Politics

Here are a few recent political stories that I found explained things in more depth than usual:

A Tale Of Two Foundations

While the reporting on the Clinton Foundation focuses on these kind of “conflicts,” there has been no evidence of actual misconduct. Charity watchdog groups rate the Clinton Foundation highly.

Meanwhile, on September 1, news broke that the Trump Foundation “violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general.” It was required to pay a $2500 fine to the IRS.

The details of the case are even more unseemly. Florida’s Attorney General was considering opening an investigation into Trump University, which is accused of defrauding students. Bondi herself contacted Trump and asked for a political contribution. After a political committee associated with her campaign received the illegal $25,000 contribution, she decided not to pursue it.

The story has something that none of the Clinton Foundation stories have: Actual evidence of illegal conduct. In this case, not only is there concrete evidence that the Trump Foundation broke the law, but a formal finding of wrongdoing by the IRS.

In May digby wrote GOP suffering from Koch withdrawl.

Yesterday the world found out why when the National Review published a blockbuster scoop revealing that the Kochs have decided to withdraw from national politics. The 900 million dollars they'd planned to spend in this election cycle has been reduced to around 40 million on "educational" campaigns. They will continue their work at the state and local level (which is significant) but they are no longer much interested in electoral campaigns on the federal level.

Charles Koch provided a window into his own thinking in an interview last month with ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

“When you look back over the years, over the last several cycles, hundreds of millions of dollars in electoral politics, what have you gotten for that?” Karl asked. “What’s been the return on that investment?”

“Well, I’ve gotten a lot of abuse out of it,” Koch said. “What have we gotten for it? Well, I think there have been some good things, particularly at the state and local level.”

“At the federal level,” he added, shaking his head, “we haven’t in any way changed the trajectory of the country.”

Karl suggested it hasn’t been a very good investment. “No, no it hasn’t,” Koch replied. “It’s been disappointing.”

In June Vox explained, Paul Ryan's "why don't you get a job" approach to poverty is doomed to fail

He's right on one thing: It does appear that work requirements like the ones he's proposing get people to work more, increase their earnings, and reduce their reliance on government programs. But America's experience with welfare reform has taught us that this comes at a significant cost. While requirements boost work somewhat, they're not enough to get a job at a living wage for everyone who can work, and they do nothing for the elderly or disabled who can't work at all. The result is enduring poverty among those who can't work or can't find work.

Sarah Kliff says It sure looks like Aetna quit Obamacare because Obama opposed their merger

When one financial analyst asked Bertolini about it on the company’s last earnings call, he responded that the merger was a “separate conversation from our evaluation of how we think about the exchanges going forward.” But the July 5 letter paints an entirely different picture, one where Bertolini says that participating in the marketplaces would be too difficult and costly for the company if it also were in litigation over its merger proposal.

There will almost certainly be different interpretations of why Aetna tied together its marketplace participation and its merger approval. In this letter, Bertolini says it’s all about finances: that the company was losing money on the marketplaces and needed a financial boost from the marketplaces in order to continue to sustain those losses. And it certainly is true that Aetna has lost more than $400 million on the marketplaces since they launched in 2014.

I didn't find any of this surprising but apparently some do, What a liberal sociologist learned from spending five years in Trump's America.

The result is Hochschild’s new book Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right — the result of five years and hundreds of in-depth interviews. The book fixates on a paradox: Calcasieu Parish in Louisiana, where she spends much of her time, is one of the most polluted regions of the country, ravaged by the oil and petrochemical industries. Residents mourned the loss of the pristine bayous of their youth, of their favorite fishing and hunting spots. Yet to her surprise, they remained deeply hostile to the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental regulation. Why was that?

There was no one simple explanation. Some of the people she met were worried about regulations killing jobs. Others saw toxic pollution and environmental disasters as the sort of risk essential to a vibrant economy, something to be stoically endured. Still others had become disillusioned with corrupt and ineffective local regulators.

As Hochschild probed deeper, what she found most common was a "deep story" the conservative white residents were telling themselves. They felt left behind or even kept down by a federal government that no longer looked out for them — that was against their interests at every turn. When Donald Trump enters the scene midway through the story, she’s none too shocked that he finds fertile territory here.

In the interview Hochschild says:

So the deep story I felt operating in Louisiana was this: Think of people waiting in a long line that stretches up a hill. And at the top of that is the American dream. And the people waiting in line felt like they’d worked extremely hard, sacrificed a lot, tried their best, and were waiting for something they deserved. And this line is increasingly not moving, or moving more slowly [i.e., as the economy stalls].

Then they see people cutting ahead of them in line. Immigrants, blacks, women, refugees, public sector workers. And even an oil-drenched brown pelican getting priority. In their view, people are cutting ahead unfairly. And then in this narrative, there is Barack Obama, to the side, the line supervisor who seems to be waving these people (and the pelican) ahead. So the government seemed to be on the side of the people who were cutting in line and pushing the people in line back.

I went back with this story to a lot of the people that I’d talked to. I asked, is this the way you feel? And they said, "Yeah, you read my mind!" or, "Yeah, I live your narrative!" And this all becomes more acute as their place in line feels more vulnerable. There’s the offshoring of American jobs, automation that is now making even skilled jobs feel vulnerable. So when you add a cultural and demographic sense of loss and decline to a real economic threat, it becomes alarming. And the government doesn’t seem like it’s heard your distress call.

Vox explains, The US paid Iran $1.3 billion in secret. It’s not a scandal.

It's been a year since the Iran deal was signed. So far, it’s worked.

Vox asked Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, It's been a year since the Iran deal was signed. So far, it’s worked

His verdict is pretty upbeat: ‘I'm going to be roundly attacked for saying it, but I think it's gone very well,’ he says.

Lewis explains that the nuclear deal is, to the disappointment of critics, mostly working out as written. Iran is basically complying with the core parts of the agreement — such as limiting the number of centrifuges it has and eliminating its stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could quickly be converted to weapons-grade material — that make it harder for the country to make a nuclear weapon.

But the deal has also failed to satisfy some of its strongest proponents.

These folks — including some in the Obama administration — hoped that a nuclear agreement might reorient Iran’s foreign policy in a more pro-American direction. This hasn’t happened: Iran still hates Israel, props up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and supports Shia sectarianism in places like Iraq and Yemen."

But Lewis argues that anyone who was expecting that to happen was deluding themselves. The deal on the nuclear program was always just that: a deal on the nuclear program — not a deal on Syria or Israel. The problem with the Washington debate over the Iran deal, he says, is that it’s serving as a proxy for debates over US foreign policy — which distract from the core question of whether Iran is further away from a bomb than it was a year ago.

4 Reasons Iran's Election Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think

The Republican party might be turning authoritarian and voting for nationalism but Vox points out 4 reasons Iran's election is a bigger deal than you think

Tens of millions of Iranians voted on Friday, for parliament and for the body that will likely pick the next supreme leader, in an election with still-uncertain but potentially major consequences for the country, its future, and its relationship with the outside world. So-called moderates swept the vote, seemingly defeating the hard-liners who've long dominated Iran's government.

It's worth a couple of important caveats. No two Iran analysts agree on who counts as a liberal-leaning 'reformist' versus a 'moderate' versus a 'hard-liner.' Iran does not have formal political parties, so we have to use fuzzy terms and imprecise measurements of which ideological factions are rising or falling. And, crucially, Iran's elected officials have real power, but they're limited by unelected authorities like the supreme leader."

