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Fat Man: Herman Kahn and the nuclear age.
by Louis Menand
June 27, 2005

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Herman Kahn was the heavyweight of the Megadeath Intellectuals, the men who, in the early years of the Cold War, made it their business to think about the unthinkable, and to design the game plan for nuclear war—how to prevent it, or, if it could not be prevented, how to win it, or, if it could not be won, how to survive it. The collective combat experience of these men was close to nil; their diplomatic experience was smaller. Their training was in physics, engineering, political science, mathematics, and logic, and they worked with the latest in assessment technologies: operational research, computer science, systems analysis, and game theory. The type of war they contemplated was, of course, never waged, but whether this was because of their work or in spite of it has always been a matter of dispute. Exhibit A in the case against them is a book by Kahn, published in 1960, “On Thermonuclear War.”

Kahn was a creature of the Rand Corporation, and Rand was a creature of the Air Force. In 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man on Japan, the Air Force was still a branch of the Army. The bomb changed that. An independent Department of the Air Force was created in 1947; the nation’s nuclear arsenal was put under its command; and the Air Force displaced the Army as the prima donna of national defense. Whatever it wanted, it mostly got. One of the things it wanted was a research arm, and Rand was the result. (Rand stands for Research ANd Development.) Rand was a line item in the Air Force budget; its offices were on a beach in Santa Monica. Kahn joined in 1947.

In his day, Kahn was the subject of many magazine stories, and most of them found it important to mention his girth—he was built, one journalist recorded, “like a prize-winning pear”—and his volubility. He was a marathon spielmeister, whose preferred format was the twelve-hour lecture, split into three parts over two days, with no text but with plenty of charts and slides. He was a jocular, gregarious giant who chattered on about fallout shelters, megaton bombs, and the incineration of millions. Observers were charmed or repelled, sometimes charmed and repelled. Reporters referred to him as “a roly-poly, second-strike Santa Claus” and “a thermonuclear Zero Mostel.” He is supposed to have had the highest I.Q. on record.

Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi’s “The Worlds of Herman Kahn” (Harvard; $26.95) is an attempt to look at Kahn as a cultural phenomenon. (Kahn is the subject of a full-length biography with a similar title, “Supergenius: The Mega-Worlds of Herman Kahn,” by a former colleague, Barry Bruce-Briggs, which, though partisan, is thorough and informed, and which Ghamari-Tabrizi, strangely, never mentions.) She is not the first to treat Kahn as more an artist than a scientist. In 1968, when Kahn was at the height of his celebrity, Richard Kostelanetz wrote a profile of him for the Times Magazine in which he suggested that Kahn had “a thoroughly avant-garde sensibility.” He meant that Kahn was uninhibited by conventional ways of thinking, alert to abandon positions that were starting to seem obsolete, continually trying to find new ways to see around the next corner. As Ghamari-Tabrizi points out, this was the mode of Rand itself. The atmosphere there was one part Southern California nonconformity and two parts University of Chicago rigor. People at Rand imagined themselves to be well out on the curve. They read widely and held salons, where they talked futurology; some had arty décor in their offices and took up gourmet cooking. They were eggheads in a world of meatheads, and they regarded the uniformed military man in the same way that the baseball statistician Bill James regards Don Zimmer: as a relic of the pre-scientific dark ages, when the wisdom of experience passed for strategic thought. The wisdom of experience was useless in the atomic era, because no one had ever participated in a nuclear exchange. The variables of nuclear strategy were too complex to be pondered without the aid of advanced quantitative methods and a high-speed computer. One of the earliest of the atomic-age defense intellectuals, Bernard Brodie, had made his reputation with a book called “A Guide to Naval Strategy,” published in 1942. When he wrote it, Brodie had not only never been on a ship; he had never seen an ocean. He carried this spirit into his work on the bomb.

Ghamari-Tabrizi thinks that if nuclear strategy is a science it is, at best, an “intuitive science,” more imaginative than empirical, and she relies a lot on the vocabulary of literary criticism to interpret it: the grotesque, the fantastic, the uncanny, the hardboiled, “the aesthetic of spontaneity,” “serious play.” She does not withhold judgment about the merits of Kahn’s work, but she is interested mainly in the feel of the moment, the moods and tastes of a time when the Cold War, and the anxious talk that swirled around it, had many Americans scared almost to death. It is an adventurous approach, and rewarding when it works. That it does not always work was implicit in the gambit.

Kahn was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1922, and grew up in the Bronx and, after his parents divorced, in Los Angeles. He went to U.C.L.A. and majored in physics. During the war, he served in the Pacific theatre in a non-combat position, then finished his B.S. and entered a Ph.D. program at Cal Tech. He failed to graduate—family financial problems interfered—and, after a halfhearted attempt to enter the real-estate business, went to work at Rand. He became involved in the development of the hydrogen bomb, and commuted to the Livermore Laboratory, near Berkeley, where he worked with Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Hans Bethe. He also entered the circle of Albert Wohlstetter, a mathematician who had produced an influential critique of nuclear preparedness, and who was the most mandarin of the Rand intellectuals. And he became obsessed with the riddles of deterrence.

The defense policy of the Eisenhower Administration, announced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations in 1954, was the doctrine of “massive retaliation.” Dulles explained that the United States could not afford to be prepared to meet Soviet aggression piecemeal—to have soldiers ready to fight in every place threatened by Communist expansion. The Soviets had a bigger army, and they threatened in too many places. The solution was to make it clear that the American response to Soviet aggression anywhere would be a nuclear attack, at a time and place of America’s choosing. It was a first-strike policy: if provoked, the United States would be the first to use the bomb. An overwhelming nuclear arsenal therefore acted as a deterrent on Soviet aggression. Eisenhower called the policy the New Look.

The New Look was good for the Air Force, because it made the nuclear arsenal, and its delivery system of bombers and, later on, missiles, the country’s principal strategic resource. But the analysts at Rand considered massive retaliation a pathetically crude idea, an atomic-age version of Roosevelt’s big stick. They thought that it was practically an invitation to the Soviets to precede any local aggression by a preëmptive first strike on American bomber bases, eliminating the nuclear threat on the ground and forcing the United States into the land war it was unprepared to fight. There was also a major credibility problem. How aggressive did the Soviets need to be to trigger a thermonuclear response? Was the United States willing to kill millions of Russians, and to put millions of Americans at risk of dying in a counterattack, in order to prevent, say, South Korea from going Communist? Or West Berlin? There had to be some options available between disapproval and annihilation. The doctrine of massive retaliation was a deterrent—a way to prevent war—but it was inherently destabilizing. National defense policy required something more nuanced, and figuring out what, since Eisenhower was uninterested, fell to the people at Rand.

Kahn began working on the problem not long after Dulles’s speech. In 1959, he spent a semester at the Center for International Studies, at Princeton, and then toured the country delivering lectures on deterrence theory. In 1960, Princeton University Press published a version of the lectures (with much added material) as “On Thermonuclear War.” Kahn was not really a writer, and his book—six hundred and fifty-one pages—is shaggy, overstuffed, almost free-associational, with a colorful use of capitalization and italics, long excurses on the strategic lessons of the First and Second World Wars, and the sorts of proto-PowerPoint charts and tables that Kahn used in his lectures.

“On Thermonuclear War” (Bruce-Briggs suggests that the title, an allusion to Clausewitz’s “On War,” was devised by the publisher) is based on two assertions. The first is that nuclear war is possible; the second is that it is winnable. Most of the book is a consideration, in the light of these assumptions, of possible nuclear-war scenarios. In some, hundreds of millions die, and portions of the planet are uninhabitable for millennia. In others, a few major cities are annihilated and only ten or twenty million people are killed. Just because both outcomes would be bad on a scale unknown in the history of warfare does not mean, Kahn insists, that one is not less bad than the other. “A thermonuclear war is quite likely to be an unprecedented catastrophe for the defender,” as he puts it. “But an ‘unprecedented’ catastrophe can be a far cry from an ‘unlimited’ one.” The opening chapter contains a table titled “Tragic but Distinguishable Postwar States.” It has two columns: one showing the number of dead, from two million up to a hundred and sixty million, the other showing the time required for economic recuperation, from one year up to a hundred years. At the bottom of the table, there is a question: “Will the survivors envy the dead?”

