The Federation has no law against genocide?

[uniderth]

And as you point out we don't know if Deneb V was a Federation member. So if General Order 7 is the only death penalty on the Federation books logic would seem to indicate Deneb V isn't a Federation Member.

The death penalty left on our books may refer to the Federation books not a individual planet's books. So while a crime might not carry the death penalty according to the Federation, an individual member world might have a different say on the matter.

 

[Tenacity]

And while both can plead insanity, this goes double for M-5/Daystrom.

Could the M5 plead insanity? It placed it's own survivial above that of other sapient beings, even those who weren't threating it. Egotisical yes, but insane?

As for Daystrom, I could see him facing a variety of criminal charges (once he's "better") but I don't see him directly facing murder charges.

MENDEZ: And to do so is the only death penalty left on our books. Only Fleet Command knows why.

I take that to be referring specifically to internal Starfleet regulations/laws. And not policy which is Federation wide.

 

[publiusr]

After the Rwandan genocide--where a lot of people took part--hand to hand machete fighting....we saw a lot of folks locked up.

I seem to remember Amanpour at a prison that itself looked like a death camp. There were children here. Every once and awhile, some local who was a UN rep would read some highfalutin speech about how awful everyone was.

It seemed out of place there.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Could the M5 plead insanity? It placed it's own survivial above that of other sapient beings, even those who weren't threating it. Egotisical yes, but insane?

That would depend on whether M5 itself qualifies as sentient.

If yes, then M5 could presumably be charged (and also plead). If no, then Daystrom must take the blame for all of M5's actions.

 

[Timo]

The computer's killing spree does appear fundamentally insane. The attack against the Woden has no rational basis apparent (and here Kirk goes out and says Daystrom would be accused of murder had there been crew aboard; presumably he is being accused of the destruction of the ship, then). The killing of the engineer may or may not be murder, but if it is, then it's murder for murder's sake. And M-5 has no rational reason to think the four starships pose a threat to it, as they operate under a friendly flag and furthermore broadcast their intent which M-5 acknowledges. Daystrom's musings about self-defense don't really apply to the situation, any of the situations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Overlord]

No government can be forced to sign, because it doesn't matter IF they sign. The law applies to all, like it or not.

The Cardassian Union was able to commit genocidal acts on Bajor for 60 years and no one tried to use interstellar law to stop them.

Interstellar law is like international law, it is meaningless if no one enforces it.

 

[Timo]

Did Cardassia do something particularly nasty? They had punitive massacres, but Klingons supposedly do those all the time ("Errand of Mercy") and get no flak from it. They had at least one labor camp that apparently produced nothing but death, but different cultures are allowed different methods of dealing with their criminals (we see some pretty horrid ones), and different definitions of criminal. And no campaign of genocide was evident - Cardassians loved having Bajorans around for that slavery stuff. Or voluntary paid labor, or whatever they called it.

It would appear that since (UFP) interstellar law does exist and is referred to, it has been formulated so as not to embarrass those who have to pretend to be wielding it evenly. But even if Cardassians were total pushovers (and they appear to be, as per "The Wounded"!) and could trivially be made to feel the full wrath of the law, their actual offenses might not rate all that highly in the sordid galactic context.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Overlord]

Did Cardassia do something particularly nasty? They had punitive massacres, but Klingons supposedly do those all the time ("Errand of Mercy") and get no flak from it. They had at least one labor camp that apparently produced nothing but death, but different cultures are allowed different methods of dealing with their criminals (we see some pretty horrid ones), and different definitions of criminal. And no campaign of genocide was evident - Cardassians loved having Bajorans around for that slavery stuff. Or voluntary paid labor, or whatever they called it.

It would appear that since (UFP) interstellar law does exist and is referred to, it has been formulated so as not to embarrass those who have to pretend to be wielding it evenly. But even if Cardassians were total pushovers (and they appear to be, as per "The Wounded"!) and could trivially be made to feel the full wrath of the law, their actual offenses might not rate all that highly in the sordid galactic context.

Timo Saloniemi

Well 15 million dead Bajorans is not a small number. There was also rape and sex slavery.

