Heartbreaking And Shameful

Given our membership in the species, all of us should feel deep shame over the actions of our fellow humans:

The town has been under attack for years by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, yet the rebel fighters in Moadamiyeh won't give up; so the whole town is being punished.

Pro-regime checkpoints ring Moadamiyeh, preventing food and medicine from being brought in. Cut off, the town has become filthy. Locals say disease is spreading. The power is dead.

Siege warfare is an ancient tactic. Christian crusaders did it to Muslim towns and cities. Muslim armies encircled and strangled Christian holdouts. Kings, dukes and princes besieged each other's town all across Europe.

Now, in Syria, this medieval form of warfare is making a bitter comeback. And it's not just the regime's forces who use the collective punishment of innocent civilians to achieve their military goals. Rebel forces are guilty of the same crimes.

A Graphic Illustration Of Humanity's Hubris

People of a certain age will remember the commercial with the tagline, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Heedless of that warning, that's exactly what we continue to think we can do, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

Some will take false comfort in blaming this year's weather disasters on a strengthened El Nino, ignoring why it is so strong; others will insist that climate change mitigation will destroy the economy. Still others will wait for a technological deus ex machina to save us all.

Perhaps they all should look at the latest evidence that nature always has the final say, and that our piddling opinions, rationalizations and magical thinking account for absolutely nothing in the larger scheme of things: