control' measures (such as requiring foreigners to have valid visas, or turning back proven criminals) could not still be used to prohibit the passage of specific indivdiuals, as far as I'm aware, as long as this wa only done on a fair basis... but, yes, "genuine" National Security reasons are the only justification that it allows for blocking people on the simple basis of nationality. Given that its basic purpose is to prevent nations waging economic warfare against each other -- or acting on racial hatred -- by blocking other countries' legitimate trade, are there any other reasons for blocking entire nationalities that you would consider appropriate for inclusion?"

I honestly have no idea what this means. Can you please clarify?

"And welcome to you, too.
As I see it, 'genuine' National Security grounds would mean that If you're at war with a nation then you don't have to let their people in just because they're transporting goods, or let other people cross the war-zone for that reason; if you have any particular sites that you feel a need to keep secret then you can legitimately divert trade around them and it would be fair enough for you to require a wider diversion for foreigners than for your own people; and, I suppose, that if your regime were so repressive that members of your ordinary population having contact with foreigners would pose a serious threat of stirring up internal unrest then you could restrict the foreign travellers to using specific routes where the only allowed stopping-points were staffed by trusted personnel*... but, because of the limited length allowed for UN proposals, my government couldn't go into that much detail here and so the precise interpretation of 'genuine' would have to be left to the UNFTC... whom I hope would use common sense in the matter..."

Just as well Sweynsson's waddled off. It'll take a while to work through that tripe sorting the straw men out from the misdirections.

"Again with the mud-slinging, when it's really been your "contributions" to this discussion that have largely consisted of 'tripe', 'straw men' and 'misdirections'? That's it, you bloody, lying hypocrite, I've had enough: Maybe this will clean you up a bit..."

*(Alfred throws his drink into Ifor's face...)*

"Well, sirrah, swords or pistols?"


_________________________________________________________________________

(* OOC: My original, far-too-long-to-be-legal draft for this proposal actually included two complete clauses about the latter possibility, inspired by the "corridors" for land traffic that used to exist across East Germany from the West German border to West Berlin...)

"And welcome to you, too.
As I see it, 'genuine' National Security grounds would mean that If you're at war with a nation then you don't have to let their people in just because they're transporting goods, or let other people cross the war-zone for that reason; if you have any particular sites that you feel a need to keep secret then you can legitimately divert trade around them and it would be fair enough for you to require a wider diversion for foreigners than for your own people; and, I suppose, that if your regime were so repressive that members of your ordinary population having contact with foreigners would pose a serious threat of stirring up internal unrest then you could restrict the foreign travellers to using specific routes where the only allowed stopping-points were staffed by trusted personnel*... but, because of the limited length allowed for UN proposals, my government couldn't go into that much detail here and so the precise interpretation of 'genuine' would have to be left to the UNFTC... whom I hope would use common sense in the matter..."


I'm beginning to understand, but the language of the clause is what confused me in the first place. It may be well for the general voting public to clarify and condense the verbiage.

Most courteously,

We thank the distinguished representative of St Edmundan Antarctic for his reply to our question. Unfortunately, the answer confirms our suspicion that we will be unable to support this measure.

The people of Ausserland believe that the people of a nation -- represented by their government -- have an absolute and inalienable right to decide who will and who will not be admitted into the territory of the nation. We will not, under any circumstances, allow any other nation or international organization to abrogate or abridge that right. The decision is ours. The criteria we use to make that decision are completely our prerogative. We will not allow the NSUN to set them for us.

We appreciate the distinguished representative's attempt to find a means of accommodating our concern. Unfortunately, this issue is so fundamental to us that the only possible way to do so is to remove all strictures on control of entry of persons from the proposal.

Balthasar H. von Aschenbach
Prime Minister

We are avid free-traders and normally will go out of our way to support Free Trade legislation. However, like the distinguished representative from Ausserland we are troubled by Article 4A of your proposed resolution:

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons;

Might we suggest that it be re-written thusly:

"4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the entry of any foreign national into their territory at their own discretion; restrict the movements of foreign nationals while within their territory, at their own discretion; regulate the entry and movement of vehicles and beasts of burden of foreign origin while within their territory; and define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners;"

David Watts
Ambassador
The Dominion of New Leicestershire

OOC: apparently it wasn't obvious that was a "I'm off for the weekend, will get back to you" holding post. And it did take rather a lot of time too. Apologies if some of St Edmundan's quoted-quoted-quoted characters get mangled, but the offline editor I was using is not kind to 'smart' characters. I've also respaced paragraphs for legibility.

“I was seriously tempted to not bother answering your latest comments, given the way in which you’ve been making blatantly false claims about this proposal, but here goes (although it seems that few if any other people are actually paying much attention to our ‘discussion’) just for the record…”
Disproving a single one of my arguments would have been a good start.

So economic warfare isn't OK to do in defence, because other people might do it, but is OK to do in offense, because honestly nobody would? Brilliant, Holmes.
“Firstly, neither I nor my government sees how moving perfectly legal goods through a nation – utilising routes that are already open to there, because nothing in this proposal would require any nation to construct any new routes, and paying whatever tolls and taxes are established as normal for all traffic using those routes – could seriously be interpreted as constituting “economic warfare” against that nation… unless your nation is simply so afraid of potential competition in other markets that it’s unfairly trying to shut out those foreign rivals’ legitimate trade altogether, in which case — in my opinion as well as that of my government — it would be you that would be taking the offence and (given your dismissal of those same foreigners as “slimy gits”) being highly offensive about it into the bargain…
A marvellous distraction, Ambassador, and almost entirely nothing to do with either this particular part of the debate or the context in which the words "slimy git" appear. You really should consider spending a little more on your tricks, they work so much better that way.

It would probably have helped if you'd noticed that the words "in that nation" make your particular view of the situation narrower than mine.

Secondly, I would point out that I did not say “nobody”, I said a “significantly lower” number of nations… which is not at all the same thing… so that, again, either you have “failed at reading” or are deliberately misinterpreting this proposal in an attempt to stir up wider opposition against it.
First, you obviously failed to understand the sarcasm inherent in the phrase "honestly nobody would." Second, and more bluntly for the hard of thinking out there, a moral argument based on number is no moral argument at all.

Thirdly, who is the is ‘Holmes’ to whom you refer? My name is Sweynsson, Alfred Devereux Sweynsson…”
My apologies, Ambassador; I withdraw the colloquialism, since it does of course refer to a very intelligent person doing something stupid.

I note that in all cases apart from the last one, the availability of transit is a resource of the nations concerned that you are forbidding them to benefit from at all. Stopping them taking unfair advantage of a monopoly is one thing, but this goes far beyond that.
“… by stopping them taking unfair advantage of a potential monopoly to put undue pressure on their neighbours, or to eliminate a potential competitor from foreign markets in which their own businesses trade, yes. Which of those blocked types of action does your government specifically support?
"Have I stopped beating my wife yet," you mean? The words "fallacy of the excluded middle" really don't mean anything to you.

I will return to your suggestion that the ability to block trade-routes is a “resource” in my reply to one of your later remarks."
Actually you don't. You return to my suggestion that being a trade route (i.e. geography) is a resource. Moreover, you agree that it is. Cheap, Mr Ambassador, cheap.

This isn't about cooperation. This is about the will of certain nations that others shall not hinder them, even if they have good reason. It promotes conflict and envy, not balance and recompense.
“Really?
Really.

Encouraging and assisting Trade between nations somehow isn’t about cooperation?
Not always, no. That's the basic fallacy of Free Trade as a concept.

Allowing nations to block trade due to personal prejudice rather than for good reasons, as you seem to be advocating, isn’t about “the will of certain nations that others shall not hinder them, even if they have good reason”? I, and my government, strongly disagree with you about which side of this debate’s declared policy most “promotes conflict and envy, not balance and recompense”.”
OK, this is a more expensive misdirection, I'll give you that. The personal prejudice (for which read 'suspicion of National Security') argument is just one I thought might be comprehensible to you, since you clearly don't get the idea that there are reasons for finding particular trades undesirable, and that you are trying to remove one of the few mechanisms for external influence in such cases. Hence the imposition of the will of the economically mighty.

That is not, however, the position of my own government: What we hold is that_
OOC: That reminds me -- why do you insist on using an underscore instead of a dash?
<snip>
2/. Because the UN’s own core rules forbid it to impose or ban the use of any political or socio-economic systems by the member-nations, any attempts by the General Assembly to try and set rules about how those nations’ governments should manage any other (and 'lesser’) aspects of how their countries work seems decidedly presumptuous.
And yet you presume to do precisely that. Clever.
“And on what basis do you regard the flow of international trade as “precisely” a matter of aspects of how individual countries work?
The flow of trade through a country is precisely an aspect of that country. One that you seek to deny them control over.

I had explained our views about why International Trade is a valid concern for international legislation more fully in the following paragraph, but you chose to insert this jibe here. Not particularly “clever” of you…”
Actually no, you asserted your view that International Trade was a valid concern etc, etc. You explained nothing about it.


3/. However, although those first two points mean (in our opinion) that the UN should refrain from legislating about any types of situation for which a national government’s own decisions would normally have no direct effects on any countries other than their own, the simple fact that the United Nations is an international organisation gives it a right to legislate -- within the limits set in its own core rules -- about types of situation where the actions of a national government probably would have direct effects on other countries too such as International Trade (as in this proposal) and other international travel, the Rules of War, the practice of diplomacy, some environmental matters, and (of course ) international cooperation in important fields of research.
Or in short, you'll make an exception for your hobby-horses.
“No, my government makes an exception for those matters that are logically “international” rather than “national” in scope.”
And the rest.

You'll be unsurprised to learn that my country's list of reasonable interventions has a whole different set of emphases, some of which you ignore and some of which ignore you.
“Unsurprised indeed: I was already well aware that quite a few nations here regard the UN as having not just a right but a duty to legislate on a wide range of matters that my own government thinks should be left for consideration at the national level instead, as well as in those fields where direct interactions between nations would be actually involved and we ourselves would consider international intervention at least potentially justifiable… What I can not see, however, is how a government like yours that holds that sort of viewpoint could honestly define any of the fields that I listed here as not appropriate for UN resolutions: To take one obvious example, even if you want to do away with the concept of Free Trade altogether — as your words not only in this discussion but in several other ones about proposals in this category recently leads me to suspect is the case — you could hardly do that right across the UN ( rather than just within your own borders) without using UN resolutions for the job couldyou?!?”
Your mistake is to assert that because I disagree with your emphases, and more particularly your preferred direction, I must be against the idea of the UN legislating on the general area. That would be implying the general from the specific, and I suppose we do leave formal examination of that error to secondary education, so I can't blame you.

International Trade is an area where the UN should be legislating. Free Trade is not, in my opinion and that of my government. Fair Trade, on the other hand, very much is. Because Fair Trade, in common with preventing human rights abuses which it is a curiously sideways example of, generally needs the intervention of an external influence to level the playing field. Our objection to Free Trade is primarily that the economic drivers behind it have a strong tendency to run counter to Fair Trade; legislation increasing Free Trade therefore, unless it is written with much more care than is usual, is highly likely to promote Unfair Trade. We don't object to the freedom to trade itself, but the blinkered worldview that seems to go with it is something that economically weaker nations must be guarded against.

Should I assume from the phrase "some environmental matters" that St Edmundan Antarctic believes in the Principle of Limited Environmental Consequences? If so, I suggest going and talking to a genuine ecologist, or even reading some of the recent records of debates on ecological proposals, which should thoroughly disabuse you of that idea.

Finally, while I don't disagree with the UN helping to coordinate research efforts, even such facetious ones as you admire, I don't see where you think that they're an internal national matter in the first place.

