Newborn galaxies teeming with dozens of baby stars
Scientists hope to learn how stellar systems are born


I love reading stories like these! I get all shiny-eyed and optimistic until I realize how scared I am of outer space. Whoops! Solar system anxiety creeping up again!


Dec. 21, 2004, 7:48PM

Newborn galaxies teeming with dozens of baby stars
Scientists hope to learn how stellar systems are born
By MARK CARREAU
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Though billions of years old, the universe still produces compact galaxies brimming with baby stars, astronomers said Tuesday.

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With help from a NASA telescope, scientists have discovered about three dozen young galaxies in the not-too-distant cosmic neighborhood that could help astronomers unravel the forces that helped create the earliest star systems.

"This is almost like looking out the window and seeing a dinosaur walking by," said Tim Heckman, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who specializes in galaxy evolution. "We thought this type of galaxy had gone extinct, but in fact newborn galaxies are alive and well in the universe."

Astronomers believe the universe unfolded 13.7 billion years ago after the theoretical Big Bang, a massive explosion of super dense matter.

As the expanding universe cooled, it absorbed hydrogen and helium. Those elements collapsed under gravity to create the first stars and galaxies, an activity that astronomers believed peaked eight to 10 billion years ago.

NASA launched its $100 million Galaxy Evolution Explorer 20 months ago to look for newborn star systems in the distant, early cosmos.

Also known as Galex, scientists equipped the small orbital telescope with optical systems sensitive to ultraviolet light, an energetic emission unleashed during star formation. The Earth's thick atmosphere shields ground-based telescopes from the energetic emissions.

Galex's first sweep has revealed 36 of the young galaxies ranging from two billion to four billion light years away. They range in age from 100 million to one billion years, said Chris Martin, the California Institute of Technology astronomer who led the search.

By comparison, the Milky Way galaxy is believed to be 10 billion years old, while Earth's sun and its solar system are about 4.5 billion years old.

The Galex team hopes the galactic infants have similar composition and structure to ancient and so far unseen distant siblings.

Scientists said the powerful Hubble Telescope must be repaired before they can study the earliest galaxies and compare them with the latest discoveries.

According to Alice Shapley, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley, scientists want to resolve the range of star ages and masses as well as the rate of star birth.

The findings could help astronomers explain whether star systems of this type merged over the over the ages to form larger galaxies such as the Milky Way.

Using Galex, astronomers can detect only compact ill-formed "fuzzy blobs" with the bright, telltale ultraviolet emissions of explosive star birth. They must leave to their imaginations what it might be like to live in such a star system.

"I believe you would see a very large number of quite bright blue stars," Martin said. "Blue stars are very hot and very massive. So, I imagine the sky would look quite a bit different from our own position in the Milky Way."

mark.carreau@chron.com

India roiled by Internet sex case
American charged over sale of clip


Culture clash!



India roiled by Internet sex case
American charged over sale of clip
By Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times | December 22, 2004

NEW DELHI -- From India's Parliament to corporate boardrooms and newspaper editorial boards, a video scandal involving teenage sex has set off a storm of controversy.

The American head of an Indian Internet firm caught up in a scandal was released on bail yesterday as police interrogated the private school student who filmed the lewd clip with a cell phone camera.

A Delhi High Court judge ordered the release of Avnish Bajaj, head of the eBay-owned Baazee.com, who still faces charges that he allowed the sale of pornographic material on the Web site.

Bajaj was arrested Friday and initially held in Delhi's high-security Tihar prison after a video clip of two private school students engaged in a sexual act was posted for sale on Baazee.com, India's biggest Internet auction site.

The 17-year-old boy who shot the video on his cell phone also was arrested. A juvenile court allowed police to question him yesterday in the presence of a social worker and his father. He was being held in a juvenile home until early next month.

The boy and the 16-year-old girl in the clip have been expelled from Delhi Public School, one of the Indian capital's most prestigious private schools.

Police also have charged a student at the Indian Institute of Technology, whom Baazee identified as the person who offered the clip for sale on the Web site. Investigators are looking for more suspects in a case that has scandalized India, where even public displays of affection as tame as kissing are frowned upon.

Police say the boy shot the video with a cell phone in his bedroom in July. The clip began to spread on cell phone and Internet networks after he showed it to friends.

A member of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party accused the United States of meddling in Indian affairs after local reports, citing unidentified official sources, said that the incoming US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, had taken an interest in Bajaj's case.

A US Embassy spokesman here did not respond to an interview request, but a State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, told reporters in Washington on Monday that ''this situation is one of concern at the highest levels of the US government."

He added that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell ''has been following it closely" and had asked about the case at a morning staff meeting.

Bajaj, 34, is a naturalized American citizen who lives in India. He sold Baazee.com to eBay, based in San Jose, Calif., for about $50 million in August.

The embassy has provided him with consular assistance, and an American diplomat attended a court hearing Monday at which Bajaj appealed a lower court order that he remain in jail until Friday.

Bajaj faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of more than $2,200 if found guilty of violating India's Information Technology Act, which prohibits ''publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form which is obscene."

Bajaj's attorney argued that the Internet executive should be released on bail because he had cooperated with authorities and had removed the listing of the video sex clip as soon as it came to the company's attention. The seller offered to e-mail the clip for just less than $3, but the clip itself was not shown on Baazee.com, the company said.

56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake


Finally, we start to hear the voices of the many who have opposed this war since the beginning. The travesty must end now!




washingtonpost.com

56 Percent in Survey Say Iraq War Was a Mistake
Poll Also Finds Slight Majority Favoring Rumsfeld's Exit

By John F. Harris and Christopher Muste
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A04

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14266-2004Dec20?language=printer


President Bush heads into his second term amid deep and growing public skepticism about the Iraq war, with a solid majority saying for the first time that the war was a mistake and most people believing that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should lose his job, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While a slight majority believe the Iraq war contributed to the long-term security of the United States, 70 percent of Americans think these gains have come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties. This led 56 percent to conclude that, given the cost, the conflict there was "not worth fighting" -- an eight-point increase from when the same question was asked this summer, and the first time a decisive majority of people have reached this conclusion.

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld at a morning news conference yesterday, but the Pentagon chief who soared to international celebrity and widespread admiration after the terrorist attacks three years ago can be glad he answers to an audience of one. Among the public, 35 percent of respondents approved of his job performance and 53 percent disapproved; 52 percent said Bush should give Rumsfeld his walking papers.

Seven weeks since his reelection victory over Democrat John F. Kerry and four weeks before his second inauguration, the poll suggests Bush is in a paradoxical situation -- a triumphant president who remains acutely vulnerable in public opinion on a national security issue that is dominating headlines and could shadow his second term.

