What I've Been Reading: July 2015 to November 2015

As was the case for the first half of this year and much of the previous one, my reading pace has been slowed down by my tendency to use my commuting time to check my email on my phone and work on various projects on my laptop rather than to do my reading. However, I still have managed to get some reading in. The books described below are ones that I've finished in the latter half of the year, and there are a few others that I should manage to finish soon.

Voices and Powers by Ursula K. LeGuin
These two novels are sequels to LeGuin’s Gifts and the second and third in her Annals of the Western Shore series. Each novel has a different main protagonist, though Orrec and Gry from Gifts play a major role in Voices, and the two of them, together with Memer, the protagonist of Voices, appear briefly at the end of Powers. In terms of dramatic setting, Voices is probably the most “typical” of the three books, as Memer is an adolescent girl living in a city occupied by a hostile army, and she comes to play a role in the effort by the people of the city to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. But as might be expected of LeGuin’s thoughtful writing, Memer learns that things are not completely black and white and that violence is not always the best way to accomplish things. Powers tells the tale of Gavir, a young man who grows up as a slave in a city-state somewhat reminiscent of ancient Greece or Rome that is at almost constant war with its neighbors (though which ones varies due to constantly shifting alliances). Though at first glance, the family that Gavir belongs to treats their slaves very well, almost like members of the family, we soon learn that there is a dark side even to the best master-slave relationships. This novel has less conventional action than Voices, being more of a tale of personal discovery, but it has its share of drama and terrible tragedy.

All three books share to some extent the central theme of the power of books and the written word, as the protagonists are all readers living among people who mostly read less well than them, or not at all, and their reading ability plays an important role in the story, particularly in Voices and Powers. Reading is at the center of Memer and Gavir’s lives and their interactions with both the literate and the illiterate people around them. As for these other characters, many of them are also quite complex and well-developed. Interestingly, the most one-dimensional characters in any of the three Western Shore novels are the chief villains. Even more complex than most of the characters are the pictures of the societies, which, as in all of LeGuin’s novels, are drawn in vivid detail. Overall, both these books are up to LeGuin’s usual high standards and are well worth reading.

Freedom in Exile by the Dalai Lama
The autobiography of the man who was born Lhamo Dondrub but is now better known as Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is very interesting reading. While I knew the basic outline of his life and, having read one of his books (Beyond Religion) and heard a few of his speeches, I knew something about his views on many issues, it was quite fascinating to learn the details. Of course anyone who knows even a little about his life knows that the Chinese claims that he is an inveterate anti-Communist and anti-Chinese radical are complete nonsense, but it was interesting to learn the details of his attempts to reach some sort of accommodation with the Chinese Communists, including his meetings with Mao Zedong and other leaders, and of his opinions of various political and economic systems – as he also says in his other book, he considers himself half a Marxist in terms of ensuring that wealth is distributed fairly, though he found that Communism as practiced in China fell far short of its lofty ideals. I only recall one occasion in the book where he slips into negative (though understandable) stereotyping of Chinese people in general; for the most part he bends over backwards to make the point that despite the terrible way the Chinese government has treated his people, he bears no ill will toward the Chinese. Though of course he regards Tibet as a country that was historically independent of China, which it in fact was, he reiterates a willingness to compromise with China on the issue of Tibet’s status, even though justly he could (and some might say should) insist on full independence.

The Dalai Lama’s stories of his childhood are quite fascinating. He grew up mostly secluded from the general populace, though he did occasionally slip out and from an early age showed a keen interest in ordinary people and their lives. While it must have been quite strange to be treated as almost a living god, it seemingly didn’t turn his head, and once his situation was transformed by first the Chinese invasion and eventually exile, he was quick to eliminate many of the formalities that had grown up around his positions. Possessing a lively curiosity and a rational mind, he unsurprisingly developed an interest in technology and science. He isn’t entirely free from unscientific beliefs, however; he expresses some faith in the powers of soothsayers, though he also makes it clear that he knows not everyone shares his belief – indeed, his own expressions of belief have a bit of ambivalence about them. Certainly for the leader of a religion who grew up surrounded by a considerable amount of what I would frankly regard as superstition, he has a much more logical and scientific mind than would be expected; indeed more so than most Westerners. While one might learn as much or more about the Dalai Lama’s philosophical views from other books he’s written, this autobiography is an excellent way to learn about his own take on his very eventful life and about the recent history of Tibet.

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
MaddAddam is the third and final book in Margaret Atwood’s trilogy about a dystopian near future, continuing the story that started in Oryx and Crake and continued in The Year of the Flood. Like those two novels, MaddAddam is told partly in the post-apocalyptic present and partly in flashbacks to the time before the plague that wiped out most of humanity, causing the collapse of civilization. In this novel, the focus is on Toby, who also was one of the two main protagonists of The Year of the Flood, and Zeb, who also played a major role in the second novel. The parts of the novel set in the present are told from Toby’s viewpoint, and they are interspersed with Zeb’s account to Toby of his life up to the time they met as members of the group called God’s Gardeners, founded by Adam, Zeb’s brother (though there is some question as to their precise genetic relationship). Jimmy and Ren, the main protagonist of Oryx and Crake and the second main protagonist of The Year of the Flood, also appear, though Ren’s role is relatively minor.

All in all, MaddAddam meets the standards set by the previous two novels, and if anything may be slightly stronger than The Year of the Flood. There is at least one apparent minor inconsistency between this book and the previous one regarding the fate of Adam, presumably because Atwood simply changed her mind, but this is insignificant and could perhaps be explained away. The only bit I found slightly disappointing was the way the fate of the three characters who disappeared on an expedition at the very end of the novel was handled. Even if the group believed that the explanation of what had happened to them was accurate, you’d think they’d send another group out to check, just in case there were (perhaps injured) survivors on either side. It seemed a bit odd for them to just make an assumption and leave it at that. However, despite this flaw, the book is otherwise a good conclusion to an excellent trilogy of novels, one that I’d recommend to readers of any sort.

Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach
Ecotopia, first published in 1975, is a very interesting book that in some ways is more of a manifesto for an ideal society than a standard novel. The basic premise is that part of the United States, specifically northern California, Oregon and Washington, has broken away and formed the nation of Ecotopia. The new country is founded on radical, idealistic principles with respect to ecology, politics, economics and indeed virtually every element of society. A journalist from the United States visits Ecotopia several decades after its independence to do a series of investigative reports on the country, which has been largely closed to Americans since it was established.

Ecotopia, as the name implies, embodies ecological principles under which humans’ use of nature is kept in careful balance. Highly artificial materials (such as most plastics) and exploitative materials such as metals and fossil fuels are dispensed with and replaced by natural materials. While animals are still eaten, they are hunted with simple weapons like bows and arrows, and care is taken to avoid over-hunting. Wood is used for a lot of things, including construction, but forests are planted to replace all wood used.

The society of Ecotopia is likewise very different from that of the US. Women and men are completely equal; indeed, women were the main driving force behind the country’s establishment. Social relations have been completely transformed, including everything from sexual relations to the raising of children. Government is highly decentralized, and large cities have been broken up into more manageable sizes. People are guaranteed basic necessities, and work to get luxuries. Schools involve a lot of independent, hands-on work by the students, including spending time exploring nature. Even relationships are quite different, with American prudishness about sex largely dispensed with, though people still form strong pair bonds (it’s even mentioned that there is no stigma about same sex relationships).

What plot there is in Ecotopia has to do with how the American journalist, William Weston, grows in his understanding of Ecotopian society and particularly how he gets involved in a relationship with an Ecotopian woman who aids him in this process. But the plot is not really the point here. The main purpose of the book is to present a comprehensive picture of a possible society founded on principles of environmental sustainability and social and economic equality and stability. While some aspects of the book date it somewhat – for example, while fossil fuels are rejected by the Ecotopians, this is because of their polluting and unsustainable qualities, not because of climate change, which is not even mentioned (the concept was known long before the book was published but had not really seeped into the public consciousness) – it is also remarkable prescient in some ways, including some of the products the Ecotopians make and some of the ways they obtain energy. Some of the changes in the way people behave strike me as a bit dubious, not so much because they would be undesirable, but because, as author Iain Banks said with regard to his futuristic society the Culture, they seem a little difficult to obtain without some sort of genetic engineering to fundamentally change some of the negative aspects of human nature. But with a few exceptions most aspects of Ecotopia do seem like they’d be a vast improvement over modern, capitalistic society. In general, the book is a thought-provoking look at some ways society could be made more sustainable and equitable, and could provide the starting point for some interesting debates.

Paris Agreement on Climate Change

In my last post, I talked about the climate conference in Paris. Now the summit is over and an agreement was reached by the attending countries (regrettably not including Taiwan, thanks of course to China, which acts as if it would rather see human civilization collapse due to runaway climate change than recognize Taiwan as an independent nation) to limit the global temperature increase to less than 2 degrees Celsius, with a goal of holding the rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees. This is in many ways an impressive, landmark agreement, as it is the first time that almost all the world’s nations have committed to fighting climate change and set specific goals to mitigate its effects. For this reason, the agreement is being widely celebrated, not only by the leaders who signed it but by many environmental groups and non-governmental organizations. However, there has been some criticism of the agreement as falling short of the truly revolutionary transformation that is needed and for lacking in specific binding steps that countries must take within specific time frames. While I haven’t read the agreement or even seen a detailed summary of it, from what I’ve heard, there is merit to both the positive and negative views of it.

