WSJ – Saudis invest in Israeli startups
Turns out it was a triumph in private sector diplomacy, bringing the Saudis and Israelis together.
Business partners don’t slaughter each other.
Remember that $2Billion Jared Kushner scandal?
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Wanna buy some shares in the Brooklyn Bridge?
The actual trustees of the Saudi Fund wanted nothing to do with Jared Kushner who has zero experience managing such a fund. And they feared THEIR reputation would be tarnished by association with him. They were “persuaded” to go along by MBS. He can be very “persuasive.”
A little bit of obvious PR about possible investments in Israel does not change the corrupt nature of the entire transaction. You are so good at seeing the mote in Hunter Biden’s eye but are blind when he comes to the little Trumpies. You are also blind – willfully I suppose – to the enormous moral and ethical failure of doing business with the butcher in question.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/massive-saudi-investment-raises-questions-about-jared-kushners-business-dealings
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And the Abrahams accords are of no value, right?
You’d rather the Arabs and Israelis remain forever at each other’s throats rather than have the Trump family succeed,
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Kushner would not have gotten a couple of billion for his group had he not been Trump’s son-in-law.
(With appropriate fees in the tens of millions, naturally…maybe a slice of pie for dad-in-law?)
Seems similar to your assessment of Hunter Biden and his seat on Burisma’s board.
So we should at least recognize that contacts in high places are part and parcel of political and economic power, domestic and international.
And when it’s your man, it a brilliant move. When it is not, it is corruption.
IMHANEO.
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Again, Kushner is not getting the $2Billion. No doubt he will get a fee, just like any fund manager, but the point is that Saudi Arabia now has a stake in the success of Israeli businesses.
That the Abraham Accords are big steps toward peace in the middle east.
I don’t know why that upsets the American left so much.
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First, I did say Kushner’s firm got the 2 billion and he would undoubtedly get big fees. Again.
Hunter Biden had you practically apoplectic. So let’s put “American left upset” to bed for now. Not nearly as hysterical as the Biden story makes the right.
As far as Abraham Accords, we’ll see. Hamas is launching rockets again. And therein lies the rub.
It would be nice for a lasting peace deal, so as I said, we’ll see.
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Really?
What threat to global peace did Hunter alleviate with his dealings?
You have come up with king of false equivalencies.
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“What threat to global peace did Hunter alleviate with his dealings?”
Israel and Saudi Arabia have been cooperating for a very long time based on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This minor transaction (for Saudi Arabia) will not change that relationship in any way.
Objectively, Hunter Biden’s Burisma gig and Kushner’s MBS gig are the same – people trading on their family name and connections. The difference is in scale and in the fact that MBS is criminal monster. And the fact that Hunter Biden never held a public position while Jared Kushner was in high office and is known to have delivered favors to MBS (such as a list of dissidents for him to murder).
The emphasis in right wing media on the fact that some of the fund may flow to a couple of Israeli start-ups completely and deliberately misses the bigger truth. MBS would not invest ANY money with a person such as Kushner without his family connections. You can parrot the idea that this is a step towards world peace until you turn blue. Knock yourself out. You constantly exhibit your partisan hypocrisy and double standards so why stop now?
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Len said the fee would be in the tens of millions – not the whole investment. In fact, the Trustees of the Saudi Fund objected to the higher-than-normal fees to an inexperienced fund manager but were overruled by the butcher.
It is noting that once again you understand that an investment is not a gift. That is distinction that escaped you when you were busy parroting the $3 million investment that the wife of the mayor of Moscow made in a fund that- as it happens – Hunter Biden had NOTHING to do with.
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The Saudi’s are not part of the accords.
Youru defense of corruption by one side while CONSTANTLY throwing out speculation by the other is out of control.
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No, they aren’t. That’s the point.
The Saudis were the big money holdout on the accords, and bringing them into the fold through the private sector bonds of mutual self interest makes the region safer.
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“No, they aren’t. That’s the point.”
Sure it is, once your ignorance of who was part of those accords is pointed out.
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Where did I say the Saudis were in the Abrahams Accord? That was a separate accomplishment by the same team.
But bringing the Saudis into the fold shows the effort is continuing and succeeding, in spite of Biden throwing sand in the gears.
Bastiat pointed out 170 years ago that ‘when goods cross borders, soldiers don’t’ illustrating the importance of commerce in keeping the peace.
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“Where did I say the Saudis were in the Abrahams Accord?”
You indicated it here:
“That the Abraham Accords are big steps toward peace in the middle east.”
