Why is Hillary Not Defending the Rights of Saudi Protesters?

Arben Nelku <[email protected]>
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Why is Hillary Not Defending the Rights of Saudi Protesters?
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Nazi Hillary/ Wiki Commons image
By Eric Blair
Activist Post
March 7th, 2011

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been exhaustively in front of  cameras 
promoting the right for people to protest in Egypt,  Bahrain, Iran, and Libya. 
 She’s been touting freedom to use social networking sites as a way for Arab 
people to organize against their oppressive regimes.  Now, the Administration is 
even considering arming the opposition in Libya.
Clinton’s perpetual propaganda efforts exposed the blatant hypocrisy on the 
subject when a silent peaceful protester was violently removed from one of her 
speeches on the very subject. However, the hypocrisy  now seems to go much 
deeper in her deafening silence over the prospect  for protests in Saudi Arabia.
After Human Rights Watch revealed that a nationwide “Day of Rage”  protest had 
been planned in Saudi Arabia for this week, March 11th,  Bloomberg reported that 
the Saudi government claims that demonstrations  and marches are “strictly” 
prohibited by law.   A Saudi Interior Ministry official said protests 
“contradict Islamic  values” and “They harm public interest, infringe on the 
rights of  others, spread chaos and lead to bloodshed.”
This prohibition of popular dissent proves beyond a shadow of doubt  that Saudi 
Arabia is indeed the most tyrannical authoritarian regime in  the Arab world. 
 Yet, U.S. Administration officials have been strangely  silent about supporting 
the people’s uprising there.
Perhaps they think the protests won’t be large enough to warrant a  response. 
 Well, they certainly did stop their best propaganda push to  stoke the puny 
protests in Iran, so the size or ferocity of unrest  shouldn’t matter to their 
exploits of supposedly backing human freedom.   And one would think that given 
what has happened to oil prices due to  the unrest in Libya and Egypt, even a 
minor protest in the largest  oil-producing dictatorship in the world would draw 
more public response  from the White House.
Or perhaps the Administration believes that the hastily-crafted $35 billion 
social aid package ordered by King Abdullah will be enough to tamp down 
escalating  tensions in Saudi Arabia.  So far, there have only been reports of 
small  Shiite protests in Saudi Arabia, mostly demanding the release of  
political prisoners held by the Sunni monarchy.
These protests would seem to be very minor in comparison to the sea  of people 
revolting in Cairo.  However, the revolutionary whispers must  clearly be 
getting louder as the Saudi stock market plummeted 11% in just two days of wild 
trading to its 7-year low on fears of civil unrest.  It’s  noteworthy that the 
plunge was reportedly led by large banks and  insurers.
If Clinton is to stand by her new-found rhetoric, certainly she’ll  call for 
restraint on the part of the Saudi government should a protest  erupt, right? 
 And surely she’ll demand that the kings of Internet censorship in the Arab 
world, Saudi Arabia, will open communication channels so  the people can freely 
unite, right?  And if push comes to shove in Saudi  Arabia, she’ll definitely 
support arming the people’s opposition to the  royal family, right?  Eh hum . . 
. don’t count on it.
Regardless, many analysts believe the Saudi regime is the next to fall with or 
without the help of the U.S.
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