Follow the petrodollars: Why Gulf wealth matters to Britain is a question everyone should be asking

Middle East Eye

In November 2012, former British Prime Minister David Cameron descended upon the Gulf for a visit aimed at - among other things - selling a bunch of Typhoon fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 

After all, what else could the UK head of government possibly have to do besides play travelling arms salesman?

In response to concerns about the dismal human rights records of the territories in question, Cameron offered the following reassurance: “[W]e do believe that countries have a right to self-defence, and we do believe that Britain has important defence industries that employ over 300,000 people, so that sort of business is completely legitimate and right.”

This sort of logical leap would become even trickier a couple of years later, when the UK supported the slaughter-fest in Yemen presided over by a Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition. As for the whole business of defence, this, it turns out, is one significant aspect of an extensive and complex UK-Gulf relationship that must be defended at all costs.

In a newly released book entitled AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain, David Wearing - a teaching fellow in international relations at Royal Holloway, University of London - sets out to methodically document the nature and function of these ties.

So much for “legitimacy” and “self-defence”.

Case in point: the Arab uprisings of 2010-11, which included a panorama of brutal repression in Bahrain - that lovable kingdom and devoted ally described by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute as a "substitute for an aircraft carrier permanently stationed in the Gulf".

Overall, reports Wearing, “the data show that the British government’s response to the new wave of demands for democracy region-wide was to continue a sharp increase in arms supplies to its key authoritarian allies”. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Can exhumation kill Franco once and for all?

Al Jazeera English

In August, the Spanish government issued a decree paving the way to exhume the remains of fascist dictator Francisco Franco from their current place of honour in the Valley of the Fallen, a massively creepy monument north of Madrid.

The dictator's family members have been given until September 15 to select a new resting place for him; otherwise, the state will decide. The transfer will, theoretically, take place later this year. 

The English-language edition of Spain's El Pais newspaper quotes Franco's grandchildren as complaining that the decree constitutes an "act of retrospective revenge without precedent in the civilised world".

Indeed, it would be most uncivilised to disturb the embalmed body of the man responsible for terrorising Spain for much of the last century. 

After all, only half a million people are estimated to have perished in the civil war of 1936-39 that brought Franco to power, where he remained until his death in 1975. 

On top of that, a mere 114,000 or so were disappeared during the war and ensuing dictatorship, many of them executed by Francoist death squads and deposited in mass graves that have yet to be excavated.

The Valley of the Fallen, incidentally, was itself built by the forced labour of political prisoners held by the fascist regime. It also houses the bones of more than 33,000 unidentified victims of the civil war. 

Other perks of Franco's enlightened rule included the practice of trafficking in newborns, which continued after the dictator's death and - according to some observers - resulted inhundreds of thousands of stolen Spanish babies.

But just how much progress does the forcible migration of Franco's remains signify? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Is Georgia in love with Israel?

Middle East Eye

In August, Georgia Today - an English-language newspaper of the eponymous former Soviet republic - featured a verbose analysis headlined “Georgia as ‘the Israel of the Caucasus’ - a Concept Worth Considering?”

Following numerous twists and turns - including a quote from late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, noting that “if we have to [choose] between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we would rather be alive and have the bad image” - the article appears to conclude that there are many prospects for “further developing the Georgia-US bilateral relationships”.

Successful development, we are left to assume, would ideally propel the wannabe NATO member into a special relationship akin to that enjoyed between the US and its favourite Israeli partner in crime. In other words, the whole “Israel of the Caucasus” concept is definitely worth considering.

Not that the concept is really anything new. Rewind for a moment to 2008 and the five-day war between Georgia and Russia that began when Georgia attacked breakaway South Ossetia. The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah, noting Israel’s intimate involvement in the war-making venture on account of “hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and combat training” to Georgia over previous years, speculated that the Georgian government may have been endeavouring to “play the role of the ‘Israel of the Caucasus’ - a loyal servant of US ambitions in that region”.

Among these ambitions was the “broader US scheme to encircle Russia”, while the training services provided by the real Israel to the Caucasian one were said to involve “officers from Israel’s Shin Bet secret service - which has for decades carried out extrajudicial executions and torture of Palestinians in the occupied territories”, as well as the Israeli police and major Israeli arms companies. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.