Forget artificial intelligence. It’s artificial idiocy we need to worry about

Tom Chatfield writes: Massive, inconceivable numbers are commonplace in conversations about computers. The exabyte, a one followed by 18 zeroes worth of bits; the petaflop, one quadrillion calculations performed in a single second. Beneath the surface of our lives churns an ocean of information, from whose depths answers and optimisations ascend like munificent kraken.

This is the much-hyped realm of “big data”: unprecedented quantities of information generated at unprecedented speed, in unprecedented variety.

From particle physics to predictive search and aggregated social media sentiments, we reap its benefits across a broadening gamut of fields. We agonise about over-sharing while the numbers themselves tick upwards. Mostly, though, we fail to address a handful of questions more fundamental even than privacy. What are machines good at; what are they less good at; and when are their answers worse than useless?

Consider cats. As commentators like the American psychologist Gary Marcus have noted, it’s extremely difficult to teach a computer to recognise cats. And that’s not for want of trying. Back in the summer of 2012, Google fed 10 million feline-featuring images (there’s no shortage online) into a massively powerful custom-built system. The hope was that the alchemy of big data would do for images what it has already done for machine translation: that an algorithm could learn from a sufficient number of examples to approximate accurate solutions to the question “what is that?”

Sadly, cats proved trickier than words. Although the system did develop a rough measure of “cattiness”, it struggled with variations in size, positioning, setting and complexity. Once expanded to encompass 20,000 potential categories of object, the identification process managed just 15.8% accuracy: a huge improvement on previous efforts, but hardly a new digital dawn. [Continue reading…]

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Kerry opens door to Iran’s participation in Syrian peace talks

The New York Times reports: Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Sunday that Iran might play a role at the peace talks on Syria that are scheduled to take place this month.

It was the first time that a senior American official had indicated that Iranian diplomats might participate in the session, which is to convene in Switzerland on Jan. 22.

But Mr. Kerry also made clear that there would be limits on Iran’s role if Tehran did not formally accept that the goal of the conference would be to work out arrangements for a transitional authority that would govern Syria if President Bashar al-Assad could be persuaded to give up power.

“Now, could they contribute from the sidelines? Are there ways for them conceivably to weigh in?” Mr. Kerry said, referring to the Iranians. “Can their mission that is already in Geneva be there in order to help the process?”

“It may be that that could happen, but that has to be determined by the secretary general,” he added, referring to Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations. “It has to be determined by Iranian intentions themselves.” [Continue reading…]

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Jabhat Al Nusra’s secret role in Syrian rebels’ successes

The National reports: Jabhat Al Nusra, the Sunni Islamist rebel group with links to Al Qaeda, has been quietly expanding its activities in southern Syria, working alongside western- and Arab-backed rebels in military operations aimed at ousting the regime of President Bashar Al Assad.

Al Nusra and other radical Islamist groups have dominated the anti-Assad insurgency in the north and east of Syria but until recently, they have been less numerous in Deraa and elsewhere in southern Syria.

While refraining from calling public attention to their activities, Al Nusra is now rising in the south. Its fighters have entered into secret, ad hoc and often uneasy alliances with units of the more moderate, western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA).

“They offer their services and cooperate with us, they are better armed than we are, they have suicide bombers and know how to make car bombs,” an FSA fighter explained.

Many FSA commanders and secular opponents of Mr Al Assad and his regime refused to talk about Al Nusra, saying the group was irrelevant in Deraa, a tribal area with a tradition of moderate Islam. But others admitted that Al Nusra’s role in fighting in southern Syria is far greater than publicly acknowledged.

“The FSA and Al Nusra join together for operations but they have an agreement to let the FSA lead for public reasons, because they don’t want to frighten Jordan or the West,” said an activist who works with opposition groups in Deraa.

“Operations that were really carried out by Al Nusra are publicly presented by the FSA as their own,” he said.

A leading FSA commander involved in operations in Deraa said Al Nusra had strengthened FSA units and played a decisive role in key rebel victories in the south.

