Thought y’all might find this interesting. I’ll apologize in advance, though, for not using names. That was a condition of my using the material.
These images are from a Westerner who works for an American company in Bahrain. He lives right smack in the middle of protest central, which is having a big impact on his daily routine. He’s been keeping people at the home office apprised of the situation. When he was asked yesterday by someone back home whether he was “having to schedule your leaving and returning around the demonstrations and are you having to stay in once you arrive,” he answered as follows:
Yes and yes… security posted a message to get to the villas before 5:00, otherwise it will be almost impossible unless
you park at the mall and walk a mile or more through the crowd. It clears out around 1:00AM. I took this at 4:15 PM today and the bigger crowds will not assemble for another couple of hours. They have live music, a wedding, food vendors, and speeches ongoing. The noise even at 36 floors above the ground is crazy…Once I get in I cannot leave until very early the next day….As long as it stays peaceful it’s actually a pretty amazing spectacle to witness. I have hotel lined up should it turn violent again.
I’ve kept the picture files big so that you can zoom in and see large televisions, tents and food vendors, all contributing to a sort of celebratory, tailgating atmosphere. The picture above was taken out the window of his 36th-floor apartment.
Today, he sent the picture below and the following additional message:
Got a good show going on down below this afternoon. They are marching from the Ministry office downtown which was a planned and scheduled event. It’s very peaceful just very noisy and traffic is blocked as far as you can see in that direction. Glad I stocked up this morning. Also glad the plants are on the other end of the island and our roads to the port are in the other direction as well.
This doesn’t give you the whole picture of what’s going on there, but it does give you one man’s view.
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Spectacular photos. What an exciting though scary time we live in.
When you zoom in it does sort of look like the SC State Fair without the ferris wheel.
Wow– and I was getting kind of annoyed by the cheering from the nearby tennis courts.
Power to the people!
Yeah, those ARE cool, aren’t they? I’d like to thank… well, I still can’t tell you who my source is, but I’d like to thank him nevertheless…
Those two long shadows remind me of the World Trade Center.
Robert Ariail’s views on the Arab protests:
http://robertariail.com/2011/03/03/jihad/
http://robertariail.com/2011/03/02/democracy-flu/
I don’t think that I would park at the mall and walk a mile to my villa. One may come back the next day and find their car a molten slag of metal. Apparently, torching cars is a recreational thing.
Hopefully, Egypt, Libya, Iran, and other countries will get democratic governments instead of control by despots.