It is certainly fair to say that the agreement is about as good as or even better than could have been realistically expected, considering factors such as political inertia, diversity of interests, and outright obstruction from some parties both inside and outside the negotiations. Past climate conferences have not produced anything nearly as far reaching as this agreement, and the fact that a goal of limiting the temperature increase to less than 2 degrees was included was a pleasant surprise, as the conventional wisdom before the summit was that a 2 degree limit was the best that was likely to be agreed to. As I understand it, the agreement also talks of a target of reducing net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, a big improvement over the vague declarations of the past. It seems that to a point at least pressure from NGOs, civil society, and the nations that will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change, particularly the small island nations whose very existence is in danger, was able to push the negotiators in the right direction.

On the other hand, those who say the agreement falls short have a point as well. Global temperatures have already risen by about 1 degree Celsius over pre-industrial levels. Even if we stopped all production of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane immediately, temperatures would still continue to rise for some time afterwards, as the gases already produced would remain in the atmosphere (though methane persists for less long, leading some to point out that stopping methane production – including putting a stop to fracking – would have more immediate benefits as far as limiting temperature increases). Scientists have stated that in order to keep temperature increases to a manageable level, global fossil fuel use needs to have peaked no later than 2020, only five years from now. Given this situation, it is fair to question whether an agreement that doesn’t actually require countries to take immediate action will be able to meet its stated goals. Countries are required to report on their progress every five years, but as far as I am aware, there are no sanctions or penalties for failure to make progress. In other words, while the stated goals may meet expectations, there is no guarantee that they will actually be met. Also, while there is general talk of lower net carbon emissions to zero, there is apparently no specific mention of one necessary step to reach that goal, namely eliminating or at least heavily reducing the use of fossil fuels. Finally, the aid being offered to developing countries by developed ones falls short of what they are likely to really need.

It should be noted that one reason for the lack of binding measures and sufficient funding for developing nations is the US Republican Party. US Secretary of State John Kerry openly admitted that the main reason the US negotiators didn’t want specific language of this sort was that it would mean that US Congress – dominated by climate changing denying Republicans – would have to review the agreement. So while Kerry and US President Barack Obama aren’t to blame for the agreement’s shortfalls (at least no more than most of the other similarly overcautious leaders), the Republicans and their supporters, along with the fossil fuel industry and certain oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia, are largely responsible for the agreement not being all it could have been. Though to some extent it is not surprising that those who have a vested interest in today’s fossil fuel industry would be reluctant to accept the need to change, it is still extremely irresponsible and selfish, and in some instances possibly even criminal, such as in the case of Exxon’s funding of climate change denialism despite having been warned by its own scientists of the threat of climate change as early as the 1970s and 1980s. As for those who are actually delusional enough to not accept that there is a problem, some may eventually come around, but in any case anyone in leadership positions who is either unable or unwilling to accept the science should definitely be voted out or replaced so they can’t continue to obstruct efforts to make change.

Despite the major caveats discussed above, the agreement should be viewed as an important step in the right direction. While it could be a lot better, it is a global acknowledgement of the seriousness of the problem and provides a framework for further progress. What’s important now is that we all work with the many activist groups focused on this issue to put pressure on our governments to not only fulfill the commitments they made in this agreement but also accelerate their progress toward a clean energy future while we all work to change our societies to make them more sustainable. If we are to avoid potentially disastrous consequences, we have to immediately start building on the limited progress that the Paris Agreement represents.

Paris Climate Summit

The most important thing going on in the world right now is the climate summit in Paris, which will help determine whether or not we will be able to avoid or at least ameliorate the severe disruption that will result from anthropogenic climate change. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have already reached 400 ppm (they were less than 300 ppm in the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution was first getting into full swing), methane levels are also rising, and the average global temperature has already increased by about one degree Celsius. This year has seen an almost constant stream of record hot months, and is certain to be the hottest year on record, beating out 2014, which is the current record holder. Even if the current summit produces an unexpectedly strong, binding agreement, we will almost certainly see a further increase in the average global temperature of about 1.5 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, even the more modest target of a 2 degree Celsius increase, regarded as the maximum that we can afford if we want to avoid catastrophic disruption, will prove difficult to meet if the world’s political leaders don’t start showing more boldness than most of them have demonstrated so far. Humanity has to decisively break free of its dependence on fossil fuels, which means standing up to the wealthy and politically well-connected oil and coal interests, and we also need to make major changes in how we feed everyone. Without immediate steps along these lines, we’re likely to see temperature increases of over 2 degrees Celsius, possibly much higher.

Even a complete lack of action would not result in anything like the extinction of humanity, much less all life on Earth. For that matter, the planet’s natural climate balancing mechanisms, such as the carbon cycle, will probably eventually undo much of the damage. But the key word is “eventually”; we’re talking about thousands or even tens of thousands of years, a short time period as far as the Earth is concerned, but a very long time in comparison with human history. This is why the argument made by climate change deniers that what climate change is occurring is not big deal because the climate is “always changing”. The problem is that thanks to us, it is changing as much in just a few centuries as it might normally in many thousands of years. The Earth and Terran life in general can adapt to these changes, but it will take a long time to do so. The changes that will result just within this century from continued inaction will in the meantime flood low-lying areas all around the world, including cities and densely populated areas that are home to hundreds of millions of people, crops that feed hundreds of millions more will have their production disrupted, some small island nations will disappear entirely, and many species will become extinct. While humanity as a whole is adaptable and will almost certainly survive, suffering will be widespread. In fact, if change is severe enough, modern human civilization could be in danger. While some of humanity will probably be able to go on as usual even if millions die and hundreds of millions are made homeless, it’s possible that disruption will reach a scale where even the world’s developed nations will descend into chaos. After all, it’s highly probable that the climate change that has already occurred contributed to the current problems in Syria. If global temperatures rise by as much as 4 degrees Celsius, the world may end with a dozen places as messed up as Syria and tens or even hundreds of millions of refugees trying to get into the world’s wealthy nations. This is even aside from the changes experienced by those nations themselves, including densely populated areas becoming uninhabitable. Can human civilization endure the strains that will result? Maybe, but it’s far from certain.

I’ll admit that I’m fairly cynical about whether we will be able to hit even the 2 degree target, which is already on the high side. There’s still too much apathy and outright resistance by the foolish and the selfish. But this doesn’t mean I agree those who just throw up their hands and say we can’t do anything so we shouldn’t bother trying. Every little bit we do now may save millions of lives in the future, so we should do as much as we possibly can as soon as we possibly can.

Current Events: Paris and Beirut, Two National Elections And China-Taiwan Meeting

There have been a lot of big news stories around the world in the last few weeks. The latest is of course the terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut (though the latter got considerably less attention, and not just because the death toll was smaller). Attacks like these call for a well thought-out response, not simplistic, ignorant “solutions”, but that hasn’t stopped some people from suggesting the latter. Many, for example, have tried to blame the refugees from Syria who have recently fled to Europe in large numbers, with a number of right-wing governors in the US declaring that they don’t want them in their states (despite lacking any legal authority to contest the federal government’s decisions in such matters) and some Republicans attempting to keep them out of the US altogether, even though the attack was largely carried out by EU citizens. One passport found at the scene appears to have belonged to a Syrian who entered Europe as a refugee, but some have suggested that this may have been a deliberate plant by ISIS, which generally rejects passports and other trappings of modern nation-states but has an interest in turning Westerns against refugees (who they hate) and in getting the West to treat all Muslims as enemies, thereby creating the religious war they want. In any case, if one or even a few out of hundreds of thousands of refugees turn out to be violent radicals, it’s no more reasonable to blame the rest of them for what happened in Paris than it is to blame all white people in the US for the terrorist act of the Charleston shooter. A bigger source of danger remains homegrown radicals, of whatever ideology, whether it’s people like Roof in the US, Breivik in Norway, or the hundreds of French citizens who have gone abroad to fight for ISIS and then returned to France (though even the latter should not all be assumed to be dangerous, as many left due to disillusionment and in at least some cases have rejected radical ideology). In fact, most of the Paris attackers who have been identified were French or Belgian by birth or upbringing, and French President François Hollande, in contrast to the repellent posturing of many conservative American politicians, has emphasized that France has the “humanitarian duty” to take in all the Syrian refugees it had agreed to admit.

This attack does seem to differ from atrocities like the ones in Charleston and Norway, which were committed by individual lunatics, or even the Charlie Hebdo attack at the beginning of the year, which was committed by a few local crazies largely on their own initiative, in that it seems from what is known so far that it may have been at least partly planned and coordinated from abroad. Nevertheless, even if ISIS was directly responsible for the attack, this if anything should mean we should be even more sympathetic to the refugees, since, as others have pointed out, the people who seem to have been responsible for the attack are the same people the refugees are fleeing from. Ironically, the response of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, was considerably more moderate and reasonable than that of many xenophobes in the West. While it may not be surprising that he would strongly condemn attacks by ISIS, a group that is currently one of Hezbollah’s biggest enemies (indeed, one of ISIS’s biggest accomplishments is making enemies out of everybody, something they’ve just reinforced by attacking a Russian airplane, a Shiite neighborhood in Beirut and a major Western capital in quick succession), it is notable that with reference to the attacks in Lebanon, he called on Lebanese not to blame the Syrian refugees in their country, and Lebanon has many times more Syrian refugees than any country in Europe. If only Western right-wingers would show as much sense.

