Tunesia, Egyt and now Yemen: a domino effect in the Middle East?

The protesters say their main demand is the resignation of Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the prime minister, who has governed Bahrain since its independence in 1971.

An uncle of the king, he is seen as a symbol of the wealth of the ruling family.

The protesters say they are also demanding the release of political prisoners, which the government has promised, and the creation of a new constitution.

Shias, thought to be in the majority in Bahrain, are ruled by a Sunni royal family.

Poverty, high unemployment and alleged attempts by the state to grant citizenship to Sunni foreigners to change the demographic balance have intensified discontent among the Shias.

Around half of the kingdom's 1.3 million people are Bahraini, with the rest being foreign workers.

"On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS Correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 Minutes story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy.

"In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

Around half of the kingdom's 1.3 million people are Bahraini, with the rest being foreign workers.

Most people would say the US and UK have meddled enough in the direction of the ME and other countries...

You may have missed this as well

NIR ROSEN

Unbelievable

THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA:

part II

CIA COVERT OPERATIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA, CIA MANIPULATION OF THE PRESS, CIA EXPERIMENTATION ON THE U.S. PUBLIC

by John Stockwell


Systematically, the contras have been assassinating religious workers, teachers, health workers, elected officials, government administrators. You remember the assassination manual? that surfaced in 1984. It caused such a stir that President Reagan had to address it himself in the presidential debates with Walter Mondale. They use terror. This is a technique that they're using to traumatize the society so that it can't function.

I don't mean to abuse you with verbal violence, but you have to understand what your government and its agents are doing. They go into villages, they haul out families. With the children forced to watch they castrate the father, they peel the skin off his face, they put a grenade in his mouth and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.

This is nobody's propaganda. There have been over 100,000 American witnesses for peace who have gone down there and they have filmed and photographed and witnessed these atrocities immediately after they've happened, and documented 13,000 people killed this way, mostly women and children.

These are the activities done by these contras. The contras are the people president Reagan calls `freedom fighters'. He says they're the moral equivalent of our founding fathers. And the whole world gasps at this confession of his family traditions.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/StockwellCIA87_2.html

What happened to Lara Logan, while sad, [haven't read the report yet] is really much much less than the much more brutal abuse that untold millions have suffered at the hands of the USA.

I DO believe that when a huge, largely isolated region filled with people who have been conditioned to believe that they can only live in one way - suddenly experiences a radical change that includes increased freedoms - and the accouterments that come with increased freedoms, open their minds to more possibilities - it is a Pandora's box.