Future of the Renaissance Factor

ThinksMarkedly wrote:What's going to complicate are the lost lines, like the Harringtons. There are quite a few with which contact was lost along the way and therefore spread the gene mods through the population via their descendants. So the correlation of genes is not going to be sufficient cause for arrest.

No, but they may find themselves having an exceptionally large number of "random" encounters with treecats, especially in the main systems (Manticore, Grayson, Haven. Eventually, New Berlin, Torch, Mesa).

The SL is just way too big and powerful to dismiss. The hairy ape is simply hibernating. It seems to me that the RF and a rejuvenated SL have a date with destiny. I have a premonition they will meet on the mat someday. A reformed SL has a right to court back its former members while claiming to be rehabilitated with a brand new (C c)onstitution. And the SL can offer real incentives for a change, that aren't simply a farce like before. The SL can actually afford to offer real incentives that are too good to pass up.

Another thing. The SL has always enforced the Eridani Edict. Someone still has to keep the galaxy in line. Especially since there is a real possibility the MA will bring the need for an enforcer back to life. I doubt the SL will tolerate someone who they think is guilty of bombing Mesa to step into those shoes.

Until Manticore's name is cleared, it may not be appropriate for them to step into those shoes.

Untill the latest compication, a "benign" Mesan Alignment which was sprung on Manticore (and us) after Albrect devistated Mesa with that little "final cleanup of messy details like - well anything the actual Alighment used for management/research/communications/residential areas and probably waste treatment systems-) gets cleared up to the satisfaction of a significant part of human occupied space, Manticor isn't going to look very good to a bunch of people who are not already disposed to believe Manticore about "The Alignment" or eventually the SLN version - "The Other Guys", there will be a lot of conflicting views.

Just how many other Red Herrings and false trails, and elaborate and long perpetrated plots for misdirection and compromising of governments has the Alighment got stuck away in it's playbook and files?

And trying to pick Alpha or Beta Star Lines out by genetics is going to be truly messy as- is pointed out in these discussions- all sorts of things were first tried out in genetic slaves and or in various adaptions given to people who have been seeded into how many thousands of populations over hundreds of years. Like sleeper agents who did end up having families but of which none of the children were ever brought into the Alignment -at any level- and have no idea what modifications are in their genetics. If the Alighment went around "cleaning up" on any bits of genetics that passed out us usefull reach or just wasn't worth recruiting there would have to have been millions of "accidents" and unsolved murders across how many star systems in the last couple of hundred years.

Besides, perhaps that somewhat random scattering of mods across populations in time is yet another mis-direction and muddying of the water cross tied to the general theory and philosophy/imperitive of Uplifting humanity through modification and could conceivably have a component of very blind trials to see how well certain mods fair when not being given "guidance" in any direction.

The Detweiler Boys- if several or all were sampled and compaired would make a wonderful research project (which the Long Term Planning Committee is probably already running unknown to them) and you have to wonder about the tweeking that was might have done to each of them (without Albrect knowing--just in the interest of Science, of course) and the hypothesis about their relevance in the way each turned out. Makes your head spin.

Brigade XO wrote:Untill the latest compication, a "benign" Mesan Alignment which was sprung on Manticore (and us) after Albrect devistated Mesa with that little "final cleanup of messy details like - well anything the actual Alighment used for management/research/communications/residential areas and probably waste treatment systems-) gets cleared up to the satisfaction of a significant part of human occupied space, Manticor isn't going to look very good to a bunch of people who are not already disposed to believe Manticore about "The Alignment" or eventually the SLN version - "The Other Guys", there will be a lot of conflicting views.

Just how many other Red Herrings and false trails, and elaborate and long perpetrated plots for misdirection and compromising of governments has the Alighment got stuck away in it's playbook and files?