Kahn believed—and this belief is foundational for every argument in his book—that the answer is no. He explains that “despite a widespread belief to the contrary, objective studies indicate that even though the amount of human tragedy would be greatly increased in the postwar world, the increase would not preclude normal and happy lives for the majority of survivors and their descendants.” For many readers, this has seemed pathologically insensitive. But these readers are missing Kahn’s point. His point is that unless Americans really do believe that nuclear war is survivable, and survivable under conditions that, although hardly desirable, are acceptable and manageable, then deterrence has no meaning. You can’t advertise your readiness to initiate a nuclear exchange if you are unwilling to accept the consequences. If the enemy believes that you will not tolerate the deaths of, say, twenty million of your own citizens, then he has called your bluff. It’s the difference between saying, “You get one scratch on that car and I’ll kill you,” and saying, “You get one scratch on that car and you’re grounded for a week.” “Massive retaliation” sounds tough, but unless a President can bring himself to pull the nuclear trigger, it’s just talk.

In “On Thermonuclear War,” Kahn argues that deterrence is not insured by the policy of massive retaliation, which he calls the theory of the “Splendid” First Strike. Deterrence is insured by a credible second-strike capability—by what the United States can do after a Soviet nuclear attack. He writes, “At the minimum, an adequate deterrent for the United States must provide an objective basis for a Soviet calculation that would persuade them that, no matter how skillful or ingenious they were, an attack on the United States would lead to a very high risk if not certainty of large-scale destruction to Soviet civil society and military forces.” He also argues for the development of a Limited War Capability—that is, the ability to counter Soviet aggression with conventional forces. That capability, too, is a deterrent, since it solves the “Scratch that car and I’ll kill you” problem. Again, the threat of apocalypse is not proof against a minor infraction.

The most infamous pages in “On Thermonuclear War” concern survivability. What makes nuclear war different, Kahn points out, is not the number of dead; it’s a new element—the problem of the postwar environment. In Kahn’s view, the dangers of radioactivity are exaggerated. Fallout will make life less pleasant and cause inconvenience, but there is plenty of unpleasantness and inconvenience in the world already. “War is a terrible thing; but so is peace,” he says. More babies might have birth defects after a nuclear war, but four per cent of babies have birth defects anyway. Whether we can tolerate a slightly higher percentage of defective children is a question of trade-offs. “It might well turn out,” Kahn suggests, “that U.S. decision makers would be willing, among other things, to accept the high risk of an additional one percent of our children being born deformed if that meant not giving up Europe to Soviet Russia.”

The book proposes a system for labelling contaminated food so that older people will eat the food that is more radioactive, on the theory that “most of these people would die of other causes before they got cancer.” It advocates providing citizens with hand-held radium dosimeters, which will allow them to measure the radioactivity their own bodies have absorbed. One symptom of radioactive poisoning is nausea, Kahn explains, and, when one person vomits, people around him will start to vomit, convinced that they are dying. If the dosimeter indicates that no one has received more than an acceptable dose of radiation, everyone can stop throwing up and get back to work reconstructing the economy. Kahn dismisses the notion that a society that has just suffered the obliteration of its cities, the contamination of its soil and water, and the massacre of a large portion of its population might lack the civic virtue and moral fibre necessary to rebuild. “It is my belief that if the government has made at least moderate prewar preparations, so that most people whose lives have been saved will give some credit to the government’s foresight, then people will probably rally round,” he writes. “It would not surprise me if the overwhelming majority of the survivors devoted themselves with a somewhat fanatic intensity to the task of rebuilding what was destroyed.” The message of the book seemed to be that thermonuclear war will be terrible but we’ll get over it.

“Kahn’s specialty was to express the Rand conventional wisdom in the most provocative and outrageous fashion imaginable,” Fred Kaplan says in his excellent history of the Cold War defense intellectuals, “The Wizards of Armageddon” (1983). This is true, except that, unlike most of the defense establishment in the nineteen-fifties, Kahn was an early advocate of civil defense. He was the champion salesman of the fallout shelter, and was especially excited by the potential of mineshafts as evacuation centers. He produced plans for building shelters in the rock below Manhattan, estimating that “very high-quality” shelter spaces could be constructed there for between five hundred and nine hundred dollars apiece. But—and this is the strange logic of deterrence—the essential purpose of investing billions in civil defense was not to save lives but to enhance the credibility of America’s nuclear threat. “Any power that can evacuate a high percentage of its urban population to protection is in a much better position to bargain than one which cannot do this,” Kahn explains in “On Thermonuclear War.” He contemplated the possiblity of several mass evacuations every decade in order to bolster American credibility. Having more shelters than the Soviets is like having more missiles: it is another way of saying, Go ahead, make our day. We can take your nuclear hit and come right back at you. The United States could not afford a mineshaft gap.

Rand was leery of civil defense for client-relations reasons: money spent on fallout shelters and dosimeters was less money for the Air Force. Eisenhower, too, opposed civil-defense programs, in part because he didn’t think that nuclear war was survivable, and in part because he was a cheapskate. Facilities for the evacuation of millions cost too much to construct. In the nineteen-fifties, the people who were enthusiastic about fallout shelters and evacuation drills, the now derided emblems of Cold War domestic culture, were liberals. All of the hundred million black-and-yellow fallout-shelter signs that appeared in the United States during the Cold War were put up by the Kennedy Administration—which also made Kahn happy by distributing two million dosimeters.

In its first three months, “On Thermonuclear War” sold more than fourteen thousand copies. The book received praise from a few prominent disarmament advocates and pacifists: A. J. Muste, Bertrand Russell, and the historian and senatorial candidate H. Stuart Hughes, who called it “one of the great works of our time.” They thought that, by making nuclear exchange seem not only possible but nearly unavoidable, Kahn had, intentionally or not, presented a case for disarmament. Not only pacifists believed this. “If I wanted to convince a skeptic that there is no security in the balance of terror which American policy is committed to maintaining, I would send him to the works of Herman Kahn far sooner than to the writings of the unilateralists and the nuclear pacifists,” Norman Podhoretz later wrote.

Other reactions were more predictable. The National Review thought that the book was not hard enough on Communism. New Statesman called it “pornography for officers.” The Daily Worker called it “useful.” In Scientific American, James R. Newman, the editor of the popular anthology “The World of Mathematics,” said that it was “a moral tract on mass murder: how to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify it.” Though Kahn’s book is an assault on the overwhelming-force mentality of Dulles and the generals at the Strategic Air Command (who, Kahn once told them, dreamed of a “wargasm”), it is also an attack on the anti-nuclear movement and the belief that nuclear war means the end of life as we know it. Most anti-nuclear advocates thought that arguing that a nuclear war was winnable only made one more likely. An official of the American Friends Service Committee compared Kahn to Adolf Eichmann, and he became one of the movement’s favorite monsters. His house was picketed.

The best-known response to “On Thermonuclear War” was a movie. Stanley Kubrick began reading intensively on nuclear strategy soon after he finished directing “Lolita,” in 1962. His original plan was to make a realistic thriller. One of his working titles was taken from an article by Wohlstetter in Foreign Affairs, in 1959: “The Delicate Balance of Terror” (an article that anticipated many of Kahn’s arguments in “On Thermonuclear War”). But Kubrick could not invent a plausible story in which a nuclear war is started by accident, so he ended up making a comedy, adapted from a novel, by a former R.A.F. officer, called “Red Alert.”

“The movie could very easily have been written by Herman Kahn himself,” Midge Decter wrote in Commentary when “Dr. Strangelove” came out, in 1964. This was truer than she may have known. Kubrick was steeped in “On Thermonuclear War”; he made his producer read it when they were planning the movie. Kubrick and Kahn met several times to discuss nuclear strategy, and it was from “On Thermonuclear War” that Kubrick got the term “Doomsday Machine.” The Doomsday Machine—a device that automatically decimates the planet once a nuclear attack is made—was one of Kahn’s heuristic fictions. (The name was his own, but he got the idea from “Red Alert,” which he, too, had admired.) In Kahn’s book, the Doomsday Machine is an example of the sort of deterrent that appeals to the military mind but that is dangerously destabilizing. Since nations are not suicidal, its only use is to threaten. “The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!” as Strangelove complains to the Soviet Ambassador.

There were a number of possible models for the character of Strangelove (who at one point tells the President about a report on Doomsday Machines prepared by the Bland Corporation): Wernher von Braun, Teller, even Henry Kissinger, who was an admirer of “On Thermonuclear War,” and whose book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” (1957) pondered the possibility of tactical nuclear wars. Peter Sellers picked up the accent from the photographer Arthur Fellig, known as Weegee, when he was visiting the studio to advise Kubrick on cinematographic matters. But one source was Kahn. Strangelove’s rhapsodic monologue about preserving specimens of the race in deep mineshafts is an only slightly parodic version of Kahn. There were so many lines from “On Thermonuclear War” in the movie, in fact, that Kahn complained that he should get royalties. (“It doesn’t work that way,” Kubrick told him.) Kahn received something more lasting than money, of course. He got himself pinned in people’s minds to the figure of Dr. Strangelove, and he bore the mark of that association forever.

