Monday, September 11, 2017
Rockall
Rosenberg Trial
MAD World - History of the Cold War | Free >> .
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who spied on behalf of the Soviet Union and were tried, convicted, and executed by the federal government of the United States. They provided top-secret information about radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines and were accused of transmitting valuable nuclear weapon designs; at that time the United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons.
Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass (who had made a plea agreement), Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.
For decades, the Rosenbergs' sons Michael and Robert Meeropol, and many other defenders maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, much information concerning them was declassified, including a trove of decoded Soviet cables, code-named VENONA, which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets and Ethel's role as an accessory. In 2008 the National Archives of the United States published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs; it revealed that Ethel had not been directly involved in activities, contrary to the charges levied by the government.
Their sons' current position is that Julius was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, though not of atomic spying, while Ethel was only generally aware of his activities. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be posthumously legally exonerated.
In 2014, five historians who had published works based on the Rosenberg case wrote that newly available Soviet documents show that Ethel Rosenberg hid money and espionage paraphernalia for Julius, served as an intermediary for communications with his Soviet intelligence contacts, relayed her personal evaluation of individuals whom Julius considered recruiting, and was present at meetings with his sources. They support the assertion that Ethel persuaded her sister-in-law Ruth Greenglass to travel to New Mexico to recruit her brother David Greenglass as a spy.
Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass (who had made a plea agreement), Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.
For decades, the Rosenbergs' sons Michael and Robert Meeropol, and many other defenders maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, much information concerning them was declassified, including a trove of decoded Soviet cables, code-named VENONA, which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets and Ethel's role as an accessory. In 2008 the National Archives of the United States published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs; it revealed that Ethel had not been directly involved in activities, contrary to the charges levied by the government.
Their sons' current position is that Julius was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, though not of atomic spying, while Ethel was only generally aware of his activities. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be posthumously legally exonerated.
In 2014, five historians who had published works based on the Rosenberg case wrote that newly available Soviet documents show that Ethel Rosenberg hid money and espionage paraphernalia for Julius, served as an intermediary for communications with his Soviet intelligence contacts, relayed her personal evaluation of individuals whom Julius considered recruiting, and was present at meetings with his sources. They support the assertion that Ethel persuaded her sister-in-law Ruth Greenglass to travel to New Mexico to recruit her brother David Greenglass as a spy.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
SCN - Skeleton Cable Network
Upon completion in 1964, it overtook the Millbank Tower to become the tallest building in both London and the United Kingdom, titles that it held until 1980, when it in turn was overtaken by the NatWest Tower.
Due to its importance to the national communications network, information about the tower was designated an official secret. In 1978, the journalist Duncan Campbell was tried for collecting information about secret locations, and during the trial the judge ordered that the sites could not be identified by name; the Post Office Tower could only be referred to as 'Location 23'.
The British Telecom microwave network (Backbone) was a network of point-to-point microwave radio links in the United Kingdom, operated at first by the General Post Office, and subsequently by its successor BT plc. From the late 1950s to the 1980s it provided a large part of BT's trunk communications capacity, and carried telephone, television and radar signals and digital data, both civil and military. Its use of line-of-sight microwave transmission was particularly important during the Cold War for its resilience against nuclear attack. It was rendered obsolete, at least for normal civilian purposes, by the installation of a national optical fibre communication network with considerably higher reliability and vastly greater capacity.
The term 'backbone' is often applied to the core of a communications network, i.e. the part that provides high-capacity links over long distances between major nodes. In the early 1950s, the term was used by the General Post Office (BT's predecessor) to describe a chain of microwave links designed to provide resilient communications in the event of nuclear war. It was originally designed as a chain of stations between south-east England and Scotland. The exact location of the Backbone sites changed as the project developed, but in July 1956 there were 14 planned sites at (from south to north).
BT remains one of the largest owners of transmission and microwave towers in the UK. The most famous of these is the BT Tower in London, which was the tallest building in the UK from its construction in the 1960s until the early 1980s, and a major node in the BT microwave network.
