The Zioconned US Military's Green Tech Strategy....

The Zioconned US Military's Green Tech Strategy....

 

Amy Westervelt,

 

At Fort Carson, Colo., the Army partnered with a local energy provider to build a photovoltaic solar array on top of a closed landfill. The White Sands Missile Range project in New Mexico will provide the Army with 4.44-megawatts of installed photovoltaic capacity, saving 10 million kilowatt hours of electricity and $930,000 annually. When finished, White Sands will be the largest renewable energy project in the Army...

 

Last week this series started off with a look at why the military wants to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and some of the ways in which it plans to do that. Today we’ll take a closer look at some of the specific technologies and products the military is pursuing and the various plans in place for making it all work.
Again, the military’s interest in clean technology and renewable energy, while certainly supported by federal policy, seems to be more about resource efficiency than any particular political agenda. And while the Solyndra debacle has had everyone complaining about the Department of Energy‘s loan guarantee program, when it comes to military projects the business case is very different.
In September 2011, for example, the U.S. Army announced a plan to install rooftop solar installations on as many as 160,000 privatized military residences in 33 states. The army announced that developer SolarCity would install, own and operate the rooftop arrays at 124 military bases. SolarCity announced that it would put Army veterans and military family members to work installing the panels. USRG Renewable Finance, the debt financing arm of US Renewable Group, announced that it would lend $344 million to SolarCity for the project, in partnership with BofA Merrill Lynch. Up to 80 percent of the loan would be guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. In this scenario, the risks are incredibly low. SolarCity has a clear interest in ensuring that its product is installed and operating properly–not only does it want to keep a large customer like the U.S. Army happy, but the better its panels operate, the more excess energy it might be able to sell back to the grid. The Army gets to lock in a guaranteed energy rate for the next several years through its power purchase agreement (PPA) with SolarCity, but doesn’t have to worry about the up-front costs or maintenance of the panels. USRG Renewable Finance and the DOE get a low-risk investment, and the solar industry gets greater scale (the Army installations would just about double the amount of installed rooftop photovoltaics in the country) and a solid showcase of its potential.
Perhaps more importantly, as the various branches of the military pinpoint which technologies and solutions work for them, their approach has not been to seek more appropriations, but to meet with private developers and investors who can help fund projects and eliminate the need for more government funding. The Department of Defense is prohibited from paying a premium for goods or services, which is an obvious hurdle when it comes to many renewable energy technologies, but it’s also driving innovation in the military’s strategy and could eventually help to drive down costs in the renewable energy sector.
As of September 15, 2011 the Army launched the Energy Initiatives Office, the mission of which is to engage the private sector in identifying and investing in big green power projects that could be built on the Army’s vast land holdings. The Army estimates it will need about $7.1 billion in investment over the next few years to meet its goal of using 25 percent renewable energy by 2025, and it doesn’t expect that money to come from the federal government.
Part of what makes the military’s renewable energy projects so attractive to would-be investors is that the service owns so much land that lends itself to such projects. A recent solar project installed at Edwards Air Force Base, for example, features three photovoltaic installations across the base, generating 3.4 megawatts of electricity. The project was developed by Borrego Solar, which leases the land the installations sit on from Edwards, and sells solar power to the base through a 10-year power purchase agreement.

We’re able to fulfill about 10 percent of energy needs on base with that system,” says Jon Gensler, federal project developer with Borrego. “They’re operating live missions out of Edwards and this gives them 10 percent of their energy over 10 years where they know what they’ll be paying for it.”

Gensler calls the Edwards project a great example of the willingness of the DOD to work closely with the private sector. In this case Borrego owns and operates the system, provides operational and maintenance support, leases land from Edwards and sells the base electricity. This sort of arrangement seems to be emerging as the DOD’s preferred way of getting renewable energy projects built, but Gensler says it hasn’t been without its obstacles.

Anywhere in the DOD, or really the government in general, having a third-party owning assets is not common” he says, but draws a corollary between what’s happening with renewable energy projects now and how the military privatized housing on bases a few years ago. “It’s a similar model–developers come and build housing for soldiers on bases, they own and operate those residences, and it keeps housing off the balance sheet of the military and converts a CapX expense to an operational expense, which saves taxpayer money on an annual basis. Now they’re looking to do the same thing with energy.

The bulk of renewable energy projects currently being considered or implemented by the country’s military bases are focused on distributed energy. By generating energy onsite, the military can help to ensure resiliency and reliability in its energy supply, which is clearly preferable to the vulnerability inherent in using energy from a source the military does not control.

With distributed energy projects, you can build plants at scale and ramp them up over time,” explains Tim Keating, VP of field operations and marketing at Skyline Solar, a Silicon Valley-based concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) company with contracts to develop solar plants at Edwards Air Force Base and Fort Bliss. “You can build one or two or three megawatts, and put those online in a local grid, so not only can you scale up over time, but you also don’t have to worry about all the issues associated with transmission. Thirty percent of power sent out on transmission lines is lost right off the top.”

Beyond Solar
It’s not just solar projects the military is looking at, but also technologies that improve the efficiency of everything from buildings to transport vehicles to jets and carriers.  According to a recent report from analysts at Pike Research, among the key sectors that will receive significant Pentagon attention and investment over the next two decades are solar power for both permanent bases and temporary facilities; fuel cells for individual soldier power; microgrids for military facilities; and biofuels for military vehicles, particularly the Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” initiative to shift to a largely biofuels-driven fleet by 2016.
Pike analyst Peter Asmus says some military branches are getting into demand-response technologies first, often as a way to generate revenue for renewable energy, microgrid, and/or biofuels projects. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will be enacting Order 745 this summer, which stipulates that any organization that effectively uses demand-response technologies to “balance supply and demand as an alternative to a generation resource … that demand response resource must be compensated for the service it provides to the energy market at the market price for energy.”
In other words, if you can deliver energy reductions that save the grid from needing to make more energy, you should be compensated, just as you would be if you were adding energy to the grid; reductions in demand should be valued at least the same as increases in supply. Because the cost of installing demand response software is far less than installing a large-scale renewable energy project, some bases are looking down that road first, planning to generate revenue through demand-response installations, which will then help fund renewable energy projects.
In other cases, bases are installing projects with capacity to produce more renewable energy than they need so that the sale of renewable energy credits can offset any premium incurred by replacing fossil fuels with renewables. And then there are products like Soladigm‘s Dynamic Glass and Global Solar’s rechargeable batteries, which, rather than imposing a premium, deliver lasting savings. Soladigm’s Dynamic Glass, which tints on demand in order to provide not only visual comfort and daylihgting, but also to reduce solar heat gain and thus air conditioning requirements, pays for itself immediately.

