F1, GCC and Saudi Bribes a Race Makes

The fast and furious Sunni revenge
THE ROVING EYE – By Pepe Escobar – 18 April, 2012 – Asia Times

And the winner is … the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (GCC), also known as Gulf Cooperation Council.

Their collective celebration party is this weekend’s Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix – complete with buckets of Moet and Ferraris oozing by. See it as a coterie of Sunni sheikhs telling the “international community” – we won; it’s our way or the (boiling hot) desert highway.

How could they not gloat? The unruly waves of that noxious Arab Spring never had a chance of disturbing the placid waters of the Gulf. The arrival of the Fast White Man Formula 1 circus – a spectacular public relations operation – proves that the GCC is as “normal” as an Arab prince swinging through Monte Carlo with a blonde babe in a Ferrari 458.

Who cares that Bahrain activists sent a letter to Formula 1 emperor Bernie Ecclestone denouncing the state of siege in the placid al-Khalifa dynasty realm, the killing and torture of pro-democracy protesters, the thousands still in jail and the lack of the most basic human rights? This does not concern The Fast White Man.

Revenge!
Strategically, the GCC was invented – with essential American input – to defend those poor Gulf petro-monarchies from the evils of Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Khomeinists, with its members comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. But when the 2011 Arab revolt exploded in Northern Africa – and then reached the Gulf, in Bahrain, and even generated protests in Oman and Saudi Arabia – the petro-monarchies faced a larger evil that simply petrified them: democracy. The status quo had to be protected at all costs.

King Hamad al-Khalifa, technically, asked the GCC for “help” into smashing the Bahrain pro-democracy movement. The fact is the House of Saud already had masterminded an invasion across the causeway linking the capital Manama with Saudi Arabia. The Pearl roundabout in Manama – Bahrain’s Tahrir Square – had to be literally razed to the ground by the al-Khalifa dictatorship to erase any physical memory of the protests.

For the GCC and its top dog the House of Saud, not only Bahrain was “contained”, Saudi subjects were placated with billionaire bribes. Ample possibilities of profiting from the geopolitical black hole in northern Africa were also opened.

Ever since the House of Saud and the emir of Qatar, Hamad al-Thani, got their act together, they have been on a roll – recent rumors of a military coup against the emir notwithstanding. The “humanitarian” bombing of Libya represented the apex of the NATOGCC embrace – with Qatar in the forefront and the House of Saud sort of leading from behind. …more