It is often said that the tower did not appear on Ordnance Survey maps, despite being a 177-metre (581 ft) tall structure in the middle of central London that was open to the public for about 15 years. However, this is incorrect; the 1:25,000 (published 1971) and 1:10,000 (published 1981) Ordnance Survey maps show the tower. It is also shown in the London A–Z street atlas from 1984.
In February 1993, the MP Kate Hoey used the tower as an example of trivial information being kept officially secret, and joked that she hoped parliamentary privilege allowed her to confirm that the tower existed and to state its street address.
It replaced a much shorter steel lattice tower which had been built on the roof of the neighbouring Museum telephone exchange in the late 1940s to provide a television link between London and Birmingham. The taller structure was required to protect the radio links' "line of sight" against some of the tall buildings in London then in the planning stage. These links were routed via other GPO microwave stations at Harrow Weald, Bagshot, Kelvedon Hatch and Fairseat, and to places like the London Air Traffic Control Centre at West Drayton.
The tower was designed by the architects of the Ministry of Public Building and Works: the chief architects were Eric Bedford and G. R. Yeats. Typical for its time, the building is concrete clad in glass. The narrow cylindrical shape was chosen because of the requirements of the communications aerials: the building will shift no more than 25 centimetres (10 in) in wind speeds of up to 150 km/h (95 mph). Initially, the first 16 floors were for technical equipment and power. Above that was a 35-metre section for the microwave aerials, and above that were six floors of suites, kitchens, technical equipment, a revolving restaurant, and finally a cantilevered steel lattice tower. To prevent heat build-up, the glass cladding was of a special tint. The construction cost was £2.5 million.
Construction began in June 1961; owing to the building's height and its having a tower crane jib across the top virtually throughout the whole construction period, it gradually became a very prominent landmark that could be seen from almost anywhere in London. A question was raised in Parliament about the crane, in August 1963. Reginald Bennett MP asked the Minister of Public Buildings and Works, Geoffrey Rippon, how, when the crane on the top of the new Tower had fulfilled its purpose, he proposed to remove it. Rippon replied: "This is a matter for the contractors. The problem does not have to be solved for about a year but there appears to be no danger of the crane having to be left in situ."
The tower was topped out on 15 July 1964, and officially opened by the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson on 8 October 1965. The main contractor was Peter Lind & Co Ltd.
The tower was originally designed to be just 111 metres (364 ft) high; its foundations are sunk down through 53 metres (174 ft) of London clay, and are formed of a concrete raft 27 metres (89 ft) square, 1 metre (3 ft) thick, reinforced with six layers of cables, on top of which sits a reinforced concrete pyramid.
SA-T Soviet–Afghan War ⇒ Taliban
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> Afghanistan >> >> Afghanistan >>>
2001 Invasion of Afghanistan > .
Male ignorance is difficult to eradicate: Afghanistan: why Taliban can't be defeated > .
2001 Invasion of Afghanistan > .
Male ignorance is difficult to eradicate: Afghanistan: why Taliban can't be defeated > .
> Pakistan >> vs > India >>
X
SA-T Soviet–Afghan War ⇒ Taliban ..
The Soviet–Afghan War was a conflict wherein insurgent groups known collectively as the mujahideen, as well as smaller Maoist groups, fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government. It was fought over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989, mostly in the Afghan countryside. The mujahideen groups were backed primarily by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, making it a Cold War proxy war. Between 562,000 and 2,000,000 civilians were killed and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees, mostly to Pakistan and Iran.
The war derives from a 1978 coup when Afghanistan's communist party took power, initiating a series of radical modernization reforms throughout the country. These reforms were deeply unpopular among the more traditional rural population and established power structures. The repressive nature of Soviet Afghanistan, which vigorously suppressed opposition including the execution of thousands of political prisoners, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups and by April 1979 large parts of the country were in open rebellion. The ruling party itself experienced deep rivalries, and in September 1979 the President, Nur Mohammad Taraki, was murdered under orders of the second-in-command, Hafizullah Amin, which soured relations with the Soviet Union. Eventually the Soviet government, under leader Leonid Brezhnev, decided to deploy the 40th Army on December 24, 1979. Arriving in the capital Kabul, they staged a coup, killing president Amin and installing Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal from a rival faction.[42] The deployment had been variously called an "invasion" (by Western media and the rebels) or a legitimate supporting intervention (by the Soviet Union and the Afghan government) on the basis of the Brezhnev Doctrine.
