A variety of links to articles/interviews on current topics that may be of interest.

A variety of links to articles/interviews on current topics that may, or may not, be of interest.

A variety of links to articles/interviews on current topics that may, or may not, be of interest.

Warning: Defending your rights may be hazardous to your health. Potential side effects can include rubber bullets, tear gas, and batons wielded with impunity.

Today eight Bahraini Shia protesters were sentenced to, wait for it, life in prison, on trumped up charges related to the island kingdom’s peaceful protest movement. Specifically, the Bahraini government royal family accuses them of conspiracy to commit a coup. In response, Shia protestors have defied the security forces and gone back to the streets.

Obama’s speech on the Arab uprising was delayed, apparently because of late rewrites. And I think that’s apparent in the text, which is a real tightrope. There’s a tension to fit all of the past and present actions of the United States in that part of the world under one coherent theme. The President spoke of how “America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator,” and this is impossible to square with tacit support for dictators before this moment, and more importantly, during it.

Today Bahrain began a “trial” for 21 opposition leaders, seven of them to be tried in absentia. The trial was suddenly announced on Saturday following public attention on Friday – including an urgent appeal by Amnesty International – when word spread that human rights leader Abdulhadi Alkhawaja had been taken from jail to a hospital for surgery for injuries caused by torture. (Alkhawaja is known to many FDL readers as the father of @angryarabiya)

Let’s make no mistake, this incursion into Deraa is a preface to a massacre, along the lines of the massacre of Benghazi that was halted by coalition airstrikes. Press Secretary Jay Carney tried a pass at describing Libya as a unique situation to prevent mass carnage, but you have tanks rolling into the streets of Deraa. That just doesn’t logically follow.

But Carney also said something else, letting his slip show. He said that Libya was unique because of the support of the Arab League. And that’s the real point here. Syria is a member of the Arab League, as was Libya until Moammar Gadhafi was expelled.

One of the tradeoffs made by the US administrations to gain support for entering into Free Trade Agreements is that these agreements impose certain standards on the parties – to protect the environment, human rights and union rights.

So what will the Obama administration do when the terms of one of those agreements are blatantly violated?

The disappearances of human rights activists, lawyers, doctors and sports figures continues in Bahrain. Three members of Congress in the US have spoken out, but still Obama and Clinton are silent.