Month: February 2011

Ryan Avent argues that only "explicit outside pressure, from bond markets, will yield deals" on the debt. Jonathan Bernstein agrees. American democracy is great, isn't it? Even with annual trillion dollar deficits, politicians are paralyzed by partisanship in their response. And the president? AWOL, as David Brooks notes this morning.

This looks like a massive crowd to me:

More dramatic footage here and of horrifying murder here.

Footage said to be from the shooting in Manama:

Enduring America:

As his security forces were shooting protesters, Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa was saying on state TV, "It is now the duty of every Sunni and Shia to calm things down for the sake of the country."

The Guardian:

Lots of tweets flying around about medical treatment being denied in Manama. Reports unconfirmed as yet.

The BBC:

The BBC's Nick Springate in Manama says the main hospital there is in "complete chaos". He says more than 2,000 people are outside chanting against the government. He adds that medics say about 120 people have been admitted, mostly suffering from tear gas or with broken bones, and there is one person who has a gunshot wound to the leg.

The Lede:

As my colleague James Glanz reports, Bahrain's government has apparently made an effort to prevent bloggers and eyewitnesses from posting evidence of the security crackdown online. Still, some video of the funerals was posted on the video-sharing site Bambuser, which allows users to stream live video to the Web from their phones, earlier on Friday. Later in the day, the entire Bambuser site was blocked inside Bahrain, according to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

Notice how obsessed the authorities are about Bambuser, bloggers, social media, video images, and the like. Notice how important it appears to the protestors to film these atrocities on their cell-phones. Have they not read Malcolm Gladwell? These are all irrelevant. And yet, somehow, to the people actually fighting for freedom, they are central.

The above video is graphic, linked to by the Bahrain Center For Human Rights. Below, some eyewitness reports around the web. The Dish has blocked tweets into paragraphs to make them easier to digest. Here's angryarabiya:

Ambulance paramedic just told me that the riot police pointed their guns on them and said leave or we'll shoot you. A man just asked me if I was using Facebook, I said no. He said "then what are you doing?" and walked away. The guy who asked me about Facebook had to be a spy. He just came back and said good luck to me n left. He's def not 1 of us! they are allowing ambulances to come back as I am hearing. Have one protester here, he says "we were shouting 'peaceful' and then Commandoes with black masks surrounded then started shotting. Docotrs coming out of ER crying. "One protester went infront of crowd and raised bahraini flag, they shouted n told him to put down the flag. "The 1st shot came from a building and straight into the head of a protester, I saw him."

Kristof arrived in Bahrain yesterday:

Ezra Klein asks progressives to consider the alternative to addressing the deficit now:

I think the question is whether we want to deal with that debt now or later. At the moment, the White House is occupied by Barack Obama, and the Senate is led by Harry Reid. It's possible that the composition of the government will be friendlier than that to progressives in six or eight years, but I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it. Democrats look likely to face a rough couple of election cycles in the Senate, and even assuming Obama gets reelected, it's fairly rare for the same party to hold the presidency for more than eight years.

Which is all to say that if you think a deal on deficit reduction has to happen at some point, this might be a better moment than most. 

Al Jazeera gets a moving, desperate interview with a Bahraini doctor:

The thought of leaving defenseless humans – wounded or dead – on the streets is just horrifying. And it is very hard to see how the West can continue to support a regime that guns down its own people from the sky. It also seems pretty clear to me that these images, spread by new and old media across the region, will only intensify the wave of revolt.

Brian Ulrich reviews the basics:

The sectarian split between a Shi'ite majority and Sunni monarchy and minority matters, but not in a straightforward way. The country's rulers have played a game of divide and rule, one which seems to have accelerated over the past few years which have seen an increase in anti-Shi'ite discrimination. Presumably hoping to keep smaller the popular base to which they must dispense patronage while tying that base to them ideologically, the Al Khalifa dynasty has portrayed Shi'ites as potential Iranian catspaws and pointed to Iraq as an example of the negative consequences of Shi'ite democratic empowerment. What you see in the government's rhetoric is an attempt to cast the Shi'ites themselves as the sectarian ones primarily on the grounds of their Shi'ism, much like the Mubarak and Ben Ali regime claimed to suppress Islamic extremism.

(Photo: Anti-government protesters pray during a clash with Bahraini security forces near the Pearl roundabout on February 18, 2011 in Manama, Bahrain.on February 18, 2011 in Manama, Bahrain. By John Moore/Getty.)

Howard Gleckman forwards along an analysis by Rachel Johnson:

If Washington is going to need new tax revenues to bring the deficit under control—which it inevitably will– I increasingly wonder where the cash is going to come from. If you listen to what President Obama has been saying in recent days, it appears that while corporations and nearly all individuals and families would avoid any tax hit at all, a handful of high-income households would get socked with major increases.

These tax hikes would be so big, in fact, that top-bracket taxpayers might end up paying a rate of 67 percent on ordinary income and nearly 50 percent on capital gains.    

Gleckman notes that this "isn’t going to happen." Really? Go read Chait. He's almost drooling at the prospect.

The Bahrain monarchy goes there:

It was not immediately clear if all the forces were using live ammunition or rubber bullets to fire at the crowd, mostly young men who had been part of a funeral procession for protesters killed in an earlier crackdown by police. Minutes later, forces in a helicopter that had been shooting at the crowds, stopped to fire at a Western reporter and videographer who were shooting footage on the latest violence.

It may backfire in yet another Arab Sunni autocracy in a majority Shiite country:

The violence appeared to be transforming the demands of the protesters who early on were calling for a switch from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one. But by Thursday, masses of protesters were chanting slogans like “death to Khalifa,” referring to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, while the opposition withdrew from the Parliament and demanded that the government step down.

There are some reports that the ammo is live, some that it is rubber and other Twitter feeds reporting the regime is preventing ambulances from rescuing the wounded. Kristof is tweeting ominously:

Witnesses say #Bahrain police cursed Shia as they attacked peaceful demonstrators. I haven't found 1 Sunni victim.

(Photo: Protesters run from a cloud of teargas during a clash with Bahraini security forces near the Pearl roundabout on February 18, 2011 in Manama, Bahrain. Protesters said that the army fired on them with live rounds, followed by teargas which drove the demonstrators back. There are unconfirmed reports that there are four dead in the clashes. By John Moore/Getty Images)

A couple days ago, Daniel Larison asserted that "the Green movement is best understood as an Iranian civil rights movement rather than a revolutionary one" and that "it does not even have the same political goal that opponents of Ben Ali and Mubarak had." I retorted: "I wonder what part of 'Death To Khamenei!' Daniel doesn’t understand?" Larison says he comprehends the phrase:

The slogan is very straightforward, and I don’t doubt that there are many people in the Green movement (and perhaps some not directly involved in it) who loathe Khamenei that much. It is harder to argue that the Green movement is unified around the goal of regime change that the slogan implies, which is what distinguishes its demands from the demands of the protesters in Egypt. More radical elements within any political movement are going to take maximalist positions, but it doesn’t mean that the rest of the movement will go along with them. If some Iranian protesters are calling for Khamenei’s head, they are probably not speaking for most of the Green movement, much less the rest of Iran. 

Does Daniel recall the scale and longevity of the protests in Iran? Does he really think the next generation wants theocracy? The revolt was more widespread than in Egypt, the numbers on the streets much larger. Yes, the goal was to return to the democratic ideals of the 1979 Revolution. But it was clearly becoming and has become more than that. The difference with Egypt is simply that the Khamenei coup regime had no compunction in gunning down, torturing, imprisoning and murdering their opponents with a ferocity that exposes just how vile Tehran's dictators are.