Kubrick’s plan to make a comedy about nuclear war didn’t bother Kahn. He thought that humor was a good way to get people thinking about a subject too frightening to contemplate otherwise, and although his colleagues rebuked him for it—“Levity is never legitimate,” Brodie told him—he used jokes in his lectures. Mordancy was his usual mode; Ghamari-Tabrizi compares him at one point to Charles Addams. “One way not to make a reputation is to find a hole in the air-defense system,” he would tell audiences. “It’s all holes.” Explaining the assumptions he made about people when he discussed the prospects for postwar recovery: “We assumed that they are the same kind of slobs postwar that they were prewar.” On what everyone will eat in the fallout shelters: “I personally intend to live with the chef at Lindy’s who really understands sour cream herring and other quite storable delicacies.”

Ghamari-Tabrizi has some enterprising pages comparing this sort of ob-la-di, ob-la-da banter with the satire of contemporaries like Mort Sahl and Jules Feiffer, and with the sick humor of Lenny Bruce and Mad. This is one of the places, though, where she seems to be reaching. (She doesn’t mention it, but Kahn was a target of one of Sahl’s routines: “He is a fascist . . . a genocide who goes home at night and plays with his kids and asks them, ‘What are you going to be if you grow up?’ “) Kahn was the opposite of a satirist. He was a believer. Questioning military policy was his business; questioning the policies that military policy is designed to protect and enable was not. For all the avant-gardism, all the high-powered analytic techniques and “thinking outside the box,” Kahn’s work was fundamentally in the service of preserving the system, and without cynicism. In this, he was like most of the Cold War defense intellectuals. The attitude was: We are trained scientists. We’ve studied the situation with detachment and disinterestedness; we have taken nothing for granted, given no hostages to sentiment. And we conclude that the world as it is—in this case, a global rivalry between two nuclear powers in an escalating arms race—is acceptable (provided that the policy changes we recommend are adopted).

“On Thermonuclear War” is a preposterous monument to this way of thinking. Complications and qualifications are swatted away like flies. “I will tend to ignore, or at least underemphasize, what many people might consider the most important result of a war—the overall suffering induced by ten thousand years of postwar environment,” Kahn writes at one point. He addresses anxieties about the effects of fallout by analyzing three radioactive isotopes, noting, almost incidentally, that there are about two hundred other isotopes in fallout, which he does not discuss. His margins of error can be staggering. Sentences like this are not uncommon (in a discussion of defective genes): “Given the uncertainties, the problem could conceivably be five times better or worse.”

A good deal of Kahn’s speculation about nuclear scenarios was based on information from Air Force intelligence, which is the only classified intelligence Rand had access to, and which, not surprisingly, habitually overestimated Soviet strength. The widespread panic about a missile gap was an artifact of this bias. In 1958, Rand estimated that the Soviets had three hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles; in fact, even in 1961, the year John Kennedy became President, after a campaign accusing Eisenhower of letting the United States fall behind in the arms race, the Soviet Union had only four missiles in its arsenal. But Kahn didn’t know this. It’s not clear, really, how much he did know and how much was speculation and hortatory display. Ghamari-Tabrizi interviewed a number of Kahn’s associates, and she includes a telling comment about what it was like to work with him. “Nothing was ever finished,” Irwin Mann, a mathematician, told her. “It was terribly sloppy. It was an enormous myth that anything was studied. Nothing was studied. Not really. He didn’t study anything. He was enormously smart.”

Critics like Newman complained that what is missing from Kahn’s work is a moral sense. Kahn had a reply to this objection, which was that the insistence that nuclear war is immoral will never prevent nuclear war. What is missing from his analysis is not morality; it’s reality. The reason his scenarios are fantastic to the point, almost, of risibility is that they deliberately ignore all the elements—beliefs, customs, ideas, politics—that actual wars are fought about, and that operate as a drag on decision-making at every point. Kahn was writing during the Khrushchev period, after Sputnik and during the Berlin crisis, when levels of Soviet bellicosity were high. But even if Soviet behavior had been more pacific his analysis would have been the same, for his methodology, the Rand methodology, required him to posit an eternally and implacably hostile enemy. In strategic thinking, you have to assume the worst of your opponent, and to assume that your opponent assumes the worst of you. To believe less is to make yourself vulnerable to bluffing. In Kahn’s world, the adversary is always, as he put it, “bright, knowledgeable, and malevolent.”

This is what the historian Peter Galison has called the Cold War “ontology of the enemy”—the image of the adversary as a “cold-blooded, machinelike opponent . . . a mechanized Enemy Other.” The machine does not have ideals or values, issues on which it might compromise or goals that might encompass something other than its own aggrandizement. It wants only to win, and every move it makes is a move in that game. It’s a short step from this abstraction to the domino theory, the belief that Communist expansion is an inexorable and practically mindless force. One of the ironies of the Cold War is that the Rand intellectuals, highbrow hardliners who enjoyed relatively little influence when Eisenhower was President, got their reward when Kennedy came into office. Robert McNamara welcomed them into the Defense Department, where, the best and the brightest, they applied their methods to the interesting problem of Vietnam. One of them was Daniel Ellsberg.

By then, Kahn had left Rand. He moved to Chappaqua, New York, and, in 1961, founded the Hudson Institute—“a high-class Rand,” he called it. Consultants included the sociologist Daniel Bell, the French political philosopher Raymond Aron, and the novelist Ralph Ellison. William Gaddis was engaged to help with the writing. Kahn liked debate, but the ad-hominem attacks on “On Thermonuclear War” had bruised him, and he softened his tone. He published a response to critics, “Thinking About the Unthinkable,” in 1962, and another book on military strategy, “On Escalation,” in 1965. He was a consultant to the Defense Department from 1966 to 1968, criticizing the government for announcing its willingness to negotiate with the North Vietnamese, and advising “a sharp, potentially uncontrollable increase in threat, which might raise anxiety about points of no return.” He couldn’t understand bombing North Vietnam unless it made life unbearable for the enemy. But he looked for an exit strategy, and he claimed to have introduced the term “Vietnamization” to the Nixon Administration, which adopted it as the path to “peace with honor.” It sounded better, Kahn later explained, than “de-Americanization.”

In the nineteen-seventies, Kahn became a dealer in the futurology business—the fascination (prevalent at a time when the present day did not bear much examination) with imaginary Armageddons and pots of gold over the rainbow. In Kahn’s case, it was all pots of gold. He devoted his institute’s resources to refuting popular apocalyptic scenarios like Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” (1968) and the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” (1972). He argued that the potential of capitalism and technology was boundless, and predicted that human beings would colonize the solar system (an unbeatable type of deterrence: you threaten us, we’ll evacuate to the moon). His politics went right. “The Coming Boom: Economic, Political, and Social” (1982) is a hymn to Reaganism. In his last book, an update of “Thinking About the Unthinkable,” he charged Jonathan Schell with exaggerating the effects of a nuclear war in his best-selling “The Fate of the Earth” (1982). Kahn died, of a massive stroke, in 1983. That was the year a group headed by Carl Sagan released a report warning that the dust and smoke generated by a thermonuclear war would create a “nuclear winter,” blocking light from the sun and wiping out most of life on the planet. Kahn’s friends were confident that he would have had a rebuttal.

Did the defense intellectuals of the nineteen-fifties, in their efforts to calculate ways of preventing nuclear war, actually push the hands of the clock closer to midnight? Part of the difficulty in answering this is that, at the time, no one really knew where midnight was. Most of the thinking and writing of the period was carried out in a haze of ignorance, misinformation, and deliberate exaggeration. The early Cold Warriors—people like Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, and the members of the Committee on the Present Danger—were at least as worried about American attitudes as they were about Soviet intentions. Obsessed with preparedness, they sometimes did not scruple about overstating the threat for which preparation was necessary. They practiced psychological warfare on their own people. Strategists like Kahn and Wohlstetter abetted this politics not by inflating the facts but by doing what they thought it was their job to do: thinking down the road, around the next technological and geopolitical bend. They wrote about things like hardening bomber bases and missile silos long before the Soviets had any ability to land warheads on targets that small. They were not responsible for starting the arms race, but the more they speculated on the unknown terrors of the future, the faster the race was run. The bomber gap, the missile gap, the mineshaft gap: Rand flourished on gaps. So did the armed services and the weapons manufacturers. When Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned of “the military-industrial complex,” this was the intersection of mutually reinforcing interests he had in mind.

