I Didn’t Know Joe Biden Even Played Golf
If you don’t pay much attention to golf—and it’s not exactly the Kentucky Derby—you might not know that the Saudi kingdom is greenwashing itself with something called LIV Golf.
It takes a heap of washing to get the blood out of Saudi underwear, but LIV and Joe Biden are doing their part
According to Wikipedia, LIV Golf is a professional golf tour financed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. The name LIV is a reference to the Roman numeral for 54, the score if every hole on a par-72 course were birdied and the number of holes to be played at LIV events.
For guys who made their reputation on the PGA, the money is too scary-huge to pass up. Phil Mickelson is rumored to have taken $200 million to the bank just to sign. Tiger Woods is said to have turned down $600 mil. Apparently everyone truly does have their price—which includes Joe and excludes Tiger.
The Saudi Crown Prince is spreading around so much dough he could probably make Wells Fargo look like an honest bank
But Joe’s over there kissing the Prince’s ass for cheaper gas at the U.S. pumps, which just goes to show how thin his ethical underwear is. This is the guy who promised (as a candidate) to make Saudi a pariah state and then (as president) kissed whatever needed to be kissed to get his crumbling approval ratings up a few points.
Not only that, but he didn’t even make the royal dude come to him—he went to Saudi to do the deed.
The Kashoggi murder, bloody and reprehensible as it was, is a only a minor crime according to our ‘trusted friend’ in the Middle East
How do I indict thee, let me count the ways:
· Saudi is home base for the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, with thousands of schools and universities worldwide. It’s very strict and exercises public beheadings. All ‘non-believers’ are enemies and all but four of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi citizens. The Saudi kingdom was the birthplace of Osama bin Laden.
· The Saudi Specialized Criminal Court hands down heavy prison terms to individuals for their human rights work and expression of dissenting views. Among those arbitrarily detained, prosecuted or sentenced were human rights defenders, government critics and other political activists. Women human rights defenders were subjected to judicially imposed travel bans following their conditional release from prison. Courts resorted extensively to the death penalty and people were executed for a wide range of crimes. Prison authorities violated the right to health of human rights defenders and others imprisoned after grossly unfair trials.
· Yemen, a small country on the Arabian Peninsula, has become the site of grievous civilian suffering amid an intractable civil war. Many analysts say the fighting, now seven years old, has turned into a proxy war: Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who overthrew the Yemeni government, are pitted against a multinational coalition led by Saudi Arabia. The involvement of other combatants, including militant Islamist groups and separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has complicated the picture.
· Saudi Arabia faced unprecedented international criticism in 2019 for its human rights record, including the failure to provide full accountability for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in October 2018, as well as the country’s dismal treatment of Saudi dissidents and human rights activists.
Yeah well, nobody’s perfect and Joe Biden’s scorecard on the International Saudi Greenwashing Tournament is only a minor blemish on the big picture
Saudi is a monarchy and America is a plutocracy, so one of them executes its enemies and the other merely pays them off. There will always be a Phil Michelson or a Tiger Woods taking our ethical temperature and neither of them will ever be president. Ethical standards are not required when you have oil to sell and armaments to buy.
But some standards are simply too low for measurement. 54 holes for a tournament? $4.5 million to win? That’s $83,000 a hole—and coming in last makes you $120,000. Do they really call that professional golf?
As for my own ethics, whoever gives me $2 gasoline gets my vote.
But Jesus, 54 holes? You gotta be kidding…