In fact I was quite surprised to see such a strongly 'National Sovereigntist’ viewpoint being put forwards by you,
If you think that's a strong viewpoint, that doesn't auger well for the clarity of expression of the NSO. Since I have heard NSO members do better than that, I'll chalk it up as a cheap debating point.
“Context, Mr Ambassador, context. As you have yet to provide any attempt at explaining why a matter that intrinsically involves as much interaction between nations as international trade does should be an unsuitable topic for a UN resolution, you seemed to be saying that even matters which do intrinsically involve that much international interaction shouldn’t be tackled by the UN… which would indeed be a very strongly sovereigntist claim.
You build great castles whose foundations are my words "It could be argued that..." In other words, context, Mr Ambassador, context.

PS: you still don't seem to have twigged that I am not the Ambassador. Yet.

You evidently haven’t done as much research into the NSO as you should have done before trying to raise such an argument, or you would have known that _
1/ The St Edmundan Antarctic is itself, through our motherland of St Edmund, affiliated with that organisation.
Actually I did know that. You, on the other hand, don't seem to have researched the term "irony".

2/ The other active members of the NSO normally do accept at least some matters in the fields of activity involving inherently extensive interaction between nations that I listed as appropriate subjects for UN resolutions, and quite often vote in favour of such resolutions, instead of holding that nothing should be handled by legislation at that level at all: The NSO’s general policy is in favour of a limited UN, rather than — like Gatesville, from whom (rather than from most NSO members) I’d more probably expect a claim such as you made about this proposal — a destroyed one.
As I said, I have heard other NSO members express themselves more clearly, hence my deduction that you were (and still are) busy plaiting a straw man. Please stop; I don't have any crows that need scaring, and it's not a very scary straw man anyway.

3/ Quite a few of the successful resolutions on the topics that I said my government would consider suitable subjects for international law, and of the unsuccessful proposals about those topics too, have actually originated from nations that are active members of the NSO: Consider the recent repeal & replacement measures in the field of banning Bio-Weapons, for example, or the ‘Maritime Neutrality Covention’…”
Did I say I thought that the NSO was an evil organisation of nations who have nothing better to do than torture puppies? No. Did I say that I thought you were playing silly buggers in a way that detracts from the reputation of the NSO? Yes. You really should try listening to what I say some time.

That also doesn't mean that I can't demonstrate that I think your proposal is a bad thing from your own viewpoint, never mind from mine.
“In which case, given that I’d actually explained why this proposal was acceptable in my own nation’s viewpoint, you would once again seem to have been reading my words very carelessly…”
That would have required an explanation rather than an assertion. Try again.

I'd be surprised that you brought up the fallacy of the excluded middle, if you hadn't already demonstrated a propensity for cheap debating tricks.
“The fallacy of the excluded middle? Oh, you mean like the way in which you implied that my nation holding sovereigntist views about those fields of activity for which national governments’ actions would normally have no direct effects beyond those nations own borders means that it should therefore have to oppose all international legislation in every field in order to be consistent?
No. That would be an observation of a middle -- an inconsistency -- that hadn't been addressed (and, to my mind, still hasn't). If your position is basically sovereigntist, you must have some justification for the exceptions you make to that worldview, otherwise those exceptions wouldn't exist. I ask you again; why do you think the sovereigntist argument against this proposal fails?

I suppose that what you’re suggesting is that my asking how your nation can hold quite strongly federalist views and yet oppose international legislation in this field falls into this category too… Well, I’ve already explained my government’s views about the inherently high level of inter-national interactions that international trade involves being a good reason why it should be considered an appropriate field for international legislation, and I’m still waiting for you to actually try refuting that argument…”
And I still have no intention of being drawn into a generalist argument over a specific point. You suppose wrong.


Oh dear. I dislike the idea of suggesting that such an obviously-intelligent ambassador as yourself has failed at reading, but if that wasn’t the case then that could only mean you were deliberately misrepresenting this proposals’ contents in the hope of stirring up more opposition to it -- which surely couldn’t have been the case (or could it?)"
I however have no compunction whatsoever in calling a cheap trick a cheap trick. Oh look, a cheap trick!
“Let’s see…

I posted the draft text for this proposal, which explained quite clearly how it is supposed to work.

You gave a reply that was clearly based on a serious misinterpretation, either accidental or deliberate, of that text… and given the intelligence that you’d already shown elsewhere, and the dislike of the concept of Free Trade that you’d also already shown, a deliberate misinterpretation in an attempt to stir up opposition to the proposal seemed the more likely of those two possibilities.

I asked you whether the misinterpretation had been deliberate, or was a genuine mistake.

Instead of apologising for the mistake, or trying to justify your interpretation at all, you simply accuse me of a “cheap trick” — thus making it fully clear, in my opinion, that you never had a real justification for your interpretation and that the “mistake” was indeed a deliberate one — presumably in the hope that if you throw enough mud then some of it might stick and deter people from supporting this proposal.
Alternatively, I haven't misinterpreted anything, and you are the one engaged in deliberate confusion. Stop playing the wounded diva, it just makes you look even more ridiculous than that suit does.


Leaving aside the simple point that nothing in this proposal would give the people transporting goods any sort of immunity to your laws on espionage (or to your law-code in general, either, anyway), please take another look at clause 4 which would definitely still allow nations to
Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons
Ah, but this requires you to have the sort of loose definition of "National Security reasons" that we hate. If we've got reasonable evidence of a risk to national security, then as you already pointed out this clause doesn't even get a look in -- our security laws would apply. However, my example deliberately didn't include any evidence more specific than "they're slimy gits, they must be up to something." While some regimes around here have said that they would consider that to be genuine National Security reasons, we'd laugh anything like that out of court. So either clause 4 doesn't apply, or it's no help.
“So you regard the term ‘genuine’ as a ‘loose’ definition?
Now read what I wrote. I deliberately set up an example that was not provably genuine. You are the one who asserted that Clause 4 applied. I'm actually happy that 'genuine' conveys your intent in a legally workable manner. That just means that Clause 4 can't apply here, so your counter to my example doesn't work. So what is your viable counter argument?


Other ways around clause '1'? Don't forget that '1.F.' allows for bans if the circumstances of the goods' production didn't meet UN standards... which means that the manufacturers would effectively have to be in compliance with (to quote three fairly obvious examples) the existing resolutions on 'Child Labour', 'Workplace Safety', and 'The Right To Form Unions' at least, and probably with a number of other resolutions too...
If that's the intention of that clause, you do realise that you are dooming your manufacturers to a bureaucratic nightmare? If they aren't UN nations (i.e. compliance isn't mandatory) they'll have to have documentory [sic proof for every damn shipment they make.
You know, that's just plain rude, missing the closing bracket off "[sic" like that.

“If the nation through which they have to pass wants to be bloody-minded about the matter, yes, I suppose so… but more reasonable nations would probably check on which of the other countries wishing to ship goods through their territories had legal standards of their own that were at least equal to the UN ones, allowing shipments from thosesources through with less fuss, and might allow individual firms from yet other nations to demonstrate compliance by an initial investigation with occasional follow-ups too instead of requiring full documentation for every shipment… and this would still be an improvement on the current situation for those manufacturers, where nations such as yours could arbitrarily ban their shipments regardless of what standards they’d been meeting, anyway…”
I'm still not understanding what that's always a bad thing, by the way.

If they are UN nations, it doesn't help those of us looking for ways round clause 1 in the slightest. Either that, or we make the buggers produce the documentation anyway, and waste everyone's time.
“But then, of course, it’s not supposed to make it easier for you to avoid the rest of this proposal’s terms… And, with regard to your last sentence there, you seem to be overlooking Clause #2 which
ACCEPTS that nations have the right to inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, unless this is forbidden either by diplomatic immunity or by treaties that those nations have ratified, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade
don’t you?”
Given that (a) universal UN compliance is to an extent metagaming, and (b) there are some very creative interpretations of compliance out there, then no, I don't think we'd be acting unreasonably.


Yes, the use of the term 'general’ was meant to prevent nations discriminating against the products of any specific nations (or, for that matter, of any specific multinationals): That being so, and given the UN's rule that proposals cannot target specific nations, how could the UN ban goods from a more 'specific’ type anyway?
You know, it's usually considered good form for the second half of a logical construct to have some bearing on the first half.
“So you’re not even going to try answering my question about how you would expect the UN to be able to ban the transit of goods that have any specific origin?”
Largely because I can't believe that a man of your experience hasn't come across the words 'economic sanctions' before now. The UN can (and in at least one case does have legislation to) impose bans on countries that act in certain ways -- supporting slavery for example. In that particular example the nation concerned couldn't actually be a UN member, but it's entirely possible to have a resolution that urges some action and threatens sanctions if ignored.

None of which means that the second half of your logical construct has any visible connection to the first half. The sheer amount of time you spend not making logical sense is pretty damn suggestive.

If they really must depend on the transit trade for their income
It's a resource like any other. Why shouldn't they?
“A ‘resource’? Well, yes, I suppose it is… but then so would somebody being significantly bigger & stronger than anyone else around be a ‘resource’, but presumably (I hope, anyway…) you wouldn’t therefore suggest that it would be acceptable for that person to exploit that ‘resource’ by using their might to extort money from people?
To follow your misdirection for a moment, that would be an immoral use of a resource. But then if you insert the word 'economically' after 'significantly' I disapprove in just the same way and apparently you don't, since that's exactly what Free Trade facilitates.

But that's a straw man; you still haven't answered the question as to why a nation shouldn't benefit politically and economically from sitting on a trade route?

There are a number of other and more legitimate ways in which a nation could take advantage of its key position on a trade-route, for example:

Simply charging all of the “transit” traffic comparable tolls & taxes to local traffic could pay a fair share of the associated infrastructural costs, especially if that through traffic was actually quite a high proportion of the total traffic along the routes concerned, and if the vehicles used for the transit trade tended to be larger than those used locally then a reasonable size/weight-based increase in the tolls should be perfectly acceptable to the UNFTC.
That's not an advantage, it's permitting us to offset a disadvantage. It explicitly requires that the offset not be big enough to turn into an advantage.

Selling various goods & services to the crews of the transiting vehicles seems an obvious possibility, of course.
Obviously. Not exactly a governmental one, unless you believe in nationalisation to an extent that I hope you don't.

Depending on the exact nature of the routes involved, it might be worthwhile constructing trans-shipment facilities (including “bonded warehouses” for storing those goods that wouldn’t need to go through Customs) and there’s certainly nothing in this proposal — unless you’re reading something into one of its clauses that wasn’t my government’s intent — to forbid nations from charging fees for the use of such sites.
That does require you to regard bonded storage of goods and the like as an "other use" in clause 3's terms, since the goods clearly aren't "only in transit" if they are stored for any significant period of time. I'd think that was a rather dodgy reading, myself.

The nation could help some of its own people to enter the trade if they were otherwise underemployed, by providing help with training or with financing their acquisition of suitable vehicles or beasts (which I think would be perfectly legal, because as this nationality-specific help would be before they actually entered the trade it wouldn’t contradict or trigger any of this proposal’s anti-discrimination clauses), and profit simply by taxing the increase in their wealth at its normal rates.
We couldn't, however, support them in any way once they actually enter the trade. Realistically, this would result in them going under rapidly, so it's not even a big fig-leaf.

It might also be worth the nation’s while (depending on the actual nature of the goods shipped along the route) to set up processing plants and/or factories, import some of those goods itself, and turn them into higher-value products that they could then ship onwards for sale at a decent profit.
That it might. I can't think of a single example where this is plausibly going to work, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.

However simply extorting discriminatory “transit tolls” from foreign freighters who might have to pass through a nation because of its location astride a trade-route, without providing anything extra to them in exchange for those payments, would be (not only in my own opinion, but in that of my government too) little if any better than highway robbery!”
Whereas in my government's opinion, removing root and branch one of the few mechanisms for tempering economic might is a very bad idea. I wouldn't object if you were trying to restrict it to those circumstances where it's a necessary balancing mechanism, but you aren't.

“There, that’s it. Given the clear hostility towards not only my nation’s intentions but the very concept of Free Trade itself too that you’ve been displaying,
You say that like it's a bad thing.

