My comment was not aimed at treaties but at the immediate response. I can imagine a "Wait and See " response from many POTUS tying the hands of the military.
It is very difficult to judge which situations call for the use of massive deadly force.

BlueMax

Okay... BUT, in the Shadowrun Timeline, that is exactly what happened... It is a fact of the Shadowrun History... I would say, Just deal with it... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

Uh, how about the US's breadbasket? Nope, those stupid American's don't need all that food! Let them eat Poop! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)



Sorry, when confronted with massive stupidity, I have to respond.

FASA didn't have to break the US the way it did. It did so because they took every cliche and ran with it. I have always said, and will always say, that FASA made a nice game system, but their fluff sucks balls.

Not a lot of Breadbasket in Arizona or New Mexico, or Montana, or Utah, or Nevada... Just Saying... And with PArts of Canada joining the UCAS, well, there is the replacement for any perceived loss of US Breadbasket...

Stupid is as Stupid Does...

And I will continue to say that that is JUST your OPINION...

Hey, does anyone know how the various Native Amerindian Nations all feel about each other? I know that the Tsimshian and SSC had it out for one another, but what about the others?

I'm running the second part of an adventure next Thursday and one of the characters has a (Fake) SIN for the Pueblo Corporate Council and is going through the SSC to get to the Tir (they're delivering a Eurocar as part of their "legal" run). So if (when) they get pulled over with a particular tribe how will that fly?

Any suggestions would be great. My knowledge is limited to Target: UCAS & Shadows of North America.

Sign--

Wacky

OK, you're right about agriculture not being as important in those states, but here is a listing of what is major in those states:

Washington: agriculture (11th largest in the nation)
Oregon: agriculture, cattle
Nevada: gold and cattle
Arizona: copper, cotton, cattle
Utah: coal, cattle
New Mexico: oil and natural gas
Colorado: agriculture, oil and natural gas
Montana: agriculture, lumber, gold, silver, and coal
Wyoming: oil, coal, natural gas, trona (largest deposit in the world), Uranium

So seeing what is in each state would the US just give up without a fight? If you say yes, then... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) ... I would not want you as President.



Leave off the personal attacks pal! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

I was not calling you stupid, I was calling FASA stupid.



And considering that there are others who agree with me... yeah my opinion, but I have support.

Y'know, there are aspects of the timeline you don't seem to get. Five years prior, the US government started GIVING away their territory to foreign powers. Matter of fact, they were stealing it from US citizens to give to said foreign powers. You may know them better as Extra Territorial Corporations.

So the U.S. was ALREADY handing their natural resources away and creating armies outside the normal government framework within the national borders.

As for the value of the NAN states, well, they come up to about 33.8 Million (pre-vitas ~2006) people and around $1.35 Trillion GDP. Now the actual value to the US was probably lower than that because of all the assets given to the proto-megacorps. What was it, 25% of federal lands and 10% of indian territories with oil were handed to United Oil? How much does that decrease the effective economy when it goes to a non-taxable foreign group?

Now let's compare/contrast. California has 36M (pre vitas, ~2006) people and an economy worth around $1.8 Trillion. Yeah, California has a big budget deficit, so does Arizona and a few other western states, so the deficits are a wash.

The entire NAN region is less valuable than California economically and it has fewer people.

You know, as crazy as this sounds, I can accept the megacorps much more so than the NAN.

I still think that they are stupid as well, but not nearly as bad as the NAN.

My followup throught to that would be the megacorporate extra-territoriality while kind of silly in a real world context does set up the awesomeness that is Shadowun. The NAN? Not so much. It serves really no purpose other then to isolate Seattle, what was originally the primary campaign setting.

First... have you looked at what the US Gained with the creation of UCAS and the inclusion of the Canadian States? And if you are going to complain about losing territory, lets not forget the secession of the CAS... as for what the President is willing to accede and what he is not, well, to each his own... you seem to be forgetting the circumstances that were present at the time...

The UCAS would have inherited a significant amounts of resources (Natural Gas, Oil, Minerals, etc) from the Canadian States, and Cattle (One of the predominant themes in your resource list) is starting to be replaced by Microprotein, Kelp, and Soy, as the amounts of beef (Pork, Chicken, etc.) resources are VASTLY INSIGNIFICANT to what the world needs, so no real loss there...

Second... There is significant support for the other view point as well, so it truly is a wash, isn't it?

And apologies for implying that you are stupid... my purpose was to imply that this argument is stupid in a lot of ways (not those that are involved in it)... History is exactly that... History... You cannot change the history... It is what it is...

In the reality of Shadowrun, you can only move on and hope for the best... these things have happened, and no amount of wishing it away will change it... In real life there are a lot of crazy/screwed up/horrendous things that have occurred throughout history... no amount of wishing them away will change them... they are afterall History... we can only hope to learn from them and move on...

But Hey... YMMV... Keep the Faith...

Your putting the cart before the horse a little bit, at the time of the treaty of denver the US and Canada didn't know what they were getting out of being the UCAS because it hadn't happened yet. All that was in their immediate world view was the nation shattering losses they were looking at in the treaty of Denver.