“The face of Al Nusra cannot be to the front. It must be behind the FSA, for the sake of Jordan and the international community,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Al Qaeda affiliate pull out of northern Syria strongholds

Reuters reports: An al Qaeda affiliate rebel group pulled out from strategic areas of northern Syria near the Turkish border on Sunday after coming under heavy fire from other Islamist brigades, opposition activists said.

Fighting erupted in the last few days between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al-Qaeda division led by foreign jihadists, and other home-grown Islamist groups, including the al Nusra Front, another al Qaeda affiliate. The clash was a culmination of tensions over territory and spheres of influence in the region near a long border with Turkey.

The area is key to supplying rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad. Units of the Western backed Free Syrian Army also took part in fighting against the ISIL.

But the pullout on Sunday, which included the ISIL stronghold of al Dana in Idlib province and the important supply line town of Atma involved no fighting, suggesting a possible deal to avoid a larger confrontations that would sap the strength of the two sides and play into the hands of Assad, opposition sources and Middle East diplomats said.

Fighters from the Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham militant group took over the ISIL positions in the two towns, activists in northern Syria said.

“The Islamic State is pulling out without a fight. Its fighters are taking their weapons and heavy guns. They appear to be heading in the direction of Aleppo,” activist Firas Ahmad said.

A statement that is currently being widely circulated says “Jabhat al-Nusra has undertaken a military operation against Da3sh [ISIS] in response to its transgressions and restore the oppressed to their families.” The authenticity of this statement is disputed.

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Syrian terror groups working for the Assad regime

The Arabic News Digest, compiled and translated by The National, reports: None of the Syrian regime’s achievements matches its fabrication of the fundamentalist-terrorist groups that it pretends to fight and protect the Syrians from, opposition figure Michel Kilo wrote in the London-based newspaper Asharq Al Awsat.

Such radical organisations did not exist in Syria before the revolution. The regime decided to create them, with the most successful one being the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the writer said.

The ISIL has offered valuable services to the Syrian regime. It has undermined the Free Syrian Army (FSA), taken areas controlled by it and subjected the citizens to sectarian tyranny. This has started to persuade the people to accept a return to Mr Al Assad’s dictatorship, he added.

The ISIL has also undermined the people and groups who began the revolution, and which the regime’s intelligence services could not counter initially.

Civil forces, particularly the Union of Syrian Democrats, that are struggling to keep the goal of democracy alive, have also been weakened by the ISIL. The Union of Syrian Democrats was created by a variety of civil organisations and figures in an attempt to provide a unified political platform that reflects the wide civil and democratic grassroots groups that want an end to division among democracy advocates.

Since its inception at the hands of outsiders, the ISIL has targeted areas that had already been liberated by the FSA, which left those places to fight in others. The ISIL had only a few overseas fighters in the beginning, so they took as their base Ar-Raqqah city after violently forced out the FSA.

After crushing The Grandsons of the Messenger and The Eagles of the North using car bombs, the ISIL has threatened other organisations to provide it with fighters and its share of the spoils of war or else it would destroy them.

Moreover, the ISIL has issued religious edicts declared as apostates the FSA, the Syrian National Coalition, the democrats, and Islamists who reject its methods, threatening to kill all of them – and have killed or arrested some.

They have also terrified non-Muslims by kidnapping Christian priests including bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yazigi and Father Paolo.

Finally, the ISIL has sought to win over the population using food assistance, and fighters using money and weaponry. In particular, it has recruited the regime’s Shabiha militias and embarked on hunting down the FSA, the democrats and journalists using lists provided by the regime’s intelligence services.

Syrian forces fighting for freedom must not be blamed for the acts of the ISIL, which is only fighting the enemies of Al Assad regime and the principles they are battling for, the writer concluded.

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Big Brother’s little siblings: How local police departments are spying on us now, too

Michael Price writes: By now, it’s well known that the National Security Agency is collecting troves of data about law-abiding Americans. But the NSA is not alone: A series of new reports show that state and local police have been busy collecting data on our daily activities as well — under questionable or nonexistent legal pretenses. These revelations about the extent of police snooping in the U.S. — and the lack of oversight over it — paint a disturbing picture for anyone who cares about civil liberties and privacy protection.

