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Wonder what the Saudi connection is...
by radicaldreamer 8y ago
Wonder what the Saudi connection is...
- atomical 8y agoJeff Bezos met with their leader.
- kawera 8y agoThey killed a WaPo journalist.
- tptacek 8y agoThe Post, along with the Times, has been pursuing and reporting a story that David Pecker, AMI's CEO, has been working with a Saudi go-between, in part as an effort to expand their business. More importantly, Jamal Khashoggi, who we now know almost beyond a reasonable doubt† was targeted by Mohammad Bin Salman before Saudi assassins murdered him in Turkey (most probably at MBS's behest), was a Post employee. † Reports emerged today that there's apparently audio of MBS himself ruminating over having him murdered.
- yourapostasy 8y agoHow does that explain Pecker's rage at the WaPo digging into AMI's Saudi connection, though? Nearly everyone who wants funding at this scale hits up the Saudis. Describing that AMI looked for funding with the Saudi royals doesn't strike me as a particularly significant reveal; Musk did it relatively recently, and he wasn't excoriated for it. How is news that AMI is doing it worthy of a push-all-the-chips-into-the-pot move like AMI pulled? Now if Bezos' private investigation team is getting close to some kind of Kryptonite like Pecker personally authorized his staff to assist with encouraging Khashoggi to visit the Saudi's Turkish embassy as a favor to the royals to try to ingratiate himself and angle for a funding pitch, then I could understand Pecker's reaction. Even if Pecker and AMI didn't know the Saudi's intent, it would indeed be very awkward for AMI and the Saudis. The other direction this could be going is the Saudis are directing AMI via cut-outs to dissuade any deeper investigation into Khashoggi's death, and miscalculated Bezos' mettle. I wonder if AMI overplayed the "Bezos cheated in his marriage!1!1" angle, too. If there is more or less a collective shoulder shrug that billionaire POTUS DJT cheated on Melania, I'm not clear what AMI thought the impact would be on Amazon's public opinion that its billionaire founder/leader is doing the same. This will be interesting to follow.
- floatingatoll 8y agoThis type of response is quite common when investigating criminal masterminds: Maximum outrage; Blatant denial; Threatening retaliation if the investigation is not halted immediately. Whether or not Pecker is a criminal mastermind is for the courts to say, but his response does him no favors in the public eye and in the press.
- Faark 8y agoYou're seem to ignoring what AMI was demanding from Bezos/WaPo. Wanting funding from Saudis is no big deal, unless you compromise your core business to do this sell-out. Maybe the deal would have fallen through with it becoming public? Why do we need any much bigger conspiracy?
- danans 8y agoA little less than a year ago, AMI/National-Enquirer published a 100 page ad-free magazine dedicated to the praise of MBS and the Saudi Kindgom [1] The Saudis claimed they had no involvement in it, although an Associate Press investigation revealed that it had circulated among Saudis weeks before publication [2] This issue was distributed at supermarkets across the United States. Whether there was an untoward arrangement behind it might be under investigation. 1.https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-publisher-pal-puts-saudi-propaganda-magazine-in-us-supermarkets https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-publisher-pal-puts-saud... 2. https://nypost.com/2018/04/24/the-strange-saga-of-a-pro-saudi-tabloid-in-americas-heartland/ https://nypost.com/2018/04/24/the-strange-saga-of-a-pro-saud...
- radicaldreamer 8y agoHere we go: https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1093715333079318530?s=21 https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/109371533307931853...