Rereading OBS in context of...

isaac_newton wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote: SNIP

I believe that it was a young Jimmy Carter who is the idiot who opened the pneumatic valves that withdrew the control rods from the core.

This reactor accident demonstrates why Edward Teller decreed "though shalt not build a positive void reactor."

isaac_newton wrote:I've just looked this up, as I'd not heard of it
This looks like an official review..
https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/history/nrx.html

do you have any actual evidence that Carter was either the superintendant or the operator in this Canadian facility at the time of the incident?

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I have no evidence to support the suggsstion that a young Carter was responsible for that disaster. Betraying the Shaw of Iran who was transforming Persia into an educated, moderate almost secular society and surrendering Iran to the tyranny of some 12th Century Ayotollahs, which in turn inspired Islamic radicals to wage a civil war in Lebanon that transformed Beiruit which had been "the Paris of the Middle East" into a warzone, compelled the US to support a dictator in Iraq to counterbalance Iran, inspired the Saudis to support radical Wahabism, motivated the USSR to invade Afghanistan which inflamed tensions beteeen Pakistan and India to the point of a nuclear arms race, compelled Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait to pay for being everyone's proxy in the war against islamic Iran, obliged the United States to wage war to protect Saudi Arabia, which provoked the 9-11 attacks by Jihadists who had been radicalized by fighting the Soviets in Afghsnistan, which in turn compelled Bush and Cheney to invade Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and hopefully deradicalize nuclear armed Pakistan, invade Iraq because they misoverestimated the WMD which in turn resulted in the US notinvsding Iran and North Korea so as to ensure that the world is now safe for nuclear prolifferation, is quite enough thank you.

The possibility that a young Jimmy Carter blew up a nuclear reactor would be inconsequential compared to the damage that peanut brained imbecile did to the world during his four years in the White House.

If you want us to take your larger rants seriously, don't you think it might be worth not spreading such easily detected porkies, just out of some excess of bile?

Obviously, this digression belongs in politics.

It seemed to me that the comment about Carter being the imbecile that blew up the reactor would be an obvious joke to everyone. I apologize for confusing you with a comment that you presumed was serious.

The chain of events that I describe might seem like a rant but the cause andeffect progression is very well documented.
The pivotol role that President Carter played in overthrowing the Shah of Iran is extremely well documented. Just FYI, the Shah and his predeccesors had been extremely loyal allies against the Soviet Union since before WW2 and were very progressive by any cogent definition. The degeneration of the Islamic world into barbarism during the decades after the Shah of Iran was deposed is irrefutable. When the Shah still ruled, women in most islamic countries often wore western style clothing in public and were attending schools and universities. The reversion to traditional attire and Sharia restrictions that are literally midevil is astounding. The fall of the Shah has set societies in the muslim world back by at least a century.

Consider the analogy of Manticore sending Honor Harrington to Yelstin's Star to incite a rebellion against Protector Benjamin which enables Masada to seize power. This is how disastrous President Carter's decision to overthrow the Shah of Iran was. The only other US policy that isnearly as bad was Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama inciting the Arab Spring protests against Mushariff of Egypt and Gadaffy of Libya. Mushariff had been a loyal ally and abider of the Camp David peace acords for decades. Daffy Gadaffy had repented by surrendering his WMD INCLUDING GAS CENTRIFUGES that we didnt know he had to Pres Bush jr and Secretary of State Condi Rice. Gadaffy's reward was the incitement of a rebellion that culminated in him being sodomized witha bayonet. No dictator will ever be willing to surrender WMD again because nukes are their only security against overthrow by the US. The result will be massive nuclear weapons prolifertion which is compelling the US to revert to isolationism. Enjoy the coming global anarchy.

TFLYTSNBN wrote: The pivotol role that President Carter played in overthrowing the Shah of Iran is extremely well documented. Just FYI, the Shah and his predeccesors had been extremely loyal allies against the Soviet Union since before WW2 and were very progressive by any cogent definition. The degeneration of the Islamic world into barbarism during the decades after the Shah of Iran was deposed is irrefutable. When the Shah still ruled, women in most islamic countries often wore western style clothing in public and were attending schools and universities. The reversion to traditional attire and Sharia restrictions that are literally midevil is astounding. The fall of the Shah has set societies in the muslim world back by at least a century.

Inquiring minds should compare this account to the Wikipedia page on the Shah of Iran. The account here leaves out such things as the CIA operation that returned the Shah to power and the cancer that killed him a year and a half after leaving the throne. President Carter was certainly unhappy with the Iranian civil rights record after institution of one party rule and secret police arrests of thousands of dissidents, but to say he was pivotal to the overthrow is as fanciful as saying he caused the reactor accident.

tlb wrote:Inquiring minds should compare this account to the Wikipedia page on the Shah of Iran. The account here leaves out such things as the CIA operation that returned the Shah to power and the cancer that killed him a year and a half after leaving the throne. President Carter was certainly unhappy with the Iranian civil rights record after institution of one party rule and secret police arrests of thousands of dissidents, but to say he was pivotal to the overthrow is as fanciful as saying he caused the reactor accident.

