Four back-to-back storms over the last three weeks have dumped more rain on parts of the islands than they normally would have seen in months, and drenched Kauai with up to six times more rain than normal for all of March, the National Weather Service said yesterday.

…Over the last three weeks, Mount Waialeale has seen more than 106 inches, and Lihue Airport has gotten 28.9 inches.

“Kauai has taken the brunt of the most widespread, excessive rainfall,” the weather service said. “Even the normally drier leeward sides have been much wetter than normal.”

On Oahu, Poamoho saw the biggest rainfall total over the three-week period, with 63 inches. Wilson Tunnel got 39.1 inches — a far second, but a more than six-fold increase from 2005. Punaluu, Luluku and the Waihee Pump rounded out the top five rainfall totals for Oahu.

Waiakea Uka and Glenwood topped the totals for the Big Island, getting 43.6 inches and 42.9 inches, respectively — up to four times higher than normal. Mountain View saw 37.8 inches, compared with 4 inches last year.
starbulletin.com

A new study suggests Canadian baby boomers are more likely to fall asleep watching television than after having sex with their partner at night.

The Ipsos-Reid survey published Thursday found Canadians between 40 and 64 years old dedicate an average of just 15 minutes a day to sex and romance.

They said they were too stressed or too tired or simply did not have enough time for a romp in bed.

But, the protagonists of the 1960s sexual revolution said they spent about four or five hours per day watching television or surfing the Internet, more than 30 hours per week in total.

Almost half found sex intimate and tender, maybe a bit predictable now, but 80 percent agreed it made them feel “loved and appreciated” and said it deepened intimacy in their relationship.

A majority also said sex is no less enjoyable now than in their twenties. Only 28 percent of those surveyed said their sex life was not as “wild and hot” or less fun.
breitbart.com

Normally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. The Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A new ocean is forming there with staggering speed — at least by geological standards. Africa will eventually lose its horn.

Geologist Dereje Ayalew and his colleagues from Addis Ababa University were amazed — and frightened. They had only just stepped out of their helicopter onto the desert plains of central Ethiopia when the ground began to shake under their feet. The pilot shouted for the scientists to get back to the helicopter. And then it happened: the Earth split open. Crevices began racing toward the researchers like a zipper opening up. After a few seconds, the ground stopped moving, and after they had recovered from their shock, Ayalew and his colleagues realized they had just witnessed history. For the first time ever, human beings were able to witness the first stages in the birth of an ocean.

PHOTO GALLERY: HIGH-SPEED GEOLOGY IN AFRICA
service.spiegel.de

Interests: The Prince and the Citizen

About 500 years ago modern political thinking began. Its enticing surface was the idea of “realism.” Its ruthless center was the idea that with a worthwhile end one could justify any means. Its spokesman was Nicolo Machiavelli.

In the year 1498 Machiavelli became adviser on foreign and military affairs to the government of Florence, one of the great Italian cities of that time. After fourteen years of service, a change of government led to his dismissal, and he spent the rest of his life in exile in the countryside outside of Florence. During that time he wrote, among other things, a little book called The Prince, which became the world’s most famous hand book of political wisdom for governments and their advisers.

Four weeks before Machiavelli took office, something happened in Florence that made a profound impression on him. It was a public hanging. The victim was a monk named Savonarola, who preached that people could be guided by their “natural reason.” This threatened to diminish the importance of the Church fathers, who then showed their importance by having Savonarola arrested. His hands were bound behind his back and he was taken through the streets in the night, the crowds swinging lanterns near his face, peering for the signs of his dangerousness.

Savonarola was interrogated and tortured for ten days. They wanted to extract a confession, but he was stubborn. The Pope, who kept in touch with the torturers, complained that they were not getting results quickly enough. Finally the right words came, and Savonarola was sentenced to death. As his body swung in the air, boys from the neighbor hood stoned it. The corpse was set afire, and when the fire had done its work, the ashes were strewn in the river Arno.

In The Prince, Machiavelli refers to Savonarola and says, “Thus it comes about that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed.”