What drove the Cold War, though, was not business or science. It was the factor that is supposedly bracketed off in systems analysis: politics—the opportunities for partisan gain made available by gesturing toward the ubiquitous shadow of an overwhelming emergency. And the manipulation was not all on one side. If the United States assigned the Soviets the role of mechanized Enemy Other, the Soviets did their best to play it. The occasional hyperbole of the Committee on the Present Danger was nothing compared with the bluster of Khrushchev and Gromyko, men who had their own domestic constituencies to worry about. It served both sides in the Cold War to take each other’s rhetoric at face value. We have yet to learn how not to do this.

Louis Menand has contributed to The New Yorker since 1991, and has been a staff writer since 2001.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 3:15 am
by admin
Truth Stranger Than ‘Strangelove’
by Fred Kaplan
10 Oct 2004

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“Dr. Strangelove,” Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film about nuclear war plans run amok, is widely heralded as one of the greatest satires in American political or movie history. For its 40th anniversary, Film Forum is screening a new 35 millimeter print for one week, starting on Friday, and Columbia TriStar is releasing a two-disc special-edition DVD next month. One essential point should emerge from all the hoopla: “Strangelove” is far more than a satire. In its own loopy way, the movie is a remarkably fact-based and specific guide to some of the oddest, most secretive chapters of the Cold War.

As countless histories relate, Mr. Kubrick set out to make a serious film based on a grim novel, “Red Alert,” by Peter George, a Royal Air Force officer. But the more research he did (reading more than 50 books, talking with a dozen experts), the more lunatic he found the whole subject, so he made a dark comedy instead. The result was wildly iconoclastic: released at the height of the cold war, not long after the Cuban missile crisis, before the escalation in Vietnam, “Dr. Strangelove” dared to suggest—with yucks!—that our top generals might be bonkers and that our well-designed system for preserving the peace was in fact a doomsday machine.

What few people knew, at the time and since, was just how accurate this film was. Its premise, plotline, some of the dialogue, even its wildest characters eerily resembled the policies, debates and military leaders of the day. The audience had almost no way of detecting these similiarities: Nearly everything about the bomb was shrouded in secrecy back then. There was no Freedom of Information Act and little investigative reporting on the subject. It was easy to laugh off “Dr. Strangelove” as a comic book.

But film’s weird accuracy is evident in its very first scene, in which a deranged base commander, preposterously named Gen. Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden), orders his wing of B52 bombers—which are on routine airborne alert, circling a “failsafe point” just outside the Soviet border—to attack their targets inside the U.S.S.R. with multimegaton bombs. Once the pilots receive the order, they can’t be diverted unless they receive a coded recall message. And only General Ripper has the code.

The remarkable thing is, the failsafe system that General Ripper exploits was the real, top-secret failsafe system at the time. According to declassified Strategic Air Command histories, 12 B52’ s—fully loaded with nuclear bombs—were kept on constant airborne alert. If they received a Go code, they went to war. This alert system, known as Chrome Dome, began in 1961. It ended in 1968, after a B52 crashed in Greenland, spreading small amounts of radioactive fallout.

But until then, could some loony general have sent bombers to attack Russia without a presidential order? Yes.

In a scene in the “war room” (a room that didn’t really exist, by the way), Air Force Gen. Buck Turgidson (played by George C. Scott) explains to an incredulous President Merkin Muffley (one of three roles played by Peter Sellers) that policies—approved by the president—allowed war powers to be transferred, in case the president was killed in a surprise nuclear attack on Washington.

Historical documents indicate that such procedures did exist, and that, though tightened later, they were startlingly loose at the time.

But were there generals who might really have taken such power in their own hands? It was no secret—it would have been obvious to many viewers in 1964—that General Ripper looked a lot like Curtis LeMay, the cigar-chomping, gruff-talking general who headed the Strategic Air Command through the 1950’s and who served as the Pentagon’s Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 60’s.

In 1957 Robert Sprague, the director of a top-secret panel, warned General LeMay that the entire fleet of B52 bombers was vulnerable to attack. General LeMay was unfazed. “If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack,” he said, “I’m going to knock the [expletive] out of them before they take off the ground.”

“But General LeMay,” Mr. Sprague replied, “that’s not national policy.” “I don’t care,” General LeMay said. “It’s my policy. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Mr. Kubrick probably was unaware of this exchange. (Mr. Sprague told me about it in 1981, when I interviewed him for a book on nuclear history.) But General LeMay’s distrust of civilian authorities, including presidents, was well known among insiders, several of whom Mr. Kubrick interviewed.

The most popular guessing game about the movie is whether there a real-life counterpart
to the character of Dr. Strangelove (another Sellers part), the wheelchaired ex-Nazi who directs the Pentagon’s weapons research and proposes sheltering political leaders in well-stocked mineshafts, where they can survive the coming nuclear war and breed with beautiful women. Over the years, some have speculated that Strangelove was inspired by Edward Teller, Henry Kissinger or Werner Von Braun.

But the real model was almost certainly Herman Kahn, an eccentric, voluble nuclear strategist at the RAND Corporation, a prominent Air Force think tank. In 1960, Mr. Kahn published a 652-page tome called “On Thermonuclear War,” which sold 30,000 copies
in hardcover.

According to a special-feature documentary on the new DVD, Mr. Kubrick read “On Thermonuclear War” several times. But what the documentary doesn’t note is that the final scenes of “Dr. Strangelove” come straight out of its pages.

Toward the end of the film, officials uncover General Ripper’s code and call back the B52’s, but they notice that one bomber keeps flying toward its target. A B52 is about to attack the Russians with a few H-bombs; General Turgidson recommends that we should “catch ‘em with their pants down,” and launch an all-out, disarming first-strike.

Such a strike would destroy 90 percent of the U.S.S.R.’s nuclear arsenal. “Mr. President,” he exclaims, “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10-20 million killed, tops!” If we don’t go all-out, the general warns, the Soviets will fire back with all their nuclear weapons. The choice, he screams, is “between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments—one where you get 20 million people killed and the other where you get 150 million people killed!” Mr. Kahn made precisely this point in his book, even producing a chart labeled, “Tragic but Distinguishable Postwar States.”

When Dr. Strangelove talks of sheltering people in mineshafts, President Muffley asks him, “Wouldn’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they’d, well, envy the dead?” Strangelove exclaims that, to the contrary, many would feel “a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead.”

Mr. Kahn’s book contains a long chapter on mineshafts. Its title: “Will the Survivors Envy the Dead?” One sentence reads: “We can imagine a renewed vigor among the population with a zealous, almost religious dedication to reconstruction.”

In 1981, two years before he died, I asked Mr. Kahn what he thought of “Dr. Strangelove.” Thinking I meant the character, he replied, with a straight face, “Strangelove wouldn’t have lasted three weeks in the Pentagon. He was too creative.”

Those in the know watched “Dr. Strangelove” amused, like everyone else, but also stunned. Daniel Ellsberg, who later leaked the Pentagon Papers, was a RAND analyst and a consultant at the Defense Department when he and a mid-level official took off work one afternoon in 1964 to see the film. Mr. Ellsberg recently recalled that as they left the theater, he turned to his colleague and said, “That was a documentary!”

Fred Kaplan is a columnist for Slate and the author of “The Wizards of Armageddon,” a history of the nuclear strategists.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 5:38 pm
by admin
Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana
by Wikipedia
3/16/17

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The Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana (Estonian: Maarjamaa Risti teenetemärk, sometimes translated as the Order of the Cross of St. Mary’s Land) was instituted in 1995 to honour the independence of the Estonian state by president Lennart Meri.[1] The Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana is bestowed upon the President of the Republic. Presidents of the Republic who have ceased to hold office shall keep the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana. The Collar of the Order was used de facto as the badge of office of the President of the Republic, since the original Presidential collar, that of the Order of the National Coat of Arms was taken from Estonia to the Kremlin after the Soviet occupation of the country in 1940, where it remains to this day. However a new collar of that order was made in 2008.[2] The Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana is also given as a decoration of the highest class to foreigners who have rendered special services to the Republic of Estonia. As such it is the highest and most distinguished order granted to non-Estonian citizens.

Classes

The Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana comprises six classes:

> One special class – The Collar of the Cross of Terra Mariana;
> Five basic classes – 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th class.

The crosses and shields of all the classes of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana have the same design and are of the same size.

