The Unknown Poster

That's not what I said. Im sorry if the thought of your pals Jared and Trump being assholes hurts you, but the proof on that front is rather glaring. Ill explain it to you again. I said "its not hard to imagine". And it wasn't hard at all. And there are a lot smarter people than me wondering how much Jared knew. When you play word games over "yeah yeah, they knew he'd be 'detained'" that's naive. It seems like, from the reporting, the US knew in advance of this plot to lure the journalist to a place he could be 'detained'. Clearly, their idea of detain was tourture and murder. I find it difficult to believe US intelligence picked up on this and shrugged it off saying "nah, they just want to ask him a few questions." Im sure Trump had no concerns at all for that plan for a US resident working for the Washington Post, right? They just want to ask him a few questions, buy him lunch. You're so angry over any suggestion the US (and by extension Trump/Jared) might have had an inkling this could happen, you're ignoring what is already being reported. Sure, Jared didnt swing the bone saw himself. We can agree on that. If that's you're comfort line in still embracing this admin, well...whatever.

You're asking if the US government could keep secret a plot to kill a dissident? Im sure the CIA is sitting around surfing twitter to figure out whats going on in the world. There surely are no operations that we never hear about. EDIT: and by keep secret do you mean how almost immediately after the murder everyone knew who did it and within days, its being reported the US had advanced knowledge of a plot to "detain" the journalist? That secret?

Very very naive.

There is a tweet in this thread where they admit US intelligence had advanced warning there was a set up to detain this guy. When asked why they didnt warn him, silence. Think about it.

Unfortunately although Branson is threatening to back out of a billion dollar deal. $45 million to the WWE is a lot of money but hardly life changing. It wouldn't change a thing for them to not have it. And if there was backlash from sponsors (especially their TV partners), they stand to lose a lot more. Im sure they have a formula in mind where the loss of revenue through backlash and lost sponsors and bad PR makes the profit from doing the show not worth it. But if they decide the profit is greater than the loss, I dont see them cancelling. Linda is the wild card due to her working in the admin though.

Not hard to imagine a scenario where he was told "we're going to take this guy out and we expect you to 'believe' us when we deny it".

That's not true. There is plenty of blame to go around. Often in a murder case, the person actually dealing the death blow isnt on trial alone. The Saudi's have a lot of enablers around the world. And the US, regardless of admin, is complicit in the enabling. But we have a US president right now who pooh-pooh's any suggestion of consequences because of the money the US makes and the money he personally makes. We have one of the highest ranking members of the admin communicating with the price before the murder. But mostly, without any consequences, its approval to keep doing what they're doing. The anti-media rhetoric of the President could certainly lead one to believe he wouldnt mind a critical journalist being "detained" by the Saudis. When Trump starts nitpicking about citizen vs permanent resident, you know how he feels about it...you know how little value he places on that life. He might not have been happy, but if he was, it sure wouldnt surprise me (or most people).

Isnt Jared and the Prince besties? Its not just they knew through intelligence channels, there is an implication they may have had overt knowledge at the highest levels.

https://www.newsweek.com/wwe-crown-jewel-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-1166045 https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/wwe-faces-criticism-for-upcoming-saudi-arabia-event-amid-investigation-into-activists-disappearance Note: That's a FOX news story. FOX who is in bed with WWE for a billion dollars or whatever their huge TV deal is. All it takes is a Murdoch to dislike the connection, call Vince and this show is over. Don't get me wrong, I think WWE is likely to go ahead with the show. They clearly want to. Its a matter of how their sponsors feel. It sounds like they've gone silent on twitter about the show and the only mention on their website is under upcoming shows. They might be taking a "pause". In the grand scheme of things it doesnt really matter but its an interesting story and since we talk about wrestling here, its why I'm posting. WWE cant be surprised that they're attracting some fleas when they decided to get in bed with dogs.