The tactics used by law enforcement are aggressive, surreptitious and surprising to even longtime surveillance experts. One report released last month made front page news: an investigation by more than 50 journalists that found that local law enforcement agencies are collecting cellphone data about thousands of innocent Americans each year by tapping into cellphone towers and even creating fake ones that act as data traps.

A new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law details how police departments around the country have created data “fusion centers” to collect and share reports about residents. But the information in these reports seldom bears any relation to crime or terrorism. In California, for example, officers are encouraged to document and immediately report on “suspicious” activities such as “individuals who stay at bus or train stops for extended periods while buses and trains come and go,” “individuals who carry on long conversations on pay or cellular phones,” and “joggers who stand and stretch for an inordinate amount of time.” In Houston, the criteria are so broad they include anything deemed “suspicious or worthy of reporting.” Many police departments and fusion centers have reported on constitutionally protected activities such as photography and political speech. They have also demonstrated a troubling tendency to focus on people who appear to be of Middle Eastern origin. [Continue reading…]

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In Guantánamo, ‘national security’ rides roughshod over human rights

Shaker Aamer writes: The language that they use here at Guantánamo reflects how they treat us prisoners. Just the other day, they referred to me as a “package” when they moved me from my cell. This is nothing new. I have been a package for 12 years now. I am a package when en route to Camp Echo, the solitary confinement wing. I am a package en route to a legal call. “The package has been picked up … the package has been delivered.”

It is not enough that we are called packages. At best, we are numbers. I worry that when I come home that my children will call for “Daddy”, and I will sit unmoving. I am 239. I even refer to myself as 239 these days. I am not sure when I will ever be anything else. It is much easier to deny human rights to those who are not deemed to be “human”.

I have been reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) so I could mark it with the violations the US government commits against us in this facility at Guantánamo Bay. I have been studying each article and on virtually every occasion I have noted how the US military is doing the opposite. After going through all of the articles, I have identified one underlying motive that leads the US to violate the whole declaration.

It is national security. This is the coathanger the government uses to suspend all of these rights. It is always a matter of national security. [Continue reading…]

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Leading British cryptographer says MI5 should be abolished

Tamlin Magee writes: Privacy campaigner and Cambridge University’s Head of Cryptography Professor Ross J Anderson has suggested one way to begin stamping out the British state’s unaccountable involvement in the NSA spying scandal: end the domestic secret services entirely.

“Were I a legislator,” Anderson says, “I would simply abolish MI5.”

Speaking with Forbes, Anderson notes the only way this kind of systemic data collection has been made possible was through the business models of private industry. The value of information-driven web companies such as Facebook and Google is built around their ability to gather vast tracts of data. It was something the intelligence agencies would have struggled with alone.

“It would never have been realistic for governments to collect so much data because they just don’t have the technical nous or managerial skill to set up and operate the systems concerned,” Anderson says. “Only private industry could do that. But, of course, now that the systems exist, spooks want access to them.” [Continue reading…]

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At home in opposition to the land

To an adult, most of the connotations of home seem positive: safety, stability, familiarity, comfort, nurturing. Yet as Ian Tattersall points out, to be tied to one place in a changing environment marked a turning point in human evolution — the juncture at which we placed ourselves in opposition to nature.

Archaeologists begin to see proto-houses during the Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers at the Ukrainian site of Mezhirich built four oval-to-circular huts that ranged from 120 to 240 square feet in area, and were clad in tons of mammoth bones. Out there on the treeless tundra, their occupants would have cooperated in hunting reindeer and other grazers that migrated seasonally through the area. The Mezhirich people dug pits in the permafrost that acted as natural “freezers” to preserve their meat and let them spend several months at a time in the “village.” With so much labor invested in the construction of their houses, it is hard to imagine that the Mezhirich folk did not somehow feel “at home” there.

But if an archaeologist had to pick an example of the earliest structures that most resembled our modern idea of home, it would probably be the round houses built by the semi-sedentary Natufians, an ancient people who lived around the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea (Israel, Syria, and environs) at the end of the last Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago. A typical Natufian village consisted of several circular huts each measuring about 10 to 20 feet in diameter; these villages testify to a revolutionary change in human living arrangements. Finally, people were regularly living in semi-permanent settlements, in which the houses were clearly much more than simple shelters against the elements. The Natufians were almost certainly witness to a dramatic change in society.