We have a clear vision to bring a product to market that is cost neutral on day zero,” says Soladigm VP of products Erich Klawuhn. “There’s no ROI or payback time because of the system-level savings that offset the premium in the glass. There’s immediate energy savings in terms of consumption, but it also helps to reduce peak load, which enables building designers to downsize the HVAC system they need. That value proposition holds pretty strong.

The value proposition for Global Solar is equally strong. The military had been in the habit of using non-rechargeable batteries, which it is now largely replacing with fewer rechargeable batteries and solar panels. A tactical team out for a three- to seven-day mission would typically need five to ten non-rechargeable batteries to supply enough power to operate a Sincgars (military radio) for the mission. These are one-use batteries, each of which costs $80 to $100, so that’s $400.00 to $1000.00 per mission. Global Solar can replace those five to ten batteries with two to three rechargeable batteries ($300 each) and their 62w solar panel ($800 each). These systems (called Sunlinq) pay for themselves in two to three missions and can be used 300 additional times or cycles before the batteries need replacing.
World’s Best Test-BedAbove and beyond the benefits these projects provide to the military itself, they provide a meaningful boost to jobs and innovation in the private sector as well.

      

The DOD is positioned to become the single most important driver of the cleantech revolution in the United States,” says Pike Research president Clint Wheelock.  “In particular, military investment in renewable energy and related technologies can help bridge the ‘valley of death’ that lies between research & development and full commercialization of these technologies.

Soladigm’s Klawuhn concurs, noting that the current alignment between the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense is a real boon to cleantech companies.

The DOE funds and steers national labs, and they are the research organizations that lead into some development of commercial technology, but then that technology needs to go somewhere,” Klawuhn explains. “So the government can either leave it there or use the General Services Administration and the Department of Defense to lead those technologies to the pilot and implementation stages. I’d love to see more of those pilot projects.

More pilot projects are indeed likely to roll out over the next two decades. Pike Research forecasts the annual U.S. military spend on renewable energy at $10 billion a year by 2030, and the DOD is committed to continuing to test and deploy technologies that will reduce its consumption of fossil fuels...

Maurice Oldfield, Gay ZIONIST SPOOK was Britain's top spy in Washington ....

Maurice Oldfield, Gay ZIONIST SPOOK was Britain's top spy in Washington at the time of the Kennedy assassination....
"The interviewer was a master spy, later to become head of the service...

"I felt his hand on my knee under the table.

"I thought it might be some sort of test, but when it began to creep up my thigh I decided that was the end of that." (So what's new about gay spies? - Independent)

Maurice Oldfield was boss of Britain's MI6 spy agency.
At university, a strong influence on Oldfield was Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier, born Ludwik Niemirowski, political secretary of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
Lord Victor Rothschild "pressured to have Maurice Oldfield installed as intell boss, who in turn promoted other homosexuals, before being sacked by Margaret Thatcher in 1980 as details of visits by young boys to Oldfields home reached her." ("FOR KNOWLEDGE ITSELF IS POWER” Intelligence saying)
Maurice Oldfield became boss of Britain's MI6 in 1973.

In the early 1960s, Oldfield was Britain's top spy in the USA.

He worked with the CIA's James Jesus Angleton.
Maurice Oldfield's friend Tom Driberg (left) with the Russian spy Guy Burgess, friend of Lord Ted Rothschild. (BRITAIN RUN BY AGENTS OF FOREIGN POWERS?) Tom Driberg MP was a rent-boy loving spook with links to Russia and hence Israel. (SPOOKS AND SPARES; GIRL MODELS AND RENT BOYS)
Lady Onslow, a close friend of Oldfield, worked with the ex-Borstal organisation 'Teamwork Associates' in London.

Keith Littlejohn had spent time in Borstal and was known to Lady Onslow.
Lady Onslow stating shortly before her death that Oldfield and Keith Littlejohn became known to each other around 1970.
In 1972, MI6 recruited the Littlejohn brothers, petty criminals, to carry out bank robberies and bomb attacks in the Republic of Ireland.

MI6 said to them that there was "going to be a policy of political assassination" for which they were to make themselves available.
Ben Gurion and Teddy Kollek. Kollek was a close friend of Oldfield who was a frequent visitor to Israel.
After Oldfield's retirement, Oldfield confessed he had lied to cover up his homosexuality.

In 1987, Margaret Thatcher confirmed to the House of Commons that Oldfield was gay.

Boys at the Kincora Children's Home in Northern Ireland were reportedly 'used' by the security services.

The head of Britain's MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, was reportedly observed by his Special Branch guards partaking of Kincora's facilities. (The troubles: Google Books Result)

Allegedly, Oldfield shared boys with Russian spy Sir Anthony Blunt, Noel Coward, several bishops, and an archbishop. (Cached)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley, who is said to be based on Maurice Oldfield.
According to "The Biggest Secret of World War II": during World war II, Maurice Oldfield was arrested with the King’s brother, the Duke of Kent, Prince George, a boyfriend to Sir Anthony Blunt.

"A policeman rounded up what he thought were 3 drunken street whores, only to find they were ... the HIGHEST in the land...

"Maurice Oldfield and the Duke of Kent ... had links to Victor Rothschild.

"Rothschild was Churchill’s mentor; he made Churchill’s decisions."

Famous gay spies include Britain's Guy Burgess, Sir Anthony Blunt, and Alex Kellar, director of MI5's F Branch (Communist subversion) (So what's new about gay spies? - Opinion - The Independent)
Victor Rothschild, who worked for various prime ministers, and for the security services. He was reported to have given away secrets to Israel
20 April 1987
The Times
"Mr Chapman Pincher, the author, who knew Sir Maurice during his intelligence career, says in a new book that he was a homosexual who consorted with young male prostitutes...

"There was particular concern over claims that Lord Whitelaw, when he was Home Secretary, received a report on Sir Maurice Oldfield's alleged homosexual activities from the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir David McNee, in the late 1970s. At that time, Sir Maurice was a special security co-ordinator in Northern Ireland after being brought out of retirement...

