Our Changing Globe

Archive for the ‘Saudi Arabia’ Category

Pakistani Catholic Didn't Burn Quran, Says Archdiocese …

newsessentials.wordpress.com12/16/11

16-December-2011 — ZENIT.org News Agency ewtn. Anti-Blasphemy Law Continues to Victimize Christians. KOENIGSTEIN, Germany, DEC. 15, 2011 (Zenit.org).- With the plight of Asia Bibi drawing international attention, …

Would the Apostle Paul Have Burned A Copy of the Koran …

creationrevolution.com11/22/11

If the Apostle Paul were alive today, would he have burned a copy of the Koran or would he encourage believers to do so? There were two events that took place during Paul's third missionary journey that could be instructive …

On March 20, after putting on a symbolic judicial robe, Rev Jones, ordered a copy of the Koran to be torched in a portable fire pit, and it’s remains now sit in a plastic Home Depot bag in a storage room in his run-down church.

It has been stashed atop a pile of cardboard boxes, next to a tattered pair of boxing gloves, and it still smells of kerosene.

The Value Of The Koran And Any Other Book

Apart from the fiscal value, the Koran and any other book only has the value that you give it, but for whatever reason, many Muslims and perhaps others too, fail to understand this.

Videos have been made of the Bible being urinated on, being rammed down a toilet and burned etc., but to the best of my knowledge, modern day Christians have never attacked, let alone killed anyone for doing such things.

How Did Muslims Respond To The Burning?

Well just the threat of burning caused huge protests, and then on April 1, a mob attacked a U.N. compound in Mazar-e Sharif, in Afghanistan and slaughtered ten UN Workers, and on April 2, related protests in Kandahar left nine dead and more than 90 injured.

No Moral Equivalency

Regardless of whether you approve or not of Rev. Jones’s actions or not there is certainly no moral equivalency between burning a book and slaughtering people whose only crime was not to be Muslim!

The Defense Department At Gitmo

It might be of interest to consider how the Defense Depart at Gitmo treat the Koran.

A Defense Department employee gives a copy of the Koran to every suspected terrorist that requests one, even though the DoD knows full well that the Koran commands Muslims to kill the very person that gives it to them.

Standard procedure calls for the book to be handled only by Muslim military personnel but if that is not possible, then the non-Muslim must wear white gloves, and is further instructed to hold it in his right hand (indulging Muslim culture’s taboo about the sinister left hand.

The book is to be conveyed to the prisoners in a “reverent manner” inside a “clean dry towel".

All of the above can easily be seen to indicate that infidels are so low a form of life that they should not be touched!

The Ayatollah Ali Sistani teaches, non-Muslims are “considered in the same category as urine, feces, s****, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors", and “the sweat of an animal who persistently eats unclean things".

Bible Burning In Afghanistan

And the very same Defense Department that is now piously condemning Koran burning did not give a second thought to the confiscation and burning of bibles in Afghanistan.

U.S. commanders ordered this purge in deference to sharia proscriptions against the proselytism of faiths other than Islam, and as General Petraeus well knows, his chain of command is not the only one destroying bibles and non-Muslim religious artifacts.

Bibles And Other Non-Islamic Artifacts Are Banned

Saudi government guidelines prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, etc., into the country, and non-Muslims are barred from entering Mecca and most of Medina, and this forbiddance is based on the classical interpretation of an injunction found in what Petraeus is fond of calling the Holy Qur’an (sura 9:28):

“Truly the pagans are unclean, so let them not approach the sacred mosque”.

Jones’s Behavior And Islamic Teachings

Jones’s actions were particularly aggressive and very antagonistic, but were they any worse than what is written in the Koran?

For example, Sura 9 of the Koran, commands Muslims to conquer and to kill non-Muslims!

9:5: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . .”;

9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the Book (the Jews) until they pay the jizya (the tax paid for the privilege of living as dhimmis under the protection of the sharia state) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”.

It might be well worth noting that nowhere in the Bible are Christians instructed to kill non-Christians!

Israel's Offshore Natural Gas Fields are a Geo-Political Game …

grendelreport.posterous.com11/9/11

Noble Energy, Inc. Map of Eastern Mediterranean Natural Gas Fields. The Oil and Gas Journal had a report, “Israel's offshore gas reserves poised to rise” that underlined how the imminence of energy independence for the …

Three Israeli Innovations That Could Power U.S. Renewables …

cleantechnica.com10/27/11

Renewable energy needs new innovations to compete with fossil fuels, but that doesn't always happen here. New inventions in Israel could boost US renewables.

