> They are using Russian satellites to pick up the transmissions, and
> they have enough in the sky to be assured of having one overhead at
> any given time.

This is the only interesting part (sez the science/political freak).

Russia chose awhile ago to rent time on their spy satellites from the
"Evil Empire" days as a way to raise hard currency (in today's Russia,
that means "damned near anything not spelled R-U-B-L-E)l

Or is that rubble :)

Imagine what could be done if the United States admitted that the
cold war were over?

Without being too off-topic, I just have a hard time imagining Saddam
running a threat anywhere near the scale of the USSR. Nor do I imagine
Hillary fleeing from Washington Dolly Madison-style after ... hmmm...
Fidel? Saddam? Hamas? Ralph Nader? invades this country and
overwhelms our Armed Forces.

As an internationalist, I'm cheered by this creative use of the
Russian network. As a Patriot, I find it a bit obscene that our
researches must leave the country to gather data which is classified
in our own network, yet which is gathered by essentially equivalent
systems in Russia. This reeks of the Spot controversy (the French
satellites which kicked Landsat butt - Landsat being old, of course -
and the US military refusing to give researchers access to higher
resolution data on "security" grounds, despite the fact that France
and Russia were photographing us ever *bleeping* day).;

Rant off. Docile-mode on: expect further developments, unless of
course Pat Buchanan gets elected Prez, in which case we'll shoot
down the Russian satellites because they'll be gathering global
paleontological evidence of the factualness of evolution, and
other un-American pseudo-science, etc...

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, more *died* as site ate its disk