The truth is, if ISIS or other extremist groups based abroad want to launch attacks on the West, it is much easier for them to use local radicals or get into the country as tourists or business travels than to enter as refugees. The idea being promoted by conservative Republicans that Syrian refugees are a threat to the US is absurd. Refugees go through many checks, far more than others who come into the country (not to mention the right-wing radicals like Roof, who are probably more of a danger), and there are virtually no cases of any refugees admitted since 2001 being involved in suspected terrorism in the US. The people of Syria have had to live with attacks like the one in Paris on an almost daily basis for several years now, and yet some people’s response when they come seeking refuge is to turn them away on the unlikely chance that a minuscule fraction of them may be terrorists, or to only admit those belonging to a particular religion? It’s not only ridiculous, it’s frankly disgusting, and I’m glad that US President Barack Obama didn’t mince words in criticizing such calls. It would be just as logical to stop allowing Norwegians into the US on the off chance that one might be like Breivik, or to stop allowing Christians because they might be like Joseph Kony. To call for stopping all Syrian or Muslim refugees from entering the US or other Western countries, one would have to be ignorant, cowardly, or morally bankrupt – or some combination of the three. When we stand in solidarity with the people of Paris – and Beirut – we should also speak out strongly against those among us who are playing into the hands of ISIS by making this out to be a conflict between the West and Muslims in general. This is not a fight against “radical Islam”, it’s a fight against all violent and hateful groups, whatever their religion or ethnic origin, including any who threaten violence against peaceful Muslims or refugees in the West.

A final note on Paris: Lest it be forgotten, at the end of this month leaders from around the world will be meeting there to address climate change. Not only are the terror attacks not a reason to delay or reduce the scope of the meeting, they actually should be an extra incentive to take action. After all, as I have talked about before and others such as US presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have noted, there is a direct link between climate change and the Syrian civil war via the severe drought the country suffered in the years leading up to it, creating mass unemployment, internal migration, instability and suffering that helped fuel the discontent that Assad’s bloody response to turned into a full scale rebellion. If we don’t do something about climate change, even more suffering and instability will no doubt create even more conflict, with radical groups of whatever ideology feeding off of it. We’ll have to hope that the world leaders meeting in Paris fully understand this and it helps push them to agree on real steps to deal with climate change.

Another significant news item is the national elections that took place in Turkey and Myanmar (Burma). In Turkey, regrettably, the AKP, the party of the country’s nationalist and increasingly authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, regained its parliamentary majority, having lost it in the elections in June. Erdogan first hindered efforts to create a coalition government, making new elections necessary, and then he openly campaigned for the AKP, both actions contrary to his position as the supposedly neutral president of the country. What’s more, he instigated an unjustified conflict with Kurdish rebels in order to inflame nationalist passions. Despite all this, it shouldn’t be overlooked that Erdogan’s victory, while unexpected by the pollsters, was not as overwhelming as many headlines might lead one to believe. The AKP won just under 50% vote, far more than they deserved to get, but still less than an absolute majority. While they won a sizable majority of seats, they still fell short of a supermajority, so Erdogan will only be able to make the constitutional changes he wants (such as, naturally, strengthening the power of the president) if he can get some cooperation from other parties. The party which saw the greatest reduction in votes and seats was the right-wing nationalist MHP, a group at least as bad as the AKP. The more left-leaning CHP, the biggest opposition party, actually gained two seats and saw a slight increase in votes. The Kurdish party HDP lost a considerable number of votes and seats, but not nearly as many as the MHP, despite being demonized by the AKP as being associated with Kurdish rebel groups and having turnout in its strongholds reduced by the conflict engineered by Erdogan, not to mention having a peace rally attended by many of its activists targeted in the deadliest terrorist attack ever in modern Turkey. Also it should be remembered that the performance of the HDP in the June elections was also a surprise to many observers, so their performance this time was closer to what had been expected in June. So really the AKP didn’t get a victory as sweeping as they might have, considering that the election was considered “unfair” by many neutral observers. Still, it was a disappointing result. We can only hope that Erdogan and the AKP are not able to do too much more damage to Turkish democracy and relations with the country’s Kurdish minority before the next election, and that enough Turkish voters choose to reject the AKP when the time comes.

Another election was held this past weekend in Myanmar (Burma), the first in which control of the government was at stake. Before it relaxed its grip on power, the military dictatorship which had previously ruled Burma drew up a constitution which reserved a quarter of the seats in parliament for military appointees, kept key ministries (including, of course, defense) in military hands, and gave the military the right to take over under certain circumstances. They also included a provision barring anyone who had been married to a foreign national from the presidency, written specifically to prevent opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose late husband was British, from becoming president. This election was the first for which all of the non-military seats in parliament were up for grabs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won an overwhelming victory, winning the vast majority of contested seats, enough to gain an absolute majority. Unlike after the last freely contested elections in 1990, also won by the NLD in a landslide, this time the military seems to be willing to accept the results. Considering the military’s still substantial power, the NLD will still have to reach some accommodation with them; while changing the constitution to reduce the military’s power and allow Suu Kyi to become president might be a possibility, it would have to be done with care, lest the military decide to seize absolute power again. There’s also the awkward situation that will prevail in the meantime, in which Suu Kyi will be the clear leader of the ruling party and the dominant individual in the government but cannot hold the position of highest formal authority in the country. But the real test for Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD is not how they deal with the military, but whether they finally start acting to protect Myanmar’s Muslim minority, particularly the persecuted Rohingya. Unfortunately, their record so far in this regard is poor; the NLD didn’t even field a single Muslim candidate. While some extremist Buddhist monks even accused Suu Kyi and the NLD of being “Islamist” because they are not sufficiently Islamophobic, the unfortunate truth is that Suu Kyi has remain mostly silent on the almost genocidal oppression the Rohingya have been subjected to. Will she act differently now that she has real power? That remains to be seen.

Lastly, there was the recent meeting between Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou and Chinese president Xi Jinping. While Western media sources tended to play up the significance of the meeting, it really didn’t amount to much. Here’s part of a comment I posted about it on one of the articles: "Ma's main purpose in having this meeting was to boost the poor prospects of the KMT in next year's elections, and if that doesn't work, to undermine the future DPP government by setting bad precedents through talk of "one China", a concept most Taiwanese don't subscribe to. Given his extremely poor poll standing and virtual lame duck status, his actions shouldn't be seen as representing Taiwan or its people. China's government and its supporters always claim that people on both sides want China and Taiwan to unify. This is probably true of people in China, given the decades of nationalist propaganda people there have had to swallow, but in Taiwan most of the "one China" propaganda has been ditched and most Taiwanese don't want to unify with China. If China really believes its own claims that Taiwanese do want to be part of China, then they shouldn't have any objection to Taiwan having a referendum on the subject. It's because they know that unification would not win that they threaten violence if such a vote was held.... Maybe Ma Ying-jeou really wants to be Chinese. In that case he is free to move to China when he leaves office. But Taiwan's fate is up to the Taiwanese to decide. Anyone else with any sense of justice will support their right to self-determination. As for those Chinese who thanks to the nationalistic education they have received can't let go of the idea that Taiwan is China's, they should ask themselves, why should it really matter to them personally what Taiwan's status is? If Taiwanese don't share your loyalty to the idea of "China", do you really think you can or should force them to? Everyone should be free to live as they wish, as long as they don't interfere with the freedom of others -- which is what China is doing by trying to force unification on an unwilling Taiwan."

Despite this apparent attempt by Ma to boost the KMT’s candidate in the race to succeed him, polls afterwards showed that it didn’t help, and most people were not impressed with the meeting itself. While there is still some time to go before the election, there seems to be a very good chance that the KMT will lose the presidency and possibly even its legislative majority, which has not happened since the KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949. While the DPP is far from perfect – one reason I hoping that one or more of the left-leaning third parties such as the Green Party do well – it would be good to see the KMT finally lose power in Taiwan.

KIC 8462852 And the Likelihood of Finding Alien Civilizations

Over the past few weeks a number of articles have appeared in various news sources about the star KIC 8462852. This was one of the thousands of stars observed by the Kepler telescope in its search for extrasolar planets. For those who are unfamiliar with Kepler and how it works, the telescope observed stars over a long period of time, watching for periodic dips in their brightness that indicated the presence of planets passing in front of the stars and blocking a tiny portion of their light. Kepler’s initial observation period came to an end when two of the reaction wheels used to maintain the stability necessary for precise observations failed, though since then it has been re-purposed for more limited observations. The initial haul of data is still being analyzed and has already resulted in the discovery of hundreds of planets. Some of these planets are super-Earths (planets not much larger than Earth, as opposed to gas giants like Jupiter), and a few are in the theoretical habitable zones around their stars where liquid water could exist on their surfaces, though we as yet have no way of knowing if it actually does.

What stood out about KIC 8462852, a star somewhat larger than the Sun (spectral class F3 as compared to the Sun's G2) that is about 1480 light years away, was that the observed dips in its brightness were too substantial to have been caused by a planet, and they were irregular. In other words, in the two observed dimming events, which came about 750 days apart, the star dimmed, brightened and then dimmed again several times. This is extremely odd, and astronomers have struggled to come up with an explanation that fits the data. This uncertainty led a few astronomers to note that there was an additional possibility that didn’t involve natural phenomena. This was that the star was surrounded by some sort of alien megastructure designed to capture the star’s light for use as an energy source. This sort of construction has been proposed as a theoretical possibility before, with the most complete version being what is known as a Dyson sphere (after Freeman Dyson, who helped popularize the concept), which would totally surround the star in order to capture all or nearly all of its light. This is obviously not what is being observed here, but as Dyson himself later noted that a solid sphere or even ring around a star was "mechanically impossible", so a practical Dyson sphere would have be something like a swarm or bubble of constructs around the star, so the possibility remains open. Furthermore, some have pointed out that the megastructure could be incomplete (whether because it’s still under construction or because it is abandoned and derelict). In any case the idea is that it is something like a "Dyson swarm" that is being seen here.

