Month: July 2009

Today's Washington Times editorial insists that what happened in Honduras "was not a military coup." Al Giordano is fed up with such assertions, especially after yesterday's news:

The same Congress that, after the military had kidnapped, beaten and dumped President Manuel Zelaya in Costa Rica had declared one of its own, Roberto Micheletti, as the coup "president" today passed an emergency law stripping Hondurans of the following rights from the country's constitution:

1. The right to protest.

2. Freedom in one's home from unwarranted search, seizure and arrest.

3. Freedom of association.

4. Guarantees of rights of due process while under arrest.

5. Freedom of transit in the country.

The coup defenders are afraid, they say, of Honduras becoming another another Cuba, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua, of losing their "freedoms" and their "democracy." But today, in one fell swoop their leaders erased those very freedoms, atop all the other ones they've already burned alive – freedom of the press, freedom to elect their own president, among them – and buried democracy with it.

(Updated: Title changed for spelling error)

— CB

Bradford Plumer backs for the climate bill but offers this caveat:

— PA

Keep your daughters away from Ted Danson.

— CB

A reader writes:

I've long been a supporter of talks with Iran but have to agree with Roger Cohen, engaging Iran now is the wrong move.  In my mind the purpose of engagement with the regime was less about achieving actual progress on the various serious issues but more about being the adult at the table.  While it might have been possible to get various concessions on small time issues, the US is such a pariah there nothing substantial would ever have been achieved. The regime couldn't do it. 

However, until we acted in good faith with that country, we could never disarm ourselves as the issue and allow for actual Iranian politics to play out.  The point is, what we hoped to have achieved by engaging with Iran has already occurred (partly by walking very softly during their election).  Thus the aim of any talks now can achieve nothing but strengthening the legitimacy of the regime while before talks weakened it.

In fact, the best move I believe the president can make is talking, loudly, to Cuba.  If you can disregard the legitimacy of the stolen election in Iran and push directly for more openness and economic prosperity in an equally adversarial country, there's your carrot and stick, without directly meddling in Iranian affairs.

This is a very potent point. Brilliant even. Any counters?

— AS

According to this translation of an Iranian blog post:

Today, Mohammad Reza Rezazadeh, the governor of Shiraz, paid a visit to the Shiraz Central Library. During his visit reporters discovered four ballot boxes. They were asked not to report the incident. According to the election laws all ballot boxes have to be returned to Tehran.

— CB

Rortybomb confesses:

[C]an I be completely honest? I didn’t realize, until I was halfway through trying to derive the Nordhaus Model, that the units weren’t Fahrenheit. Everyone, including myself, keeps saying “we expect there to be, on average, a 3 degree increase in temperature by 2080″, and I always implicitly mentally mapped that to Fahrenheit and not to Celsius. Be honest – did you? To scientists, and noted Francophiles like Jim Manzi, it is very natural to use the metric system. But to everyday Americans, that’s really an increase of “5.4 degrees (F)” in how we discuss weather.

He asks: "should journalists report, and bloggers discuss, this to American audiences in Fahrenheit? Celsius? Both?"

— PA

The BLS June jobs report is out. It's not pretty:

(Chart from Calculated Risk)

–PA

The Iranian government gave Al Jazeera permission to shoot footage of Tehran yesterday. Also, Juan Cole gets an email:

Throughout the capital there are deep marks etched onto the asphalt, mottled grooves in the shape of a blocky "u" from where the bin fires burned hot against the pavement. The scars run at regular intervals across Tehran's many neighborhoods, sometimes in overlapping pairs or threes. It will be some time before these blemishes are repaired. Entirely new roads will have to be built…

Every young person I see I wonder, What were you doing three weeks ago? Who were you then? I look for signs of subversion. A girl wears a green headscarf. A kid shifts gears in his Kia Pride with an arm encased in a green cast. What does it mean? Together, in a crowd, the color green added up to something.

— CB

The victim of the attack is now in fair condition in hospital. And the police chief has changed his tune:

Halstead promised that he will work to employ a liaison between police and the gay community. "We’ve got to work together," Halstead said. "Be patient, and you will see that this is just not lip service. I will meet with you wherever you want to meet. I will go to your restaurants, your house, we can eat barbecue, whatever you want to do. But we’ve got to talk. We will heal beyond this."

When cops accuse gay men in a bar of groping them and then beat one of them into a near-fatal condition, it seems to me that healing is way off. Investigation and accountability first. 

— AS