New Catalog covers and info- cover/info not final

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by JD, Dec 21, 2010.

  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Well, all we know is that she did before Destiny. As I said, circumstances afterward are substantially different.

    :wtf: Has anyone been claiming that? If so, I must've missed it. If that were the case, I'd say it's misunderstanding the situation, not being corrupt. I can't imagine why anyone would perceive Bacco as corrupt in any way.


    No, but in your previous post you asked whether, in a hypothetical situation where she did know that, she would be willing to risk "inevitable war" by uncovering the truth. I'm saying that I reject the premise that war is the inevitable result in that scenario. You're the one who posed it as a hypothetical, so I don't get why you're now objecting that it doesn't conform to the facts.
     
  2. kkozoriz1

    kkozoriz1 Fleet Captain

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    Bacco knows about Ross and his part in removing Zife from office. That's why she forced him to resign. She also knows that shortly afterwards Zife and a number of other people disappeared. It doesn't take Perry mason to see that those two just might be connected in some way. Bacco doesn't order an investigation. She doesn't have Ross interrogated to find out all that he knew and who else was involved. She accepts his resignation and sweeps the whole thing under the rug.

    This isn't some random killing we're talking about. It's about members of the military, and Starfleet is the Federation's military although they are mich more than that, forcing an elected official from office and he is later killed. Imagine that happeing a 21st century democracy and tell me that its acceptable. If she doesn`t investigate then she`s guilty of dereliction of duty at the least and of being an accomplice after the fact at worst. Either way, she should be doing something. If the Federation cannot stand the truth of it`s actions then it is a corrupt organization. As my parents told me when I was growing up, if you make a mistake, you stand up and you accept the concequences of your actions.
     
  3. David cgc

    David cgc Admiral Premium Member

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    No, but you turn on the lights, and the roaches scatter. Just exposing Section 31 wouldn't do anything. It'd just mean that Bureau 13 would pop up a couple years later and continue the good work of sending out bio-weapons and committing false-flag attacks to hire Augments. If you wanted to really stop them, you'd need to know them well enough to cripple their ability to operate before you exposed them. That means you'd need to be able to implicate a significant number of cells, and if there's any kind of central authority, you'd need to get them, too.

    And anyone who went sniffing around would probably be discovered by a 31 patsy and become the victim of some sort of accident unless they were very, very careful. Hence, too powerful to get to.
     
  4. kkozoriz1

    kkozoriz1 Fleet Captain

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    Starfleet has known of their existance since at least the time of Archer. If they can`t at least put a dent into Section 31 in 225 years then how seriously are they taking it?

    Bashier is also being an idiot about this. All the times that Section 31 has contacted him and he doesn`t even consider the possibility that they`re involved in ZSG. Ohh, soulmate! Zing go the heartstrings. Flush goes the brain. You would thatnk that he`d be reasonably suspicious of any sort of undercover or intelligence work that came his way.

    If the roaches are so bad that they`re in your walls then you can strip the walls down the the bare wood and exterminate them from there. Section 31 needs resources to do what they do. They`re not operating in a vacuum.

    "Interesting, isn't it? The Federation claims to abhor Section 31's tactics, but when they need the dirty work done, they look the other way. It's a tidy little arrangement, wouldn't you say?"- Odo (DS9: "The Dogs of War")
     
  5. David cgc

    David cgc Admiral Premium Member

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    Well, how do you suggest brute-forcing 31 outside the metaphor? Putting everyone under surveillance so it's impossible to have a clandestine meeting?
     
  6. kkozoriz1

    kkozoriz1 Fleet Captain

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    Taking the viewpoint that since Section 31 will simply scatter so it`s best not to do anything at all doesn`t really solve the problem, does it? "They`re too secreative, we`ll never catch them. Oh well, at least we didn`t try."

    You don`t need to put everone under survellance. They are getting support somewhere. They manage to travel off planet, make subspace communcations. Starfleet has had over 200 years to try and figure out at least a few ways of cutting them off. Whatever happened to Kirk`s group dedicated to stamping them out? Thought that they couldn`t risk tipping off S31 so they just hung out in the Rec Dec and ate nachos and planned operations that they`d never carry out?
     