Most likely, though, the explanation is something far more prosaic. Even the astronomers who have talked about the possibility that what is being seen at KIC 8462852 is an alien artifact have emphasized that the true explanation is likely to be something natural. The leading theories seems to be a unusually large swarm of comets, presumably disturbed by a recent passing star, though some question whether it is possible for a large enough number of comets to account for the data to have been disrupted, or simply dust, though astronomers are not sure why a seemingly older star (KIC 8462852 is thought to be at least as old as the 5-billion-year-old Sun, though there is still some uncertainty about that) would have so much dust around it. Despite the difficulties with both ideas, dust seems to be the most likely cause. Certainly we should want to see a lot more evidence before leaping to the extraordinary conclusion that aliens are the cause, or even anything more than a remote possibility; as Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

But all the talk about KIC 8462852 does bring up once again the long-running debate over life in the universe, and specifically the likelihood that there are alien civilizations capable of space travel (obviously necessary to build any kind of structures around even the local star) out there somewhere. Of course, there are a lot of uncertainties involved, spelled out most clearly in the famous Drake equation. How many habitable planets are there? How many of those have life? How many planets with life give rise to technological civilizations capable of space travel? How long do such civilizations typically last? Everyone has different answers to these questions, but no one knows for sure. However, I’m willing to give my own take on the matter, even if I can’t claim to be an expert.

From all the planets we have discovered over the past two decades, we can estimate that there are over a hundred billion planets in the Milky Way, which is home to several hundred billion stars, many or even most of which are likely to have planets. Most of these planets will not be at all Earth-like, but it still seems likely that there could be billions in our galaxy that are similar enough to Earth to be considered habitable. The next question is how likely it is that life has arisen on these planets. We’re still not certain exactly how life arose here (though we’re getting closer all the time) and we still haven’t found definitive evidence of life originating anywhere other than Earth. Given how pervasive life is on Earth, though, I would not be surprised if we find traces of it elsewhere in the solar system, such as on Mars, Europa or Enceladus, and the fact that life seems to have appeared fairly early in Earth’s history is also a positive sign for how likely it is to arise in the first place.

But so far we are only talking about life in its most primitive, single-celled form. There is a rather large leap from this to a technological civilization capable of space travel. In fact, even if life in general turns out to be fairly common in the universe, we may find that on the vast majority of planets it consists entirely of single-celled organisms. After all, life existed on Earth for over 3 billion years before multi-cellular life appeared around 600 million years ago. To put that in perspective, life appeared within a billion years of the Earth’s formation and quite soon after the end of the hypothetical Late Heavy Bombardment era, during which it may have been difficult for even primitive life to survive (and even harder for any traces of life that may have arisen to survive for us to find), but for the vast majority of Earth’s history, there were only single-celled organisms – no plants or animals of any sort, much less intelligent life. This may indicate that it takes special conditions that are not easily fulfilled for multicellular life to evolve, and on many planets where life appears, these conditions may never arise.

Even if multicellular organisms appear, there is no guarantee that intelligent life forms will evolve – particularly intelligent life forms capable of constructing spaceships. Multicellular life had been on Earth for over half a billion years before humans evolved, so obviously intelligent life takes some time to appear. Of course on Earth there have been periodic mass extinctions that have wiped out most life, essentially setting back the evolutionary clock, so it isn’t as if we’ve had half a billion years of continuous evolution. On the other hand, other planets are likely to also suffer from periodic mass extinctions, and intelligent life would have to evolve in the periods between such events, which might be difficult if they were more frequent than they are on Earth. And even if intelligent life evolved, it would not necessarily be capable of developing advanced technology. It is often argued that dolphins are highly intelligent, but even if they are as smart as humans, they obviously can’t build spaceships. For that matter, even humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before developing advanced technology, and we couldn’t have done that without the right raw materials (for instance, sufficient amounts of iron that could be easily mined). Then there is the obvious danger of an advanced civilization destroying itself in a relatively short period of time, just as we could end up destroying ourselves (or at least sending ourselves back to a low level of technology) through nuclear weapons or catastrophic climate change. After all, we've been capable of space travel for only half a century. That's 0.025% of the time modern humans have been around, and 0.000001% of Earth's history. For us to have a chance of encountering (even from a distance) any alien civilizations, some of them would have to last a lot longer than that.

So there probably are a lot of barriers to advanced technological civilizations arising, to the point that they may only appear on a tiny fraction of habitable planets. But on the other hand, if there are 10 billion habitable planets in the galaxy, even a one in a hundred million chance that an advanced civilization had arisen and survived long enough to be around now would mean that there would be a hundred such civilizations. That’s not a particularly huge number, considering how large our galaxy is, and if they are that rare we may have trouble finding them, especially if we keep in mind how huge the distances between stars are - even talking to any aliens living in the KIC 8462852 system would take 3000 years for a single exchange of messages. As for alien civilizations in other galaxies, they would be so far away as to be completely inaccessible even for any form of communication, unless wormholes or other forms of exotic travel turn out to be possible. Still, while it seems too much to hope that KIC 8462852 will turn out to have advanced alien life, it almost certainly does exist somewhere else in the universe, and probably even exists somewhere else in our galaxy. Whether we will ever find it is another matter; however, I am all in favor of continuing to look.

More Election Fun

Having commented recently on the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, it makes sense to talk a little about the Democratic candidates as well, especially since they recently held their first debate. Actually, I made a few observations on them a few months back, and much of that still stands. Furthermore, it is still in my opinion a bit early to be obsessing to much about the US presidential race, as there are still several months until the primaries actually start. However, given the importance of the US president, it is worthwhile to start taking a look at some of the people vying for the position, particularly those who have reasonable positions on the important issues. I’m also going to comment briefly on the Taiwanese presidential race, where there have been some bizarre developments.

If I were to judge the Democratic candidates purely on their current stated positions, Martin O’Malley might have to be my first choice. His policy positions on important issues like climate change, economic inequality, gun control, and reining in Wall Street are as good as or better than those of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. However, some aspects of his record as mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland bother me, and in any case his current prospects are not that great. Sanders is the best prospect for radical, progressive change, which is something I think the United States needs. His positions on the majority of issues are excellent, and as I will discuss further in a moment, he does really seem to be different from your average politician, even on the left. His main weakness is on guns. Though this is perhaps quite as vital an issue as climate change, income inequality, or getting money out of politics, it is still something that is reaching a crisis point in the US, and as I have noted in the past, it is connected with other issues, such as the high numbers of people being shot and killed by the police (to reiterate, though as Black Lives Matter activists correctly state, there is a very clear racial disparity in such incidents, it is also obvious that if guns weren’t so pervasive in the society, police would be much less trigger happy, regardless of the race of the suspects). While Sanders has a far better stance on gun control than anyone on the Republican side, some of his past votes were poor judgment at best. In fact, guns are another of the many issues were there needs to be a radical change in direction, and unlike on other issues, Sanders seems unlikely to provide it. Nevertheless, his excellent views on so many other issues go a long way toward making up for his weakness in this area.

Of course, despite Sanders’ high poll numbers and the huge crowds he has been his drawing, the pundits still consider Hillary Rodham Clinton the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, especially given her strong performance in the debate. Though many progressives have decidedly mixed feelings about Clinton, her stated positions on the majority of issues are solidly progressive, and at least one article I read noted that her voting record as a US Senator was actually slightly more progressive than Barack Obama’s. Perhaps in part due to pressure from popular left-wing Democrats like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Clinton’s positions on many issues have moved noticeably further to the left in this campaign. However, she is still overly cautious on many issues, showing a reluctance to push for radical reform. If she is elected and manages to actually carry out everything that she says she want to do, it would certainly make things better in the US, but perhaps not as much as is really needed. Still, if she wins the Democratic nomination, I will support her. Even in the primaries, though I think Sanders and O’Malley have better positions overall, I am not necessarily rooting that strongly for them to beat her. I think she’s a stronger candidate than O’Malley, and her stance on guns is better than that of Sanders. Also, just the fact that if she won she would be the first woman to be US president is a point in her favor.

I should also note that one negative about Clinton in the eyes of most on the left is less of an issue for me, and that is her relatively hawkish stances on foreign policy. I think she may be a little more inclined to rely on military force than is wise, as I definitely think that military force should be an absolute last resort. That said, I don’t think it should be completely ruled out, especially in the face of major humanitarian crises like the war on Syria. I don’t mean that I think US ground troops should be put into Syria or Iraq, or even necessarily that a no fly zone in Syria is a good idea at this point. But if I were US president and I could be convinced, after hearing all the arguments on both sides, that a no fly zone would save civilian lives and was unlikely to make things worse in the long term (such as by exacerbating the already bad relations between the US and Russia or by creating even more chaos in Syria), I would certainly consider it. In other words, while I agree that in most cases US intervention doesn’t help and often even makes bad situations worse, I do think we shouldn’t completely rule anything out if it has the potential to save lives. So while I’m still undecided as to the best course of action in Syria, I tend to think of myself as falling somewhere between Sanders and O’Malley on the one hand and Clinton on the other hand.

But to go back to Sanders, I would like to mention one instance in which he demonstrated how he is different from your average politician. One of the most talked about moments in the debate was when Clinton was once more being grilled on the emails she sent as Secretary of State – the ones that the Republicans, abetted by many in the media, have been trying their best to turn into a scandal – and Sanders stepped in and defended Clinton, saying that people were tired of hearing about “your damn emails” when there were so many important issues facing the country. Not only was this part of Sanders’ narrative about keeping his campaign focused on substantive issues, rather than the meaningless trivial things the media loves to obsess about, it also demonstrated how uninterested he is in point scoring. The average politician would pile on when a rival is on the defensive, but Sanders seems to be genuinely determined to keep the focus on what can be done to solve the problems the US faces. This is definitely very refreshing, as is his call for a political revolution, rather than just incremental reform. Still, at this point I haven’t completely made up my mind between him and Clinton, or for that matter between the two of them and O’Malley.

