Why did we vote for Obama? Joseph Dana reports that AP reporters have now pressed PJ Crowley, ass't sec'y of State, three times over the imprisonment of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a leader of nonviolent protest of the unending landgrab in the West Bank. And... the State Department says jacks---. Many other countries have been monitoring this case and denouncing Abu Rahmah's treatment. And our country? Dana:
On Friday, 10 December, AP reporter Matt Lee directly addressed Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s case during a US State Department briefing. US State department spokesman PJ Crowley responded that he was unable to provide a comment on the trial. When Matt Lee pushed, arguing that the EU and other foreign dignitaries had labeled Abu Rahmah a human rights defender, Crowley responded that he will “[find] out what we know.”...
The current US administration has made repeated statements on the need to support civil society activists, such as the one made by Secretary of State Clinton in July, 2010 the Krakow Community of Democracies meeting, in which she saluted “civil society activists around the world who have recently been harassed, censored, cut off from funding, arrested, prosecuted, even killed.” Clinton explained that when we defend civil society activists “we are defending an idea that has been and will remain essential to the success of every democracy.”..
Yesterday, 15 December 2010, the issue of Abu Rahmah was followed up by the AP. Crowley answered that the case is ‘watched closely’ by US representatives in Israel. Far from releasing a statement on Abdallah Abu Rahmah, Crowley confirmed the silent position on Palestinian non-violence that the United States has maintained in recent months.
Video links of the relevant State Department briefings can be found here (10.12.2010, minute 13:08), here (13.12.2010, minute 17:08), here (14.12.2010, minute 21:33) and here (15.12.2010, minute 22:20).
So fake, so hypocritcal, I’ll bet if Rahmah were in an Iranian prison we’d be hearing Hillary bellow “shame on you Ahmedinejad” and his face would be plastered over the media. But Hillary and her sidekick would rather kiss some Zionist/Israeli ass rather than be honest about Abu Rahmah’s detention in an Israeli prison for peaceful activism.
birds of a feather:
Hillel Hails Young Jews on Campus, as long as they Affirm Israel as a Jewish State and disavow BDS
Kalithea,
I just send an email to Obama and I said the same thing about too bad he isn’t Iranian. I urge everyone to to write or call:
link to whitehouse.gov
I don’t think these things have any impact whatsoever, but at least they can’t lie and say that their constituents don’t write/care about these things.
There is no way I am voting for him or any other Democrat ever again. I don’t care who wins. Obama has been the absolute worst for Palestinians.
Thanks. I’ll try that. I suppose doing anything is better than nothing.
that’s a good idea, thanks seham.
So you are a Palestine firster huh Seham?
Yonira, I will be voting Green because I think that’s BEST for this country. Does that satisfy your snarky curiousity?
I don’t really know if I used the word snarky correctly, first time I used it.
Seham,
“Snarky”:
A combination of the words snotty and shark. Usually associated with a comment that is clever, sarcastic and always mean-spirited, often delivered with feigned innocence, and an UNINTENDED tinge of hypocrisy.
I think you grasped an essence of the word “snarky” beautifully.
there’s a tragic divergence occurring, Kalithea and Seham: I’ve been watching the US-Iran-Israel debate in US for almost 5 years.
I know, I know, it’s not scientific, but I guage the mood of the US public from comments on C Span Washington Journal, which I listen to closely and monitor on a spreadsheet and a blog. More and more people are calling in to voice opinions that may not be exactly pro-Iranian, but they are certainly opposed to the official anti-Iran policies of government and viciously anti-Iran rhetoric heard on US main stream media and, stunningly, in US network entertainment vehicles.*
So it seems to me that Americans are learning a bit more about Iran, and are growing somewhat more sympathetic toward Iran.
Iranians had been quite friendly toward Americans. When I visited Iran in 2008, I had the experience most Americans have had when visiting Iran: Americans are treated like rock-stars by Iranians; Iranians were way more than hospitable, they invited us into their homes, gave us food. Iranians were highly informed about the US and engaged in robust conversation comparing and contrasting our governments, etc.
