On Mon, 24 Sep 2018 20:42:16 -0400, Jonathan Clark <xxxxxx@att.net>
wrote:

>Jeff Zeitlin wrote:
>
>>     The TAS does not publicise their involvement with the well-known charitable
>>     organization Compassion Corps.

>This must be a terrific idea :-) because I came up with something very similar for a
>recent campaign. In M (highly variant) TU I called them the Red Crystal (no prizes
>for guessing where the name came from), and in the campaign (at least) they were
>more oriented towards providing medical care for civilians affected by warfare (so
>a bit more MSF and a bit less natural-disaster, paint yours anyway you want),
>but there's no reason why the same organization couldn't do both. I never thought
>of associating them with TAS, but again, why not? It does make some sense.

I was actually thinking of MSF and Mercy Ships when I came up with this,
but I was specifically avoiding using those names, or anything associated
with the ICRC, because the latter is very protective of their trade/service
marks, and I felt it necessary to assume that the others are as well.

The 'backdoor' association with TAS made sense to me, as TAS seems to me to
be politically unaligned, and given what they do publicly for their
members, they've _got_ to be one of the wealthiest orgs in Charted Space.
So, why don't we hear about how wealthy the org is, or what they do with
all that wealth? Well, maybe it's because they don't make a big noise about
their involvement with other orgs and programs. So they plow some of that
money into charitable orgs, possibly for tax benefits, possibly for
guilt-assaugement, possibly out of moral conviction that one should do good
without being seen to do good, or whatever. The point is that orgs like
this have to be funded from somewhere in order to be able to do the sort of
things they do, free, yet you don't tend to hear about their funding
sources, just about their activities.

>I had them as completely independent, but with some support from various 'good guy'
>governments. EG a military hospital ship might, at the end of its useful life with
>a Fleet, simply be donated to the Red Crystal 'as is', rather than being stripped,
>broken up, and so on. Similarly, Red Crystal ships possessed something akin to
>diplomatic immunity, so attacks on them might be treated by Acts of War by some
>powers (and not by others, of course!). And the Red Crystal might, on occasional,
>call on these 'good guy' governments for aid. EG my campaign featured a pair of Red
>Crystal hospital ships kidnapped by an insurgency. The Red Crystal, having no military
>assets of its own, calls upon the Regency for help, and hilarity ensues.

And any of this could apply to Starships of Succor - who may use a
far-future version of the Red Crystal or Vilani, Luriani, Sylean, Geonee,
etc., equivalents, much the way any of the ICRC symbols - including the
Crystal - may be used today.

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--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
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