I have not forgotten that there are other candidates running for the Democratic nomination. But Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee, aside from having no real chance at winning, are far less progressive than Clinton, the least progressive of the three top candidates, and don’t have anything in particular to recommend them. The most interesting candidate aside from the three discussed above in Lawrence Lessig, who as I have mentioned before I actually met and spoke to once around a decade ago when he was in Taiwan promoting Creative Commons. I agree wholeheartedly with his goal of dramatic campaign reform to get money out of politics, and I wouldn’t mind seeing him getting some traction in the race. He certainly should be allowed to join the next debate, as he probably has at least as much support as Webb and Chaffee, and he is a much better candidate. However, he is still a long shot, and I think it’s unlikely that he has a realistic chance. Finally, there’s Joe Biden, who people keep talking about as a potential candidate. While I like Biden well enough and would almost certainly vote for him if by some chance he won the nomination, he is also less progressive than Clinton (if to the left of Webb and Chafee), and I don’t see any point in him entering the race. If, rather than electing the first woman president of the US, we’re going to elect another white male, at least it should be someone really progressive like Sanders or O’Malley.

But while there are still many months to go before the nominees in the US presidential race will be decided and over a year until the general election, Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections will take place only three months from now, in mid January, so we’ll have a new Taiwanese president before the Democrats and Republicans have even officially nominated their candidates. But as close as the election is, there’s just been a major change in the race. The ruling KMT (Kuomintang/Guomindang/國民黨) several months ago went through its official process for choosing a candidate by means of a primary. Only one candidate, the right-wing legislator Hung Hsiu-chu, entered the race, so she won by default and was officially nominated by the KMT in July. However, she proved a terrible choice. Her campaigning skills left much to be desired, and more importantly, she showed herself to be even more pro-China than the mainstream of the KMT, which is already far to prepared to accommodate Taiwan’s bullying neighbor. Unsurprisingly, she fell well behind in polls against the candidate of the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party/民進黨), Tsai Ing-wen. A few weeks after Hung was nominated, former KMT official and past presidential candidate James Soong entered the race, making dubious attempts to position himself as a moderate. With a split in conservative support, Hung polled even worse, running far behind Tsai and not that far ahead of Soong, with even their combined support eventually dropping below that of Tsai. Finally, the KMT decided to replace Hung as their candidate, holding a party conference in which Hung was replaced by party chairman Eric Chu by acclamation – in other words, they didn’t even hold a vote.

If there is a recent example from anywhere in the world of a major political party changing their presidential candidate less than half a year before the election, particularly in such a clearly undemocratic manner, I’m not aware of it. What’s more, Chu’s decision to “accept the task” makes a mockery of his past assertions that he would serve out his current term as mayor of New Taipei City (not that he would be the first politician to violate such a pledge). While having Chu as president would not be quite as awful as having Hung, it wouldn’t be any improvement over the current president, Ma Ying-jeou, who’s been pretty bad (Chu has been fairly lousy as our mayor too), and I certainly wouldn’t want to see the KMT get rewarded for their dubious changing of horses in midstream by a victory. I hope Tsai (who is far from perfect, but would at least be a substantial improvement) wins by a substantial margin, even though it’s unlikely to be as much of a landslide as it would have been with Hung as her opponent. Somewhat comically, in the meeting at which Hung was replaced, Chu warned against the possibility that the DPP could win both the presidency and the legislature, claiming that would mean there would be no checks on the DPP’s power. This was rather ironic, since the KMT has held both the presidency and a large legislative majority over the past two terms (not to mention all the years it ruled Taiwan as a one party state before democratization in the 1990s), though it’s certainly true that Taiwanese have suffered due to the lack of checks on the KMT’s power. The best thing that could happen to Taiwan is if the KMT lost power permanently and the main opposition to the DPP came from new forces on the left. While this is unlikely in the immediate future, this election could be a start. As it happens, I am acquainted personally with at least three people running for legislative seats this time. All three are running as outsiders (two as members of small, new progressively-minded parties, and one as an independent), and while it’s far from certain that any of them will get elected, it would certainly be nice to see them and others like them in the legislature to keep the DPP and KMT honest, or at least as honest as they can be, which is not very in the KMT’s case, as its recent actions have once more shown.

Finally, there are actually some elections going on now - those for the Tibetan government in exile. The winners will certainly have a challenging job, not only trying to find a way to deal with China's unending malice, but also trying to fill the Dalai Lama's shoes as leader of the Tibetan people. It's interesting that one candidate for prime minister is openly suggesting that the Dalai Lama's moderate course be abandoned and full independence once again be declared the ultimate goal of the Tibetan people. As much as I respect the Dalai Lama, I think there is something to be said for aiming for independence, and I think it would be good if the Tibetans can have an open discussion about their options.

The Race to Be the Top Nut in the Nuthouse

According to the Republicans campaigning to be their party’s nominee to be the President of the United States (not to mention many others in their party), the chief problems facing the United States include things like illegal immigration, attacks on religious liberty, Planned Parenthood, attacks on cops incited by Black Lives Matter activists, Hillary Clinton’s private emails, and of course Iran and ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Given the excessive attention being paid to this circus – and particularly to the loud guy with the goofy hair who is currently leading the pack – by the national media in the US, at least some of the public may also be starting to believe that these are the things that matter, rather than issues like climate change, severe economic inequality, racial injustice, or the way money has come to dominate US politics. If the US president wasn’t such an influential figure, not only in the US itself but globally as well, most of the candidates’ rhetoric would simply be hilarious in its inanity, and if some of their fellow Republicans weren’t in a position to make laws and fund (or rather not fund) the government, their disconnection from reality would just be amusing.

According to Mr. Hair, the US is in grave danger of being overrun by rapists and murderers that Mexico is deliberately sending north and therefore it is imperative that a huge wall be built to keep out the riffraff. Most of his fellow candidates are only slightly less extreme in their views on immigration. Never mind that the number of people actually coming over the border illegally is at its lowest level in years, or that immigrants in fact commit crimes at far lower levels than native-born Americans, or that undocumented immigrants pay more into the system than they get in benefits. How extreme some in the Republican party have gotten on the issue of illegal immigration is shown by their response to the murder of a woman in San Francisco by a undocumented immigrant who had come back into the country despite being deported. A number of Republicans have gone so far as to propose a mandatory five year prison sentence for anyone caught coming back into the US after being deported. American prisons may be already overflowing, mandatory sentences in general may have long ago been shown to be unjust and ineffective at ending crime, and the idea of judging millions of undocumented people for the actions of one despicable individual may make about as much sense as condemning all white people for the actions of the racist Charleston mass murderer: Republicans still want to stuff prisons full of people whose “crime” is trying to join their families or just make a better life for themselves, treating them as they’ve committed an act as bad or worse than armed robbery or assault.

Then there’s the issue of “religious liberty”. Republican presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee rallied to the cause of a county clerk who went to jail rather than obeying a judge’s order to do her job, acting like she was some sort of martyr for her beliefs when she could have simply resigned if she really found letting same sex couples register their marriages at her office too much for her “conscience” – even though she seems to have no problem with divorced people (including herself) getting married. Only Lindsey Graham and Carly Fiorina offered some mild criticism of this petulant display of defiance against the rule of law. Huckabee and most of his fellow candidates also want Christians who oppose same sex marriage to be able to deny other services to gay couples, though they are silent on whether such people should also be able to deny services to people on second marriages or interracial couples. The Republicans seem to think that because conservative Christians are no longer able to freely impose their views in the public sphere, their “liberty” is at stake. On the other hand, they don’t seem so interested in protecting the religious liberty of Muslims, with Ben Carson even saying that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to be president and the orange haired guy implying that one already is (and that there are training camps for Islamic terrorists in the US, despite there being not a shred of evidence to support that claim).

As for Planned Parenthood, the Republican candidates are almost unanimous in condemning the organizations on the basis of doctored videos that do not actually prove anything like what they have been saying, and Carly Fiorina make even more wild and blatantly false claims based on a video that doesn’t even exist. Amazingly enough, it is the Donald who has been the voice of reason on this issue (relatively speaking, of course), acknowledging that Planned Parenthood provides many useful services. But the rest seem to just foam at the mouth at the mere mention of Planned Parenthood. But despite their supposedly “pro-life” hostility to abortion, none of these candidates seems interested in supporting measures that would actually reduce abortion, such as comprehensive (not abstinence-only) sex education and ready availability of contraceptives, nor are they interested in ensuring a decent life or even sufficient food, health care and education for the children that they want to force women to bring to term. In the meantime, John Boehner’s reluctance to shut down the entire federal government over Planned Parenthood funding has cost him his position as Speaker of the House of Representatives, leaving the House Republicans, as one commenter put it without even ineffectual “adult supervision”.

We’ve also heard that people like President Barack Obama have helped create anti-police hysteria by acknowledging in mild terms that a few police officers have on a few occasions done bad stuff and that Black Lives Matter activists are helping to create a war on cops. Never mind that far fewer police have been killed in the line of duty during Obama’s term than in equivalent periods in past administrations reaching back to the 1970s, or that the number of people killed by police in the first week of September was greater than the number of police killed in the entire year to date, or that Obama said a lot of positive things about most police officers, or that there have been many – and I do mean many – cases in which police officers have literally gotten away with completely unjustifiable murder, or that Black Lives Matter activists have never called for attacks on police, just reforms to address the problems which anyone who has been paying in attention clearly exist in how the police and the justice system treat minorities, especially African Americans.

Of course few Republican national figures can go very long without attacking the current Democratic front runner Hillary Rodham Clinton for something or other. An old favorite is her supposed responsibility for “allowing” the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including the ambassador (though Republicans seem to have conveniently forgotten that their favorite president, Ronald Reagan, “allowed” an attack on the US embassy in Lebanon that killed a couple hundred Marines). The current favorite, though, is Hillary’s deletion of private emails that she used when doing government business as US Secretary of State. Never mind that she was doing pretty much what her predecessors had done, or that there is no indication that she violated any procedures that were in place at the time; the desperate need for the Republicans to dig up a scandal to bring her down means that we can expect them to keep dredging the issue up until the general election (unless perhaps Bernie Sanders can manage to upset her in the Democratic primaries).