A recent poll by the US based Charney organization shows a dramatic drop in the level of Iranian “like” for the US.
And on several Iran-oriented blogs, more and more Iranians, ex-pat and Iran-based, are expressing the sentiment that while Americans may think rapprochement with Iran would be good for the US, Iranians may not necessarily think that Iranian rapprochement with US would be good for Iran.
That is a dramatic shift. And we Americans have only ourselves to blame if we “lose” Iran.
(Two days ago the “bad guy” on a an NCIS (?) episode was an Iranian who was trying to smuggle weapons into yada yada yada) .
So
I’ll probably prod Amnesty again about his case, which is about the most effective thing I can think of. Not our worthless government, for sure.
No surprise that Abu Rahmah’s name wasn’t on the State Department’s list of civil society activists who are being harassed by their governments. After all when has the U.S. government sided with movements for freedom and independence? Certainly not in the last century when such movements sprung up on almost every continent. In Nicaragua, for example, when a populist uprising successfully rid the people of a U.S. sponsored dictatorship, our government responded by creating the Contra terrorists. Not only sponsoring them but labeling them freedom fighters. Likewise in Venezueala eight years ago when the Venezuelan people rose up to put down a U.S. backed military coup d’etat, the State Department’s response, besides it’s pro forma denial of U.S. involvement in said coup, was to signal U.S. approval of the coup as well as the “freedom fighters” who carried it out. When will our government get it right as to who and what constitute freedom fighters and liberation movements? When whe have a government that’s of for and by the people in more than title only. What’s this going to take? Our siding up en masse, whereupon it’ll be up to us. Why can’t we get there by way of the incremental approach using the system handed down to us by the founding fathers? Why? Because there’s a certain urgency to our turning things around, what with perpetual war + global warming = doomsday and with time running out. Yet despite this urgency is there any doubt that under the existing system we’re moving backwards, not forward?
sixth line up …………..Our rising up en masse, whereupon it’ll be up to us, the what sort of world. ……
“When will our government get it right as to who and what constitute freedom fighters and liberation movements? When whe have a government that’s of for and by the people in more than title only. What’s this going to take? Our siding up en masse, whereupon it’ll be up to us. Why can’t we get there by way of the incremental approach using the system handed down to us by the founding fathers? ”
The answer is that the current government will never get it right, that is because it has never been a government of the people from the beginning, no matter what you were taught in public school (or wherever). They are there to serve a moneyed elite, and it is their business to protect this elite from the “leveling impulses” as the so called father of the Constitution said, Madison in the 10th Federalist Paper. In other words, the people would be in the process of bringing something that has never been here, by the design of the system as it has always functioned here – and until this is recognized and taken into account the “reforms” will always be insufficient (you targets will always be skewed) and bring surface reform perhaps that will always collapse back into the same mode of operation eventually.
However that is all I am going to say at this juncture, because it will be a repeat of who knows how many times I have said this? As far as the function of the FBI, they have always functioned in this capacity, they are the political police and always have been, their primary function has never been to “fight crime” (no matter how many TV shows we are treated to). Look at their (the FBI) record, this is round who knows what in the same capacity, it just has a different target now. Do yourself a favor and read something like “Agents Of Repression,” it will help you understand what the function of the FBI is yesterday and today.
Anyone who wants to know what this hypocritical administration really thinks of “civil society activists” please read this:
link to desertpeace.wordpress.com
Oh yeah, watch the video too.
Shame on you Obama! Shame on you Hillary!
The FBI is doing a lot more than questioning a young Jewish American lady because she made a trip to the Promised Land with two Palestinian American girlfriends and talked to some Palestinians. Check what they are doing to catch “the bad guys” right here at home: link to washingtonpost.com
PS, those two girlfriends must be scared s***less. Growing up in Amreeka.