And trying to pick Alpha or Beta Star Lines out by genetics is going to be truly messy as- is pointed out in these discussions- all sorts of things were first tried out in genetic slaves and or in various adaptions given to people who have been seeded into how many thousands of populations over hundreds of years. Like sleeper agents who did end up having families but of which none of the children were ever brought into the Alignment -at any level- and have no idea what modifications are in their genetics. If the Alighment went around "cleaning up" on any bits of genetics that passed out us usefull reach or just wasn't worth recruiting there would have to have been millions of "accidents" and unsolved murders across how many star systems in the last couple of hundred years.

Besides, perhaps that somewhat random scattering of mods across populations in time is yet another mis-direction and muddying of the water cross tied to the general theory and philosophy/imperitive of Uplifting humanity through modification and could conceivably have a component of very blind trials to see how well certain mods fair when not being given "guidance" in any direction.

The Detweiler Boys- if several or all were sampled and compaired would make a wonderful research project (which the Long Term Planning Committee is probably already running unknown to them) and you have to wonder about the tweeking that was might have done to each of them (without Albrect knowing--just in the interest of Science, of course) and the hypothesis about their relevance in the way each turned out. Makes your head spin.

It seems like a show down is brewing on the horizon between the Benigns and the Malignants. Which makes sense. At some point, notions can become too extreme. It will always come back to the fact that the MA should have just carved out their own part of the galaxy and became separatists. There was never a need to wage war against humanity. That part of the plan was born out of the human element of revenge. At some point, someone has to realize that the revenge part of the equation is wasteful, childish and detrimental to the plan. A purely domestic dispute?

We know that at a very early point, Mesa was being set up to take the fall as the source of all the evil and blame for everything that came out of the various genetic labs of the Alignment under the cover of Manpower. RFC laid that out clearly.
Darius - once found and identified as a good Secret Lair and production center- became the place where the Alignment ultimatly shifted all of its important people and/or critical R&D in the emergency acclerated Houdini evacuation with cover-up.

Mesa was ALWAYS going to become the target of just about anyone who was against genetic slavery and what was clearly research and practical applications of things vastly beyond the Beowulf Codes. That doesn't start to address the anger accumulation against the verious Transtellars of the rapacious kind or just very dirty trade practices and whatever other unsavory companies were operating out of Mesa even if they were not direct puppets of the Alignment.

While not all the members of our newly discoverd "benign" Alignment on Mesa will ever ever believe that the whole organization they actualy belong to is really just one more intricate and totaly expendable group of sacraficial cattle created to cover the actions and identifies of the abomination they are camoflage fore......well, these non-Mallignment is going to be yet another group that is going to pull the knives out and go looking for the Alignment when -eventualy- the real story comes out. In the meantime, they are- as intended- yet another distraction and web of disinformation by the Malignment.

I have to wonder if the same doubts that got to Jack McBride are going to start to show up inside the RF as information about Mesa begins to be more than one horrific "attack" after another and people start wondering and thinking about the credability of what is actualy going on. Even the StarLine RF people (not just general population aka normal humans) will have to wonder just what the hell was and is going on with Mesa. How many of the RF StarLines and other Alignment agents are going to start wondering just how expendable they are if the Alignment is going to do what it did to the population of Mesa and why? At the very least they abandoned the populaiton to the attacks of the Ballroom but just exactly how did such an organization get the ability to do all that was done. And if there was such devistation why wasn't anything done to try and prevent it?
Oh, that's right, a number of people actualy know that they are protecting a wormhole that leads to the secret location the Alignment's private system where they are safe from such nasty things as their own creations who decided they didn't want to be slaves. So what happens when somebody else- like me- is just an expendable piece of diversion? Bad line of thinking....tum de tum tummy

It’s much harder to find a convenient spy to confess to. And the pattern of true believers is they don’t go to their death cursing Stalin, they go to their deaths saying "If only Stalin knew he would stop all this. Please comrade, somebody get word to him, for Lenin's sake, and he can send us all home."

Spoiler: Stalin knew.

