This is going off target badly but there is a difference. in the ocld war the US and USSR both wanted their allies/satilites to follow their views. The difference is that the US tried to manipulate thought, they wanted allies to have free wiill but wanted that free will to think the US was right. The Soviets enforced free will with mass murder and occupation. The US army in West Germany was there to defend the republic from outside invasion. The soviet army in East Germany was there for that AND to ensure the Germans didn't stray off message at any point, as the Czechs and Hungarians did and as was feared the Poles would in 1980.

to drag back on topic the corps try for more though manipulation because
A) wars are expensive
and
B) you can see the trouble the Azzies got into in the yucatan and The Japanocorps in CFS and the Philipines.

By comparrison as 4th ed points out AZT has the biggest PR pushes to shape opinion and at the other end Yamatetsu (now Evo) kept itself so hidden that when Derek Montgomery started worked around in 2XS he'd never heard of them an AAA level corp and he, in the shadows, didn;t know baout them..

Wars are expensive, but damn good ratings!

Hense Desert Wars!

sure in a controlled situation where you cvan limit/decide on your expenses and get to test prove your copr's gear and people in an envirnment that the viewingp ublic will enjoy.
I mean shoot the dreck out of those PCC or Novatech guys in the desert is good ratings "Man look how cool those Renraku rockets are!". Shoot the drek out of those peasants in a grass hut and maybe the audience will think less of you.

Yep! Marketing and Ratings all in one! With sports team fanatics to make the psycological experiment scientists drool!

What free will was supported in Vietnam, El Salvador, Cuba, Angola, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Iraq, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Lakota, Grenada, or Bolivia? That if they didn't do what the United States government thought they should do that they could be shot instead?

Yes, the United States always hires some compradors on the ground in order that they are protecting the interests of something or other rather than "just" being an external invader. But that's just slickness, just marketing. It isn't really any different to hire local crime lords and back them up with weapons, money, and "military advisors" than it is to just send your own damn troops. You're still taking external resources and shooting people in another country who don't agree with you. The bodies on the sidewalk and the source of the bullets is exactly the same.

The "free will" of "Worship me first amongst the gods and never break my commandments or rouse my ire lest ye be cast into an eternity of flames" is not free. That's coercion that is every bit as real as the iron boots of any empire you care to mention. The fact that the United States historically pretends that it isn't crushing resistance and waging genocidal wars against groups that oppose it doesn't make it any nicer. Finding unbiased body counts is essentially impossible for that period, but they are extremely large for both sides. The United States won, but that doesn't mean that they weren't ruthlessly murdering people who opposed them. It just means that they were better at it than the Russians.

We get better body counts for WWII: Imperial Nippon gets the highest, followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. The allies get to be the "good guys" there simply because the death tolls racked up by the Axis were so unprecedentedly high. It's not like the British weren't killing literally millions of people in India during that period. The only group that comes off even slightly OK during the cold war is the Unaligned Movement. At least they had the balls to kick South Africa out for being genocidal fucktards.

-Frank

Please keep on the topic and do not go off onto a tangent.

"Win" nothing. The origional question was"



To which I brought up marketing. From there, you concured that it was possible for A to shape B's thoughts, but that you thought it wasn't inherently a bad thing. I don't care if you for one welcome our corporate overlords, All I care about is that you understand that A is in fact capable of shaping B's thoughts and desires. You have shown that you do. I shouldn't really let myself get drawn into the morality arguments, because that's tangential to the conversation.

Frank feels very strongly about politics, and I don't blame him.

It would be better if such "politics" that were discussed were those of the Shadowrun world so that the posts remain on-topic.