Out of order snippet? WHAT out of order snippet?

Daryl wrote:Capturing isn't something that tree cats do well though.
Reducing threats to hamburger is more their style.

I do seem to remember a short story, was it Princess Adrienne who was targeted for assassination and was subsequently adopted by a 'cat? The other treecats, of which there were legion, chased down and did indeed capture one of the conspirators.

runsforcelery wrote:..snip..
And the evidence that it wasn't a missile strike to which I referred earlier is, indeed, the absence of coronas of plasma shrieking down out of the night time sky. Don't need any stinkin' sensor records of impeller signatures if enough iphones caught the "death rays" screaming down the sky! Only there ain't none.

Someone mentioned the fact that people missed the light show when Security used a KEW on the seccy tower in Cauldron. Nobody in the vicinity "missed" it, but for some odd reason, the totally independent and rigorously impartial Mesan news services failed to mention this in any of its coverage. The Seccies and the slaves --- and the full citizens in the vicinity --- knew what had really happened; nobody outside the immediate vicinity did. And those who did know understood from the official version that they were to keep that minor fact to themselves.

One of the "everyone knows" secrets of Mesa is that sometimes the official news has to be . . . tailored a bit in the interest of not encouraging additional servile rebellion, after all. So it's not like the citizens wouldn't have expected the GA to lie about its own actions after it invaded. And the off-world newsies covering the story are still feeling their way into the official explanation for what happened. There are, however, ways to explain away the absence of that visual evidence of missiles carrying out the strike.

As to what they are, though . . . .

I'm afraid you'll just have to read the book to find out.

So, to avoid having visuals of missiles delivering the nukes there are a few scenarios to explain it:

1. The nukes where planted in advance.
2. The shuttles from the TF launched missiles.
3. Henke's TF used stealthed missiles.
4. Henke's TF used slow missiles.

The plausible ones are #1 and #2, #3 and #4 doesn't make sense at all.

And I said earlier, destruction patterns have a direct correlation to where the explosions occurred. And optimal use of nukes means explosions above ground, and if the explosions occurred inside or under the targets it means the bombs must either be planted before or traveling at very high speed to penetrate the structures. The latter implies visible missile traces.

On another note, why wouldn't more newsies listen to what the GA says about the alignment? Manticore and Haven have been at war on and off for almost 40 years and I would think that a lot of people would start asking questions about how two bitter enemies suddenly became friends over night and enemies with the SL. Any newsie worth his salt would die for that story.

pappilon wrote:

Daryl wrote:Capturing isn't something that tree cats do well though.
Reducing threats to hamburger is more their style.

I do seem to remember a short story, was it Princess Adrienne who was targeted for assassination and was subsequently adopted by a 'cat? The other treecats, of which there were legion, chased down and did indeed capture one of the conspirators.

Two things
One Adrienne was adopted shortly before the assassination attempt.
Second about 15 Treecats turned one of the conspirators into a human scratching post.

Joat42 wrote:On another note, why wouldn't more newsies listen to what the GA says about the alignment? Manticore and Haven have been at war on and off for almost 40 years and I would think that a lot of people would start asking questions about how two bitter enemies suddenly became friends over night and enemies with the SL. Any newsie worth his salt would die for that story.

Which independent newsies? The ones not from the SL? SL newsies have been co-opted by Ministry of Education and [mis]Information. Who in the League will believe Manticore's own equally co-opted newsies? or Haven's? Maybe there is an Andermani photojournalist out there.

IIRC the "oooh how did haven and Manticore become friends" story has already been debunked. Harrington was sent to Haven with Zilwicki and Cachat and part of the terms of surrender was Pritchrd return to Manticore and play nice with Elizabeth.

pappilon wrote:Which independent newsies? The ones not from the SL? SL newsies have been co-opted by Ministry of Education and [mis]Information. Who in the League will believe Manticore's own equally co-opted newsies? or Haven's? Maybe there is an Andermani photojournalist out there.

No, one of the newsies is famous for her independence and willingness to chase the story that the facts reveal, not the one handed to her in a nice package with a bow by MoE. Any guesses who that is?

Btw, please remember that Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer is still claimed by the N.Y. Times despite it being well established that he was primarily a transcriptionist for Stalin’s propagande department and felt that his primary mission as a journalist was to cover up the crimes of the communists.

pappilon wrote:

Joat42 wrote:On another note, why wouldn't more newsies listen to what the GA says about the alignment? Manticore and Haven have been at war on and off for almost 40 years and I would think that a lot of people would start asking questions about how two bitter enemies suddenly became friends over night and enemies with the SL. Any newsie worth his salt would die for that story.