Plus it did seem like the Central Command's plan was to work the Bajoran population to death to make room for Cardassians to colonialize the planet. It was not a plan to kill as many Bajorans as they could right away, but they still seemed to have a nasty end game.

Interstellar law is pretty useless if it only bans the most extreme crimes, like blowing up planets and is designed to allow governments with no respect for others to save face and get away with pretty nasty stuff.

 

[STR]

The problem with genocide laws is that we expect genocide requires intent and prolonged periods of activity carrying out that intent. Kevin was powerful enough to commit genocide as a crime of passion, in a split-second. What would be for us a momentary loss of control - a mitigating factor if, say, you killed the person who murdered your lover - was enough time for him to do the same to a whole species. Yet the loss of control was the same - there was no pogrom, no gas chambers or mass graves as we expect with genocide, just a man for an instant mad with rage for the death of his wife, and with the power to kill on a massive scale.

Hence Picard's statement. We can't judge that. We can't wield that amount of power ourselves, even if we can understand Kevin's motives - COULD he have stopped himself? He's not human, he may think as fast as Data and thus have had time to reflect on what he was doing... or not. We just aren't equipped to say if what he did was deliberate or spur of the moment.

And yes, as others have said, even if we judge him guilty - how the hell do you hold him?

Just wanted to say this is the perfect argument here. I think it covers every base.

To build on it, perhaps there is a legal carve out for entities such as Kevin, or Q. Such a law would make sense, as you cannot hold them responsible for their actions, and any attempt to do so may just provoke their wrath (at tremendous cost of lives). So any aggressively stupid prosecutor is simply barred from pressing charges.

Law, ultimately, is meant to stabilize society and promote justice for as many as possible. It is in the best interest of both of those goals, to simply treat these kinds of things as forces of nature. Just leave them be, and hope there is a Continuum or Trelane's mom out there to police themselves.

I might also add, that arrest itself would be tricky beyond the practicalities of restraining the individual. Q, even if he's appearing right in front of you, isn't really in your jurisdiction. He's not actually there, any more than he is or isn't anywhere else. He's not corporial. Technically, you'd probably have to petition the Continuum for extradition, and good luck finding a place fo deliver your summons, never mind getting them to answer it.

At which point you have a Chambers v God (Google it, it's an actual case) situation.

 

[DonIago]

The fact is the Cardassians got away with treating Bajor as they did because nobody cared enough to risk war with the Cardassians in order to stop them.

 

[The Overlord]

The fact is the Cardassians got away with treating Bajor as they did because nobody cared enough to risk war with the Cardassians in order to stop them.

Which speaks to my point, things like international or interstellar law only mean something if they are enforced.

The Federation could not stop Cardassian crimes on Bajor, there is no way Picard could have done anything to punish a god like being like Kevin.

 

[Nyotarules]

The fact is the Cardassians got away with treating Bajor as they did because nobody cared enough to risk war with the Cardassians in order to stop them.

The Bajorans were not part of the Federation. The Federation are not the galactic police or 'The Founders' of the Alpha/Beta quadrant. The Romulans and The Klingons do not treat their subject non Klingon species any better than the Cardessians did. If the Feds were to interfere despotic regimes treatment of others, outside the Federation they would always be at war.
Saudi Arabia/Yemen/Qatar has a terrible human rights record, subjugates 'third world' foreign labour in and has a terrible record of treating women; anyone fancy going to war over that?

 

[Timo]

Well 15 million dead Bajorans is not a small number.

It's still just a number. An angry Bajoran number at that, from "The Darkness and the Light". What does it mean? That without the occupation, nobody would have died? Mortality in humanoid species tends to be 100% in all circumstances. The rest is interpretation.

There was also rape and sex slavery.

There's that in the United States today. Whether in smaller or greater amount, it's hard to tell. Whether the US government is more or less involved, again hard to tell. The "problem" with televised Trek is that everything seen is peanuts: there are extremely few people involved in X because actors are expensive. We see about four officers abuse their powers while assigned abroad, which is definitely below the US average (or Dutch, or Malaysian, insert-a-nation, insert-a-corporation).

