A random comment by myself:

Sometimes I think Nature is indifferent to the concepts of Good & Bad.

One reader remarked,

Well, duh. Red in tooth and claw. The birds aren’t singing–they are screaming in pain.

http://youtu.be/jjjnZvtwtqA

There’s a different interpretation!  The YouTube link is to a Werner Herzog video.

Another reader responded,

The harmony of overwhelming and connected murder. Oy vey.

Werner did seem to be on a down day, perhaps.  Or observing that survival doesn’t connote joy.  Yet another reader goes with logic:

Absolutely. Good & Bad (good & evil) are totally human constructs. The closest nature comes to that kind of moral judgement is a consideration of desireable vs. undesireable. No shades of morality attached.

Hard to assail that fortress.

Here’s the situation: the Democrats are, including the right wing of the party and those under pressure from a public unversed in foreign relations, rallying behind the Iran deal – only two Democratic Senators have registered opposition to the deal, both heavily involved with Israel.  The current GOP leadership, on the other hand, is united in opposition to the deal, the GOP presidential contenders competing to make outrageous comments in order to catch the attention and votes of the GOP base.  Alone amongst the allies of the USA, Israel stands against the deal.  While some of the Mid East allies are grumpy, even Saudi Arabia has signed on.

But now, as Steve Benen @ Maddowblog notes, the old GOP leadership is showing up for perhaps its last stand – against those who supplanted it.

Because, whether the right likes it or not, the GOP’s elder statesmen keep announcing their support for the diplomatic solution.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed support for the nuclear agreement with Iran, calling the various planks Iranian leaders accepted “remarkable” and dismissing critics’ concerns over its implementation.

“It’s a pretty good deal,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Powell, a veteran of the Bush/Cheney administration and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, described the provisions of the Iran deal as “remarkable” and praised the “very vigorous verification regime [that] has been put into place.”

PoliticusUSA notes:

“They had stockpiled something in the neighborhood of 12,000 kilograms of uranium. This deal will bring it down to 300 kilograms,” Powell said. “It’s a remarkable reduction. I’m amazed that they would do this this but they have done it.”Putting a finely honed knife to the back of Republican fearmongering about the Iran deal, Powell said, “These are remarkable changes. We have stopped this highway race that they were going down and I think this is very, very important.”

For the finishing blow, Powell took out the Republican argument that we just gave them everything and got nothing, “Will they comply with it? Well, they get nothing until they comply and that’s the important part of the arrangement.”

He joins Brent Snowcroft, and former Senators Richard Lugar and John Warner in supporting the deal – senior members of the GOP who have been shoved aside by the current leadership.  Of course, not all the GOP retirees are in the same boat.  From another Benen article:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak today at a D.C. think tank, delivering remarks intended to condemn the international nuclear agreement with Iran. If an ignominious exchange over the weekend was evidence of his expertise, however, Cheney might want to reschedule, brush up on the details, and rethink his approach.

The underlying challenge for the failed former V.P. is the degree to which his own Iran policy failed spectacularly. Iran didn’t have a meaningful nuclear weapons program until Tehran developed one – during the Bush/Cheney administration. At the time, in response to Iran’s nuclear program, the Bush/Cheney administration did nothing – except, of course, strengthen Iran’s regional power by invading Iraq.

Here’s the thing: this is not so much a debate any longer as a display of leadership.  Leadership quite often means grabbing the tether of a bucking horse and leading it where it should go, not where it wants to go.  In this case, the current GOP leadership and the GOP base have convinced themselves that the deal is horrid – while the Democrats do not agree, and the rest of the world, having examined the deal, and in important cases actually signed on, watches in a sort of quiet horror at the antics of the GOP.

Lugar, Snowcroft, Warner, and now Powell are showing how to be a mature political party by setting aside partisan politics at the national border and evaluating events in a proper way – that is, by putting the interests of the nation above party.  By putting honesty above party.  By not being swayed by the cries of the uninformed base, of the commercially motivated pundits with no skin in the game, of the political amateurs currently occupying national seats who fail to realize that “boots on the ground” and other such marketing phrases really mean People Will Die.

Let their be no mistake: the degree to which the GOP Members of Congress choose to support the Iran deal will be a measure of the maturity of the GOP Party.¹

¹And how long after these courageous members of Congress stand up and declare their allegiance is to their country, first, and Party, second, will the wild cries of “RINO” ring out, and soon their skins will hang from the walls of the Party faithful, who will then resume their slack-jawed, drooling wandering through the hallways of Futile Purity?

Unlike most criticisms of the Iran deal, Lawfare is worth reading through.  First comes Yishai Schwartz, who worries about a possibly poor precedent:

This debate is important, but it also misses the larger point. What happened in the IAEA negotiations with Iran was precedent setting. The IAEA demanded access to an Iranian site in order to resolve questions about weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program. Iran refused, and in large part, the IAEA acquiesced. A set of arrangements was developed–which may or may not be technically sound for each and every one of the IAEA’s purposes (for this, we must follow the debate among experts closely)–which precluded actual IAEA access to the site. …

But what of the long-term, precedential effects? Based on the Parchin agreement, we can already predict what will happen 5, 10, 20 years from now, when Iran once again chooses to explore or pursue weaponization. The IAEA will demand access to a sensitive Iranian site, and Iran will stonewall. And when the time comes to negotiate, Iran will insist that IAEA and international community has already acknowledged it doesn’t really have a right to demand full access to military sites. After all, look at Parchin! And this agreement, rather than Iran’s actual legal obligations under its safeguards agreement and additional protocol, will become the new baseline.

Iranian negotiators have a track record of pocketing what seem at the time like limited and isolated Western concessions, only to argue (successfully) that they are of much larger significance. (This is, for example, what happened when the IAEA accepted that Iran wasn’t really bound by the Additional Protocol or Modified Code 3.1) With Parchin, I worry that we have just handed them another.

In contrast, Cody Poplin criticizes what appears to be a reasonable Congressional response – legislation permitting the President to respond to Iranian transgressions forcefully:

Middle of the road Iranians might just as well see an AUMF as adding sour bellicosity to a deal ostensibly meant to avert conflict—if not also as evidence of bad faith. As for hardliners, a force authorization, however conditional, could hand politically useful cover to officials and clerics eager to cheat on Iran’s side of the deal.

The doubtful efficacy can be paired with this downside, too: A rainy day Iran authorization likely would be a tough nut to crack legislatively. Under Einhorn’s formulation, for example, the president would be required to present “evidence” that Iran had cheated, before any force authorization could kick in. But as previous debates have shown, it’s not obvious what counts as evidence and at what threshold Congress should be convinced. Given the predictable political wrangling, a conditional AUMF thus present a great risk: the worst of all possible outcomes for deterring an Iranian breakout would be one wherein an administration spent significant resources to get a preemptive authorization only to end up failing.

I leave these with no comment.  However, I also received this video in email today:

To which a very simple response is necessary:

We are, after all, the Great Satan.

