Except that your target probably has the same opinion as you of the general behaviour of US immigration in similar circumstances.

And if pauldavis was referring to YOU as the troll and not to Destronok, well, I suspect you and he might both think the other was trolling, what with his implications that the Bahrain protests may have been organised by nefarious political organisations.

@pauldavis – perhaps one difference is that the tea party is a well-known ‘political’ organisation (i.e. “organised”) whereas from what I have read so far (and I’m happy to be proven wrong or insufficiently well-read) the protest and uprising in Bahrain was a tad more spontaneous or disorganised as political organisations (such as the tea party) are not exactly ten a penny in Bahrain. Which substitute “different organisation” did you have in mind as being behind the events in Bahrain? What more “origins and motivations” do you need than an oppressive freedom-denying regime with all the injustice that goes with it?

http://www.seattlesrestaurants.info/photo/Seattle-WA/Bridge-Troll-Seattle-WA

none of the rest of what i wrote had anything to do with your post in any direct sense, and indeed i am quite aware that bahrain is not in north africa. the same concerns apply there though, too: the difficulty for outsiders in understanding the legitimacy of a liberation movement.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/02/bahrain-video-protest-khalifa-violence-shoot.html

i want to stress that i don’t really believe that the CIA has anything to do with tunisia, egypt or even libya. i’m just a little skeptical of our instant readiness to buy into the “regular folks, fighting for freedom” story when (recent) history has several examples that turned out to be more complicated.

Iran? Syria? Even some of the N.African states, but Bahrain?

Naah – they have no interest in further upsetting the status quo in Bahrain.

Others might, though. Iran for example.

Omar, it seems as though one of the main reasons you didn’t get through was you were a freelance journalist. The delay in denying your visa was probably due to them making sure you weren’t arriving in Bahrain with a non-journalistic intent. Suffice to say, the security situation in Bahrain is real. The region is on high-alert for anything Iran might do in order to destabilize the situation in Bahrain. Hizbollah has an active relationship with hard-liners in Bahrain and is likely to have contributed in training the highly-organized effort to bring down the government that occurred in the form of political stalling, occupation of public space, and barricading essential highways in the country.

Many news organizations neglect to mention the anti-government protestors turned violent before the GCC forces entered Bahrain. Indian expatriates were murdered in the streets [WARNING: GRAPHIC], the main hospital was occupied (which is really dumb, for real, because it means individuals that need critical care are denied it. This resulted in at least two deaths which might not have happened had the hospital remained a hospital.), ambulances were used to capture indian expatriates for reasons that are unapparent (and inexcusable whatever the reasons), and only half an hour ago Bahrain Television aired a video showing the corpse of a policeman (a Bahraini) being kicked by a crowd of 5-10 individuals. References to it are already on Twitter.

If Bahrain needs anything from the international community, it’s support in realizing that there are violent groups in Bahrain that need to be stopped (US intelligence agencies are probably well aware of this, and recent Wikileaks cables help shed light on the matter). This kind of destructive behavior would not be tolerated in any civil society (watch for the improvised explosive device at 2:37).

Bahrainis, on the other hand, have had the freedom to create political parties and run for parliament for over a decade. Now if you had a political party with constituents and an organizational structure to disseminate information, how silly would it be to run out into the street and hope that people would follow?

(As a general note, the tendency to lump Egypt and Bahrain into the same basket doesn’t help. The two nations are very different, and one should recognize that.)

It’s very hard create an argument that exclusively blames one group or organization in Bahrain.

The government’s to blame for not giving its people the right of freedom of speech in its fullest sense. They are also to blame for often having only two settings when it comes to crime and punishment: super-leniency || beat-the-shit-out-of-you. It’s a weird bipolar situation where sometimes people get off way too easy when they really shouldn’t and other times people are thrown in prison for being critical of the wrong people (which is wrong).

The members of parliament are to blame for being asshats for two consecutive 4-year terms. Their great accomplishments include noticing that mannequins in shop windows are way too attractive and something needs to be done about that, as well as calling for legally enforceable racial segregation (also mentioned in the above link).

The people are to blame for electing the aformentioned asshats and then getting pissed off when they aren’t being represented. Guess what? It’s your fault. No really, it is.

suppose, for example, that the tea party was able to get, say, 500,000 people to march in an aggressive but non-violent manner on washington DC. suppose they repeated this for several days in a row. suppose smaller, similar outbursts occured in other large cities throughout the US. if the tea party is not a credible source of such action for you, substitute a different organization.

when these protesters claim to act on behalf of the american people, how can we tell if their claim is true?

in the depth of my heart, i wish for liberty and freedom and meaning for everyone around the world and particularly for those in countries that have recently overthrown dictators of one form or another. my heart is sick with the idea of what gaddhaffi may do if he can reassert full control over libya, and the possibility that the hope and heroism of people there will be extinguished.

and yet … i still don’t know how we can really establish the legitimacy of particular liberation movements even if the need for liberation is clear to all. and this worries me, at home in the future USA as much as elsewhere in the present world.

One thing they have managed to do successfully (the legislation to ban attractive mannequins was shot down) is enact a progressive increase in their salaries over the years.

Allow me to explain.

The old birdshot to the legs was part of US military crowd control doctrine at list through the 80′s.

I hope news organizations are slick enough to send people with no prior history of journalism to Bahrain to report on what is happening.

This just means the original writer doesn’t know diddly about guns. It doesn’t mean deadly force was not used. Shotguns are indeed deadly, within close range.

I see… Thanks for clearing that up. =#)

Sorry about that pauldavis. I saw your comment appear right below mine and assumed you were replying.

The pellet marks on that car suggest a proper riot gun was used (or at least a riot load fired from a short-barreled shotgun). Count the marks; there are about 30 of them in the space of that fender. Look at the distribution of the shot; it’s too loose to have come from a combat shotgun. Lastly, consider the pellet craters themselves. The craters suggest either high-powered tiny pellets or low-powered larger pellets. If it was high-powered tiny pellets, the choke would be a lot tighter, and it simply isn’t.

So what kind of load uses big pellets with just enough powder to inflict that kind of damage without penetrating the sheet metal? I’m going with rubber buckshot or some equivalent riot load. It’s the kind of thing that would incapacitate a person without shearing off limbs or blowing holes in them.