While the results are bad for Bush as people look at past decisions -- whether the Iraq war should have been waged in the first place -- the president has more support for his policies over the choices he faces going forward.

A strong majority of Americans, 58 percent, support keeping military forces in Iraq until "civil order is restored," even in the face of continued U.S. causalities. By a slight margin, 48 percent to 44 percent, more voters agreed with Bush's position that the United States is making "significant progress" toward its goal of establishing democracy in Iraq. Yet, by a similar margin, the public believes the United States is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order.

This was just one area where there was considerable ambivalence and even pessimism about the challenges confronting U.S. policy in the coming months.

On the question of whether Iraq is prepared for elections next month -- a topic widely debated among national security experts -- 58 percent of respondents believed the violence-plagued country is not ready. Nonetheless, 60 percent want elections to go forward as scheduled -- even though 54 percent do not expect honest results with a "fair and accurate vote count." Fifty-four percent are not confident elections will produce a stable government that can rule effectively.

Bush waged his reelection campaign heavily on national security, but the polling data reaffirm what similar surveys showed during the campaign: He is winning only half the case.

A full 57 percent disapprove of his handling of Iraq, a number that is seven percentage points higher than a poll taken in September. But the president's core political asset, public confidence in his leadership on terrorism, remains intact, albeit down significantly from even a year ago. Fifty-three percent approve of his record on terrorism, while 43 percent do not. Those numbers were 70 percent and 28 percent a year ago this week.

The public splits down the middle on Bush's overall job performance, with 48 percent approving while 49 percent disapprove, percentages that closely approximate results taken just before the election. By contrast, President Bill Clinton had an approval of 60 percent in a poll taken just before he began his second term.

The Post-ABC results are consistent with other newly released surveys. Time magazine, which this week named Bush its "Person of the Year," found that 49 percent approve of his job performance, little changed from before the election. A Pew Research Center survey, meanwhile, showed that the angry divisions about Bush that marked the 2004 campaign were hardly bridged by the election's end -- nor were the sharply divergent appraisals of reality. By emphatic majorities, Bush voters were upbeat on whether things are going well in Iraq and with the economy, while Kerry voters were negative.

The Post poll also showed such partisan divides on many foreign policy and national security questions. In a potential trouble sign for the White House, Republicans' support for Bush on these questions is lower than the Democratic opposition. And majorities of independents side with the Democrats in their skepticism toward the administration's course.

There are sharp partisan divisions over Rumsfeld, with about two-thirds of Democrats and slight majorities of independents disapproving of his job performance and believing he should be replaced. Smaller majorities of Republicans, about six in 10, approve of Rumsfeld and want him to stay in the job.

There are similar splits on Iraq. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents agree the elections should be held. But more than two-thirds of Democrats and about six in 10 independents believe that Iraq is not ready for elections and that the vote will not be fair and will not produce a stable Iraqi government, in contrast to a majority of Republicans. Opinion is even more sharply divided over the outcome of elections. Seven in 10 Democrats and five in nine independents believe elections will not produce a stable government in Iraq, while more than two-thirds of Republicans believe they will.

A total of 1,004 randomly selected Americans were interviewed Dec. 16 to 19. The margin of sampling error for the results is plus or minus three percentage points.

Fans' Racist Taunts Lead to Fine of Spanish Soccer

Racism worldwide, how nice eh?

washingtonpost.com
Fans' Racist Taunts Lead to Fine of Spanish Soccer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17785-2004Dec21.html

Wednesday, December 22, 2004; Page D02


World soccer's governing body yesterday fined Spain's national federation $87,000 for racist taunting by its fans during matches against England.

FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said the Spanish federation also was warned against a repeat of such fan behavior at future games. According to Spain's Efe news agency, a Spanish soccer official said the federation would honor the fine and had no plans to appeal the sanction.

Taunts aimed at the black players on England's soccer team marred Spain's impressive 1-0 victory in the Nov. 17 match. While the Spaniards outplayed England at Santiago Bernabeu stadium, their fans taunted Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole whenever they had the ball.

England also protested Spanish fans' racist chanting during a meeting of the two nations in an under-21 match the day before. FIFA chief Sepp Blatter said: "Racism again is rearing its ugly head in society and in football. FIFA is determined to stamp out racism."

Spanish soccer has been hit by a string of racist incidents. Earlier this month, European governing body UEFA fined Real Madrid $13,023 for racist behavior by its supporters at the Champions League game against Bayer Leverkusen on Nov. 23. Members of the crowd made Nazi salutes and taunted Leverkusen's black players

In U.S., 44 Percent Say Restrict Muslims


As much as I am weary of the politics of most people around me, I still find this poll's results shocking. How in the hell can most Americans believe this! This country is not just for white Americans, sorry! Jesus, this is clearly a sign of the times. All I can say is that everyone who participated in the sentiment that interned Japanese-Americans and hunted Communists in history are now seen as the stupidly inhumane people that they were. The same will happen when people in the future look back on this period in history. Nothing good can come when you dehumanize and scapegoat one group of people. Oppression will only lead to a fierce blowback. I stand for the rights of everyone and this poll just angers me and makes me disheartened for the future of our society. I clutch my heart and thank my good senses that I support the ACLU whenever I hear about shit like this. On another note, I'm not surprised that the more religious you are the more repressive you are. Nice one, all you good Christian folks!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041218/ap_on_re_us/muslims_civil_liberties_4

In U.S., 44 Percent Say Restrict Muslims

Fri Dec 17,10:08 PM ET

By WILLIAM KATES, Associated Press Writer

ITHACA, N.Y. - Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.



The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.


Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.


"It's sad news. It's disturbing news. But it's not unpredictable," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society. "The nation is at war, even if it's not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface."


The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.


The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.


Cornell student researchers questioned 715 people in the nationwide telephone poll conducted this fall. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.


James Shanahan, an associate professor of communications who helped organize the survey, said the results indicate "the need for continued dialogue about issues of civil liberties" in a time of war.


While researchers said they were not surprised by the overall level of support for curtailing civil liberties, they were startled by the correlation with religion and exposure to television news.


"We need to explore why these two very important channels of discourse may nurture fear rather than understanding," Shanahan said.


According to the survey, 37 percent believe a terrorist attack in the United States is still likely within the next 12 months. In a similar poll conducted by Cornell in November 2002, that number stood at 90 percent.


___


On the Net:


Cornell University: www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Dec04/Muslim.Poll.bpf.html


Muslim American Society: www.masnet.org

A Whitewashed Earthsea
How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.