Political ideas are centered on the issue of ends (What kind of society do we want?) and means (How will we get it?). In that one sentence about unarmed prophets Machiavelli settled for modern governments the question of ends: conquest. And the question of means: force.
Machiavelli refused to be deflected by utopian dreams or romantic hopes and by questions of right and wrong or good and bad. He is the father of modern political realism, or what has been called realpolilik. “It appears to me more proper to go to the truth of the matter than to its imagination…for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation.”

It is one of the most seductive ideas of our time.
informationclearinghouse.info

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi police detained an American private security contractor working at a U.S. military base in northern Iraq for several hours on Tuesday, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The spokesman said the man was arrested at a checkpoint in the northern town of Tikrit. He denied initial reports that explosives were found in the car, but said two AK-47 assault rifles were in the vehicle.

“He was picked up by Iraqi police after being detained at a checkpoint in Tikrit,” the spokesman said, adding police later released him. “We are looking at why he left the base unescorted.”

Abdullah Jebara, deputy governor of Salahaddin province, earlier told Reuters the man was arrested in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit on Monday and that U.S. forces removed him from the provincial government building on Tuesday.

The man was stopped by police for violating a daytime curfew in Tikrit, a security source said. American security personnel rarely travel alone.

A spokesman for the major crimes unit in Tikrit said he was first brought to their headquarters but they refused to take him into custody, adding police were told to take the man to the provincial council building.
yahoo.com

A pretty euphemism, calling a paid mercenary a ‘security contractor.’

Mass grave find fuels sectarian tension in Iraq
Iraq moved closer to sectarian civil war as police found the bodies of 87 men killed in Baghdad, many of them showing signs of torture. The dead appear to be Sunni Muslims killed in retaliation for the bombs that slaughtered 58 people and wounded 200 when they exploded in crowded markets in the strongly Shia area of Sadr City.

Some 29 dead men were found yesterday buried in a pit in a playing field. “Some children were playing soccer and they smelt something strong and the police were notified,” said a police spokesman. Members of a Shia militia dug in a pit to unearth the bodies. They found that the men had been gagged and bound and were in their underwear. Many of them had been tortured before being shot dead.

The Interior Ministry spokesman, Lt-Col Falah al-Mohammedawi, said that the men appeared to have been killed in Kamaliyah, a mostly Shia district in east Baghdad, about three days ago. Local residents offered sheets to cover the bodies as they were dragged from the earth.

A photographer for the Associated Press agency who took pictures of the grave was warned not to publish them. The location of the grave suggests that the dead men were Sunni.

The fear now in Baghdad is that the bombs detonated by Sunni insurgents in Shia neighbourhoods are leading to immediate retaliation against Sunnis.

Until a bomb attack destroyed the holy Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February, Shias had been restrained in their reaction to repeated attacks on them since 2003. They were also cautioned against being provoked into seeking vengeance by influential Shia clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Since the Samarra bomb the Shia willingness to heed his calls for patience is much reduced.

In another atrocity, 15 bodies of men who had been strangled were found in an abandoned minibus parked between two Sunni districts in west Baghdad. In Sadr City, a further four men were shot in the head and their bodies hanged from electricity pylons. Elsewhere in Baghdad another 40 bodies, both Shia and Sunni, were found said Lt-Col Mohammedawi.

…”May God damn you,” said Mr Sadr of Mr Rumsfeld. “You said in the past that civil war would break out if you had to withdraw, and now you say that in face of civil war you won’t interfere.”

Humanitarian situation remains critical in Kirkuk as ethnic tensions rise
BAGHDAD, 14 March (IRIN) – The oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq has been the scene of ongoing displacement and rising ethnic tensions in the past six months, according to local officials.

“The humanitarian situation in the city is very bad and thousands of innocent people are still displaced,” said Nuri al-Salihi, a spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS). “But nothing has been done to help them because of a recent increase in sectarian violence that has delayed the work of many local NGOs.”

According to IRCS officials in Kirkuk, located some 255 km north of Baghdad, little aid has come from the main IRCS branch in the capital in the past eight months. This, they say, is due to major displacements in the western Anbar governorate and recent flooding there that forced thousands of residents to flee their homes.

