The issue to be resolved is ridding Muslim "land" of infidels. The weapon to be used is oil. From Islamabad, a petroleum jihad has been advised. This report from the Kashar News explains it all.
Speakers at the concluding session of a workshop on Sunday urged the Islamic world to utilize the 1973-like leverage of oil for the resolution of issues including Kashmir, Palestine and Iraq.The two-day workshop was organized by Pakistan Islamic Medical Association and addressed among others by Senator Prof Khurshied Ahmed, Syed Munawar Hasan, Ghulam Mohammad Safi and Dr Iqbal.
In his address, Prof Khurshid said that at present, one and half billion Muslims were possessing some 22 percent land of the glob; and Muslims constitute 25 percent of the world’s population.
He said that in 1973, the Muslim world used the leverage of oil in line with their demands which was a good move. “It is time the Islamic world raise its decisive voice for the resolution of pending issues including Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Chechnya,” he stressed.
He observed that America was losing ground in Iraq in the face of valiant and resilient Iraqi resistance and guerrilla war. “The same situation is in Afghanistan,” he said.
Senator Khurshid said though rulers of Muslim countries were siding with the US, they have no public backing at home. He said the US was entangling into quagmire of huge internal debts and if the situation remains unchanged, the US would not survive for long.
Speaking on the occasion, Syed Munawar Hasan, secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan said that change of people’s mind is crucial to the change of system in the country.
He said that the US has been practically defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that gallant fighters in these two Islamic countries have turned the table on the enemy and the day was not far when forces of darkness and tyranny would have to flee.
Assume that Muslim OPEC members decided to cut off all Western buyers. Then what? The oil would simply be sold to other buyers -- e.g. China and Japan. They, in turn, would buy less from non-Arab or non-Muslim suppliers, which would then sell their oil to those same Western buyers.
Or assume that simply took oil off the market. Assume that governments with countries with rapidly-increasing populations, largely young and unemployed and very angry, are willing to risk taking in less money. Assume further that they are willing to risk retaliation by that same Western world, which could at once seize the assets of nationals belonging to those countries (Saudi princelings own a lot of real estate, individually and collectively, throughout the Western world, that is most illiquid). It could be done in precisely the same spirit that the assets of German nationals were seized during World War II; all it takes is an act of Congress, and Congress does not much care for Saudi Arabia, even if they do not yet fully reflect or express the fury with Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states that those who voted for them feel.
And what about, in any case, the problem of the peaking of Saudi production in a few years? Should we ignore Matthew Simmons and others, or do they have a point? Just how much oil is there at Ras Tanura, Al Qatif, Ad Dammam, Dhahran? And how are Totalfina and Elf doing in their explorations in the Rub al-Khali? Okay? Not so okay? We need to know.
And notice please that Ras Tanura, Al Qatif, Ad Dammam, and Dhahran, are all bunched up together in Hasa, conveniently located right on the Pers...oops, as the Arabs have renamed it, the "Arabian" Gulf (funny, because they also call the gulf on the western side of Saudi Arabia the "Arabian Gulf," for when it comes to the Arabs, every placename that can possibly have an "Arab" or "Arabian" in front of it is going to: Arab this, and Arab that. The Iranians must not be too happy with the attempt to efface the Persian Gulf from the world's atlases, and the world's memory.
Suppose that such a step were to be taken. This could have unintended but good consequencs. At long last the attention of the Western world would be fixed on getting off oil and gas, off those damned fossil fuels that not only support the Jihad, but not incidentally, seem to be damaging our natural, as the Jihad so funded seems to be damaging our man-made environment. It may be the only thing to get everyone's attention.
And why is that attention necessary? How many scientists, sober and soft-spoken, does it take to get someone like Bush to believe that global warming, or the general degradation of the natural environment, deserves to have devoted to it whatever attention is not devoted to defending ourselves against the Jihad? How else is disaster of the It's-Too-Late variety going to be avoided?
It is not America alone. A whole armada of ships of state are really ships of fools, Narrenschiffen, in danger not of hitting, like so many Titanics, an iceberg, but of not even finding an iceberg to run into, because the polar ice is melting, and the consequences, some foreseeable, some only to be guessed at, are not good, are very bad.
