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Bernie Ecclestone, 81, the formula one supremo, speaking at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, said of Bahrain: ''I know people who live there and it's all very quiet and peaceful.''

Pictures emerged of Ecclestone's image being burned in Bahrain posted on a Facebook page called ''Pearl Family Circle - Martyrs' Square''.

concerns for the health of imprisoned activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, now 65 days into a hunger strike, being held in a military hospital.

The problem isn’t that the revolution created this Mirage State, but rather that it has always existed from the days of Mubarak, which we always suspected but never believed, because things used to function due to informal structure that we created without noticing. The state used to function based on a network of connections; the economy used to and still functions based on an informal sector that no one can either measure or penetrate; the policing used to be carried out away from the law or true investigative work and more reliant on torture and jailing; politics used to be the domain of one party that would insist that it believes in democratic transition and values while always rigging elections; and the president used to do anything he wanted in the country no matter what the constitution or the laws stated

The illusion was so strong that they thought it was real even after it was destroyed.

Instead of resolving the issues that exist between the governorates and the trash collection companies, or using the help of the zabaleen community, who have been doing a remarkable job of being the informal trash collectors of Egypt, President Morsy asked the people to simply resolve the trash problem by picking up the trash. Fine, but take it where? No answer. Would that mean that we no longer have to pay the trash collection money added to our electricity bill, since we are the ones collecting the trash? No answer. Is this part of maybe some sweeping recycling initiative, where we create a huge recycling industry and quite possibly create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process? Nope. The plan is simply to pick up the trash and for Egyptians to engage in their civic duty in collecting trash that they pay to be collected for them in order to… eh… nothing.

The brutal attack came during the early hours of 3 February, and with it, what Abdel Kader describes as “a wake-up call. I realized these weren’t a bunch of sissy kids, and that they weren’t just having fun. They were fighting for something, and they were putting up a brave fight.”   Abdel Kader pauses before continuing. “They were willing to die for what they believed in, and I was fighting them because I had been paid LE200. The thought of it broke my heart.”

“I am a drug dealer,” he admits. “I am not going to deny it. But I am only a drug dealer because the police bullied me into becoming one.”

“They threw me in jail to show me what it would be like, and then took me back out so I could sell their drugs for them.”