Steven Benen at MaddowBlog comments on the press conference Obama ran concerning the Iran deal:

And then Obama did something I’ve never seen him – or really, any president – do. From the transcript:

“All right. Have we exhausted Iran questions here? I think there’s a helicopter that’s coming. But I really am enjoying this Iran debate.
“Topics that may not have been touched upon, criticisms that you’ve heard that I did not answer…. I just want to make sure that we’re not leaving any stones un-turned here.”

It’s really worth watching the video of this portion, because I’ve never seen anything like it at a White House press conference. In effect, Obama wanted to hear every possible criticism – from Republicans, from Israeli officials, from the media, anyone – of the Iran deal so that he could explain, in detail, why those criticisms are wrong. …

It conveyed an amazing level of confidence in the diplomatic agreement. Obama made it clear that no matter what anyone asked, argued, or complained, he knew this deal is stronger than anything its (or his) critics could come up with.

I suspect historians are going to look at the performance of President Obama and put him in the same category as Jesse Owens, Jim Brown, and George Washington Carver (and many others) – a man who realized that he faced more critical judgments and harsher (and irrational) criticisms than a white person might in the same situation, and found a way to exceed expectations.  From the mundane – an Administration practically free of scandal – to dealing with the emergencies of the day, from Republican leftovers to, perhaps, the Iran nuclear deal – he has been more than competent.  While the evaluation of the Iran deal by experts remains to be well-publicized (or I’m too busy to look), history may label him as superb.

Or, as Andrew Sullivan is wont to say with regard to Obama’s opponents, “Meep Meep, motherfuckers.”

A reader writes concerning Ceres and some white spots:

I refuse to believe the bright spots on Ceres are just reflections. A reflection would vary in intensity with rotation. I need a better explanation.

Since one of the white spots had been previously observed by HST, it’s doubtful that this is a camera artifact / defect.  Here is a report on the white spots.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has beamed home the best-ever photo of the mysterious bright spots that speckle the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres.

The new image resolves Ceres’ strange spots, which are found inside a crater about 55 miles (90 kilometers) wide, into a cluster comprised of several patches, some of which were not visible in previous photos. But it doesn’t solve the mystery of the spots’ origin and composition.

“At least eight spots can be seen next to the largest bright area, which scientists think is approximately 6 miles (9 km) wide,” NASA officials wrote in a statement today (June 22). “A highly reflective material is responsible for these spots — ice and salt are leading possibilities, but scientists are considering other options, too.”

I speculated that perhaps Ceres was perhaps not rotating quickly enough, but space.com reports otherwise:

A day on Ceres lasts a little over 9 Earth-hours, while it takes 4.6 Earth-years to travel around the sun.

At least, I’d think it would be fast enough to cause a variability in reflection.  IO9.com presents speculation from the principal investigator (the link IO9 has for the principal investigator is broken, otherwise I’d use it), Chris Russell:

“Ceres’ bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations.”

The comment section also has some semi-viable speculation.

Volcanos require a magma layer, but several moons have known volcanic activity – usually caused by the gravitational proximity of the primary – Ceres has no primary.

I briefly speculated that it might be chemical, but given the HST observations are more than a decade old, you’d think the material involved in the reaction would be exhausted, unless lower temperatures slowed down the reaction – but then would it be visible?  But my chemical knowledge is miniscule.

Finally, the IO9 story also tells us what makes a scientist a scientist:

I admit it: I’m totally jazzed that we’ve got such a blatant mystery staring right at us, daring us to figure it out with ever more obvious clues!

Nature reports on a new rule concerning chimpanzees:

Chimpanzee research in the United States may be nearly over. On 12 June, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it is categorizing captive chimpanzees as an endangered species subject to legal protections.

The new rule will bar most invasive research on chimpanzees. Exceptions will be granted for work that would “benefit the species in the wild” or aid the chimpanzee’s propagation or survival, including work to improve chimp habitat and the management of wild populations.

The FWS proposed the rule in 2013 to close a loophole that exempted captive chimps from the Endangered Species Act protections that had already been given to their wild counterparts. Under the law, it is illegal to import or export an endangered animal, or to “harm, harass, kill [or] injure” one.

It’s interesting that there had been a loophole that permitted invasive research on endangered species – it seems like a contradiction of the entire point of the Endangered Species Act.

Melissa Breyer @ TreeHugger is excited:

Yes! Yes, yes, yes. In fabulous news for chimps in labs across the country, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it is categorizing captive chimpanzees as an endangered species subject to legal protections. The new rule will essentially spell the end for chimpanzee research.

Science/AAAS reports on Jane Goodall’s reaction at the press conference:

“This is a very exciting day,” Goodall said at the press conference. “It’s been a struggle to think of the chimpanzees exploited in medical research.” She has begun referring to chimps as “chimpanzee beings” instead of as “animals” and says the decision “shows an awakening, a new consciousness.”

Here’s a video of her reaction.  Meanwhile, Nature’s report also includes a dour statement from Matt Bailey:

The government’s decision to list captive chimps as endangered drew swift criticism from some science groups. “Practically speaking, [given] the process to get exceptions [for invasive research], I don’t expect chimps will be a viable option,” says Matt Bailey, executive vice president of the National Association for Biomedical Research in Washington DC.Bailey’s group argues that medical research with chimpanzees benefits both humans and chimps, given that the two species are affected by many of the same diseases, and notes that captive research chimps have been bred for that purpose — making the connection to wild populations tenuous.

So, if the connection to the wild population is tenuous, doesn’t that make the population of research chimpanzees an Endangered Species in their own right?  Or does that designation only properly belong to species that have not been transformed through human intervention?  And, if the connection is tenuous, then how much benefit does research performed on research chimps really have for the wild chimps?  There is a connection, but …

Interestingly, several of the science organizations (Nature, Scientific American, Science/AAAS) referenced the New England Antivivisection Society, which issued a statement including this unfortunate paragraph:

“NEAVS’ Project R&R: Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. Labs campaign has focused on several routes to end their use in research,” says Dr. Capaldo. “Like the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 finding that ‘most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary’ and the NIH’s 2013 decision to retire the vast majority of their chimpanzees, this FWS decision continues momentum – adding another barrier to unnecessary and non-productive research purportedly to benefit humans. We stand on ethically and scientifically firmer ground as we move closer toward ending atrocities under the guise of ‘necessary’ research. Our moral commitment as a humane nation was remembered today in FWS Director Dan Ashe’s welcomed announcement.”

This sets all the bells of conspiracy theories ringing – it reads as if they believe researchers enjoy hurting and destroying their subjects.  The Chronicle, a publication of Duke University, has an article from 2012, when the change was first proposed.  Prominent in it are the opinions of one Professor Hare:

“The researchers using chimpanzees [in labs] are not producing useful, interesting information to the medical community and it’s costing literally tens of millions of dollars to produce mediocre science,” said Brian Hare, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology and director of the Hominoid Psychology Research Group. “The bill will end that and then that money can be used for other researchers who are actually doing great jobs.”