But seriously, as I've already explained once, I'm not against the freedom to trade. I am against Unfair Trade, and when a proposal seems to be aimed at removing one of the few things that can be used to create Fair Trade, I'm going to object. You've made it clear that your intent here is pretty damn objectionable.

[...] it seems clear that neither of us is going to convince the other of their cause’s rightfulness and I’m not even going to try any more. Nobody else around here seems to be paying any attention to us, so as far as I’m concerned this conversation might as well be closed.

In case you choose to continue posting further deliberate misinterpretations of my government’s words — or of my own words — however, I ask one thing: Who is your ‘second’, and where might that person normally be found, in case my second needs to call on him or her to make the necessary arrangements?”
This from the man who lectured me that might doesn't make right. It's nice to see that you're such a man of principle, Ambassador.

(OOC: given that was a holding post, you may or may not wish to rescind the whisky throwing. Or do it after this post instead. I'm easy either way, since Ifan is being pretty insulting.)

As I see it, 'genuine' National Security grounds would mean that if you're at war with a nation then you don't have to let their people in just because they're transporting goods, or let other people cross the war-zone for that reason; if you have any particular sites that you feel a need to keep secret then you can legitimately divert trade around them and it would be fair enough for you to require a wider diversion for foreigners than for your own people; and, I suppose, that if your regime were so repressive that members of your ordinary population having contact with foreigners would pose a serious threat of stirring up internal unrest then you could restrict the foreign travellers to using specific routes where the only allowed stopping-points were staffed by trusted personnel*... but, because of the limited length allowed for UN proposals, my government couldn't go into that much detail here and so the precise interpretation of 'genuine' would have to be left to the UNFTC... whom I hope would use common sense in the matter..."
I'm beginning to understand, but the language of the clause is what confused me in the first place. It may be well for the general voting public to clarify and condense the verbiage.

Prince Tang of Allech-Atreus
Ambassador to the UN
The Great Star Empire of Allech-Atreus
Clarifying the text still further I’m certainly willing to consider: Unfortunately, however, I suspect that this might require expansion rather than condensation and the limited length allowed for proposals means that there simply isn’t much room left for expansion… unless I and my staff can find an acceptable way at which to shorten some other section of this text by enough characters instead…

We thank the distinguished representative of St Edmundan Antarctic for his reply to our question. Unfortunately, the answer confirms our suspicion that we will be unable to support this measure.
The people of Ausserland believe that the people of a nation -- represented by their government -- have an absolute and inalienable right to decide who will and who will not be admitted into the territory of the nation. We will not, under any circumstances, allow any other nation or international organization to abrogate or abridge that right. The decision is ours. The criteria we use to make that decision are completely our prerogative. We will not allow the NSUN to set them for us.
We appreciate the distinguished representative's attempt to find a means of accommodating our concern. Unfortunately, this issue is so fundamental to us that the only possible way to do so is to remove all strictures on control of entry of persons from the proposal.

Balthasar H. von Aschenbach
Prime Minister
My government thanks the distinguished gentleman for the courtesy of his reply, and deeply regrets the fact that his government would find it impossible to support this measure… but we will probably be pressing on with attempting to bring it into law, regardless of that fact.
As I understand it, your disapproval has less to do with wanting a right to ban the entry of foreigners for any further specific reason — which we would be prepared to consider, and perhaps to accommodate by modifying the proposal still further if that reason was as reasonable as your government’s reasons normally are — than with general principles about where the line between National Sovereignty and the UN’s legislative rights should be drawn, yes? In that case, although we certainly find this argument more acceptable when it comes from the government of a nation with as long and distinguished a history of upholding National Sovereignty within the NSUN as yours — rather than from a supposedly ‘Federalist’ regime such as the government of Gobbannium — I am afraid that this is a point on which we will have to agree to differ… My own government’s view on where that line should be drawn is, as I explained to the Gobbannean representative earlier in this discussion (although apparently he didn’t bother listening to it properly, was somehow incapable of understanding it, or deliberately and rudely chose to pretend a lack of comprehension…), that although the UN should certainly refrain from meddling in those fields of activity where any one national government’s actions would probably have no direct effects on any other nation it does have a right to pass reasonable legislation about matters that directly involve interactions between its member-nations; that International Trade is, for reasons I hope should be obvious to anybody of sense (such as yourself), one of the topics falling into the latter category; and that the requirements specified in this proposal’s current draft (requiring “genuine National Security grounds”, or that any other discrimination be only on a “fair“ basis, for excluding people) would be a necessary, fair and acceptable price to pay for getting the proposal to work.
If anybody were to suggest a proposal requiring nations to admit people into their territories on a long-term basis, even if this also allowed for some legal safeguards, then that would be a different matter because we would certainly agree with you that actual “permanent” Immigration is a matter that primarily affects the nation involved and thus should be a matter for national rather than international laws: However simply having to allow a right of peaceful (and probably quite brief, unless a nation’s territories are extremely wide relative to the freight-transporters’ top speed) transit — with reasonably adequate safeguards (such as I hope you would agree the rules included in this proposal would allow…) in place against that right being misused — seems much less intrusive on Sovereignty to us, and an acceptable price to have to pay for the fact that it would then be much harder for any other UN member-nations to block our own international trade…

We are avid free-traders and normally will go out of our way to support Free Trade legislation. However, like the distinguished representative from Ausserland we are troubled by Article 4A of your proposed resolution: 4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade, or define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners for this, for genuine National Security reasons;
Might we suggest that it be re-written thusly:

"4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the entry of any foreign national into their territory at their own discretion; restrict the movements of foreign nationals while within their territory, at their own discretion; regulate the entry and movement of vehicles and beasts of burden of foreign origin while within their territory; and define specific routes through their territories as open to natives but not foreigners;"

David Watts
Ambassador
The Dominion of New Leicestershire
We thank the ambassador from New Leicestershire for his politeness and his suggestion. As we see it, however, his (or his government’s) suggested re-write of the clause in question would create a MAJOR loophole in this proposal because — to put it in such plain English that [hopefully] even the Gobbannean representative would be unable to misunderstand it — it is unfortunately the case that some UN member-nations’ governments don’t really seem to have any “discretion”: The criteria of “genuine National Security grounds” and of no “unfair" discrimination that we have used so far are ones that a court (or the UNFTC) could hope to consider on a reasonably objective basis (or so I hope, anyway…), whereas “at their discretion” is such a vague expression that it might as well say “at their whim”… and would mean that, although clause #1 of this proposal would still keep them from actually prohibiting the passage of any foreign goods outright, they would be able to prohibit the use of foreigners to transport those goods and then specify such a high charge for having any of their own people do the job that the movement would effectively be blocked de facto if not de jure… whilst your suggested wording for the last two phrases of that clause could allow such regimes to make any transporting of goods through their territories that they theoretically did permit foreigners to conduct effectively impractical… and thus the potential effectiveness of this proposal in promoting international trade, and in restricting nations’ ability to practice economic warfare against each other, would be destroyed.

Alfred Devereux Sweynsson MD,
Ambassador to the United Nations
for
the Protectorate of the St Edmundan Antarctic
(and still required to wear this confounded penguin costume…)

_________________________________________________________________

(OOC reply to Gobbannium’s latest comment…)

OOC: apparently it wasn't obvious that was a "I'm off for the weekend, will get back to you" holding post.
No, it wasn’t: As the character was apparently (on the basis of his own words) staying around to study my own previous comment, it could only have been the player who would have been going offline for the weekend… so I would have expected (quite reasonably, in my opinion) any such “holding post” to be written in OOC terms. The fact that it was posted as an IC remark instead meant that I had to consider its contents in IC terms, and the fact that Alfred doesn’t even know about the NSUN multiverse having players (at our own level of Reality) — rather than just inhabitants—meant that his response could only be IC too. So he took it for the gratuitous insult to his nation’s government and to himself that it so clearly was…
And so, as far as both I and Alfred are concerned, the drink-throwing incident and challenge occurred in response to that post — where I originally placed them — rather than after these later remarks. He will wait for an IC reply to his challenge, and unless & until he receives one neither I nor he will respond directly to anything that either Gobbannium’s player or any of its characters say… except, perhaps, by warning anybody else who might be reading those comments that the nation in question seems to favour misdirection, deliberate misrepresentation of other people’s words, and gratuitous insults, rather than reasoned discussion. Even in the event of anybody who speaks for Gobbannium actually managing to raise any points that I accept as valid in any discussion after this, some other player (or one of some other player’s characters) will have to ask me for my opinion about the suggestions made before I will respond to them because I am now placing him on ‘Ignore’. (He has the dubious ‘honour’ of being the very first player with whom, in almost two years of playing this game, I have become sufficiently exasperated to consider this step necessary…)

The following remarks are not actually addressed to Gobbannium’s player, they are simply a clarification of my views (and those that I ascribe to the government of the St Edmundan Antarctic, and generally to Alfred too…) about some of the points that he raised.

* * * * *

Thirdly, who is this ‘Holmes’ to whom you refer? My name is Sweynsson, Alfred Devereux Sweynsson…” My apologies, Ambassador; I withdraw the colloquialism, since it does of course refer to a very intelligent person doing something stupid.Here Gobbannium apparently fails to realise, IC and/or OOC, that people from different versions of reality do not necessarily share the same cultural referents… and that Alfred’s querying of the phrase that Ifan used was simply because his native Earth’s literature doesn’t contain the character of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ to whom I (OOC) presume the Gobbanean was referring…

The flow of trade through a country is precisely an aspect of that country. One that you seek to deny them control over.The ways in which trade flows through a country are primarily a matter of national rather than international concern, but then this proposal would still allow nations to control those ways — as long as they treated foreign traffic fairly while doing so — anyway. The actual fact that international traffic passes (and might effectively “need” to pass) through a country is, however, logically a matter of international concern rather than just [or “precisely”] national concern.

Should I assume from the phrase "some environmental matters" that St Edmundan Antarctic believes in the Principle of Limited Environmental Consequences? If so, I suggest going and talking to a genuine ecologist, or even reading some of the recent records of debates on ecological proposals, which should thoroughly disabuse you of that idea.
If the player of Gobbannium had bothered to define his terms, or even to provide a link to definitions elsewhere, then I would be able to answer this question with some confidence that he would be unable to misunderstand (or, at least, plausibly pretend to misunderstand) my answer. As it is, however, I see no point in responding further to this question.

Finally, while I don't disagree with the UN helping to coordinate research efforts, even such facetious ones as you admire, I don't see where you think that they're an internal national matter in the first place.So he regards improved weather-forecasting as “facetious”? Evidently he doesn’t work in one of the many occupations for which knowledge of what the weather is likely to do next can matter, or live close to a ‘Hurricane Belt’ or in some other area where extreme weather conditions are likely to pose a serious danger to life & limb… I wonder whether he’d have thrown that insult out if he’d bothered to check how many other nations chose to vote for the resolution in question?
And I didn’t think that such efforts were “an internal national matter in the first place”, as he said here: That was why I specifically listed them amongst the topics that I considered ‘international’ enough for UN resolutions to be justifiable: Once again, he has either “failed at reading” or was deliberately misrepresenting my position…

PS: you still don't seem to have twigged that I am not the Ambassador. Yet.It is a St Edmundan custom to address a person who is effectively doing a particular job by the correct title for that job (except in a few cases, such as the office of ‘King’) in normal speech, as a courtesy. Alfred was still trying to be polite to Ifan, despite strong provocation to the contrary, at that point…

you seem to be overlooking Clause #2 whichACCEPTS that nations have the right to inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, unless this is forbidden either by diplomatic immunity or by treaties that those nations have ratified, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade
Given that (a) universal UN compliance is to an extent metagaming, and (b) there are some very creative interpretations of compliance out there, then no, I don't think we'd be acting unreasonably.
With regard to (a): When this question has arisen in the past I have consistently taken the position that compliance with (the letter of) UN resolutions should be considered an IC rule of nations’ membership in the organisation, rather than just as metagaming… and as Alfred was clearly [labelled as] speaking IC he couldn’t reasonably have been expected to know about the “metagaming” aspect.
With regard to (b): Those “very creative interpretations of compliance” depend on there being no IC body with the specific authority to rule on their acceptability, other than the UN Gnomes who are apparently concerned only with obedience to a most literal interpretation of the resolution’s wording… However, in this case, the fact that I specified the UNFTC as having that authority means that anybody who would want to work around the rule plausibly would have to argue their interpretations in ways that they could convince the other players involved would be acceptable to that organisation: That is precisely why I gave the UNFTC this role…

“So you’re not even going to try answering my question about how you would expect the UN to be able to ban the transit of goods that have any specific origin?”Largely because I can't believe that a man of your experience hasn't come across the words 'economic sanctions' before now. The UN can (and in at least one case does have legislation to) impose bans on countries that act in certain ways -- supporting slavery for example. In that particular example the nation concerned couldn't actually be a UN member, but it's entirely possible to have a resolution that urges some action and threatens sanctions if ignored.