"According to Mr Pincher, in his book Traitors: The Labyrinths of Treason, Special Branch officers who were giving Sir Maurice round-the-clock protection throughout his Northern Ireland appointment, discovered that male prostitutes were visiting him in his flat in Westminster.
"A report was sent to the then Mr William Whitelaw, it was claimed, and Sir Maurice was warned by a senior minister 'in the most direct language' to curb his behaviour. It appeared that no further action was taken, although Sir Maurice resigned as Ulster security co-ordinator in 1980 through ill-health. He died a year later at the age of 65...

"There were reports in the Belfast newspapers, attempting to link Sir Maurice with the scandal over the Kincora welfare hostel for boys, which in 1980 was alleged to have been used for hiring out boys for homosexuals."

Julian AmeryJulian Amery frequently met Maurice Oldfield at the Savoy Grill.
Julian Amery was the son of Leopold Amery (1873-1955), who hid the fact that he was a Jew. (Le Cercle membership list - WikiSpooks)

Churchill once said of Leopold that he regarded the Empire as his own personal property.

Leopold was the author of the final draft of the Balfour Declaration, a trustee of the Rhodes Trust and a supporter of the Rothschild-Warburg-financed Paneuropa Union.
Julian Amery became chairman of the rightwing Le Cercle.
Julian was an MI6 operative.

He was co-founder of the CIA-sponsored Congress for Cultural Freedom and had links to Bilderberg and BCCI.

He was a member of the Other Club together with Lord Rothschild, Tony Blair and others.

According to Julian Amery: "The prosperity of our people rests really on the oil in the Persian Gulf, the rubber and tin of Malaya, and the gold, copper and precious metals of South- and Central Africa... If the communists [or anyone else] were to take them over, we would lose the lot..."

Julian Amery was a member of the Monday Club among whose leading figures were the Cecil family who have links to the Rothschilds and Oppenheimers.

Julian's brother John worked for Adold Hitler....

 

 

 

Brief History of the Zioconned crypto-Jewish Saudi Wahhabism and their thuggish ideological politics...

 

 

Brief History of the Zioconned crypto-Jewish Saudi Wahhabism and their thuggish ideological politics... 

^[2] 