In opposition,

The Association of American Universities, which is comprised of 61 universities, including Duke, released a statement officially opposing the Act. The organization noted that chimpanzees are a critical for biomedical research on hepatitis C and other infectious diseases.

One case that relied on lab chimpanzees was the development of a hepatitis C vaccine. Hepatitis C, which can lead to liver disease and cancer, affects only chimpanzees and humans, making no other animal models valid.

But Professor Hare continues what appears to be an ad hominem attack:

“People who are against this bill are trying to argue that this is non-scientists trying to stop science. That is not what this bill will do—it will make science better,” Hare said. “The only people who [argue this] either don’t work with chimpanzees or are the handful of people who are about to retire and are desperate because they know they’ve been doing mediocre science.”

… which sounds rather like a weapon from Star Trek, but is not – it’s the code word for the movement away from fossil fuels and thus blunting the impact of anthropocentric climate change.  The G7 nations agreed to remove fossil fuels from their economies by 2100, or at least so the communique is interpreted.  From whitehouse.gov:

Urgent and concrete action is needed to address climate change, as set out in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. We affirm our strong determination to adopt at the Climate Change Conference in December in Paris this year (COP21) a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) applicable to all parties that is ambitious, robust, inclusive and reflects evolving national circumstances.

The agreement should enhance transparency and accountability including through binding rules at its core to track progress towards achieving targets, which should promote increased ambition over time. This should enable all countries to follow a low-carbon and resilient development pathway in line with the global goal to hold the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C.

Germany’s dw.de reports on environmentalist reactions:

Lutz Weischer, of the German environmental NGO Germanwatch, told DW that the decisions on climate change constituted an “important moment in the international climate debate.” The commitment to global decarbonization, he added, was “a significant step.”

Samantha Smith, who leads the WWF’s global climate and energy initiative and was also in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, was less enthusiastic: “The G7 have given us some important political signals, but they’ve left out the concrete commitments from themselves as nations,” she told DW. Concrete, immediate actions to cut emissions, Smith added, “would have had a big impact,” particularly in the run-up to the summit. She did, however, call an initiative agreed by leaders to roll out renewable energies in Africa and other emerging countries “very positive.”

But,

Concrete financial pledges were, however, not made in the 17-page communiqué, which was hammered out by the delegations on the sidelines of the meeting. Leaders also pledged to lift 500 million people in developing countries out of hunger and malnutrition by 2030 – also without making concrete financial commitments.

Climate Central suggests this is too little, too late:

“Decarbonization by the end of the century may well be too late because the magnitude of climate change long before then will exceed the bounds of many ecosystems and farms, and likely will be very disruptive,” Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said.

The goal is a step in the right direction, but not very meaningful considering greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced dramatically within the next decade, well ahead of the G7’s timeline, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said.

“In my view, the science makes clear that 2050 or 2100 is way too far down the road,” he said. “We will need near-term limits if we are going to avoid dangerous warming of the planet.”

350.org warns investors:

The commitment should serve as a dire warning for investors considering new dirty projects, like the Galilee Basin coal mines in Australia, or investors who continue to hold shares in companies such as Exxon and Chevron, who refuse to acknowledge their climate risk and continue to spend massively on high carbon projects.

And Big Oil may become Tiny Oil:

More ambition is needed, but even these targets should send shivers down the spines of major fossil fuel companies. Scientists are clear that meeting the 2°C target will require leaving at least 80% of known fossil fuel reserves underground. Any new investments in extracting or finding new reserves will only further inflate a carbon bubble that is bound to burst.

G7 leaders also reiterated the need to phase out the fossil fuel subsidies, a push that will only gain momentum between now and the G20 summit in Turkey this November.

Bjorn Lomborg’s take at MSN is here.  Clean Technica reports,

Merkel and US President Obama, as well as President Hollande of France, have stood at the forefront of the G7 decarbonization movement. Jennifer Morgan, director of the global climate program at the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute, said that “It’s pretty clear that Canada and Japan are in a different place than the rest of the G7 on the issue of climate change.”

Obama cannot make this succeed on his own, however.  International Business Times reports Sir David King of the UK is optimistic:

For him, Monday’s G7 agreement to “decarbonize the global economy” means a workable global climate deal is likely in Paris, he said late Wednesday 10 June.

“That commitment from the G7, to me, was a critical turning point,” said Sir David King, the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change, in a process where “progress has been painfully close to zero.”

After failed talks in Copenhagen in 2009, “I think we’re coming to a very different point now,” he added. King is leading the UK’s efforts abroad to secure an ambitious deal at the crucial UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. …

During the G7 Heads of Government meeting on Monday, 8 June, world leaders from the developed nations pledged to remove carbon from the global economy by 2100.

The conditions for creating a global climate deal are now “realistic,” King said, because various carbon tax schemes are “emerging country by country.” Currently six Chinese provinces are trading carbon credits, with all provinces in the country set to take up the scheme in 2017.

As is Sami Grover @ Treehugger:

This is a significant coup for climate hawks, especially given that the G7 includes tar-sands rich Canada. And yet I see many Internet commenters voicing their incredulity: 2100 is simply too slow, given the speed at which the climate is already changing.

In many ways these angry voices are right. Many were hoping for more ambitious push by 2050 – and many individual G7 member countries including the United Kingdom and the United States have emission reduction targets of around 80 percent by that date – but this collective commitment to actually phase out fossil fuels completely, now signed onto by recalcitrant nations like Canada and Japan, represents a significant statement about where the future is headed.

As I’ve argued before, once we are firmly headed in a particular direction, the pace at which we get there becomes less about specific government targets, and more about the sheer momentum of social and technological change.

A FB correspondent remarks:

The trouble is, presenting facts doesn’t work. They ignore their failures, and just repeat their mantras. Bah. I wonder if the people of Kansas will bother to notice.

Let’s look at what we can know, which is the results of surveys.  Governor Brownback, former Senator for Kansas, was elected in 2010, winning a four way race with 63% of the vote, according to Ballotpedia.  At the time, cjonline.com (Topeka Capital-Journal) reported,

Immediate priorities in the Statehouse will be cutting state taxes and regulations in an effort to spur private-sector job growth, Brownback said. He vowed to reduce state government spending.

“My vision for Kansas is to see our economy grow so we will be able to fund the state’s core services,” he said. “My economic growth team and I are working hard to develop a balanced budget and tax plan, which will release the entrepreneurial spirit of Kansans and create the economic environment necessary for Kansas to become more globally competitive.”

Taking his vote percentage as an approval rating is probably a dubious practice, but it’s indicative of his dominance (second place had 32%).  What happened in the 2014 election?  Again, according to Ballotpedia, this time he won 49.8% to 46.1%, with a libertarian candidate taking the rest.  His approval rating in 2011,  according to local news station KWCH, was 51%, but in 2013 fell to 35% ; during the 2014 race, polling seemed to show he was frequently behind his opponent, to the extent that his campaign protested the cjonline.com poll, conducted by SurveyUSA:

In the midst of a challenging re-election campaign in 2014, Brownback’s staff now takes a disparaging view of SurveyUSA’s capacity to sample the public’s political pulse. The Clifton, N.J., company’s latest poll in Kansas’ race for governor, revealed Tuesday, had Democrat Paul Davis leading 48 percent to 40 percent for Brownback.