Plus it did seem like the Central Command's plan was to work the Bajoran population to death to make room for Cardassians to colonialize the planet. It was not a plan to kill as many Bajorans as they could right away, but they still seemed to have a nasty end game.

Where does this come from? Only one Cardassian ever spoke like that, and this was the fake Gul Darhe'el who only pretended to have been cruel. The real deal might have held similar sentiments or then not; might have been under Central Command or Detapa orders or then acting alone; might have been power-mad like Nazi Gauleiters or then merely mad but without powers.

Even Gul Dukat in his moments of utter madness in "Waltz" only spoke of slaughtering Bajorans in the "what if?" or "perhaps we should have" sense.

Mind you, the writers danced with great virtuosity here. They never outright established the Cardassians as "as bad as the Nazis" or "this much worse than the Ottomans" or "almost as cruel as the Crusaders" or anything. Everything was left ambiguous, open to interpretation, open to comparison with one's preferred real world conflict. And Bajorans were never given a free pass: they were a bunch of religious fanatics, ruthless terrorists, spineless collaborators, demonic opportunists, and sometimes all four simultaneously. Projecting real world conflicts on them was made maximally easy and minimally unambiguous as well. So we won't find objective proof of Cardassian war crimes or Bajoran ruthless terror doctrines, because the elimination of the objective viewpoint is how the writers make DS9 feel so real.

Interstellar law is pretty useless if it only bans the most extreme crimes, like blowing up planets and is designed to allow governments with no respect for others to save face and get away with pretty nasty stuff.

Comparison to real world international law would seem to support this (the fact that it indeed is useless, that is).

The fact is the Cardassians got away with treating Bajor as they did because nobody cared enough to risk war with the Cardassians in order to stop them.

What "risking of war"? The UFP was at war with the Union for several years during the latter's occupation of Bajor. And we know it was pretty much Gatling guns against sharpened avocados, as per "The Wounded": Bajor could have been liberated with little effort.

But probably not without bloodshed, as even people armed with sharpened avocados can die en masse even if they can't kill much.

Anyway, the reason great powers don't crush petty dictatorships is other great powers. Would the UFP crushing Cardassia have given the Klingons an advantage at a bad moment, perhaps? Even if only by establishing the UFP as the crushing type, thus depriving it of any moral superiority vs. the Klingon Empire.

We don't really know the UFP's attitude towards wars against petty foreign dictatorships. Significantly, there is no canon declaration of even a single year of peace for the Federation; it seems they are constantly at war with at least half a dozen opponents, and nobody but the actual frontline troops even notices, not when the enemies are as petty as Cardassia... Is this because everybody wants war with the UFP (possibly knowing that there will be no crushing involved, even though victory is out of the question), or because the UFP wants war with everybody?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Overlord]

It's still just a number. An angry Bajoran number at that, from "The Darkness and the Light". What does it mean? That without the occupation, nobody would have died? Mortality in humanoid species tends to be 100% in all circumstances. The rest is interpretation.



There's that in the United States today. Whether in smaller or greater amount, it's hard to tell. Whether the US government is more or less involved, again hard to tell. The "problem" with televised Trek is that everything seen is peanuts: there are extremely few people involved in X because actors are expensive. We see about four officers abuse their powers while assigned abroad, which is definitely below the US average (or Dutch, or Malaysian, insert-a-nation, insert-a-corporation).



Where does this come from? Only one Cardassian ever spoke like that, and this was the fake Gul Darhe'el who only pretended to have been cruel. The real deal might have held similar sentiments or then not; might have been under Central Command or Detapa orders or then acting alone; might have been power-mad like Nazi Gauleiters or then merely mad but without powers.

Even Gul Dukat in his moments of utter madness in "Waltz" only spoke of slaughtering Bajorans in the "what if?" or "perhaps we should have" sense.