The end of the Ice Age was a time of transition from a hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence to an agricultural way of life. But it also involved a Faustian bargain. Adopting a fixed residence went hand-in-hand with cultivating fields and domesticating animals. It allowed families to grow, providing additional labor to till the fields. But becoming dependent on the crops they grew meant that people found themselves in opposition to the environment: The rain didn’t fall and the sun didn’t shine at the farmers’ convenience. They locked themselves into a lifestyle, and to make the field continuously productive to feed their growing families, they had to modify their landscape.

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New Syria rebel alliance declares war on Al Qaeda

Post by Kafranbel Syrian Revolution.

AFP reports: A newly formed Syrian rebel alliance has declared war on the powerful Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and joined other opposition groups in battling the extremists.

“We, the Army of the Mujahideen, pledge to defend ourselves and our honor, wealth and lands, and to fight ISIS, which has violated the rule of God, until it announces its dissolution,” said the new alliance of eight groups, in a statement published on Facebook Friday.

The alliance demanded that ISIS fighters either join the ranks of other rebel groups “or hand over their weapons and leave Syria.”

The alliance accused ISIS of “spreading strife and insecurity… in liberated [rebel] areas, spilling the blood of fighters and wrongly accusing them of heresy, and expelling them and their families from areas they have paid heavily to free” from Assad’s regime.

The Army of Mujahideen also accused ISIS of theft and looting, and of “kidnapping, killing and torturing [rebel] commanders and activists,” echoing repeated complaints among opposition ranks against the Al-Qaeda affiliate.

The newly formed group is made up of eight small to medium-sized brigades, and it was not immediately clear how many fighters it commanded.

But as the statement was issued it fought fierce clashes against ISIS in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces of northern Syria.

The Islamic Front, the largest rebel alliance, which is made up of several powerful Islamist groups, and the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, another major rebel bloc, also battled ISIS on Friday.

Joshua Landis adds: The Syrian opposition Coalition claims that ISIS is a regime inspired organization, designed to undermine the principles of the revolution and pervert the meaning of Islam. Chants of “Assad and D`ASH are one” have been repeated at many recent demonstrations against ISIS. (DA`ASH is the acronym in Arabic for ISIS or Dawla al-Islamiyya fi-l `Iraq wa Sham). The Coalition told AP that:

The Syrian National Coalition believes that ISIS is closely linked to the terrorist regime and serves the interests of the clique of President Bashar Al-Assad…. The murder of Syrians by this group leaves no doubt about the intentions behind their creation, their objectives, and the agendas they service, which is confirmed by the nature of their terrorist actions that are hostile to the Syrian revolution.

Hassan Aboud of the Islamic Front and head of its political bureau blamed ISIS for bringing this war on itself. Hassan Aboud explained in an interview with aljazerra:

All this fighting [between rebel forces] will only weaken the revolution and help the regime. We, in the Islamic Front, did not take the decision to fight ISIS, but whoever did it had his reasons because of the way ISIS treats other groups. ISIS denies reality, refusing to recognize that it is simply another group. It refuses to go to independent courts; it attacked many other groups, stole their weapons, occupied their headquarters, and arbitrarily apprehended numerous activists, journalists and rebels. It has been torturing its prisoners. These transgressions accumulated, and people got fed up with ISIS. Some of those people have attacked ISIS’s positions, but ISIS was first to attack in other places, bringing this on itself.