1. The trend points toward a rise of moderates in Iran
2. Iranians approve of the nuclear deal and opening with the West — and push for more
3. It puts pressure on the supreme leader
4. The election's hidden and potentially historic significance: on picking the next supreme leader

The Iran JCPOA ain't a treaty (or an executive agreement, for that matter)

Marty Lederman at Balkinization has confirmed, The Iran JCPOA ain't a treaty (or an executive agreement, for that matter). See this pdf from the State Department.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treat or an executive agreement,a nd is not a signed document. The JCPOA reflects political commitments between Iran, The P5+1 (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China), and the European Union. As you know, the United States has a long-standing practice of addressing sensitive problems in negotiations that culminate in political commitments.

The success of the JCPOA will depend not on whether it is legally binding or signed, but rather on the extensive verification measures we have put in place, as well as Iran's understanding that we have the capacity ro re-impose -- and ramp up -- our sanctions if Iran does not meet its commitments.

Everything in the JCPOA and its annexes are commitments Iran made, and must keep, to remain in compliance. If Iran breaks these commitments, we can snap back both unilateral and UN sanctions.

The part Lederman is confirming is that Republicans knew of this arrangement, and aren't arguing the constitutional aspects of such a commitment:

But here's what's so interesting to me, and what I meant to stress in my last post: Despite the general, deep polarization Mark describes, there is no such polarization on the constitutional questions that Jack and Sandy raised, because of a remarkable settlement that has been established over the past 100 years of U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic practice--a settlement that, I might add, was unknown to approximately 99% of all law professors (myself included), ignorant as most of us are concerning the way that the government actually functions in foreign affairs. (For much more on the extraordinary disconnect between the academy's hidebound, "received wisdom" views and the actual constitutional practice of foreign relations as conducted by the U.S. Department of State, see Harold Koh's terrific 2012 Ryan Lecture here at Georgetown.)

The GOP's new Iran deal plan is cynical, dishonest, and politically brilliant

Max Fisher writes in Vox, The GOP's new Iran deal plan is cynical, dishonest, and politically brilliant

Republicans, in this new plan, would argue that President Obama didn't live up to his promise to fully inform Congress about the Iran nuclear deal, so therefore Congress cannot vote on whether to approve the deal.

This is not really true, but that's beside the point. The point is that Republicans don't like their current strategy because it means, after they vote on their doomed resolution, they will have conceded the Iran deal as politically legitimate.

This new strategy would allow Republicans to argue in perpetuity that the Iran nuclear deal is somehow illegitimate, without ever actually proving that. It would create a definitionally irresolvable political 'controversy' over the deal, allowing Republicans to raise money and hold hearings and go on conservative talk radio for many years to come, making conspiratorial claims about the Obama administration withholding some vital information.

It would look, in other words, a lot like Republicans' years-long political campaign over Benghazi. In that campaign, the focus was almost never on actual US mistakes in Libya — which are substantial but complex — but rather was on misleading conspiracy theories and nonsense political controversies.

Similarly, this new GOP anti-deal strategy would let them avoid the actual substance of the Iran deal, and instead focus on dark claims about self-inspections and the like. This not only lets Republicans direct the focus to talk-radio-friendly conspiracy theories, but also allows them to assert, for years to come, that Obama never followed correct procedure on getting congressional approval, and thus that the Iran deal is illegitimate.

The first such conspiracy theory they appear to be going with — the first of many, I am sure — is the alleged 'secret side deal.'"

Cheney’s Iran Ideas As Sophisticated As Expected

Jonathan Chait explains in New York Magazine that Cheney’s Iran Ideas As Sophisticated As Expected

"Bush and Cheney may have rhetorically opposed the Iranian nuclear program. In reality, they allowed it to blossom. As Marc Champion explained several months ago, ‘at the start of Bush's presidency, Iran had no operational centrifuge cascades and no stocks of enriched fuel, so it had no means of making a nuclear weapon.’ Then things got bad:

By the time Bush left office in January 2009, Iran had just under 4,000 working centrifuges and an additional 1,600 installed. These had, to that point, produced 171 kilos of low-enriched uranium. Oh, and Iran had covertly built a new enrichment facility under a mountain at Qom.