This essay is mind-blowing! To read something this socially aware and explicit is refreshing. Even from a writer. Few popular writers ever dare to be so down to earth and get real about social issues. The color issue is still something very much alive and pertinent. This writing is so clear, direct, and genuinely human that it makes me, as cynical as I am, very proud to agree with this writer.


culturebox
A Whitewashed Earthsea
How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.
By Ursula K. Le Guin
Posted Thursday, Dec. 16, 2004, at 6:14 AM PT



On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries based—loosely, as it turns out—on my Earthsea books. The books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense. My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he's a petulant white kid. Readers who've been wondering why I "let them change the story" may find some answers here.

When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"—which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film. They said they had already secured Philippa Boyens (who co-wrote the scripts for The Lord of the Rings) as principal script writer. The script was, to me, all-important, so Boyens' presence was the key factor in my decision to sell this group the option to the film rights.

Months went by. By the time the producers got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries—and another producer, Robert Halmi Sr., had come aboard—they had lost Boyens. That was a blow. But I had just seen Halmi's miniseries DreamKeeper, which had a stunning Native American cast, and I hoped that Halmi might include some of those great actors in Earthsea.

At this point, things began to move very fast. Early on, the filmmakers contacted me in a friendly fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters—a dangerous thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people for decades. They replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and would be unlikely to care about changes to the books' story and characters.

They then sent me several versions of the script—and told me that shooting had already begun. I had been cut out of the process. And just as quickly, race, which had been a crucial element, had been cut out of my stories. In the miniseries, Danny Glover is the only man of color among the main characters (although there are a few others among the spear-carriers). A far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned. When I looked over the script, I realized the producers had no understanding of what the books are about and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence.

Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future science fiction books are not white. They're mixed; they're rainbow. In my first big science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man, and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In the two fantasy novels the miniseries is "based on," everybody is brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. The central character Tenar, a Karg, is a white brunette. Ged, an Archipelagan, is red-brown. His friend, Vetch, is black. In the miniseries, Tenar is played by Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, the only person in the miniseries who looks at all Asian. Ged and Vetch are white.

My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had "violet eyes"). It didn't even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn't they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?

The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from Northern Europe, which is why it was about white people. I'm white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for "young adults") might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees—hoping that the reader would get "into Ged's skin" and only then discover it wasn't a white one.

I was never questioned about this by any editor. No objection was ever raised. I think this is greatly to the credit of my first editors at Parnassus and Atheneum, who bought the books before they had a reputation to carry them.

But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition—a strong, red-brown profile of Ged—or with Margaret Chodos Irvine's four fine paintings on the Atheneum hardcover set, but all too often. The first British Wizard was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy—I screamed at sight of him.

Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very, very gradually publishers may be beginning to lose their blind fear of putting a nonwhite face on the cover of a book. "Hurts sales, hurts sales" is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal—a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader.

I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does.

I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in—and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, when they'd found nothing to read in fantasy and science fiction except the adventures of white people in white worlds. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.

So far no reader of color has told me I ought to butt out, or that I got the ethnicity wrong. When they do, I'll listen. As an anthropologist's daughter, I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism—a white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future science fiction setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of science fiction and fantasy—freedom of invention.

But with all freedom comes responsibility. Which is something these filmmakers seem not to understand.

Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of the Earthsea series and many other books. Her most recent book is Gifts.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111107/

Comments/Feedback to this story:
http://fray.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=culturebox

The leaders we have, not the ones we might want

I'm now understanding the situation that soldiers are in. It's always been hard for me to feel sympathy for those who enlist and ignore the blatant cruelty of the military, but I've underestimated their lives. It's still an issue I grapple with....

Tuesday, December 14, 2004, 12:00 A.M. Pacific

Guest columnist
The leaders we have, not the ones we might want

By Steven W. Simpson
Special to The Times


Will someone explain to me what in the world is going on in Iraq? Our troops are now digging around in trash heaps looking for chunks of metal they can use to improvise armor to protect their vehicles against small-arms attacks.

We are not talking about troops whining because they want another dozen $10-million-a-pop missiles or better satellite-guidance systems. These are grunts in the field getting shot at who are picking around in junkyards for chunks of metal they can weld on whatever tin-can war equipment the Army is passing out these days.

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why U.S. forces were being sent into action with insufficient protection, Rumsfeld told the soldiers, in effect, to stop whining about all those shrapnel holes in their inadequate military vehicles.

Rumsfeld, in what has to shake out as one of the most cold-blooded, disaffected statements by anyone about the war, told the people risking their lives, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have."

Rumsfeld and his Pentagon buddies, who are safe behind nice, fat desks, want the troops to go out and fight despite the fact that the behind-the-lines people did not do their job. They did not plan adequate armor protection and issued the troops equipment that even under the most minimal of battlefield conditions will get them killed.

The troops know it because they are in the middle of the fighting. They have seen explosives penetrate the inadequate armor and kill their buddies. That's why they are searching trash piles for protection. The real trash pile is in Washington, D.C., and could use a good picking over.

I was a platoon leader in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. When we got into bad fights, it was always terrible and frightening. But in the back of our minds, we always knew we were fighting against people with inferior equipment and weapons.

We knew if we could fight long enough, stay alive long enough, our weapons and technology would help us win. Both sides fought with courage in that war, but our equipment and weapons were the best. Now we have soldiers in the field with fighting vehicles that wouldn't even stop a bullet unless soldiers glued some junkyard trash on the sides.

I am a veteran. I was not asked to risk my life and fight for my country using second-class equipment and pieces of glued-on trash. Has this country forgotten how terrible war can be? Has our military leadership been sitting in their offices so long that they forgot what bullets and bombs can do to human flesh? Or worse, they remember and no longer care?

Perhaps worse than lack of adequate equipment is lack of adequate troops. This administration has been very loud telling anyone who will listen that we will stay the course. From the looks of things, what that means is the soldiers who happened to be enlisted at the time the war was started will be forced to continue fighting until America gets tired of the bloodshed. That's because there are no new troops to send in to relieve those doing the fighting.

Reserve and National Guard soldiers make up 45 percent of U.S. troops in Iraq. The so-called Pentagon "stop-loss" orders are forcing soldiers to continue fighting beyond the limits of their enlistment. President Bush said there would be no draft, but it does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that if we do not have enough soldiers in our regular and part-time forces combined, new soldiers will need to be found somewhere.

An Army Reserve unit in Iraq refused to carry out a convoy mission it considered too dangerous. Eight U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Kuwait filed a lawsuit challenging the "stop-loss" policy. These people are not cowards. They are soldiers at the sharp end of the stick who are trying every way they know how to tell America that the desk-jockeys are sending them into battle without appropriate equipment, without enough troops, and getting soldiers killed unnecessarily.