So he finally bothers to answer one of the more important of the questions that I asked in my reply to his first post in this thread…
Yes, I have come across the words ‘economic sanctions’ before but I was waiting to see whether Gobbannium’s player would actually get around to mentioning them instead of just continuing with his attempts at misrepresentation & misdirection… and I’m not altogether sure how far I approve of the concept anyway. Arms embargoes are one thing, but generalised sanctions are likely to hit a nation’s ordinary people more severely than they do those nations’ leaders (against whom bans on foreign travel, and the seizure of “personal” assets that are stored abroad [such as wealth that they diverted from their nations’ treasuries into ‘offshore’ banking arrangements] are likely to be more effective measures).
In the specific case of UN-desired sanctions against nations that supported slavery: This proposal would still allow UN member-nations to ban the passage of goods of any general types that couldn’t legally be traded within their boundaries which would (of course) let them block the transport of actual slaves, whilst right to block the passage of any goods whose production “did not meet UN standards” which would (fairly obviously?) cover any goods whose production had involved slave labour at any point in the process, and simply including a clause in the anti-slavery resolution that required nations to use all legal means they possess against the slave-holding nations would make their use of those rights compulsory. Whether the clause about “UN standards” could also be invoked successfully to block goods made by non-slave labour for companies that own & use slaves too would be a matter for the UNFTC to determine, but a decision that it did allow this would seem likely to me: Whether the UNFTC would also let that clause be used against any goods that were produced in nations where slavery was legal but by producers who don’t actually use any slave labour themselves might be more problematical… but I’d prefer not to ban their goods, thus giving them a competitive edge over their slave-using rivals back home that might well lead to a wider abandonment of slavery there for purely practical reasons.
Having said which, it took me less than ten minutes to work out how a valid clause to let a resolution apply sanctions if this proposal was itself already in place as a resolution could be drafted: I won’t publish that clause here yet, because if I did then it might also get “borrowed” for use in proposals that I would consider less acceptable (such as one that would allow nations to impose whatever blockades and embargoes they chose, without needing what I would consider a justifiable reason for these…), but if this proposal does get passed and anybody who seriously intends to submit a good anti-slavery proposal (like Quod’s) in the near future then asks for it I’ll re-consider the matter… and if a player whom I would trust not to “misuse” the clause or to spread it further without my consent would like to see it then, especially if they would be willing to vouch for its potential effectiveness and they are somebody whose word other players are generally willing to trust, I’ll send them a copy by TG…

Simply charging all of the “transit” traffic comparable tolls & taxes to local traffic could pay a fair share of the associated infrastructural costs, especially if that through traffic was actually quite a high proportion of the total traffic along the routes concerned, and if the vehicles used for the transit trade tended to be larger than those used locally then a reasonable size/weight-based increase in the tolls should be perfectly acceptable to the UNFTC. That's not an advantage, it's permitting us to offset a disadvantage. It explicitly requires that the offset not be big enough to turn into an advantage.
There’s nothing in this proposal to say that nations can’t charge taxes/tolls whose levels are higher than those that would be necessary just to maintain the routes concerned, as long as they do so on a fair basis… and if there’s as much foreign traffic passing along a route as the Gobbannean spokesman’s level of concern suggests he thinks would be the case in his own country with this proposal turned into law then the revenue legitimately collected from it like this could potentially pay for a significantly better infrastructure than the nation’s own travellers could support — for example, by funding major construction projects (ports, airports, bridges, tunnels, motorways, or whatever) that couldn’t have been financed from purely “local” sources — therefore giving those native travellers (even though they would have to share those facilities with the foreigners) a significant benefit in exchange for the levels of taxes/tolls that they would have to pay… especially in countries, like Gobbannium, whose own economies are in such a mess that there are almost certainly relatively few natives running engine-powered vehicles (let alone doing so on a commercial basis) anyway…

Selling various goods & services to the crews of the transiting vehicles seems an obvious possibility, of course. Obviously. Not exactly a governmental one, unless you believe in nationalisation to an extent that I hope you don't.
No, I don’t: However, surely the fact that the national government could then collect some money by taxing the profits made during those transactions should be fairly obvious… especially to a government of a nation that — like Gobbannium—currently has an average tax rate as high as 88% “and much higher for the wealthy”…

Depending on the exact nature of the routes involved, it might be worthwhile constructing trans-shipment facilities (including “bonded warehouses” for storing those goods that wouldn’t need to go through Customs) and there’s certainly nothing in this proposal — unless you’re reading something into one of its clauses that wasn’t my government’s intent — to forbid nations from charging fees for the use of such sites.That does require you to regard bonded storage of goods and the like as an "other use" in clause 3's terms, since the goods clearly aren't "only in transit" if they are stored for any significant period of time. I'd think that was a rather dodgy reading, myself.
The question of how long goods could reasonably be counted as “in transit” for while they were left in ‘bonded’ storage (a practice for which there is, after all, adequate RL precedent) would have to be determined by the UNFTC, either on a case-by-case basis or by publishing general rules, but I’d assume this would probably be acceptable to that organisation for as long as no attempt was made to sell the goods concerned locally instead… at least unless & until a decent opportunity to ship them onwards (due to the passage of a suitable vehicle with enough cargo space available at a reasonable cost) instead was rejected. Shippers would obviously not leave goods stored indefinitely without a good reason (such as a war getting in the way, for example), because of the storage fees and probably because of the need to turn a profit on their investment in those goods within as reasonable a time as possible too… If the shippers were obviously leaving goods in storage en route until prices for such goods at the intended destination rose then I suppose that the UNFTC could justifiably declare those goods to be no longer “in transit”, and of course even a nation that was benefiting by collecting the storage fees might complain in such a case simply because they needed the space vacated to make room for newer shipments, but then a ruling on that basis I myself would consider fair enough anyway…

The nation could help some of its own people to enter the trade if they were otherwise underemployed, by providing help with training or with financing their acquisition of suitable vehicles or beasts (which I think would be perfectly legal, because as this nationality-specific help would be before they actually entered the trade it wouldn’t contradict or trigger any of this proposal’s anti-discrimination clauses), and profit simply by taxing the increase in their wealth at its normal rates.We couldn't, however, support them in any way once they actually enter the trade. Realistically, this would result in them going under rapidly, so it's not even a big fig-leaf.
So the Gobbanneans in general are so bad at business matters that they couldn’t possibly compete internationally on a fair basis, without subsidies or other protectionist mechanisms? Oh well, Alfred couldn’t necessarily be expected to know that (considering how many other nations there are in the UN too), but I suppose it might explain why the UN currently classifies their nation’s economy as a “basket case”…

It might also be worth the nation’s while (depending on the actual nature of the goods shipped along the route) to set up processing plants and/or factories, import some of those goods itself, and turn them into higher-value products that they could then ship onwards for sale at a decent profit. That it might. I can't think of a single example where this is plausibly going to work, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.
If he’s speaking specifically about just his own nation’s economy (such as it is) then I admittedly don’t know enough about that subject to assess the accuracy of his comment… but if he’s speaking in more general terms then he’s displaying an abysmal ignorance of economics: After all, don’t most processing plants & factories depend on the ability to sell their products for significantly more than the raw materials involved cost them in order to keep going (unless they receive relatively large subsidies from their governments, or are simply part of a state-run “command economy” with no actual need to turn a profit)? And wouldn’t being on a natural route between the source of the materials and the outlet for the goods be an obvious advantage in terms of shipping costs? To consider just one example from RL, the economy of Britain back in the days when Royal Navy had such a superiority over all of the Earth’s other navies that we effectively owned the Seven Seas as well as an Empire “on which the Sun never set” benefited greatly from the ability to import raw materials from the colonies (across the seas that were such an obvious route for our use) and then re-export some of the goods that it produced from these…

“In case you choose to continue posting further deliberate misinterpretations of my government’s words — or of my own words — however, I ask one thing: Who is your ‘second’, and where might that person normally be found, in case my second needs to call on him or her to make the necessary arrangements?”This from the man who lectured me that might doesn't make right. It's nice to see that you're such a man of principle, Ambassador.
And so Gobbannium, yet again, employs the “Fallacy of the Excluded Middle” that his character erroneously accused mine of using at an earlier point in this debate: If we take his words seriously then he’s saying that anybody who rejects the idea of force (or the threat of force) being used to extort money from people — whether this is by a strong individual bullying weaker people, or by a nation that sits astride a trade-route using that position to collect “transit tolls” from passing trade without giving the traders any corresponding benefits — must reject the use of force in all possible situations, no matter what, whereas anybody who accepts the fact that there are circumstances when the use of force may be justifiable (for example, in Alfred’s opinion, to defend his nation’s honour — and his own — against somebody who has been persistently misrepresenting their words) must therefore accept that all uses of force (or its threat) are justifiable… Does anybody else here apart from Gobbannium accept the idea of that genuinely being an “either/or” situation?

We appreciate the honorable representative's desire to accommodate our concern. Perhaps, to save him needless effort, we should make our position crystal clear.

We hold that it is the absolute and inalienable right of every nation to decide who shall and who shall not be admitted to its territory. We will not be dictated to in this regard by any nation or international body. We decided, upon joining the NSUN, that we would give blanket permission for officers and employees of NSUN instrumentalities to enter Ausserland as necessary in performance of their duties. But that was our decision, as it properly should be. We will not countenance the NSUN dictating to us the criteria on which such decisions should be made.

Although our nation has long been active in the National Sovereignty Organization, we have never once held up simple "national sovereignty" as an argument in debate. Not once. But we will do it now. We consider the provisions of this proposal concerning entry of persons to be an egregious and intolerable abrogation of a fundamental right of every sovereign nation. Surely, if a vendor found it necessary to have his goods traverse our nation, he could find some way to do it without this.

We will oppose this proposal with every resource at our command if it contains the provisions we find completely intolerable. Should it be adopted in that form by this Assembly, we would be forced, with great regret, to resign our membership in this organization. We don't hold that out as any sort of "threat". Our departure would mean little or nothing to most and would warm the cockles of the hearts of some. We simply state it as an indication of the seriousness with which we view this issue.

By order of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Ausserland:

Balthasar H. von Aschenbach
Prime Minister

This legislation fails to deal with the transport of hazardous waste, toxic materials, garbage, and ecologically damaging materials which a country could transport freely.

We would like to be able to inspect the goods so they don't end up carrying in man eating bugs, tree mites, or other pests before they enter our country.

We would like to also be able to restrict the transport of hazardous waste through our country. Someone might be transporting hazardous materials as a trade good. One country takes another countries waste for a price.

This is not just waste, it could also be volatile chemicals used in manufacturing.

We appreciate the honorable representative's desire to accommodate our concern. Perhaps, to save him needless effort, we should make our position crystal clear.

