The Original Nex wrote:CUSWE wrote:this [The Corporate Alliance] was the name given to the alliance between the Old Republic and Corporate Sector, allowing the Corporate Sector Authority a large amount of latitude in which to conduct its business. Based on the planet Lethe, the Corporate Alliance was established for many reasons: to serve as the negotiating body for many of the galaxy's largest corporations and businesses, as well as to regulate the sales and distribution methods of these corporations. The Alliance was eventually allowed to arm its own battleships in order to protect its interests, thereby allowing the Republic to use its military forces elsewhere. The Corporate Alliance, like the Trade Federation, also developed its own droid army, in an effort to protect its ground-based assets.
So there is
some connection.
The CUSWE is not free of error, nor are its entries free of misrepresentation. Consider the following example:
Rationalist Party
this socio-political group, formed from the Newcomers to the planet Nam Chorios, was led by the younger incarnation of Seti Ashgad. It served as the main faction of support for Ashgad and his unknown superior, Dzym. They continually attacked Theran gun emplacements on the planet, in hopes of allowing free trade to come to Nam Chorios. They were not aware of Ashgad's connections to Dzym and the real reason for the attacks on the gun platforms. (POT)
Now contrast this claim with the following explicit statement from
Planet of Twilight (which is cited as the source by Mr. Vitas):
"Minister of State Rieekan thinks it may be through someone in the Rationalist Party -- maybe even Q-Varx himself, though I think the man's honest. They have adherents both in the Republic and in nearly every piece of the Empire still big enough to field a fleet."
Senator Q-Varx represents Calamari to the New Republic, and is explicitly stated to be a member of the Rationalist Party, which has party organizations throughout the New Republic and the Imperialist warlord states. Yet nevertheless Mr. Vitas claims that it was limited entirely to Nam Chorios, in clear contradiction of the evidence. This is not due to malice, but rather due to necessarily superficial examination of the evidence.
While the CUSWE is a useful resource, one should always take its claims with a grain of salt, and whenever possible verify its claims independently by direct recourse to the primary sources. In this particular case, where is the curious definition of the Corporate Alliance actually stated? Is this an actual claim found in the Expanded Universe, or perhaps a guess by Mr. Vitas?
He defines the Corporate Alliance as being a literal alliance between the Republic and corporate interests. Is this sensical? By that definition, the Republic itself would have joined the Confederacy of Independent Systems in
Attack of the Clones, because the Corporate Alliance is one of those "massive organs of commerce" that backed the CIS -- and the Republic itself is claimed to be one of the defining partners of the Alliance. As James Morley might say, the claim is plainly ridiculous on its face, and therefore fails the "Ho Ho test."
Furthermore, the Official Site's Databank makes no mention of the Corporate Sector with respect to the Corporate Alliance; instead, it defines the Alliance as a cartel, saying that it is "charged with regulating sales and distribution of countless corporations in the galaxy" and was "constantly frustrated with the cumbersome bureaucracies of the Republic, which kept the Alliance from maximizing its profits (in direct contradiction to Mr. Vitas's claim).