Israel Has Oil And Gas?!

Update:

The first oil was extracted last Wednesday (June 29, 2011), and drilling will be clean and won’t leave a footprint.

Read the oil extraction article now.

New Data

New data suggests that Israel may not only have much larger gas resources than previously believed, but actually have the 3rd largest deposit of oil shale in the world!

Put In Perspective

Libyan oil accounts for less than 2% of the world’s oil production, yet the ongoing revolt against Muammar Gaddafi caused the price of oil to leap to more than $100 per barrel in just one month.

Total Share Of World’s Total Oil Supply

According to the US Department of Energy, the Middle East’s share of the world’s total oil supply is expected to increase in the years ahead because the world is using up the reserves of non-Middle East oil more quickly.

Moreover, according to the CIA, of the trillion barrels of proven reserves still left, roughly 800 billion barrels are to be found in the Middle East and North Africa, especially in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.

Israel’s Political Problem?

The implications for Israel of the West’s growing dependence on Middle Eastern oil would be troubling, for obvious reasons, but two new developments in its energy sector could well offset these trends and eventually alter Israel’s standing in the world, especially with respect to Europe.

Israel’s Gas

The Tamar field, in the Eastern Mediterranean should begin production in 2013, and it’s expected to supply all of Israel’s domestic requirements for at least 20 years, and the recently discovered Leviathan field, which has twice the gas of Tamar, would be completely devoted to exports.

The two fields together have about 25 trillion cubic feet of gas and Greece is already talking to Israel about creating a transportation hub for distributing gas throughout Europe from the Eastern Mediterranean that will come from undersea pipelines.

And what’s more, the US Geological Survey estimates that there are 122 trillion cubic feet of gas in the whole Levant Basin, most of which is within Israel’s jurisdiction.

Israel’s Shale Oil

What is perhaps less well-known, but is even more important, is that a new assessment that was released late last year by Dr. Yuval Bartov, who is the chief geologist for Israel Energy Initiatives, at the yearly symposium of the prestigious Colorado School of Mines suggests that Israel’s oil shale reserves are the equivalent of 250 billion barrels which can be put into perspective by comparing it to Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves of 260 billion barrels.

If the figures prove to be correct then Israel would have the third largest largest deposit of oil shale, after the US and China.

* Shale oil is an underground layer of rock impregnated with kerogen, a petroleum precursor, which ultimately becomes oil when heated.

The Problems With Oil Shale

Until now oil shale mining used to be a very dirty business that used up tremendous amounts of water and energy.

New Technologies

New technologies that are being developed for Israeli shale, seek to separate the oil from the shale rock 300 meters underground and the techniques would actually produce water, rather than use it up.

In a nutshell, the process involves prolonged heating of the rock through boreholes until the residual layer liquefies after which it is then siphoned out and refined.

In 2008, Israel licensed a vast shale deposit at the foot of the Judean Hills to Israel Energy Initiatives, which is currently conducting a pilot project to produce 500 barrels of oil, and if testing proves technically and economically feasible, then the company believes Israel will have a source of high-grade oil worth several decades of energy.

A Seismic Shift

If Israel is able to develop a unique method for separating oil from shale deep underground, that has none of the negative ecological side-effects of earlier oil shale efforts, that technology can be made available to the whole world, and change the entire global oil market, and the effect of the spread of this technology would be to shift the center of gravity of world oil away from Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to more stable states such as Jordan and Morocco that have no history of backing terrorism or radical Islamic causes.

How Would The Change Affect Israel Politically?

After America’s reserves in Texas and Oklahoma were depleted by World War II, it sought to upgrade its military and diplomatic ties with the Saudi kingdom even before its production capacity was fully exploited, and Saudi Arabia’s status grew as its future position in world oil came to be appreciated, and one only has to look at how the West turns a blind eye to atrocities carried out by the leaders of major oil exporting countries to understand the influence that comes with oil.

Updated international reports verifying the true dimensions of Israel’s undersea gas and oil shale should be forthcoming in the next year and many more international companies are likely to take an interest in its energy sector at that time.

Israel is uniquely situated by its geographical position and would easily be able to direct its energy exports to either Europe or China and India, and although Israel may not have the capital to build this export capacity, the involvement of foreign investors in these projects will give European and American banks new interests in developments.

The world’s policies will not change overnight, but Israel now needs to start telling the the full story of its newly emerging role in the world energy sector in order to alter the way it’s being handled internationally.