Measured by results, rather than sound bites, Cheney was the greatest thing that happened to the radical regime in Iran since it took power. Michael Rubin, a former Bush administration Middle East policy adviser, has attempted to defend the administration’s disastrous Iran policy by blaming the failure on our feckless European partners, who continued to trade with Iran, undermining our sanctions. Rubin insists, ‘the problem was not too little diplomacy, but rather too much trade.’ But why were sanctions so weak under Bush, and so much stronger under Obama? Because the Obama administration used the promise of negotiations to build strong support for sanctions. Without those negotiations, the sanctions regime would be just as weak as it was under the Bush administration. The notion that simply refusing to make any concessions whatsoever could prevent Iran from advancing its nuclear program is not a novel idea. Cheney’s administration tried it. It didn’t work."

it's astounding to me that anyone still listens to Cheney. Or that in the 3 interviews I've seen of him on his book tour no one brought up that Iran started enriching Uranium under his watch. Or for that matter that during the Bush-Cheney presidency India, Pakistan and North Korea acquired nuclear weapons (usually citing aggression from the US as a motivator) and under seven years of Obama no other nation has acquired them. Just STFU already Cheney.

I can't get over this giant contradiction in Iran hawks' case against the nuclear deal

Max Fisher in Vox points out I can't get over this giant contradiction in Iran hawks' case against the nuclear deal "Iran hawks are making their case in a way that exposes a very telling contradiction in their arguments, one that is so brazen and transparent it is almost hard to believe. If you look at what they've said in the aggregate, an odd position emerges: Delaying Iran's nuclear program for 10 years via diplomacy is bad, whereas delaying it for two years via war is good. What does that tell you?"

He quotes Robert Farley, a professor at the University of Kentucky:

What the hawks want is indefinite militarized confrontation between the United States and Iran. From the perspective of Israel and Saudi Arabia, this is hardly irrational. Iran supports terrorist groups and other non-state actors that like to mess with the Saudis and the Israelis, and both the Saudis and Israelis would like to have the military capabilities of the United States at their disposal. Nor is it irrational for the Saudis and Israelis to believe that the US will come through with this kind of support; the entire GOP Presidential field (with the possible, partial exception of Rand Paul) seems committed to making it happen.

... And for someone who really wants a semi-permanent guarantee that the United States will threaten to bomb Iran, only nukes work, even if nukes aren’t the central concern. As Fred Kaplan has noted, the really big problem for Israeli, Saudi, and US hawks is that the deal might work, that Tehran might take nukes off the table, and the Iran might reintegrate itself back into the community of nations.

The Iran Deal

As usual, Vox has a lot of information on the deal, The Iran nuclear deal: everything you need to know. Max Fisher describes, The Iran nuclear deal, translated into plain English. Here is my formulation of the bullet points:

• Iran currently has 20,000 centrifuges and will have to get down to 7,000 older models
• Iran will be allowed to enrich uranium to only to 3.67%, way less than the 90% needed for a bomb
• Iran will be required to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium from 10,000 kg to 300 kg.
• Iran fulfills initial commitments by Oct, IAEA inspects by Dec, and only then do sanctions start to be lifted
• A panel of 7 nations plus the EU votes periodically on if Iran is complying, the US has a veto
• Formerly secret sites Natanz and Fordow can be used, but only Natanz for enrichment. Fordow only for research.
• Arak will be rebuilt to only make energy grade plutonium.
• IAEA inspectors will have full access to Iran's nuclear sites, uranium mines and mills, centrifuge factories, and supply chains and managed access to certain military sites. It will monitor dual-use technologies. It can access "suspicious sites."