“SurveyUSA has a history of inaccurate polling,” said John Milburn, a spokesman for the governor and former Associated Press reporter who covered Brownback and other Kansas politicians for more than a decade. “This latest release from the organization is more of the same.”

Brownback campaign manager Mark Dugan, who worked for Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, discounted SurveyUSA’s work product as “another absurd poll showing the governor losing.”

Was the polling inaccurate?  Biased?  FiveThirtyEight had forecast Brownback to lose – big:

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is in trouble for three related reasons: a Republican party split, economic woes and education. For as long as most of us have been alive, Kansas has leaned to the right, practicing its own brand of moderate Republicanism. Brownback, though, has governed as a pure conservative.

It has hurt him; Democrat Paul Davis has been endorsed by scores of moderate Republicans upset by cuts to education necessitated by Brownback’s large tax cuts.

According to SurveyUSA, taxes and education remain among the most important issues to voters in 2014. The result has been disenchanted Republicans. The share of registered Republicans in Kansas was 9 percentage points higher than the share of self-identified Republicans, according the latest Marist College poll. Many of these Republicans now identify as independent, a group Davis is winning by a 26-point margin.

Although polls have narrowed from a few months ago, most surveys have Davis riding Republican discontent to a lead. He’s an 82 percent favorite.

However, they do not appear to have conducted any polls of their own, just relied on others.  I found this courtesy Kevin Waisfeld, who goes on to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude.

So, back to the original question: do people learn?  I think they do.  Not enough, in this case; or perhaps they decided to accept the Governor’s assertion that he just needs more time.  That might be understandable, although in four years a lot of damage can be done.  But I think that electing a governor involves issues that are close to home: highways and education.  Let’s be honest: even WAR seems far away and irrelevant if you don’t have family members in the service – and there’s no draft to spread fear and discontent amongst the eligible; foreign policy?  For wonks.  Social Security and MediCare – hardly anyone touches those any more, and if they do they get to retire.

But when it’s close up and personal, then people do learn.  Which, of course, doesn’t really explain the Minnesota experience of an improved economy resulting in the Democrats losing the state House of Representatives.

A Facebook correspondent likes Carson:

I like to listen to the man, but he is to nice to win.

Perhaps.  His speech at the National Prayer Breakfast was apparently not the nicest:

Dr. Ben Carson, former pediatric neurosurgeon and author of “You Have a Brain” declared that President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast “makes me feel that perhaps we’re [Christians] being betrayed” on Saturday’s “Fox & Friends” on the Fox News Channel.

Given what appears to be his level of ignorance on a number of subjects important in the political arena, I think he’ll either be out in a hurry, or he’ll be quite entertaining as he finds it very rough sledding in a field that he doesn’t own.

Which brings me to a somewhat startling result: sympathy.  I’ve noticed that as we become a more and more specialized society – an inevitability, given what we (for example, Dr. Carson’s specialty as a pediatric neurosurgeon) – our opinions on nearly anything outside of our specialty can be horrendous.  Dr. Carson thinks a President can ignore the Supreme Court; that the 2016 elections may be canceled; that our troops should be immune from war crimes prosecution … these are all positions that I would take to be from an unserious candidate.  Yet Dr. Carson’s indisputable accomplishments mark him as extremely serious, and being a surgeon who pioneered new surgeries marks him as a rung or two above your standard-issue doc (who I also admire for their memories and their intense work ethic – but recognize that’s what it’s all about).

So … what’s the deal?  My personal theory is simply a person can only do so much, no matter what their level of intelligence may be.  At some point, you have to turn off the info flow and rest; and if your information flow is tainted, well, GIGO.

We no longer have renaissance men or women.  We’re specialists, or we’re general laborers, working so many hours that being informed on much of anything is difficult; or we’re poverty-stricken and therefore even deeper in the hole, and sadly not well educated, either.  This all plays into a perpetual conundrum (& worry) for me: we keep on trying to govern using amateurs rules, yet moving to professional rules invites ruin.  So we keep running elections full of people who may, or may not, know what they’re doing.  It’s one of those hard questions…

Pediatric surgeon and GOPer Ben Carson has entered the Presidential nomination race.  He has never served in a public office before.  His On the Issues quiz suggests a mostly doctrinaire conservative, although he does oppose larger military budgets and invading Iran – good for him.  His positions on gay marriage and marijuana, on the other hand, clearly indicates he’s out of touch on those issues.

The Atlantic and GQ have longish profiles of Dr. Carson.  Neither is complimentary; the latter is entitled, “What If Sarah Palin Were a Brain Surgeon?”

The Baltimore Sun reports (amongst many) that Carson wants to redefine the role of SCOTUS:

Carson said Sunday that “we need to discuss” the court’s long-held power to review laws passed by Congress. That authority was established in the 1803 landmark case Marbury v. Madison.

Carson, the former head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins and a longtime resident of Baltimore County, announced his candidacy for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination last week in Detroit. He now lives in Florida.

He was asked on “Fox News Sunday” whether the executive branch is obligated to enforce laws that the Supreme Court declares constitutional.

“We need to get into a discussion of this because it has changed from the original intent,” he said.

Carson has said a president is obliged to carry out laws passed by Congress, but not what he called “judicial laws” that emanate from courts.

The New Civil Rights Movement also notes Carson’s stance and then references a rebuttal at the National Constitution Center in regards to a similar statement by Newt Gingrich:

It is a rarity for presidents to simply ignore decisions of the Supreme Court, although it has been done.  President Abraham Lincoln famously ignored Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s order finding unconstitutional Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus rights in 1861, early in the Civil War.But the example of Roosevelt and the German saboteurs is more complex than the Gingrich summary implies.  The saboteurs, convicted of war crimes by a military commission, actually had their day in a civilian court — in three courts, including the Supreme Court — as they pursued (unsuccessfully) a writ of habeas corpus.  They were not executed until after the Supreme Court had upheld the President’s power to set up the military commission.   There was never an occasion for Roosevelt to ignore the Court.

The Hill reports:

Republican White House candidate Ben Carson on Friday stood by his remark that President Obama is a “psychopath,” saying the president displays the associated personality traits.

“I said he reminds you of a psychopath, because they tend to be extremely smooth, charming people who can tell a lie to your face,” Carson told host John Harwood on CNBC’s “Speakeasy.”

“It looks like sincerity, even though they know it’s a lie,” he said.

Which reminds me of when REASON Magazine published an article on then-President Clinton and his alleged emotional damage.  Just about as credible as an alligator subsisting on apples.