We went through this in Vietnam and should have learned to ask questions and hold our leaders accountable. Get the heat off those risking their lives and start questioning the Pentagon and administration officials responsible for this nonsense.

Steven W. Simpson is a writer and editor. He teaches at the Mercer Island High School alternative school, Crest Learning Center, and publishes a weekly online education newsletter, Ed.Net (www.edbriefs.com).

Write him at simpson@edbriefs.com

It came from the vaults! Google seeks to open the library

One last story on Google.

Google info link: http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/15/google_print_library/

It came from the vaults! Google seeks to open the library

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk)
Published Wednesday 15th December 2004 09:25 GMT

In what could be a historic move in the history of the internet, Google has announced arrangements with Harvard University, and a handful of public libraries, to digitize parts of their valuable collections and make them available over the public web. Yahoo!, Grokker and Microsoft are working on similar ventures.

Google Print Library (http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html), as it's called, will take many years to complete its first phase, and like the others, faces tremendous hurdles. Copyright and licensing issues remain a huge obstacle; the ontological expertise remains the domain of information professionals; and as a monopoly gateway to the world's information, no private corporation can expect to evade regulatory concerns. And lazy governments, both central and local, could find use it as an excuse to axe what commitments they have to making high quality information available. Any of these issues could hobble the venture, providing a service that's as useful as the fake cardboard book-props one can buy by the yard to fill an empty study bookcase. But as a statement of intent, such ventures deserve to be taken seriously.

Google will co-operate in scanning and digitizing works with major academic libraries and make them searchable. The results will be displayed using Google Print - which uses DRM to restrict the viewing and printing of copyright material - and display links to either commercial booksellers such as Amazon.com or, using Open Worldcat metadata, provide information where to find it at your local library. Initial partners include Harvard, with 15 million books, Oxford's Bodleian Library (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/google/pics.shtml), Stanford and Michigan University, where the scanning of seven million books is expected to take six years. Google won't at first offer advertisements on Print Library, although there's plenty of scope for this to change. For example: Do you want fries with your burgher? (http://www.google.com/search?q=burgher).

At ResourceShelf, Gary Price has a roundup (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3447411) of other digitization projects, and librarian Steve Cohen offers a few notes of caution. Google will need to improve on the brute force text search algorithms it uses today, he notes (http://www.resourceshelf.com/2004/12/google-lets-digitize-several-million.html), and "libraries should be pushing their own materials through their websites rather than having to 'rely' on Google to do so".

The promise of universal access to data repeated over a decade of internet hype has not been fulfilled, and the role of librarians as information professionals has been consistently undervalued - something, we suspect, to do with the adolescent hostility to expertise that characterizes so much internet evangelism. Which in turn, probably has a lot to do with the internet's libertarian backgrounds. Whether the private sector succeeds after a decade of failure in overcoming copyright interests remains to be seen, and whether it can be trusted to do so is another question. We'll certain need the librarians, to keep the Microsofts and Googles both honest and effective. ®
© Copyright 2004

Despite Google, we still need good libraries

A good statement to make amidst the excitement of new Google technology. I'm sure there's a way between balancing the traditional elements of knowledge with the new. At least I hope so cause' I'd be very sad if libraries ceased to exist!


Despite Google, we still need good libraries

GEORGE KEREVAN


GOOGLE, with whom I spend more time than with my loved ones, is planning to put the contents of the world’s greatest libraries on line, including the Bodleian in Oxford and those of Harvard and Stanford in America. Part of me is ecstatic at the thought of all that information at my fingertips (assuming my mouse is not greasy, or the damned computer is not flashing incomprehensible "error" messages). Another part of me is nostalgic, because I think physical libraries, book-lined and cathedral-quiet, are a cherished part of civilisation we lose at our cultural peril.

My love affair with libraries started early, in Drumchapel in the Fifties. Glasgow Council neglected the shops and amenities but somehow remembered to put in a public library - actually, a wooden shed - for the 60,000 exiles packed off to the city’s outer fringe.

That library was split into two - an adult section and a children’s section. This was an early taste of forbidden fruit. A lifetime of hating bureaucratic rules was born. Not to mention much useful human reproductive knowledge gained from certain books examined surreptitiously in the adult biology section.

The first lesson here is that on-line libraries are valuable, but they are only as useful as the electronic librarians let them be. Don’t count on the Chinese authorities being Google-friendly.

At university, I discovered the second great secret of the library as a physical space: its serendipity. Glasgow University has a skyscraper library, built around a vast atrium stretching up through the various floors. Each floor was devoted to a different subject classification. Working away on the economics floor, I could see other students above or below - chatting, flirting, doodling, panicking - each cocooned in their own separate world of knowledge. Intrigued, I soon took to exploring what was on these other planets: science, architecture, even a whole floor of novels.

Lesson two: the unique aspect of a physical library is that you can discover knowledge by accident. There are things you know you don’t know, but there are also things you never imagined you did not know (to paraphrase the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld).

There is a stock response to my love affair with libraries: that I am being too nostalgic. That the multi-tasking, MTV generation can access information from a computer, get cheap books from the supermarket and still chatter to each other at a thousand decibels. Who needs old-fashioned library buildings? And why subsidise what Google will provide for free?

There is proof for this line of argument. In 2003, the number of people in Scotland using their local public library fell for the fifth year running, with just under a quarter of Scots now borrowing books (admittedly, that was 34 million books). As a result, local authorities have reduced their funding on new books by 30 per cent. Of course, fewer new books mean fewer library users, so guaranteeing the downward spiral. And, yes, I do know that of the 20 most-borrowed books in British libraries, 16 were written by one person, the children’s author, Jacqueline Wilson.

One erroneous response to this state of affairs has been to turn traditional public lending libraries into glorified community centres full of broken-down PCs and dog-eared popular novels which you can find in better condition in the local charity shop for ten pence. That is not a library: that is a politically correct con trick.

It may well be that public demand and technical change mean we no longer need the dense neighbourhood network of local libraries of yore. But our culture, local and universal, does demand serious city libraries where one can find science, history, reference texts, foreign-language works and art books - precisely the material that is too expensive for the ordinary person to buy, and for the most part too complex to find on-line. Such facilities are worth funding publicly because the return in informed citizenship, civic pride and enhanced skills is far in excess of the money spent. Better a few good public libraries than a host of tatty community centres. City libraries also have that undervalued resource - the trained librarian. The ultimate Achilles’ heel of the internet is that it presents every page of information as being equally valid, which is of course nonsense. The internet is cluttered with false information, or just plain junk. The city library, with its collection honed and developed by experts, is a guarantee of the quality and veracity of the information contained therein, in a way that Google can never provide.