Another example:

Stalin’s most celebrated victims were themselves used to humiliation and self-abasement. As Robert Conquest writes in his indispensable book The Great Terror, “Their surrender was not a single and exceptional act in their careers, but the culmination of a whole series of submissions to the Party that they knew to be ‘objectively’ false.” Conquest tells of a former member of the Soviet Supreme Court who was informed by an interrogator, “Well, the Party demands that you, as a Bolshevik, confess that you are an English spy.” The man responded: “If the Party demands it, I confess.”

So not a lot of people are going to decide "My entire life is a lie, I an an idiot, a fool and a sociopthic murderer and I am going to attempt to destroy my friends, my family and my kids when I go talk to someone who is probably a secret police agent."

Or, to mangle a Russian proverb, "when three conspire, two are fools and the other is a police agent."

kzt wrote:Another example:

Stalin’s most celebrated victims were themselves used to humiliation and self-abasement. As Robert Conquest writes in his indispensable book The Great Terror, “Their surrender was not a single and exceptional act in their careers, but the culmination of a whole series of submissions to the Party that they knew to be ‘objectively’ false.” Conquest tells of a former member of the Soviet Supreme Court who was informed by an interrogator, “Well, the Party demands that you, as a Bolshevik, confess that you are an English spy.” The man responded: “If the Party demands it, I confess.”

So not a lot of people are going to decide "My entire life is a lie, I an an idiot, a fool and a sociopthic murderer and I am going to attempt to destroy my friends, my family and my kids when I go talk to someone who is probably a secret police agent."

Or, to mangle a Russian proverb, "when three conspire, two are fools and the other is a police agent."

I saw a documentary lately, where a group of Doctors without Borders Ophthalmologists went to N Korea to do a mass of cataract surgeries (a major issue in N. Korea, where it is not treated). I cannot stress this enough - This was a service done for free by Western Doctors because the communist government did not or could not treat the disease.

When the bandages were removed after the surgery, and the 100s of people could see again, uniformly, they went to the obligatory pictures of the Kims in the room and fell before them weeping in thanks and repeatedly thanking them for their returned sight. Not the doctors - the pictures of the Kims who could not provide such care for their people.

Theemile, could that be the result of the total brainwashing by the Kims AND the effectiveness of a radio-free NK, or is it knowledge that gratitude for the rest of the world is NOT tolerated?

****** *


Have we yet considered how the SL will accept these RF worlds who come to have an economical and industrial shot in the arm via ex-SL polities?

cthia wrote:Theemile, could that be the result of the total brainwashing by the Kims AND the effectiveness of a radio-free NK, or is it knowledge that gratitude for the rest of the world is NOT tolerated?

****** *


Have we yet considered how the SL will accept these RF worlds who come to have an economical and industrial shot in the arm via ex-SL polities?

Seeing the video and later hearing the doctors discussing how odd the behavior was, I would say brainwashing. There was no thanking the Doctors (not even a handshake or a polite head nod...), just a beeline to the wall and a severe heartfelt release of love, joy, and addoration at the Portraits of the Kims, which I've rarely seen outside of a religious shrine or backstage at a boy-band concert.

Yes, many of those who were treated were were older Koreans, and they knew firsthand Kim Il Song as the guy who lead the rebel movements to drive out the brutal Japanese occupation they were enduring, created the N. Korean nation, drive out us evil Americans and our capitalistic ways, etc. But even their families reacted the same. It was just... odd. Their fervor was that of a religious zealot. I guess it explains why N. Korea still exists.

as for the RF worlds...
The RF worlds are the planets next door. Visigoth was a founding member of the SL. Their populations are just normal SL populations, living normal SL lives and their industries are integrated into SL economic structures just like any other SL company is. Some might have been secretly fronting or researching for the RF for years, unknowingly.

No, the real concern is what will happen when they PULL OUT of the SL economy? For example, That one company which has been buying out all the other SL based hard drive manufacturers and moving construction to random RF worlds? Or those two companies that has driven all the other unobtanium producers out of business on price points - which just happen to be based on RF planets?