We hold that it is the absolute and inalienable right of every nation to decide who shall and who shall not be admitted to its territory. We will not be dictated to in this regard by any nation or international body. We decided, upon joining the NSUN, that we would give blanket permission for officers and employees of NSUN instrumentalities to enter Ausserland as necessary in performance of their duties. But that was our decision, as it properly should be. We will not countenance the NSUN dictating to us the criteria on which such decisions should be made.

Although our nation has long been active in the National Sovereignty Organization, we have never once held up simple "national sovereignty" as an argument in debate. Not once. But we will do it now. We consider the provisions of this proposal concerning entry of persons to be an egregious and intolerable abrogation of a fundamental right of every sovereign nation. Surely, if a vendor found it necessary to have his goods traverse our nation, he could find some way to do it without this.

We will oppose this proposal with every resource at our command if it contains the provisions we find completely intolerable. Should it be adopted in that form by this Assembly, we would be forced, with great regret, to resign our membership in this organization. We don't hold that out as any sort of "threat". Our departure would mean little or nothing to most and would warm the cockles of the hearts of some. We simply state it as an indication of the seriousness with which we view this issue.

By order of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Ausserland:

Balthasar H. von Aschenbach
Prime Minister

We understand your viewpoint, and would be one of the nations that deeply regretted it if you did leave this organisation.
Unfortunately we are unable to think of an alternative wording that would allow this proposal to meet your requirements whilst still leaving it truly functional. It might well be true that a vendor who needed to find a way to get their goods through your nation should be able to find a way of doing so, but sadly there are all too many nations out there across the UN whose governments are much less reasonable and whom we could forsee blocking other nations' external trade quite effectively for various reasons (e.g. to apply political pressure on those nations, to close foreign competitors to their own businesses out of markets, or simply because they disliked those other nations for some reason or another) if the proposal were to be passed with its wording in this respect changed sufficently to be acceptable to you.

Alfred Devereux Sweynsson MD,
Ambassador to the United Nations
for
The Protectorate of The St Edmundan Antarctic
(And still required to wear this bloody penguin costume!)

_________________________________________________________________

(OOC: Not that it looks likely I'll ever actually manage getting this to quorum, anyway...)

OOC Addendum, 28th May

Actually, I might have found a way of making this proposal acceptable to both of our nations, at least if I can find enough characters spare within the maximum length allowance to add the necessary clauses _
If Ausserland's reason for wanting the right to exclude foreigners without a reasonable cause is purely a matter of principle (concerning National Sovereignty and border-control), then would the Ausserlander government accept this proposal with a clause allowing that but requiring any government that does ban transporters without what the other clauses specify as reasonable cause to meet the costs of finding mutually-acceptable replacment personnel for the job?

This legislation fails to deal with the transport of hazardous waste, toxic materials, garbage, and ecologically damaging materials which a country could transport freely.

We would like to be able to inspect the goods so they don't end up carrying in man eating bugs, tree mites, or other pests before they enter our country.

We would like to also be able to restrict the transport of hazardous waste through our country. Someone might be transporting hazardous materials as a trade good. One country takes another countries waste for a price.

This is not just waste, it could also be volatile chemicals used in manufacturing.

Clause #2 of the submitted draft ACCEPTS that nations have the right to inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, unless this is forbidden either by diplomatic immunity or by treaties that those nations have ratified, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade;

and clause #4 ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. *(snip)*
B. Require the people involved to have adequate training in relevant skills;
C. Require the beasts or vehicles involved to be of general types that are legal there, and to meet proper safety and environmental standards;
D. Require the use of adequate safety measures, including proper labelling of all goods, by the transporters;

And if trade in the general type of 'hazardous waste' concerned is actually illegal in your nation then clause #1 would allow you to continue blocking its passage anyway.

If those points really aren't adequate to meet your concerns then what specific changes would you desire, bearing in mind the fact that this proposal is already very close to the maximum length allowed...

OOC: there's no way I'm even going to try to respond to that wodge of text at 2:30 am, except to observe that the IGNORE cannons are a really ineffective way of dealing with IC animosity. Any OOC animosity is entirely one-sided as far as I'm concerned.

What stops someone, such as myself, from clogging the roads of UN nations with gigantic road trains and bringing all traffic to a standstill?

What stops someone, such as myself, from clogging the roads of UN nations with gigantic road trains and bringing all traffic to a standstill?

The fact that if you're neither in the UN nor complying fully with this resolution on a voluntary basis then -- under clause 1.C -- your trade isn't protected by its terms?
The fact that if the locals don't use "gigantic road trains" themselves then their governments could set whatever [high] levels of limits and tolls they chose to on your ones without contradicting clause 5.D against unfair discrimination?
The fact that those UN nations could require that the goods being shipped have a specified destination, and that if this clearly isn't the case or the size of the 'road trains' is clearly disproportionate to the quantity of goods being shipped then your intentions would seem fairly obvious and the "reasonable National Security Grounds" justification for restrictions (clause 4.A)could legitimately be invoked?
The sheer expense to your own nation?

The fact that if you're neither in the UN nor complying fully with this resolution on a voluntary basis then -- under clause 1.C -- your trade isn't protected by its terms?
The fact that if the locals don't use "gigantic road trains" themselves then their governments could set whatever [high] levels of limits and tolls they chose to on your ones without contradicting clause 5.D against unfair discrimination?
The fact that those UN nations could require that the goods being shipped have a specified destination, and that if this clearly isn't the case or the size of the 'road trains' is clearly disproportionate to the quantity of goods being shipped then your intentions would seem fairly obvious and the "reasonable National Security Grounds" justification for restrictions (clause 4.A)could legitimately be invoked?
The sheer expense to your own nation?

Oh, good, this one does fix the obvious loopholes.

Pardon me, I just like to look for loopholes in UN resolutions that allow me to be annoying.

Oh, good, this one does fix the obvious loopholes.

Pardon me, I just like to look for loopholes in UN resolutions that allow me to be annoying.


You're pardoned: I like to find the loopholes myself, although less to be annnoying than just to get around any clauses that don't suit my government... ;)

(OOC reply to Gobbannium’s latest comment…)


No, it wasn’t
OOC: And I forgot to apologise for that. Duh. Sorry. I try to stay IC unless I absolutely have to drop out, or the thread is one (like Silly/Illegal Proposals) that blurs the line anyway. I've certainly read that subtext into other players' posts in the past, so I assumed it was normal practice.

So [Alfred] took it for the gratuitous insult to his nation’s government and to himself that it so clearly was…
OOC: He's not wrong about that :-)

And so, as far as both I and Alfred are concerned, the drink-throwing incident and challenge occurred in response to that post — where I originally placed them — rather than after these later remarks. He will wait for an IC reply to his challenge,[snip]
OOC: OK, fair enough. I was only interested in which resolution of a potentially ambiguous situation the player wanted, after all; it's not something that Alfred can have an opinion on. For context...

"Again with the mud-slinging, when it's really been your "contributions" to this discussion that have largely consisted of 'tripe', 'straw men' and 'misdirections'? That's it, you bloody, lying hypocrite, I've had enough: Maybe this will clean you up a bit..."

*(Alfred throws his drink into Ifor's face...)*
Ifan's face runs through shock and anger before he visibly reigns himself back in. He takes a moment to wipe some of the whiskey off his face and taste it. "You couldn't have used the good stuff, could you?" he says sourly.

(OOC: Ifan's never going to get served in the Strangers' Bar now)

"Well, sirrah, swords or pistols?"

"Typical. Weren't you the man who was telling me that using force to get your way is a bad thing? And yet here you are, reduced to calling me a liar, throwing cheap whiskey at me and threatening my life. Try words, doctor. I'm told they can be very effective weapons. You'd make a better impression if you actually argued against my points rather than dismissing them."

OOC: to prevent any further blurring of the line between player and character, I'm not going to respond to the rest of the post until and unless it appears in character. There's more than enough confusion going round at the moment.

Knootoss wholeheartedly endorses this. Mare Liberum!

http://www.meninhats.com/images/aram.gif
Aram Koopman
Ambassador representing the Knootian UN Office

Ifan's face runs through shock and anger before he visibly reigns himself back in. He takes a moment to wipe some of the whiskey off his face and taste it. "You couldn't have used the good stuff, could you?" he says sourly.
"Typical. Weren't you the man who was telling me that using force to get your way is a bad thing? And yet here you are, reduced to calling me a liar, throwing cheap whiskey at me and threatening my life. Try words, doctor. I'm told they can be very effective weapons. You'd make a better impression if you actually argued against my points rather than dismissing them."

(Immediately after that…)

“You are guilty of not just one but THREE serious errors here,” Alfred replies:
“Firstly, in apparently assuming that I was as lost to Rightfulness as you in your lying would seem to be, so that I would not care to chance defending my government’s policies and the truth of my own words on the Field of Honour.”
“Secondly, in your claim that duels are an example of ‘Might Makes Right’ when in fact — once the ‘Numen’ of Justice has been properly invoked — they are actually a clear case of ‘Right Makes Might’ instead… For how else could my own maternal grandfather, Andre Etienne De Marigny Devereux, have won a duel against a much younger and generally fitter man — and with swords, rather than with the easier-to-handle pistols, at that — on his eighty-fourth birthday?”
“And thirdly, by suggesting that anybody opposed to the use or threat of force for unjustifiable extortion must also oppose the use of force in righteous causes such as the justifiable defence of Honour or be a hypocrite, you have once again fallen — either by careless accident or, hypocritically yourself, on purpose — into a ‘Fallacy of the Excluded Middle’ such as the one to which you erroneously claimed I had resorted at an earlier stage of this discussion: Taking your argument seriously would require us to agree that either one must oppose all use of force, no matter how righteous the cause — such as resistance to tyranny — in which it might regrettably be required, or must accept all use of force — including not only the extortion of ‘transit tolls’ without fair recompense, such as your words imply your homeland’s government would consider acceptable if not restrained from that policy by any UN Resolution, but also wars of conquest and even campaigns of outright genocide — as valid instead. Surely nobody but an utter fool would take that argument as binding, rather than accepting that although there are circumstances in which force may rightly be used there are also circumstances in which it should certainly be shunned?!?”

“As for your suggestion that Old Dragons’-Blood whiskey is NOT "good stuff", either the liquors produced in your own nation must be of very high quality indeed — a hypothesis that I might put to the test on some future occasion — or you are as lacking in good taste as you are in honesty… and I know which of those possibilities I consider the more likely…
Now, sirrah, will you answer my question: Swords, or pistols? My second will be Colonel Balthasar Balthasar, the St Edmundan representative at UN DEFCON, who is currently on an official visit to my offices here and whom your second — assuming that you are actually able to find somebody who is willing to stand beside you in this matter — will therefore probably be able to find without too much trouble in order to make the arrangements for our next meeting: Shall I advise him to expect such a call? Or are you lacking in honour, too?”


_________________________________________________________________


OOC: I’ve actually got another revised draft for this proposal ready to post, but considering the matter logically I think that Alfred wouldn’t have this too until several days after the conversation that’s currently in progress… so I’ll wait until a suitable break in the debate occurs…

The Principality of New Avarin is very opposed to this resolution. However, this resolution would be ineffectual and easy to bypass. Article 1, Section E states that: "Trade in goods of that general type is illegal there; "

Our nation simply would (and will) declare that goods from The Dominion of Complete Bastards (http://www.nationstates.net/27534/page=display_nation/nation=complete_bastards) are illegal within the Principality of New Avarin. The type of goods are very general indeed, and thus meet muster within those bounds.

We choose to prohibit the free trade from our neighbor, The Dominion of Complete Bastards, as they have an abhorrent practice of hunting our beloved Catbois, and selling thier remains a "Catboi Delicacies." Our nation finds this act repulsive and abhorent, however, we respect The Dominion's right to engage in such practices within thier own nation. They do not encroach upon our sovereignity in doing so.

