There should be no big mystery as to why Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince Bill Gates talked into giving away all his money to charity, is dumping his riches.
No one’s given away all of his money since the last saint more than 2000 years ago.
Charity is no longer as conventional as it once was. In the case of the notorious Clinton Foundation, charity eloped with power and has never been the same.
Is Prince bin Talal, whose $32 billion fortune makes it possible, about to buy immortality for the Democrats?
Now that Barack Obama’s made good on his promise to fundamentally transform America, progressives the world over are looking to the Democrat’s Act II. Gung-ho to cling onto DC power forever, the Democrats may now have $32 billion to control the 2016 election and any that come thereafter.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s money is going to charity, and there’s no doubt that the “Send $5” Democrats have spent their last seven years being a charity,
Hillary will no longer have to have her goons corral and rope-lasso reporters when conducting her meet-the-taxpayer walk-a- bouts like she did yesterday in New Hampshire. (See surrealistic photo proof, shared on Twitter and Snapchat from which there was no reporter but only public outrage. Pictures of uncomplaining roped-in reporters and the potential for roping in elections with billions of dollars should serve as proof positive that the next president being Democrat is all but inevitable.
Before nominating Bill Gates for the Noble Peace Prize, Prince bin Talal was trying to throw his money around as far back as 2001 when Mayor Rudy Giuliani turned down his $10-million check in the aftermath of 9/11.
That didn’t stop the Arab prince -- who likes watching CNBC -- from giving his money to a plethora of American and UK universities – including Harvard, Cambridge and Edinburgh.
“High-profile investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a swath of stakes in private and public companies in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, mostly through Kingdom Holding Co., 5% of which is listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange. Holdings include stakes in Twitter, Citigroup, hotel management companies Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Movenpick Hotels & Resorts and Fairmont Raffles Holding, as well as hotel real estate such as the swanky Hotel George V in Paris and a stake in the Savoy Hotel in London. Kingdom Holding announced in early February 2015 that it had sold most of its stake in News Corp in the first half of 2014. The Prince also owns extensive Saudi real estate and other assets outside of Kingdom Holding. In February 2015, Alwaleed launched Al Arab, an Arab-language TV news channel in Bahrain, which the government shut down less than 24 hours after the launch, reportedly due to a licensing problem. A spokesperson for the Prince didn't reply to Forbes' request for comment about the channel, but in late February the Financial Times reported that the Bahrain government had requested a permanent shutdown of Alarab. (Forbes)
“Alwaleed, a nephew of King Salman and a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder, Abdulaziz, is unlike other big Saudi princes. He often appears in public with his tinted glasses and wearing suits instead of the usual ankle-length thawb. The prince, who is obsessive about calorie counting and usually has no more than 1,100 a day, has progressive views on women, music and cinema and has called for the Arab world, Saudi monarchy included, to implement reform. (Guardian, July 3, 2015)
“He married the glamorous and unveiled Ameera years after she interviewed him for a school paper when she was 18. In a society where women are kept away from the limelight, he appeared with her in public – including at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 – and insisted on Saudi newspapers publishing her photos despite the usual restrictions on using Saudi women’s images in print. The prince divorced Ameera in 2013, although they remain friends.
“He is happy to boast that his Saudi-based headquarters employ more women than men and that they don’t have to wear veils at work. Not everyone believes that the prince’s focus on women is solely aimed at empowering them; some critics say it is also a way for him to gain more influence, especially in the west.”
"The 'high-flying royal' who sued Forbes for ‘underestimating’ his fortune just years before handing it all to charity, seems to defy the cliches of a Saudi magnate.
“There is something that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia badly wants you to know: the exact amount of his wealth.
“In 2009, he invited a Forbes reporter to a week-long visit of his 420-room palace in Riyadh and to accompany him and his then wife, Princess Ameera, on a flight to Cairo on board his personal Boeing 747 to make sure the magazine realised the scale of his wealth when compiling the list of the richest people on the planet.
“That plan did not go well. In 2013, he launched a libel action against Forbes for underestimating his fortune. The magazine said he was worth $20bn, the 26th most wealthy billionaire in the world, but he claimed his fortune was much larger. After all, the 60-year-old member of the Saudi royal family and self-proclaimed Arabian Warren Buffett, is the wealthiest man in the Middle East, holding stakes in the likes of Apple, Twitter, Citigroup, Canary Wharf, Time Warner and Paris’s George V and London’s Savoy hotels.
“This week, the prince, who has a penchant for texting influential people and has James Murdoch on speed-dial, announced he will donate all his wealth to charity, including empowering women through his own Alwaleed Philanthropies organisation, modelled on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As he invited the world media for a briefing in Riyadh, he also used the opportunity to push his version of the size of his fortune, which he says is $32bn (£20bn). That is still at odds with Forbes’s 2015 estimate of $22.6bn, which puts him 34th on its list. “
His alleged retention of a group of dwarves as an act of charity is to say the least, a matter of curious controversy.
“His supporters say he has shown a favour to the dwarves by giving them shelter and money.” (Guardian)
Are Alwaleed’s favoured now going from dwarves to Dems?
Judi McLeod——Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
There should be no big mystery as to why Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince Bill Gates talked into giving away all his money to charity, is dumping his riches.
No one’s given away all of his money since the last saint more than 2000 years ago.
Charity is no longer as conventional as it once was. In the case of the notorious Clinton Foundation, charity eloped with power and has never been the same.