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The Syrian double revolution and the Euro-Leftist double impotency

Leil-Zahra Mortada writes: Since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution many radical Leftist groups and networks, both on the international and local levels in Europe and around the world, have engaged in a heated debate on wether to support the revolution or not, on wether it was a revolution or an imperialist conspiracy. The European counterargument against the revolution had a quite-telling approach that was different from many in the rest of the world. It wasn´t just the usual claim that the Assad regime is one of the last-standing anti-imperialist forces. That claim became weaker in Europe after the aggravation of the regime crimes accompanied with hard-to-deny evidence on its brutality continuously coming out from Syria. Many within the European Left over and over affirmed that they will not support what is happening in Syria until they find revolutionary forces worthy of their support. The difference in approach was in the claim that there was no third option that is “revolutionary” and that poses a substitute to both the Assad regime and the Islamist militias. This approach wasn´t only problematic in its privileged laziness in not doing the needed effort to find these networks in Syria, but also in its White-tailored presets for what is a “better future” for the Syrians. It is the cliché and banal dichotomy of Secular vs. Islamist, something very reminiscent of Huntington´s “Clash of Civilizations”. It also bears a certain condescending patronization on who is worthy of demanding an end to a certain terrorist regime and who is not. This is a very dangerous approach. It is a clear double-standard in the alleged radical Leftist agenda, and a quite revoking one. Any people, whether we agree with them or not, who are living under such an oppressive and violent regime, has the right to overthrow it. Whether they have a plan that meets our aspirations on what is to come next, or not, it is their full right and own choice to rebel. We can be critical and actively disagree with their agenda, but we should never justify or whitewash the crimes of the regime against them. Refusing to support certain anti-regime actions or groups that do not meet our politics is needed and important, but this should not be mistaken for a support to the regime forces or undermining rebellious efforts of other groups and individuals. This is not problematic on the Syrian question only. It is a clear call for reflection on the mentality and approach of a big section of the European Left. This is where the debate is urgently needed. The strictly Eurocentric definition of the world, of politics, and even of revolution itself. The European Left has made a brand out of Revolution. It was taken under a European copyright and it gets bestowed on some and denied to others. It is given and could be taken away. Alas!

With over 170 days of siege on the El-Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, and over 30 people there murdered by the regime forces with the weapon of starvation, Assad´s credibility as a pro-Palestine leader crumbled. It is no longer easy to justify his crimes against El-Yarmouk, nor paint him as the Palestine-loving fairy. It became harder and harder for people to look the other way. The humanitarian approach was gaining grounds before the revolutionary agenda. While El-Yarmouk suffered for a pretty long time, and its rebellious residents joined the revolution very early on, it took starvation and the usual postcard of dying children to get the world´s attention; especially the world of Palestine-solidarity networks in Europe and beyond. Starvation can´t be justified as a bomb that allegedly took a wrong turn, nor it could be blamed on certain anti-regime militias. It was no longer easy to keep the eyes closed! Though this only undermined one of Assad´s PR points, it still didn´t provoke the needed reaction. The Palestinian refugees in the El-Yarmouk camp, like many Syrians, are dying of hunger. The regime is using starvation as a weapon. Clear? Now action is needed!

The denial of life-saving medicines and vaccines is also being used as a weapon. For example, Polio vaccines are denied or given in amounts much less than the needed ones to zones out of the regime control. This is not a matter of a UNICEF-style activism of sick children on a postcard like some claim. And it is not a matter of the World Health Organization taking its responsibilities and duties seriously, plus putting the funds it has into action. This is another evidence, just like the refugee question, on the corruption of the international relief agencies. On the amount of money wasted and on diplomatic and bureaucratic protocols that are respected more than life itself. Health is being used as a weapon, as a repressive measure that is destroying the lives of many and will most probably leave life-long life-devestating impacts. There is a revolutionary obligation to actively put an end to this and as soon as possible. This is in no way different than fighting against a nuclear-power facility or a multinational that endangers the lives of many and that of the future generations, except maybe in its pressing urgency.

Much of the European Left´s counterargument against the revolution was demanding proof from the Syrians on their worthiness of support, asking them to demonstrate that they are “revolutionary enough”. Maybe it was never put so bluntly, but that is the essence of it. It was never enough that there are people dying, and that there are thousands in detention camps; it was never enough that the population is being forced into murderous exodus or being deprived of basic needs. The European Left wanted its “revolutionaries”. They continuously negated the presence of any substantial forces fighting the regime and posing an option other than religious fundamentalism.