The war derives from a 1978 coup when Afghanistan's communist party took power, initiating a series of radical modernization reforms throughout the country. These reforms were deeply unpopular among the more traditional rural population and established power structures. The repressive nature of Soviet Afghanistan, which vigorously suppressed opposition including the execution of thousands of political prisoners, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups and by April 1979 large parts of the country were in open rebellion. The ruling party itself experienced deep rivalries, and in September 1979 the President, Nur Mohammad Taraki, was murdered under orders of the second-in-command, Hafizullah Amin, which soured relations with the Soviet Union. Eventually the Soviet government, under leader Leonid Brezhnev, decided to deploy the 40th Army on December 24, 1979. Arriving in the capital Kabul, they staged a coup, killing president Amin and installing Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal from a rival faction.[42] The deployment had been variously called an "invasion" (by Western media and the rebels) or a legitimate supporting intervention (by the Soviet Union and the Afghan government) on the basis of the Brezhnev Doctrine.
Several other government buildings were seized during the operation, including the Ministry of Interior building, the Internal Security (KHAD) building, and the General Staff building (Darul Aman Palace). Alpha Group veterans call this operation one of the most successful in the group's history. Russian documents released during the 1990s show that the Soviet leadership believed Amin had secret contacts with the U.S. embassy and "was capable of reaching an agreement with the United States". However, allegations of Amin colluding with the U.S. have been widely discredited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm-333 .
The Islamic State – Khorasan Province is an affiliate of the Islamic State militant group active in South Asia and Central Asia. ISIS–K has been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, where they claimed attacks. While both Islamists, ISIS–K and the Taliban consider each other enemies.
The group was created in January 2015 by disaffected Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, although its membership includes individuals from various countries, notably Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar. Its initial leaders, Hafiz Saeed Khan and Abdul Rauf Aliza, were killed by U.S. forces in July 2016 and February 2015, respectively. Subsequent leaders have also been killed; its leader Abdullah Orokzai was captured in April 2020 by Afghanistan's former intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security. ISIS–K has conducted numerous high-profile attacks against civilians, primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In July 2018, ISIS–K bombings killed 149 at election rallies in Mastung and Bannu, Pakistan. In May 2021, an ISIS–K bombing at a school killed 90 in Kabul. In August 2021, ISIS–K killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 American military personnel during the U.S. evacuation of Kabul, which marked the highest number of U.S. military deaths in an attack in Afghanistan since 2011. In July 2023, ISIS–K killed 63 at a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) rally in Khar, Bajaur, Pakistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War .
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-soviet-war-in-afghanistan-1979-1989/100786/ .
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-soviet-war-in-afghanistan-1979-1989/100786/ .
The group was created in January 2015 by disaffected Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, although its membership includes individuals from various countries, notably Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar. Its initial leaders, Hafiz Saeed Khan and Abdul Rauf Aliza, were killed by U.S. forces in July 2016 and February 2015, respectively. Subsequent leaders have also been killed; its leader Abdullah Orokzai was captured in April 2020 by Afghanistan's former intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security. ISIS–K has conducted numerous high-profile attacks against civilians, primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In July 2018, ISIS–K bombings killed 149 at election rallies in Mastung and Bannu, Pakistan. In May 2021, an ISIS–K bombing at a school killed 90 in Kabul. In August 2021, ISIS–K killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 American military personnel during the U.S. evacuation of Kabul, which marked the highest number of U.S. military deaths in an attack in Afghanistan since 2011. In July 2023, ISIS–K killed 63 at a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) rally in Khar, Bajaur, Pakistan.
Soviet Youth Organizations - Cold War
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sī vīs pācem, parā bellum
igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...