The Iran nuclear deal, explained in fewer than 500 words is also really good. The Guardian has their own description of the deal complete with bullet points, Iran nuclear deal: world powers reach historic agreement to lift sanctions. Wonkblog has 13 charts and maps that make the Iran deal a little easier to understand

Monkey Cage points out, The Iran deal reflects the U.S.’s overwhelming power over the world’s financial system. Apparently the deal will limit international sanctions, US secondary sanctions, but not US primary sanctions.

The sanctions program against Iran was supported by the United Nations. The U.S. engaged in an extended diplomatic effort to get the UN Security Council to sign up to extensive sanctions against Iran. It also succeeded in getting the European Union to impose tougher sanctions against Iran, to the chagrin of European energy companies.

However, the willingness of the U.S. to impose “secondary sanctions” against non-U.S. firms that did business with Iran was arguably just as important. In a series of actions, the U.S. has imposed hundreds of millions of dollars in fines on financial institutions dealing with Iran. The European Union also required SWIFT–a key intermediary in all financial transactions–to cut Iranian financial institutions out of its system. Together, these steps effectively froze the Iranian economy out of the world financial system.

Glenn Greenwald of course presents the Iranians' View of the Nuclear Deal: Optimistic, With Significant Caveats. "The optimistic Iranian view is grounded in the expectation that the deal will usher in a normalization of relations between Iran and the west, lifting both the sanctions regime and the threat of war."

"Expectations among ordinary Iranians are very high: they expect substantial economic improvement, and if that fails to materialize, [Hooshang] Amirahmadi sees a likelihood of serious political instability which 'could go in a terrible direction for Iran.'"

Ezra Klein talked with Ian Bremmer on why the Iran deal is about much more than nuclear weapons. While he thinks there will be some compliance issues to resolve, he thinks it's better than no deal because the current sanctions would have eroded and our threat of war with Iran was weakening (because who wants that?) and because the Russians, Chinese and Europeans wanted an even softer deal. Also there are two aspects that for political reasons the administration can't come out and talk about. The extra oil will bring down prices and hurt OPEC which is good, and a stronger Iranian economy participating on the world stage might hurt the Iranian regime.

Regarding oil prices, Ed Kilgore refers to a WSJ article and points out Iranian Oil Will Undercut Prices. "Yes, as sanctions are lifted against Iran its oil production for export will resume (they were cut in half when sanctions were first imposed), and what is already a global market surplus will get larger, undercutting prices." So that's bad for oil companies and good for everyone else. Vox has more details on how quickly (or rather slowly) this might happen, What the Iran nuclear deal means for oil prices.

Zack Beauchamp found 2 tweets that explain the real debate over the Iran deal. "So that's the debate. Deal supporters think the deal, as is, is the only realistic alternative to war or a nuclear-capable Iran; opponents think the deal makes a nuclear Iran more likely and that war is a preferable alternative. This is a debate about the big pictures, not the details."

To put the anti-deal side in perspective, as Bremmer said, after Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, war Iran is obviously less desirable for the US and a harder sell, so it's less of a deterrent. With the international coalition weakening in their support of sanctions, we had fewer and fewer options. The Economist had this chart which really put the effect of Stuxnet on their centrifuges in perspective.

As for conservative opposition to this deal, Matthew Yglesias points out Conservatives have opposed every diplomatic breakthrough for decades. As an example he shows a 1988 conservative ad that compared Ronald Reagan to Neville Chamberlain regarding the INF treat with Gorbachev! He points out many examples to make this point, "Conservatives don't believe in talking to your enemies."

Ed Kilgore points to Two Takes on the Iran Deal.

This seems like a great analysis of options and why Republicans hate this deal. Why Republicans Are So Mad About Obama's Nuclear Deal With Iran.

Kevin Drum suggests wisely, Maybe We Should All Read the Iran Deal Before We Take a Stand On It. "In the meantime, it looks like a decent agreement to me after a first look at the deal outline—certainly better than doing nothing and letting Iran build a bomb whenever it wants, anyway. But I'll wait to see what nuclear experts have to say before I go any further. A few days won't kill me." I'm in the same boat, though from what I remember from nuclear experts a few months ago, the inspection regime is way better than they were expecting.