The Blaze reports Glenn Beck believes Carson’s ambitions are doomed:

Glenn Beck on Friday said Dr. Ben Carson’s presidential career is over before it began, after the famed neurosurgeon said on CNN that homosexuality is a choice.

“The answer here is, ‘Why is government involved in marriage in the first place?’” Beck said on his radio program. “Let the individual be free to make his choice. The only reason why the government is involved is so the government can get their grimy little hands on tax dollars. That’s the only reason. Why are we arguing about this?”

Beck said Carson’s explanation, that “a lot of people who go into prison, go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay,” sounded like it came from a “10-year-old.”

ThinkProgress has a list of 7 things Carson believes, which makes him look ridiculous.  Hard to disagree – Carson may be leaving this race early, if he has this much catch-up to do.

Think Mapquest or its successors is neat?  NewScientist‘s Hal Hodson (11 April 2015) reports (paywall) on the next generation:

For a few days last summer, a handful of students walked through a park behind the University of Hannover in Germany. Each walked solo, but followed the same route as the others: made the same turns, walked the same distance. This was odd, because none of them knew where they were going.

Instead, their steps were steered from a phone 10 paces behind them, which sent signals via bluetooth to electrodes attached to their legs. These stimulated the students’ muscles, guiding their steps without any conscious effort.

It sounds great until someone hacks into the system and takes you for the walk of a lifetime.  I’m seeing a lovely sight-seeing tour of Venice, ending with an involuntary and fatal dive into the drink as your mortal enemy – or some kid with a root kit – takes over for just a moment.

Acceptance may be the biggest problem, although it is possible that the rise of wearable computing might help. Pfeiffer says the electrode’s current causes a tingling sensation that diminishes the more someone uses the system. Volunteers said they were comfortable with the system taking control of their leg muscles, but only if they felt they could take control back.

One of the students compared the feeling to cruise control in a car, where the driver can take control back when they want it. “Changes in direction happened subconsciously,” said another.

No doubt acceptance will be an issue with autonomic cars as well.  And yet, it may turn out the next generation – meaning those who are just being born now – will not mind cars that drive themselves, and assisted walking that require no more direction than “take the tourist route” or “get me to the train station”.

Still, the inventors see this as useful for disasters:

The system could also be used to direct crowds, not just individuals. “Imagine visitors to a large sports stadium or theatre being guided to their place, or being evacuated from the stadium in the most efficient way in the case of an emergency,” the team write in a paper that will be presented at the CHI conference in Seoul, South Korea, next week.

The fighting, and political maneuvering, involving Yemen continues as CNN reports on the situation in Aden, Yemen’s sea port city currently contested by government forces and their allies, the Saudis, and the rebel Houthis:

Saudi Arabia began airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen three weeks ago Thursday. But Aden remains a city not fully in the hands either of Houthi rebels or forces loyal to the ousted government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi.

Everyone we spoke to Thursday told us the same thing: Living in Aden these days is terrifying.

We visited a hospital where doctors have given up trying to count the dead and the dying who are brought in. Officials said they believe the toll of the dead runs into the hundreds.

Everywhere, we felt, saw, heard and smelled the desperation.

AL Monitor publishes Bruce Reidel’s report on the details of Pakistan’s refusal to assist their allies, the Saudis.  Mr Reidel is is director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution, which Wikpedia classifies as a centrist think tank:

After five days of debate, not one speaker apparently supported sending ground troops. While many praised Saudi Arabia as a friend of Pakistan, almost all called for a political solution and diplomacy to end the crisis. Some even blamed Riyadh for starting the war. Every political party opposed sending troops. The consensus was to stay neutral while reaffirming friendship with the kingdom.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Pakistan during the debate. He met with both Prime Minister Sharif and Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif. The army has argued that it is stretched too thin with a counterterrorism campaign against the Pakistani Taliban and tensions with India to send troops to Yemen. Sharif said April 13 that he urged Zarif to rein in the Houthis and support a political solution.

It may be true that Pakistan lacks resources to expend; they have certainly been rocked by Taliban attacks, and are wont to worry about the Indians.  But I have to wonder if the Pakistani politicians are watching Iran’s deal with the global powers and are practicing circumspection against the possibility that an Iran free of sanctions could make for a raucous neighbor.  Mr. Reidel expands on this possibility:

The episode also raises concerns about Iran’s clout in the region. Much of the debate in parliament had been about avoiding further sectarian violence in Pakistan (which is 20% Shiite), which intervention in the war in Yemen would stoke (perhaps with Iranian help). Zarif had a big stick behind his back. Without ever mentioning the threat of Iranian meddling in Pakistan’s already fragile domestic stability, Zarif could remind his hosts they don’t want more trouble at home.

[UPDATE: Added missing title 5/2/15)

One of the key parts of the GOP strategy going forward may be to never, ever say you’re sorry.  This fellow (the piece is unsigned) on Unqualified Offerings brought it up in a piece in which he suggests Governor Scott Walker may win the GOP nomination:

Apologizing or even admitting error represents weakness, period. So Mitt Romney titles his campaign book No Apology; Ted Cruz insists the 2013 government shutdown is why the GOP walloped the Democrats in the 2014 elections.

We can also see this in the public flailing about of Governor Mike Pence over the Indiana Religious Restoration Act.

“Over the past week this law has become a subject of great misunderstanding and controversy across our state and nation. However we got here, we are where we are, and it is important that our state take action to address the concerns that have been raised and move forward.”

Or here:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Sunday defended his decision to sign a religious freedom bill into law, saying that it was ”absolutely not” a mistake.

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” the Republican governor repeatedly dodged questions on whether the law would legally allow people of Indiana to refuse service to gay and lesbians, saying that residents of the state are “nice” and don’t discriminate and that “this is about protecting the religious liberty of people of faith and families of faith.”

As a political strategy, you want to say it’s a political miscalculation: adult human beings make mistakes and own up to mistakes; voters will recognize the immaturity (or worse) of the GOP candidates and reject them.

Sadly, I do not think this will be true, because of the underlying assumption of good knowledge, by which I mean everyone is aware of what’s going on and when public mistakes are made.  I believe there are two factors at work:

1. We’re too busy to keep track of such things.  Look at the hours we work – 47 a week, and then there’s all of our “leisure” activities, child care, etc.  How many folks keep careful, sober track of the candidates and their performance?
2. That’s the jobs of the other side.  Not any longer.  It’s hard to believe the other side, no matter who they are.  The polarization of politics leaves me shaking my head; sure, some are just ridiculous [DailyJot], but when a former Minnesota Rep indulges in ludicrous hyperbole, then I have to doubt anything anybody on either side says.  There are precious few with any stature left.  Obama I will seriously consider, as I see him as an old-style politician to whom honesty has some weight over Party loyalties; maybe Reid.  I’m not even sure of Klobuchar and Franken, my Senators, who generally seem fairly likable.  On the GOP side, there’s just no one.  They have not cultivated a reputation for honesty, for reasonable analysis.