However, these practices are so abhorent, we do not wish to provide aid or support of any kind to nations who engage in practices abhorrent to us. We also do not wish to engage in war over such matters. However, this resolution would leave us no choice to engage in war to defend our beliefs.

Respectfully,

His Highness,
Marek, Prince Royal of New Avarin.

The Principality of New Avarin is very opposed to this resolution. However, this resolution would be ineffectual and easy to bypass. Article 1, Section E states that: "Trade in goods of that general type is illegal there; "
Our nation simply would (and will) declare that goods from The Dominion of Complete Bastards (http://www.nationstates.net/27534/page=display_nation/nation=complete_bastards) are illegal within the Principality of New Avarin. The type of goods are very general indeed, and thus meet muster within those bounds.

(This is an OOC post…)

That “loophole” might not be quite as easy to exploit as you’re assuming. Remember that Clause 6 of the proposal gives the UNFTC the right and duty of judging any international disputes that might arise due to the rules involved… so that if you do try blocking ALL goods from another nation like that, and their government makes an official complaint (as I expect would be likely), you would — at least theoretically — have to be able to present a convincing argument about just why those goods constitute a ‘general type’…
For example, what reasonable criteria would make both “widgets” and “doodads” from that nation constitute a valid ‘general type’ and yet mean that any “widgets” produced in your own nation were NOT also in the same 'type' as those foreign ones & therefore banned too?
If I had used the term “general category” instead then your case would be a bit more defensible semantically: However, although we can’t actually know how the UNFTC would decide, the fact that both[/b] the [i]other people who’ve commented about that particular clause so far (one in an offsite forum, and the other here in this thread) have interpreted “general type” in the way that I intended — even though the second of those national representatives is as hostile to the general idea of this proposal as you are — rather than in the way that you suggest would be not only possible but “easy” makes me think a verdict against you rather more likely than one in your favour…
Of course, as we will never actually see the UNFTC make any ruling, you would still be free to claim that it had supported your position… but, unless you can come up with a convincing argument as to why it would have done so, how many people do you really think will take you seriously?

Afterthought: As I was already going to present people with yet another new draft of this proposal, before its next submission, I’m going to go back to the clause in question and clarify my intentions even further. However this might also, in at least some people’s opinion unfortunately, have the side-effect of making it slightly harder for any later UN Resolutions to legitimise international sanctions against such trade…

Addition, on the next day: There are, however, two other sections within Clause 1 that you might be able to use as valid justifications for banning the passage of goods that were produced in the nation of ‘Complete Bastards’: Given that they are not currently a member of the UN and are therefore not required to comply with this organisation’s resolutions themselves, and considering not only their name but also their motto and the UN’s description of their country, it seems very likely to me that they would neither be complying fully with this proposal’s terms on a voluntary basis (so that you could justify banning their goods under ‘1.C’) nor holding their industries to the UN’s standards in fields such as Workplace Safety or the Right To Form Unions (so that you could justify banning their goods under ‘1.F’) instead…

I believe that this Resolution is written very well, and that its intentions are good. There is only one problem with it. Each nation has the right to deny entry to anything or anybody that wish to enter the country. For the NSUN to not allow the member nations to use this right, would be an attack on the nation's sovereignty.

I believe that this Resolution is written very well, and that its intentions are good. There is only one problem with it. Each nation has the right to deny entry to anything or anybody that wish to enter the country. For the NSUN to not allow the member nations to use this right, would be an attack on the nation's sovereignty.

And a nation has a right to pass its own laws on all subjects, and to ignore foreign laws... until it joins the NSUN.
By voluntarily joining this organisation (as I presume there was no coercion applied?), you voluntarily agreed to surrender some of your sovereignty. There are a wide range of positions held by different nations about just how widely this fact should actually entitle the NSUN to regulate matters, but even my own government -- which holds that the UN should keep its legislation out of just about any matter in which any national government's decisions would [probably] have no direct effects on any other nation, and is therefore generally considered to be quite 'sovereigntist' in its views -- accepts that when a field of activity genuinely involves interactions of potential importance between member-nations then the NSUN has a right to pass relevant Resolutions... and as far as we're concerned, International Trade is one of the fields of activity that obviously falls into the latter category.

As we have said before, we consider the right to control entry of persons into a nation one of the most fundamental and critical rights possessed by any nation. We consider it absolute and inalienable. We will not, under any circumstances, accept dictation by the NSUN on who we may and may not allow to enter our territory.

This proposal has many good features. We find it a shame that it is fatally marred by the inclusion of one provision which we believe to be unnecessary and the most egregious assault on the sovereignty of our nations that we have seen in a long while. As the honorable representative said, there is a wide range of views on the issue of "national sovereignty". Ausserland has generally been considered rather moderate on the subject. On this issue, though, we must draw the proverbial line in the proverbial sand.

By order of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Ausserland:

Balthasar H. von Aschenbach
Prime Minister

This law deals with goods and materials, there is nothing that says you can't force them to use another sentient to transport the goods. We look forward to this being putting up for vote very soon.

Regards,

Rex Smiley, UN Representative

This law deals with goods and materials, there is nothing that says you can't force them to use another sentient to transport the goods. We look forward to this being putting up for vote very soon.

Regards,

Rex Smiley, UN Representative

Try reading Sections 4 and 5 again. We've discussed this with the author quite a bit. Surely, if what you say had any truth to it, he would have made the point.

Lorelei M. Ahlmann
Ambassador-at-Large

(OOC: The current draft wouldn't let nations force traders to use alternative personnel, unless I let a loophole slip by me... The next draft -- which I'll post once the situation with Ifan has been advanced slightly, and a couple of days can reasonably be assumed to have passed IC -- will allow this, but at the price (if the nations concerned can't give a "good reason" for requiring this changeover) of making those nations responsible for any extra "fair" costs therefore incurred by the traders...)

“Firstly, in apparently assuming that I was as lost to Rightfulness as you in your lying would seem to be, so that I would not care to chance defending my government’s policies and the truth of my own words on the Field of Honour.”
"Your 'Field of Honour'," and apparently it is possible to make Capital Letters sound unreasonably sarcastic, "is nothing more than an attempt to impose your will on someone you know to have no weapons training. I refuse to submit to such blatant intimidation.

“Secondly, in your claim that duels are an example of ‘Might Makes Right’ when in fact — once the [i]‘Numen’ of Justice has been properly invoked — they are actually a clear case of ‘Right Makes Might’ instead… For how else could my own maternal grandfather, Andre Etienne De Marigny Devereux, have won a duel against a much younger and generally fitter man — and with swords, rather than with the easier-to-handle pistols, at that — on his eighty-fourth birthday?”
Most of the obvious explanations start with your grandfather's opponent being already dead, M'sieur. And if your invocations of the Name of Justice are so powerful, why couldn't they just tell everyone the truth instead of requiring a farcical combat?

“And thirdly, by suggesting that anybody opposed to the use or threat of force for unjustifiable extortion must also oppose the use of force in righteous causes such as the justifiable defence of Honour or be a hypocrite, you have once again fallen — either by careless accident or, hypocritically yourself, on purpose — into a ‘Fallacy of the Excluded Middle’ such as the one to which you erroneously claimed I had resorted at an earlier stage of this discussion: Taking your argument seriously would require us to agree that either one must oppose all use of force, no matter how righteous the cause — such as resistance to tyranny — in which it might regrettably be required, or must accept all use of force — including not only the extortion of ‘transit tolls’ without fair recompense, such as your words imply your homeland’s government would consider acceptable if not restrained from that policy by any UN Resolution, but also wars of conquest and even campaigns of outright genocide — as valid instead. Surely nobody but an utter fool would take that argument as binding, rather than accepting that although there are circumstances in which force may rightly be used there are also circumstances in which it should certainly be shunned?!?”
I can't work out whether you're equating my stance or your inconsistent behaviour with genocide. Either case is pretty obviously absurd. Stop wasting our time floundering about and just admit that you're wrong.

“As for your suggestion that [b]Old Dragons’-Blood whiskey is NOT "good stuff", either the liquors produced in your own nation must be of very high quality indeed — a hypothesis that I might put to the test on some future occasion — or you are as lacking in good taste as you are in honesty… and I know which of those possibilities I consider the more likely…
Now, sirrah, will you answer my question: Swords, or pistols? My second will be Colonel Balthasar Balthasar, the St Edmundan representative at UN DEFCON, who is currently on an official visit to my offices here and whom your second — assuming that you are actually able to find somebody who is willing to stand beside you in this matter — will therefore probably be able to find without too much trouble in order to make the arrangements for our next meeting: Shall I advise him to expect such a call? Or are you lacking in honour, too?”
No call shall come. This is pure, straightforward bullying trying to pretend that it is anything to do with honour, and I shall not be bullied in this manner.

(OOC: sorry this is taking so long. RL descended on me in a big way, and I really need to finish up the current Kawaiian rescue attempt before I can bring HRH back and make Alfred happy :-)

The Democratic Republic of Zyrwick opposes any resolution that would force us to accept trade from countries that we do not wish to trade with, or accept foreigners into our homeland without being processed by our methods.

Further we like Ausserland view that the allowing and/or disallowing of transit, either of goods or persons on our homeland soil is a sacred and involible requirement for national sovereignty to exist in a nation.

As such we must also oppose this proposal.

Alexei Gramiko
Zyrwickian UN Ambassador.

The Democratic Republic of Zyrwick opposes any resolution that would force us to accept trade from countries that we do not wish to trade with, or accept foreigners into our homeland without being processed by our methods.

Further we like Ausserland view that the allowing and/or disallowing of transit, either of goods or persons on our homeland soil is a sacred and involible requirement for national sovereignty to exist in a nation.

As such we must also oppose this proposal.

Alexei Gramiko
Zyrwickian UN Ambassador.

We would appreciate it if the representative of Zyrwick would refrain from misrepresenting our position on issues. Our objection to the proposal as drafted rests solely on its infringement of our right to control the entry of persons into our nation. We have said nothing about goods.

Travilia E. Thwerdock
Ambassador to the United Nations

Then we fully apologize then for misrepresenting your position.

However Our position remains clear. We view it as inherent for national sovereignty to exist in a nation that the government of a nation have control over the entry of persons or goods, into their homeland. We also extend this to include businesses, and corporations under our laws.

Our country is still building Socialism and as such it it vitally important for the continuation of the Zyrwickian Dictatorship of the Proletariat that the government controls the entry of persons, goods and business organizations/corporations of foreign origin.

Alexei Gramiko
Zyrwickian UN Ambassador.

The United States of Philimbesi is prepared to endorse this resolution provided some clarification is given for "other tools of war". Is it not possible for a load of fertilizer on our rail cars bound for our neighboring countries to be used as a "Tool Of War?" Is it to be left up to the discretion of our Department of Security or it's equivalent in the other NSUN nations?

Javar Perez Dequar
UN Ambassador at Large
The United States of Philimbesi

( Very sorry about the delay, folks! )



"Your 'Field of Honour'," and apparently it is possible to make Capital Letters sound unreasonably sarcastic, "is nothing more than an attempt to impose your will on someone you know to have no weapons training. I refuse to submit to such blatant intimidation.”