The blue colour tone of the moiré ribands belonging to the decorations of all the classes of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana is determined according to the international PANTONE colour-table as 300 C.

Notable recipients

Recipients of the Collar

The recipients are :[3]

Estonia Estonian presidents

> President Lennart Meri (1992–2001), 10.09.1995 (Serie 5 – n° ?)
> President Arnold Rüütel (2001–2006), 08.10.2001 (Serie 270 – n° 1138)
> President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (2006–incumbent), 09.10.2006 (Serie 692 – n° 1071)

Foreign heads of state

Country / Recipient / Date of reception / Serie number / Decision : number & date

Awarded by President Lennart Meri ( 6 October 1992 – 8 October 2001 ) [4]

Finland Pres. Martti Ahtisaari 16.05.1995 1 547
Sweden King Carl XVI Gustaf 11.09.1995 11 608
Mexico Pres. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León 27.10.1995 22 624
Denmark Queen Margrethe II 28.11.1995 23 640
Czech Republic Pres. Václav Havel 24.02.1997 37 725 (30.05.1996)
Latvia Pres. Guntis Ulmanis 23.10.1996 39 6
Hungary Pres. Árpád Göncz 13.05.1997 49 134
Slovenia Pres. Milan Kučan 16.05.1997 50 134
Italy Pres. Oscar Luigi Scalfaro [5] 22.05.1997 51 144
Turkey Pres. Süleyman Demirel 20.05.1997 52 144
Lithuania Pres. Algirdas Brazauskas 20.08.1997 55 177
Poland Pres. Aleksander Kwaśniewski 28.04.1998 72 320
Iceland Pres. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson 08.06.1998 73 351
Norway King Harald V 31.08.1998 75 397
Greece Pres. Konstantinos Stephanopoulos 24.05.1999 99 586
Lithuania Pres. Valdas Adamkus 24.09.1999 102 632
Latvia Pres. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga 02.05.2000 121 780
Finland Pres. Tarja Halonen 16.05.2000 123 788
Germany Pres. Johannes Rau 07.11.2000 131 914
Hungary President Ferenc Mádl 12.12.2000 177 944
Malta President Guido de Marco 02.05.2001 233 1049
Ireland President Mary McAleese 24.05.2001 241 1057
France President Jacques Chirac 23.07.2001 243 1124

Awarded by President Arnold Rüütel ( 8 October 2001 – 9 October 2006 )

Turkey President Ahmet Necdet Sezer 18.04.2002 377 141
Luxembourg Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg 05.05.2003 416 332
Portugal President Jorge Sampaio 12.05.2003 417 408 ( 08.05.2003 )
Bulgaria President Georgi Parvanov 11.06.2003 435 414
Romania President Ion Iliescu 23.10.2003 446 451 [6]
Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos 08.01.2004 449 451
Italy President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi 20.04.2004 498 581
Slovakia President Ivan Gašparovič 12.10.2005 599 896
Hungary President László Sólyom 27.03.2006 688 994

Awarded by President Toomas Hendrik Ilves ( 9 October 2006 – incumbent )

United Kingdom Queen Elizabeth II 19.10.2006 693 2
Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili 07.05.2007 739 148
Japan Emperor Akihito 24.05.2007 740 150
Spain King Juan Carlos I 09.07.2007 741 168
Portugal President Aníbal Cavaco Silva 24.09.2008 783 269
Netherlands Queen (now HRH Princess) Beatrix 14.05.2008 824 280
Belgium King Albert II 10.06.2008 837 290
Latvia President Valdis Zatlers 07.04.2009 872 460
Romania President Traian Băsescu 12.04.2011 968 881
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev 20.04.2011 970 885
Malta President George Abela 31.05.2012 988 98
Latvia President Andris Bērziņš 05.06.2012 1001 99
Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaitė 27.05.2013 1045 266
Germany President Joachim Gauck 03.07.2013 1087 305
Finland President Sauli Niinistö 09.05.2014 1150 429

Recipients of the First Class

The recipients are :[7]

Former foreign heads of state and government

These decorations are awarded for targeted reasons :

Country / Recipient / Date of reception / Serie number / Decision : number & date

Awarded by President Lennart Meri (6 October 1992 – 8 October 2001)

United States Former President Gerald Rudolph Ford 07.01.1997 29 683 (16.02.1996 )
Sweden Carl Bildt, politician, Former Prime Minister (1991–94) 25.07.1996 36 725 (30.05.1996)
Germany Former President Roman Herzog (1994–99) 20.03.2001 104 730 (08.02.2000)

Awarded by President Arnold Rüütel (8 October 2001 – 9 October 2006)

Finland Mauno Henrik Koivisto, former president (1982–1994) 20.11.2001 271 30 ( 16.11.2001)
Finland Esko Tapani Aho, Former Prime Minister, for supporting quest of independence 23.02.2003 381 332 (03.02.2003)
Ireland Garret FitzGerald, former Prime Minister 22.05.2003 383 332 (03.02.2003)
Denmark Poul Holmskov Schlüter, Former Prime Minister, for supporting quest of independence 24.02.2003 387 332 (03.02.2003)
United States George Herbert Walker Bush, for supporting quest to independence 15.09.2005 524 775 (02.02.2005)
Germany Richard von Weizsäcker, former President (1984–94), for supporting quest to independence 09.06.2005 529 775 (02.02.2005)
United States Bill Clinton, former President (1993–2001), for supporting adhesion to NATO ? 634 976 (06.02.2006 )
Germany Helmut Kohl, Former Chancellor (1982–98), for supporting quest to independence 03.04.2006 635 976 (06.02.2006)
Poland Lech Wałęsa, former President (1990–95), for supporting quest to independence 23.02.2006 636 976 (06.02.2006)

Awarded by President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (2006–incumbent )

United States George Walker Bush, former President ? 973 48 (01.02.2012)

Consorts of foreign heads of state and royalties

Country / Recipient / Date of reception / Serie number / Decision : number & date

Awarded by President Lennart Meri ( 6 October 1992 – 8 October 2001 )
Finland Eeva Ahtisaari, née Hyvärinen, President Martti Ahtisaari's wife 16.05.1995 2 547 ( 16.05.1995 )
Sweden Queen Silvia of Sweden 11.09.1995 12 608 ( 08.09.1995 )
Sweden Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden 11.09.1995 13 608 ( 08.09.1995 )
Sweden Prince Bertil, Duke of Halland 11.09.1995 14 608 ( 08.09.1995 )
Sweden Princess Lilian, Duchess of Halland 11.09.1995 15 608 ( 08.09.1995 )
Denmark Henrik, Prince Consort of Denmark 28.11.1995 25 640 ( 20.11.1995 )
Denmark Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark 28.11.1995 24 640 ( 20.11.1995 )
Norway Queen Sonja of Norway 31.08.1998 76 397 ( 24.08.1998 )
Latvia Imants Freibergs, President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga's husband 02.05.2000 122 780 ( 27.04.2000 )
Finland Pentti Arajärvi, President Tarja Halonen's husband 16.05.2000 124 788 ( 04.05.2000 )
Germany Christina Rau, President Johannes Rau's wife 07.11.2000 132 914 ( 02.11.2000 )
Hungary Dalma Mádl, President Ferenc Mádl's wife 12.12.2000 178 944 ( 01.12.2000 )
Malta Violet de Marco, President Guido de Marco's wife 02.05.2001 234 1049 ( 24.04.2001 )
Ireland Martin McAleese, President Mary McAleese's husband 24.05.2001 242 1057 ( 15.05.2001 )

Awarded by President Arnold Rüütel (8 October 2001 – 9 October 2006)

Finland Taimi Tellervo Koivisto, President Mauno Henrik Koivisto's wife 20.11.2001 272 30 ( 16.11.2001 )
Poland Jolanta Kwaśniewska, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski's wife : 18.03.2002 337 121 ( 13.03.2002 )
Norway Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway 10.04.2002 356 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Norway Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway 10.04.2002 357 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Portugal Maria José Rodrigues Ritta, President Jorge Sampaio's wife : 12.05.2003 418 408 ( 08.05.2003 )
Bulgaria Zorka Petrova Parvanova, President Georgi Parvanov's wife : 11.06.2003 436 414 ( 30.05.2003 )

Awarded by H.E. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves ( 2006–incumbent )

