the birth of tragedy

Its got  to the point where we welcome catastophic disasters with horrendous death tolls whether they happen to us or anyone else because we know the earth needs to breathe and we arent letting it.

We're riding the Tyger and breaking its back.  

On the day US law enforcement announced that they'd  busted the world's biggest ID theft scam run by a former CIA  informant i realised that a market for trading physical identity wouldnt be such a bad thing. Sure , in the future people will design what their kids look like in a WYSIWYG  app from a range of simple pull down menus and premier membership  add on genetic enhancements  running to quite an expense but for now what do we do other than use the blur, dodge and lighten tools in Photoshop to present and market ourselves as the beautiful people we know ourselves to be inside?

There was a time when ugly meant something.

People would think, 'fuck s/he looks lived in and  ugly,  I bet her/his life has been interesting' but with plastic surgery now being something bored 23 year olds get into when they feel their profiles  or jawlines   no longer stop the traffic  ugly has been ejected from the interestingness room to the consequences of  poverty realm.

I'd like to think ugly could make a comeback in my lifetime. Saving that, I think I am going to save up to  have some surgery to look like Brad Pitt.

bears for oil

Today polar bears were finally  listed as  threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because their sea ice habitat is melting away.

Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said that dramatic declines in sea ice over the last 30 years  and projections of continued losses meant that the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future. Kempthorne also warned that the decision should not be viewed as a path to address global warming saying it would be "wholly inappropriate" to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change.

The Endangered Species Act "is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy," said Kempthorne, reflecting a view recently expressed by President Bush. Kempthorne outlined a set of administrative actions and limits to how it planned to protect the bear with its new status so that it would not have wide-ranging adverse impact on economic activities from building power plants to oil and gas exploration. He also explained that arctic ice loss looked set to increase and quicken and that two thirds of the ice bear population would probably disappear by mid century .

Critics accused the US Government of adopting a ' sink or swim ' approach to the fate of the ice bears.  

Environmental  legal pressure group  EarthJustice   said they welcomed  protection for polar bears under the Endangered Species Act, but called on the government to cease  oil and gas activities in polar bear habitat. 

The Arctic is melting and polar bears are feeling the heat," said Earthjustice attorney Clayton Jernigan. "We need a time out on further oil activity in the Polar Bear Seas until we all understand what measures are necessary to protect the polar bears, other wildlife, and people that live in this rapidly transforming ecosystem."

EarthJustice accused the Bush administration of using a loophole called a 4(d) rule that appears calculated to limit protection for the ice bears and their shrinking sea-ice habitat in areas where oil and gas development is planned or proceeding , extending   no greater protection from oil and gas development than they previously had under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

A listing that should have enabled a reprieve is configured more like an execution warrant. Its a charter for an invasive species not appropriate protection for endangered polar bears.

"By listing the bear as threatened, instead of endangered, and adopting weaker protections for polar bears and their habitat, the administration is attempting to make it easier for oil and gas development to proceed on a fast track in prime polar bear habitat," said Jernigan. "Earthjustice will continue to work hard to protect polar bears and their habitat."

Earthjustice is currently involved in three separate legal actions aimed at protecting polar bears and their remaining habitat in the Polar Bear Seas.

El Corazón de Frida by autotelic

As the peso and Mexican stocks fall against the  now depressingly familiar background of soaring food prices Mexican drug cartels   desperate to retain control of their own lucrative drugs markets have hit back at a Mexican Government led campaign to break them up by murdering 5 high ranking  policemen in the last week.

At the funeral of one of the victims Mexican President Felipe Calderon said  , 'We have to come together to confront this evil, we Mexicans have to definitively and categorically say, 'That's enough!' adding "We can't accept this situation, we have to take back our streets."

Despite deploying 25,000 troops to smash the drug cartels who are responsible for most of the dope, coke and speed that hits the streets in the US and Canada ,  the Mexican authorities are  struggling as the cartels respond to official pressure put on them with precision killings of policemen and other authority figures and the use of ruthless lethal violence against anyone else they consider to be a threat to them.

There were 2,500 drugs related killings in Mexico last year and there have been 1,100 up to May this year.The cartels are effectively operating as terrorist organisations funded by North American drug users who may well face price rises for their drugs as the battle between the cartels and the Mexican Government committed to breaking their murderous grip on Mexican society ratchets up. 

This video just about sums up the fucking futility of existence as our accidental consciousness still doesnt make the purpose of our lives that much different from insects. We multiply and die. At least the bees arent burdened with the notion that they are ' special' as they await death.