F1 Fanatic

@wasiF1 Thank you so much for your heartfelt words, I really feel all of your support and it is really overwhelming!

@jihelle I’m sorry if I offended you as a media person, but they weren’t interested in both sides. Maybe they were all taken back by the lives that were lost, as we all were! So they became biased because of that.. If you don’t know about the history of the disrupt that the opposition have been causing in the country you will never know or understand where we come from. I do not want to go into that, as this is NOT my point, I don’t want to point or blame anyone. But the opposition have been here for years and are not as peaceful as everyone may think, the police you talk about have protected us for years. No one can judge them but Bahrainis, and yes they have protected ALL of the F1 races and have ensured the safety of everyone who attended. This is not the first time the opposition attempted to do things during international events, and the police have served and died protecting their people, so please don’t take everything at face value.
I am very sorry don’t mean to attack you or anything, but our police aren’t known for ‘attacking innocent’ people. What happened was wrong, and all of the forces were withdrawn.

@AUS_Steve Thank you, your support really means a lot to us! :)

I am neither Sunni nor Shiite as well. Not really the most important thing, although every single difference between groups can be part of disagreements.
Only thing modern society should do about that it listen to the arguments and adress matters piecefully (right, a western propagated Idea, that often does not get too much chance even in the west).
What group one belongs to should not be what matters, and often it is just a relatively easy way to describe a group (compare the “ethnics” of Albanians, Serbs, Croatians and “Muslims” in the shambles of Juguslavia)

Great to see you feel up to the task of defending your views LAK. I really get the feeling things are on the up now in Bahrain and hope you keep this course going so you don’t need the imported police forces (that did not help the situation I suppose) to protect anyone.
Keep it going as a good example for others. And let’s celebrate at the next Bahrain GP with full grandstands from all groups in the population (safe orthodox religious groups who do not hold with such fun).

Sad to hear China got to preventively arresting people planning protests, although it is nothing close to the abhorrent treatment of protests by Ghadaffi’s regime. Respect for all risking their lives getting as much news out for the rest of the world, be it only part of the picture as it is discovered there and then.

Amen BasCB. It’s ironic really in a way that we are getting these pro-democratic uprisings (for want of a better word) in the Middle East (which by the way is a term I don’t agree with, if it’s the Middle East where is the Near East? I prefer to call the region the latter, I think archeologists do so too), since I feel representative democracy had had its day in the West and especially with the financial crisis is beginning to buckle and if it broke I don’t see a fairer world resulting from it at all.

Well that post started off quite interesting and then I got bored by the end of it!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/robert-fisk-in-manama-bahrain-ndash-an–uprising-on-the-verge-of-revolution-2220639.html

Interesting article by Robert Fisk, a man who I hold highly when it comes to correct journalism.

“For the record, the Shia rebellion against the country’s Sunni rulers has been going on for years, with hundreds of political prisoners tortured in four prisons in and around Manama, their tormentors often from the Jordanian army – just as many Bahraini soldiers come from the Punjab and Baluchistan in Pakistan. Yesterday, there were repeated demands for the release of political prisoners, banners carrying photographs of young men who are still in jail years after their original sentencing: they run into the hundreds.”

How do statements like this pan out vis à vis the crown prince’s discourse of national unity? Bahrain surely isn’t another Egypt or Tunisia, but some strategies of the political elites aren’t really that different.

What I do wonder is how the two legislative assemblies balance each other out. Do they have equal power? That would seem strange, because it would mean only 50% of the MPs are actually voted into power and 50% is appointed by a hereditary monarch with no real democratic legitimacy. How does this bicameral system balance itself?

Hi LAK, thanks for your heartfelt posts, I understand your need to share your views. I hope you and yours are well and stay safe.

I’ve posted a couple of my thoughts about both the troubles and the scheduled race on the forum over the last few days and won’t go into that here.

However, despite my views on the Bahraini govnt etc, I maintain that it’s a universal human right to have freedom of speech without fear of reprisals and it’s good to see that progress is being made on that front, and that those who feel the need to protest (whether in the majority or minority) are free to do so safely.

I hope to see the Bahrain GP take place in the future again, once these protests are over and any changes brought about by them are implemented.

@ Icthyes…What you describe as Near East would be technically called Eastern Europe!

Thanks for the insight LAK, It is probably the most interesting thing I have read about the whole Bahraini affair! The media nowadays have a tendency to only report on the most headline grabbing stories that they can, and it is getting harder and harder to find balanced reporting, even on the BBC which used to be the world leader in accurate and balanced news reporting.

Afterall, Why would the modern media networks report on the peaceful protest of a couple of hundred thousand when down the road there are a few thousand people going head to head with the military. They know as well as we do which makes for the more interesting(?) video footage.

What is perhaps more disturbing is the single umbrella with which all of these middle eastern country’s regimes seem to be being grouped under when in reality, there are vast differences in the governing bodies of say Bahrain and Libya, even between Libya and Iran.

It is reporting by soundbite, something which our own government here in the UK has succumbed to and it makes my piles itch!!! ;)