As to yoru second view about history being immutable, no it's not, the retcon of the anglo expulsion proves that, or the design team coduld decide to do a "final crisis" event and things could be rewritten just as easily. Would I support that sort of event, meh I'm somewhat 50/50. History is immutable certainly, but this isn't histroy we're talking about, it's a game and it's supposed back story whether believable or not.

Going back to the posters original question, yes the NAN has faded, but then again all national powers have faded. The story of shadowrun is a story about the corporations and the runners they employ in their shadow wars. With any luck the NAN will continue to fade or, maybe for a change of pace we'll see a series of splats that deal not with what frosty and the other immortal elves are doing with their time, and maybe what happens when the azzies start to push north, or the NAN pushes east or any number of things.

I've been thinking on the political climate and events. I'm willing to allow the SCOTUS declaring corporations to be declared semi-sovereign to decide appropriate use of force when the public good (aka toxic waste) is at risk. Given food riots and the like, doing otherwise is double jeopardy for the corps where they are damned if they use lethal force to avoid a toxic spill or damned if they don't and a lethal toxic spill happens.

However the Resource Rush doesn't explicitly follow. Yay, you can police your facilities. How does that evolve into "gimme that!" with the govt actually doing it? It's not like the corps were richer or acquired the jedi mind trick from a court case.

The answer is corruption, across the board, in all three branches of goverment. Corrupt, greedy self serving politicians in congress to pass laws that obviously only benefit the proto-megacorps, in the white house to sign them and courts to uphold them.

Corrupt people wrap themselves in patriotism but by definition they won't have the best interests of the nation in mind. Their own skins and profit are all that matters.

Now bring out scary magic indians who confound the military and blow up mountains. Magic indians who maybe, possibly, had something to do with the assassin that took out President Garrety and was never captured. Even if they don't maybe they'll turn their magic on the leaders. Maybe said leaders will explode if that happens.

Do these politicians really give a crap about Montana or South Dakota? If they did would they have signed off on their parks and private lands being handed over for mining, drilling and logging by the corps?

As long as the suits keep their offshore bank accounts and cushy offices you can do whatever you want.

A patriot might nuke the indians (gotta kill the country to save the country) but that patriot wouldn't have gone along with the Resource Rush that provoked SAIM.

I can definitely get behind this...

Except that this is stupid. Anyone has the right to use deadly force to prevent death or serious bodily injury to another. {OK, outside of California, New Jersey and New York, which have insanely limited the right of self-defense.} And having your security guards shoot people on a public highway doesn't, even in SR canon, exempt you from being arrested and/or sued as you didn't do this on corporate territory.

As I understand self defense in the general sense, you can use lethal force to defend yourself when you believe someone's life is in immediate jeopardy. You typically can't get away with blazing away at an assailant in a fist fight. Fire a warning shot to get their attention, then, in accordance with South Park law, if they come right for you you can blow them away. After all, only meth heads will charge a drawn gun (at least that's the standard defense)

The seretech case was different.
My recollection of the trigger event aggregated over 4 editions was that seretech was transporting toxic waste through an area that had a food supply crisis due to a teamster strike. Rioters thought the truck was food and converged. The guards could have escaped but defended the truck with deadly force.

The seretech defense was based on the need for agents of a corporate (entrusted with toxic waste by the government specifically because of their expertise and understanding of the danger posed by the waste) to be able to act in a manner that was in the best interest of all even if that involved taking extreme actions. Or in other words, we had to kill a few rioters to save the rest of them and anyone else in a 3 mile radius.

The (paraphrased) decision said that (large) corporations had a responsibility to take action that was in the interest of the common good and are not accountable under civil and criminal oversight after the fact. It at some point said to treat them as if they were foreign powers, probably drawing on the laws of diplomatic immunity, where agents of foreign powers who are legally in a coutry can only be deported for any crimes, excluding those handful like espionage, terrorism, assassination of government officials, etc.

Please tell me you don't carry.

People who say things like that almost always don't really think that anything bad will ever happen to them, much less trouble themselves with actually taking inconvenient actions to protect themselves.

No, to quote current NY state law on deadly force (which is among the most restrictive in the country):

"Such conduct is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury which is about to occur by reason of a situation occasioned or developed through no fault of the actor, and which is of such gravity that, according to ordinary standards of intelligence and morality, the desirability and urgency of avoiding such injury clearly outweigh the desirability of avoiding the injury sought to be prevented by the statute defining the offense in issue."



No. Diplomatic Immunity is ABSOLUTE. One of the reasons why the CIA doesn't use undercover intel officers is that a CIA officer under diplomatic cover has diplomatic immunity, unlike a KGB illegal. And as for terrorism or assassination, see the case of the Libyan embassy incident in London when they machineguned an unarmed police woman. The most they can do is deport you if the government in question doesn't waive immunity. Alternately they can choose to commit an act of war by breaching the Vienna Conventions. And a nation has the absolute control over who they allow on their territory with immunity, as everyone with diplomatic immunity has to be formally accepted into a country by the state dept/foreign ministry to have diplomatic immunity and they can refuse anyone for any reason or no reason at all.

