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Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while, I Think I see my friends coming, Riding a many mile. Friends, you get some silver? Did you get a little gold? What did you bring me, my dear friends? Keep me from the Gallows Pole. What did you bring me to keep me from the Gallows Pole?
I couldn't get no silver, I couldn't get no gold, You know that we're too damn poor to keep you from the Gallows Pole. Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while, I think I see my brother coming, riding many a mile. Brother, you get me some silver? Did you get a little gold? What did you bring me, my brother, to keep me from the Gallows Pole?
Brother, I brought you some silver, yeah.I brought a little gold, I brought a little of everything To keep you from the Gallows Pole. Yes, I brought you to keep you from the Gallows Pole.
Hangman, hangman, turn your head awhile, I think I see my sister coming, riding many mile, mile, mile. Sister, I implore you, take him by the hand, Take him to some shady bower, save me from the wrath of this man, Please take him, save me from the wrath of this mad, man.
Hangman, hangman, upon your face a smile, Tell me that I'm free to ride, Ride for many mile, mile, mile.
Oh yes, you got a fine sister, She warmed my blood from cold, She warmed my blood to boiling hot to keep you from the Gallows Pole, Your brother brought me silver, Your sister warmed my soul, But now I laugh and pull so hard, see you swinging from the Gallows Pole
But now I laugh and pull so hard, see you swinging from the Gallows Pole Swingin' on the gallows pole!
Ah-ha-ha Swingin' Swingin' on the gallows pole! See-saw marjory daw See-saw knock at my door!
"The Maid Freed from the Gallows" is one of many titles of a centuries-old folk song about a condemned maiden pleading for someone to buy her freedom from the executioner. In the collection of ballads compiled by Francis James Child, it is indexed as Child Ballad number 95; eleven variants, some fragmentary, are indexed as 95A to 95K.[1] The ballad existed in a number of folkloric variants from many different countries, and has been remade in a variety of formats. It was recorded in 1939 as "The Gallis Pole" by folk singer Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, but the most famous version was the 1970 cover of the Fred Gerlach version by English rock band Led Zeppelin, which was entitled "Gallows Pole" on the album Led Zeppelin III.
Synopsis
Although it exists in many forms, all versions recount a similar story. A maid about to be hanged (for unknown reasons) pleads with the hangman, or judge, to wait for the arrival of someone who may bribe him. The first person (or people) to arrive, who may include the father, mother, brother, and sister, have brought nothing and often have come to see her hanged. The last person to arrive, often her true love, has brought the gold to save her. She may curse all those who failed her.
The typical refrain would be:
"Hangman, hangman, hangman / slack your rope awhile.
I think I see my father / ridin’ many a mile.
Father, did you bring any silver? / father, did you bring any gold,
Or did you come to see me / hangin' from the gallows pole?"
"No, I didn’t bring any silver, / no I didn’t bring any gold.
I just come to see you / hangin’ from the gallows pole."
The song is also known as "The Prickly Bush", a title derived from the oft-used refrain lamenting the maid's situation by likening it to being caught in briery bush, wherein the brier prickles her heart. In versions carrying this theme, the typical refrain may add:
O the prickly bush, the prickly bush,
It pricked my heart full sore;
If ever I get out of the prickly bush,
I'll never get in any more.
In "The Maid Freed from the Gallows", the first person (usually her father, mother or brother) has come not to free the condemned, but to see her hanged, but the last person (usually her lover) has brought the bribe with which to free her.[1] Although the traditional versions do not resolve the fate of the condemned one way or the other, it may be presumed that the bribe would succeed.[2]
It has been suggested that the reference to "gold" may not mean actual gold for a bribe, but may instead stand for the symbolic restoration of the maid's honor, perhaps by proof of her innocence or fidelity.[3][4] Such an interpretation would explain why a number of variations of the song have the maid (or a male condemned) asking whether their visitors had brought them gold or paid their fee. In at least one version, the reply comes that "I haven't brought you gold/ But I have paid your fee."[5]
Variants
In some versions, the protagonist is male. This appears to be more prevalent in the United States, where hanging of women was uncommon.[4] The crime for which the protagonist faces hanging is occasionally mentioned. The woman may be being held for ransom by pirates; or, she has stolen something from her employer. Other instances tell of her having lost a treasured golden ball,[6][7] or indicate that she is being hanged for fornication.
The most extensive version is not a song at all, but a fairy story titled "The Golden Ball", collected by Joseph Jacobs in More English Fairy Tales. It encompasses the theme of the song. The story focuses more on the exploits of the fiance who must recover a golden ball in order to save his love from the noose; the incident resembles The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.[8] Other fairy tales in the English language, telling the story more fully, always retell some variant on the heroine being hanged for losing an object of gold.[9]
Origin
The song likely originated in a language other than English. Some fifty versions have been reported in Finland,[10] where it is well known as Lunastettava neito. It is titled Den Bortsålda in Sweden, and Die Losgekaufte in German. A Lithuanian version has the maid asking relatives to ransom her with their best animals or belongings (sword, house, crown, ring etc.). The maiden curses her relatives who refuse to give up their property, and blesses her fiancé, who does ransom her.[11]
Francis James Child found the English version "defective and distorted", in that, in most cases, the narrative rationale had been lost and only the ransoming sequence remained. Numerous European variants explain the reason for the ransom: the heroine has been captured by pirates.[12] Of the texts he prints, one (95F) had "degenerated" into a children's game, while others had survived as part of a Northern English cante-fable, The Golden Ball (or Key).[12] Child describes additional examples from Färöe, Iceland, Russia, and Slovenia. Several of these feature a man being ransomed by a woman.[12]
The theme of delaying one's execution while awaiting rescue by relatives appears with a similar structure in the classic fairy tale "Bluebeard" by Charles Perrault in 1697[13] (translated into English in 1729).
