Going, going...

I said on a blog somewhere that the Bahrain demonstrators were demanding change in government, they were not against the monarchy. (I think it must have been in a comment I left on another blog).

I also said in yesterday's post, about the violence against the protestors: ...in practical terms it's simply counter productive. The more you brutalise people the more they will rebel against you. By doing it you create more pressure for change. It's a mistake all authoritan regimes make and they never learn from past examples....Even (the promised enquiry) may not be enough to stem the predictable reaction by the people to the violence.

It certainly did produce the predictable reaction. More demonstrations, increased fury at the authorities and an expansion of the demands to include calls for the king to go.

Once again a government has made a disastrous decision. And it continues because there was more shooting on demonstrators by the army on Friday.  Fifty injured, seven critically, according to reports.

It's an upward spiral, there's inevitably going to be much more violence and stronger demands in reaction to it.

"Our demands were peaceful and simple at first. We wanted the prime minister to step down,' Mohamed Ali, a 40-year-old civil servant, said as he choked back tears. "Now the demands are harsher and have reached the pinnacle of the pyramid. We want the whole government to fall."

In the short term a government may be able to control its people with raw power, but that isn't sustainable.

There's only one way this is going to end and that's with change. Only the government can control whether that change happens peacefully by negotiation or violently.

It will happen, one way or another. It's gone too far for it not to.


The quote is from here.