Now news is hitting international fronts on Syrian activists kidnapped by Islamist forces. There is no more hiding of the division between the Islamist militias and the revolutionary groups in the anti-Assad camp. This division made it crystal clear that there are voices who are fighting both, that there are people who are a threat to Assad and to the Islamists. The threats-turned-attacks of the Islamists against many activists within the anti-Assad camp undermines the oversimplified binary of Assad vs. Islamists. The “third option” paid for the spotlight dearly, with threats to their lives. The voices from local committees and grassroots networks denouncing both the Assad regime and the Islamists trying to hijack the revolution intensified in the recent period. It is now much harder to ignore and marginalize them, let alone claim they don´t exist and that it is only Al-Qaeda militias in the horizon. [Continue reading…]

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Video: Syrian human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh recorded this message shortly before her abduction

Award-winning Syrian human rights defender and writer Razan Zaitouneh, along with her husband, Wa’el Hamada, and two colleagues, Nazem Hamadi and Samira Khalil, were abducted by unknown individuals on 9 December 2013 from a joint office for the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) and the Local Development and Small Projects Support (LDSPS) in the Damascus suburb of Douma, part of Eastern Ghouta, an area under the control of a number of armed opposition groups that is being besieged by government forces. (FIDH)

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47 senators take AIPAC’s word over U.S. intel community

Jim Lobe writes: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has published the list of senators who so far have agreed to co-sponsor the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, aka the Wag the Dog Act of 2014. You’ll recall that the initial list, which was introduced by its principal engineers, Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, Dec 19, included 26 co-sponsors equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, to which newly elected New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker quickly added his name. Since then, 20 other senators — all Republicans, unsurprisingly — have added their names, for a grand total of 47 — still short of a majority, let alone one that could survive an Obama veto that the White House has already committed the president to cast if the bill is passed in its present form.

According to the AIPAC list, which is reproduced below, 53 senators, including 36 Democrats and the two independents who normally vote with the Democratic caucus, have not agreed to co-sponsor the bill, or, in the dreaded moniker used by AIPAC to score lawmakers’ voting records (presumably for the benefit of the “pro-Israel” PACs that decide how to dole out campaign cash), are labeled “DNC.” They will undoubtedly be the top targets for AIPAC’s legendary powers of persuasion when the Senate reconvenes early next week.

What is remarkable about this list, however, is that very few of the 47 co-sponsors have chosen to publicize their support for the bill to their constituents through local media or other means. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq fighters, Qaeda allies, claim Falluja as new state

The New York Times reports: Black-clad Sunni militants of Al Qaeda destroyed the Falluja Police Headquarters and mayor’s office, planted their flag atop other government buildings and decreed the western Iraqi city to be their new independent state on Friday in an escalating threat to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whose forces were struggling to retake control late into the night.

The advances by the militants — members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — came after days of fighting in Falluja, Ramadi and other areas of Anbar Province. The region is a center of Sunni extremism that has grown more intense in reaction to Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and the neighboring civil war in Syria.

Assertions by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters that they were in complete control of Falluja were disputed by government security forces and an alliance of tribal leaders who have joined them. By nightfall, the security forces and tribal militia members had recaptured a part of the main street and a municipal building.

Mohamed al-Isawi, the head of the Falluja police, said in a telephone interview that he was gathering men in an area north of Falluja, as a staging ground for what he hoped would be a decisive battle to retake full control of the city.

“We succeeded today with the tribesmen in getting back the main street of Falluja after a big fight,” Mr. Isawi said, “and now we are keen to fight the terrorists and liberate our city from any traces of the criminals.”

But Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters still appeared to have the upper hand, witnesses and others reached by telephone said, and there was no question that the group had scored a propaganda victory against Mr. Maliki, whose authority over Anbar Province has been severely undermined in the two years since American forces left the country.[Continue reading…]

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Egypt in the dentist’s chair

Alaa Al Aswany writes: Novelists work hard to acquire human experience. They search for characters who might inspire them. They go to unusual places to collect the necessary material for their novels.

I am lucky not to have had to undertake these adventures because I am both a novelist and a dentist.

The dentist’s profession enables him to see so many varied examples of humanity that his clinic sometimes resembles the backstage of a theater, where the performers, out of costume and minus makeup, are no longer acting.

