{"id":14342,"date":"2012-11-27T07:46:06","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T14:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14342"},"modified":"2012-11-27T07:46:06","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T14:46:06","slug":"rocking-for-reconciliation-in-bahrain-crack-heads-in-state-department-have-moment-of-clarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14342","title":{"rendered":"Rocking for Reconciliation in Bahrain – Crack-heads in State Department have “moment of clarity”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rethinking rocker in Bahrain<\/strong>
\nBy Al Kamen – 26 November, 2012 – Washington Post<\/p>\n

It seemed like a pretty neat idea when rocker \u00adAndrew W.K. posted on his Web site last week that the State Department was sending him as a cultural ambassador to Bahrain to help folks in that deeply unsettled country.<\/p>\n

Just Monday, the government used tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators and street battles flared, the Associated Press reported.<\/p>\n

The bipartisan commission that set policymakers on the path to negotiations underway now.<\/p>\n

So how about sending a rocker whose hits include \u201cParty Hard\u201d and \u201cParty Til You Puke\u201d to get warring Sunnis and Shiites to start dancing in the streets instead of fighting?<\/p>\n

Apparently not.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a Bahraini entity approach the embassy about co-sponsoring a visit by this guy, who I take is pretty popular there in Bahrain,\u201d State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Monday, our colleague Anne Gearan reports.<\/p>\n

Maybe someone at first thought the lyrics to \u201cParty Til You Puke\u201d \u2014 \u201cYou can never kill us. We choke, We gun, We kill, We stab, We rob, We steal\u201d \u2014 would have a calming effect?<\/p>\n

In any event, the co-sponsorship request was \u201cinitially approved\u201d \u2014 what? \u2014 Nuland said, \u201cand then when more senior management at the embassy took a look at this, the conclusion was that this was not an appropriate use of U.S. government funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seemed someone \u201clooked at the body of his work,\u201d Nuland explained, and the conclusion was \u201cwe didn\u2019t need to be part of his invitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottom line: \u201cHe is not going to Bahrain on the U.S. government\u2019s dime,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe body of his work?\u201d His oeuvre?<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not in Bahrain either<\/p>\n

Odd movement at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Sometime around late summer, General Counsel Lisa Gomer was suddenly moved out of the counsel\u2019s office and given some sort of \u201cspecial\u201d assignment, we heard.<\/p>\n

All the lawyers on her team were told they could no longer talk to her about her work. This was especially problematic because she had planned a big meeting in Washington of agency lawyers, including folks stationed abroad, for October, and because of the situation, it had to be canceled.<\/p>\n

Sources said this was a costly decision because of cancelation fees for reservations, air flights and such. The agency says not \u00adreally, noting that the booked airline tickets were changeable without cost and the conference venue simply moved the booking to a new conference date in February.<\/p>\n

Gomer, a Harvard Law School classmate of President Obama\u2019s, is a veteran of international development, having worked for the United Nations and been a consultant to the the United Nations Development Program.<\/p>\n

No one at USAID appears to know what\u2019s going on. There were even suspicions that her reassignment was being kept under wraps prior to the election. (Of course everyone suspected everything was kept under wraps until after the election. Besides, weeks after the election, it\u2019s still under wraps.)<\/p>\n

The agency is sticking with the usual \u201cnot at liberty to discuss,\u201d but it appears that Gomer is still in the building though not in or running the general counsel\u2019s office. Deputy General Counsel Susan Pascocello has moved up to acting general counsel for now. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Rethinking rocker in Bahrain By Al Kamen – 26 November, 2012 – Washington Post It seemed like a pretty neat idea when rocker \u00adAndrew W.K. posted on his Web site last week that the State Department was sending him as a cultural ambassador to Bahrain to help folks in that deeply unsettled country. Just Monday, more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3740],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14344,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14342\/revisions\/14344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}