Ahmed Mashhdanny, a senior Kirkuk governorate official, said that more than 200,000 Kirkuk residents have been displaced since 2003 and more than 300 have been killed in ethnic fighting over land. “The return of the Kurds to the city left thousands of Arabs displaced in deteriorating conditions and has increased ethnic aggression between the two groups,” he said.

Under an “Arabisation” programme initiated under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Kurds and other non-Arabs were driven out of the city, to be replaced with pro-government Arabs from the impoverished south. After Hussein’s ouster by coalition forces in April 2003, however, Kurds began returning to the area to reclaim their property.

This, in turn, led to the displacement of thousands of Arabs, Mashhdanny explained. “Thousands of displaced people from different ethnic groups – mainly Arabs – can now be seen in improvised camps on the outskirts of Kirkuk, as well as in abandoned government buildings and schools,” he said. “Kurds, Arabs and Turcomans are suffering because measures haven’t been taken to secure their rights.”

Iraqis say US raid on home killed 11 family members
TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) – Eleven members of an Iraqi family were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an al Qaeda militant from a house.

Television pictures showed 11 bodies in the Tikrit morgue — five children, two men and four women. A freelance photographer later saw the bodies being buried in Ishaqi, the town 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad where the raid took place.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi early on Wednesday to capture a “foreign fighter facilitator for the al Qaeda in Iraq network”.

“Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building,” U.S. spokesman Major Tim Keefe said. “Coalition Forces returned fire utilising both air and ground assets.

“There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building … (was) destroyed.”

Keefe said the al Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

US ‘may want to keep Iraq bases’
he United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect oil supplies, the army general overseeing US operations in Iraq has said.

While the Bush administration has downplayed prospects for permanent US bases in Iraq, General John Abizaid told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday he could not rule that out.

Abizaid said that policy would be worked out with a unified, national Iraqi government if and when that is established, “and it would be premature for me to predict”.

Many Democrats have pressed President George Bush to firmly state that the United States does not intend to seek permanent military bases in Iraq, a step they said would help stem the violence there.

Abizaid also told the Appropriations subcommittee on military quality of life that while an Iraqi civil war was possible, “I think it’s a long way from where we are now to civil war”.

Electricity Hits Three-Year Low in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Electricity output has dipped to its lowest point in three years in Iraq, where the desert sun is rising toward another broiling summer and U.S. engineers are winding down their rebuilding of the crippled power grid.

The Iraqis, in fact, may have to turn to neighboring Iran to help bail them out of their energy crisis – if not this summer, then in years to come.

The overstressed network is producing less than half the electricity needed to meet Iraq’s exploding demand. American experts are working hard to shore up the system’s weaknesses as 100-degree-plus temperatures approach beginning as early as May, driving up usage of air conditioning, electric fans and refrigeration.

If the summer is unusually hot, however, “all bets are off,” said Lt. Col. Otto Busher, an engineer with the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division.

Moscow, March 14 – Russia cautioned the United States on Tuesday against raising its military presence in the strategic Caspian sea region bordering Iran, saying buildup of forces from “outside” would destabilize the region, Itar-Tass news agency said.

Russia “is opposed to the presence of third-party military forces on the Caspian,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the start of a meeting among representatives of the five countries that border the sea: Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

His comments were seen as directed at the United States, which has stationed military advisors in Azerbaijan and is helping that country upgrade its naval forces and two powerful radar stations.

Itar-Tass also quoted Lavrov however as saying that Russia was not calling for withdrawal of all military forces from the Caspian sea region, which is known to hold vast oil and gas resources.
iribnews.ir

The Israeli government has begun to develop facilities for what eventually could be the largest settlement project in the West Bank since 1967.

On Monday, Israeli officials confirmed that Israel was building a police headquarters and “other facilities” in what it calls the E-1 area, extending from East Jerusalem to the settlement of Maali Adomim, the largest in the West Bank.

In addition to 3550 settler units, the planned development would include a road network, six hotels and a park.

