Saw a BBC analysis today claiming that the recent use of chemical weapons, which is now accepted as fact even by the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies, lifted the crisis to such a high level that all sides, and the USA and Russia in particular, should be far more likely to put their differences aside and find that they have more in common than meets the eye while struggling to find a political solution that will restore peace and stability. Admittedly, the author appears to realize at the end that such a view is overly optimistic to say the least, yet publishing such an analysis of an ongoing and extremely important situation only to genuinely dismiss it at the end would serve no purpose and definitely fail to meet the standards such a reputable news source is justifiably expected to meet, so I can’t believe that this final part is meant to imply that the entire piece is otherwise little more than wishful thinking. Unfortunately, however, it seems to me to be precisely that.
About the attack itself, I have to say that it’s certainly strange. On the one hand, the fact that it took place shortly after UN inspectors were finally allowed inside Syria does for once make the regime’s version, namely that the rebels or “terrorists” are to blame, seem rather plausible. On the other, pulling off such a move precisely when everybody is certain to think you couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to do so may be seen as a stroke of genius. And then there’s a third option as well, namely that what happened was at least in part an accident, though that’d obviously still require one or both sides to have been preparing to launch such an attack, be it at another time, another target or, and perhaps most likely, on a smaller scale.
It may be that the regime launched it trying to blame the rebels, that the rebels launched it themselves trying to blame the regime, or that the fundamentalists launched it against the moderates while at the same time trying to blame the regime and therefore strike at both enemies at once. It may be that it was an act of sabotage, either somehow tricking the regime into using the chemical weapons we know it has or causing a discharge from some the rebels had either captured or were trying to create. It may be that the rebels had captured or were trying to create chemical weapons in that area and the regime’s heavy bombardment, intentionally or not, caused a massive discharge. Or, of course, it may be some sort of combination of these.
It’s this level of uncertainty that seems to me to serve only to make any sort of action even less likely. A line has definitely been crossed, but unless how and why it happened and, most importantly, who was behind it can be determined and undeniably proven very quickly, any desire for actual involvement will be dampened even further by the fear of an even worse backlash, and the West was never keen on involvement in the first place. The only outcome which both the West and Russia, and possibly also China, may be looking forward to is finding a way to claim that it was an attack staged by the fundamentalists against the moderates, but even the USA and Russia allying against those and defeating them is unlikely to result in peace, and will definitely not result in anything good for the people of Syria, seeing as removing those when the moderates have been nearly wiped out will hand over victory to the regime and therefore mean that all these years of war, the deaths and the suffering of so many Syrians, have been for nothing.
The problem, or one of the most important problems, is that the world stood by far too long and the regime is no longer under any threat of being defeated by anything short of a full assault by foreign troops. It may be unable to win the war, but it’s been several months since it could lose it, so even if the West would somehow get past empty threats and do at least as much for the rebels as Russia has done all along for the regime, it still won’t be enough. The only way to end that war is, and has perhaps always been, direct foreign intervention, yet if nobody had the guts to do anything so far, the uncertainty surrounding this attack seems to make such a course of action even more unlikely, despite the most recent wave of threats.
The regime refused to negotiate even while it appeared to be losing, so it certainly won’t now that it’s no longer under any real threat. The fundamentalists will neither negotiate nor surrender because they never do. The moderates, while the only ones who may deserve support, have nobody to negotiate with and, either way, have become largely irrelevant due to having always been targeted by both the regime and the fundamentalists and never managing to stop bickering long enough to form a cohesive and believable force. Russia and Iran want to make sure they won’t lose their ally in the region and, seeing as the regime’s defeat is no longer a real possibility, have no reason to negotiate either, which is almost certainly true for China as well. As for the USA and EU countries, which also have nobody to negotiate with, I highly doubt that a major event shrouded in uncertainty and likely to aggravate the negative reaction to any sort of intervention will make them decide to actually get involved for a change, not after having proven unwilling to do anything more than utter empty threats for over two years, during which time over one hundred thousand people died, millions were displaced and their only potential partners on the ground have been almost completely wiped out.
So no, I don’t see how this may even bring an end to the current war, much less actual peace. It changes nothing on the ground, makes the regime’s allies no more, and perhaps even less, likely to accept any course of action that may do so, and probably makes direct Western intervention even more unlikely despite all the threats. It makes a peaceful solution no more likely than it ever was and, while it certainly might have been, it wasn’t immediately used as an excuse for anything which might have had positive results, and by now it’s probably too late to do so and still maintain any credibility.
The first part of the title refers to the fact that I quite randomly stumbled into the game at the end of last week and decided to install and start playing it yesterday. Definitely not playing The Witcher anymore, since I’m obviously too afraid of messing everything up after noticing how easy it seems to be to do that in that game, and six out of the last seven actual games I managed to finish were freeware, so I may have some luck with this at least.
