In Defence of the Bahrain Grand Prix

Lots of liberals are whinging that the Bahrain Grand Prix shouldn't go ahead. 'Human Rights', they cry, weeping into their muesli. 'Torture. Repression. No freedom of speech or assembly'.

And yes, Bahrain is a corrupt dictatorship that ruthlessly crushes all dissent. They've even bought John Yates, the ex-Scotland Yard and Murdoch mouthpiece, a man who has never declined to have his mouth stuffed with gold ('I feel safer here than I did in London', the corrupt tyranny-lover said).

But why all the fuss over Bahrain? The next race is in Shanghai. Have you never heard of Tiananmen Square? Or Urumqi? Do you know nothing of China's brutal and very profitable approach to democracy and human rights ('no thanks')? Face it: Formula 1 is organised pollution designed to make billions for advertisers, oil producers and its organisers, while making a series of very unpleasant states look like fun destinations. Malaysia, Singapore and Abu Dhabi are all more or less repressive. Australia thinks that environmentalism is slightly more reprehensible than paedophilia, the UK, US and France wave nuclear weapons in peoples' faces…

The category errors westerners are making are in thinking that a) F1 matters in some way, and b) that there's a 'good' list of countries and a 'naughty' list, and that we're always on the good list. Who keeps Bahrain afloat? A US Navy base, British secret service personnel, and Saudi Arabia, my least favourite country of them all. F1 is a business. Ecclestone and Co. are very rich, very right wing fat white men. They respect tyranny and don't care about you, me or the people of Bahrain, China or anywhere else. They're immune to moral arguments. They care about cash. Look at their pompous and self-serving statement:

President Jean Todt led a fact-finding mission to the Kingdom in November 2011, meeting a large number of decision-makers and opinion formers, including elected Shia members of parliament, the president of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, ambassadors from the European Union countries, the Crown Prince, the Interior Minister and many members of the business community.

Laughable. Who are the 'decision-makers and opinion formers'? The same vicious elites who organised the murders of hundreds of protesters, and make tidy sums in bribes commissions for the race. As for the 'independent commission', the Crown Prince, the Interior Minister and the 'business community'… Well, let's just say that 80% of 5 women thought that Bernie Ecclestone's shampoo made their split ends look better.

So my advice to liberals: stop your handwringing. The F1 'community' is immune to morality. Let the race go ahead so the world can see exactly who is on which side. I hope the Bahrain Grand Prix goes ahead. I hope that the people of Bahrain wreck the event on live, global TV. I want the plutocrats and the millionaire drivers to be besieged and strung up by their sponsored Rolexes pour encourager les autres.

Cancelling the race would just allow F1 and the sponsors to pretend they have consciences. Let them face the consequences of their beliefs instead.

Manacles from the Bahrainis. How sweet.

I'm off to a couple of weddings over Easter, neither of which is the royal one. Apparently despite (or perhaps because of) my lack of hands dripping with blood, I'm not on the list, which reads like British Aerospace's weaponry customer database. Perhaps the gifts list is organised by BAe too.

Amongst the guests is the King of Bahrain, currently busy violently crushing the democracy movement with the help of the Saudi and Emirati armies. Their rulers will be at the wedding too.

So it looks like a good day for a revolution if you're a Saudi woman, Bahraini proletarian or Emirati guest worker.

Turning Japanese

I mentioned the other day my frustration with the way the Japanese tsunami is turning into horror-porn for the news networks. It's getting worse. Two of my favourite news programmes (Radio 4's Today and Channel 4 News) have flown out their 'top' anchors to report from Japan: James Naughtie and Jon Snow. I respect them both as broadcasting giants, but their presence in Japan says a lot more about the macho and hierarchical culture of their respective institutions than it does about the disaster.

More precisely, neither of these gentlemen speak Japanese. They can't do any research or story-chasing (neither can the BBC journalist moved hurriedly from North Korea to Japan). All they can do is rely on local talent and official statements made to the world's press in English. So all we're getting (at our expense, in the case of Naughtie) is the dubious pleasure of a familiar face/voice regurgitating facts and claims they haven't researched, in front of disaster footage.

Journalism 0, media 1.

Meanwhile, there's good news for the British economy. Saudi Arabia's dictatorship has sent troops to help the Bahraini dictatorship crush its oppressed protestors. The UK is one of SA's closest allies, and the Saudis have bought literally billions of pounds' worth of weaponry from the UK for their tiny armed forces. I always thought it was part of a little oil/weapons deal, but now those shiny guns are going to get some exercise at last. How proud our political leaders must be.

It's an ill wind…

Certainly Britain's doing very well out of the Middle East's revolutions.

The most unequivocal message since the election was made by Peter Luff, the defence equipment minister, who told a defence show in June: "There will be a very, very, very heavy ministerial commitment to arms sales. There is a sense that in the past we were rather embarrassed about exporting defence products. There is no such embarrassment in this government."

It's not embarrassing selling crowd control missiles to Bahrain and Libya at all.

As the Campaign Against the Arms Trade notes on Bahrain: in 2010, equipment approved for export included teargas and crowd control ammunition, equipment for the use of aircraft cannons, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and submachine guns. No requests for licences were refused.

In the third quarter of 2010, equipment approved for export to Libya included wall-and-door breaching projectile launchers, crowd control ammunition, small arms ammunition and teargas/irritant ammunition. No requests for licences were refused.

On the other hand, if the Arabian oiks win, they might start looking at the receipts and lose their warm fuzzy feelings towards Britain. But for now, I suspect Britain's arms factories can't churn out the anti-civilian ammunition fast enough for their favourite clients. No wonder the recovery is export-led.

Bahrain's Brutality: Made in Britain

In case it's not common knowledge, Bahrain - which has just seen peaceful protesters shot dead -  is an awful, repressive place. The Sunni rulers have long remained in place through the use of secret service repression and a policy of importing Sunni Muslims from other countries to rebalance the native population, which is 75% Shia.

Saudi Arabia is providing tactical support and large amounts of cash as Bahrain's oil money disappears (the last thing the Saudis want is a democracy on its borders), but the muscle comes from the British. They gave Bahrain a savage secret policeman - Colonel Ian Henderson - and provide all the weaponry and training required to keep a dictatorship in good running order. Why? Because Bahrain's an ex-British possession and democracy comes a bad second to oil and an obsessive desire to control dark-skinned foreigners. Henderson learned his torture skills in Kenya at the fag-end of empire, before being transferred to the Bahrainis.

Documentary about torturer Henderson.
BBC news article about his involvement in torture.

I wonder what the UK government has to say about what's going on today.