What everyone gets wrong about Iran nuclear negotiations

Vox's Max Fisher talks with Nuclear Weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis about What everyone gets wrong about Iran nuclear negotiations. It's very useful.

"I'm way more worried about, like, the covert facility problem. I'm not as worried that they're going to use Natanz [or another known nuclear development site] to break out. I think if the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] wakes up one morning and is really feeling it, they're gonna dig another hole under a mountain someplace. So, to me, the value of the agreement is not just 'does it lengthen the breakout time' but does it make less likely they can build a secret facility."

"There is this question of dual use goods [that could be used for peaceful purposes or for a clandestine nuclear program] that they import; there is a whole bunch of stuff sanctions will come off of. And it would be good to have, like, a registry or database of those things, so we can at least check to see if they are importing, say, specialized ball bearings, and make sure those are not going to a facility under a mountain."

"It's easy to support automatic enforcement mechanisms [on nuclear treaty violations] until somebody points out that the South Koreans had a safeguard violation. And then [people inevitably say], "These things should be done on a case-by-case basis." So these treaties never really have an enforcement mechanism, which is, from a legal perspective, kind of weird and kind of a bummer but totally understandable in a world of states that jealously guard their sovereignty."

"I care about whether the IAEA can look at Iran's centrifuge workshops and can make sure that they're getting information about all of the different mining locations, so there's not another source of natural uranium that could be enriched some place else. So the agreement will have verification provisions. But our confidence in the agreement will also be based on an assessment of our intelligence capabilities. And give the intelligence community credit. I mean, they caught Iran with [secret nuclear sites at] Lavizan, Natanz, and Fordow."

New York Times Accidentally Undermines John Bolton "Bomb Iran" Op-Ed in Own Pages

The Intercept points out that the New York Times Accidentally Undermined John Bolton "Bomb Iran" Op-Ed in Own Pages. It seems they added a link to his text

In an unusual touch, a link added to the original online edition of Bolton’s op-ed directly undermines Bolton’s case for war:

…Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq…can accomplish what is required.

U.S. and Israeli politicians often claim that Israel’s bombing of Iraq in 1981 significantly set back an already-existing Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The truth is almost exactly the opposite. Harvard Physics Professor Richard Wilson, who visited the ruins of Osirak in 1982 and followed the issue closely, has said the available evidence ‘suggests that the bombing did not delay the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program but started it.’ This evidence includes the design of the Osirak reactor, which made it unsuitable for weapons production, and statements by Iraqi nuclear scientists that Saddam Hussein ordered them to begin a serious nuclear weapons program in response to the Israeli attack."

Interestingly the Times has changed the link. It now points to this 1981 article, Israeli Jets Destroy Iraqi Atomic Reactor - Attack Condemned By U.S. and Arab Nations. According to The Intercept it originally pointed to this 2012 Washington Post opinion piece, An Israeli attack against Iran would backfire — just like Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq.

NEWSCASTER - An Iranian Threat Inside Social Media

iSight Partners reports on NEWSCASTER - An Iranian Threat Inside Social Media "iSIGHT Partners believes Iranian threat actors are using more than a dozen fake personas on social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Blogger) in a coordinated, long-term cyber espionage campaign.  At least 2,000 people/targets are, or have been, caught in the snare and are connected to the false personas.

This campaign, working undetected since 2011, targets senior U.S. military and diplomatic personnel, congressional personnel, Washington D.C. area journalists, U.S. think tanks, defense contractors in the U.S. and Israel, as well as others who are vocal supporters of Israel to covertly obtain log-in credentials to the email systems of their victims. Additional victims in the U.K. as well as Saudi Arabia and Iraq were targeted."