“And just how was I supposed to know that you lack that training? I knew that there are many nations which don’t require their people to show a decent level of commitment to those lands’ freedom and wellbeing by doing some kind of ‘national service’ before granting them the full rights of citizenship — such as I would expect anybody doing an Ambassador’s job to have — as St Edmund does, but there are so many different nations represented here, differing from each other in so many ways, and your homeland has been of so little relevance to mine before this debate, that — although you, in your apparently overblown sense of self-importance, might feel otherwise — there has been no reason why I should have studied either your own career or your native culture in that much detail before now. However I did feel it quite reasonable to presume that any government which is apparently happy to use a Prince as its main envoy here as yours does would expect all of its other official representatives to display at least some semblance of honourable behaviour, and am disappointed that this seems not to be the case...
As it happens, by the way, the fact that I did my own national service in the Medical Corps rather than in an actual combatant arm of the forces, and that that was several decades ago, means that although I’ve done a little bit more training with the sword from time to time I’m quite out of practice with pistols myself… and, as a traditional St Edmundan saying points out, “Even an old man can use a pistol” — because their use is easy enough, after all, just a matter of cocking the hammer and aiming and pulling the trigger, with little in the way of muscular effort required — so that if you were to choose that weapon for our meeting I wouldn’t really have much of an innate advantage over you in that respect at all and if you actually believe Justice to be as much on your side as you’ve been claiming here then you should be confident of winning.
If you are actually physically incapable of wielding even a pistol then tradition would allow you to send a ‘champion’ in your place, but that would require you to accept the result as legally binding on your own future behaviour and to renounce your opposition to this proposal if victory then fell to me rather than to them, and — to be blunter than I normally would in ‘diplomatic’ situations — I no longer trust that you would be that honourable.”

Most of the obvious explanations start with your grandfather's opponent being already dead, M'sieur.

*Alfred shakes his head slowly from side to side, in resigned recognition of Ifan’s refusal to acknowledge reality.*

And if your invocations of the Name of Justice are so powerful, why couldn't they just tell everyone the truth instead of requiring a farcical combat?
“Justice is mightier than mere humans, of course, and so we can only invoke its influence upon our business rather than — unless we were to resort to much higher levels of personification and outright worship than the Church would be happy with — its actual presence amongst us as a conscious entity in its own right.”

I can't work out whether you're equating my stance or your inconsistent behaviour with genocide. Either case is pretty obviously absurd. Stop wasting our time floundering about and just admit that you're wrong. No call shall come. This is pure, straightforward bullying trying to pretend that it is anything to do with honour, and I shall not be bullied in this manner.

*Still shaking his head, Alfred doesn’t even bother to reply to this rant but turns on his heel and stalks — as well as he can while wearing the penguin costume — away to get another drink…*

_____________________________________________________________________

(OOC: That should be a good point at which to break that conversation, to allow for the few days of subjective time that would pass at the UN before the next draft of this proposal arrives from St Edmund…[/OOC])

(OOC: sorry this is taking so long. RL descended on me in a big way, and I really need to finish up the current Kawaiian rescue attempt before I can bring HRH back and make Alfred happy :-)

( That’s okay, after all I haven’t exactly been able to find plenty of time recently in which to work on my side of this matter either…)

_________________________________________________________________________

The Democratic Republic of Zyrwick opposes any resolution that would force us to accept trade from countries that we do not wish to trade with, or accept foreigners into our homeland without being processed by our methods.
Further we like Ausserland view that the allowing and/or disallowing of transit, either of goods or persons on our homeland soil is a sacred and involible requirement for national sovereignty to exist in a nation. As such we must also oppose this proposal.

Alexei Gramiko
Zyrwickian UN Ambassador.

*Alfred pauses, on his way out to the NSO Saloon, to reply to the remarks of the Zyrwickian ambassador_*

“You would seem to have misread not only the Ausserland government’s response to this proposal but several sections of the actual proposal itself_
Firstly, it would not force you to trade with anybody, because it says nothing at all about requiring you to accept any imports (or, for that matter, to allow the export of any locally-produced goods): It is purely about allowing the shipment of foreign goods through your territories to foreign destinations — and, for that matter, the transit of any goods that you might export through any other nations that lie between your own territories and whatever countries might be their actual destinations.
Secondly, the clauses that would ban unfair discrimination against people involved in this trade implicitly allow you to treat them just as you normally would other foreign visitors [of the same nationalities] in general, so that you would still be able to “process” them by your usual methods… unless, of course, the nature of that “processing” violated any other UN resolutions or any treaties to which your government might be a signatory.”

( “involible”? Do you mean ‘inviolable’? ;) )

We view it as inherent for national sovereignty to exist in a nation that the government of a nation have control over the entry of persons or goods, into their homeland.

“Firstly, again, I point out that it is solely the passage of goods through your nation — rather than their entry into it for sale or other use there — that this proposal would require you to allow. You would still be able to apply your normal ‘border control’ measures to the people who were transporting those goods, assuming those measures did not themselves contravene any other UN resolution… As it happens, however, I believe that the new draft for this proposal that is currently being worked on back home may address the matter of such border controls in greater detail and allow the nations to retain more rights in that respect.
Secondly, whilst a nation would indeed have total control over its borders if it possessed full sovereignty, the simple fact is that — as I have already pointed out to the current representative from Gobbannium — when your government voluntarily joining the United Nations and thus accepted the binding nature of U.N. Resolutions it voluntarily surrendered a part of its sovereignty to this Assembly… Now, there is certainly scope for arguing just how far the UN should go in legislating — and my own government has always held that any fields of activity in which the decisions of any particular national government would normally have no direct effects on any nation other than its own, as opposed to those fields of activity such as International Trade that directly involve interaction between the separate nations, should be left to the national level for legislation — but claiming a right to exercise full national sovereignty while voluntarily remaining a member of this organisation (Presumably your membership here is voluntary?) seems decidedly nonsensical.
Might I enquire whether there are actually any fields of activity for which your government accepts the United Nations as having a right to legislate and, if the answer to that question is “No”, then just what the purpose of your nation’s membership here is? If your intention is simply to try sabotaging this organisation, by opposing every proposal that might be brought forward for potential consideration in the General Assembly, then perhaps you could do us the courtesy of saying so outright so that we could simply take your opposition for granted in future discussions without having to sit through the same arguments time and time again…”

We also extend this to include businesses, and corporations under our laws.

“That’s fine. This proposal would not force you to let any foreign corporations or other businesses actually do business within your nation’s borders, only to let them ship goods through from one border to another… and surely goods in transit are much the same effectively regardless of whether they are owned by a corporation, a business of some other type, a family or individual, or a government…
Does your government really need to have explained to its members the fact that, unless they are actually rejecting the concept of importing and exporting any goods to and from your country altogether, this proposal would not only guarantee other nations the right to ship goods through your territories but also help to protect your own trade against any ideologically-motivated or personally-motivated blockades any other UN member-nations might feel like employing against you?”

Our country is still building Socialism and as such it it vitally important for the continuation of the Zyrwickian Dictatorship of the Proletariat that the government controls the entry of persons, goods and business organizations/corporations of foreign origin.

“Why? I can see that the economic dislocations involved might require limiting imports, and the rights of foreigners as well of natives to do business there, but why should letting foreign goods move through your territories — which, I repeat for the third or fourth time, is all that this proposal would actually require you to do — be any hindrance to your government’s attempts at social engineering? If your regime’s grasp is so tyrannical that even brief contact with foreigners who are transporting goods would provide your people with too great a glimpse of liberty for them to accept the situation, or the sight of goods bound for foreign nations that your people realise your system would deny them the opportunity to acquire themselves would provoke too much unrest, then I suppose that — although my government probably shares my own view that your people would be better off with a freer system instead — you could invoke the “genuine National Security grounds” clause and restrict all of that trade-in-transit to just a few specific “corridors” ( as the government of the RL ‘East Germany’ did with all of the trade that passed through its territories between ‘West Germany’ proper and ‘West Berlin’ …) where you could ensure that the only local people who might get close to it were ones who had been specially selected for political reliability…”

_________________________________________________________________

OOC: My original draft for this proposal, the one that was about 50% over the maximum length allowed and that I cut down to size to produce the second draft which was the first one that I actually showed anybody else, actually included two whole clauses about “corridors” through nations whose governments wanted to minimise their peoples’ exposure to the fact of that foreign trade passing through…

_________________________________________________________________

The United States of Philimbesi is prepared to endorse this resolution provided some clarification is given for "other tools of war". Is it not possible for a load of fertilizer on our rail cars bound for our neighbouring countries to be used as a "Tool Of War?" Is it to be left up to the discretion of our Department of Security or it's equivalent in the other NSUN nations?

Javar Perez Dequar
UN Ambassador at Large
The United States of Philimbesi

“That line is one of the several details within this proposal that my government would most have liked to clarify still further, but that it was kept from expanding upon by a combination of the limited length that is allowed for proposals and the need to make all of the clauses that were finally included as loophole-free as possible. The current wording is in fact itself changed from that of an earlier draft, which simply referred to ‘military equipment’ and was therefore (I think) even more open to wider-than-intended interpretation in the case of potential “dual-use” items such as food or oil or medical supplies or that load of fertilizer: My government’s hope was that the term ‘tools of war’ would be seen more clearly as applying only to those types of goods that are more directly and purely “military” in their roles such as munitions, armoured fighting vehicles, warships and warplanes, weapons-grade Uranium, E.M.P.-resistant electronics, robots with lethal inbuilt weapons, and so on… National governments are free to make claims about what they think this term should cover but, as is explained in Clause 6 of the proposal, the shippers can appeal against them to the ‘UN Free Trade Commission’ and — although I obviously can’t speak for that organisation’s members — I suspect that because the UNFTC was originally established to protect free trade its judgements would probably allow only the most obvious items to be barred…”

( I don’t know how long you’ve actually been involved in NS for but, in case you didn’t already know, the NSUN’s agencies [which may or may not be staffed primarily by Gnomes … ;) ] are generally assumed to be both honest and efficient, so that although we will never actually see their rulings about any disputes it is reasonable to presume that — no matter what weird and wonderful explanations some of the players might come up with to try justifying claims — their decisions will always be based on a common-sense interpretation of the resolutions concerned: Thus, if people want their statements about what the committees are letting them get away with to be widely accepted, they probably face a need to be reasonably plausible in their claims…)


Alfred Devereux Sweynsson MD,
Ambassador to the United Nations
For
The Protectorate of The St Edmundan Antarctic

(and still, although hopefully not for much longer, required to wear this confounded penguin costume…)

_________________________________________________________________


*Alfred leaves the Chamber…*

( Very sorry about the delay, folks! )

“That line is one of the several details within this proposal that my government would most have liked to clarify still further, but that it was kept from expanding upon by a combination of the limited length that is allowed for proposals and the need to make all of the clauses that were finally included as loophole-free as possible. The current wording is in fact itself changed from that of an earlier draft, which simply referred to ‘military equipment’ and was therefore (I think) even more open to wider-than-intended interpretation in the case of potential “dual-use” items such as food or oil or medical supplies or that load of fertilizer: My government’s hope was that the term ‘tools of war’ would be seen more clearly as applying only to those types of goods that are more directly and purely “military” in their roles such as munitions, armoured fighting vehicles, warships and warplanes, weapons-grade Uranium, E.M.P.-resistant electronics, robots with lethal inbuilt weapons, and so on… National governments are free to make claims about what they think this term should cover but, as is explained in Clause 6 of the proposal, the shippers can appeal against them to the ‘UN Free Trade Commission’ and — although I obviously can’t speak for that organisation’s members — I suspect that because the UNFTC was originally established to protect free trade its judgements would probably allow only the most obvious items to be barred…”



In light of that explanation we are prepared to vote for the passage of this resolution.

OOC: Yea, I didn't understand back then thanks...

