Welcome to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), formed in 1981 by top dog Saudi Arabia plus the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. A more appropriate denomination would be Gulf Counter-Revolutionary Council - or club; a Gulf club to end all golf clubs. As far as the GCC is concerned, the great 2011 Arab revolt will triumph over their (wealthy) dead bodies.One area of the world in which US mainstream media covers the most superficially are events in these oppressive medieval kingdoms. This might seem strange because they, organized as the GCC, are a major piece on the chess board of the Great Game, a piece joined at the hip to the US Empire and integral to its strategies for dominating the world.
The problem for mainstream media is that the governing of these countries represent the antithesis of democracy and humanitarian concerns which media organs always use to justify the Empire's foreign policies and actions, the current one being the "humanitarian" mission in Libya that mysteriously morphed into regime change. Escobar does a splendid job of describing how neatly this piece fits with the Empire's preference for mercenary armies and weapons all supplied by private corporations.
If you would like to know more about what life is like in one of these kingdoms, Dubai (a part of the UAE), a good read is from the The Independent from a couple of years ago.