The Iran deal: An epochal moment that Congress shouldn’t squander →

Brent Scowcroft, retired USAF Lieutenant General, and former US National Security Advisor:

In my view, the JCPOA meets the key objective, shared by recent administrations of both parties, that Iran limit itself to a strictly civilian nuclear program with unprecedented verification and monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N. Security Council. Iran has committed to never developing or acquiring a nuclear weapon; the deal ensures that this will be the case for at least 15 years and likely longer, unless Iran repudiates the inspection regime and its commitments under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Additional Protocol.

There is no more credible expert on nuclear weapons than Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who led the technical negotiating team. When he asserts that the JCPOA blocks each of Iran’s pathways to the fissile material necessary to make a nuclear weapon, responsible people listen. Twenty-nine eminent U.S. nuclear scientists have endorsed Moniz’s assertions.

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Congress rightfully is conducting a full review and hearing from proponents and opponents of the nuclear deal. However, the seeming effort to make the JCPOA the ultimate test of Congress’s commitment to Israel is probably unprecedented in the annals of relations between two vibrant democracies. Let us be clear: There is no credible alternative were Congress to prevent U.S. participation in the nuclear deal. If we walk away, we walk away alone. The world’s leading powers worked together effectively because of U.S. leadership. To turn our back on this accomplishment would be an abdication of the United States’ unique role and responsibility, incurring justified dismay among our allies and friends. We would lose all leverage over Iran’s nuclear activities. The international sanctions regime would dissolve. And no member of Congress should be under the illusion that another U.S. invasion of the Middle East would be helpful.

South Sudan’s leaders just signed a peace deal. Will it work? →

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir signed a peace agreement on Wednesday, offering a much-needed glimmer of hope in the brutal civil war that has plagued his country for the past 20 months.

But an agreement does not instantly translate to peace. The situation remains dynamic and implementation of the agreement will be a herculean task.

Thinking about how likely it is this agreement, 75 pages in all, will bring peace, I immediately went back to V. Page Fortna’s seminal article on the value of peace agreements. While Fortna examined wars between states, the resonance with the South Sudan civil war is troubling. Fortna argues that well-structured peace agreements can contribute to durable peace. However, there are certain base conditions that render situations more likely to see a return to violence. Unfortunately in South Sudan we see many of these characteristics – no clear armed victory, a long history of hostility between the competing factions, and the existence of at least one of the parties at stake.

So, against these odds, what needs to happen to capitalize on this forward momentum to help South Sudan move toward peace in a positive direction? ...

The politics of China's market decline are much more worrying than the economics →

China's Shanghai Composite Index has fallen catastrophically — by 7.6 percent just on Tuesday. The decline follows a huge Monday collapse dubbed "Black Monday" and is part of a four-day slide; on the heels of another huge decline in July, this has erased the Chinese stock market's 2015 gains entirely. On Monday, stock markets around the world dropped as well following the Chinese losses.

So what does this mean for China? China's stock market is not a major part of the Chinese economy, so it's unlikely that this crash alone will trigger a broader economic crisis there. But the political consequences could be quite serious. There is a big debate going on right now within China's leadership over what to do about the economy, and this turmoil could push that debate in the wrong direction.

The crash could bolster political factions inside China that want to block critical economic reforms, and weaken factions that do want these reforms — which are, make no mistake, very important for the country's future. Without these reforms, China is much likelier to face far more severe economic problems.

Mapping the invisible scourge →

A big consequence of corruption in China is the lack of environmental regulation. And people are upset.

Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America’s highest threshold. That is even worse than the satellite data had suggested.

Berkeley Earth’s scientific director, Richard Muller, says breathing Beijing’s air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day and calculates that air pollution causes 1.6m deaths a year in China, or 17% of the total. A previous estimate, based on a study of pollution in the Huai river basin (which lies between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), put the toll at 1.2m deaths a year—still high.

No-Fly List Uses Predictive Assessments →

The US government has admitted that it uses predictive assessments to put people on the no-fly list:

In a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the US Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping US and other citizens from travelling on airplanes is a matter of "predictive assessments about potential threats," the government asserted in May.