Non-Jews would not be allowed to live or buy land in the settlement.
aljazeera.net

JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday condemned Israel’s raid on a West Bank prison and seizure of a militant leader as a crime that would not be forgiven.

Across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Palestinians went on strike over an Israeli operation that has boosted interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of March 28 general elections.

Israeli security forces were on high alert after Ahmed Saadat’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Islamist militant group Hamas promised retaliation.

Israeli forces used tanks and bulldozers to tear apart the Jericho jail on Tuesday to grab Saadat, accused by Israel of overseeing the 2001 assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi claimed by the PFLP.

Speaking at the destroyed jail, Abbas accused British and U.S. monitors supervising the incarceration of Saadat and five other militants who were detained of complicity with Israel.

“What happened is an ugly crime which cannot be forgiven and a humiliation for the Palestinian people and a violation of all the agreements. Their arrest by Israel is illegal,” Abbas said.

The United States and Britain, citing security concerns, withdrew the monitors on Tuesday and Israeli forces moved in minutes later. Both Washington and London denied cooperating with Israel.
reuters.com

Blair defends withdrawal of monitors from Jericho jail
Tony Blair today laid the blame squarely at the door of the Palestinian Authority for yesterday’s outbreak of violence across the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of British monitors from a prison in Jericho.
The prime minister told the Commons that he had personally warned the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that the British personnel would be withdrawn unless security agreements were met.

During prime minister’s questions, Mr Blair said there could be no long-term peace in the region until the Palestinian authorities were able to maintain law, and the incoming Hamas government recognised Israel’s existence and put an end to violence.

“If people want progress towards a two state solution, which we have championed in this country – an independent viable Palestinian state living side by side with Israel – then the security within the Palestinian area is of prime concern,” Mr Blair said. “We have done everything we can to support them. But we need some help back.”

Just answer the question, Mr. Blair.

U.S. may veto bid for UN condemnation of jail siege
The threat of a U.S. veto hovers over planned closed-door deliberations Wednesday over Qatar’s bid for a UN Security Council to condemn Israel’s Jericho jail siege and its capture of the killers of former cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi.

A draft statement by Qatari Ambassador Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, representing Arab nations, would have condemned “Israel’s violent incursion” in besieging the Jericho jail, and would have demanded that Israel return the prisoners it seized “and to return the situation to that which existed prior to the Israeli military attack.”

Security forces went on high alert Tuesday fearing Palestinian reprisal attacks after Israel Defense Forces troops laid siege to the Jericho prison and arrested six wanted inmates.

A tense, gunfire-punctuated nine-hour IDF siege of a Jericho prison complex ended after dark on Tuesday with the abrupt surrender of Ahmed Sa’adat and five other Palestinian militants.

Sa’adat, leader of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, is believed to have ordered the assassination of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001.

One of the other militants was Fuad Shobaki, the alleged mastermind of an illegal mass weapons shipment to the Palestinian Authority in 2002.

The six arrested wanted militants are to be held in prison in Israel, officials said.

The PFLP threatened
that “Israel will pay a heavy price for the operation.”

VERACRUZ, Mexico – President Vicente Fox climbed aboard a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday to formally announce a new deep-water oil discovery he said could eventually yield 10 billion barrels of crude oil.

An exploratory well dubbed Noxal 1 was drilled at a depth of 3,070 feet below the water, and is seeking a depth of 13,125 feet.

“With Noxal we will begin a new era of oil exploration in our country,” Fox said aboard the “Ocean Worker 6 Britania” platform.

Government estimates say the find could exceed reserves at the giant offshore field Cantarell, Mexico’s largest oil field, which has seen its production decline but is still expected to yield 1.9 million barrels a day this year.
news.yahoo.com

…The major question for the twenty-first century is whether this fateful inability to adjust to changes in the global power-structure can be overcome. Thus far the signs are negative. Can the United States and Japan, today’s versions of rich, established powers, adjust to the reemergence of China — the world’s oldest, continuously extant civilization — this time as a modern superpower? Or is China’s ascendancy to be marked by yet another world war, when the pretensions of European civilization in its U.S. and Japanese projections are finally put to rest? That is what is at stake.
tomdispatch.com