ISIL of course is the current favorite foreign bogeyman of the American right wing. Lindsey Graham, and the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is their favorite example of the supposed weakness of Obama’s foreign policy. Lindsey Graham famously warned that without military action by the US, ISIL would come to the US and “kill us all”, and most of his fellow candidates have been only a little less hyperbolic about the threat. At the same time, they seem to regard the agreement with Iran as a total capitulation. Never mind the fact that, while truly awful, ISIL has not shown any capability of striking seriously in the US (right wing terrorists have killed more people in recent years in the US than Islamic terrorists of any sort have) or that the Iran agreement is really a fairly decent deal, and much better than the alternative. Only Rand Paul acted disinclined to wade into another war in the Middle East, and John Kaisch was the only other Republican candidate to evince any reluctance to immediately throw out the Iran agreement if elected.

Of course where other issues have been mentioned, the rhetoric hasn’t been much better. Only Graham has fully acknowledged the reality of climate change, the others sticking to the same denial of reality that has dominated the Republican party on this issue. On taxes they mostly offer the same old giveaways to the rich and on the budget they are mostly eager to gut social programs and foreign aid, while dumping even more money on the one part of the government where the vast majority of the actual waste is, namely the Pentagon.

So what are we to make of this bunch? On every issue, there are at best one or two candidates who have semi-reasonable positions, but those same candidates invariable have terrible or even absurd positions on other issues. Take the Donald, the current front runner in the polls, for example. While his less completely unhinged attitude toward Planned Parenthood and his willingness to raise taxes on at least a few rich people (e.g. hedge fund managers) might seem to make him like one of the less repellent options, his xenophobia and sexism are more worthy of one of the lower types of Internet trolls than of a serious candidate for president of the US, and in any case, anyone delusional enough to doubt whether Barack Obama was born in the US should be automatically disqualified from any political office. Graham is almost reasonable on climate change but terrible on foreign policy and most other things. Paul has halfway sensible stances on issues like marijuana regulation, over-incarceration, government spying or the overreliance on military force in US foreign policy, but he would be terrible for the poor or the environment. Really, all of them would be so terrible that the race for the Republican nomination does really seem like a competition to be the top nut in the nuthouse.

The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Climate Change and a Grim Future

The refugee crisis on the borders of Europe has dominated international news in recent weeks, with attention focused on the flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly from Syria but also from countries like Afghanistan and Eritrea, who have been trying to get into the European by boat from Turkey to Greece and overland through the Balkans, sometimes with tragic consequences. There are a lot of issues related to this topic that are worth addressing, such as the failure of the international community to do more to end the war on Syria (while much of the blame goes to Russia and Iran for their insistence on propping up the murderous Assad regime, the West could certainly have done and being doing more) or to do more for the millions of refugees still stuck in camps in the region, not to mention the poor response of Europe and the US to the immediate crisis, not only the disgustingly nationalistic and xenophobic actions of people like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his supporters, but also the failure of countries like the UK and the US to offer to take in much larger numbers of refugees (kudos to Martin O’Malley for being the first US presidential candidate to call for the US to offer a home to a substantial number of the refugees). But I’d like to focus on an aspect of this crisis that has been less discussed, except on a few more progressive and environmentally oriented sites, namely the relationship between the Syrian crisis and climate change and what it bodes for the future.

While it is of course an exaggeration to say that climate change was the sole or even the major cause of the Syrian crisis (the Assad government’s violent response to peaceful protests, for one thing, had more than a little to do with it), it is almost certain that it was a contributing factor. The distinction between a sole cause and a contributing factor is one that some people have a hard time comprehending, especially when talking about climate change. It is impossible to directly attribute any weather event entirely to climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change is not affecting these events. For example, we can’t say that any particular typhoon or hurricane was “caused” by climate change in the sense that we can be sure it wouldn’t have happened without the global warming caused by humans, but we can say that climate change makes typhoons more likely and increases their severity. Another example of this is drought, such as the extremely severe one afflicting the west coast of the United States, particularly California. This drought might still have occurred if humans had not changed the climate, but it almost certainly would not have been as severe. What’s more, if warming trends continue, such droughts will become more common.

This brings us back to Syria. Over several years preceding the uprising against Assad, Syria and its neighbors had been hit by one of the worst droughts in recorded history. This caused great suffering among ordinary Syrians, so naturally there was a high level of discontent. It didn’t take much for this discontent to erupt into first mass protests and then, when the government reacted violently, open rebellion, and the widespread nature of the hardships meant that more Syrians were receptive to the call to revolt. Of course it is impossible to state for sure that the rebellion wouldn’t have occurred or have been as widespread without the drought, just as it is impossible to say that anthropogenic climate change alone caused the drought itself. But it is almost certain that climate change exacerbated the drought, and it is highly probable that the drought was at least one cause of the rebellion. This is hardly without precedent; many rebellions, migrations, and other upheavals throughout history have been shown to have natural disasters such as famines, floods and so forth as a major cause. What is different about the Syrian crisis is that this drought was almost certainly worsened by global warming, a worldwide problem that humanity is still failing to address properly.

The reality is that f we do not take dramatic steps in the immediate future, current warming trends will continue, which means that droughts, floods, and other weather events influenced by climate change will become more frequent and severe. This in turn means that the refugee crisis that we are seeing now is just a harbinger of worse things to come. Either we take immediate action to deal with climate change, or in coming decades we can expect to see many refugee crises, whether caused directly by natural disasters or by wars that result from them, some of which will be as bad as or even worse than the one we are seeing now. For example, right-wingers in the US like to rail against undocumented immigrants from Latin America (despite the historically low numbers coming in recent years); climate change is expected to cause severe droughts not only in the western US but in Mexico and Central America. If that happens the US is likely to see a flood of migrants in numbers out of the worst nightmares of American xenophobes. So it is highly ironic that it is for the most part the exact same people that most fear and hate refugees and migrants that are preventing action on climate change. Of course given the complex nature of the relationship between climate change and refugee crises, it will be hard to change the attitudes of people who seem to even lack the intellectual capacity to understand and accept the simple reality of climate change itself.

What I've Been Reading: January 2015 to June 2015

As is evident from the length of time since my last post on my reading and the limited number of books in this post (though I should point out that one of the entries below is a trilogy of books), it should be obvious that I am getting even less reading than I did last year. This is in large part because I've acquired a laptop computer and have been trying to get some work on my various music and other projects done on it while commuting instead of reading as I did in the past - and as has been true for an even longer time, going through emails on my phone also takes up some of my commuting time. But I still manage to a bit of reading at home or on other occasions, so here are a few of the books I read earlier this year (more recent books will have to wait for a future post).

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Set in Istanbul in the late 16th century at the height of the Ottoman Empire, My Name Is Red is a historical novel by Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (indeed it seems to have been one of the main reasons he won the award). The story is a murder mystery, a tale of intrigue among miniaturists working to illustrate manuscripts for the Sultan, told in the first person through the eyes of a rotating cast of characters. While the use of shifting viewpoints to tell a tale is common enough, here not only do we hear much of the tale from the perspective of the obvious protagonists like Black, who is asked to solve the mystery by his maternal uncle and former mentor Enishte Effendi, or Shekure, Enishte’s daughter and the woman Black loves, but also through the eyes of the murderer, the three chief suspects, various minor characters and even non-living characters such as the murder victim, who opens the story with the declaration “I am a corpse” and several of the illustrations themselves, the latter brought to life by a storyteller in a coffee shop frequented by many of the miniaturists (though interestingly enough – and probably not coincidentally – we never hear the voice of the storyteller himself).

The story is engaging, and the characters are well drawn. The reader also learns a great deal about the art of illustrating manuscripts in the Islamic world and its historical development. The tension between the miniaturists and the sometimes capricious rulers who make use of their talents on the one hand and those who follow a stricter interpretation of Islam on the other hand forms one of the central underlying conflicts in the story, along with the struggle between those like Effendi who want to incorporate Western influences into Ottoman art and those who are repelled by the idea. It is surely not a coincidence that Pamuk chooses to build his novel around conflicts such as religion versus secularism and tradition versus modernity that continue to roil society in Turkey and in the wider Islamic world. There is also a strong element of metafiction, as the characters often express awareness that they are part of a story. In addition, not only is the name of Shekure’s younger son Orhan, like that of the author, but his older brother Shevket shares his name with the real Orhan’s older brother, and Shekure herself has the same name as the author’s real mother. Furthermore, Shekure reveals at the end that it is Orhan who has written down the final version of the story. She warns the reader that Orhan may have distorted some of their characters, concluding: “For the sake of a delightful and convincing story, there isn’t a lie that Orhan wouldn’t deign to tell.”

Cleverly written and yet more readable than most consciously “literary” novels, incorporating both interesting historical information and themes with modern parallels, My Name Is Red is worthy of its reputation as a Nobel Prize winning novel without being overly difficult or lacking in entertainment value. Readers interested in murder mysteries, Turkey, history, Islamic art, conflicts between tradition and modernity or good literature in general will find it worth reading.

