Dominic Flandry's assessment of the Merseian raid on Gorrazan:
"'...a most useful piece of psychological warfare has just been waged on Magnusson's account.'" (p. 325)
Decades ago, I was in Dublin during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Dail, the Parliament of the Irish Republic, was about to discuss a proposal for closer security cooperation with the British and was expected to vote against. A single bomb exploded in O'Connell Street, the main street in Dublin. The Dail overwhelmingly voted in favor of the proposal. Who planted that bomb and why? Perhaps I can leave you with that thought until some time tomorrow when we might join Diana Crowfeather and her companions in the Cynthian town of Lulach on The Highroad River on the planet Daedalus in the Patrician System of the Terran Empire on the marches of the Merseian Roidhunate.
Good night and good flight.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Conspiracy theorists can easily claim that bomb was exploded by either those inside Eire who favored those closer security ties with the UK or by the British! More likely, IMO, it was set by either by terrorists, either pro or anti Nationalist.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
It is perhaps relevant to wonder as well if Poul Anderson had read Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger's classic text PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE. Linebarger, of course, is better known among SF fans as Cordwainer Smith, author of the Instrumentality of Mankind stories. The Gorrazan raid would certainly seem to be among the tactics and methods discussed by Linebarger in his book (which I should reread).
Ad astra! Sean
Terrorists are usually so wedded to one worldview that they're terrible at seeing things from somebody else's POV, or accurately predicting the response to their own actions.
They're also usually also power-craving megalomaniacs who have a deep need to overestimate their own power to compel obedience through force.
In other words, to someone who's not mentally ****d up, the consequences of planting that bomb were obvious... but the people who were blamed for it -were- so mentally screwball and self-absorbed that they probably wouldn't anticipate that result of their actions.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Again, I agree. I don't expect rational thought or objective analysis from most terrorists!
That monster, Vladimir Lenin, might be an exception. He seems to have shrewdly and correctly understood his enemies in the Provisional Gov't, enabling him to overthrow Kerensky in 1917.
Ad astra! Sean
Lenin was pretty good at extrapolating _Russian_ circumstances. Whenever he tried to analyze politics in other countries, he got it spectacularly wrong.
Eg., he repeatedly, over and over again, underestimated the force of national patriotism in other countries. This accorded with Marxist ideology, but in point of fact Russian peasants of the period -did- have a very weak national consciousness compared to Poles or Czechs, not to mention Germans, and Marxists in -those- countries warned of the consequences of underestimating it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. I knew Lenin was an idiot when it came to the politics of other nations.
How much I regret that Lenin managed to seize power in Russia in 1917! It would have been so much better for Russia if Nicholas II, after he abdicated, had been succeeded by his son Alexis II, with their widely respected cousin Grand Duke Nicholas as Regent. I took great satisfaction in how, in your second Black Chamber book, the Regent got rid of Lenin and his gang!
Ad astra! Sean
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