Spain Sofia of Spain 09.07.2007 742 168 ( 05.07.2007 )
Spain Felipe, Prince of Asturias 09.07.2007 743 168 ( 05.07.2007 )
Spain Letizia, Princess of Asturias 09.07.2007 744 168 ( 05.07.2007 )
Belgium Queen Paola of Belgium 10.06.2008 838 290 ( 05.06.2008 )
Latvia Lilita Zatlere, President Valdis Zatlers's wife : 07.04.2009 873 460 ( 02.04.2009 )
Sweden Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland 18.01.2011 906 807 ( 12.01.2011 )
Sweden Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland 18.01.2011 907 807 ( 12.01.2011 )
Romania Maria Băsescu, President Traian Băsescu's wife 12.04.2011 969 881 ( 06.04.2011 )
Malta Margaret Abela, President George Abela's wife 31.05.2012 989 98 ( 29.05.2012 )
Latvia Dace Seisuma, President Andris Bērziņš's wife 05.06.2012 1002 99 ( 31.05.2012 )
Germany Daniela Schadt, President Joachim Gauck's partner 09.07.2013 1088 305 ( 03.07.2013 )

Presidents of Parliament, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, Ambassadors and other High Officials

Country / Recipient / Date of reception / Serie number / Decision : number & date

Awarded by President Lennart Meri ( 6 October 1992 – 8 October 2001 )

Finland Raimo Tiilikainen, Market Marine Rescue commander, Commodore 16.05.1995 3 547 ( 16.05.1995 )
Germany Henning von Wistinghausen, ambassador to Estonia 09.10.1995 7 597 ( 08.08.1995 )
Norway Brit Løvseth, ambassador to Estonia 08.08.1995 6 597 ( 08.08.1995 )
United States Robert C. Frasure, ambassador to Estonia (1991–1994) 21.08.1995 8 603 ( 19.08.1995 )
Germany Boris Meissner, Professor, supporter of the independence of the Baltic States 26.11.1995 9 607 ( 01.09.1995 )
Sweden Lars Arne Grundberg, ambassador to Estonia 06.09.1995 10 607 ( 01.09.1995 )
United States Paul A. Goble, Editor in Chief, supporter of Baltic States independence 21.10.1995 20 622 ( 17.10.1995 )
United Kingdom Frederic Mackarness Bennett, Adviser to the Prime Minister 06.05.1996 26 642 ( 24.11.1995 )
Iceland Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson, Member of Parliament 04.03.1996 31 683 ( 16.02.1996 )
France Gabriel Kaspéreit, Member of Parliament 23.02.1996 32 683 ( 16.02.1996 )
United States George Frost Kennan, U.S. diplomat 27.06.1996 33 683 ( 16.02.1996 )
Germany Wolfgang von Stetten, Member of Parliament 20.02.1996 34 683 ( 16.02.1996 )
Finland Jaakko Erik Kaurinkoski, ambassador to Estonia 22.05.1996 35 721 ( 22.05.1996 )
Italy Carlo Siano, ambassador to Estonia 05.12.1996 38 5 ( 17.10.1996 )
Germany Berndt von Staden, German politician 16.07.1997 44 82 ( 18.02.1997 )
Germany Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs 06.03.1997 40 82 ( 18.02.1997 )
Denmark Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, Denmark M.P., former Foreign Minister 20.02.1997 41 82 ( 18.02.1997 )
United Kingdom General Garry Johnson, International Baltic defense advisory group chairman 20.02.1997 42 82 ( 18.02.1997 )
Germany Otto Graf Lambsdorff, politician, Chairman of the Trilateral Commission's European Department 18.11.1997 43 82 ( 18.02.1997 )
United States Lawrence Palmer Taylor, ambassador to Estonia (1995–1997) 06.08.1997 53 175 ( 06.08.1997 )
Russia Aleksander Trofimov, ambassador to Estonia (1992–1997) 13.08.1997 54 176 ( 11.08.1997 )
France Roland Dumas, Chairman of the Constitutional Court and former Minister of Foreign Affairs 09.05.1998 57 280 ( 09.02.1998 )
Finland Retired General Adolf Erik Ehrnrooth 21.02.1998 58 280 ( 09.02.1998 )
United States George Soros, Founder of the Open Estonia Foundation 04.03.1998 59 280 ( 09.02.1998 )
United Kingdom George Howard, 13th Earl of Carlisle, secretary of the British-Estonian parliamentary group 01.03.1998 56 280 ( 09.02.1998 )
Sweden Katarina Brodin, ambassador to Estonia (1994–1998) 11.06.1998 74 352 ( 03.06.1998 )
France Jacques Faure, ambassador to Estonia (1994–1998) 24.09.1988 77 399 ( 24.09.1998 )
Italy Roberto Martini, ambassador to Estonia (1996–1999) 20.04.1999 98 577 ( 06.04.1999 )
Ukraine Juri Olenenko, ambassador to Estonia (1993–1999) 06.07.1999 100 612 ( 30.06.1999 )
Germany Bernd Mützelburg, ambassador to Estonia (1995–1999) 27.07.1999 101 620 ( 19.07.1999 )
United States Strobe Talbott, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State 24.01.2000 103 717 ( 12.01.2000 )
Sweden Margaretha af Ugglas, Former Foreign Minister (1991–1994) 23.02.2000 105 730 ( 08.02.2000 )
Denmark Svend Roed Nielsen, ambassador to Estonia (1995–2000) 15.03.2000 119 741 ( 04.03.2000 )
United Kingdom Timothy Craddock, ambassador to Estonia (1997–2000) 02.08.2000 127 884 ( 18.07.2000 )
Germany Gerhard Schröder, Chancellor (= Prime Minister) 07.11.2000 133 914 ( 02.11.2000 )
Germany Wolfgang Thierse, President of Parliament 07.11.2000 134 914 ( 02.11.2000 )
Finland Pekka Artturi Oinonen, ambassador to Estonia (1996–2001) 16.03.2001 232 1013 ( 12.03.2001 )
France Pierre Moscovici, French Foreign Ministry's European Affairs Minister 28.07.2001 244 1124 ( 23.07.2001 )
France Jean-Jacques Subrenat, ambassador to Estonia 28.07.2001 245 1124 ( 23.07.2001 )
United States Melissa Foelsch Welss, ambassador to Estonia (1998–2001) 04.09.2001 266 1128 ( 23.08.2001 )
Latvia Gints Jegermanis, ambassador to Estonia (1998–2001) 25.09.2001 267 1135 ( 20.09.2001 )
China Mingrong Zou, ambassador to Estonia (1998–2001) 02.10.2001 268 1135 ( 20.09.2001 )

Awarded by H.E. President Arnold Rüütel (8 October 2001 – 9 October 2006)

