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Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Now, however, the White House is requesting one of the larger increases in warhead spending history. If its request is fully funded, warhead spending would rise 10 percent in a single year, with further increases promised for the future. Los Alamos National Laboratory, the biggest target of the Obama largesse, would see a 22 percent budget increase, its largest since 1944. In particular, funding for a new plutonium "pit" factory complex there would more than double, signaling a commitment to produce new nuclear weapons a decade hence.
So how is the president's budget compatible with his disarmament vision?
The answer is simple: There is no evidence that Obama has, or ever had, any such vision. He said nothing to that effect in Prague. There, he merely spoke of his commitment "to seek . . . a world without nuclear weapons," a vague aspiration and hardly a novel one at that level of abstraction. He said that in the meantime the United States "will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies."
Since nuclear weapons don't, and won't ever, "deter any adversary," this too was highly aspirational, if not futile. The vain search for an "effective" arsenal that can deter "any" adversary requires unending innovation and continuous real investment, including investment in the extended deterrent to which Obama referred. The promise of such investments, and not disarmament, was the operative message in Prague as far as the U.S. stockpile was concerned. In fact, proposed new investments in extended deterrence were already being packaged for Congress when Obama spoke.
To fulfill his supposed "disarmament vision," Obama offered just two approaches in Prague, both indefinite. First, he spoke vaguely of reducing "the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy." It's far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean. Most likely it refers to official discourse--what officials say about nuclear doctrine--as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Second, Obama promised to negotiate "a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START] with the Russians." As far as nuclear disarmament went in the speech, that was it.
Of course, Obama also said his administration would promptly pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an action not yet taken and one entirely unrelated to U.S. disarmament. The rest of the speech was devoted to various nonproliferation initiatives that his administration planned to seek.
On July 8, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced their Joint Understanding, committing their respective countries to somewhere between 500 to 1,100 strategic delivery vehicles and 1,500 to 1,675 deployed strategic warheads, very modest goals to be achieved a full seven years after the treaty entered into force. Total arsenal numbers wouldn't change, so strategic warheads could be taken from deployment and placed in a reserve--de-alerted, in effect. The treaty wouldn't affect nonstrategic warheads. It wouldn't require dismantlement. As Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American Scientists has explained, the delivery vehicle limits require little, if any, change from U.S. and Russian expected deployments.
Ironically, it's possible that the retirement PDF of 4,000 or more U.S. warheads under the Moscow Treaty and other retirements ordered by George W. Bush may exceed anything Obama does in terms of disarmament. As for the stockpile and weapons complex, Bush's aspirations were far more hawkish than Congress ultimately allowed. Real budgets for warheads fell during his last three years in office. Now, with the Democrats controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, congressional restraint is notable by its absence. What Obama mainly seems to be "disarming" is congressional resistance to variations of some of the same proposals Bush found it difficult to authorize and fund.
Last May Obama sent his first budget to Congress, calling for flat warhead spending. At that time, the administration was still displaying a measured approach toward replacement and expansion of warhead capabilities.
That said, in last year's budget the White House did acquiesce to a Pentagon demand to request funding for a major upgrade to four B61 nuclear bomb variants--one of which had just completed a 20-year-plus life-extension program. Just one day before that budget was released a grand nuclear strategy review previously requested by the armed services committees was unveiled. It was chaired by William Perry, a member of the governing board of the corporation that manages Los Alamos, and recurrent Cold War fixture James Schlesinger. [Full disclosure: Perry is also a member of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors.]
The report's recommendations for increased spending and weapons development quickly began to serve as a rallying point for defense hawks--surely the point of the exercise. Overall, it was largely a conclusory pastiche of recycled Cold War notions, entirely lacking in analysis and often factually wrong. But neither the White House nor leading congressional Democrats offered any public resistance or rebuttal to its conclusions.
More largely, opposition to nuclear restraint within the administration quickly emerged from its usual redoubts at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Pentagon, STRATCOM, and interested players in both parties in Congress. Plus, Obama left key Bush appointees in place at NNSA while the Pentagon added some familiar faces from the Clinton administration, leaving serious questions about the ability of the White House to develop an independent understanding of the issues, let alone present one to Congress.
Either way, potential treaty ratification is surely a major factor in White House thinking. Senate Republicans, as expected, are demanding significant nuclear investments prior to considering ratification of any START follow-on treaty. Democratic hawks, especially powerful ones with pork-barrel interests at stake such as New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, also must be satisfied in the ratification process. All in all this makes the latest Obama budget request a kind of "preemptive surrender" to nuclear hawks. So whether or not the president has a disarmament "vision" is irrelevant. What is important are the policy commitments embodied in the budget request and whether Congress will endorse them.