Libraries have another function still, which the internet cannot fulfil. Libraries, like museums, are custodians of knowledge - and should be funded as such. It has become the fashion in recent decades to turn our great national museums and libraries into entertainment centres, ostensibly to justify their public expense. As one of the original founders of Edinburgh’s highly successful Science Festival, I have every enthusiasm for popularising esoteric knowledge. However, the world of knowledge cannot be reduced to the level of a child’s view of the universe.

FURTHERMORE, we have a duty to future generations, especially in the nation that gave the world the Enlightenment, to invest in the custodians of our culture, above all of its literature and manuscripts. Besides, the desire by politicians to turn museums and libraries into theme parks has less to do with modernising access to knowledge, and more to do with courting cheap publicity.

Fortunately, there are still some adventurous minds, defending the notion of libraries as workshops of the future rather than tombs of the past. Witness Aberdeen University, where the principal, Duncan Rice, has just launched an appeal for a major new library facility, in part to re-house the university’s glorious medieval-humanities collection.

Professor Rice’s inspiration is the famous Beinecke Library at Yale University. One of the largest buildings in the world devoted entirely to rare manuscripts, the Beinecke has no windows but is constructed of thin marble panes which filter light so that the fragile materials can be displayed without damage. Inside, the golden effect is extraordinary. Let’s hope some benefactor comes up with the cash for Aberdeen so that the project is not held back or reduced in aspiration, architecturally or intellectually. (By the way, the price is one-tenth of one Scottish Parliament building.)

Of course, I can’t wait for Google to get on-line with the Bodleian Library’s one million books. Yet here’s one other thing I learned from a physical library space: the daunting scale of human knowledge and our inability to truly comprehend only a fraction of it. On arriving at Glasgow University library, I did a quick calculation of how many economics books there were on the shelves and realised that I could not read them all - ever, never mind before the time my degree course was over. From which realisation comes the beginning of wisdom, which is different from merely imbibing information.

The internet, on the other hand, is still in its Messianic phase. The new Google library reminds me of a short story by the science-fiction writer, Frederic Brown, where all the knowledge of all the computers in the world is finally available on one giant, Google-like application. To celebrate, the computer is asked the ultimate question: "Is there a God?" After a few whirrs and clicks, the machine answers: "Yes, now there is."


This article:

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1434442004

Global library heralds new information era

I completely agree. Google is just continuing to change the face of day-to-day living. I can't wait to see the results of this new innovation. I love Google, information, books, and libraries. This is terrific news for a change!


Global library heralds new information era
12-16-2004, 07h07

NEW YORK (AFP) - Moves by Internet search giant Google to create a global virtual library could signal a communications revolution on a par with Johann Gutenberg and the invention of moveable type in the 15th century.

"We've been talking about it here in those kind of terms," said John Wilkin, associate librarian at Michigan University.

Michigan and four more of the world's top libraries -- Harvard, Stanford, New York Public Library and the Bodleian in Oxford -- announced this week a deal with Google to digitise millions of their books and make them freely available online.

"This just changes the landscape so completely," Wilkin said.

"The research library, which was not very accessible before, will be available to everybody. The focus will start to shift to electronic space for all of our scholarly communications," he said.

Michigan and Stanford are planning to digitise their entire library collections -- totalling some 15 million books -- while the Bodleian is offering around one million books published before 1900.

The Harvard and New York Public Library contributions are smaller, but the entire project is still expected to take up to 10 years, with cost estimates ranging from 150 million to 200 million dollars.

"This is a great leap forward," said Michael Keller, librarian at Stanford University which has been digitising texts on a far smaller scale for several years.

"This new arrangement catapults our effective digital output from the boutique scale to the truly industrial," Keller said.

The project will grant global access to landmark publications and other rare out-of-print titles that previously were only available to specialised researchers on an appointment-only basis.

Among the historical books held by the participating libraries are a 1687 first edition of Isaac Netwon's "The Principia," owned by Stanford and Charles Darwin's 1871 classic "The Descent of Man" in the Bodleian.

"It's a revolution," Ronald Milne, the Bodleian's acting head librarian told the Times of London.

"In terms of what Gutenberg's invention was all about, enabling books to be disseminated cheaply, it is very much comparable to that," Milne said.

The access issue is as much about scope as price, and the Google project may ruffle some feathers in countries like China which still have lengthy lists of banned books.

"Once you have the research library available to anyone with an internet connection, it's going to be very hard to influence what people can see and what they can't see," said Michigan's Wilkin.

Books which have passed out of copyright and into the public domain will be available in their entirety, while the reproduction of newer titles will require the publishers' permission.

For Google, the move allows the company to get a jump on its competitors in what can only be an expanding field, and observers say the company will boost advertising revenue through increased user volume.

Publishers should also benefit, as excerpts of books still under copyright will be accompanied by purchase links.

"Every bit of anectdotal evidence has confirmed that when an in-print book is made available on the internet, the sales go up," Wilkin said. "So, I think publishers will see this as a boon."

The project is an extension of an existing Google Print program, which allows users to search contents of newly published books.

"This is a win-win situation for everyone involved," agreed Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library.

"It is central to our mission of making our collections democratically accessible to a global audience, free of charge," LeClerc said.

The Google project is not the only one of its type, although it is far and away the largest.

The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library, announced this week an agreement with libraries from five countries, including the United States, Canada and Egypt, to put one million digitised books on the web.

Presidential Medals of Failure

"The War to Rid Iraq of WMD has now become The War to Bring Democracy to the Middle East."

Another story on the latest farce from the Bush Empire.

washingtonpost.com

Presidential Medals of Failure

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A37


Where's Kerik?

This is the question I asked myself as, one by one, the pictures of the latest Presidential Medal of Freedom awardees flashed by on my computer screen. First came George Tenet, the former CIA director and the man who had assured President Bush that it was a "slam-dunk" that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Then came L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy of Iraq, who disbanded the Iraqi army and ousted Baathists from government jobs, therefore contributing mightily to the current chaos in that country. Finally came retired Gen. Tommy Franks, the architect of the plan whereby the United States sent too few troops to Iraq.

One by one these images flicked by me, each man wearing the royal-blue velvet ribbon with the ornate medal -- one failure after another, each now on the lecture circuit, telling insurance agents and other good people what really happened when they were in office, but withholding such wisdom from the American people until, for even more money, their book deals are negotiated. (Franks has already completed this stage of his life. His book, "American Soldier," was a bestseller.)