The Led Zeppelin version of the song is unique in that, despite the bribes, which the hangman accepts, he still carries out the execution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maid_Freed_from_the_Gallows
Monday, February 8, 2010
An anticensorware investigation by Seth Finkelstein
Abstract: This report describes the system by which results in the Google search engine are suppressed.
Google Exclusion, introduction
Google is arguably the world's most popular search engine. However, contrary perhaps to a naive impression, in some cases the results of a search are affected by various government-related factors. That is, search results which may otherwise be shown, are deliberately excluded. The suppression may be local to a country, or global to all Google results.
This removal of results was first documented in a report Localized Google search result exclusions by Benjamin Edelman and Jonathan Zittrain , which investigated certain web material banned in various countries. Later, this author Seth Finkelstein discussed a global removal arising from intimidation generated from the United Kingdom town of Chester, in Chester's Guide to Molesting Google .
My discussion here is not meant to criticize Google's behavior in any way. Much of it is in reaction to government law or government-backed pressure, where accommodation is an understandable reaction if nothing else. Rather, documenting and explaining what happens, can inform public understanding, and lead to more informed resistance against the distortion of search results created by censorship campaigns.
How it works
A Google search is not simply a raw dump of a database query to the user's screen. The retrieval of the data is just one step. There is much post-processing afterwards, in terms of presentation and customization.
When Google "removes" material, often it is still in the Google index itself. But the post-processing has removed it from any results shown to the user. This system can be applied, for quality reasons, to remove sites which "spam" the search engine. And that is, by volume, certainly the overwhelming application of the mechanism. But it can also be directed against sites which have been prohibited for government-based reasons.
Sometimes the fact that the "removed" material is still in the index can be inferred.
Global censorship
For the case of Chester , which concerned a single "removed" page, the internal indexing of the target page could be established by comparison with a search for the same material on another search engine.
Consider a Google search for the word "lesbian" on the site torkyarkisto.marhost.com . It returns a page titled "The Kurt Cobain Quiz", with a count of
Results 1 - 1 of about 2
The "about" qualifier there represents many factors, but sometimes encompasses blacklisted pages. This can be seen here by comparing to an AltaVista search for the word "lesbian" on the site torkyarkisto.marhost.com
There are two pages visible in that case, the "Quiz" page, and the "Chester" page which caused all the trouble in the first place.
Since we know the "Chester" page was once in the Google index, it must be the other page referred to in "about 2". QED.
Local censorship
In this situation, comparing results from the different Country Google searches, is often revealing. The tests are often best done using the "allinurl:" syntax of Google, which searches for URLs which have the given components (note the separate components can appear anywhere in the URL, so "allinurl:stormfront.org" is "stormfront" and "org" in the URL, not just the string "stormfront.org" as might be naively thought). Stormfront.org is a notorious racist site, often banned in various contexts.
Consider the following US search:http://www.sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship/google-stormfront1-com.gif This returned: Results 1 - 27 of about 50,700.
Now compare with the German counterpart (Google.DE):http://www.sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship/google-stormfront1-de.gif This returned: Results 1 - 9 about 50,700.
Immediate observation: The rightmost (total) number is identical. So identical results are in the Google database. It's simply not displaying them. How is it determining which domain results to display?
Note the hosts of which "stormfront.org" URLs are visible on the German page:
irc.stormfront.org:8000/www4.stormfront.org:81/lists.stormfront.org:81/
What do these all have in common?They all have a port number after the host name.The exclusion pattern obviously isn't matching the ":number" part of the URL.It's matching a pattern of "*.stormfront.org/" in the host, as in the following which are displayed the US search, but not the German search.
www.stormfront.org/kids.stormfront.org/women.stormfront.org/nna.stormfront.org/www4.stormfront.org/
Even more interesting, the German page has a broken URL listed at the bottom: http/www.stormfront.org/quotes.htm . That's not a valid URL, so it seems to escape the host check.
Thus, the suppression again appears to be implemented as a post-processing step using very simple patterns of prohibited results.
The same behavior is observed in a German "stormfront.org" images search This returned: Results 1 - 6 about 1,410. Versus a US "stormfront.org" images search This returned: Results 1 - 18 about 1,410. (note identical right-hand numbers, and hosts matching "*.stormfront.org/" pattern are suppressed in the German results)
And also in a German "stormfront.org" directory search This returned: Results 1 - 8 about 15. Versus a US "stormfront.org" directory search This returned: Results 1 - 10 about 15. (note again identical right-hand numbers, and hosts matching "*.stormfront.org/" pattern are suppressed in the German results)
Conclusion
Contrary to earlier utopian theories of the Internet, it takes very little effort for governments to cause certain information simply to vanish for a huge number of people.