Haytham A. K. Radwan

  
While Islam as a faith is the main religion in 48 countries, and Muslims around the globe are rapidly growing, Saudi Islam is the main sectarian movement in Saudi Arabia, and its influence is also rapidly growing. Acting as the protector of Islam through its own form of Islam, while it remains an American client state through its location, petrodollar’s cheque book, and American diplomatic and military protection, it could be argued that among the major influential players, Saudi Arabia’s policies, its own form of Islam, and its relations with the US, undoubtedly constitute one of the most serious threats to the security of the world today.
     Indeed, since the eighteenth century, and in conjunction with the Wahhabi religious establishment, Saudi Arabia became the centre for a new brand of religious imperialism based on sectarian movements. For nearly a century, the kingdom’s religious fervour kept the oil-rich country in the Western political camp. Today, the existence of radical Islamic groups is in part a legacy of the Saudi form of Islam, not Islam itself, and the Saudi-US alliance, and of political decisions made to address a different set of security concerns which helped no one accept the US projects.
     While Islam itself as a faith is not a threat to international security, it is Saudi Islam that is a threat. Indeed, it is fair to say that the problems within the Muslim world today rise not from Islam itself, but from the Saudi form of Islam, Muslim religious leaders who are relying on Saudi support, and their own interpretations of the Quran. It is also fair to say that questions pertaining to why Americans see Islam as a threat to world stability is because of the American failures to distinguish between Islam as a faith and Saudi Islam. In the US, Islam has been perceived as a threat to its civilization. However, while Americans knew that Islam itself is not a threat to their civilization, the majority of American politicians, journalists, and ideologists have ignored the truth that the threat is coming from Saudi Islam. This is seen as a tactic to avoid any damage to the relations with the House of Saud in order to keep economic and political interests alive.
     As a result, the Saudi-US relationship and the Saudi Wahhabi expansionist policy not only transform Muslim world politics, but also world politics. Saudaisation movements may expand into broader struggle throughout the Arab and Muslim nations and beyond. In some parts of the Muslim world, steps toward Saudaisation have already begun while the US is turning a blind eye to the Saudi rulers. At the same time, the US is also busy trying to convince the world that their policies towards Saudi Arabia is about promoting democracy and protecting human rights.
^[3]   Apart from the obvious results of such a conflict, such as loss of power in some Muslim countries, it would impact on the behaviour of other Western and non-Western states which could use the conflict for more ideological and tactical reasons. So, because religion has no borders, it could become global religious and sectarian conflicts.
     It is possible we are already seeing the war in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Yemen and of course, the non-stoppable Wahhabi-American pressure on Syria.
Why? This is because Wahhabism itself is nothing more than an extension of Western imperialism. This short paper shed light on the roots and origin of the Saudi Wahhabism.
The Roots of Wahhabism:
      Although the origin of the Saudis’ current expansionist and extremist policy dates back to the religious and military alliance with the Wahhabi establishment, it was actually the British who initially provided the Saudis with the ideas of Wahhabism and made them its leaders for their own purposes to destroy the Muslim Ottoman Empire.[1] ^[4] Indeed, the intricate details of this intriguing British conspiracy are to be found in the memoirs of its master spy, titled “Confessions of a British Spy” (For details see Sindi 2004). [2] ^[5] In his memories, the British spy “Hempher” who was one of many spies sent by London to the Arabian Peninsula in order to destabilize the Ottoman Empire has stated:
“In the Hijri year, the Minister of Colonies sent me to Egypt, Iraq, Hejaz and Istanbul to act as a spy and to obtain information necessary and sufficient for the breaking up of Muslims. The Ministry appointed nine more people, full of agility and courage, for the same mission and at the same time. In addition to the money, information and maps we would need, we were given a list containing names of statesmen, scholars, and chiefs of tribes. I can never forget! When I said farewell to the secretary, he said, the future of our State is dependent on your success. Therefore you should exert your utmost energy”. (Nabhani, see also confession of a British spy). [3] ^[6]
As a result, a small Bedouin army was established with the help of British undercover spies. In time, this army grew into a major menace that eventually terrorized the entire Arabian Peninsula up to Damascus, and caused one of the worst Fitnah (violent civil strife) in the history of Islam.[4] ^[7] In the process, this army was able to viciously conquer most of the Arabian Peninsula to create the first Saudi-Wahhabi State.[5] ^[8]
After the death of Muhammad ibn Saud, his son, Abd al-Aziz, became Ad Diriyah’s new emir who captured Riyadh in 1773. By 1781, the al-Saud family’s territory extended outward from Ad Diriyah, located in the Arabian Peninsula’s central region of Najd, about one hundred miles in every direction. In 1788, Saud, son of Abd al-Aziz, was declared heir apparent. He led his Wahhabi warriors on more raids.[6] ^[9] To fight what they considered Muslim “polytheists” and “heretics”, the Saudis-Wahhabis shocked the entire Muslim world when in 1802, invaded Iraq’s Shiite majority, sacked Karbala, where Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad and the leading Shiite martyr is buried, and also demolished the massive golden dome and intricate glazed tiles above Hussein Bin Ali’s tomb, a holy shrine to Shiite Muslims. In the same year, the Saudi-Wahhabi warriors committed another atrocity in Taif, just outside Mecca. Again in 1810 they ruthlessly killed many innocent people across the Arabian Peninsula. They raided and pillaged many pilgrimage caravans and sever major cities in Hejaz including the two holiest cities of Makah and Medina.
In Makah they turned away pilgrims, and in Medina they attacked and desecrated Prophet Mohammad’s Mosque, opened his grave, and sold and distributed its valuable relics and expensive jewels.[7] ^[10] The Saudi-Wahhabi crimes angered the ottomans.
In 1818, an Egyptian army destroyed the Saudis-Wahhabis army and razed their capital to the ground. The Wahhabi Imam Abdullah al-Saud and two of his followers were sent to Istanbul in chains where they were publicly beheaded. The rest of the Saudi-Wahhabi clan was held in captivity in Cairo. The destruction of the Saudi-Wahhabi warrior’s alliance did not last long. It was soon revived with the help of British colonialist.[8] ^[11]
Accordingly, when Britain colonized Bahrain in 1820 and to expand its colonization in the area, the Wahhabi House of Saud sought British protection through Wahhabi Imams.[9] ^[12] As a result, the British sent Colonel Lewis Pelly in 1865 to Riyadh to establish an official British treaty with the Wahhabi House.[10] ^[13] Between 1871 and 1876, power changed hand seven times and the Wahhabis led more raids. This marked the end of the second Saudi state. This period however, kept the Wahhabi movement alive, ready to influence Muslims again in the twentieth century—and in the twenty-first.[11] ^[14]
The twentieth century’s Saudi Arabia comprises the third period of Wahhabis political power. It has changed Saudi Arabia dramatically and the Saudi-Wahhabi’s kingdom has changed the century significantly. The first interval began in 1902, when Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud captured Riyadh and proceeded to re-establish a Wahhabi Kingdom. In 1904, Abd al-Aziz captured Anaiza, an oasis near Hail. In 1913, he captured Al Hasa Province, but had no idea that he had just acquired a quarter of the world’s oil.[12] ^[15]
Not surprisingly, after his return from Al Hasa, the British helped ibn Saud with the establishments of the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), an army of fierce religious warriors. The Ikhwan looked for the opportunity to fight non-Wahhabi Muslims—and non-Muslims as well—and they took Abd al Aziz as their leader. The Ikhwan movement began to emerge among the Bedouin. They abandoned their traditional way of life in the desert and moved to an agricultural settlement. By moving to agricultural settlement, the Ikhwan intended to take up a new way of life to enforce a rigid Islamic orthodoxy.[13] ^[16]
To achieve his goals, on December 26, 1915, Abd al Aziz signed treaty with Sir Percy Cox, Britain’s political agent in the Arab Gulf. The British praised Abd al-Aziz as the greatest Arab man,[14] ^[17] and recognised his [Abd al- Aziz] sovereignty over Najd and Al-Hasa (central and eastern Arabia), while Abd al-Aziz promised the British that he would not have any dealing with any other country without the British approval and supplies.[15] ^[18] In addition, the British praised Abd al-Aziz despite his unattractive traits such as public beheading, amputations and floggings. The advisor of Abd al-Aziz for more over 30 years, Harry St John Philby, had described him as ‘the greatest Arab since the Prophet Muhammad’. Philby was sent to Arabia by the British government to assist Abd al-Aziz, perhaps to play kingmaker, in 1917.[16] ^[19]
Indeed, when in 1915, there were more than 200 hujar in and around Najd and nearly 100,000 Ikhwan waiting to fight, the British supplied Abd al-Aziz with weapons and money. The word hijra (hujar) was related to the term for the Prophet’s emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622. This period ended in 1934, with the declaration of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under the leadership of Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud.
Since then, Abd al-Aziz declared the relationship between oil and religion. Indeed, after establishing his British-made Wahhabi State, the Wahhabi king and imam Abd al-Aziz became an autocratic dictator who named the whole country after his own family, calling it the Kingdom of “Saudi” Arabia.[17] ^[20] Since then the House of Saud has allocated a significant amount of oil revenues to building Islamic schools and mosques throughout the Muslim world,[18] ^[21] which eventually has inspired radical Islam.[19] ^[22] At that time however, Abd al-Aziz had various goals: he wanted to take Hail from the Al Rashid’ clan, to extend his control into the northern deserts (Syria), and to take over the Hejaz and the Persian Gulf coast. While Cox openly encouraged Abd al-Aziz to attack al-Rasheed’s clans to divert them from helping the Ottomans he prevented him from taking over much of the Gulf coast, where they [the British] had established protectorates.[20] ^[23] They also opposed Abd al Aziz’s efforts to extend his influence beyond the Jordanian, Syrian, and Iraqi deserts because of their own imperial interests. But Abd al-Aziz continued his mission, and after he began the siege of Hail, the city surrendered to the Saudi’s warriors. In 1922, the Ikhwan warriors attacked Amman, the capital of Trans-Jordan. This caused problem with the British because, unlike Mecca and Medina, Hail had no religious significance. However, Abd al-Aziz apologised to the British. The British asked him to draw borders between his kingdom and Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait.[21] ^[24]
[25]
Today, although a few Wahhabi religious leaders have tried to “distant” themselves from the House of Saud’s brutality and anti-Islamic policies in a vain attempt to save Wahhabism’s image from further deterioration, most of the top Wahhabi religious leaders are still firmly behind the House of Saud. In fact, most Wahhabi leaders have openly supported the House of Saud’s unpopular domestic and foreign policies. Indeed, in the Arab nations, the rise of extremism in the form of the Wahhabi movement during the twentieth century could not have taken place without the huge investments made by the Al-Saud family in conjunction with the American in the name of democracy, freedom and human rights to destroy Arab nationalism, socialism, secularism, and of course Islam. This has intensified since the discovery of oil in the 1930s, reached its peak during World War II, and the Cold War, and took more extreme directions since the establishment of the Iranian Islamic Republic in 1979, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the same year.
References:

---

[1] ^[26] – Abdullah-M, S 2004, ‘Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud’, Kana’an Bulletin, vol. IV, no. 361, pp. 1-9.

