Mini-round-up: Greco-Persian edition (updated)

It looks like it will take a while for New Horizons to transmit all its Pluto pictures and data, but in the meantime there's plenty happening on our own planet.

Most important is the nuclear agreement with Iran, which by most accounts should prevent the ayatollahs from getting nuclear weapons, end the economic sanctions that have kept prosperity out of reach for millions of Iranians, and open up more connections between Iran and the rest of the world which will hopefully speed up the erosion of the theocratic hard-liners' power.

Republicans, of course, are taking their usual Groucho Marx approach to anything Obama comes up with.  Sorry, I'd rather rely on the judgment of actual nuclear-proliferation experts than that of doofus politicians who can't even keep track of who's on which side.

Oh, and invoking the Chamberlain "peace for our time" meme to attack any case of a negotiated settlement whatsoever, regardless of details or context, has surely reach the Godwin's Law point by now.

The full text of the agreement is here.  Some other worthwhile links:

BBC:  The key details.

The White House:  The case for the agreement.

Kaveh Mousavi :  What it will mean for Iran.

Booman Tribune:  What it will mean for international relations.

Update:  Politics Plus:  A round-up of reactions.

The other big international story of the moment is the Greek government's capitulation to yet more austerity as the price of a new EU bailout and staying in the euro.  It's not a totally done deal yet -- the Greek Parliament might still reject the agreement as too brutal, and Germany may even reject it as not brutal enough.  Whatever happens, with US media coverage of the situation being dominated by anti-Greek talking points, clichés, and (to be blunt) lies, it's important to keep clear what's really happening:

Paul Krugman:  Whatever you think of Tsipras, the austerity plan is a descent into vindictive madness.  And what the EU calls a "technocrat" sounds remarkably like a US Republican talking economics.

The Guardian:  This raw and brutal display of German power is causing anxiety across Europe.  The IMF warns that a deal is unworkable without more debt relief.

The Obama Diary:  Germany is demanding total humiliation.

Update:  The Greek Parliament has ratified the surrender.  The backlash across Europe has escalated to a boycott of German goods (so far on a small scale, though the ugliness of the German responses shown may change that), and protests by the left within Germany itself.  This last is a promising development since it was protests within the US that eventually reined in some of the worst of US imperialism in the Third World.

This is astonishing.  It took Germany decades of good behavior to rehabilitate itself after the atrocities of Naziism -- and now Merkel and Schäuble have thrown all that away in a matter of weeks.