I have treated the teeth of thousands of people, from the poorest peasant farmers to society ladies and government ministers, and I am always learning something new about human behavior.

A government minister in Egypt does not go to the dentist on his own. Instead, an entourage of sycophantic staffers sniffs all around the clinic like bloodhounds to make sure that everything is as it should be.

This tawdry drama epitomizes the philosophy of rule in dictatorial regimes, in which loyalty always comes ahead of efficiency as a condition for promotion.

I used to work as a dentist in a government institution. One day, as I was about to do a filling for a staffer, having placed a rubber dam over his mouth, the door opened and the director’s secretary came in to tell me that the big boss was on his way to the clinic to have his teeth looked at.

“The director doesn’t have an appointment,” I stated calmly.

“The director doesn’t need to have an appointment,” he said with incredulity. “Please get rid of this patient so that you can see the director.”

“I haven’t finished with this patient yet,” I told him angrily. “I don’t think you understand that the director is just a patient here.”

The secretary looked at me wide-eyed, then left, slamming the door behind him. I realized I was in for trouble, but I was not afraid. Nor was I sorry for having stood up for the principle.

During my exchange with the secretary, however, I had forgotten about the patient with the rubber dam over his mouth. He was gurgling and gesticulating as he tried to tell me something. The moment I removed the rubber dam, he leapt from the chair.

“Doctor, you’re wrong,” he shouted. “The director is entitled to be seen by you whenever he feels like it, and I am handing over my appointment with you to him.”

The patient did not wait for my response, but rushed out of the surgery, his cavity unfilled. He apologized to the director and led him into the surgery.

This was a lesson for me in just how difficult and usually abortive it was to defend the rights of people who have lived an eternity under oppression. [Continue reading…]

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Surveillance network built to spot secret nuclear tests yields surprise scientific boon

The Washington Post reports: It records sounds that no human ear can hear, like the low roar of a meteor slicing through the upper atmosphere, or the hum an iceberg makes when smacked by an ocean wave.

It has picked up threats invisible to the human eye, such as the haze of radioactive particles that circled the planet after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011.

The engineers who designed the world’s first truly planetary surveillance network two decades ago envisioned it as a way to detect illegal nuclear weapons tests. Today, the nearly completed International Monitoring System is proving adept at tasks its inventors never imagined. The system’s scores of listening stations continuously eavesdrop on Earth itself, offering clues about man-made and natural disasters as well as a window into some of nature’s most mysterious processes.

The Obama administration hopes the network’s capabilities will persuade a reluctant Senate to approve a nuclear test-ban treaty that stalled in Congress more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, without the treaty and wholly without fanfare, new stations come on line almost every month.

“We can pick up whale sounds, and ice sheets cracking,” said Thomas Muetzelburg, a spokesman for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), the Vienna-based group that operates the network. More importantly, he said, “we can reliably detect nuclear tests.”

The monitoring system is a latticework of sensors — including radiation detectors and machines that measure seismic activity or low-frequency sound waves — spread out across 89 countries as well as the oceans and polar regions. Like a giant stethoscope, it listens for irregularities in Earth’s natural rhythms, collecting and transmitting terabytes of data to a small office in the Austrian capital.

The network was designed to help enforce the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, which outlawed explosive testing of nuclear weapons. But while the treaty has never entered into force — the United States and seven other countries have declined to ratify it, in part because of concerns over verification — the monitoring network has steadily grown over the years, from a handful of stations in 2003 to more than 270.

The network has emerged as one of the most compelling arguments for the treaty, advocates say. Arms-control officials in the Obama administration have cited the network’s advances in arguing for a new push for Senate ratification of the nuclear test ban, despite opposition from prominent Republicans who argue that the pact undermines U.S. interests.

“There has been a growing realization, especially after Fukushima, that the International Monitoring System has improved to an impressive level,” Rose Gottemoeller, the State Department’s assistant secretary for arms control, verification and compliance, said in an interview. “It became clear that the time is right to go out and talk about these accomplishments and what the treaty can do for U.S. national security.” [Continue reading…]

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