[2] ^[27] -Sindi, A-M 2004, ‘Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud’, Kana’n bulletin, vol. IV, no. 361.

[3] ^[28] -Nabhani, Y Khulasat-ul Kalam, Dar-ul-kitab-is-sufi (the House of Sufi book), Cairo, Egypt, see also Confession of a British Spy and British Enmity Against Islam, available at: , .

[4] ^[29] Weston, M 2008, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present, Wiley &Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.

[5] ^[30] -Sindi, A-M 2004, ‘Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud’, Kana’n bulletin, vol. IV, no. 361.

[6] ^[31] Weston, M 2008a, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present, Wiley &Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.

[7] ^[32] Ibid; Sindi, A-M 2004, ‘Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud’, Kana’n bulletin, vol. IV, no. 361.

[8] ^[33] Ibid.

[9] ^[34] Weston, M 2008, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present, Wiley &Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey; Troeller, G 1976, the Birth of Saudi Arabia: Britain and the Rise of the House of Saud, Frank Cass, London.

[10] ^[35] Lacey, R 1981, the Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York.

[11] ^[36] Weston, M 2008, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present, Wiley &Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.

[12] ^[37] Ibid.

[13] ^[38] Ibid.

[14] ^[39] Aburish, SK 1994, A Brutal Friendship: the West and the Arab Elite, first edn, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

[15] ^[40] Weston, M 2008, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present, Wiley &Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.

[16] ^[41] Aburish, SK 1994, A Brutal Friendship: the West and the Arab Elite, first edn, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

[17] ^[42] Sindi, A-M 2004, ‘Britain and the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud’, Kana’n bulletin, vol. IV, no. 361.

[18] ^[43] Long, D 1979, The Wilson Quarterly (1976), vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 83-91.

[19] ^[44] Redissi, H 2008, ‘The Refutation of Wahhabism in Arabic Sources, 1745-1932′, in Kingdom without Borders: Saudi Arabia’s Political, Religious and Media Frontiers, ed. A-R M, Hurst, London, pp. 157-177.

[20] ^[45] Aburish, SK 1994, A Brutal Friendship: the West and the Arab Elite, first edn, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

[21] ^[46] Weston, M 2008, Prophets and Princes: Saudi Arabia from Muhammad to the Present, Wiley &Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.

*********

^[47]Haytham A. K. Radwan is a Syrian-Australian citizen living in Adelaide, Australia. He is currently completing Bachelor of Laws at the University of South Australia. He has completed a Masters in International Studies / Relations in 2011, and Bachelor degree in International Studies in 2006 at the University of South Australia. His Masters research examined Saudi Arabia’s Politics, Its Islam, and Its Relations with the U.S. As A Threat to World Stability: Myth or Reality. Haytham also studied Psychology and Education Studies in the early 1990s at Damascus University, Syria. He is been admitted into the Golden Key International Honour Society in 2006, awarded the University Merit Award in 2006, and the Chancellor’s Commendation in 2005 from the University of South Australia.  ^[48]

The Euro teeters on the precipice and economic disaster beckons, as Frau Angela CIA MERKEL is flailing about aimlessly....

The Euro teeters on the precipice and economic disaster beckons, as Frau Angela CIA MERKEL and Nicolas MOSSAD sarkozy are flailing about aimlessly....

 

 

