LNH20: Generation 2.0 #7

[Martin Phipps]

On Mar 15, 1:32 am, Lalo Martins <lalo.mart... at gmail.com> wrote:
> quoth Adrian J. McClure as of Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:35:43 +0000:
>
> > On Mar 13, 5:15 pm, Andrew Perron <pwer... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Interesting.  This one had a weird sort of energy about it.  I suggest
> >> pushing further in this direction!
>
> >> Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, keep it up!
>
> > Agreed. It's good to see you developing your characters and concepts
> > more fully.
>
> > AJM (but surely WHATEVER would have shell corporations they could siphon
> > money through?)
>
> AIUI, the intent is that Baidu's is one of those.

What I had in mind was a legitimate company with ties to the mob: the
mob does things for them and they, in return, launder mob money to
make it look like the mob is making money legally.  I suppose a better
analogy might be Arab businessmen in the United States funding Al
Qaeda and referring to it as a "charity".  In their own minds,
supporters of Al Qaeda might consider themselves philanthropists just
like Tony Stark's funding of the Avengers through the Maria Stark
Foundation is considered charitable donations even though what he's
doing essentially is supplying weapons (or at least quinjets).  Tony
Stark funding the Maria Stark Foundation is analogous to Bill Gates
funding the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, although ironically the
MSF came first.

Anyway, if the government finds out that a businessman in the U.S. is
funding Al Qaeda they will freeze his assets.  This is serious so Bao
had to be killed.  (I actually knew a guy named Bao Nguyen in
university.  I am not being passive aggressive: I had already given
May and Jay the name Nguyen and I needed a name for their dad.  At
least he was a good guy.)

Which brings up a good point: does the government know about
WHATEVER?  If not then WHATEVER is basically a code name in that bad
guys can talk about WHATEVER openly and people won't know what
WHATEVER is.  It is only when people try to find out what WHATEVER
means that there's a problem.

Mind you, I suppose this could be another example of the amnesiac
public trope.  (I just made that up.)  Just as the public in comics
tends to forget about alien invasions and is surprised every time and
alien invasion occurs, people in comics don't seem to be aware of
Hydra even though they've been active for years and make Al Qaeda look
like a social club.  Or is SHIELD in comics the equivalent of the "War
on Terror"?  Does the LNH20 government have an organization ready to
combat WHATEVER or is the LNH all they have?  Or are they just
completely ignorant?

Oh and I just found this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlausibleDeniability

It's not quite what I had in mind but it is close. :)

Martin