When you have a secret process that can judge and penalize people without due process or oversight, this is the kind of thing that happens.

The V.A.’s Woman Problem →

Of the almost 22 million veterans in the United States today, more than two million are women, and of those, over 635,000 are enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs system, double the number before 9/11. Women are the fastest growing group of veterans treated by the V.A., and projections show that women will make up over 16 percent of the country’s veterans by midcentury.

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Unfortunately, these veterans aren’t always getting the care they require from a system originally designed to serve mostly men. Women have health care needs that are distinct from men; cardiovascular disease, for example, plays out differently in the female body, and particular expertise is required when providers see women in their childbearing years. “For too long, the V.A. has essentially ignored many of the most pressing needs that our women veterans face,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said during a hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year.

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The problem is not will, it’s money. The V.A. has to care for all living veterans, and has encountered increased demand on every front, from nursing home beds to mental health care. The demographic challenge is daunting: dealing with a large population of aging Vietnam veterans just as over one million veterans are making the transition from the military back into civilian life, most after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Yes, increased funds will be needed,” says Dr. Sally Haskell, the V.A.’s deputy chief consultant for women’s health services. “We need to work to make sure that women veterans are being taken care of.”

But leaders of the V.A. have to choose between competing priorities. This summer, for example, they obtained extra funds to provide new drugs for hepatitis C, which is rampant among Vietnam veterans, after threatening to close facilities unless the dollars came through. They did not employ the same strong-arm tactics to obtain additional funding for new services for the young women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Science Isn’t Broken: It’s just a hell of a lot harder than we give it credit for. →

Really neat article. Looks at the problems with one of the most common modern statistics. A small window into the world of science.

...Taken together, headlines like these might suggest that science is a shady enterprise that spits out a bunch of dressed-up nonsense. But I’ve spent months investigating the problems hounding science, and I’ve learned that the headline-grabbing cases of misconduct and fraud are mere distractions. The state of our science is strong, but it’s plagued by a universal problem: Science is hard — really fucking hard.

If we’re going to rely on science as a means for reaching the truth — and it’s still the best tool we have — it’s important that we understand and respect just how difficult it is to get a rigorous result. I could pontificate about all the reasons why science is arduous, but instead I’m going to let you experience one of them for yourself. Welcome to the wild world of p-hacking...

The Bail Trap →

Bail hasn’t always been a mechanism for locking people up. When the concept first took shape in England during the Middle Ages, it was emancipatory. Rather than detaining people indefinitely without trial, magistrates were required to let defendants go free before seeing a judge, guaranteeing their return to court with a bond. If the defendant failed to return, he would forfeit the amount of the bond. The bond might be secured — that is, with some or all of the amount of the bond paid in advance and returned at the end of the trial — or it might not. In 1689, the English Bill of Rights outlawed the widespread practice of keeping defendants in jail by setting deliberately unaffordable bail, declaring that ‘‘excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed.’’ The same language was adopted word for word a century later in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

But as bail has evolved in America, it has become less and less a tool for keeping people out of jail, and more and more a trap door for those who cannot afford to pay it. Unsecured bond has become vanishingly rare, and in most jurisdictions, there are only two ways to make bail: post the entire amount yourself up front — what’s called ‘‘money bail’’ or ‘‘cash bail’’ — or pay a commercial bail bondsman to do so. For relatively low bail amounts — say, below $2,000, the range in which most New York City bails fall — the second option often doesn’t even exist; bondsmen can’t make enough money from such small bails to make it worth their while.

With national attention suddenly focused on the criminal-justice system, bail has been cited as an easy target for reformers. But ensuring that no one is held in jail based on poverty would, in many respects, necessitate a complete reordering of criminal justice. The open secret is that in most jurisdictions, bail is the grease that keeps the gears of the overburdened system turning. Faced with the prospect of going to jail for want of bail, many defendants accept plea deals instead, sometimes at their arraignments. New York City courts processed 365,000 arraignments in 2013; well under 5 percent of those cases went all the way to a trial resolution. If even a small fraction of those defendants asserted their right to a trial, criminal courts would be overwhelmed. By encouraging poor defendants to plead guilty, bail keeps the system afloat.