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Education Reading Vietnam War

US involvement: FDR, Truman & Eisenhower

They said when I was growing up that America’s involvement in Vietnam began in the 1960s with Presidents FDR, Truman & Eisenhower sending advisors to Vietnam to help a democratic South defeat an aggressive communist North. After Kennedy’s assassination the US was ultimately dragged into war following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964.

But the truth of America’s involvement is far more complex as Section V of the Pentagon Papers outlines below. US involvement dates back to FDR, Truman & Eisenhower.  Actually the book cover obviously states realtions began in 1945 – before the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan.

Pentagon PapersAmerican involvement and plans for a post World War II Asia extended back to the Presidency of FDR and then Harry Truman, noting negociations with the French regarding Indo-China before the end of World War II.

US involvement in Vietnam spans a full generation reaching back 30 years to an pre-war era of French Colonialism. I must admit: it is amazing to read communications between the OSS (precursor to the CIA) and the French Government discussing the role of a new French Indo-China following the coming Japanese defeat in World War II.  Plans for a post-war “French Union” in Indo-China were being negotiated by the French as victors in the war with American support for their aims set against a backdrop of an emerging cold war with the Soviet Union and communist China.  It would forever handicap our efforts fighting the Communist north.  The Pentagon Papers document efforts by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson in the following volumes:

[Part V. A.] Justification of the War. Public Statements.
Volume I: A–The Truman Administration
Volume I: B–The Eisenhower Administration
Volume I: C–The Kennedy Administration
Volume II: D–The Johnson Administration

[Part V. B. 1.] Justification of the War. Internal Documents.
The Roosevelt Administration
The Truman Administration. Volume I: 1945 – 1949
The Truman Administration. Volume II: 1950 -1952
The Eisenhower Administration. Volume I: 1953
The Eisenhower Administration. Volume II: 1954 – Geneva
The Eisenhower Administration. Volume III: Geneva Accords – 15 March 1956
The Eisenhower Administration. Volume IV: 1956 French Withdrawal – 1960
The Kennedy Administration. Book I
The Kennedy Administration. Book II

The papers clearly bring American interests at the end of World War II to light with France’s attempt to re-claim colonial territories lost to Japan during the war.

Categories
Education Reading Vietnam War

Pentagon Papers statistics and graphs of the war

The Pentagon Papers statistics and graphs of the war: Volume IV-c(10) “Statistical Survey of the War, North and South: 1965 – 1967” provides 23 pages of statistics and graphs on the war in the following areas:Volume IV-c(10)Clearly the splash of today’s information graphics are failed in comparison.   I wonder what Edward Tufte would say about these graphs.

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Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation Network Technology

WaaS: Warehouse as a Service

As the crowded cloud space continues to rapidly change today’s business landscape an emerging service is finally just arriving: Data Warehouse as a Service or WaaS, is joining SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and the still late-in-arriving SuperComputer as a Service or SCaaS.

Is it remarkable to see this type of new service that offers data warehousing as a service? This big data service can be consumed rapidly across companies and still keep the hardware layer in the background.  While Amazon’s RedShift (still in limited preview) will capture a lot of attention, BitYota is just coming out of private funding.  BitYota is moving their solution around SaaS:

Warehouse as a Service

Clearly we are moving into a dynamic change in network enhanced services for a new cloud empowered internet.  BitYota’s initial focus is mobile, advertising and educational applications.

Categories
Education Reading Vietnam War

The first wikileak: Pentagon Papers

Finally after 40 years the US Government will publish The Pentagon Papers for the very first time.

The Pentagon Papers

The study commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was officially titled: “United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense” and was a secret kept hidden from President Johnson. and American public for over 40 years.

The study traces US involvement in Vietnam beginning in 1945 just after World War II and ending in 1967 before the Tet Offensive.  The report, a scathing self-examination of U.S.-Vietnamese relations and the Vietnam War, led to one of the largest and most significant court battles ever concerning government secrets vs. freedom of the press.  Nixon’s demand to damage Ellsberg resulted in the Watergate scandal.

The Nixon Library has a copy in that was part of President Richard Nixon’s papers. It will be released at 9 a.m., June 13, 40 years to the day that leaked portions of the report were printed on the front page of The New York Times.

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Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation Internet2 Network Technology

Internet2: Arthron – A Tool for Video Streaming Remote Management in Artistic Performances Experiences

Arthron was concept for experiences in the domain of Art and Technology. Arthron facilities include its simple user interface and the manipulation of different media sources. Users can remotely add, remove and configure the presentation format as well as schedule the media streaming during an artistic performance.
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Arthron is composed by six components described as follow. The Articulator is responsible for the remote management. This component concentrates a great part of the Arthron functionalities, such as stream scheduling (manual or automatic), network monitoring and measurement, remote configuration of other modules, access control, web page automatic generation for online publication, video effects, and communication tools. The Encoder is responsible for capturing and encoding (when necessary) of media source, which can be external (DV or HDV camera, DVD) or internal (a local file). The Decoder’s main functionality is to decode and display the media stream in a specific device (monitor, projector, etc). The Reflector is responsible for the replication and redistribution of media streaming over the network.

The VideoServer component is able to transcoding media streaming that will be published online. This component is also responsible for working with flv, ogg and h264 formats. The MapManager controls and displays the interactive map of Arthron components. MapManager offers to users an overview of the geographical distributed locations of Arthron components.