Mind you, the writers danced with great virtuosity here. They never outright established the Cardassians as "as bad as the Nazis" or "this much worse than the Ottomans" or "almost as cruel as the Crusaders" or anything. Everything was left ambiguous, open to interpretation, open to comparison with one's preferred real world conflict. And Bajorans were never given a free pass: they were a bunch of religious fanatics, ruthless terrorists, spineless collaborators, demonic opportunists, and sometimes all four simultaneously. Projecting real world conflicts on them was made maximally easy and minimally unambiguous as well. So we won't find objective proof of Cardassian war crimes or Bajoran ruthless terror doctrines, because the elimination of the objective viewpoint is how the writers make DS9 feel so real.



Comparison to real world international law would seem to support this (the fact that it indeed is useless, that is).



What "risking of war"? The UFP was at war with the Union for several years during the latter's occupation of Bajor. And we know it was pretty much Gatling guns against sharpened avocados, as per "The Wounded": Bajor could have been liberated with little effort.

But probably not without bloodshed, as even people armed with sharpened avocados can die en masse even if they can't kill much.

Anyway, the reason great powers don't crush petty dictatorships is other great powers. Would the UFP crushing Cardassia have given the Klingons an advantage at a bad moment, perhaps? Even if only by establishing the UFP as the crushing type, thus depriving it of any moral superiority vs. the Klingon Empire.

We don't really know the UFP's attitude towards wars against petty foreign dictatorships. Significantly, there is no canon declaration of even a single year of peace for the Federation; it seems they are constantly at war with at least half a dozen opponents, and nobody but the actual frontline troops even notices, not when the enemies are as petty as Cardassia... Is this because everybody wants war with the UFP (possibly knowing that there will be no crushing involved, even though victory is out of the question), or because the UFP wants war with everybody?

Timo Saloniemi

But then where does interstellar law draw the line into something being illegal? If the Cardassians can get away with everything they did on Bajor (we can argue how cruel their actions, but the both shows almost always puts the Occupation in a bad light), how much worse can another government's actions be before interstellar law does anything?

If the Romulans went some other planet and killed a quarter of the population, is there anything interstellar law can do or does it do nothing because the Romulans are a powerful Empire and they can ignore it at their leisure?

This why the idea that interstellar law should apply to Kevin and not the Cardassians or the Romulans is ridiculous, in theory the Federation could do something against these empires, because at least they are the same power level.

Kevin is a god like being, the Federation doesn't have the death penalty and even if it did, it has no way to kill Kevin. So that leaves putting Kevin in prison, which he can leave anytime he wants or he can transform the cell into anything he desires, that is not a punishment, its nothing.

So the Federation is going put someone in prison, having a cell and assigning guards to guard him till the end of time, who can leave that cell whenever he feels like it or transform the cell into anything he wants and could decide to kill everyone in the Federation if he felt like it, to punish him for killing an alien race they never heard of before.

That is a pointless waste of time and resources, Picard made the right decision to just leave him alone, just be glad Kevin had some moral compass and count your blessings.

 

[Timo]

But then where does interstellar law draw the line into something being illegal? If the Cardassians can get away with everything they did on Bajor (we can argue how cruel their actions, but the both shows almost always puts the Occupation in a bad light), how much worse can another government's actions be before interstellar law does anything

Generally speaking, ITRW it would be "worse than what we the signatory members expect to be doing ourselves in the medium-term future, except when we reign so supreme that we can dodge charges simply by staring at our would-be accusers real hard". Which is why mass murder as such isn't outlawed, say - only certain special types of it, not including useful signatory maneuvers such as carpet bombing or the occasional nuking.

If the Romulans went some other planet and killed a quarter of the population, is there anything interstellar law can do or does it do nothing because the Romulans are a powerful Empire and they can ignore it at their leisure?

Since in ST6 there exists this UFP interstellar law that doesn't appear to sway the Klingons, we could argue the UFP writes it so that Klingons and Romulans look bad no matter what they do. And the Feds certainly could draw a line between killing a quarter of the local population and, say, killing a couple of hundred civilians collaterally, and then stay safely on one side of that line.

That's already doing quite a lot, letting third parties know that Klingons and Romulans are criminal scum by definition and the Feds are not. When the third-party lot gets polarized, those siding with the scum were scum themselves in the first place, and the undecided will have a motivation to decide in favor of the Feds.

This why the idea that interstellar law should apply to Kevin and not the Cardassians or the Romulans is ridiculous, in theory the Federation could do something against these empires, because at least they are the same power level.