I braced myself. Could Bernard Kerik be next? Would we skip the entire process of maladministration, misjudgments in office and sycophantic admiration of the current president and go straight to the celebrated failure? After all, what seems to matter most to this president is not performance -- certainly not excellence -- but a matey kind of loyalty and obsequiousness, of which Kerik had plenty.

"Bernie," Bush called out at a White House ceremony last year.

Kerik, who was walking away, stopped. "Yes, sir," he said.

"You're a good man," the president said.

It is this manly affection that explains how Kerik came to be nominated to head the Department of Homeland Security. The president liked him. He was the president's kind of guy: a wayward, messy kind of youth and then -- wow! -- this explosive career, coming out of the starting gate like Seabiscuit, another runt with something less than an elite East Coast pedigree. What's more, he had been recommended by Rudy Giuliani, another very tough guy who, everyone somehow forgot, is a man hobbled by awful judgment, in people as well as in himself.

Had the president given the awards a moment's thought, he might have asked himself what he was doing. A pretty good argument can be made that Tenet was incompetent. He not only failed to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 but he failed to protect the president from what has to be a historic embarrassment: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As for Franks and Bremer, they cannot -- on the face of it -- both deserve medals. Since coming home from Iraq, Bremer has said the United States did not use enough troops there. "We never had enough troops on the ground," he confided to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers in October. This allowed the looting that broke out shortly after Baghdad was captured and the subsequent insurgency. For the record, Franks -- prodded by Donald Rumsfeld -- is the guy who never had enough troops on the ground. Which one deserved the medal? Easy. Neither.

The White House medal ceremony was really about George W. Bush. It had a slight touch of the absurd to it, as if facts do not matter and failure does not count. The War to Rid Iraq of WMD has now become The War to Bring Democracy to the Middle East. No one is ever held accountable, because the president will not do as much for himself. He admits no mistakes because he is convinced that he has made none. The terrorist attacks themselves, for which Tenet should have been sacked, are no one's fault because they cannot be the president's fault. He was warned. Condi Rice was put on notice. But, still, who could have known?

To make these awards in the face of failure -- the mounting American death toll, the awful suffering of the Iraqis, the looming possibility of civil war, the nose-thumbing of the still-at-large Osama bin Laden and the madness of making war for a nonexistent reason -- has the creepy feel of the old communist states, where incompetents wore medals and harsh facts were denied. For this reason Bernie Kerik -- three months in Iraq building a police force as good as rhetoric can make it -- seemed as likely and appropriate a recipient of a presidential medal as any of the others.

Maybe next year.

cohenr@washpost.com

HIV now a bigger threat to women than men
UN calls for social change as infections soar among females

This story is from a couple weeks ago that I forgot to post. Needless to say, this is an important issue that should be at the top of everyone's agenda right. This severely worries me as a feminist human rights supporter. :0


Sarah Boseley, health editor
Wednesday November 24 2004
The Guardian


The Aids pandemic rampaging around the globe will not be stopped
without radical social change to improve the lot of women and girls,
who now look likely to die in greater numbers than men, United
Nations agencies said yesterday.

Infections among women are soaring, from sub-Saharan Africa to Asia
to Russia. What began as a series of epidemics among men - in some
regions gay and bisexual men, in others men who frequented sex
workers or male drug users - has spread to their female partners who
are biologically more easily infected.

In many countries, women's subordinate status, and their lack of
education and economic power have made it impossible for them to
negotiate sex with men or to ask for the use of condoms. Yesterday
the UN agency set up to combat the pandemic, UNAids, called for all
that to change in the interests of checking the spread of a disease
which killed 3.1 million adults and children last year.

"We will not be able to stop this epidemic unless we put women at the
heart of the response to Aids," said UNAids' executive director,
Peter Piot.

At the launch of the UNAids annual report on the pandemic yesterday,
actor Emma Thompson, who is a founder member of the Global Coalition
on Women and Aids launched this year, put it in starker fashion.
"There are some countries where women are an endangered species -
they will disappear from the face of the earth," she said. "I think
this is the greatest catastrophe that the human race has ever faced."

Across the globe, 39.4 million people, including 2.2 million
children, are carrying the HIV virus and will die without treatment
to contain it - up from about 36.2 million two years ago. Only one in
10 in developing countries can get the drugs they need.

Last year, 4.9 million people were newly infected and 3.1 million
died. In some parts, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the numbers living
with HIV appear to have stabilised, but only because as many are now
dying as are acquiring infection.

In the UK, HIV continues to spread. UNAids says it "has become the
fastest-growing serious health condition". A report today from the
Health Protection Agency will confirm the trend. Last year there were
7,000 new diagnoses, taking the total numbers living with infection
well above 50,000.

The numbers of women affected globally are rising faster than those
of men, now making up nearly half of the total. In sub-Saharan
Africa, where the pandemic is furthest advanced, the transition is
complete - 57% of those with HIV are women. In Zambia, Zimbabwe and
South Africa, 77% of all young people infected virus are women.
Across nine countries in that region, the infection rate in the whole
population is one in four.

In other parts of the world, there have been large hikes in the
proportion of women affected. In east Asia, there has been a 56%
increase in the number of HIV positive women in the past couple of
years. In Russia, where the epidemic began in young, mostly male
injecting drug users, the proportion of women infected has gone up
from 24% to 38% in just 12 months.

In every region of the world - including the US, where Aids is one of
the biggest killers of African-American women, and Europe - it is the
same story, said Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of
UNAids, yesterday, and it means that a new strategy must be adopted.

"The prevention strategies now in place are missing the point when it
comes to women and girls," she said. The ABC mantra favoured by the
US - abstinence, be faithful and use a condom - is useless to women
who do not have the power to refuse sex, sometimes from an older,
sexually experienced husband who already has HIV.

Social and cultural change is the only way to check the pandemic in
countries where women have no status or power, UNAids says - although
it accepts that revolution is not on the cards.

"What we're talking about is very specific actions that are doable,
moving to a situation where every woman gets to keep her house and
her land and her furniture when her partner dies," said Ms Cravero.
"It doesn't mean turning society on its head. It means getting the
right laws in place and making them enforceable.

"We have to work against the fatalistic idea that you can never
change these things."

UNAids is urging governments to reform their inheritance laws, pass
legislation protecting women from domestic violence and help girls
attend secondary schools. A woman who has some education and some
economic power through possession of her own house and garden will be
better able to negotiate sex, said Ms Cravero. "We have to turn
abstinence on its head and fight for the right of every woman to
abstain when and if she wants to, because right now she doesn't have
that right."

