Looks like whaling is making a comeback

I can't even be sarcastic about this one, it's just so fucked and saddening. We are going to need another Rod Coronado, and Sea Shepherd is going to need way more fucking money. Fuck these people. Fuck. Dirty, piece of shit humanity. I have no respect. At least Australia's trying to do something about it. They are pretty much the only country telling these people (Japan, Norway, Iceland) to go fuck themselves. Indignant assholes.

Here's an article about what's going on at the moment.

A fragile plan to resolve the global feud on whaling is coming under attack from all sides, with Australia seeking more concessions from whalers and Japan vowing never to end its hunt completely...

The plan would let Japan, Norway and Iceland hunt the ocean giants openly despite a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling. In return, whaling nations would agree to reduce their catch "significantly" over 10 years...

But Japan and Australia, whose relations have been stained over Tokyo's annual whaling missions in the Antarctic Ocean, remained deeply at odds.

Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, said it had been seeking a compromise despite "extremely difficult domestic coordination" and deplored that other nations sought an eventual end to whaling...

But Australia said the draft plan offered nothing from whaling nations.

"The draft 10-year compromise falls well short of a result that Australia could accept," wrote its commissioner to the IWC, Donna Petrachenko.

"To date there has been no tangible engagement from whaling nations to define 'significant reductions'" in their catch, she said.

This is so profoundly troubling. Lately, I haven't been able to help but feeling that pretty much everything is getting worse, that I am/we are living through a serious period of human decline on the way to the bottom, much more rapid that anything seen before, and this only serves to confirm it. Talk about a fucking step backwards. We're going from a whaling ban to "regulated" whaling. WHAT THE FUCK. But only for ten years, and then they'll stop. Except Japan says right now that it won't ever stop.

Do you know why? If you've read this far, yes, you do. They say it's part of their culture. FUCK YOUR CULTURE. As though any piece of any culture is immutable or necessarily good. Racism is a part of American culture. So is rape. So was slavery. So was women staying home and not being able to vote. Let's bring all those back, just for the fuck of it. It was part of American culture, so it must be good. It's culture, after all. It will be great. We'll have so much fucking culture that we won't know what to do. Maybe we'll choke on it. If only.

Yeah, so anyway, other governments are foaming at their filthy mouths to start their own whaling programs, like South Korea:

South Korea was unusually vocal in its comments, saying it "strongly" opposed language that would restrict whaling to those nations that currently catch the ocean giants.

"The draft is unfair and unduly restricts (countries') rights to sustainable use of whale resources without reasonable grounds," it said.

South Korea officially does not allow whaling. But whale meat is sold legally in South Korea if the mammals are accidentally caught in fishing nets, in what environmentalists say is an easily exploitable loophole.

"South Korea's position is a clear indication that this is a slippery slope," said Phil Kline, senior oceans campaigner for Greenpeace USA.

"If you restart commercial whaling, you know that others are going to be waiting in line," he said.

I wish there were an actual line. Cause then someone could do a drive-by on it.

And of course, that line would be leading to an office (which would be amenable to fire), which would be staffed, at least in part, by the wonderful government of Iceland, where I'm sure whaling is part of their "culture" too. Their bankrupt, penniless, produce-nothing fucking government is just so angry that anyone try to tell them that they cannot sell the butchered pieces of stolen whale lives abroad. They aren't satisfied with being able to murder and keep the bounty domestic. No, they want to try to dig themselves out of their massive, self-made financial greed hole with whale bones.

Read as one of them blames everyone else for Iceland's potentially unrestrained whaling:

“If US authorities won’t budge on this issue it is clear that we cannot reach an agreement and, if so, we will declare that they are responsible for it,” Tómas H. Heidar, Iceland’s main representative on the IWC, told Morgunbladid.

Yes, of course, it makes perfect sense. Everyone knows that Icelanders have a genetic predisposition to kill whales, and that it is patently unfair to hold them accountable for it in any way. We have to coddle them and be gentle. Arrogant fucks. What will they do when they've killed all the whales? Be broke again? Good. I hope you all fucking starve and watch your children suffer.

Fuck anyone who supports this, in any way, for any reason.

Have we spent out way out of world dominance?

I hope so. Alarm bells are sounding left and right that America is on its way down, for good:

WASHINGTON — In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

That last part is so significant - "a nation that...simply cannot get above water." I wonder how China will go about foreclosing on America. That will probably be rather ugly. No amount of patriotism or jingoism will get that bank off of your back.

In an uncharacteristically bleak assessment of the future, the New York Times says that we are basically fucked for good, that this is the end:

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.

How about that. That big party we had for the last sixty years just foreseeably blew up in our fat, rich face. It's over. Time to walk around and drink what's left in the beer cans you find.

Butterflies in space

Yup. Now baby butterflies will visit the final frontier.

Really.

It's for a fantastic cause though, which will surely allay all reservations once you read it:

Once the payload's in orbit, teachers and K-12 students from throughout the United States will tune in at BioEd Online to watch the "butterflynauts" grow in a microgravity environment.

The time has long since come for this knowledge. HOW DO BUTTERFLIES GROW IN ZERO GRAVITY?

You know those situations on television and movies where people are so rich that they swim in their money, have money fights or buy a new car every time they drive? That's what NASA is.

Paying sweatshop wages at American embassies

I guess government jobs are regarded pretty well here. Good benefits, job security, lots of days off compared to most other jobs, decent pay. Not so in the rest of the world.

Foreign nationals working for the American government in foreign lands get paid shit, says the State Department. Three to four dollars a day doesn't go far anywhere:

...some lower-grade foreign nationals who work for the State Department earn so little that they must cut back to one meal a day and send their children out to peddle on the streets.

This is comparable to what you hear about Nike factories or whatever. Except those Nike factories are maybe just in Honduras or Malaysia. American embassies are in approximately 170 countries. I bet the government could loosen up some money to pay its shitworkers a bit better if it ended a war or two.

Two ex-Gitmo detainees join al-Qaida: report

Big surprise. I'd probably join Al Qaeda too if some sadistic fucks locked me up for nothing for about five years.

As with most other Guantánamo returnees, the Saudis did not have evidence of criminal wrongdoing against Shihri. In such cases, Turki says, the men were charged with the minor violation of traveling to Afghanistan, a country Saudi passport holders are barred from visiting.