Elizabeth Rubin, Brzezinski, Melbourne photovoltaic, homo animals, not Chicxulub, Amazon felling

nyt: a long detailed report on Afghanistan from Elizabeth Rubin,
its astounding where this woman gets her interviews:

Musharraf agreed to a deal in the spring of 2004 whereby the militants would give up their guests in return for cash. Pakistani officers and the militants hugged and shed tears during a public reconciliation. But the militants did not relinquish their Al Qaeda guests, and they took advantage of the amnesty to execute tribal elders they said had helped the Pakistani military. The tribal structure in Waziristan was devastated, and the Taliban took to the streets to declare the Islamic emirate of Waziristan. Since Musharraf signed a truce with the militants last month, attacks launched from Waziristan into Afghanistan, according to NATO, have risen by 300 percent.

learntoquestion
Dafur and the ICC:
Bush signed into law the American Service-Members' Protection Act, which requires American forces to liberate any American in I.C.C. custody. It is popularly known as The Hague Invasion Act.

[some of Rubins early reports from Iraq smell somewhat of the 'flowers and chocolates welcome' school.
I doubt she would venture beyond the green zone these days]

---

guardian
'Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.'
heed the wombat

---

warandpiece

there were these group of neoconservatives in there, like Paul Wolfowitz, who has the deputy secretary of defense; Richard Perle, who wasn't even in the government but he was an outside adviser, who were effectively shaping U.S. strategy.

Do you buy that?

Brzezinski: I buy a great deal of that. I think Al Haig is absolutely right. We had, at the top a president, who was essentially uninformed about foreign policy, and then top policy-makers like Rumsfeld and, of course, Cheney who are, kind of, traditional, quote, end quote, "realists," hard nosed types.

But the guys who provided the strategy and made the argument that we have to go into Iraq, that we have to link the war on terror with an attack on Iraq, were the guys that Al Haig is talking about.

They provided strategy. They provided the argument that we would be greeted as liberators, that this would be a cake walk. And they have devastated American national interests as a consequence. ...

---

greenhouse
Melbourne SLAR PV photovoltaic
1.6 kW peak grid-connected pV array on the north facing roof, pitched at 30° ..
The annual electricity bill for this family of 5 in the Ecohome is $240.00,
and the annual gas bill is $160.
The PV contributes 1560kWh Annually (4.27kWwh/day).. one quarter of household electricity.

---

homo animals
also among birds that pair with one partner for life, as geese and ducks do, he noted: four to five% of the couples are homosexual, and single females will lay eggs in a homosexual pair’s nest. Homosexual couple often seem better at raising the young than heterosexual couples...

In colonies of black-headed gulls, almost every tenth pair is lesbian..
..one scientific description of mating among giraffes, in an area where nine in ten pairings occurred between males. “Every male that sniffed a female was reported as sex,” he said; but anal sex with orgasm between males was portrayed as a dominance, competition or greeting behavior.

---

The Chicxulub impact alone could not have caused the mass extinction,..because the impact occurred 300,000 years before the dieoff.
..A second huge meteor crash finally pushed them over.
.. The Deccan volcanism released copious greenhouse gases .. the oceans were 3-4° warmer at the bottom. On land it must have been 7-8° warmer.

---

aljazeera
Amazon: 13,100 km² were cleared in the year to July 2006, cf 18,790km² in the previous season..
Lula (just re-elected today)..
Elizabeth Rubin Brzezinski Melbourne photovoltaic homo animals not Chicxulub Amazon felling