Update: See also, How China’s army hacked America. They basically did the same thing, send messages to people designed to trick them into opening an infected attachment or leading to site to get them to enter a username/password. This is apparently how most Internet spying is done.

Iran Has Hacked US Energy Companies

Iran Has Hacked US Energy Companies "According to the WSJ, Iran has hacked US oil, gas and power companies. The hackers were able to gain access to control-system software 'that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines'. Basically, the hackers are far enough inside that people are starting to get worried."

That sounds bad. Are control systems on the Internet or is this a Stuxnet-like USB stick attack?

Grand Ayatollah or Grand Old Party?

Reza Aslan posted the following quick, Grand Ayatollah or Grand Old Party? "Who said it: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum?"

Up With Chris Hayes on Iran

Up With Chris Hayes (MSNBS weekends 8-10am) continues to be the best political show on TV. This morning's first hour covered Iran in more depth than I've seen anywhere else (while being a bit contentious and entertaining). MSNBC doesn't rerun it but I suspect most if not all of it will appear on the Up With Chris site.

Iran Makes First Nuclear Fuel Rod

Bloomberg reports Iran Makes First Nuclear Fuel Rod "Iran produced its first nuclear fuel rod, state-run news agencies reported, as the country offered to restart international talks over its atomic program."

The Stuxnet Worm

Ars reported Stuxnet worm attacks industrial targets, could be aimed at Iran "Security researchers have uncovered some unexpected behaviors in a piece of malware called Stuxnet. The worm exploits a number of zero-day vulnerabilities in order to propagate itself over Windows networks, but it also targets embedded software developed by Siemens that runs in industrial equipment. The worm could be used to disrupt factories and other industrial environments. Researchers have found that the highest concentration of Stuxnet infections is located in Iran. That discovery, coupled with the very high level of sophistication exhibited by the malware, has led some researchers to speculate that it was crafted by a major government body with the aim of disabling Iran's nuclear power plant."

Here's Schneier on The Stuxnet Worm.

Oh Yeah, What To Do About Iran and Nukes is Still an Issue

The New York Times wrote Israeli Attack on Iran Would Start Long War

"Oxford Research Group, which promotes non-violent solutions to conflict, said military action should be ruled out as a response to Iran's possible nuclear weapons ambitions. 'An Israeli attack on Iran would be the start of a protracted conflict that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and might even encourage it,' it said in a report. It would also lead to instability and unpredictable security consequences for the region and the wider world, it added."

Zahra's Paradise

I read about the new web comic Zahra's Paradise in the Economist. "The scenes are from “Zahra’s Paradise”, an online graphic novel written and illustrated by two Iranians in America. The authors are anonymous, fearing what could happen to relatives still in Iran. The novel, published three times a week, tells in stark black-and-white pictures the story of Iran’s protesters and the horrors they have endured since the election. Tens of thousands of readers scattered all over the world follow each instalment in languages from Persian and Arabic to Dutch and Korean. When the story is finished, the authors plan to release it as a book."

You can start at the beginning (published in February) Chapter 1: Aftermath.

NPR mentioned it in March. "Another, wholly separate, thing that comics do well is explore historical events in ways that make them freshly available to the senses."

Iran agrees to ship enriched uranium to Russia for refinement

McClatchy reports Iran agrees to ship enriched uranium to Russia for refinemen "Iran agreed in principle Thursday to ship most of its current stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim, measure to ease concerns over its nuclear program."

Lord of the Rings' marathon in Tehran

Anonymous wrote at Salon...Tehran dispatch: The regime shows us movies. "In Tehran, state television's Channel Two is putting on a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon, part of a bigger push to keep us busy. Movie mad and immunized from international copyright laws, Iranians are normally treated to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week. Now it's two or three films a day. The message is 'Don't Worry, Be Happy.' Let's watch, forget about what's happened, never mind. Stop dwelling in the past. Look ahead."