The second part, on the other hand, has to do with how the trees on my street were “pruned”. I only noticed it yesterday, but the fact that I only did so on my way back, after the deep pits dug where I think trees used to be on another street made me pay more attention to them, means that it might as well have happened even weeks ago and I simply never looked up until then. Not that it makes much difference exactly when it happened, because either way it was during summer and that probably explains why the few leaves that are left look so burned even more than what was done does in itself.
To give you an idea, it’s not exactly like what happened in Constanta about a month ago, but that’s only because there are still some small branches and those leaves being burned by the summer heat, since little direct sunlight would have hit them normally. As far as the large branches go, however, those images depict what happened to the trees on my street quite well; almost everything was simply hacked away! What’s left now are trunks with little more than a few twigs coming out of them, which obviously can’t provide any shade and whose continued survival, not to mention anything about recovery, is seriously threatened.
Those trees had already been massive when I was little, most of them still looked healthy, and now they’re just… I can’t even find the words. It’s like they’ve been hacked to pieces and left to die, which is actually the only explanation I can find, that the authorities are looking for an excuse to cut them in another year or two. When I looked up and noticed it yesterday I was simply stunned, and then too angry to be able to fall asleep again after crawling back in bed after getting back, despite only getting some four or four and a half hours of sleep that morning.
Add that to this area behind the building, so in front of my window, being completely cleared of nearly every plant yet again some time ago and… What’s going on? This wasn’t a bad place to live, still somewhat green despite the large number of apartment buildings close to each other, but in recent years I’m seeing quite a “crusade” against Nature, with many different people seeming to simply want to do as much damage as possible for no other reason than because they can, and that definitely makes for one of those “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore” moments. Admittedly, this is a minor reason to feel that way compared to all the others, but it’s staring me right in the face every day now.
It would appear that being childfree got something of an image boost about a week ago, when the cover story of Time tackled the issue. That article requires a subscription to read, however, so I can’t know exactly what it says myself, but a piece posted on Grist mentions that the author “discusses the immense social pressure to have kids, and some of the upsides for those who resist that pressure”. However, that same Grist article states clearly that the Time story unfortunately misses the most important aspect of being childfree, namely the environmental one, focusing solely on what can be considered the selfish benefits of being childfree instead.
Admittedly, if any sort of argument has any chance of persuading anyone not to have children, emphasizing those selfish benefits is probably the better choice, especially since those who do care about the world as a whole in any way and are willing and able to put their brains above their gonads already know that having a child is probably the single worst thing they could do. However, the decision to have children isn’t a rational one, because if it was then hardly anyone would be having them, so that large majority of people who listen to their most basic instincts above anything else will not respond to any arguments, instead being far more likely to see such an article as evidence that not having children is an extraordinarily selfish decision, when in fact it’s the other way around.
The sad part is that I ended up learning about the Time story and the Grist article from a dreadful one posted on TakePart and included in their newsletter, which I’m actually still not quite sure how I ended up subscribed to but may occasionally include something interesting. I rushed to read it the moment I noticed a title like “If You Love the Environment, Is It Still Okay to Have a Child?”, only to be sorely disappointed by the actual content, the author’s blatant selfish attitude and his utter dismissal of the issue in spite of admitting that not having children “is perhaps the most effective individual choice” for an environmentalist. He even basically mocks those who actually do take this seriously, by ending with: “If that flavor of honesty gets my pass to the eco-tree house revoked for the rest of the summer, well, so be it.”
At the same time, a surprisingly high percentage of the comments posted so far on this article appear to be from people who are childfree and strongly advocate the concept, at least in large part for environmental reasons, so there is some good to take out of the bad. In addition, a little searching also proved that TakePart can post blunt articles that tackle the issue and reach the right conclusion as well, or at least they could in 2011. Even if it’s quite tongue-in-cheek and mentions a maximum sustainable population of 4.4 billion, which is some 50% above the most optimistic number I ever saw in any serious study taking renewable or fully recyclable resources, a decent standard of living for all humans and the well-being of other species into account, and dozens of times above the particularly pessimistic values, if I wouldn’t have found this article and the few others that at least tentatively attempted to start a debate on the issue over the years, I was seriously considering unsubscribing and forgetting about the site after such a demonstration of “thinking” with one’s gonads.
