[jumpy]

I would like to clarify (as a former Bahrain resident) that we are not talking about a country like Syria or iraq etc.
Bahraini citizens get free healthcare and schooling and many other things that this 'oppressive regime' hand out gratis.
That some of the majority shia population choose not to send their children to school, preferring to keep them ignorant is up to them.

Yet again when westerners view the middle east, they fail to understand that most of these countries do not want a western style democracy, and should the government be toppled (and it is not the first time that the bahrain state has endured attempted coups and civil unrest), everything will continue more or less as before in terms of our much vaunted human rights, the only difference is that perhaps the more hard-line islamic shia will be in control; leaving much of what made Bahrain a relatively secular state, with an economy and a culture worth being open to the rest of the world, will end up like, oh I don't know... look at the closest parallel - iraq, or afghanistan, both rife with sectarian infighting and corruption on a much larger scale than before.

To quote a Bahrain resident interviewed on the radio yesterday - yes, there are protesters, trying to change the country for the better, but in view of the grand prix, the timing for violent thugs to take to the streets with petrol bombs, smashing the place up, is somewhat convenient - the most publicity is to be gained from disrupting this event.

But which other ME state has reforms, both political and economic, so far reaching and in direct response to the protests?
Bahrain is a very small country and my former home for a number of years; I would not like to see it slip backward to hard-line shia islamic rule with its mobs of violent, ignorant zealots ruling the country.

I rather think that we'd have another ugly surprise were the Bahrain government and ruling family to be supplanted by something less tolerant with more basis in religious fundamentalism. Such is the reality of many Gulf States.

They should be allowed to make their own way in the world and not have us interfering and telling them how to do it - support them when they ask for it, yes. They have a hard enough job as it is keeping ties with the west with the last 20 years of unrest in the region.
They are not 'us' and never will be - time western governments started to understand this.

How many of you can say the same as someone who has lived there, or do you just get your information from our press and media sharks?