Finland Jaakko Blomberg, ambassador to Estonia 20.11.2001 273 30 ( 16.11.2001 )
Finland Paavo Lipponen, Prime Minister 20.11.2001 274 30 ( 16.11.2001 )
Finland Riitta Uosukainen, Chairman of the Parliament 20.11.2001 275 30 ( 16.11.2001 )
Italy Luchino Cortese, ambassador to Estonia (1999–2002) 28.01.2002 295 86 ( 18.01.2002 )
Poland Władysław Bartoszewski, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, for supporting adhesion to NATO 09.05.2002 296 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
United States Senator Robert C. Byrd, for withdrawal of Russia and supporting adhesion to NATO 13.03.2003 297 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
United States Senator Richard J. Durbin, for supporting adhesion to NATO 19.03.2002 298 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
Poland Bronisław Geremek, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, for supporting adhesion to NATO 20.06.2002 299 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
Latvia Anatolijs Gorbunovs, Former Speaker of the Saeima 23.02.2002 300 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
United States Senator Jesse Helms, for withdrawal of Russian troops and supporting adhesion to NATO 19.03.2002 301 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
Finland Max Jakobson, Chairman of the International Investigation Commission Against Crimes 22.05.2002 302 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
Lithuania Vytautas Landsbergis, Former Chairman of the Supreme Council 23.02.2002 303 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
United States Senator Richard G. Lugar, for withdrawal of Russian troops and supporting adhesion to NATO 19.03.2002 304 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, for supporting adhesion to NATO 19.03.2002 305 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
United States Senator Gordon H. Smith, for supporting adhesion to NATO 19.03.2002 306 97 ( 04.02.2002 )
Poland Marek Borowski, Speaker of the Sejm (Parliament) 18.03.2002 336 121 ( 13.03.2002 )
Poland Leszek Miller, Prime Minister 18.03.2002 338 121 ( 13.03.2002 )
Poland Longin Pastusiak, Speaker of the Senate 18.03.2002 339 121 ( 13.03.2002 )
Norway Kjell Magne Bondevik, Prime Minister 10.04.2002 358 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Norway Nina Frisak, Chancellor of the Prime Minister's Office 10.04.2002 359 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Norway Bjarne Lindstrøm, Chancellor of the Foreign Ministry 10.04.2002 360 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Norway Per Kristian Pedersen, ambassador to Estonia 10.04.2002 361 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Norway Jan Petersen, Foreign Minister 10.04.2002 362 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Norway Berit Tversland, Private Secretary to the King 10.04.2002 363 137 ( 02.04.2002 )
Germany Gerhard Enver Schrömbgens, ambassador to Estonia (1999–2002) 28.06.2002 378 195 ( 21.06.2002 )
Lithuania Rimantas Juozapas Tonkūnas, ambassador to Estonia (1997–2002) 03.10.2002 379 233 ( 25.09.2002 )
Hungary Béla Jávorszky, ambassador to Estonia (1999–2002) 25.10.2002 380 243 ( 10.10.2002 )
United States Thomas J. Campbell, Former member of the House of Representative, for supporting quest of independence 25.09.2003 382 332 ( 03.02.2003 )
United States Thomas Slade Gorton III, Former U.S. senator, for supporting quest of independence 25.09.2003 384 332 ( 03.02.2003 )
Denmark Hans Hækkerup, Former Minister of Defence, for supporting adhesion to NATO 03.02.2003 385 332 ( 03.02.2003 )
Finland Elisabeth Rehn, Former Defence Minister, for supporting Estonian's Defence forces 25.03.2003 386 332 ( 03.02.2003 )
Sweden Björn von Sydow, Chairman of the Parliament 14.04.2003 388 332 ( 03.02.2003 )
Portugal Filipe Augusto Ruivo Guterres, ambassador to Estonia 12.05.2003 419 408 ( 08.05.2003 )
Portugal Carlos Costa Neves, Secretary of State for European Affairs 12.05.2003 420 408 ( 08.05.2003 )
Portugal Rosário Ventura Secretary of State for trade, industry and services 12.05.2003 421 408 ( 08.05.2003 )
Sweden Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, ambassador to Estonia (1998–2003) 25.06.2003 437 416
China Cong Jun, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2003) 23.07.2003 438 437
Malta Edward Fenech Adami, Prime Minister 01.10.2003 440 445
Malta Vincent De Gaetano, Chancellor of Justice 01.10.2003 441 445
Malta Anton Tabone, president of the Parliament 442 445
United Kingdom Sarah Squire, ambassador to Estonia (2000–2003) 28.10.2003 447 451
United States George Allen, Senator, for supporting adhesion to NATO 06.10.2005 450 532
United States Joseph Biden, Senator, for supporting adhesion to NATO 05.02.2004 451 532
Spain Ramón de Miguel Egea, State Secretary for European Affairs, for supporting adhesion to European Union 24.02.2004 452 532
United States Madeleine Korbel Albright, State Secretary, for supporting adhesion to NATO 08.09.2005 453 532
United Kingdom George Islay MacNeill Robertson, general secretary of NATO, for supporting adhesion to NATO 20.09.2004 454 532
Ireland Dick Roche, Minister of European Affairs 23.02.2004 455 532
United States Joseph Michael De Thomas, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2004) 29.06.2004 507 654
Czech Republic Vladislav Labudek, ambassador to Estonia (2000–2004) 29.06.2004 508 654
Ireland Sean Farrell, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2004) 04.08.2004 509 672
Lithuania Antanas Valionis, Foreign Minister 04.10.2004 510 693
United Kingdom Robin Finlayson Cook, Former Foreign Minister, for supporting adhesion to European Union 13.07.2005 525 775
Finland Jaakko Blomberg, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2005) 04.07.2005 591 852
Germany Karl Jürgen Dröge, ambassador to Estonia (2002–2005) 20.06.2005 592 852
Hungary László Nikicser, ambassador to Estonia (2003–2005) 04.07.2005 593 852
Denmark Jørgen Munk Rasmussen, ambassador to Estonia (2000–2005) 04.07.2005 594 852
Netherlands Joanna Maria van Vliet, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2005) 04.07.2005 595 852
Poland Wojciech Wróblewski, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2005) 04.07.2005 596 852
Latvia Edgars Skuja, ambassador to Estonia (2002–2005) 12.09.2005 597 887
Norway Per Kristian Pedersen, ambassador to Estonia (2000–2005) 12.09.2005 598 889
Turkey Ömer Altuğ, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2005) 08.11.2005 600 909
Ukraine Mykola Makarevych, ambassador to Estonia (1999–2005) 25.11.2005 601 928
Latvia Aigars Kalvītis, Prime Minister 07.12.2005 613 937
Latvia Ingrīda Ūdre, President of the Parliament 07.12.2005 614 937
China Jiuyin Hong, ambassador to Estonia (2003–2005) 02.03.2006 687 981
Lithuania Antanas Vinkus, ambassador to Estonia (2002–2006) 28.06.2006 689 1033
Russia Konstantin Provalov, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2006) 22.08.2006 690 1060
France Chantal de Ghaisne de Bourmount, ambassador to Estonia (2002–2006) 26.09.2006 691 1066

Awarded by H.E. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (9 October 2006–incumbent )

Austria Jakub Forst-Battaglia, ambassador to Estonia (2001–2006) 13.12.2006 694 20
United States Aldona Wos, ambassador to Estonia (2004–2006) 13.12.2006 695 20
Finland Seppo Kääriäinen, Minister of Defence 14.03.2007 724 168
Finland Leena Luhtanen, Minister of Justice 14.03.2007 725 168
Finland Matti Vanhanen, Prime Minister 14.03.2007 726 168
Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister 09.07.2007 745 168
Spain Manuel Marín Gonzàlez, Chairman of the lower house of Parliament 09.07.2007 746 168
Spain María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, Vice-Prime Minister 09.07.2007 747 168
Spain Pedro Solbes, Second Vice-Prime Minister, minister of Economy and Finances 09.07.2007 748 168
Spain Miguel Ángel Moratinos Cuyaubé, Minister of foreign Affairs and Cooperation 09.07.2007 749 168
Spain Alberto Aza Arias, Head of the House of the King of Spain 09.07.2007 750 168
Spain Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón Jiménez, Mayor of Madrid 09.07.2007 751 168
Hungary István Mohácsi, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2007) 04.09.2007 780 170
United Kingdom Nigel Robert Haywood, ambassador to Estonia (2003–2007) 31.10.2007 781 187
Spain Miguel Bauza y More, ambassador to Estonia (2004–2008) 23.01.2008 782 245
Latvia Ivars Godmanis, relation between Latvia and Estonia 784 269
Netherlands Franciscus Cornelis Gerardus Maria Timmermans, Minister for European Affairs 14.05.2008 825 280
Netherlands Henk Ary Christiaan van der Zwan, ambassador to Estonia 14.05.2008 826 280
Netherlands Marco Hennis, Queen's counsellor 14.05.2008 827 280
Netherlands Martine Louise Amélie van Loon-Labouchère, Queen's mistress of the wardrobe 14.05.2008 828 281
Netherlands Lieutenant General Andreas Joseph Gulielmus Maria Blomjous, Queen's head adjutant 14.05.2008 836 281
Belgium Olivier Chastel Secretary of State of Belgian Foreign Ministry 10.06.2008 839 290
Belgium Pierre Dubuisson, ambassador to Estonia 10.06.2008 840 290
Czech Republic Miloš Lexa, ambassador to Estonia (2004–2008) 17.06.2008 850 297
Ireland Noel Kilkenny, ambassador to Estonia (2004–2008) 23.08.2008 851 333
Sweden Dag Hartelius, ambassador to Estonia (2003–2008) 05.08.2008 852 334
Portugal Ana Paula Baptista Grade Zacarias, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2008) 27.11.2008 0? 363
United States Stanley Davis Phillips, ambassador to Estonia (2007–2009) 08.01.2009 0? 418
Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister 24.03.2009 856 423
Turkey Fatma Şule Soysal, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2009) 26.03.2009 871 456
Latvia Imants Viesturs Lieģis, Minister of Defence 07.04.2009 874 460
Latvia Ints Dālderis, Minister of Culture 07.04.2009 875 460
Germany Julius Bobinger, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2009) 17.06.2009 885 492
Denmark Kristen Rosenvold Geelan, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2009) 28.08.2009 887 522
France Daniel Louis Labrosse, ambassador to Estonia (2006–2009) 03.09.2009 888 524
Italy Fabrizio Piaggesi, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2009) 10.09.2009 889 526
Denmark Per Stig Møller, Foreign Minister 03.02.2010 891 606
Germany Joseph Martin Fischer, Foreign Minister 03.02.2010 890 606
Ukraine Pavlo Kir´iakov, ambassador to Estonia (2006–2010) 09.06.2010 901 669
Russia Nikolay Uspenskiy, ambassador to Estonia (2006–2010) 18.06.2010 902 691
Poland Tomasz Chłoń, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2010) 07.07.2010 903 692
Finland Jaakko Kaarlo Antero Kalela, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2010) 19.08.2010 904 728
Norway Stein Vegard Hagen, ambassador to Estonia (2005–2010) 03.09.2010 905 730
Sweden Ingvar Carlsson, Former Prime Minister (1986–1991, 1994–1996) 12.01.2011 908 807
Sweden Kristine von Blixen-Finecke, First Lady of the Royal Court 18.01.2011 909 807
Sweden Lena Hjelm-Wallén, former Foreign Minister (1994–1998) 25.02.2011 910 807
Sweden Svante Lindqvist, Grand Marshal of the Court 18.01.2011 911 807
Sweden Jan Palmstierna, ambassador to Estonia 18.01.2011 912 807
Sweden Göran Persson, Prime Minister (1996–2006) 18.01.2011 913 807
Sweden Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister 18.01.2011 914 807
Sweden Sten Tolgfors, Minister of Defence 18.01.2011 915 807
Sweden Per Westerberg, President of the Parliament 18.01.2011 916 807
Sweden Lars-Hjalmar Wide, Grand Marshal of the Court, Ambassador 18.01.2011 917 807
Sweden Frank Belfrage, Foreign Minister 25.02.2011 951 810
Spain Eduardo Ibáñez López-Dóriga, ambassador to Estonia (2008–2011) 05.05.2011 971 890
Austria Angelika Saupe-Berchtold, ambassador to Estonia (2007–2011) 14.10.2011 972 932
Malta Tonio Borg, Vice-Prime Minister and Foreign Minister 31.05.2012 990 98
Latvia Solvita Āboltiņa, Mme President of Parliament 05.06.2012 1003 99
Latvia Valdis Dombrovskis, Prime Minister 05.06.2012 1004 99
United States Michael C. Polt, ambassador to Estonia (2009–2012) 27.06.2012 1029 112
Denmark Uffe Anderssøn Balslev, ambassador to Estonia (2009–2012) 06.07.2012 1030 113
Belgium Nicolaas Buyck, ambassador to Estonia (2008–2012) 02.07.2012 1031 114
Netherlands Maurits Robbert Jochems, ambassador to Estonia (2010–2012) 11.09.2012 1033 164
Japan Hideaki Hoshi, ambassador to Estonia (2010–2012) 11.09.2012 1032 165
Italy Rosa Maria Chicco Ferraro, ambassador to Estonia (2009–2012) 19.10.2012 1034 166
United States Hillary Clinton, Foreign Minister (2009–2013) 06.02.2013 1035 224
Lithuania Algirdas Butkevičius, Prime Minister 27.05.2013 1046 266
Lithuania Neilas Tankevičius, ambassador to Estonia 27.05.2013 1047 266
Germany David Gill, Cabinet Director of the Presidency 09.07.2013 1089 305
Germany Harald Braun, Foreign Minister 09.07.2013 1090 305
Germany Christian Matthias Schlaga, ambassador to Estonia 09.07.2013 1091 305
France Frédéric Billet, ambassador to Estonia (2009–2013) 02.09.2013 1102 308