So this will be the unintended consequence of the GOP culture cultivated over the last couple of decades: they do not have a reputation of honesty, of fair dealing, of mature government (for a glaring example, see the entire Bush years).  They have a rep of unreasoning enmity, of extremism, of a failure to acknowledge that their opponents no doubt have the future of the Nation at heart – they just throw mud.  As an independent, it’s hard to consider voting for a GOP candidate these days.

No wonder the Millenials evidence little enthusiasm for the GOP.

And the Democrats seem to have a hard time figuring out how to respond to this immaturity.

(Updated misspellings and missing links 21 September 2015)

Iran has been a bugbear for successive sessions of Congress ever since the Iranians booted out Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi for (in popular opinion) being the catspaw of the United States, engaging in torture, etc (Feb 1979).  The taking of American hostages in November of the same year was, of course, traumatizing to anyone who loves their fellow countrymen; and for those who believe in America’s Manifest Destiny, exceptionally offensive.  I was just coming of age during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and I do recall the shock of screaming anti-American crowds, the overwhelming of the guards, and then the long crisis, the failed rescue raid, and finally the almost silent release of the prisoners as Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter.

Since then, simply pulling various memories of Iran out of my head, I recall the Iran-Iraq War, including the reports of the horror of gas warfare, the sacrifice of the youth of both nations for the egos of the leaders, and all the other horrors that go along with quasi-religious wars; I remember the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution, and the shocking way his death was mourned (for those who are not aware, as I recall the videos, his body was manhandled by mobs who carried it over their heads, before he was finally buried), which really brought home the idea that some people are really different and are truly heartbroken when a leader dies (I was already quite cynical about such matters); the execution of one of the initial leaders of the revoluion, a large jawed chap who had served as a news announcer during the crisis – I regret to say I do not recall his name.

The Iranian nuclear program began in the 1950s during the reign of the aforementioned Shah, went dormant when the Revolution took place, and was quietly revived in the 1990s.  This became public in 2002, and ever since there’s been dispute about the nature of their nuclear program; a short history is here.

Thus, concern about the Iranian nuclear program is understandable, and not entirely unmerited; since Pakistan and India, long term enemies, became nuclear powers and thus able to seriously damage, if not completely obliterate each other, not to mention seriously damage their neighbors, the jitters surrounding any other power regarded with not only suspicion, but outright paranoia, will certainly lead to a certain amount of disturbance.

However, the GOP’s reaction to a deal being assembled by a Democratic Administration can strain credulity to the breaking point.  Here’s a survey of some opinions, minus the well known Bachmann broadside.

Time gives a summary of the deal here.

Iranian President Rouhani:

“Some think we should either fight with the world or surrender to other powers,” he said. “We believe there is a third option. We can coöperate with the world.”

Thomas Friedman at the New York Times reports,

President Obama invited me to the Oval Office Saturday afternoon to lay out exactly how he was trying to balance these risks and opportunities in the framework accord reached with Iran last week in Switzerland. What struck me most was what I’d call an “Obama doctrine” embedded in the president’s remarks. It emerged when I asked if there was a common denominator to his decisions to break free from longstanding United States policies isolating Burma, Cuba and now Iran. Obama said his view was that “engagement,” combined with meeting core strategic needs, could serve American interests vis-à-vis these three countries far better than endless sanctions and isolation. He added that America, with its overwhelming power, needs to have the self-confidence to take some calculated risks to open important new possibilities — like trying to forge a diplomatic deal with Iran that, while permitting it to keep some of its nuclear infrastructure, forestalls its ability to build a nuclear bomb for at least a decade, if not longer.

Politico reports Saudi Arabia is giving cautious support.  Peter Beinart at The Atlantic writes in “What’s the Alternative to Obama’s Iran Deal?”

Benjamin Netanyahu insists that opposing Thursday’s framework nuclear deal with Iran doesn’t mean he wants war. “There’s a third alternative,” the Israeli prime minister told CNN on Sunday, “and that is standing firm, ratcheting up the pressure until you get a better deal.”

There are three problems with this argument. The first is that even some of Netanyahu’s own ideological allies don’t buy it. …

The second problem with Netanyahu’s argument is that it’s based on bizarre assumptions about Iranian politics. According to Netanyahu, if the United States walks away from the current deal, Iran’s desperation to end global sanctions will lead it to scrap its nuclear program almost entirely. But Iran’s nuclear program is decades old and enjoys broad public support. Even Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the reformist Green Movement, declared in 2009 that if elected, “we will not abandon the great achievements of Iranian scientists. I too will not suspend uranium enrichment.” … Rouhani’s hardline opponents, who benefit politically and economically from the sanctions, fiercely oppose such a deal. Netanyahu thinks a more aggressive American posture, coupled with a demand for near-complete Iranian capitulation, will make Tehran accept terms that today not even Iranian doves accept.

Finally, there’s a third, less well-appreciated flaw in Netanyahu’s argument. He assumes that after walking away from the current deal, the United States can “ratchet up the pressure on Iran.” In fact, the pressure will likely go down.

Yes, Congress can pass additional sanctions. But more American sanctions alone won’t have much effect. After all, the United States began seriously sanctioning Iran in the mid-1990s. Yet for a decade and a half, those sanctions had no major impact on Iran’s nuclear program. That’s largely because foreign companies ignored American pleas to stop doing business with the Islamic Republic.

Assuming the facts are as presented, this refutes Netanyahu without addressing the virtues of the deal itself.

Ben Caspit, an Israeli columnist, comments for the AL Monitor:

On the evening of April 2, when Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini faced the press, Jerusalem was shocked into silence.

First, the very fact that a framework agreement had been reached ran counter to all Israeli assessments, according to which the deadline would be postponed once again to the end of June (the original deadline). Second, the principles of the agreement surprised Israeli officials and especially the political echelon. No, there isn’t a single person around Netanyahu or Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon who will concede that the agreement is a good one, but several of its elements make it anything but the “bad agreement” that Israel has insisted all along would be produced.

AL Monitor talks to Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amos Yadlin, formerly the head of Israeli military intelligence:

“It depends on how you look at it,” he said. “If we aspire to an ideal world and dream of having all of Israel’s justified demands fulfilled, then of course the agreement does not deliver. It grants Iran legitimacy as a nuclear threshold state and potential to eventually achieve nuclearization. It leaves Iran more or less one year away from a nuclear weapon, and Israel will clearly not like all of this.

“But there’s another way to look at it that examines the current situation and the alternatives. In this other view, considering that Iran now has 19,000 centrifuges, the agreement provides quite a good package. One has to think what might have happened if, as aspired to by Netanyahu and Steinitz, negotiations had collapsed. Had that happened, Iran could have decided on a breakout, ignored the international community, refused to respond to questions about its arsenal, continued to quickly enrich and put together a bomb before anyone could have had time to react. And therefore, with this in mind, it’s not a bad agreement.”

The Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, remains unhappy, however.

Over at The American Conservative, W. James Antle III opines

How do you say trust but verify in Persian? For the truth is, the framework for a nuclear deal with Iran is only partly about the technical details. It is also a matter of trust.

