Funnier still, one was killed a funeral service for a dude killed in the protests yesterday! 
The king went on TV and apologized.
In Bahrain’s case, the protests apparently are about a controversial election last year – what else, I’m not sure. My guess is that this one goes nowhere, but these situations are ever-surprising this month.
And yet protests continue for the third day.
It’s no fun being two big powers’ bone of contention. Just ask the Alsatians.
Someone ought to tell the WaPo that being an island kind of disqualifies you from being at a georgraphic crossroads.
The weird thing is that the protestors are bitching about the results of a largely symbolic election anyway; all power in Bahrain devolves from the monarch, just as in the other theoretical Arab constitutional monarchies.
It’s also about the usual stuff. Kleptocratic Royal Family from one Islamic wing and a disproportionate bunch of poor people from the other.
Probably going nowhere as the US has a major base there. Home of the 5th Fleet among other things so expect a conspicuous silence from Obama.
That’s what they’re bitching about, really.
We are propping up yet another kleptomaniac dictator-equivalent in the Middle East, I see. Probably against a mob that would start stoning women and so forth if they had power. Lovely. The Middle East is such a fountain of suck.
Sadly, it is. And we keep on meddling for ‘strategic’ reasons, sowing dragon’s teeth and generally storing up trouble.
The best we can hope for out of all of this is that the end results look more like Turkey than Iran, Iraq, The Mayor of Kabul’s vile little satrap or Saudi.
[quote=“BrainGlutton, post:1, topic:571498”]
Funnier still, one was killed a funeral service for a dude killed in the protests yesterday! :)[/qyuote]
No offence mate, but your multi messages in this area give me the impression this is like some huge videogame for political junkies like yourself. I know you mean well, but the above strikes me as needless.
The king went on TV and apologized.
Why? Perfectly possible. Obviously not literal road-cross roads, but perfectly possible for a sea-faring extension of the metaphor.
Perhaps you might try not pre-emptively judging them as your moral and cultural inferiors.
And yet there was a time when it was the center of all high civilization west of China. Sic transit . . .
Of course it is that, among other things. Which is no skin off any Middle Easterner’s nose.
I would have thought this crowd would appreciate the black-comic irony. No disrespect meant to the families of the deceased.
When I want words put in my mouth, I’ll put them there myself, thank you.
Fun fact: I used to live in Bahrain, and had a pet goat.
Did you stare at it?
Yes, but I wasn’t trying to kill it. I was trying to make it stop giving milk so that I could go back on dairy.
Note also that the notoriously brutal security forces are all foreign nationals from Pakistan and the like given preferential treatment and fast-tracked citizenship as a reward.
You mean, likes some two-bit Varangian Guard?
Speaking for all Saudi expats, we all look at this situation and wonder, “Will we get danger money?”
Tell me when you start thinking “Does our embassy roof have a helicopter pad?”
The strain of the reign is painful for Bahrain!
I am so going to Hell . . .