Re: "Possible New Minor Power" - major upgrade (LONG)

Well, we Romans might not fire on them without provocation.  But we
aren't permitting port calls.  We remember the last time we let an
armed papal fleet into our ports.

PS: We STILL want those damn lions back from Venice.  

Seriously, why not?  After all, the Latins are rich, powerful, and
ever eager to extend their temporal power (having lost sight of any
other objective centuries ago).  In addition to the Papal Guard, it
also gives some people (not naming names) an excuse to paint starships
red, with a white Maltese cross on them to go with the black ones with
white crosses.	The white ones with black crosses would probably
retain semi-regular status as NSL troops.  It would be an interesting
exercise.  With the failure of the LLAR and the PAU's status as a
third-rate power, one imagines a number of Catholics from those areas
would welcome a chance to serve their religion directly.

Hey, we've got Jews, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and now Catholics
in space.  The Mongols are Bhuddist, the Japanese State Shinto.  The
NAC, FSE, NSL, Scandanavians, OU are religiously tolerant (and could
be argued to be largely post-Christian), the ESU militantly atheist. 
The PAU is a real mixed bag--given that any given African nation has a
mix of Christians, Muslims, and Animists in varying proportions and
levels of hostility it's a miracle there isn't more religiously
motivated violence than there is already.  Romanov Hegemony is
Orthodox,  Indonesian Commonwealth predominately Muslim but with a
bunch of Buddhists and a militant Catholic minority in assimiliated
Indochina.

I guess the Prods just aren't enthusiastic enough to try to set up a
non-secular state in space.  Of course, having seen a Baptist church
try to get through a series of meetings to discuss a single church's
operating budget I can't imagine the spaceship design process.

The ones getting really shortchanged in all this are the Indians.  I
don't see them being happy little Eurasian Communists en masse. 
There's gotta be a seperatist Hindu Homeland out there somewhere. 
Would be interesting, but I don't know nearly enough about Indian
culture or history to be the one to write it up.

John

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 23:33:33 -0500, John Brewer <jbrewer@webtv.net>
wrote:

> I invite your coments.