Assuming a final agreement really resembles what the State Department outlined publicly, it will have its weaknesses. Iran will remain a nuclear threshold state. The Islamic republic will be allowed to maintain a vast nuclear infrastructure, and the deal’s success depends on the ”P5+1″ group’s ability to detect and penalize Iranian cheating in a timely fashion. …

The deal has to be evaluated against plausible alternatives, not an ideal outcome. It was in the absence of any deal that Iran went from having a little over 16o [sic] centrifuges in 2003 to 3,000 in 2005, 8,000 by the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency and 22,000 by 2013.

This seems fairly reasonable to me, acknowledge there are problems, but this is progress and we should appreciate it.  He goes on to comment on the alternative,

Critics of the deal don’t like it when it is suggested that the failure of diplomacy makes war more likely. They borrow one of Obama’s favorite catchphrases and call it a “false choice.”

This would be more convincing if leading Iran hawks weren’t already calling for bombing Iran or saying war is our best option.

But …

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been quoted as saying, “If you think the war in Iraq was hard, an attack on Iran would, in my opinion, be a catastrophe.”

CNBC is not happy:

The agreement significantly reduces the number of Iranian centrifuges and other nuclear infrastructure, but only limits Tehran’s ability to quickly “break out” from these restrictions and accumulate enough fissionable material to create a nuclear weapon in less than one year. Theoretically, we are told that is enough time for the West to detect Iranian violations and respond — but it is not.

The National Interest’s Zalmay Khalilzad is not happy.

… there are four reasons why this agreement is flawed and poses significant risks:

First, using the so-called fatwa by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei as an indicator of Iran’s true intentions— present and future—is a mistake.

Second, even if President Obama is correct that the agreement puts Iran one year away from producing enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon, it entails substantial risks.

Third, the president is counting on the efficacy of inspections—believing that Iranian efforts to cheat or deceive will be discovered and exposed in a timely manner, allowing the United States and its partners to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Fourth, the framework agreement assumes that if Iran violates the deal, the sanctions that were lifted can be re-imposed—or can snap back into place.

Mr. Khalilzad has some significant experience with Middle East affairs, having been Ambassador to Iraq, and should perhaps be taken a trifle more seriously.

The Washington Free Beacon, relying mostly on unnamed arms control experts, believes the deal is unsustainable:

Despite promises by President Obama that Iranian cheating on a new treaty will be detected, verifying Tehran’s compliance with a future nuclear accord will be very difficult if not impossible, arms experts say.

“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will not be effectively verifiable,” said Paula DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation from 2002 to 2009.

But David Corn at MotherJones has the temerity to roundup a number of named experts who think this is sustainable:

Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a former national security aide to Sen. John McCain, and a former director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense: “[T]he proposed parameters and framework in the Proposed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has the potential to meet every test in creating a valid agreement over time…It can block both an Iranian nuclear threat and a nuclear arms race in the region, and it is a powerful beginning to creating a full agreement, and creating the prospect for broader stability in other areas. Verification will take at least several years, but some form of trust may come with time. This proposal should not be a subject for partisan wrangling or outside political exploitation. It should be the subject of objective analysis of the agreement, our intelligence and future capabilities to detect Iran’s actions, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) capabilities to verify, and enforcement provisions if Iran should cheat. No perfect agreement was ever possible and it is hard to believe a better option was negotiable. In fact, it may be a real victory for all sides: A better future for Iran, and greater security for the United States, its Arab partners, Israel, and all its other allies.”

Kori Schake at FP writes an article entitled “I’m a Republican and I Support the Iran Nuclear Deal”:

1. The inspection provisions are solid. According to the details of the agreement that have been released so far, the deal provides for continuous inspection of all of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities. It also challenges inspections of any suspect facilities, and calls on Iran to sign up for the IAEA Additional Protocol, which increases short-notice inspections and IAEA access to establish greater confidence in an absence of cheating. If these are all carried out, they would amount to a robust verification regime. The inspection provisions would dramatically increase the United States’ ability to know what is happening in Iran’s nuclear programs, to judge the extent of their militarization efforts, and to anticipate “breakout” toward a nuclear weapons.

William Kristol at the conservative The Weekly Standard writes an editorial, “Kill the Deal“:

But it’s important not to lose sight of the whole, even as one goes after its most vulnerable parts. The whole of the deal is a set of concessions to an aggressive regime with a history of cheating that will now be enabled to stand one unverifiable cheat away from nuclear weapons. In making these concessions, the U.S, and its partners are ignoring that regime’s past and present actions, strengthening that regime, and sending the message that there is no price to be paid for a regime’s lying and cheating and terror and aggression. …

It is now up to the members of Congress to do their duty, on this delicate and momentous occasion. It is up to members of Congress to refuse to accede to this set of concessions made by our current executive magistrate, concessions that would put one of the world’s most dangerous regimes further along the road to acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.

Fox News publishes “What Saddam Hussein tells us about the Iran nuclear deal“:

President Barack Obama correctly has pointed out that the impending Iran nuclear deal depends for success upon United Nations inspections.  He also said, incorrectly, that “…Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history.”

The President seems not to remember the inspection regime for Iraq following the 1991 Kuwait war.  And that inspection regime did not work, for reasons that included both Saddam’s behavior and that of the U.N. Security Council.

It’s not entirely clear to me how the one paragraph relates to the other; I also recall the Iraq War, and the belated discovery that Iraq indeed did NOT possess Weapons of Mass Destruction, despite the assurances that he did — all over the repeated assertions of UN inspectors that he did not.  So if the deal is even more robust than the Iraq deal, I find it hard to get upset.

Finally, the indictment of Democratic Senator Menendez, a critic of the deal, has drawn some conspiracy theories out of the woodwork like salt draws water out of beef, this one from conservative Breitbart.com:

“If you had written this in a ‘House of Cards’ script, it would have been thrown out. The idea that the president’s most powerful democratic critic of the Iran deal goes down, indicted just before the deal is announced, nobody is suggesting a connection, but it sure does have an impact and it will it will be harder for Republicans to get a veto-proof majority to challenge the deal.”

The above quote from Jon Karl.

And, as an addendum, Egberto Willies at the Daily Kos chimes in with a quote from Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson:

I am not one to go immediately to war. I would go to some sort of containment policy. And try to do something about it through that policy rather than going to war. But I know what my political party wants. My political party, at least some of them—the 47 for example who signed the letter to the Ayatollah—they want war.

I have been unable to find a second source for the above quote, but it does fit the pattern of the good Republican Colonel speaking his mind, not his ideology.

… think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  At least in the sense of memory manipulation.  Jessica Hamzelou in NewScientist (14 March 2015) reports scientists can implant false memories in mice.

