Path: e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com!newsfeeds-atl1.usenetserver.com!news.webusenet.com!diablo.theplanet.net!diablo.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.news2me.com!newsfeed2.earthlink.net!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!harp.news.atl.earthlink.net!not-for-mail From: "Allen L. Barker" Newsgroups: alt.mindcontrol,alt.politics.org.cia,alt.politics.org.covert,soc.rights.human Subject: Yemen Strikes, Pentagon Surveillance, Secrecy, V2S, the Future Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 02:54:43 -0500 Organization: No Dismay Lines: 190 Message-ID: <3DD0B3C3.9CFA5A90@datafilter.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: a5.f7.7e.07 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Server-Date: 12 Nov 2002 07:54:34 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.78 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.9-31 i686) X-Accept-Language: en Xref: usenetserver.com alt.mindcontrol:125448 alt.politics.org.cia:133917 alt.politics.org.covert:111702 soc.rights.human:153205 Bush Authorized Yemen-Style Strikes, Rice Says Last Updated: November 10, 2002 01:16 PM ET http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=topnews&StoryID=1709802 By Todd Eastham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has given broad authority to "a variety of people" in his administration to launch attacks like the missile strike that killed six suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen last week, his national security adviser said on Sunday. "The president has given broad authority to a variety of people to do what they have to do to protect this country," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told the television show Fox News Sunday. "It's a new kind of war. We're fighting on a lot of different fronts." Human rights group Amnesty International wrote to Bush on Friday to question Washington's role in the attack. 'EXTRA-JUDICIAL EXECUTIONS' "If this was the deliberate killing of suspects in lieu of arrest, in circumstances in which they did not pose an immediate threat, the killings would be extra-judicial executions in violation of international human rights law," the London-based rights group in a statement. Amnesty called on the United States to issue a clear and unequivocal statement that it does not sanction extra-judicial executions. Rice seemed to reject that call on Sunday. "I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here," she said when asked if such killings violated U.S. or international law. The president is "well within the bounds of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority," Rice said. [...] Citing "informed sources," Newsweek said Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh gave the United States permission for such attacks but was angered when the hit was leaked to the press. CIA officials were also angry and concerned that the leak, which they traced to the Pentagon, would discourage other countries from allowing such strikes within their borders, Newsweek reported. --------------------------------------------------------- Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/politics/09COMP.html?ex=1037509200&en=873ff5626a3c666e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE By JOHN MARKOFF November 9, 2002 The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe - including the United States. As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant. Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States. [...] Before taking the position at the Pentagon, Admiral Poindexter, who was convicted in 1990 for his role in the Iran-contra affair, had worked as a contractor on one of the projects he now controls. Admiral Poindexter's conviction was reversed in 1991 by a federal appeals court because he had been granted immunity for his testimony before Congress about the case. --------------------------------------------------------- SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2002, Issue No. 107 October 28, 2002 http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/10/102802.html CIA ADDRESSES WORLDWIDE THREAT ISSUES DOD EXAMINES "PREEMPTIVE" INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS THOMAS B. ROSS, 73 PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SECRECY --------------------------------------------------------- Recent cultural references to voice-to-skull technology: Voices in Your Head? Check That Chip in Your Arm http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/technology/10SLAS.html?todaysheadlines The Sound of Silence http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9136-2002Nov5.html --------------------------------------------------------- The near and far future: Star Wars airships By Tim Reid http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-477539,00.html THE Pentagon has turned to technology first used in Napoleonic France to defend the United States from attack in the 21st century: the giant airship. Sixty-five years after the Hindenburg disaster sent the airship?s prospects crashing to the New Jersey earth, Pentagon officials plan to ring the American continent with giant unmanned craft to spot incoming missiles and aircraft. The US Missile Defence Agency has asked the country?s largest military contractors to develop a high-altitude airship that can float at 70,000ft, aiming to have an operational fleet by 2010. The agency, charged with protecting America from ballistic missiles, has given the companies until February to submit designs. In the post-September 11 world, the technology could also enhance monitoring terrorist activities on the ground, the Pentagon believes. Each airship would carry 40ft radars with a sweep of about 750 miles, ringing the US coastline. Initially they would not carry weapons, but the Pentagon hopes that later they could use lasers to attack missiles, a marriage of Great War and Star Wars technology. ----- Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,837058,00.html Robin McKie, science editor Sunday November 10, 2002 The Observer Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically. Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years. The effects could be catastrophic. Powerful radiation bursts, which normally never touch the atmosphere, would heat up its upper layers, triggering climatic disruption. Navigation and communication satellites, Earth's eyes and ears, would be destroyed and migrating animals left unable to navigate. 'Earth's magnetic field has disappeared many times before - as a prelude to our magnetic poles flipping over, when north becomes south and vice versa,' said Dr Alan Thomson of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh. [...] -- Mind Control: TT&P --> http://www.datafilter.com/mc Allen Barker