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
This series of dystopian science fiction novels (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay) for young adults is probably one of the best known of the genre, not only due to the best-selling status of the novels themselves but also due to the movie adaptations, which have also done very well at the box office. The novels are certainly entertaining and generally pretty well done, though they aren’t without their flaws. They are not very deep or literary, and there are some story elements that slightly strain credulity. There is also sometimes a touch of melodrama in the way Katniss Everdeen (the protagonist from whose point of view the reader follows the story) sees what is happening to her. For instance, when she realizes that her fellow Hunger Games contestant Peeta has not given up on surviving the games, she automatically assumes that he’s planning to kill her. Admittedly, given the rules, he couldn’t win without her dying at some point, but as is made quite clear once the games start, even if winning the games was actually his goal, the chance that he would have had to kill her himself would have been very small. In fact, I suspect Katniss’s tendency toward melodrama arose mainly through Collins’s deliberate effort to keep drawing the reader on. Virtually every chapter ends on, if not a cliffhanger, a dramatic revelation or other statement designed to get the reader to continue on to the next chapter to see what happens.

Despite these issues, it’s easy to see why the books are popular. Katniss is an interesting character, if not always very likeable, and the story moves at a dizzying pace. There are quite a few dramatic plot twists and surprises that keep readers on the edge of their seat, eager to find out what else may be in store. The world of the Hunger Games is also interesting, though it is less detailed than some other fictional worlds and there are occasionally believability issues. Overall, The Hunger Games books are not exactly great literature, but as pure escapist entertainment, they are a good option for readers of all ages.

[Side note: The popularity of The Hunger Games books led to an influence on real world events, as anti-coup protesters in Thailand used the defiant salute from the books (and the movies) to express their opposition to the military takeover, in some cases getting arrested for it.]

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Pinocchio is one of many characters from children’s literature and folk tales that is regrettably most familiar from the Disney version. Unlike characters from folk tales like Cinderella, Snow White, or Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) but like Peter Pan, Pinocchio comes from a more modern novel, in this case a 19th century book by Carlo Collodi. This means that there aren’t numerous different versions of the story, so without reading the original novel most people will only be exposed to the Disney version. On the other hand, it also means that there is a definitive original, which is not the case for most folk tales, whose origins are usually lost in the mists of time. In either case, while the Disney versions of the stories are not bad, their tendency to so vastly overshadow earlier versions is not a good thing (Disney’s propensity for using and essentially taking over public domain characters while going to great lengths to protect their own original copyrights is also hypocritical, but that is another issue). So I was curious to find out what the original Pinocchio was like, though to tell the truth it’s been so long since I’ve seen the Disney movie that my memories of it are rather vague.

Pinocchio is initially extremely mischievous, even nasty, to his creator Geppetto and to the Talking Cricket (who he kills early on, though the cricket reappears as a ghost), but he soon resolves to turn over a new leaf. Unfortunately, he keeps getting tempted and returns to his mischievous ways. The series of adventures Pinocchio has have a slightly old fashioned feel to them, vaguely resembling earlier folk tales or perhaps the adventures of slightly more modern (but still older than Pinocchio) characters such as Don Quixote or Tom Jones. Many of the adventures were used in the Disney version, though I don’t remember enough of the latter to determine how much they were changed. The cricket at least underwent a fairly drastic transformation in the Disney version. But overall I really can’t judge whether the Disney version of the story was much worse or better that the original. The latter at least is reasonably interesting and entertaining, though there are better books around.

The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic by Robert O’Connell
As I think I have mentioned previously on this blog, one of my favorite subjects as a kid, aside from astronomy and planetary science, was ancient history, and in particular the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. So of course my favorite historical figure was the great Carthaginian general Hannibal, and I read pretty much every book on him and his home city of Carthage that was available at any of the local libraries. While I also read plenty on other historical topics (general histories of Greece and Rome and so forth), Hannibal and the Punic Wars was my main focus. While today the scope of my historical reading has broadened considerably, I still can’t resist picking up any interesting looking new take on Hannibal and his career, and so when I saw this book in a used book store on a visit to the US a few years ago, of course I had to get it. Interestingly, subsequently I saw a Chinese translation of this book placed prominently on a display table in a bookstore in Taiwan, which surprised me a little, because as interesting as I think Hannibal is myself, the topic is a little esoteric and so not something I’d expect to attract a particularly wide audience.

The Ghosts of Cannae, as the title suggests, takes as its centerpiece Hannibal’s most famous and most complete victory over the Romans, the Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, but it also covers the background and aftermath of the battle. It is a lucid, well done account, though I don’t necessarily completely agree with all of his interpretations and conclusions. For example, he concludes that Hannibal made a mistake by failing to march on Rome after the battle, though he admits that it was a long shot and acknowledges that the majority of modern scholars think Hannibal’s decision was the right one (assuming that there was even any debate about it, as Livy claims with his story about the Carthaginian officer Maharbal’s urging Hannibal to go to Rome). Of course we can’t be sure that such a march, long and difficult though it would have been, especially considering exhausted state of the victors and the substantial casualties they had suffered, wouldn’t have somehow caused Rome’s will to collapse, and we know that Hannibal’s chosen strategy of breaking up Rome’s alliances ultimately failed. But considering the difficulties of an immediate march on Rome, it’s likely that Hannibal didn’t even seriously consider the idea, and it’s probable that it was not a realistic option anyway for the reasons mentioned above. For that matter, if a few things had gone differently later in the war (for example, if Hasdrubal had defeated the Scipio brothers and go on to march on Italy in 215 BCE), it is possible that Hannibal’s strategy could have been successful. But all in all O’Connell’s account is a solid addition to the body of work on Hannibal and his war against Rome.

The Clean Power Plan, Presidential Candidates in the US and Taiwan, and Jimmy Carter

There are a number of current topics that I’d love to have to time to talk about in some detail, but due to lack of time I will just offer a few brief comments on each. In some cases, I may find a chance to come back to them and talk about them in more depth in the future. In my last blog post I talked about the Iran nuclear agreement, which, as I observed, is imperfect but worth supporting, especially given the lack of realistic alternatives. Aside from the nuclear agreement (which is the work of a number of countries, not just the US and Taiwan), US President Barack Obama has announced another important initiative in the last few weeks, one which is at least as important as the Iran deal, and that is his (or rather the EPA’s) Clean Power Plan. This takes a big step toward fighting climate change and reducing pollution by setting strict limits on carbon emissions. As might be expected, there has been loud opposition from polluting industries and the right wing politicians in their pockets, but the truth is if put into effect the plan will be to the benefit of almost everyone except those who directly profit from polluting industries like coal. It won’t even be that difficult for most utilities to comply with the plan, and of course it will make the air much cleaner, not to mention reduce the US’s carbon emissions and thereby help reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change. In fact, if anything the plan may not be ambitious enough. The truth is we need to quickly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane if we are to avoid warming that will have dramatic (and in the near term at least mostly negative and even highly destructive) effects all over the world.

Speaking of President Obama, much of the news from the US has been focused on the candidates to take over for him when he leaves office, even though the actual election isn’t until late next year. Taiwan is also having a presidential election, though it is at the beginning of the year, so the similar focus on election politics is a little more justifiable. In both races the most likely winners are women who are imperfect but acceptable choices, if not super exciting (Hillary Rodham Clinton in the US and Tsai Yingwen in Taiwan). On the other side there are some completely awful choices (the entire bunch of Republican candidates in the US and Hong Xiuzhu and James Soong in Taiwan). The US race also has at least one quite exciting candidate and a couple others who have some excellent positions on certain issues (Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and possibly Lawrence Lessig), though their prospects for actually winning are uncertain. At some point in the future, I would like to go over these races in more detail. For now regarding the US race I will just note that while I think Clinton has said many of the right things on numerous issues and I expect that I will vote for her if she ends up winning the Democratic nomination as expected, Sanders is better than Clinton on the majority of issues and offers a much better prospect of real change – if he could get elected. O’Malley stands out especially on the environment, having gone into even more detail than Sanders on the steps he would take to deal with climate change (though what Sanders has said so far on the issue has also been great, whereas Clinton has been good but regrettably vague on a few key points). Lessig, who only announced his prospective candidacy, is running on the single issue of making a radical overhaul to the US election system, promising to resign once he gets his program passed. Though the seems like a rather quixotic campaign, he is perfectly correct about the need for major reforms, and I’ll admit that the idea that someone I’ve met and briefly spoken to (I helped translate for him in an interview session with a few reporters in Taiwan when he came to promote Creative Commons) may run for president of the US.

Talking of US presidents, a sadder piece of news is that former US President Jimmy Carter announced the other day that he has cancer that has already spread through much of his body. Since he is already 90 years old, his prospects of surviving advanced cancer are probably not very good. But he has done a lot of excellent work since leaving office in 1980, and indeed is one of the best ex-presidents the US has ever had, so he can look back on a life of real accomplishment. The job he did as president is not highly rated by most people, but even this is a bit unfair. He did have some flaws, particularly his inability to delegate well and his difficulty in establishing good relations with Congress, though some of the fault for that was on the side of Congress. Carter was a true outsider, unlike some politicians since who have run under that label, and that made it harder for him to get things accomplished. But many of the problems that he faced in his presidency were not his fault and it is questionable whether he could have done much else about them. Many of his ideas were good, such as making human rights a more important factor in foreign policy, even if the execution left something to be desired. In fact, if he had been reelected it’s quite possible that in a number of areas the US (and even the world) would be considerably better off. In Carter’s day there were some prospects of a move away from rampant capitalism and excessive reliance of fossil fuels, for instance, but with the election of Ronald Reagan that all went out the window and instead the US got supply side economics and severe backsliding on the environmental front, not to mention an overly aggressive foreign policy. Movement toward renewable energy basically came to a halt for the next two decades. The parody newspaper The Onion captured the contrast well on its faux front page from 1980. Under the article headline “Campaign ‘80” there are pictures of Carter and Reagan and quotes representing their political agendas. Carter’s is “Let’s Talk Better Mileage” while Reagan’s is “Kill the Bastards”. In the article, Carter talks about renewable energy, urban renewal, mass transit, job, infrastructure, and job training programs for disadvantaged minorities while criticizing Reagan’s proposed cuts to social programs and tax breaks for the wealthy, but Reagan just keeps repeating “kill the bastards.” The article is subtitled “Which Message Will Resonate with Voters?” Of course we know which one did, but even granted that the article greatly exaggerates the contrast for comic effect, I can’t help wondering what the world would be like if things had gone differently. Perhaps we wouldn't even need a Clean Power Plan. In any case, today Americans would do well to heed some of President Carter’s recent messages, such as his warning that the US has become an oligarchy. Maybe the US really does need to elect someone like Bernie Sanders, who at least would attempt to put America back on the path towards a greener, more egalitarian and more democratic society.