But what if something terrible were to be threatened in the near term, and we just had to have that oil which, we are supposed to believe, would be taken off the market? In that case, it is entirely feasible to seize the oil and gas fields (let's not forget all that natural gas in tiny, meretricious and Al-Jazeera-supporting, Qatar) of the small sheikhdoms with half-a-division of men -- Qatar, Abu Dhabi and the rest of the Emirates, Kuwait. And of course Saudi Arabia, or rather the eastern oil-bearing province with the unhappy Shi'a, would be fasr less difficult to separate from its oilfields and ill-gotten gains than was the seizure of Iraq, by three divisions, in a few weeks.
And what's more, the oil is right there on the Gulf waiting to be loaded into ships, and those ships, protected by Western navies (oh, did I forget to say that the Muslim countries have no navies?) and air forces (ditto), would not have much trouble.
The Saudis know this. They have deliberately leaked phony stories about how they have managed to mine all the oilfields, and are ready to blow them all up if the Western powers were ever to attempt to seize them. Nonsense. They would never do such a thing, because they know that Al-Qaeda would not mind at all setting the fields alight, and perhaps even, in a pinch, some of the local Shi'a -- the Al-Saud family just can't take a chance. But the story itself is telling.
Again, nothing to worry about. They can bark, and bark, and bark about denying us oil. The caravan moves on. And if there is enough barking by those threatening canines, the caravan's pace may quicken, as it moves toward what might be seen as the promised oasis of other sources of energy, which at long last will prove to be -- a reality, and not merely a mirage.
Hugh
Imenno. I only fear that the dhimmis at the State Department and the EU leadership will take these threats seriously and will continue offering more and more concessions.
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dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org
"Voskhititel'no" a few days ago from one poster. Now "imenno" from another. I'm beginning to feel right at home on Nevskiy Prospekt.
And suppose that this terrible thing did happen. I wonder how quickly would appear one of those alternate energy sources and all that technology created by garage and basement scientists that has been set aside and allowed to sit forlornly until the last penny from the last drop of oil is earned.
If America can't get oil, which we probably can from a manner that Hugh has described, there is always something else waiting in the wings. Someone with deep pockets is depending upon keeping his cash flow going...
A distinguished physicist from CalTech has stated many times that the technology to produce practical and cost-effective nuclear fusion reactors will exist before 2020. We should be spending more resources on electrical transmission and storage technology.
Islam's ancestral homeland needs to sell us petrol more than we need to buy it. Indeed, Islam has no economy. It forbids interest and capitalism. It forbids half the population to work. It has a tax system of 2 1/2% that cannot support even just widows and orphans. The system only works by imperialism, enslavement of the infidel and expansion. Cutting the West off would be the best thing these truly ignorant people could do for us. It will force the West to use alternative fuel sources: nuclear, shale, wind, water, geothermal, whatever our free markets scrounge. The democratic West has economic mechanisms in place that can deal with this. The Islamic millenary movement does not. I am convinced Islam will loose the war because their worldview and image guarantees them a loss. As the vanguard of 1 billion Moslems, these Jihadists cannot contain their lust for murder and blood of the remaining 4 billion western, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or communist Chinese people, who have a technology that can wipe them out in fifteen minutes. All alternative life cycles and religions are becoming so sickened by the evil, aggressive pathetic savages that Islam is doomed to lose. I predict that the rest of world is very close to giving up on problems associated with Moslem aggression. The world will put a fence up around the Moslem world and its agitators, or will require that fellow Moslems deliver up the bad people or the Moslem world will be annihilated.
Looks like the seeds are being sown for the Third World War.
Cyrus:
Aside from the fact that Saddam was, himself, a WMD, there's been plenty of evidence that he had all sorts of contraband materials that he either hid or shipped to Syria, and, perhaps even your country. The explosives being used for roadside bombs are coming from Iran, but weren't necessarily manufactured there. And Iran's mullahs are probably also supporting the jihaddists in other ways although they are the ones murdering Shiites for "collaborating" with the Coalition forces.
As for your rant about the US "sucking" all the benefits out of the world, that's crap and your wish for annihilation will probably get your post deleted when I bring it to Spencer's attention, if not get you banned altogether from posting.