On Bahrain and the Arab Revolutions

I saw something today I can’t unsee.

Like the revolutions that swept across Egypt that brought down Hosni Mubarak and the revolution in Libya that threatens Gaddafi, Bahrain is in revolt, and their neighbor Saudi Arabia has invaded the country to suppress the protests.

The crackdown of the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain has turned brutally violent, and countries, including ours, have condemned the regime’s violence against its own people.

One of the news websites I follow had up video this afternoon from the Bahraini protests.

I had never seen what happened when someone is shot in the head before.

Intellectually, I knew what would happen and what the result would be. It didn’t prepare me for actually seeing it.

I know what’s inside my own skull, at least (again) in an intellectual sense. If there were some sort of explosive trauma that caused the back of the skull to not be there any longer and that took brain matter with it, that would leave kind of a void, wouldn’t it? And there would be skin and things that were still attached to the rest of the head, but there would be a lot of things that were gone.

I didn’t know the video was going there.

I can’t quite process what I saw. Even now, hours later, I’m still stunned; did I really see that?

I don’t even understand how something like this can happen. Why would someone shoot someone else? He was a human being, too. He was just like the man who shot him in the head. The same kind of blood flowed through his veins. He had the same kind of dreams. They breathed the same kind of air. They both had friends and families.

What the hell is wrong with people?

I don’t know what the solution to the Arab world violence is. There are no easy answers, but I feel confident that violent death isn’t the answer.

I don’t know.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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