Master Chief making you feel bad about yourself?

I was catching up on a little light Penny Arcade reading the other day and came across this gem. Now for years it has been said that playing video games leads, primarily young men, to commit violent and illegal acts. This however has that beat by a Warcraft mile. Apparently after playing the part of an attractive character for as little as 15 minutes (though we all know we can't play for only 15 minutes at a time...) can have a negative effect on the players self-esteem regarding looks and physique.

Now while most of us will agree that Lara Croft was the finest arrangement that pixels have ever been in, even before Ms. Jolie's interpretation, I have never looked at Solid Snake and thought, "Man, I wish I were that ruggedly handsome". No, I've typically thought, "Holy shit! That dude just shot a rabid hamster at me! Where can I get THAT gun?!?".

Late nights on the couch playing Call of Duty with Tyler, Kevin, and the rest of the 23rd Street Crew we never commented on the players looks or build or our own for that matter except making jokes at one anothers expense. While I will give them the benefit of the doubt that we are simply a minute sample of gamers out there, I doubt that there is this following of pre-pubescents or even 40 year olds living in thier parents basement that have the obsession of an 18 year old girl looking through Cosmo. For the most part, we just aren't wired that way. But then again, I could be wrong. I mean that Prince of Persia guy is pretty ripped...

Israel: The Middle East Beast

Time to Bail:

Some things just never go out of style. High heels, for instance. In the Middle East and the majority of the international community at large, it's hate for Israel. One can expect this trend to increase as some estimates conclude that more than half of the 1200+ Palestinians killed in the current Gaza conflict have been civilians. Despite the fact that human lives are not items on a grocery list which can be easily counted without any proper context, any mindful individual with a functioning left side of the brain should conjure feelings of rage and sorrow from the vast amount of images portraying dead Palestinian civilians.
Israel's offensive has already cost itself and its moderate Arab allies dearly in terms of political capital, and imposed staggering losses on the civilian populace whose acceptance it will eventually need to capture. Unless the IDF can engineer a complete collapse of Hamas as a governing entity, which could remove a significant obstacle to future peace in the region and signal a reversal of the Iranian proxy, there is little more to be gained by continuing its campaign. Even if it were the unlikely case, would Mahmoud Abbas and the secularist Fatah party be expected to simply stroll back into the Gaza Strip courtesy of the IDF? Think again. Conversely, if the intent of the operation was simply to establish deterrence, it was surely achieved it in its beginning, and while I'm hesitant in applying deterrence theory to irrational Islamists, perhaps Hamas will think harder after indiscriminately launching rockets into populated Israeli areas as Hezbollah did. Israel should cease its operation and use its leverage to negotiate a more favorable cease-fire which (hopefully) diminishes Hamas' capacity to provoke wars.


Disproportionate Use of Criticism:

A host of Israel's critics have even more self-reflection to do as the hypocrisy in their scathing rhetoric is appalling. For instance, Syria has been adamant in labeling the Israeli operation as "genocide," yet quick to forget about the 1982 Hama massacre in which they literally shelled the entire rebel town killing between 20,000-30,000 people. If the Arab world put half of the energy they spend in tearing down Israel (which only gives them very short-run support amongst their populace) into developing their own societies and combating the pervasive Jihadist ideology, the forces of peace would certainly solidify. Even Russia, a subtler faultfinder, has more than it’s share of blood on its hands. Yet naturally, one should be entitled to expect a legitimately westernized democracy to conduct itself better than such regimes. Nonetheless, hyperbolic accusations of genocide and war crimes not only do an obvious disservice in undermining the true meanings of the words, but also serve to discourage the Israelis from proactively engaging the global community with its problems. If the already peace-oriented majority of the Israeli public perceives that its sensitive geopolitical setting is being objectively analyzed, if even slightly empathized with, they will have a much higher propensity towards utilizing international institutions instead of feeling the conviction that they have no choice but to exclusively rely on the sword.


Collective Palestinian Accountability, Not Suffering:

Whereas the military might of the IDF is capable of debilitating Hamas' infrastructure and sapping their capacity to govern, in the end Hamas as a political ideology can only be defeated by the Palestinians themselves. A fundamental objective for the international community, especially the willing moderate Arab states, should be in encouraging Palestinian electoral accountability. They democratically elected a terrorist entity --"militancy" as the more squeamish and delusional may prefer-- which they need to hold responsible just as much as Israel. There needs to be the final climax of realization that by futilely spewing rockets at Israeli towns, Hamas is not the glorious iconic liberator of Palestinian oppression they have portrayed themselves as, and if anything have set back the ultimate goal of nationhood. Disenchanted with the destruction of Gaza, emotionally fervent Palestinians will, of course, have an irrational inclination to rally towards Hamas. This is why governments worldwide and international non-state actors should limit this effect by providing mass amounts of humanitarian with objectives analogous to the Marshall Plan.

$50 Billion Just Ain’t What It Used To Be

The African nation of Zimbabwe introduced a $50 billion note into circulation on Monday the 13th of January. According to CNN a holder of just one of these notes will have enough money to buy two whole loafs of bread. Personally I applaud the Zimbabwean central bank for addressing an issue that has been ignored for far too long, not enough super billionaires.

The country’s struggling (maybe to nice of a word) economy has an inflation rate estimated at 231 million percent. That figure is not a typo; Zimbabwe’s inflation is at 231,000,000%. To make matters worse most businesses are only accepting foreign currency. The most commonly used are the American dollar and South African rand.

Now if only the $1trillion note would hurry up and come out people could afford a full dinner.

Sources: CNN, AP

UPDATE: The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has heard and granted Kswiss' wish!

LA Times Reporter Rides With Taliban

I don't know what is more interesting about this article in the LA Times: the fact that a western journalist (or at least an Afghan stringer working for a western paper) was able to meet with a Taliban tribe without losing their head, or the amazing exemplification this article is of the Taliban's ability to utilize and manipulate the media to their ends.

It is clear that the Taliban understands the power that articles like this one have in convincing people that the insurgency is thriving in Afghanistan, and that NATO and the US have a long way to go there. Convincing one country to withdraw 1000 soldiers is certainly easier than killing or wounding them.

The Taliban has been controlling how they are portrayed in the media using less subtle methods as well, i.e. beheading pro-western Pakistani journalists and threatening others with death.

Meanwhile they have been selling professional-quality DVDs of beheadings and bombings in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The DVDs are used as recruitment tools (kind of like the commercial where the Marine fights the fire monster I guess [or this one where the cool Ukrainian army guy gets the babe]).

It's pretty interesting to see how well a religious movement that wants to roll back all the social progress of the last millennium is able to adapt so quickly to the modern media machine.