On 22 December 1999, a letter appeared on the front page of Germany's leading conservative daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. It contained a searing attack on the country's most highly regarded statesman, Helmut Kohl, recently retired chancellor and much-feted architect of reunification. Kohl, then mired in an ugly party funding scandal, had to be cut loose, the letter urged, as teenagers must jettison their parents to grow into adults. The only way forward for his Christian Democrats was a complete break with their past.
It was a remarkable letter, a clinical and very public coup-de-grace delivered to an eminent, mortally wounded elder. What made it more remarkable was that the person who signed it was not one of the obviously thrusting young pretenders to Kohl's CDU throne, but a moon-faced and oddly unmemorable protege whom he used to refer to, dismissively, as das Mädchen: the girl.
Some like to see in this episode – which duly launched Angela Merkel on the stratospheric trajectory that would see her elected head of the centre-right CDU the following year and Germany's first woman chancellor barely five years after that – proof positive that she is a sharp, maybe even a ruthless opportunist, eminently capable of bold, decisive and, if necessary, dirty deeds to achieve her ends.
Others construe it more as an uncharacteristic moment of madness from a politician who otherwise has constructed an entire career on caution and consensus; a public figure so superficially unremarkable, so singularly lacking in passion or charisma that in nearly 25 years in politics she has (as her biographer puts it) "not made a single speech that stayed in the memory". A moderator, not a leader; a tactician, not a strategist.
She could, of course, be both. But what's becoming increasingly clear, as the euro teeters on the precipice and economic disaster beckons, is that if she is, a great many people – most of them, it has to be said, outside Germany – would actually quite like to see a bit more of the former, and rather less of the latter. A touch more of the bold and decisive, somewhat less of the calm and methodical. If possible.
Merkel is, after all, about the most important person in the world right now. As leader of the eurozone's undisputed economic powerhouse, she in effect holds the future financial wellbeing of all of us in her hands. And the worry is she's not up to the job. For all her undoubted qualities and undimmed domestic popularity (the pollsters, certainly, see no hint of a rival who could threaten her re-election in 2013, for a third successive term), Merkel – a pale, irredeemably frumpy, maddeningly hard-to-pin-down shadow of an Adenauer, a Brandt, a Kohl – is totally not what's needed, say her critics.
Some are downright damning. "Since the very beginning of this crisis, in 2007-8, Angela Merkel has not ceased providing us with the proof that she is really not the stuff of which great leaders are made," says Jean Quatremer, longstanding Brussels correspondent of the French daily Libération and a veteran observer of European affairs.
"She's navigating by sight, with no real political vision, and no authority. So much sluggishness, so much incapacity to grasp the gravity of the situation, takes the breath away ... Angela Merkel has now become Europe's principal problem."
Others are not quite as scathing, but no less despondent. Merkel's greatest failing, says Charles Grant, of the pro-European thinktank Centre for European Reform, is that she's either unwilling or unable to question prevailing German orthodoxies.
"Truly great political leaders, real statesmen – they can change the weather," Grant says. "They're prepared to think the unthinkable, to say and do things that they know will be deeply unpopular. Merkel just isn't naturally quite brave enough to do a Thatcher, even a Sarkozy, and try to actually change the way people think."
There's certainly little in the chancellor's background to cast her as a fearless challenger of the status quo. Born in July 1954 in Hamburg, she was only a few months old when her father, Horst Kasner, a dauntingly dedicated Lutheran pastor, and his wife moved to the parish of Templin in east Germany, not far from Berlin, where Kasner helped train other priests. The church was also next door to a centre for handicapped children that took up much of his attention.
Occasional visits back to the west gave Angela and her younger brother and sister a glimpse of life the other side of the Iron Curtain. But unlike many of her contemporaries, she never got itchy feet: perhaps uneasy at having a pastor for a father in an unambiguously atheist state, Merkel positively threw herself into the system.
She was a star student, at one point winning a trip to Moscow as a reward for her mastery of Russian. At the same time, she was a keen member of the socialist Free German Youth, or FDJ, organising expeditions and excursions and even, according to some, helping with publicity and propaganda. After school, it was on to Leipzig university to study physics, and eventually the East German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, as a research physicist.
On the home front, a 1977 marriage to Ulrich Merkel, a fellow student, ended after five years, and on moving to Berlin she met and eventually married a quantum chemist at Humboldt university, Joachim Sauer. Sauer stays well out of his wife's spotlight, although he will, gamely, escort the leaders' wives when Germany hosts international summits. For her part, Merkel, who never had children, claims still to do her bit domestically – the odd spot of shopping, sewing and cake-baking.
There's plenty in those early years, plainly, for cod psychologists to chew on. A distant, otherwise-engaged father whom she felt she could never sufficiently satisfy; a religious upbringing that valued hard work (everyone who knows her cites Merkel's prodigious appetite for that) and abhorred showiness; an academic discipline that rewards calm, methodical analysis rather than bravura out-of-the-box leaps of faith.
Equally, many have remarked on the ease with which Merkel navigated the murky waters of pre-reunification East German academe. That she succeeded in pursuing a successful scientific career without ever having to join the Communist party as an adult reveals, it is said, a rare ability to keep a low profile, make oneself unthreatening, negotiate awkward compromises.
At 35, she came late to politics, eventually getting involved through the burgeoning democracy movement shortly before the Wall came down in 1989. Showing impeccable timing and considerable political nous, she joined the CDU weeks before reunification. To Chancellor Kohl, she was a gift: an Ossi (former East German), a conservative, and a woman to boot. Three months later, Merkel found herself minister for woman and youth in his first post-reunification cabinet.
Merkel is a CDU oddity: a Protestant from the east, she heads a party whose core vote is Catholic and whose political roots are solidly in the west. Policy-wise, too, she's something of an enigma. Her hobbyhorses are climate change and Germany's ageing and shrinking population. But her socialist predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, pushed through the painful reforms that have allowed Germany to flourish today, and in her first term as chancellor her moderate, social-market conservatism was straitjacketed in a coalition with Schröder's SPD.
She has taken decisions to end conscription and, in the wake of Fukushima, to scrap nuclear power. But her second term, in a coalition with the liberal and increasingly unpopular Free Democratic party, has been largely dominated by the fallout from the global financial and economic crisis. Her response to this at home has been criticised as messy and hesitant, but it's hard to argue it did Germany's economy any actual harm.
But for most Germans, policies are not the point of Merkel. For them, what they know about her character far outweighs what they don't know about her ideas. Polls have for some time now showed her to be more popular than her party; that cautious, sensible, pragmatic style – her biographer, Gerd Langguth, has said she likes to "sit problems out", and rather than entertain grand ideas of a "historical mission" or "social vision" seeks "to solve today's problems, in a way that ensures she stays in power" – clearly resonates. A large majority plainly like the image of Germany that Merkel projects.
And that, when it comes to the current eurozone crisis, may be the nub of the problem.
Foreign critics may like to see Merkel as devoid of imagination; for Germans, she's level-headed. We portray her as dithering; in Germany, she brings to the summit table a much-needed dose of calm and reflection. A poll two weeks ago for the state broadcaster ARD found her personal approval rating had risen by nine points since October, to 57%. And she's not about to do anything that might upset that.
There's an ideological gulf, too, on the key question of economics. It doesn't help, concedes a German banker in Frankfurt who would rather not be identified, that few Germans, hardly anyone in the German government, and certainly none of Merkel's economic advisers "have ever read Keynes, or even begin to get market economics. To some extent, they're entitled not to, of course: they have the most successful economy in Europe. The trouble is, this thing is a hell of a lot bigger than Germany."
So it remains the Bundesbank's, Merkel's and Germany's deeply held conviction that discipline and austerity are the only ways out of the current crisis, and that any more generous solutions – collective Eurobonds, for example, or allowing the European Central Bank to act as a lender of last resort, both ideas touted in London and several other capitals – will only encourage more profligacy in Europe's irresponsible southern periphery.
"Her advisers are absolutely convinced they're right," says Grant, "and they won't take lessons from Anglo-Saxons. But there's a real danger that Merkel, neither an intellectual nor an economist, will go down as the woman who destroyed the euro because of this lack of boldness, this inability to challenge the intellectual climate in which she operates."
Moreover, many Germans believe the euro has become a kind of unfair and prohibitively expensive tax on their economic prowess. (It has also, of course, contributed greatly to their wellbeing, allowing the mighty German export machine to produce goods far more affordable in those ailing southern economies than they ever would have in Deutschmarks. But there's little political capital to be made from explaining that, and only very recently has Merkel started to make the effort.
Grant confesses he has changed his mind on Merkel: "In the beginning, I was a fan. She was brilliant at the early summits; brought everyone together, acted as peacemaker, got deals done. But since the eurozone crisis ... she's pandered to opinion. The very first Greek bailout, back in 2010, was delayed by months because of an election in North Rhine-Westphalia, which the CDU lost anyway."
(Away from the crisis, he detects a similar pattern: "On nuclear power, she did what she did because she faced tricky elections, especially in Baden-Wurtemburg. She's a follower, not a leader.")
In Brussels, Quatremer agrees: "She's no doubt a good captain when the weather is calm. But as soon as the seas get rough, she's incapable. I would seriously doubt, for example, whether this chancellor would have been capable of persuading her citizens to accept the euro, as Kohl did in his day, in the face of overwhelmingly hostile public opinion."
Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin and former political editor of the Hamburg weekly paper Die Zeit, reckons at least one part of all this Merkel-bashing is simply misplaced. It's true, she says, that the chancellor's most striking characteristic is "her staying power. She's just still there. Like Thatcher, except Maggie was thrilling and terrifying and Merkel is neither. Like water drilling through granite."
Stelzenmüller also agrees that Merkel "leads from behind. She's undeniably a master tactician, always there at the finishing line ... but she favours strategic ambiguity. She'd doubtless say people like Blair and Obama are fools for saying out loud and up front what they're going to do, then failing to do it."
But like all German leaders, Stelzenmüller stresses, Merkel is severely constrained by the country's political structure, its Länder, coalition government, and a powerful constitutional court: "Few leaders are as responsive to public mood as Merkel, because none sail so close to the wind."
Robin Niblett, director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as Chatham House, readily concedes the point. "Being chancellor has some of the aspects of being US president," he notes. "You're simply not as in charge as people think you are. Cameron and Sarkozy, for example, have immeasurably more concentrated power than Merkel does."
But he too sees something deeper, more fundamental in the German leader's makeup: "She's highly methodical and thorough, yes. And she doesn't want to be rushed. But but she's not, like some, methodical and thorough enough to then go on and be bold. In the end, Merkel will always be cautious."
What the German chancellor seeks, Niblett reckons, is "an equilibrium. And when she's found it, she wants to keep it. That's her guiding principle. It strikes me there's almost a sense of insecurity about where Germany sits, psychologically, as a country. And she's just very worried indeed about fracturing it."
That patient, logical, methodical approach has sometimes appeared to pay off: forcing Greece, for example, to pledge more structural reforms, and winning a voluntary agreement from the banks to take a 50% haircut on Greek debt. And Merkel has been able to overcome her innate distaste for Nicolas Sarkozy (the French president is all she detests in a man, and in a leader: brash, flamboyant, impetuous, brimming with big but random ideas), to build a functioning relationship. But she may also have stored up trouble for herself by ruling out potential exit strategies, and by cosseting German voters, refraining for so long from telling them the truth: that Germany has not only profited from the euro, but helped cause its problems – German banks, after all, lent to Greeks, who used the money to buy German products.
Ultimately, Niblett concludes, "the worry has to be that she may be right in theory, but wrong in practice. That this crisis may turn out to be just so big and irrational that maybe a country like France, bolder, more mercurial, may have a better nose for it. The bottom line is, Merkel's style of leadership is simply not suited to the role the world needs Germany to play in the current crisis."
Unfortunately, that style of leadership is very much the one that Germany, in times of need, wants most. "Germans don't want ideological posturing or undue stridency or big, dramatic gestures," says the Frankfurt banker.
"They want a sensible, pragmatic leader who will truly represent Germany and not betray core German values, the things that matter most here: hard work, fiscal responsibility, the social market economy. For the moment, that's what we've got. And we're very happy with it, thank you."....