Lol Conrad Black Why is it whenever there is chatter about something stupid or reckless Trump did or said, someone comes along with a completely irrelevant take on something completely different (a post about Canada in the US politics thread). I suppose, to be fair, Trump does or says something stupid almost continuously so there's little wiggle room. Oh well.

I think most people who really dislike this deal are more uneasy over the unabashed praising of the Saudi government and how wonderful the nation is. If they just went there and did a show, not as big of a deal But it’s a billion dollar American company doing propaganda. And keep in mind one of the owners of that company is in the Trump admin. And that company’s big US PR currently is about women’s rights. Some business is beginning to take action. Branson is backing away. There is a business summit or something later this month that might be cancelled. WWE is definitely watching this nervously.

Yeah there were a couple links but that was the only twitter one and I like the visual of twitter ;-). The $100,000 from WWE was to help smooth over any political issues Kane might face. So there was a feeling BEFORE the journalist was murdered that Kane could get some backlash.

Some Tennessee media has noticed the Mayor of Knox County is going to Saudi Arabia

wow

This Saudi news is slowly beginning to rub off on WWE as they have a show there in a few weeks. The big thing is, its not just that WWE does a show there, they are paid huge to spread Saudi government propaganda. Within wrestling, its looked at very poorly. WWE likely will just try to fly under the radar (the money is just too good to pass up) but there is a chance the story explodes and WWE is forced to cancel.

I think people who dont embrace the extremist view are called deniers and are said they dont believe. That is generally untrue. But if society has collapsed due to climate change in 2030, Ill come back here and say you were right and I was wrong.

We averted an ice age? Man is powerful. Sorry, dont buy it. My issue is the extremist panic. Of course, let's be good to the Earth. Nations should commit to that in a reasonable fashion. Again, at what cost when heavy nations wont comply at all? In a real world way, is like asking me to use low energy bulbs, low flow toilets, recycle, turn the lights off etc vs installing geo therm and solar panels. I can do all the former. I cannot do the latter. No one is saying dont do anything.

Saw an interesting story on twitter...cant recall where so I cant post it. But it was quoting a magazine or newspaper from the 70's and saying leading scientists were quite sure we'd all be wearing gas masks in the 80's and half the sun would be blocked out. Those of us in school in the 70's or early 80's know we were taught that same thing and that it would lead to an ice age. What will "leading scientists" say 15-30 years from now? I think that is what people struggle with. We're talking about micro-fraction of time over the course of the planet's life.

Jared’s bestie. Oh and did we mention Saudi Arabian collusion? You might hear that come up sooner or later

If I recall, killing Glenn was the beginning of the huge slide. I remember watching that and immediately said to my gf (who was a bigger fan and read the books), they just blew it. They really really blew it. Glenn was the viewer's avatar. He was the most down to earth and likable of the cast and "grew up" on the show. He was arguably the most heroic and kind and had the strongest moral convictions. He was newly married with a baby on the way. Killing him was the single stupidest thing the producers did.

6 million viewers a week is a lot better than most. Its just way below their prime. I think the problem is the premise has finally handcuffed them. We can either tune in every week to watch them go about their mundane lives or we see them do stupid things to create risk and conflict or a new big bad guy shows up for like the 10th time. Fear is interesting because its a different setting but it too is getting pretty boring. Their issue is that the skipped a lot of interesting stuff to get to "we're ******". For the original TWD, I get that. And its been 9 years, thats cool. But I want to see the fall of civilization and how that reasonably happened. Show me what happened in the White House. Show me what happened in capital cities around the world.

And yet in some ways we’d miss him if he were gone.

If climate change lobbyists could get those countries on board, then sure, let's hold hands and move together. But if we're going to bankrupt ourselves to save the world while other nations burn it to the ground effectively making our efforts inconsequential, that just doesnt work. Thats always been the problem. I thought by now we'd all have little nuclear power packs in our homes and cars and be set for life.