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“Where did I say the Saudis were in the Abrahams Accord?”
As we were discussing Saudi Arabia you brought this up out of the blue. . .
“And the Abrahams accords are of no value, right?”
My take – right or wrong – was that you thought Saudi Arabia was party to those accords and that after Adam pointed out that they were not, you cannot simply say “whoops.” If you KNEW that they were not, then bringing them up in the context of Kushner’s dealing with MBS makes very little sense.
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No, the connection is that Kushner was instrumental in negotiating the Abrahams Accords and his efforts in the region continue in this deal.
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“No, the connection is that Kushner was instrumental in negotiating the Abrahams Accords and his efforts in the region continue in this deal.”
Yes, so you say after Adam pointed out that Saudi Arabia were not part of the Abraham Accords.
“. . . his efforts in this region”
Not too laughable. Kind of like his efforts to save his broken Manhattan investments with Arab money. The very obvious fact is that this scion of a criminal family who embedded himself in another criminal family is out for himself and has zero interest in anything else. We are talking about a person who aided MBS in consolidating his coup, and helped him identify dissidents and who was stripped of his security clearance for passing on classified information from the President’s Daily Brief.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/
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Having PBS and WSJ reporting on the same story provides an interesting study in contrasts.
PBS weaves a fabric of speculative innuendos by focusing on issues outside of the transaction that is the center of the story. WSJ focuses on the transaction itself and what can be said — presumably verifiably — about it.
I like WSJ’s style better. If in fact there is some unethical dimension to Kushner’s deal, I will trust WSJ’s reporting when it is revealed, and not PBS’s.
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It’s all MSM. Just pick your poison.
I don’t disagree that which MSM a person picks is based partly on which one feeds the brain in a way one likes.
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RE: “It’s all MSM. Just pick your poison.”
Some poison is objectively less harmful than others.
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Change “objectively” to “subjectively” and you may have a point.
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No, objectively is the right word. The PBS treatment of the story is objectively invalid.
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Because YOU think it is wrong. Got it. Your idea of objectivity is based on SOURCE and what they say; if you agree it is fine, if you disagree it is not.
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That’s not what he said.
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I read it that way. You didn’t.
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“That’s not what he said.”
Okay, what does “objectively invalid” mean, objectively?
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In the case of the PBS version, a lack of internal consistency and consistency with known facts.
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RE: “Okay, what does ‘objectively invalid’ mean, objectively?”
I claim that WSJ and PBS report the story in different ways. This is an objective claim in the sense that you can prove it to yourself by repeating the comparison that led me to make it.
I further claim that the PBS treatment of the story is objectively invalid. This is my opinion, but it is substantiated by my previous claim.
Put another way, since PBS reports the story by weaving a fabric of innuendos that are peripheral to the subject at hand, one can rationally (objectively) dismiss the PBS report as less informative compared to the WSJ story.
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Objectively invalid.
The operative word is not “objectively” it is “invalid.”
Without debating the ethics and morality of getting into bed financially with a criminal monster or the legality of public officials receiving huge payoffs from people they dealt with after leaving office, I will simply point out that your opinion that PBS reporting is “invalid” is purely subjective – a truth you simply deny.
My subjective opinion is that these puff pieces emphasizing that the fund may invest in a couple of Israeli start-ups are deficient (‘objectively invalid’) because they miss the big story – Trump family corruption.
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I would not disagree that MBS is a vile person, as are the Saudis with limited exceptions, as are the Wahabbists wherever they are.
But they are monsters with which we must coexist.
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RE: “The operative word is not ‘objectively’ it is ‘invalid.'”
Fine. Then think of invalid as meaning infirm or defective. PBS raises ethical questions, but never actually states what the ethical violation might be. A reader who finds the presentation compelling is as defective as PBS.
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“A reader who finds the presentation compelling is as defective as PBS.”
I am happy to be compared to PBS which is OBJECTIVELY one of our finest news organizations. People who choose PBS as their primary source of news are OBJECTIVELY better informed than people who choose the sort of trash sources that you constantly cite.
Len attempted to be civil by politely pointing out the subjective nature of opinions – his and yours – but being civil is a waste of effort with a person such as yourself.
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What if a viewer found the PBS story to be somewhat compelling. Does that make him only somewhat defective?
Your opinion about the objectivity of the report is your opinion and that means it is subjective.
Either way, Trump family nepotism, unprecedented and unsavory, just keeps on popping up as stones are turned over.
In my subjective opinion.
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