Angela Merkel is a weak CIA stooge and an ultra cautious, ultra boring conservative....who was parachuted by CIA on Helmut KOHL....Period!

She's quite obviously a paid-up CIA member of those who's sole purpose is to **** everyone else over while smiling behind the thin veil of governmental responsibility......
By now it's pretty obvious that those of these ilk are merely serving the (excuse me) top 1% who own everything from the media (that most people take as out-right truth) to the banking system and all the worlds energy resources. It's really quite obvious and not even far fetched, anymore. Chimp with half a brain starting to catch on.
They're all rich and paid-off to screw us all, to facilitate processes and someone else's regime and I wouldn't trust any of them to bake a cake let alone run countries and handle financial affairs....they are ALL utterly corrupt to the core....

I was living and working in Germany when shortly before an election she went on TV to declare that multiculturalism in Germany had been a total failure, without offering up a single solution or any reason why this might be the case, simply in order to curry favor with the CDU's largely xenophobic lower middle class base. I found this grossly irresponsible in a country that still struggles with neo-Nazism and through my own experience has quite a lot of difficulty integrating foreign workers or indeed treating foreigners like they are human beings. Also Germany isn't that socially democratic, it is an institutionally racist country, there is no minimum wage and millions work full time for 500 Euros a month in jobs that are supposed to be reserved for young apprentices but due to loopholes the government refuses to close, actually aren't....
In terms of the Euro, Germany has benefitted from the Euro which is an undervalued currency in terms of the German economy, this is why everyone here raves about Berlin being so cheap but when you are actually working there it seems expensive. The Euro is undervalued in Germany because Germany is rich, and its value is dragged down by Greece, Italy and Spain, meaning Germany's exports are cheap and Germany is attractive to foreign investors and foreign workers. If Germany left the Euro, or if club med left, the German currency would soar and price it out of markets and cities like Berlin would be as expensive as London overnight. This is why Merkel isn't doing anything other than attempting to buy off the peripheral Eurozone countries and teach them patronizing lessons in economics, so what if half of them are on the dole....

The German government is using its power in a very negative way; a way which pretty much everyone who knows anything about the subject seems to think is cruelly (and potentially catastrophically) wrong. If Merkel is Queen of Europe, she's a reine fainéante. But as I said, I think her inactivity gives the illusion of greater power than she has, at least for positive leadership.
Until recently I've hoped that the politicians knew vaguely what they were doing. I didn't want to be one of those people who emerges for any controversy to declare that everyone in a position of power is clearly an idiot and/or criminal and utterly corrupt.... But as time's gone on it's become horribly obvious that the world is just stumbling from one part of this crisis to the next....because of utter corruption and barbaric criminality, gone on for much too long without any punishement on Wall Street, in DC and on main street as well in most Zioconned countries and beyond...Just look at ALL these UNSC resolutions since 1947 that have gone for Decades without any enforcement....

Berlusconi-style parties being copied in neighboring nations....