(And now…)

*Alfred Sweynsson, having re-entered the Assembly chamber several days after his previous appearance (in this thread) there, addresses those of the other Delegates, Ambassadors and other national representatives who have shown enough interest in this topic to gather for the continuation of the discussion about it…*

“Ladies and Gentlemen … and others, my government has now sent a seventh draft of this proposed UN Resolution for your consideration. This differs from its immediate precursor in the following important ways:

Firstly, in sub-clause ‘1.A’, the requirement that any other UN Resolution allowing a ban on the passage of goods would have had to be passed before this one has been dropped: This was not — I most emphatically add — because of any concern for the suggestion about this point that the current spokesman for Gobbannium raised amongst all of his deliberate misunderstandings and other attempts at misdirection, but simply because we have since noticed a potential loophole that would have let any future proposal’s author get around that limitation quite easily anyway and so there seems no point in leaving the word there when the (rather stingy, in our opinion) maximum length allowed for proposed Resolutions means that we have to make every character count...
My government’s first thought about how sanctions could be introduced if these rules were in place was, I have to admit, along similar lines to that suggested here quite recently by the representative of ‘New Avarin’: In the absence of a clear and thorough definition of what a “general type” of goods should be taken as consisting of — such as we really would have liked to include, but reluctantly accepted would not be possible within the length-limit if all of the other details that seemed even more necessary were to be included — it seemed possible that the hypothetical future author would just have had to define “all goods heading to” (and possibly “or from”, as well) all nations of the type against which he or she wished to impose sanctions as constituting “a ‘general type’ of goods, all trade in which shall be illegal within UN member-nations” in order to make those sanctions fully legal… The key difference between this approach and New Avarin’s would have been that as the UNFTC whose job would include settling any relevant disputes is itself a UN-run body it would have had to take such a clause in an actual Resolution as legally binding, whereas it could (and, I think, would) have regarded any attempt by an individual nation at defining a “general type” of goods as loosely as New Avarin’s representative suggested doing as incorrect and therefore as illegal. However, including such a clause in a Resolution would then set a legal precedent for the individual nations to use that strategy, which is something that we would rather avoid, so we reject that idea and would strongly oppose any attempt by anybody else at using it.
An alternative approach to legalising sanctions that we think could be used in any Proposals submitted after this one’s passage, one that we would consider more legitimate — and therefore as preferable for that reason, as well as because it would create far less of a potential loophole for certain nations to exploit — would be for those proposals to say that the actual production of goods in all nations qualifying for sanctions under their terms does not “meet U.N. standards” and thus apply the ban under sub-clause ‘1.F’ of this draft instead… However, if anybody were to try introducing a Resolution that would actually give national governments the right to introduce sanctions against any other nations they chose simply by declaring that those nations’ production processes failed in this way — without requiring them to produce reasonable proof that production in those other nations really did not meet some specific standard that had already been established as binding on the UN’s members by some other Resolution — then we would certainly oppose that attempt.

Secondly, on that general point, although we felt that the term ‘general type’ used in sub-clause ‘1.E.’ should really be seen clearly enough as meaning a genuine ‘type’ that was united by a common nature (such as firearms, for example, or recreational drugs, or cars, or donkeys…) in the absence of any such clause in a further Resolution, rather than possibly as including “nationality of origin” instead — and although the first two representatives of governments other than our own who commented about that clause interpreted it in the sense that we had intended, even though one of the governments was as opposed to this proposal as that of ‘New Avarin’ subsequently revealed itself to be — we have since clarified this clause to make defining goods of a specific national origin as a “general type” somewhat harder to justify as legal.

Thirdly, sub-clause ‘4.A’ has been condensed, and — hopefully — clarified, as was requested by the ambassador from Allech-Atreus.

And fourthly, and (probably) most importantly, we have responded to the very strong unhappiness that the representatives here of several nations — including our old friends in Ausserland — expressed about the earlier drafts’ potential clash with their views on the interaction between international action and National Sovereignty: For this purpose we have added a new sub-clause, number ‘4.E’, in the hope that this will be enough to satisfy their concerns in this respect...
The wording of this clause would now allow nations to retain and exercise full sovereignty in the matter of who they allowed across their borders but should also, I think, still be effective enough at deterring biased, hostile or simply ‘frivolous’ actions such as those that my own nation’s government has always intended this proposal to prevent.
BEFORE anybody starts screaming about this sub-clause’s requirement for nations to pay any fair costs involved in replacing any goods-transporting personnel whose entry they ban, I will point out that it only applies if those nations’ governments can not produce any fair reason for that ban: Excluding people for genuine reasons of National Security would certainly still be possible without any such costs being payable, and so too would excluding anybody involved in this trade whom you would have barred from your territories for some other reason — such as their having a serious criminal record, for example, or their currently carrying an infectious disease — if they had applied for entry permission for some reason other than involvement in the transport of goods… but excluding any foreigners who are involved in this trade for ‘unfair’ reasons such as wanting to put undue pressure on their nation or employers, because your government just doesn’t like their homeland’s government, or simply because one of your officials at the border doesn’t like that particular foreigner’s face (or didn’t receive a high enough bribe from that particular foreigner), will now mean that there is a price that you have to pay. My government feels that some such restriction is absolutely necessary in order to protect international trade in the way that this proposed Resolution is intended to do, because allowing nations the right to ban foreign freight-movers arbitrarily without setting any such counter-balance would mean that governments could effectively bar the passage of goods through their territories — despite the proposal’s ‘Clause 1’[/i] — simply by barring every foreigner who was sent to move those goods and then quoting an impossibly high price for any of their own people to do that job instead. We are open to suggestions about improving the wording of this section, and possibly even to the idea of replacing it with some alternative (but just as effective) way of helping to guarantee the free flow of goods across borders, but are absolutely adamant that whatever the precise wording in whatever version of this proposal finally reaches quorum says in this general respect it must include some effective way of stopping the use of nations’ sovereign right to restrict the entry of foreigners as an unfair way of restricting the transit of goods… Therefore, as far as we are concerned, this sub-clause must be seen as an all-or-nothing matter and if too many nations object to the requirement involved for its inclusion then we would have to withdraw the associated right as well...”


[b]International Transit of Goods

Category: Free Trade
Strength: Significant

Description: The United Nations,

RECOGNISING that international trade can allow nations and peoples to benefit from access to wider ranges of materials and products than exist locally,

NOTING that this may require the movement of goods through intermediate nations between their origins and their destinations,

ACCEPTING that governments may reasonably wish to limit trade in certain types of goods due to concerns such as public safety or environmental protection,

REGRETTING that some governments may also try to restrict international trade for more selfish reasons, for example to exert undue pressure on other nations;

1. DECLARES that no nation may forbid the passage of any goods through its territory, from foreign nation to foreign nation, unless any of the following apply:
A. The ban is allowed or required by another current U.N. Resolution;
B. The nation is at war with the goods’ nation of origin, the previous or next nation on their planned route, or their planned destination;
C. Either the nation of origin or the planned destination is neither in the U.N. nor voluntarily complying fully with these rules;
D. The goods are weapons or other ‘tools of war’ that there is good reason to think would be used for acts of state aggression or genocide;
E. Trade in goods of that general type (NOT ‘that nationality’) is illegal there;
F. The goods are stolen property, their production breached valid property rights, or that production’s conditions did not meet U.N. standards;

2. ACCEPTS that nations may inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, except when this forbidden due to diplomatic immunity or by treaties those nations have signed, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade;

3. DECLARES that nations may not charge any customs duties, special ‘transit taxes’, or other tariffs, on goods that are only in transit through their territories rather than meant for sale or other use there, unless in Customs Unions with those goods’ planned destinations;

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people or vehicles involved in this trade, and limit the routes through their territories that are open to foreigners for this trade, for genuine National Security reasons;
B. Require the people involved to have adequate training in relevant skills;
C. Require all beasts or vehicles used to be of general types that are legal there, and to meet proper safety and environmental standards;
D. Require the use of adequate safety measures, including proper labelling of all goods, in this trade;
E. Ban the passage of any foreigners involved in this trade without giving fair reasons, IF they then meet all fair costs involved in replacing those personnel suitably;

5. DECLARES that nations must not _
A. Set limits based on where people trained, membership in civilian organisations, special licences, or where beasts or non-‘rail’ vehicles originated or are registered;
B. Require that people involved be in any organisation;
C. Otherwise discriminate unfairly, on the basis of nationality, against people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade;
D. Discriminate unfairly against people, beasts or vehicles in this trade, as compared to those either in import/export trade at their borders or in purely domestic trade within them;

6. ASSIGNS the U.N. Free Trade Commission the right and duty to judge any international disputes about these rules.

( = 3’494 characters?)


“And, of course, various minor alterations have been made to the wording and phrasing of various other clauses, too, either to tighten-up and polish the text slightly or just to free the additional characters that were needed for making the more important changes…”


Alfred Devereux Sweynsson MD,
Ambassador to the United Nations
for
The Protectorate of The St Edmundan Antarctic
(and still — although hopefully not, now, for very much longer — required to wear this blasted penguin costume…)”

Re-submitting it again today, using a puppet, as the list's very short at the moment...

OOC
Well, this time around it received 34 approvals before running out of time... although there were a few more delegates who'd almost certainly have approved it too if I'd asked them individually.
I'm not giving up on the idea altogether, but evidently a TG campaign definitely will be needed for getting it to quorum and I just can't spend long enough online at a time to manage such a project... So, unless several of the more pro-trade people around here are willing to volunteer for the job (although in some cases that would have to be seen as purely OOC, because there are nations here whose help the government of St Edmund would no longer consider accepting IC...), we seem to have reached an impasse.

In the meantime, I'm going to fix a loophole that recent events have revealed (namely that its reference to goods moving across nations' territories "from foreign nation to foreign nation" would actually have let nations block the passage of goods between international waters and their own territories) and make a few more small changes. The current version of the next draft, which might need trimming slightly to fit inside the limit (as my last version, despite being short enough according to this computer, did...) is here...

International Transit of Goods
A resolution to reduce barriers to free trade and commerce.

Category: Free Trade
Strength: Significant
Proposed by: This might be a puppet

Description: The United Nations,

RECOGNISING that international trade allows nations and peoples to benefit from access to wider ranges of materials and products than exist locally,

NOTING that this may require the movement of goods through intermediate nations between their origins and their destinations,

ACCEPTING that governments may justifiably wish to limit trade in certain types of goods for reasons such as public safety or environmental protection,

REGRETTING that some governments may also try to restrict international trade for more selfish reasons, for example to exert undue pressure on other nations;

1. DECLARES that no nation may forbid the passage of any goods that are destined for another nation through its territories, unless any of the following apply:
A. The ban is allowed or required by another active U.N. Resolution;
B. They are at war with the goods’ nation of origin, the previous or next nation on the planned route, or the intended destination;
C. Either the nation of origin or the intended destination is not in the U.N. and not voluntarily complying fully with these rules;
D. The goods are weapons or other ‘tools of war’ that there is good reason to think would be used for acts of state aggression or genocide;
E. Trade in goods of that general type (NOT ‘that nationality’) is illegal there;
F. The goods are stolen property, their production breached valid property rights, or that production’s conditions did not meet U.N. standards;

2. ACCEPTS that nations may inspect goods in transit through their territories for legality and safety, except when this is forbidden due to diplomatic immunity or by treaties they have signed, but insists that this process must be kept reasonable and not used unfairly to impede legal trade;

3. DECLARES that nations may not charge any customs duties, special ‘transit taxes’, or other tariffs, on goods that are only in transit through their territories rather than meant for sale or other use there, unless in Customs Unions with those goods’ intended destinations;

4. ACCEPTS that nations may _
A. Restrict the nationalities of the people or vehicles involved in this trade, and limit the routes through their territories that foreigners may use for this trade, for genuine National Security reasons;
B. Require the people involved to have adequate training in relevant skills;
C. Require that all beasts or vehicles used be of general types that are legal there and meet proper safety and environmental standards;
D. Require the use of adequate safety measures, including proper labelling of all goods, in this trade;

5. DECLARES that nations must not _
A. Set limits based on where people trained, membership in civilian bodies, special licences, or where beasts or non-‘rail’ vehicles originated or are registered;
B. Require that people involved be in any organisation;
C. Otherwise discriminate unfairly, on the basis of nationality, against people, beasts or vehicles involved in this trade;
D. Discriminate unfairly against people, beasts or vehicles in this trade, as compared to those either in import/export trade at their borders or in purely domestic trade within them;

6. DECLARES that if a nation prohibits the entry of any person involved in this trade without giving a fair reason for doing so then it must meet all fair costs involved in suitably replacing that person;

7. GIVES the U.N. Free Trade Commission the right and duty to judge any international disputes about these rules.