The Feds never have done anything, though. Except when these people themselves plead, as when Picard arbitrated the Klingon succession.

One wonders... Picard might have made a mighty example by ordering Kevin executed. The depressed superbeing might have agreed to the treatment, after all - but competing superpowers would have gasped at the audacity of the Feds, and perhaps would have been easier to handle in the future.

Kevin is a god like being, the Federation doesn't have the death penalty and even if it did, it has no way to kill Kevin. So that leaves putting Kevin in prison, which he can leave anytime he wants or he can transform the cell into anything he desires, that is not a punishment, its nothing.

But as said, the Federation disbelieves not just in capital punishment, but in all punishment as a concept. Kevin would not be tortured by freedom deprivation or by daily floggings - he would be cured of his specific criminal tendency with therapy that in other known cases appears to consist of talk only. Would Kevin object to that? He likes talking to humans. He might welcome the brainwashing attempt, and perhaps even allow for it to take effect. He can be physiologically human. And he is psychologically human enough.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Overlord]

Generally speaking, ITRW it would be "worse than what we the signatory members expect to be doing ourselves in the medium-term future, except when we reign so supreme that we can dodge charges simply by staring at our would-be accusers real hard". Which is why mass murder as such isn't outlawed, say - only certain special types of it, not including useful signatory maneuvers such as carpet bombing or the occasional nuking.



Since in ST6 there exists this UFP interstellar law that doesn't appear to sway the Klingons, we could argue the UFP writes it so that Klingons and Romulans look bad no matter what they do. And the Feds certainly could draw a line between killing a quarter of the local population and, say, killing a couple of hundred civilians collaterally, and then stay safely on one side of that line.

That's already doing quite a lot, letting third parties know that Klingons and Romulans are criminal scum by definition and the Feds are not. When the third-party lot gets polarized, those siding with the scum were scum themselves in the first place, and the undecided will have a motivation to decide in favor of the Feds.



The Feds never have done anything, though. Except when these people themselves plead, as when Picard arbitrated the Klingon succession.

One wonders... Picard might have made a mighty example by ordering Kevin executed. The depressed superbeing might have agreed to the treatment, after all - but competing superpowers would have gasped at the audacity of the Feds, and perhaps would have been easier to handle in the future.



But as said, the Federation disbelieves not just in capital punishment, but in all punishment as a concept. Kevin would not be tortured by freedom deprivation or by daily floggings - he would be cured of his specific criminal tendency with therapy that in other known cases appears to consist of talk only. Would Kevin object to that? He likes talking to humans. He might welcome the brainwashing attempt, and perhaps even allow for it to take effect. He can be physiologically human. And he is psychologically human enough.

Timo Saloniemi

All that just makes interstellar law seem like pointless moral posturing and symbolic non sense that has no bearing on events on the ground, which makes it useless. Any third party who is dealing with these empires likely knows what they are getting into and are doing so their own self gain. The Cardassian Union had several third party civilizations they used to get around any sort of interstellar law to further their own interests.

I think when they put the Female Changeling in prison, they will likely never let her out and thus are punishing her. If they did let her out 3 years later, you would have massive protests on several Federation worlds, I don't care how much humanity has progressed, kill someone's friends and family and there will be hard feelings. Take that away and make people less human, not more. If someone killed an future human's entire family and their reaction would be shrug and say whatever, you would wonder what is wrong with that person. Its part of human nature to want to see injustices be punished, take that away and you take away a part of human nature.

Also I think rehabilitation of Kevin is pointless, its not like he will be a repeat offender, he clearly didn't enjoy the actions he took, him just being alone, left to his own devices, is clearly what he wants and if he wants to go to councilor in 10 years he can do it, he clearly was not in the mood to do that during the episode, otherwise he would not have bothered with deception.

 

[velour]

That is a pointless waste of time and resources, Picard made the right decision to just leave him alone, just be glad Kevin had some moral compass and count your blessings.

I hate to say this, but Picard made the practically right decision. It wasn't necessarily the morally right decision, though. Picard couldn't enforce any charge or punishment against Kevin without Kevin voluntarily submitting and obeying any legal action against him. Kevin had all the power.

