Al-Waleed Bin Talal is, according to Forbes, the 26th richest man in the world. He has a large investment in Citigroup, holds the second largest stake in News Corp. (behind Rupert Murdoch), owns more than 200 cars and counts among his many wealthy family members Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who is his uncle. He is a member of the House of Saud, a monarchy whose astronomic wealth relies on the rest of the world's pathetic addiction to oil, and a corrupt regime which greatly limits the freedoms of its citizens – to the extent that women aren’t allowed to drive cars. For those reasons alone, he could be considered something of an unsavoury character.
Annons
Yet it’s not Bin Talal’s buddy-buddy relationship with Rupert Murdoch (one can imagine a whole host of iniquitous despots, dictators and all around thugs in this guy's address book), or his seemingly insatiable appetite for “things” that attracts our ire, but rather his very frank comments on the Western World's oil dependency.When he appeared on CNN a few days ago to talk with Fareed Zakaria, he very casually noted the sympathy he has for the West on account of our oil woes. He even stated that he’d like to see the price come down to $70 or $80. How kind! He continued: “We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives, because, clearly, the higher the price of oil goes, the more they have incentives to go and find alternatives.”In other words: “We [The Saudis] wouldn’t be able to last a week without you suckers buying all of our liquid gold. So hopefully the price of oil will come down and you won't have a reason to find a better alternative, leaving us in the lurch, unable to buy off our citizens and pawning our assets in order to flee before being systematically decapitated in the town square.”There are numerous environmental reasons why we should ween ourselves off of oil, but it gets us in a lot of shit in security terms, too. For example: we send a heap of our money to people who use it to maintain their autocratic rule and unilateral power (Russia), or promote extremist views that turn against us in various ways (Saudi Arabia).Basically this guy wants the slow deterioration of the environment and global affairs in general, so that he and his corrupt fam can maintain a life of insane luxury.So there you have it. For his immaculate greed, his shameless gluttony, his orgiastic consumption, his affiliation with a repressive monarchy and this week, most importantly, his heartfelt wish that we remain suckers attached to the oily teet of his country, Al-Waleed Bin Talal is this week’s asshole.ZACH PONTZ
