Bahrain Nervously Awaits Revolt Report’s Findings

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Source: NYT

Bahrain’s forgotten revolt sometimes reads like the script for a film of international intrigue, where the truth remains elusive.

There is the beleaguered crown prince of a veteran American ally, and a scheming royal family that believes, with seeming sincerity, that it was almost overthrown. An ensuing crackdown made chauvinism against the majority the effective policy of the state. Inscrutable and aggressive, Iran and Saudi Arabia lurk over a body politic, where the opposition waits, restrained, even as it warns that far worse is yet to come.

Bahrain’s protests in February and March stand as the opening credits to a plot that remains unresolved today, in an oil-rich region that sits at the nexus of American hegemony, regional rivalries and looming instability. In all the revolts that have roiled the Arab world this year, Bahrain’s government managed a tactical, perhaps ephemeral victory through force. But in doing so, it may have destroyed a society that once took pride it its cosmopolitanism. The question not only for Bahrain but for other Arab countries in tumult — like Egypt and Syria — is whether reconciliation can stop an unraveling spreading across the region.

The answer here may be in the hands of an Egyptian-American law professor asked by the king this summer to investigate the protests, crackdown and aftermath, in what the king’s supporters called a bid to heal the country. His task: essentially arbitrate a crisis in which neither side even agrees on what to call the landmark traffic circle where the revolt erupted.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/world/middleeast/bahrain-nervously-awaits-revolt-reports-findings.html?pagewanted=all

[tcaudilllg]

1. Beware... the 1% is getting a handle on things

Frame the anger as a simple expression of indignity, then try to bait the protestors into feeling guilty when someone espousing false humility takes the stage. Or even worse, criticize them for NOT feeling guilty!