Ms Thompson related stories from three trips to Africa of sugar
daddies who offered schoolgirls meals or trainers for sex. "I knew of
a girl who gave her body to a man because he gave her an apple,
because nobody had ever given her anything before," she said.

Mothers who were desperate for money would gamble that if they were
infected with HIV, they could stay alive long enough to bring up
their children. "I would sell my body if I had to do it to feed my
child," said Ms Thompson.

She suggested that Tony Blair could contribute by going to Ethiopia,
where she had recently been, and publicly taking an Aids test. "I
think it is going to take big gestures like that. Examples have to be
set by men of power."

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited


To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited
site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

Cholo is bursting out of the barrio

Mainstream America is learning how to say a new word: cholo.

This is pure shite. Mexicans should be so lucky! Note the sarcasm. Hmph. Old story that needs to be filed for posterity here.


Cholo is bursting out of the barrio
By Karen Thomas, USA TODAY

Mainstream America is learning how to say a new word: cholo.

It's slang for Mexican gangster, and the lifestyle has its roots on the gritty barrio streets of East Los Angeles.


These days Christina Aguilera's sporting a bandana everywhere.
By Scott Gries, Getty Images

Fashions first seen on gang members are popping up on the clean-cut likes of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. But the trend extends beyond the cholo uniform of bandanas, khakis and plaid Pendleton shirts. It's even being celebrated on the Discovery Channel.

And celebrities — always a gateway for what's cool for the masses — are infatuated.

"We love cholo," says stylist Trish Summerville, who has worked with Pink, Mya, Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera.

The cholo movement feels "exactly like rap/hip-hop culture did in the early '80s," says trend researcher Irma Zandl, founder of Manhattan's Zandl Group. "We're at the very start of something as big or bigger than hip-hop."

Evidence that cholo has moved beyond the barrio:

Bandana style

For cholas (female cholos), it's not just having a bandana, it's how it's worn — "folded flat, across the front of your head," Summerville says. Celebs spotted in cholo-style bandanas: the Olsen twins, Aguilera, Missy Elliott and Vivica A. Fox.

Pepsi goes cholo

Older-model sedans that sit low to the ground have long been part of the Mexican scene, and the automotive style has been borrowed by hip-hoppers. How cool is the new Vanilla Pepsi ad, in which the delivery truck is outfitted with hydraulics to make it bounce to the music?

Cholo 'Madness'

Motorcycle customizer Jesse James, left, who grew up in a Mexican neighborhood in East L.A., is now the darling of the Discovery Channel with the popular series Motorcycle Madness. James says he "adapted cholo into the way I dress and the way I build my bikes." Celeb clients include Keanu Reeves, Fred Durst and Kid Rock.

Gang-inspired tattoos

Celebs such as Bow Wow, Justin Timberlake, Eminem and Beyoncé Knowles are flocking to tattoo specialist Mr. Cartoon. The East L.A. artist bases his fine-line work on a prison practice among gang members who tattoo themselves with a method using sharpened guitar string threaded through an empty pen. Other cholo-inspired tattoo trends: Old English lettering and neck tattoos. Aguilera has "xtina" tattooed on the back of her neck.

Cholo on MTV

Beyond fashion, musicians are embracing cholo in their videos. Metallica's Saint Anger is set in a real L.A. prison, and much of the video is focused on tattooed, cholo-attired inmates.


http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-10-08-cholo_x.htm?POE=click-refer

Defense Missile for U.S. System Fails to Launch


Let's hope Bush sees this as proof that this ludicrous missile system is bollocks and should be forgotten. Hah, that's funny. Of course our government isn't that savvy! Silly me.


December 16, 2004
Defense Missile for U.S. System Fails to Launch
By DAVID STOUT and JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - An important test of the United States' fledgling missile defense system ended in failure early Wednesday as an interceptor rocket failed to launch on cue from the Marshall Islands, the Pentagon said.

After a rocket carrying a mock warhead as a target was launched from Kodiak, Alaska, the interceptor, which was intended to go aloft 16 minutes later and home in on the target 100 miles over the earth, automatically shut down because of "an unknown anomaly," according to the Missile Defense Agency of the Defense Department.

The launching had been planned as the first full test in two years of this element of the Bush administration's effort to deploy a multilayered missile defense shield.

The setback threatened to delay further the initial step of activating a basic missile defense, which had once been planned for September but slipped into next year after a series of canceled tests and developmental difficulties.

The launching had been delayed several times because of bad weather or problems with equipment at the Pacific test range on Kwajalein Atoll, where officials must now try to determine what went wrong on Wednesday.

The last test of the interceptor, on Dec. 12, 2002, was also a failure, as the interceptor failed to separate from its booster rocket, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere.

But shortly after that, President Bush ordered the Pentagon to proceed with initial deployment of a limited system, a goal that he campaigned on in the election this year.

In 2003, a test of another part of the system, based on Navy ships, also failed.

Before Wednesday's test, the Missile Defense Agency had conducted eight tests with interceptor vehicles, scoring hits in five under carefully controlled conditions. Some critics of the agency, which has spent more than $80 billion since 1985, say the entire test program is unrealistic and that the tests have been scripted.

The failure was the latest challenge to the administration's drive to deploy the system piecemeal even as developmental tests, fraught as they are with technical difficulties, are carried out.

The overall missile defense program is to cost more than $50 billion over the next five years; the first group of land- and sea-based missiles, sensors and associated systems envisioned for deployment is to cost more than $7 billion, and this test alone had a budget of $85 million.

The failure Wednesday may renew a running debate on Capitol Hill over the missile program when the new Congress convenes early next year.

A Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has been critical of the program, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said the latest setback might make lawmakers wonder whether money for the Pentagon might be better spent elsewhere, particularly in light of the mounting costs of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It reinforces the point I've been trying to make," Mr. Reed said in a telephone interview. "This is a very complicated system that requires testing."

But a spokesman for Senator John Kyl, Republican of Arizona, a strong advocate of the program, said "one bum test" would not alter support for it.

Indeed, despite a series of delays in testing this year, Congress has embraced the deployment of a rudimentary system, which is favored by those who want to field even a limited system sooner rather than later.

Advocates say that fielding even a few interceptors of modest abilities, and improving them later, would help defend against potential threats that themselves are only just emerging, especially from North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs.

The military spending bill that Congress approved in October allocated $4.6 billion in the current fiscal year to support the initial fielding of the ground-based missiles. Recognizing the "challenges" involved in the attempt, the House and Senate members who negotiated the final bill approved an additional $200 million, and ordered the Pentagon to "fully fund this critical program" in next year's budget request.