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Yes, and I said as much in the paragraph immediately after the one you quoted. I'm refuting the assertion that Vaughn didn't reveal what he knew because he was afraid of S31's overarching power. I'm saying that the real reason is because he knew they would scatter if he made the announcement prematurely, because he was biding his time until he was in a position to take them down.
     
  8. Arpy

    Arpy Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The former President of the United Federation of Planets disappears and there isn't a massive society-rocking investigation and years of malaise and conspiracy-theorizing afterward? Could you imagine what would happen if Obama resigned tomorrow and disappeared shortly thereafter?
     
  9. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I apologize, I was being unclear. This is essentially a continuation of a debate that's been touched upon in other threads by kkozoriz1 and I.

    No, it's not. You are mis-remembering A Time for War, A Time for Peace and Articles of the Federation.

    Bacco knew about the role Ross played in forcing Zife to resign before she even came into office. It was why she allowed him to serve as Starfleet Liaison to the Office of the President -- that whole "keep your enemies closer" thing. If he's nearby, she can keep an eye on him and all that. That exposing his coup would risk triggering a war with the Klingons was also why she didn't act against him for it.

    She forced Ross to retire -- not resign, as she noted that a resignation could be revoked or lead to continued employment in a position of authority, but retirement means he'll be in no position to wield any power or authority -- because journalist Ozla Graniv uncovered the fact that Ross forced Zife out at gunpoint and believed, erroneously, that Ross killed him. So far as we know, this is what Bacco believes as well. Graniv and Bacco both remain unaware of the role Section 31 played in Zife's assassination.

    Again, because in her judgment the costs of a potential war with the Klingons outweighed the benefits of a full investigation and trial, Bacco and Graniv both forced Ross's retirement, with the provisio that he never ever put himself in any position of power or influence again.

    That's a decidedly un-charitable interpretation of events. You might as well complain of Captain Picard allowing an admitted murderer to serve as his chief of security aboard the Enterprise-D -- you're only presenting half the stor and doing so in a deeply unfair manner.

    Meanwhile, in the real world, leaders understand something: Millions of innocent lives depend on situations of political stability and peace. And political stability is often a much more precarious thing than it is ever given credit for; spending any amount of time studying societies undergoing or which have recently undergone major civil wars, genocides, government repression, or other instances of major conflict will make it abundantly clear that society is often never more than a few irresponsible decisions by political elites away from utter instability and anarchy.

    And leaders -- good ones, anyway -- understand that lives depend on avoiding that sort of instability and anarchy. That lives depend on maintaining the peace. That it is fundamentally immoral to risk upsetting stability sometimes when millions of lives are at stake.

    Just look over the WikiLeaks trove of U.S. State Department cables, and you'll see why rational political actors tend to favor stability over war.

    It's all well and good to talk about what they "ought" to do, but when you're talking about getting millions killed, that's a fundamentally irresponsible thing to do.

    In the time of Archer, Section 31 is a hell of a lot more benign. And bear in mind that we don't know how events will play out in the ENT Relaunch -- it's entirely possible that Archer, Trip, T'Pol, and Reed will come to believe that Section 31 has been disbanded by the time the Federation is founded. We probably shouldn't presume continuous knowledge of the existence of Section 31 outside its ranks from the 22nd Century onwards.

    It's the United Federation of Planets. It's a society that's been so honest and so successful, the overwhelming majority of its citizenry probably literally wouldn't know how to react to real corruption of the sort Section 31 represents and likely wouldn't believe it exists anymore. (Seriously, Federates are awfully quick to rant about how much more evolved they are than those awful corrupt societies that neighbor them.)

    That is, indeed, what the foreshadowing in the Section 31 miniseries seems to be implying will eventually happen. And I would suggest you would enjoy the framing sequence of ENT: The Good That Men Do.