The next best thing for Picard to do would be to make sure that what Kevin did was recorded in the history books and every other book.

Never forget what Kevin did and what he and his kind are capable of; and a warning to anyone who might encounter Kevin in the future. This warning could be somewhat similar to General Order 7 prohibition against travel to Talos IV, but without the death penalty or actual prohibition against contact.

TOS was pretty consistent with this: no crime formally carried any sort of punishment.
Timo Saloniemi

Apparently, that was also the case in DS9.

Sisko used a weapon of mass destruction against the Maquis in "For the Uniform", yet faced no consequences for his action. Furthermore, his use of the wmd wasn't even authorized by Starfleet command. Sisko wasn't hit with any charges of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, or even a violation of some Starfleet procedure.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sisko used a weapon of mass destruction against the Maquis in "For the Uniform", yet faced no consequences for his action. Furthermore, his use of the wmd wasn't even authorized by Starfleet command. Sisko wasn't hit with any charges of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, or even a violation of some Starfleet procedure.

There's at least two reasons for this: 1) there was no loss of life attributable to Sisko's actions, and 2) it was done in response to Eddington's use of the same methods in the Maquis. (In the end, the populations thus targeted, simply switched planets.)

So is there any real reason to prosecute Sisko for using weapons of mass destruction, when - in a very real sense - there was no destruction?

 

[DonIago]

Yeah, people do seem to gloss over the fact that, in the end, Sisko simply balanced the scales.

 

[Timo]

I think when they put the Female Changeling in prison, they will likely never let her out and thus are punishing her.

Prison? What prison? We never hear of any prison.

All we know is that the Founder agreed to stand trial. For all we know, she was acquitted - after all, she did nothing worse than her Alpha Axis counterparts.

If someone killed an future human's entire family and their reaction would be shrug and say whatever, you would wonder what is wrong with that person. Its part of human nature to want to see injustices be punished, take that away and you take away a part of human nature.

And that's the very point. It's also human nature to kill and rape. If the victims want to get angry over being victimized, it's the society's task to take that bit of their evil humanity away from them, just as it's the society's task to reduce the evil humanity of the culprit. Therapy for all, and the world will be a better place.

Also I think rehabilitation of Kevin is pointless, its not like he will be a repeat offender

Then why punish him, either?

Apparently, that was also the case in DS9. Sisko used a weapon of mass destruction against the Maquis in "For the Uniform", yet faced no consequences for his action. Furthermore, his use of the wmd wasn't even authorized by Starfleet command. Sisko wasn't hit with any charges of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, or even a violation of some Starfleet procedure.

That's different from TOS where people do get charged for their crimes and have to face the consequences - but the consequences do not involve any sort of punishment. The criminals get medical help instead.

In DS9, Kasidy Yates smuggles for the enemy, and gets a six-month absence from the show for it; she herself refers to it as "jail time". Garak attempts genocide, and gets six months of holding cell. Those appear to be punitive measures - but they are not in any proportion to the respective crimes, no matter which one gets used as the yardstick. The difference can't be easily explained by a mismatch between legal systems, either, even though Yates might face UFP civil law and Garak perhaps Starfleet or Bajoran justice, depending on how Sisko spins it.

Remarkably, though, neither turns out to be a repeat offender. And if the sentences stem from UFP law, perhaps they include mandatory medical intervention as a prime ingredient, thereby explaining both their effectiveness and their apparent lack of any of the qualities we today associate with freedom-deprivation torture?

As for Sisko's actions, since when has WMD use required authorization from anybody higher up than a starship CO? All of the weapons of a starship are WMDs (even though phasers and photon torpedoes can also trivially be rigged to be nonlethal riot control gear, or scientific instruments, or whatever). Starfleet has general orders specifically authorizing the total destruction of a planet's civilization, and Sisko fell far short of that; we don't know if the Starfleet criteria were met, because we don't know the criteria, but since Starfleet didn't do anything visible to Sisko, we might as well argue Sisko did meet the criteria for regulations-approved use of WMDs.

Timo Saloniemi