The idea is to deploy 10 interceptor missiles initially, 6 in Alaska and 4 in California, to be supplemented later by another 10. Later still would come ship-based missiles that could hit enemy missiles as they lifted off and an airborne laser defense to intercept inbound warheads as they re-entered the atmosphere.

Right now, there are six missiles in silos in Alaska and one in California, with one more due in California by the end of the month, said Richard A. Lehner, a missile agency spokesman. None of those in place are operational.

Mr. Lehner said that despite the disappointment, Wednesday's event was not a total failure. He said "quite a bit" had been learned from the aborted test, which he called "a very good training exercise." He said the rocket that failed to rise could be used later. The target splashed down in the ocean some 3,000 miles from Kodiak, he said.

The Pentagon said it did not know whether the problem that stymied the launching was serious enough to cause major delays. Mr. Lehner said he could not predict when the cause of the weapon's shutdown might be determined. No other tests have been scheduled.

Wednesday's test was to have been the most advanced so far, Mr. Lehner said. The interceptor was equipped with the same type of booster rocket that the defense system is to use when it becomes operational, although a next-generation booster is already in the works.

The agency says the tests are devised to answer specific questions and "to build confidence in the system that we are working to design." Although individual tests are expensive, Mr. Lehner said, fewer are necessary than with missiles of years past because of advanced modeling and simulation techniques.

The missile system under development is a scaled-down version of the so-called Star Wars defense envisioned by President Ronald Reagan two decades ago against a rain of missiles from the Soviet Union. But the end of the cold war made Mr. Reagan's original vision outdated.

President Bill Clinton's administration explored a much less advanced system. Mr. Bush pledged during the 2000 campaign to push for a scaled-down version of the Reagan plan. By walking away from the Anti-ballistic Missile treaty during his first term, Mr. Bush cleared the way for a deployment.

Mr. Lehner said there was no new target date for deployment of the system. In December 2002, Mr. Bush said he hoped it would be operational by September 2004. But by then, the program had fallen behind schedule by about 10 months.

In a report last March, the Government Accountability Office, an auditing arm of Congress, said that a first-generation booster built by Orbital Sciences Corporation that was being used in current flight tests had passed its early tests and could be produced, though it was uncertain whether enough could be built for the initial deployment.

A next-generation booster made by Lockheed Martin was having problems with its flight computers, and accidents at a factory making parts for the booster meant it would not be available for the initial deployment, the G.A.O. said.

On Monday, Boeing won a $928 million contract for the overall ground-based interceptor project.

Victoria Samson, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, said the latest failure showed that the system was still "in a very rudimentary state," and that the missile agency had felt the need to rush the process. The center, founded by retired military officers, calls itself a "watchdog on wasteful defense spending."

Mr. Lehner said there had been no rush. "We took our time," he said. "This is a very deliberate process."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/16/politics/16missile.html

"these men (Franks, Bremer, Tenet), and the man giving the medals out (Bush), should be charged for war crimes, not receiving honors."


advanced the cause of human liberty." Yeah, right! God, people are truly morons if they believe this propaganda.. Urghh...


Bush's Medal of Freedom Recipients Hammered by Left
By Kathleen Rhodes
CNSNews.com Correspondent
December 15, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - The highest honor bestowed on an American citizen, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was awarded Tuesday to three key individuals involved in the liberation of Iraq, prompting one anti-war activist to call the ceremony "a complete farce," involving "people who carried out an illegal, immoral and unjust war and occupation."

President Bush honored retired four-star general Tommy Franks, former U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer, who administered the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and former CIA director George Tenet. But left-wing blogs were buzzing Tuesday afternoon with bitterness.

In an e-mail to CNSNews.com , AiMara Lin, the national office coordinator for the Not In Our Name project, wrote that "these men (Franks, Bremer, Tenet), and the man giving the medals out (Bush), should be charged for war crimes, not receiving honors."

Lin indicated that her organization would continue to oppose what she called the "immoral" actions of the U.S. "Expect a massive outpouring of what people really think of Bush and this illegitimate agenda of war and repression on January 20th, Inauguration Day, when the entire world says NO," Lin wrote.

"We did not give a mandate for this war, and we will continue to fight it. The government doesn't want us to know how many Iraqis or Americans are dying. It's disgusting," she added.

By contrast, President Bush used the White House East Room as the backdrop to praise Franks, Bremer and Tenet for "having played pivotal roles in great events." Their efforts, Bush said, "have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty."

Tenet served as CIA director for seven years, through the last part of the Clinton administration and the first three-and-a-half years of the Bush administration before resigning in July. "More than three-quarters of al Qaeda key members and associates have been killed or detained, and the majority were stopped as a result of CIA efforts," the president said in praising Tenet.

"Tenet was one of the first to recognize and address the growing threat to America from radical terrorist networks," Bush added. "Immediately after the attacks on September the 11th, George was ready with a plan to strike back at al Qaeda and to topple the Taliban."

The president went on to describe Tenet as "a fine public servant and patriot," whose "tireless efforts have brought justice to America's enemies and greater security to the American people."

Tommy Franks, the general who headed operations in both the Afghan and Iraqi theatres and later endorsed President Bush's re-election campaign, also was credited with "defending the world's security."

Franks "helped liberate more than 50 million people from two of the worst tyrannies in the world," Bush said. He lauded the general's "brilliant strategy" in Afghanistan, which "defeated the Taliban in just a few short weeks." Bush also called Franks' invasion of Iraq the "the longest, fastest armored advance in the history of American warfare.

"One of the highest distinctions of history is to be called a liberator, and Tommy Franks will always carry that title," Bush said.

Bush referred to Bremer, who served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council and oversaw the transition of power in post-war Iraq, as a "seasoned diplomat" who "earned the respect and admiration of Iraqis.

"His silence was essential to reassure Iraqis that the new law was entirely their own. Yet his presence was essential to reassure Iraqis of our coalition's steadfast commitment to their future and their success," Bush said of Bremer.

Bush's honorees, especially Tenet and Bremer, were the target of much criticism while carrying out their jobs related to the war against terrorism. The 9-11 Commission and U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee reports blamed Tenet, in part, for the intelligences failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Tenet's assertion prior to the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, was also ridiculed when no WMD stockpiles were uncovered. However, documents that CNSNews.com obtained in October from a senior U.S. government official showed that Saddam had purchased anthrax and mustard gas and had extensive ties to the world's most notorious terrorist groups.

Bremer fueled criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war planning in Iraq when he told the Washington Post on Oct. 6 that the United States had paid dearly for "not stopping [the looting] because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness."

Bremer was also widely criticized for disbanding Iraq's defense ministry while holding down the administrator's position at the Coalition Provisional Authority. Monday, Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawar called that decision Bremer's "big mistake."