Which independent newsies? The ones not from the SL? SL newsies have been co-opted by Ministry of Education and [mis]Information. Who in the League will believe Manticore's own equally co-opted newsies? or Haven's? Maybe there is an Andermani photojournalist out there.

IIRC the "oooh how did haven and Manticore become friends" story has already been debunked. Harrington was sent to Haven with Zilwicki and Cachat and part of the terms of surrender was Pritchrd return to Manticore and play nice with Elizabeth.

How many planets in the SL? And we only have 1 independent newsie? Please...

How many newsies choose to fight the SL Dept of Education and Indormation AND succeed well enough to prosper? Methinks without her support from the MAlign agents O'Hanrahan would have been crushed long ago. One suspects the MAlign would have done their own crushing of her true competitors as the gold standard of reporting integrity.

Joat42 wrote:

Joat42 wrote:On another note, why wouldn't more newsies listen to what the GA says about the alignment? Manticore and Haven have been at war on and off for almost 40 years and I would think that a lot of people would start asking questions about how two bitter enemies suddenly became friends over night and enemies with the SL. Any newsie worth his salt would die for that story.

pappilon wrote:
Which independent newsies? The ones not from the SL? SL newsies have been co-opted by Ministry of Education and [mis]Information. Who in the League will believe Manticore's own equally co-opted newsies? or Haven's? Maybe there is an Andermani photojournalist out there.

IIRC the "oooh how did haven and Manticore become friends" story has already been debunked. Harrington was sent to Haven with Zilwicki and Cachat and part of the terms of surrender was Pritchrd return to Manticore and play nice with Elizabeth.

How many planets in the SL? And we only have 1 independent newsie? Please...

We see a few newsies in Unconquered, but by and large I've stayed away from that side of the story. In the case of this book, that was a very conscious decision on my part. It's already the longest of the HH novels, and to include that part of the story --- the actual mechanism of the news cycle and the people who cover it --- would have added at least another 5-10,000 words.

Having said that, the "background noise" of the news coverage is very much a factor in the book. The narrative in the SL is shaped far more by the information coming out of Old Chicago than it is by news coming in from other planets. Think of it as the way that hyper-frenzy news coverage focuses on "inside the Beltway" events here in the US right now. There's a heck of a lot of other stuff going on in the world, but the news cycle is totally dominated by politics and it seems that every single non-political story somehow gets tweaked around until it is a political story. That's the way the interstellar news cycle in the SL is driven. There's even an in-universe term for it: "inside the Kuiper."

The vast bulk of the reporters in the SL (or anywhere else) tend to concentrate on events inside their own systems and rely on "the wire services" for news from outside them. In the SL, those "wire services" are heavily influenced (to the point of being outright co-opted, in many instances; to the point of knowing what they'd better not report in the cases of those not actively co-opted) by Public Information,. They know their access will be cut off if they stray too far outside the official line. Besides that, they tend to share Old Chicago's fundamental biases because their editorial boards are also located "inside the Kuiper."

What makes O'Hanrahan unique is that she's managed to build an enormous following while rejecting the official line. She's won her spurs as an investigative reporter who is not simply independent but fiercely independent, and she has (literally) risked her life to cover dangerous stories. She isn't the only independent reporter in the League. She's simply one of the best --- some would say the best -- and she's the only one in her league who happens to be on Mesa at the moment. That's what makes her so critical to how the story goes down in the League. There's not enough time for her to be a truly significant element in Uncompromising, but over the long haul, she's in a position to do the GA a lot of harm or a lot of good.

And depending on how the AM sees its priorities, she'll pick one or the other to do.

is the "AM" in "how the AM sees its priorities" a typo for "MA" or something else?

runsforcelery wrote:SNIP

What makes O'Hanrahan unique is that she's managed to build an enormous following while rejecting the official line. She's won her spurs as an investigative reporter who is not simply independent but fiercely independent, and she has (literally) risked her life to cover dangerous stories. She isn't the only independent reporter in the League. She's simply one of the best --- some would say the best -- and she's the only one in her league who happens to be on Mesa at the moment. That's what makes her so critical to how the story goes down in the League. There's not enough time for her to be a truly significant element in Uncompromising, but over the long haul, she's in a position to do the GA a lot of harm or a lot of good.

And depending on how the AM sees its priorities, she'll pick one or the other to do.

Thanks RFC

I guess maybe this is where that snippet with the Detweilers frothing in rage re the GA is going to play into that strategic decision.

So maybe we will see a radical plan change so that the GA becomes the main target and the SL a secondary...?