Version 1.0 Mar 10 2003
http://articles.sfgate.com/2006-02-02/news/17280735_1_google-products-google-s-senior-policy-counsel-google-china
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The block was only removed early this morning following a raft of complaints after both websites were unavailable on many ISP’s since Friday.
As the New Zealand based InfoNews website reported yesterday, both of Alex Jones’ flagship websites were blocked by ISPs using Asia Netcom for their international internet traffic.
It is important to stress that we receive emails on a weekly basis informing us that our websites have been blocked as “hate speech” or “offensive material” at Internet cafes, libraries, transport hubs, workplaces, and numerous other buildings not only in the United States but across the world. The censorship is being done at the ISP level, so whereas some people in a particular country will still have access, others will be blocked.
As we reported in 2008, London’s St. Pancras International, which millions of people traveling across mainland Europe pass through every year, completely blocks Prison Planet, Infowars and even more mainstream political websites as a matter of course.
In 2007, MySpace admitted their policy to censor and filter out posts containing links to the Prison Planet.com website, adding that the MySpace server automatically blocks such information. The social networking giant, as well as others such as Facebook, periodically block links to Alex Jones material and only revoke such filters when people complain.
In 2005, Time Warner subscribers from New York to California reported that their access to Infowars and Prison Planet had been blocked due to “hate speech,” before their access was restored.
UK ISP Tiscali also blocked the websites following the 7/7 London bombings in 2005.
Infowars’ social network was also blocked by libraries in the U.S. in 2008 using Safesquid and Google filtering software.
We receive numerous reports every single week of Alex Jones’ websites being blocked by ISPs and by filtering software in public buildings.
The websites were blocked on every ISP that relied on Asia Netcom as its upstream provider, including Woosh, Telecom, Slingshot and Orcon.
According to Duncan Blair, Head of Brand and Communications at Orcon, access to content hosted on the Limelight content distribution network, including Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com, was blocked as a result of a “technical issue”.
“I’m the person who half-made this story possible by calling my ISP,” wrote Jeff Mitchell in a comment on Prison Planet. “Just want to report that infowars.com is now working for me, even though it was down all weekend! We complained to ISPs and they were “very concerned” about censorship; that, combined with this article on prisonplanet could very well have been the reason for us regaining access.”
Whether the problem was down to technical issues or deliberate censorship, the fact that ISP’s can selectively block certain websites at the flick of a switch gives us a frightening preview of what a Chinese-style government regulated Internet would look like, which is exactly what influential insiders are calling for.
The move to impose centralized government control and regulation of the free Internet has accelerated over the past 12 months.
Last week, Time Magazine enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.
During a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
Internet censorship bills currently working their way into law in the UK, Australia and the U.S. legislate for government powers to restrict and filter any website that it deems to be undesirable for public consumption. In Italy, new rules to be imposed by government decree force anyone who wishes to upload a video to the web to get permission from the government’s Communications Ministry.
Power brokers in the White House have openly declared war on free speech and targeted Internet “conspiracy theorists” as the main threat to their agenda.
In a 2008 white paper, Obama’s Regulation Czar Cass Sunstein called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.
1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
The ominous spectacle of major free speech websites going dark in supposedly democratic countries is a shocking portend of what the establishment wants to impose on a widespread basis. Only by screaming bloody murder in defense of the last true outpost of free speech – the Internet – and threatening boycotts and aggressive public relations campaigns can we counter the insidious move to silence the only remaining open forum of lawful dissent.
He operates secretly and illegally, as part of a community of hackers who exploit flaws in computer software to break into Web sites, steal valuable data and sell it for a profit.
Majia says he fell in love with hacking in college, after friends showed him how to break into computer systems during his freshman year.
He is consumed by the challenges it presents. He reads hacker magazines, swaps information with a small circle of hackers and writes malicious code. He uses Trojan horses to sneak into people’s computers and infect them, so he can take control.
“They make a lot of money selling viruses and Trojan horses to infect other people’s computers,” Mr. Henderson said in a telephone interview. “They also break into online gaming accounts, and sell the virtual characters. It’s big money."
Most of his socializing occurs online, where he works from about 6:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., starting every evening by perusing computer Web sites like cnBeta.com.
Asked why he doesn’t work for a major Chinese technology company, he sneers at the suggestion, saying that it would restrain his freedom.
Oddly, Majia said his parents did not know that he was hacking at night. But at one point, he explained the intricacies of computer hacking and stealing data while his mother stood nearby, listening silently, while offering a guest oranges and candy.
“Microsoft and Adobe have a lot of zero days,” he said, while scanning Web sites at home. “But we don’t publish them. We want to save them so that some day we can use them.”
When asked whether hackers work for the government, or the military, he says “yes.”
Does he? No comment, he says.