Some Thoughts on the Nuclear Deal with Iran

Now that an agreement has been signed with Iran on its nuclear program, the inevitable debate over whether it’s a good deal is raging in the US (interestingly, I haven’t heard anything about intense opposition to the deal in the European countries that are party to it, though there must be at least a little). Since it is a fairly far-reaching agreement and if implemented it has the potential to transform US-Iranian relations and the politics of the Middle East, numerous aspects of the agreement are being discussed and argued about. Those who favor the deal consider it the best chance to avoid even more conflict in that part of the world and prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, not to mention putting the US and Iran on a path toward more friendly or at least less hostile relations. Opponents call it capitulation to the Iranians, argue that Iran can and will cheat, and warn that reducing or ending sanctions on Iran will free it to cause more trouble in the region by backing violent regimes and terrorist groups. They also lament the agreement’s failure address issues such as Iran’s support for terror, its unlawful detention of several American citizens, or its poor human rights record in general.

I will address the latter concern first. I agree that Iran’s human rights record is terrible, its detention and treatment of both Iranian dissidents and the American citizens currently in its prisons is deplorable, and its support for terror groups and particularly the hideously bloodthirsty Syrian regime is appalling. However, those issues are not what the agreement was negotiated to address. Just as the US negotiated arms control treaties with the USSR that didn’t address human rights issues in the latter, there is no reason to expect an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program to address unrelated issues. This doesn’t mean that these issues don’t have to be addressed, though. It is my understanding that US sanctions imposed due to Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, for instance, will remain in place. It is quite possible, even probable, that the US government (and European governments) could and should do far more to pressure Iran over human rights issues. Many Western governments have shown a bad tendency to prioritize economic ties and business interests over human rights in their dealings with countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and others, and we should put pressure on them to act differently not only in Iran’s case but others as well. But the nuclear agreement should be judge according to its purpose, which is preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons rather than for issues it is not designed to fix.

There are no doubt flaws in the agreement which Iran can exploit. Iran may be able to avoid coming clean about past weapons programs, and it may find ways to hide things from inspectors, especially given the uncertainty about whether inspectors will have sufficient access to military sites. But it will require Iran to dramatically reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium and its number of centrifuges, which at a minimum will put a bomb a little further from reach. It is true that it may not prove easy to re-impose sanctions should Iran violate the agreement, but I don’t think it will be as difficult as critics claim, nor do I think it will be as easy for Iran to cheat as they are asserting. Iran does have many incentives for adhering to the agreement, and if the moderates remain in charge (a point I will come back to), they probably will do so.

In any case, as I and many others have observed in the past, those critics calling this a bad deal, whether it is Republicans in the US Congress or Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have never laid out specifically what they would consider a good deal. From their rhetoric, a “good” deal would be unconditional surrender on the part of the Iranians, involving a complete dismantling of their entire nuclear program. Of course, there was never any chance that Iran would have agreed to such a deal, regardless of the pain sanctions might have been causing. After all, look at how tightly the North Korea clings to its nuclear bombs, even as its economy collapses and its people live at the edge of starvation. If the Iranian leadership is as sinister and power-mad as those most hostile to it claim, they would most certainly not hesitate to continue to pursue their nuclear ambitions in the absence of an agreement regardless of the sanctions, especially if they perceived the West as unremittingly hostile. It is also unlikely that the sanctions regime could be held together for long if the US rejects the agreement, as countries like China and Russia are too eager to do business with Iran. While this is not a good thing, given the authoritarian tendencies of all three, there is not much that the West can do about it at this point.

Given the critics’ lack of a clear vision of what a “good deal” would look like and the extreme unlikelihood of Iran being willing to make more concessions, the alternatives are these. The agreement can be carried out and Iran’s nuclear program can be made at least somewhat more peaceful and subject to a certain degree of scrutiny. Otherwise, the US can reject the agreement, as the Republicans in Congress want. What would follow from that? The Iranians, who are already quite close to acquiring a bomb, would have little reason not to proceed to actually producing one, and the only way the US or Israel could prevent them would be by starting a war. It is by no means certain that a few airstrikes could do sufficient damage to Iran’s facilities to put a bomb out of reach, so we are talking about a major war with a country that is considerably larger and more powerful than Iraq.

Iran’s geopolitical stature is a point worth some additional scrutiny. On the one hand, hyperbolic claims that the Obama administration’s concessions to Iran are equivalent to Neville Chamberlain’s concessions to Adolf Hitler at the Munich Conference are absurd not only in exaggerating the size of the concessions but in implying that Iran is as great a power and as much of a threat to world peace as Nazi Germany, which is not even remotely the case (incidentally, another lesson from that era that many forget is that it was the harsh terms that the Allies imposed on Germany after World War I that facilitated Hitler's rise, which is relevant to a point I'll discuss a little later about the agreement's potential effect of Iranian domestic politics). Conversely, however, Iran is not a small, weak country that the US could easily overpower in a fight. This doesn’t mean that the US should avoid a conflict with Iran no matter what; if, say, Iran actually started assembling a nuclear weapon and declared an intention to carry out the rhetorical threats that some of its more extreme leaders have made in the past against Israel, for instance, a military strike by the US would be justified. But a decision to launch a war should not be taken lightly, and if this agreement is not put into effect, it is hard to see what other options US would have to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

Furthermore, it is worth remembering a bit about Iran’s history and its current society. Over most of the past 2600 years, ever since the rise of the Median and Persian Empires in the wake of the destruction of Assyrian power, Iran has been one of the most dominant nations in West Asia. While its power has waxed and waned. Its current position as one of the major powers in the region is commensurate with its historical position. Of course, history does not give Iran an automatic right to any particular status today, much less the right to push its neighbors around (the same point applies to China, which is fond of misusing history in this manner). But given Iran’s size, population, resources, and relative stability, it is not at all surprising that it has once more become one of the strongest countries in the region.

For these reasons, the Western approach to Iran can’t be merely one of containment. This is not to say that containment of a sort doesn’t have its place. The US and other nations should certainly work to counter problematic Iranian actions in the region, such as its support for the Syrian regime or groups like Hezbollah. But it is necessary to engage Iran too. It is worth remembering that despite the fundamentalist theocracy that is currently in power, Iran has a sizable, well-educated middle class, much of which has a quite secular outlook. Even among the clerics, there are moderate voices. It should be remembered that not all of the Iranian leadership has shown the type of unremitting hostility to Israel and the US that is commonly cited by opponents of the deal. The more moderate leaders should be encouraged as much as possible in the hope that in the future, a new Iranian leadership can take charge, one that will be far less interested in the aggressive approach of the hardliners in the current leadership. It is conceivable that in a few decades Iran could even transform into a secular democracy, if it is allowed to evolve in that direction as moderate forces gain more power. And which option is more likely to help Iranian moderates, accepting the agreement or rejecting it? Since the agreement is, on the Iranian side, the work of the moderate faction in the current leadership, if it proves beneficial to Iran and specifically to the average Iranian citizen, then it will certainly strengthen the moderates. Rejecting it, however, would mean that the hardliners would take over completely. They would probably even gain some support among the secular middle class, as an American rejection of the agreement would support the assertions of the hardliners that the US is completely hostile to Iran and no rapprochement with it is possible. Even those who would still prefer a more moderate approach might feel compelled to publicly support the nationalistic hardline view for fear of being accused of traitors.

All this doesn’t mean that an agreement which entirely favored the Iranians would be acceptable. But the truth is, the Iranians made plenty of concessions of their own. As mentioned above, they are giving up their enriched uranium and most of their centrifuges, as well as submitting to a fairly comprehensive inspection regime, if not as strong as would be considered ideal from a Western viewpoint. Also, the Iranian assertion that they have the right to a peaceful nuclear program is not unreasonable, as many other countries, including some with worse human rights records, also have nuclear power (of course I’d say all of them should be focusing more on renewable energy, but that’s another issue). While a lifting of sanctions may boost Iran’s ability to assist destructive parties elsewhere, the US and its allies can attempt to find ways to counter such actions on the part of Iran, including, if necessary, new sanctions. It is worth reiterating that this agreement, the negotiations that it came out of, and the sanctions that helped bring Iran to the table were all directed at Iran’s nuclear program, not anything else it might have been doing. While resolving the nuclear issue might have both good and bad effects elsewhere, this is unavoidable. As I said above, if the agreement makes it at least a lot less easy for Iran to acquire a bomb and at the same time boosts the moderate forces in the country, then it is adequate – especially considering the very unpalatable alternatives.

[Update: An additional point worth noting is not only do polls show that a majority of Jewish Americans support the agreement, a number of prominent Israeli security figures are also supporting it. Perhaps even more telling is the Iranian side of the debate. As discussed in some detail in this article, moderates, reformists, the majority of Iranian citizens and Iranian Americans and even many dissidents and exiled opponents of the current regime support the agreement, while the conservatives and hardliners have for the most part been critical of it. Not exactly what you'd expect to see if, like the deal's American and Israeli opponents claim, the agreement gave away far too much to Iran.]