High Personalities

Country / Recipient / Date of reception / Serie number / Decision : number & date

Awarded by President Lennart Meri ( 6 October 1992 – 8 October 2001 )
European Union Otto von Habsburg, Member of European Parliament 11.10.1996 30 683 ( 16.02.1996 )
European Union Mr Jacques Delors, former chairman of the European Commission 23.03.1999 78 495 ( 02.02.1999 )
Turkey His Holiness Bartholomew I Archbishop and Patriarch of Constantinople-New Rome 27.10.2000 130 444 ( 09.10.2000 )

Awarded by H.E. President Arnold Rüütel (8 October 2001 – 9 October 2006)

Russia His Holiness Alexy II of Moscow, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia 29.09.2003 439 444 ( 18.09.2003 )
Spain Juan Antonio Samaranch 29.11.2003 448 464 ( 20.11.2003 )
European Union John Kjær, Head of the Delegation of the European Union (2000–04) 23.11.2004 523 717 ( 12.11.2004 )
European Union Patrick Cox, Former President of European Parliament, for supporting adhesion to European Union 03.11.2006 526 775 ( 02.02.2005 )
European Union Christopher Patten, Former Member of the European Commission, for supporting adhesion to European Union 27.10.2005 527 775 ( 02.02.2005 )
European Union Günter Verheugen, Former Member of the European Commission, for supporting adhesion to European Union 02.05.2005 528 775 ( 02.02.2005 )

Awarded by H.E. President Toomas Hendrik Ilves ( 9 October 2006 – incumbent )

European Union José Manuel Durão Barroso, President of the European Commission 23.02.2009 855 423 (04.02.2009)
NATO Jakob Gijsbert de Hoop Scheffer 09.07.2009 886 520 (06.07.2009)
European Union Hans-Gert Pöttering ( Germany), President of the European Parliament 23.02.2013 1036 224 (6.02.2013)
United States Vinton Gray Cerf, Computer scientist 28.04.2014 1103 368 (05.02.2014)


Recipients of the Fourth Class

> Robert Fripp, 2008[8]

References

1. The Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana. President of the Republic of Estonia, Estonian State Decorations. Retrieved 2011-01-22
2. http://www.president.ee/et/ametitegevus ... gid=109326
3. "Bearers of decorations: Maarjamaa Risti ketiklassi teenetemärk". president.ee. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
4. "Bearers of decorations: Maarjamaa Risti ketiklassi teenetemärk". president.ee. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
5. "Bearers of decorations: Maarjamaa Risti ketiklassi teenetemärk". president.ee. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
6. "Bearers of decorations: Maarjamaa Risti ketiklassi teenetemärk". president.ee. Retrieved 2 October 2013.
7. Estonian Presidency, Recipients First Class (Maarjamaa Risti I klassi teenetemärk). Retrieved 03 October 2013
8. Listing for Robert Fripp (2008)

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:16 am
by admin
Google's Vint Cerf warns of 'digital Dark Age'
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News, San Jose
13 February 2015

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Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet", says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost.

Currently a Google vice-president, he believes this could occur as hardware and software become obsolete.

He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a "digital Dark Age".

Mr Cerf made his comments at a large science conference in San Jose.

He arrived at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science stylishly dressed in a three-piece suit. This iconic figure, who helped define how data packets move around the net, is possibly the only Google employee who wears a tie.

I felt obliged to thank him for the internet, and he bowed graciously. "One is glad to be of service," he said humbly.
His focus now is to resolve a new problem that threatens to eradicate our history.

Our life, our memories, our most cherished family photographs increasingly exist as bits of information - on our hard drives or in "the cloud". But as technology moves on, they risk being lost in the wake of an accelerating digital revolution.

"I worry a great deal about that," Mr Cerf told me. "You and I are experiencing things like this. Old formats of documents that we've created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.

"And so what can happen over time is that even if we accumulate vast archives of digital content, we may not actually know what it is."

'Digital vellum'

Vint Cerf is promoting an idea to preserve every piece of software and hardware so that it never becomes obsolete - just like what happens in a museum - but in digital form, in servers in the cloud.

If his idea works, the memories we hold so dear could be accessible for generations to come.

"The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future."

Computers

A company would have to provide the service, and I suggested to Mr Cerf that few companies have lasted for hundreds of years. So how could we guarantee that both our personal memories and all human history would be safeguarded in the long run?

Even Google might not be around in the next millennium, I said.

"Plainly not," Vint Cerf laughed. "But I think it is amusing to imagine that it is the year 3000 and you've done a Google search. The X-ray snapshot we are trying to capture should be transportable from one place to another. So, I should be able to move it from the Google cloud to some other cloud, or move it into a machine I have.

"The key here is when you move those bits from one place to another, that you still know how to unpack them to correctly interpret the different parts. That is all achievable if we standardise the descriptions.

"And that's the key issue here - how do I ensure in the distant future that the standards are still known, and I can still interpret this carefully constructed X-ray snapshot?"

The concept of what Mr Cerf refers to as "digital vellum" has been demonstrated by Mahadev Satyanarayanan at Carnegie Mellon University.

"It's not without its rough edges but the major concept has been shown to work," Mr Cerf said.