Berlusconi-style parties being copied in neighboring nations....

 

 

 

October , 2011 -- Israeli official enjoys "bunga bunga" parties in Balkans...

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is not the only Mediterranean leader who enjoys "bunga bunga" orgies at private villas.

Balkan intelligence sources report that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has recently been a noted guest at villas in Banka Luka, the capital of the Srpska Republic region of Bosnia-Herzegovina, hosting similar parties featuring a number of young women who are available for sexual encounters.

Lieberman, who represents the illegal West Bank settler Yisrael Beiteinu Party in the coalition government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has been traveling to countries that have remained uncommitted to supporting Palestine's bid to join the United Nations. Lieberman has made a number of trips to the Republic Srpska, the other component of the Bosnian Muslim-Croat Federation that comprises Bosnia-Herzegovina. A current member of the UN Security Council, Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj, is Jewish, has seen a full-court press by Israel to abstain or vote no on Palestine's UN application. Israel and the United States want to deny Palestine nine votes in the Security Council, thus averting a promised U.S. veto of the nascent nation's UN bid.

The Muslim and Croat co-presidents of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic and Zeljko Komsic, respectively, support Palestine's UN membership application. However, the Bosnian Serb member of the tripartite presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic, is opposed.

The President of the Republic Srpska, not to be confused with the Republic of Serbia, Milorad Dodik, has struck up a personal friendship with Lieberman. Dodik was feted in Israel last year and Lieberman has made several trips to the Republic Srpska, not all of which had diplomacy as a primary concern.

Lieberman was on a visit with Israeli businessmen in May and he just returned a few weeks ago. However, Lieberman has made several unofficial trips to Banja Luka, where we are told he attends Berlusconi-style parties with younger women. Lieberman, a former night club bounder from Moldova, has been associated with a number of Jewish eastern European, Belarusian, and Russian mafia figures, some of whom have been investing heavily in Republic Srpska and other Balkan nations, including Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Romania. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Lieberman a "mafia boss" two years ago.

One of Lieberman's best friends is Uzbekistan-born Israeli billionaire businessman Michael Cherney, aka Mikhail Chernoy, who has reputed mob ties in Bulgaria. Both have been under criminal investigations in various countries....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colombian Footballer Detained in Saudi Arabia Over ‘Sleeveless Shirt’ and Jesus tattoos...

 

Footballer detained in Saudi Arabia over ‘sleeveless shirt’ and tattoos

Pino inks Al Nasr Club from Saudi Arabia, without knowing ink on his arms is a crime there....

Colombian Footballer Detained in Saudi Arabia Over ‘Sleeveless Shirt’ and Jesus tattoos...

Saudi Arabia’s religious police detained Colombian footballer Juan Pablo Pino while he was shopping at a mall with his wife because he wore a shirt without sleeves, his tatoos visible....

Riyadh/NationalTurk- The 24-year-old Colombian footballer, who currently plays for the Saudi Al-Nasr club, was at the mall in the Saudi capital Riyadh with his pregnant wife when members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice seized him. “They then put him and his wife in their car and waited until executives from Al-Nasr club came and sorted it out. Pino and his wife were handed to the club officials after a brief detention
“Following the incident on Friday, Pino’s pregnant wife is living in a state of anxiety and is demanding that she and her husband leave Saudi Arabia, a extreme Muslim kingdom ruled by Shariah (muslim canonical laws). Al Nasr club has asked its Argentine coach Gustavo Costas and his wife to try and persuade Pino’s wife to change her mind but their attempts have been futile.”  (read HERE).

According to several Arabic news sources, last Monday, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region."
The Grand Mufti made his assertion in response to a question posed by a delegation from Kuwait: a Kuwaiti parliament member recently called for the "removal" of churches (he later "clarified" by saying he merely meant that no churches should be built in Kuwait), and the delegation wanted to confirm Sharia's position on churches.
Accordingly, the Grand Mufti "stressed that Kuwait was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore it is necessary to destroy all churches in it."
As with many grand muftis before him, the Sheikh based his proclamation on the famous tradition, or hadith, wherein the prophet of Islam declared on his deathbed that "There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula," which has always been interpreted to mean that only Islam can be practiced in the region.
While the facts of this account speak for themselves, consider further:
Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah is not just some random Muslim hating on churches. He is the Grand Mufti of the nation that brought Islam to the world. Moreover, he is the President of the Supreme Council of Ulema [Islamic scholars] and Chairman of the Standing Committee for Scientific Research and Issuing of Fatwas. Accordingly, when it comes to what Islam teaches, his words are immensely authoritative.
Considering the hysteria that besets the West whenever non-authoritative individuals offend Islam—for instance, a fringe, unknown pastor—imagine what would happen if a Christian counterpart to the Grand Mufti, say the Pope, were to declare that all mosques in Italy must be destroyed; imagine the nonstop Western media frenzy that would erupt, all the shrill screams of "intolerance" and "bigot," demands for apologies if not resignation, nonstop handwringing by sensitive politicians, and worse.
Yet the Grand Mufti—the highest Islamic law authority of our "friend-and-ally" Saudi Arabia—gets a free pass when he incites Muslims to destroy churches, not that any extra incitement is needed (nary a month goes by without several churches being bombed and destroyed throughout the Islamic world). In fact, at the time of this writing, I have not seen this story, already some three days old, translated on any English news source, though "newsworthy" stories are often translated in mere hours.
Likewise, consider the significance of the Grand Mufti's rationale for destroying churches: it is simply based on a hadith. But when non-Muslims evoke hadiths—this one or the countless others that incite violence and intolerance against the "infidel"—they are accused of being "Islamophobes," of intentionally slandering and misrepresenting Islam, of being obstacles on the road to "dialogue," and so forth.
Which leads to perhaps the most important point: Islam's teachings are so easily ascertained; there is no mystery in determining what is "right" and "wrong" in Islam. The Grand Mufti based his fatwa on a canonical hadith, which Muslims and (informed) non-Muslims know is part of Islam's sources of jurisprudence (or usul al-fiqh). And yet the West—with all its institutions of higher learning, including governmental agencies dealing with cultural and religious questions—is still thoroughly "confused" as to what Islam teaches.
All of this is nothing short of a scandal—a reminder of just how deep the mainstream media, academia, and most politicians have their collective heads thrust in the sand.
Meanwhile, here is the latest piece of evidence of just how bad churches have it in the Muslim world, for those who care to know....