Getting back to the Time cover story, while it apparently doesn’t even mention the main reason why the vast majority of people shouldn’t have children, it seems to shine an at least passably positive light on the concept. Seeing as mainstream media, when it doesn’t ignore the population issue completely, usually does nothing but spew forth alarmist articles written from the point of view of those who support the current economic system and describing lower birth rates as a huge threat, that’s good news in itself. Add the fact that it also seems to raise awareness about the immense social pressure and even the discrimination that the childfree face and you could say that it’s a good start… Unfortunately, it’s more than half a century too late for a mere start to have much relevance anymore.
Still, it may be the best moment to bring up the issue once again in quite some time and we should quickly figure out how to make the best use of it, although there’s little room for hope when you remember that even all those leading scientists who were pointing out throughout the ’70s that we were already well past any sustainable population limit were silenced when the topic became taboo. A better opportunity might have been provided by the series of articles published throughout 2011 by National Geographic, but that proved to be nothing but a huge slap in the face by taking the “official” line, namely that further population growth is inevitable and not that big of a threat, at most acknowledging the idea that a drastic reduction of the global human population is necessary before any other efforts will be anything more than a waste of time only to quickly dismiss it with nothing but superficial arguments and focusing only on painting the supposed solutions aimed at mitigating some of the problems caused by overpopulation in bright and happy colors.
What all who claim to care for the environment and the other species we share this planet with must realize is that all their efforts are largely wasted unless we’ll first solve the overpopulation problem and that, while simply being childfree doesn’t necessarily make you an environmentalist, not being childfree certainly means that you can’t truly be one. And what all those who are serious about solving the overpopulation problem, most preferably without killing people or allowing them to unnecessarily die due to lack of access to needed resources and services, must realize is that a mix of basic instincts and shortsighted economic interests conspire to make the vast majority of people from all walks of life vehemently oppose the very idea of doing so, that few of those people will ever respond to reason and that education, awareness campaigns and voluntary measures have always been, are, and will always be little more than a drop in the bucket compared to what’s truly needed to tackle such a problem. Yet tackle it we must, by absolutely any means necessary, perhaps less for ourselves and more for all the other species we share this planet with.
This Monday, I managed to get my MobyGames account back after another talk with Sciere. He did, after all, say that he will look into the matter and see who is in the right when he banned me, so I sent him a message after being banned for a full month to ask how that’s going and, I guess, pestered him enough with the long rants that followed for this to be the simpler solution. It doesn’t imply anything being done about the asshole, he doesn’t even seem to be looking through what was escalated and the submissions that were rejected just when I was banned and have therefore vanished from the “recently rejected” list by the time I was allowed back are lost for good, but he did say that if I’ll feel that anything else is sent back, rejected or escalated unfairly I should let him know right away so he can look into it immediately and decide what to do then, suggesting that he could perhaps ask jaXen to skip them if they won’t really go against the standards but that guy will remain adamant that they do.
That said, I’m only posting this today because I didn’t actually submit anything again until a little while ago. I’m not even sure I care to do it so much anymore, because there’s that feeling of not even being able to do that right anymore that all these rejections have created, even if they’re all from a single approver who clearly has a different interpretation of the standards than the others, and that’s definitely not what I care to be feeling when I’m doing some volunteer work. I kept going until I resorted to the, shall we say, act of civil disobedience that got me banned because it was a conflict and I didn’t want to give in to an asshole’s unreasonable demands, but when I generally think that everything I do is wrong, something like this was bound to have consequences once I was forced to give it some time to settle in.
The site is a dying mess anyway; had been “ill” even before being sold in 2010 and has certainly been dying ever since that happened, since that resulted in it losing even what little support it had before, so I’m not even sure how long will it still be active in any way. If even Sciere, who’s the top contributor, said that the fact that the owners have abandoned it for so long made him decide there are better uses for his time, which is also why he didn’t care to get involved in my conflict with jaXen until he absolutely had to even though he’s probably the one person there who may still hold enough influence to decide on such matters, you know the end is near… Unless, of course, some other company that actually cares for games, perhaps the older ones in particular, and gamers, the more intelligent and thorough ones in particular, will decide to buy it from the current owners and somehow save it. But that’s another issue…
For most of this book, I was saying it’s an entirely run-of-the-mill SF; little to be bothered by, with the exception of what I’ll say below about the main character, but next to nothing to remember, so much so that you could probably readily find hundreds like it and never recall which was which after reading them. Add to that the uncorrected conversion issues, resulting in many misspelled or simply wrong words, not to mention all the missing periods, and it’s not hard to see why it’s given away for free.
Still, if you somehow struggle through to the final portion, it does get notably better. Not enough to make up for the lack of, well, anything relevant up to that point, and definitely not enough to counterbalance the annoying macho hero that appears made of steel while hiding a troubled past and proving instantly irresistible to the hottest women, including an improbably sexually compatible alien, but enough to make reading it no longer be a complete waste of time.
Rating: 3/5