Investments on the scale requested should be flatly unacceptable to all of us. The country and the world face truly apocalyptic security challenges from climate change and looming shortages of transportation fuels. Our economy is very weak and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The proposed increases in nuclear weapons spending, embedded as they are in an overall military budget bigger than any since the 1940s, should be a clarion call for renewed political commitment in service of the fundamental values that uphold this, or any, society.
Those values are now gravely threatened--not least by a White House uncertain about, or unwilling or unable to fight for, what is right.
The lake is about 90 to 95 percent ice-covered, and more cold temperatures forecast for the next week or so could freeze the entire lake, National Weather Service meteorologists in Cleveland said.
"We're thinking it probably will ice over the rest of the way,'' said weather service meteorologist Karen Oudeman.
Weather service meteorologist Robert LaPlante said Tuesday that the remaining open area extends from Long Point, Ontario, southeast to the New York state shoreline. Satellite images also indicate some waters just north and east of Erie, off Pennsylvania, are also ice-free.
An ice-covered lake could mean good news for winter-weary residents, or not-so-good news for people who can't get enough of the snow.
The ice-over also could mean a later start to the Lake Erie shipping season.
Complete or nearly complete ice cover lessens the chance of lake-effect snowstorms, which occur when cold air passes over warmer bodies of water, building up clouds and dumping snow downwind. Inland snowbelt areas are typically hit the hardest.
"The moisture source really isn't there when it's frozen. There's less moisture to work with,'' Oudeman said.
But here's three reasons why you shouldn't put away your snow shovels and snowblowers just yet:
- The Lake Erie snow machine can be turned on again by small, open areas of water, or high winds that break up the ice. "It's kind of a fragile ice setting out there,'' LaPlante said. "A county or two-sized area opens up and all of a sudden you have (the potential for) a snowstorm.''
Oudeman said even a completely iced-over lake typically has some open pockets of water. "It doesn't usually look like a perfect ice rink, because the wind is pushing ice and water in different directions. It's very dynamic,'' she said.
Even so, small, open areas of water would produce less lake-effect snow, she said.
- While most of our lake-effect snow comes from westerly winds over Lake Erie, some of it comes from Lake Huron, which is mostly still open, LaPlante said.
"If we get a northwest flow of cold, arctic air, it can flow off Lake Huron and affect northwest Pennsylvania,'' he said.
- And synoptic weather systems -- large-scale patterns that affect a larger part of the nation -- could bring snow to northwestern Pennsylvania, too, the meteorologists said. A storm system that started Tuesday, expected to move from Iowa to the East Coast, was such a system, LaPlante said.
The lake hasn't completely frozen over since the winter of 1995-96, though it virtually froze over a year later, at 99.6 percent, on Jan. 28, 1997, said George Leshkevich, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.
But the ice cover reached 90.2 percent or higher five times from 2000-01 through 2008-09, he said. Leshkevich's data comes from the National Ice Center, an agency that comes under the umbrella of NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.
But even at 90 percent, Leshkevich said much of the lake-effect snow potential is diminished.
This season, as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, Erie recorded 62.1 inches of snowfall at Erie International Airport, far below the pace of the seasonal total of 145.8 inches for 2008-09.
But recent ice cover is only one possible reason for the lower amount.
"There is a lot of variability from year to year,'' LaPlante said.
This season, November was mild, cold temperatures in early January gave way to moderate temperatures later in the month, and the region experienced few periods with below-normal temperatures that contribute to lake-effect storms, LaPlante said. Also, he said, the region has been spared large synoptic storms like the one that buried Pittsburgh and much of the East Coast over the weekend.
A complete ice cover of Lake Erie also could affect the multi-billion-dollar Great Lakes shipping trade, said Glen Nekvasil, spokesman for the Lake Carriers' Association, a Cleveland-based trade group representing U.S.-flagged vessels on the Great Lakes.
A later start to the shipping season is possible if "formidable'' ice forms on the lake, though U.S. Coast Guard ice breakers are available, he said. The ice thickness varies throughout the lake, the weather service's Oudeman said.
The U.S. Coast Guard has eight ice breakers stationed in the Great Lakes, and brought a ninth one from the East Coast for this winter, Nekvasil said.
But Nekvasil said only one is modern and capable of operating in all conditions, and he said Canada has scaled back its number of Great Lakes ice breakers.
The shipping season on Lake Erie typically starts about March 15, with coal shipments from Ohio ports to Canada and the United States, Nekvasil said.
The "starting gun'' for the rest of the Great Lakes is typically March 25, with the opening of the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., he said.
Winter-weary residents have their eyes on a different season, the start of spring on March 20.
But with a lake that could freeze over entirely for the first time in 14 years, that seems like a long way off.
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