[Karim] Benchenane’s team used electrodes to monitor the activity of mice’s place cells [neurons that fire in response to being in or thinking about a specific place] as the animals explored an enclosed arena, and in each mouse they identified a cell that fired only in a certain arena location. Later, when the mice were sleeping, the researchers monitored the animals’ brain activity as they replayed the day’s experiences. A computer recognised when the specific place cell fired; each time it did, a separate electrode would stimulate brain areas associated with reward.

When the mice awoke, they made a beeline for the location represented by the place cell that had been linked to a rewarding feeling in their sleep. A brand new memory – linking a place with reward – had been formed.

It seems so reasonable, but assuming this can be scaled up to human memory, it’s a trifle unsettling, especially if an electrode could be replaced with an electric cap.

Or a remote device.

I suppose I could talk about how memories are notoriously unreliable; pictures and videos are much  more trustworthy.  But then think about how they can be modified.

Reality is becoming far too plastic for my tastes.

Sue Branford and Maurício Torres (NewScientist 7 March 2015) in “Dambusters” (paywall) cover the latest events in the Amazon Basin.  Key information:

According to official satellite data, 22 per cent of the forest has been felled. But this is an underestimate as it fails to account for selective logging, which the satellite images don’t detect. After several years of marked declines in forest clearance, which won Brazil international plaudits, the level of deforestation has risen again.

As we all should have learned in school, there is a cycle of evaporation -> rain -> evaporation called the water cycle.  In the Amazon the forest is a key part of this cycle:

While this may be a result of natural climate variability, Antonio Nobre, a senior researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research in São José dos Campos, says that the disruption is linked to deforestation. Recent research has shown that Amazon vegetation, particularly large trees, play a central role in maintaining the hydrological cycle. “In a single day a large tree in the rainforest can pump over 1000 litres of moisture from the soil into the atmosphere. If this is scaled up for the whole forest, it means the Amazon forest transpires 20 billion tonnes of water a day,” he says. Cut down the forest and you destroy the flying rivers.

So do trees make evaporation more efficient?  That’s not clear in the article.  The “flying river” is a nickname coined by a Brazilian scientist for the clouds formed from this evaporation that delivers rain to the south.  But:

São Paulo, the industrial heartland of Brazil, is in the grip of the worst drought in living memory. The clouds from the Amazon that make the basin itself so wet and also deliver rain to the south of the country – dubbed “flying rivers” by one Brazilian scientist – have failed to materialise.

And so on to the chase.  The forest of the Amazon has been under attack for decades by slash and burn farmers, by miners, by developers – many of whom are operating illegally against Brazilian law, and all of whom are impacting local tribes, most in a negative manner as the forest they have existed in for centuries are now torn from them simply because they do not conform to modern notions of ownership – although the authors of the NewScientist article do cover the efforts of the Munduruku to take ownership of their bit of it.  I think most folks would consider this to be … evil-doing.  Not that the perpetrators see it that way, but then English colonialists hardly ever felt badly about killing American Indians, either.  Here’s the thing: I think you can identify true “good guys” by the their activity patttern: they are cooperative.  They have a sense of justice and they are aware that in order to achieve justice, they must work with each other, compromise.

The other side, what I find myself calling the bad guys tonight, cannot do that: they are motivated by unmoderated greed.  Not that the good guys don’t have a spot of avariciousness in whatever they use for a soul, but it’s moderated and used for positive purposes.  But if you look at criminal gangs, evil regimes, and even fiction: the bad guys tend to destroy each other.  Working together tends to deny the greed which they feel.  So:

if deforestation continues, the viability of the large dams may be compromised. Until recently most scientists thought that cutting down trees near dams increased the amount of water flowing into them. But a recent study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in San Francisco, California, came to a very different conclusion. It found that by 2050, when on present trends at least 40 per cent of Brazil’s Amazon forest will be gone, there will be a significant decline in river flows and energy generation (PNAS, vol 110, p 9601). This would make the reliability of the dams as an energy source highly questionable. …

Along with growing doubts from scientists, another factor is creating the perception that the authorities’ love affair with Amazon hydropower may be waning. Historically, one of the biggest drivers of dam-building has been a cosy relationship between big engineering companies and their political allies. “Energy planning in Brazil is not treated as a strategic issue but as a source of money for engineering companies and politicians,” says Felício Pontes, prosecutor for the Federal Public Ministry in Pará.

But many of the companies are now caught up in a massive corruption scandal involving bribery and money laundering by the state-owned oil company, Petrobrás. Investigators are examining the contracts for the Belo Monte dam, and a leading executive of one of the companies, Camargo Corrêa, which has been funding viability studies for the São Luís do Tapajós dam, has been arrested.

So, in order to build a dam, they have to destroy that which makes the dam economically viable, transgressing against folks who’ve lived in these areas for centuries; and in the process of deciding who gets to do what, the government and the companies indulge in corruption.  As the scientists take in the new data and come to (always contingent) conclusions that this project will self-destruct, it is becoming less likely that hydroelectric power will be implemented on the Amazon.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi summarizes the current state of social media in the Arab world on PS21:

Although Al Qaeda has used social media to a limited degree over the past few years beyond posting their videos on YouTube, their breakaway group ISIS has taken its use another level. For starters, ISIS videos have been of a much higher production quality than Al Qaeda, using Hollywood-like special effects. In one of the videos posted online, the ISIS killer draws his knife to behead a hostage as the film cuts to slow motion to increase the dramatic effect. In a subsequent ISIS video of the beheading of 18 Syrian regime soldiers, the sound of beating heartbeats is added to the soundtrack. ISIS’ most gruesome upload to date featured the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot in a 21 minute video“that imitates the production values of documentaries aired on outlets like the History Channel”. The film ends by showing alleged homes of other Jordanian pilots identified through aerial mapping technology.

Since July 2014 ISIS has also been publishing an online magazine called Dabiq, now in its fifth issue, available to download in PDF and published in English. The propagandist publication, which without the gruesome content would look like a lifestyle magazine, features interviews with fighters and stories about recent conquests by the terrorist organization. The group has also used popular hashtags such as #WorldCup2014 to disseminate their videos and flood Twitter with their messages.

Conclusion:

What initially was a space for liberal minded technology geeks and activists is now a darker, gloomier world in which threats are made and videos of brutal beheadings and government flogging of liberal activists are shared and cheered. Today the social media landscape in the Middle East resembles the squares and streets of the Arab Spring cities of yore: it is a new battleground for hearts and minds between regimes, Islamists and activists; between young and old; between freedom and constraint.

There are signs of hope, though. In the midst of the all the doom and gloom, comedy from the likes of Bassem Youssef, Karl Sharro and Fahad Albutairi has become a tool to counter the growing online restrictions. Satire, “the weapon of the powerless against the powerful” has angered brainwashed ISIS followers and countered racist and Islamophobic coverage in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacres. One thing is clear: the liberal minded activists of the Arab Spring may be down, but they are certainly not out.

The easy thought: any weapon can be turned against you.  But there’s a limited audience for brutality, and brutality begats brutality and little else.  For those who exist through its employment, they may enjoy limited success, but I do not imagine living in such a society brings one much pleasure.