Again, the people who wrote the original background didn't have the foggiest idea about what they hell they were writing about and just ignored the way thing actually work instead of figuring out a logical way to get there, as they would have taken work.

Actually kzt, FASA not only had no clue on what they were doing, they took EVERY cliche and stereotype and ran with it. I mean honestly, why did Mexico go back to being Aztecs? Because of magic? Sorry, Mexico is 76% CATHOLIC, not 76% Aztec! Why would they believe in something that for most is just a page in their history?

Although off topic, I have to agree with Critias' concerns over kigmatzomat's firearm theory, although probably for very different reasons, you NEVER, EVER draw your weapon unless you are fully prepared and mentally able to KILL another human being, thinking that merely brandishing your firearm will scare away your attacker might get you killed and provide a criminal with a firearm and "warning shots" are simply dangerous to innocent bystanders.

As for a few things that has crossed my mind over the actual topic at hand in no practicual order;

For the poster who asked whether or not Mages are useful when compared to Sammies, Deckers, and Riggers in the eyes of the anti-NAN people, something that you have to remember is that despite the helping hand the NANs got from a Horror, Big D is on record as being amused and perhaps amazed with the differences between the way metahumans viewed the limitations of Magic in teh Fourth Age as opposed to the Sixth Age, so the NAN did not have access to the same mojo that Shadowrunners do several decades later.

Also the way that spirits work in Fourth Edition is not a retcon, but rather an advancement of the setting, in Third Edition fluff researchers were working on UMT which among other things would allow Shamans to bond Elementals and Mages to summon Nature Spirits.

And as it has been pointed out, Mexicans tend to be staunt Christians, so I very much doubt that any illegal aliens still on American soil after Big A's takeover of Mexico are going to join forces with the NAN, much less actual citizens, and why was one of the most brutal, ruthless, and magically capable Mega willing to let the NAN remain as they are as opposed to expanding Big A's turf?

The more time that passes between the Awakening and the Great Ghost Dance is worse for the NAN Rebels, not better, sure they have more time to pratice their mojo and learn Fourth Age Blood Rituals, but everyone else also have time to figure out that yes, magic is real and here is how it works, when someone is actually able to produce flame from their fingertips or fly on demand people are going to listen and the number of American Mages are going to outnumber the NAN Rebel Shamans hands down, and with the way magic works in the Sixth Age the tribal rituals that has been handed down from days of yore are just as useless/useful as someone's belief in Jedi or the Invisible Noodle Monster.

Meanwhile the topic has 13 pages and because i am not particularily interested in the situation at all (sometimes even i just accept what fluff-balls they throw at me) i didn´t follow the whole discussion. But there is one thing that hit my mind. The Amerindian populations was quite small at the ghost-dance and i don´t think that it massively exploded since then. Most of the people here are bothered by the idea, that some drum-shakind, feather-wearing redskins overtake the living space of several million americans and get through with it, UNLESS the pinkskins in the meanwhile also have access to this kind of mojo. I basically agree, BUT: we are talking about mojo that is comparable to an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The NAN have this mojo, the UCAS (and probably everybody else) have this mojo, but would YOU risk to check out if they use it again? The NAN have a lot to lose, so i don´t think the wouldn´t use it again. And they have the guts to get killed through the ritual. So i think the NAN is still in existance, because nobody want´s to risk a new war. Don´t forget the current situation in china or korea. Of course our weapons are better and this equals easily their enormous amount in manpower, but they have got nukes, so nobody risks a war.

A couple of problems, first the NAN simply could not continue the Great Ghost Dance, that was covered in the fluff in one of the Third Edition books where an Indian whose tribe was native to the East Coast was bitching and was slapped down by someone who claimed to have actually been present at the ritual itself. Now, if we accept the theory that only the NAN got magic instead of following the logic of how the Awakening would have unfolded according to Sixth World Magical Theory than America had no way of knowing that a Second Great Ghost Dance was impossible, BUT the Treaty of Denver was agrueably worse than continuing the war.

Also remember, that even if you believe that a bunch of Indians gathering around what would have had to be a massive camp according to The Great Ghost Dance fluff would have gone unnoticed and thus not nuked, Big A doesn't have that going for them so their cities and lands were a viable target, if for no other reason than to cut off exturnal support for the NAN Rebels.


And never forget, MAD works both ways, the NAN Rebels had just as much if not more to lose than America did by breaking out the WMDs, magical and otherwise.

How exactly was the explanation for the "second ghostdance doesn´t work"? Seems like i have missed it.

I think that the GGD was possible because of a mana spike. When the mana flows evened themselves out, the GGD became impossible.

Nah, The Great Ghost Dance was so costly in lives and energy that the NAN Rebels simply couldn't "afford" to exend it's effects any longer much less do it again according to the Shadowtalk.

*EDIT*

Also something to consider is that The Great Ghost Dance was massive enough that it created a Mana Spike large enough to form a bridge for the Horrors to cross over early, which was why the NAN were given the ritual in the first place.