The story of the weekend!
No, I’m not talking about the death of Kim Jong-il. That’s a pretty big deal, but I was more interested in a story that broke last night in which it was revealed that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has made a $500million investment in Twitter via his 95% owned Kingdom Holding Company.
This is the same KHC which owns a 7% stake of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News. Did you know though, Kingdom Holding also owns, or has at some point owned, stakes in Apple computers, Citigroup financial services, eBay, McDonald’s fast-food restaurants, Coca-cola, PepsiCo, The Walt Disney Company, Proctor & Gamble, and others. Things like this make me really question the American National Security Complex Incorporated. Oh, I meant US National security measures (whoops!) like the TSA, Homeland Security, the militarization of our police forces… I mean, isn’t it obvious? The Christian Right is all fear-mongering and frightened of Islam trying to take over the West through terrorism when the truth is they’re doing it the same way the Christians did: Capitalism.
I will be fair enough to the Prince to point out that he wrote a pretty impassioned plea for reform earlier this year at the outset of the Arab Spring. Also, according to his Forbes profile, his Kingdom Holding Corporation employs mostly women who are, while on the property or in one of his palaces, not required to wear the full-body covering abaya they are required to wear elsewhere in Saudi Arabia. So maybe he’s not such a bad guy personally. His religion though (like the others) still sucks.
One final note for my atheist friends to enjoy: next time a Citi banking, Disney loving, McDonald’s eating conservative spouts some Islamaphobia on Twitter from their iPhone because of something they saw on Fox News, remind them a Muslim owns a portion of every corporation listed in that sentence.
Happy holidays!