Wikipedia is not to be trusted on contentious issues. Dumb things done by one particular political party are high on that list.

Cyrus Vance was running Carter's state department. The arrogant jerk didn't resign when his precious ayatollah seized the US embassy and held the embassy staff hostage. No, that was fine with him. He resigned because Carter decided to rescue them. That's the kind of razor sharp minds that were running US foreign policy.

"Vance argued in favor of reforms while Brzezinski urged him to crack down – the 'iron fist' approach. Unable to receive a direct course of action from Carter, the mixed messages that the shah received from Vance and Brzezinski contributed to his confusion and indecision as he fled Iran in January 1979 and his regime collapsed."

tlb wrote:Inquiring minds should compare this account to the Wikipedia page on the Shah of Iran. The account here leaves out such things as the CIA operation that returned the Shah to power and the cancer that killed him a year and a half after leaving the throne. President Carter was certainly unhappy with the Iranian civil rights record after institution of one party rule and secret police arrests of thousands of dissidents, but to say he was pivotal to the overthrow is as fanciful as saying he caused the reactor accident.

kzt wrote:Wikipedia is not to be trusted on contentious issues. Dumb things done by one particular political party are high on that list.

Cyrus Vance was running Carter's state department. The arrogant jerk didn't resign when his precious ayatollah seized the US embassy and held the embassy staff hostage. No, that was fine with him. He resigned because Carter decided to rescue them. That's the kind of razor sharp minds that were running US foreign policy.

"Vance argued in favor of reforms while Brzezinski urged him to crack down – the 'iron fist' approach. Unable to receive a direct course of action from Carter, the mixed messages that the shah received from Vance and Brzezinski contributed to his confusion and indecision as he fled Iran in January 1979 and his regime collapsed."

I am fine if you want to say that mixed messages contributed to the Shah's confusion (which may have been enhanced by the cancer drugs he was taking). The Shah's police had already been cracking down, without the desired effect. The Wikipedia article says that the Shah thought the US and the British were conspiring against him. But all that is far from being pivotal; let's give some credit/blame to the demonstrators facing the police.

In any case, the Shah had less than 2 years to live and what would happen next? Could the throne have been successfully transferred to the oldest son against the protests?

PS. This Wikipedia page concentrates on Iran and the Shah, rather than specific actions (or inactions) within the US government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Queen Elizebeth is just a few years younger than Honor Harrington and Mike Henke.

Queen Elizebeth knows far more about the weapons technology that will become available to the RMN than even Admiral Whitehaven.

Puts the intraservice squabbles in perspective.

I tend to disagree... because -- specifically -- that "Horrible Hemphill" and Honor haven't interacted enough. The events and technology in House of Steel guarantee Manticore's early survival, the developments once HH arrives on the scene lead to the changes that allow wartime survival and lead to the wins. Hemphill's development of the FTL comm follows Honor's trick of flipping her impellers off as a signal in one of the short stories. Figuring out how to use "parasite pods" occurs in a Short Victorious War, but the battles in the first three books are ultimately secure by the arrival of sufficient RMN forces to insure the victory. Hemphill has "a right" idea about LACs, but the proof of concept occurs in "Honor Among Enemies"... and the RMN begins building LAC carriers. Instead of the Sonya swarm, we get survivable small craft, especially compared to Haven's early iterations.

Plot wise, later we get to the Shannon Foraker / Lester Tourville duo who sort of get the Oh, S--t jobs of the Havenite side in the war. They're the ones who keep Haven within spitting distance of the RMN despite the speed of the RMN's innovations in warships and weapons.

Thoughts?

The claim that it was honor flipping the wedge up and down is absurd. It was known for a very long time that you could transmit data that way.

kzt wrote:The claim that it was honor flipping the wedge up and down is absurd. It was known for a very long time that you could transmit data that way.

We see that in the Manticore Ascendant series: the Axelrod ship shuts down its wedge as a signal to its hidden support vessels that it's been "destroyed" and that they must attack the Volsung force. It's quite obvious you can transmit some kind of FTL signal from the moment you can detect a wedge via FTL. It probably took 10 seconds for someone to ask, "hey, can we transmit Morse code via this?"

The bandwidth is horrible, since wedges take minutes to go up and down. The secret of Manticoran FTL is not the FTL, it's the bandwidth (modulation, etc.)

So Honor didn't invent anything. She probably used a well-known tactic, which wasn't widely used because it left a ship vulnerable and could easily be seen by the enemy. But her doing it could have reminded Sonja to take a look and explore it further.