...such as this tear gas used to disrupt peaceful protests against totalitarian regimes. I'm really proud my taxes go to help crush calls for democracy and human rights. I'd put up a link to the Twitter account of the person who took this photo but his account has been crushed. Hilary was just saying how proud she is of the progress Bahrain has made... so proud...
I never thought I'd see the day Bahraini dissent would make international head lines.
It was almost ten years ago, my brother Joe and my friend Matt and I followed some black helicopters into a Shi'a village to see what all the black smoke was. Turns out we stumbled upon a police riot. The village was burning, people were pissed but we didn't understand why, after all Bahrain was supposed to be a peaceful and progressive Gulf state where we all lived in harmony. Matt was driving and I began to take some photographs from the passenger seat. A cop soon detected us and fired a tear gas canister at us. As Matt manipulated the car into a three point turn, tear gas came streaming through the air conditioning vents. Elsewhere, the rest of the island was as calm as can be. If they never left your residential compound, shopping mall, sports club or school, an expatriate Westerner would never know what was going on in those villages.
I spent the next few years trying to make sense of what I had seen. Why were those villagers so angry? Why were the cops cracking down so hard? Why were people burning flags and what role did we play in it all?
