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U.S. Withholding Satellite Data
plover writes "Because of Congressional legislation passed quietly in 2003, the Air Force Space Command will no longer distribute space surveillance data via NASA. There was supposed a three year transitional period where the data was to be made available via a NASA web site, but earlier this month their transitional server went down hard, and NASA has decided to not rebuild it. (It was scheduled to be shut down on 31 March 2005 anyway.) The only way to obtain satellite data now is by signing up with the official Space-Track website. Part of the agreement to obtaining data from their site is that you agree to not redistribute their data. Of course, amateurs are still free to redistribute their observations, including those of classified satellites."
Who has the right to make a definition? If he had thought he could have convinced anyone, Mussolini would have defined fascism as paradise. That doesn't necessarily mean it is correct.
Allow me to quote the definition found on Wikipedia (No link, it's currently out):9 )
Definition
The word fascism has come to mean any system of government resembling Mussolini's, that
* exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
* uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
* engages in severe economic and social regimentation.
* engages in corporatism,[1] (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=21936
* implements or is a totalitarian regime.
In an article in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana, written by Giovanni Gentile and attributed to Benito Mussolini, fascism is described as a system in which "The State not only is authority which governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life, but it is also power which makes its will prevail abroad.... For the Fascist, everything is within the State and... neither individuals nor groups are outside the State.... For Fascism, the State is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative...."
Mussolini, in a speech delivered on October 28, 1925, stated the following maxim that encapsulates the fascist philosophy: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato." ("Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State".) Therefore, he reasoned, all individuals' business is the state's business, and the state's existence is the sole duty of the individual.
Historians should judge the leaders of the world - not themselves. And it appears historians consider corporatism a rather small part of fascism. It is later in that article described as more of a means than an end.
Historians often judge people and their deeds quite different from what they would do themselves. Consider this quote: (Translated from German to Danish to english - sorry)
"At this hour I feel, that it is my duty to my own conscience again to appeal to the common sense, both in Great Britain and elsewhere(...)
I can see no reason for this war to continue. Herr Churchill will probably disregard this statement by saying, that it is born of fear and doubt about our final victory. In that case I have relieved my conscience about the things that are to follow." Adolf Hitler - 19. july 1940.
Yet historians put the blame of the atrocities of the second world war on Hitler, rather than Churchill.
(Yes, I know about Godwin's law)
The only change here is that (a) they get to know who's accessing the data, and (b) those who access the data can't restribute it. This doesn't keep them from distributing the result of calculations based on the data, however.
Heavens-above.com has data regarding when satellites are visible from a given location on the earth's surface. I'm not sure if this gives any data on classified satellites. This site does currently still show orbital elements on the "orbit" page of each satellite's detail list - these are probably coming from non-Airforce tracking radars.
JTrack 3D is a great little java applet (warning, the applet loads in a separate window) that shows you a real-time view of near-earth space. You can even pull up description pages for each of the satellites shown. The "Launch/Orbital information" link on the detail page is broken, and seems to be the only part of this service affected. Again this is unlikely to ever have shown classified satellites.
Conspiracy theorists, take note. Every spacefaring nation on the planet knows where everything is in space including the orbital elements mentioned, to make sure thier expensive new pr0nosat won't crash into that random chunk of "damaged hardware that can't be de-orbited, oops" that's taking pictures of Osama's outhouse. This just keeps people from anonymously having the US Air Force do their orbit tracking for them.
Pavlov's Dog ate the bell, and now he's barking at Schroedinger's cat all the time... -Me