Wikileaks releases Saint Nicholas’ “Naughty or Nice” list. :eek:
You’ll pay for this, Superman. Oh, how you’ll pay.
Funny, on so many levels. Well, two anyway. 
Kringle is not “yielding” to anybody. Since the point of the lump of coal is to express displeasure and encourage improvement, it’s not necessary that it be an actual piece of coal. Santa’s too wise to get into a pointless argument when he could just as easily drop a rock.
Anyway, given the speed and cloaking abilities of the Sleigh, I doubt he cares what China and Russa say about air space. No mortal government can do anything about him. Remember a few years back when the Authority tried to confiscate some of his tech for their own purposes, and he took out Midnighter, Jenny Quantum, and Apollo all by his lonesome even before the Ultimates arrived to back him up?
Ultimatum From The Glorious Peoples’ Republic Of Korea!
The annual tresspass of
the Impeialist Warmonger
Claus
Is a
Deliberate Provocation
To the
Peace-loving Peoples’ Air Defence Force
And To
The Glorious Peoples Republic Of Korea!
If it is repeated
this year
We shall retailate
with
Massive Military Force!
Also, our Great Leader wants a pony.
They try that every damn year. The missiles always miss Santa and kill the pony.
Which if you think about it makes Santa kind of …
:: considers ::
kind of a wonderful guy!
My little girl (4yo) told me last night that she doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, that she thinks that we’re Santa and are just fooling her. Poor child was rather upset about it. (Odd how the wierdest ideas can come to kids, isn’t it?)
What can we do? It’s not as if we can stay up all night or set up cameras to take pictures of the man. I tried discussing it with her, but she is rather adamant:
“Honey, why would everybody in the world buy their children presents for Christmas and then credit somebody who doesn’t exist? That makes no sense.”
“I don’t care! I don’t believe in Santa and I don’t hafta if I don’t wanna!”
Anyway, this is distressing my poor wife like nothing has before, so if the good people of the SDMB have any suggestions about how to handle this, I would love to hear them.
It actually isn’t that big a deal. During most of the Cold War, and afterwards, our launch policy was to launch only after confirmed detonations on our soil. (The idea being that even after a Soviet first strike, we’d retain sufficient second-strike capacity to devestate the USSR - and this was a sufficient deterrent to prevent a Soviet first strike). This changed under Reagan, which made the 1980s excitingly dangerous, but Clinton eased us back off the hair trigger.
So, the annual announcement that we’ll be letting Santa through is really more a measure to reassure the Russians than an actual change in our policy. Even if we did think the sleigh carried nukes, we wouldn’t launch our birds until we damn well knew for certain. Especially since a single missile, even with MIRVs, isn’t going to significantly degrade our second-strike capacity.
You’re correct regarding the technical difficulty of intercepting Santa’s sleigh - remember how contrived DARPA’s anti-sleigh missile test was a few years ago? And it still failed.
But China and Russia needn’t intercept the sleigh to make things very awkward for Santa. All they need to do is criminalize the possession of gifts from Santa, and he won’t be able to distribute them without risking real repercussions for the people on his “nice” list. Sure, the governments in question might have a hard time proving that a new toy or gizmo came from Santa - but since when has this stopped them?
Authoritarian states have always had tools at their disposal to make life difficult for Santa - and I think that’s precisely why he’s switched to non-combustible rocks this year.
We have this argument every year, and every year you ignore the fact that Santa is not helpless. Remember that, when Aslan set up the Claus charter, he prohibited Santa from interfering in politics unless a political entity acts to impede his lawful actions. But if a nation or despot does that, Santa is empowered to do whatever is necessary to deliver the presents to anyone on the nice list who deserves it. Remember how quickly Japan fell in '42, after the Japanese government tried to prevent his delivering presents to the tiny Christian minority claiming he was an American agent?
(Though, effectively, he was. I’ve always suspected Roosevelt allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor hoping for exactly that result. Big gamble, but it paid off and won us the war.)
Look Santa,
I know you like giving coal to people who are naughty.
And I know the WWF is naughty in a lot of ways. Bad “comedy”, releasing good wrestlers, pushing bad wrestlers, all that.
But you still have not given me a good answer to what they did that was so bad it justified you giving them Michael Cole.