    Well, up until the Borg Invasion, at least, only one journalist is known to have gone looking for him. That doesn't mean that any others didn't though -- it would be relatively simple for someone to fake Zife's continued existence for the purposes of P.R. Have a hologram of him appear at the opening of the Min Zife Federation Presidential Library or what-have-you. (David Mack posted once on the Psi Phi BBS saying that if he were to re-write anything of his already published, he would re-write A Time to Heal to make it clear that Section 31 or one of their allies has been making fake Min Zife public appearances. Because I agree that the idea of no one noticing that the former President hasn't been seen since he resigned, I tend to accept that as "canonical" for the purposes of the Destinyverse novels.)

    To be fair, Min Zife seems to have become almost universally despised within the Federation by the end of his time in office, so it would actually be more akin to George W. Bush resigning and then never appearing in public again. And given how rarely he's appeared in the media since, I do wonder if anyone would even notice.

    Post Destiny, though, I think we can probably assume that Min Zife's continued disappearance would go unnoticed in the wake of the Borg Invasion and would probably be attributed to that.
     
  10. kkozoriz1

    kkozoriz1 Fleet Captain

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    OK, Ross was forced to retire rather than resign. He gets his pension then.

    How is it uncharitable to point out that she's allowing Ross, whom you just referred to as her enemy, to simply walk away with no consequences? You keep claiming that to expose Zife's actions will inevitably lead to war with the Klingons. It can be pointed out that the perpetrators have all been arrested and will face justice for their crimes. Imagine what will happen when the Klingons not only find out about the source of the weapons but that the Federation lied about it and covered it up?

    Well, at least the Federation government doesn't want to upset the delicate sensibilities of it's citizens. I guess it's a fungus-ocracy. Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.

    How convenient for everyone involved in Zife's murder that the Borg invaded when the did then. I'll bet they're breathing a sigh of relief. I wonder what other crimes will be covered up by the Borg invasion?
     
  11. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Because it does not acknowledge that that decision is being made not because she wishes for him to escape without consequence, nor because she in some way benefits from the cover-up, but because of her judgment that doing so saves lives and prevents an unnecessary war. You're painting it as a morally simplistic decision done for seemingly selfish purposes when it is no such thing.

    No, I keep claiming that Bacco has concluded that this is what will happen and that this is what informs her subsequent decisions.

    Certainly there is a risk involved in her decision to perpetuate the cover-up. This does not mean that in her view, a cover-up with the potential for a subsequent war is not a better option than an open inquiry leading inevitably to war.

    It would be more accurate to say that President Bacco doesn't want to unroot the peace that exists between the Federation and the Klingon Empire and sunder an alliance that has managed to save millions of lives over the decades. This isn't about the domestic situation, this is about preserving relations with a foreign state.

    Once again, you paint this as a corrupt decision made out of an attempt to control the Federation citizenry and subvert democracy, when it is no such thing. It's an attempt to preserve a good relationship with a foreign state -- and do remember that Bacco ran on the platform of preserving the Federation-Klingon alliance -- and to avoid a war that would kill millions of innocent Federates.

    Now, you may disagree with her calculation that an open inquiry would inevitably lead to war. But this does not mean that Bacco's motives are corrupt or part of any attempt to systematically keep the populace in the dark and subvert democracy.

    If you actually read the damn books, you'd know that none of those characters are breathing any sigh of relief. :rolleyes:
     
  12. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    How did we get from a thread about new covers to this?
     
  13. BrotherBenny

    BrotherBenny Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Because there's no more information on the covers or blurbs coming out. It diverged and there is nothing to bring it back on topic yet.
     
  14. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    But none of the upcoming books covered in the thread pertains to Section 31 or the aftermath of Tezwa. So it's hard to remember how it ever drifted onto those topics in the first place.
     
  15. Snaploud

    Snaploud Admiral Admiral

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    The original post had links to book descriptions. The book descriptions led to a discussion of whether or not trek currently suffers from "small universe syndrome," and the latest tangent of that discussion has been about how so many main characters appear to be aware of the "secret" organization Section 31 (with Tezwa being an example used in that tangential discussion).
     
  16. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'll be honest, at first I thought this was the Zero Sum Game thread, until I double checked the title.