New protests erupted in Syria, while violence by the Yemeni government against protestors reached unprecedented levels. Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia's monarch combined handouts and threats to insulate his kingdom from regional unrest. The emerging pattern of bullets and bribes has characterized the most recent round of Middle East unrest, which threatens to unseat regimes that were previously considered stable.

Yemen has entered a distinctly new phase in anti-government demonstrations, where at least 40 protesters were killed by security forces and government supporters in a single day. The level of violence dwarfed previous crackdowns and sparked a government announcement of a state of emergency, as well as renewed calls for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down and for the resignation of senior members in his government.

Saleh was quick to claim the violence came from clashes between "citizens and demonstrators" and that "the police were not present and did not open fire." His statements did not satisfy foreign allies, as France condemned the violence and President Obama called for his Yemeni counterpart "to adhere to his public pledge to allow demonstrations to take place peacefully."

Syria saw its first serious protests across the nation, after it broke up demonstrations outside of the main mosque in central Damascus. Security forces killed four protestors with live fire in Daraa, a town south of the capital, while demonstrations also broke out in the Islamist stronghold of Hams and the coastal city of Banias.

Bahrain's violent crushing of protests this week was followed by the destruction of the pearl in the Pearl Roundabout, the symbolic center of the protests. Intervention by the Gulf Central Coordination, led by Saudi Arabia, brought the protests to a swift and brutal end. It also enraged Shiites across the region, moving Shiite anger from tiny Bahrain to Iran and Iraq, where demonstrators vowed to join the fight against the Sunni kingdom.

The Saudi response to unrest within its own borders was more nuanced. King Abdullah ordered the handout of billions of dollars in benefits to Saudi citizens and the creation of 50,000 more domestic security jobs. He also told media that they must respect the monarchy and clerics, or face stiff penalties. The king has been serious about protecting the kingdom's public image, including the recent revocation of accreditation for a Reuter's reporter after he authored less than flattering accounts of the regime's reaction to protests.