I’m not ignoring Article 9 of the Clause Charter - I just don’t think it would be applicable in the scenario I described. As you say, the Charter explicitly permits Kringle to use force against a state that impedes his lawful actions - but the Charter doesn’t authorize him to do a damned thing after he carries out his present-delivery mandate.
We agree that if Russia, say, tried to shoot down the Sleigh, Santa could respond with sufficient force to permit safe delivery. But if the Duma passed a law requiring the recipients of gifts from Santa to turn them in to FSB collection depots, I don’t believe that this would trigger Article 9. Remember that neither Santa nor Aslan have ever denied that states have the right to tax Santa’s gifts as income - and the power to tax is the power to destroy.
I would also point out that Santa has never denied that states have the right to regulate or seize gifts for reasons of public policy, health or safety. Remember when he gave that primo bong to the stoner in California, and the DEA seized it?
Didn’t the UN try to renegotiate the Claus charter that time? Did anything come of it?
Notice on roof:
'THIS IS THE SUBTROPICS. IT HAS BEEN RAINING A LOT LATELY. TRYING TO GET ROOFING GUYS OUT TO FIX THE HOLE ON BOXING DAY IS GETTING OLD. PLEASE USE THE FRONT DOOR ALREADY. THANKS FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION".
So you’re going to completely ignore what he did to Tokyo, I take it. :rolleyes:
Admittedly there were far fewer fatalities (and no civilian ones) than there would have been if we had had to firebomb the place. (And I seem to recall reading some Harry Turtledove story set in a world in which Santa did not operate and the war in Japan went on for much longer.) But you can’t deny that Mr. Kringle was exercising, ah, tough love in that case.
I’m a bit late to the party, but I just saw a great documentary about Santa called Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. It’s a Finnish documentary about how a group of American miners in Finland accidentally drill into Santa’s secret lair, only it’s not a playful workshop.
I never knew this, but Santa is a creepy guy who likes to eat children, so at some point in the distant past, the Sami people of Finland captured him, encased him in ice, and buried him in a mound shaped like one of the surrounding mountains, with his exploits and danger fading to the realm of myth and legend. Imagine everyone’s surprise when he’s dug up again! And he’s still hungry! And his elves are vicious! The documentary was scary, creepy, and it was really good. The little boy who knew all along how dangerous Santa was should be a national hero in Finland. The world, really.
Man, if it weren’t true, the documentary would be a lot of fun.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I agree with you regarding Santa’s right to meet force with force - we only disagree regarding his options when states do not bring force to bear against him. Allow me to clarify:
In 1942, the Japanese government declared that it would use force to prevent Santa from delivering presents to children within Japan or any territory administered by the Japanese government. And it tried to carry through on that threat - anti-aircraft batteries surrounding Tokyo fired upon the sleigh. This, of course, triggered Article 9, and Santa immediately fired upon the anti-aircraft guns, destroying them and killing their crews. When Imperial Japanese Army soldiers attempted to engaged Santa with small-arms fire while he delivered gifts, he then escalated to the destruction of most of the military facilities in mainland Japan, and disabled nearby warships. This, too, was in full compliance with the terms of Article 9, which affords Santa the right to use “reasonable and proportionate” force in reply to force directed against himself or those in his employ. And the devestation of the Japanese military left Japan defenseless against US Naval and Marine forces, thus leading to surrender.
However, Article 9 is very clear about the context in which it applies - it affords Santa the right to self-defense while carrying out his mandate, and has been interpreted to permit preemption. (As in 1992, when Santa bombed Iraqi military airfields prior to conducting his deliveries). But so long as states don’t interfere with the gift-delivery process, it’s hard to read Article 9 as permitting force in response to regulation of these gifts after they’re delivered, even if that regulation is draconian in character.
This isn’t the Pit, so I’ll restrain myself. Suffice to say that the blood libel against Santa and his elves has been debunked many, many, many times - including in an excellent column by Cecil Himself. There’s a reason that Rare Exports has been the first film with any sort of wide release to be banned in Germany in the past decade.
Equipoise, you bring a lot of good posts to the Dope. But your wide-eyed “isn’t this neat?” schtick regarding this film is disingenuous nonsense. You should know better.