A Tiger Woods Post

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Now that Woods appears to have been involved in a domestic dispute, the
media are wondering if there is "another Tiger." They are desperate to
pillory the man for his personal problems. It would be more appropriate
if they took this opportunity to scrutinize him for the right reasons.
Woods has every right to keep his personal problems personal. But when
he makes deals that benefit dictatorships and unaccountable
corporations, all in the name of his billion-dollar brand, he deserves
no privacy.

Now I really don't care about Tiger Woods' automobile incident or potential domestic disputes but as the closing paragraph from an article in The Nation would suggest that does not mean Woods doesn't deserve some scrutiny.

First we have his relationship with the unsavory corporation Chevron:  

As the saying goes, behind every great fortune is a great crime.
Following his car "accident," Woods's agent says it's unclear whether he will attend his foundation's Chevron World Challenge Golf
Tournament. In 2008 Chevron entered a five-year
relationship with Tiger Woods's foundation under the guise of
philanthropy. But if Woods had a shred of social conscience, this
partnership never would have existed. Lawsuits have been issued against
Chevron for dumping toxic waste all over the planet. Alaska, Canada,
Brazil, Angola and California have all accused
Chevron of dumping. Even worse, Chevron has a partnership with Burma's ruling military junta on the country's
Yadana gas pipeline project, the single greatest source of revenue for
the military, estimated at nearly $5 billion since 2000.

Ka Hsaw Wa, co-founder and executive director of EarthRights
International, wrote in an open letter to Woods, "I myself have
spoken
to victims of forced labor, rape, and torture on Chevron's
pipeline--if you heard what they said to me, you too would understand
how their tragic stories stand in stark contrast to Chevron's rhetoric
about helping communities." Chevron is underwriting a dictatorship,
but Tiger Woods apparently sees them as upstanding corporate partners.

But perhaps his most disturbing relationship is in Dubai.

Then there is Dubai, site of the first Tiger Woods-designed golf
course. Located at the southern coast of the Persian Gulf, Dubai has
been a symbol of economic excess and, most recently,
economic collapse. It has been called an "adult
Disneyland"--complete with indoor ski resorts and unspeakable human
rights violations. As Johann Hari wrote in the Independent, it is
a city that has been built over the past thirty years by slave labor. Paid foreign laborers
work in more
than 100-degree heat for less than $3 a day. Dubai also
has a reputation as ground zero of the global sex trade. The project
cost $100 million, and Woods said nary a word about his benefactor's
practices. This is business as usual
for Woods who would sooner swallow a five-iron than take anything
resembling a political stand.

So after and early morning vehicle incident the media is all over Tiger Woods.  So where was the media when Woods was giving support to corporations and countries that encouraged slavery and forced prostitution?  The media, just like Tiger Woods, are part of the international corporatocracy where slavery and prostitution are business as usual - a feature not a bug.