Saudi Arabia: Terror Attack On Oil Refinery Foiled

Local daily al-Riyadh reports that Saudi police on Tuesday carried out house searches in the al-Mantar area of Abqaib, where some employees of Saudi oil giant Aramco live, arms and explosive were discovered in one of the homes and one man was arrested. Reports say that the vehicles to be used in the attack bore the company logo.

The apparent "inside job" nature of this attack is a significant escalation. Even though they didn't succeed, they're getting close, learning, adapting, and probably already plotting their next attempt based on data from this one.

The first attack necessarily seems like an isolated incident; if "market uncertainty" (whether real or partly an opportunistic invention) over that one added a few cents to gas prices, it'll be interesting to see what this one does, while we hope the third time isn't the charm for al Qaeda's designs on Abqaiq.

Regarding the Christian in Afghanistan, I think we can breath a little easier now.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4856748.stm

I wonder how this is lied about on Arab Tv (excluding Saudi Arabia). I am sure there are conspiracy theories ready to blame the Zionists and the CIA. It the jews, its the pigs and apes, never our noble muslims.

While Saudi Arabia is claiming to fight "terrorists," it only fights those militants and islamic leaders that question the official Islam and delegitimize the rule of the saudi king. Hmm, sounds like they are freedom loving muslims who crave democracy. Why don't we help them out?

My point again is that we do not want democracy in the middle east. towel heads and bee keeper women do not deserve democracy. They have not even advanced past the feudal or even tribal system. Some countries never advance out of that system which relies on a despot to set policy and rule arbitrarily - Russia is a great example of that. Put dictators back in, including Sadam and the Iranian President. They will talk the talk, but never do anything because they know what is good for them.

Spreading democracy is a mistake. These people have not advanced enough to have a progressive Islam movement (the one on Wikipedia is a joke collection of few unrelated apostates). Install dictators, leave the area, kick out muslims out of here, don't let new ones in even if they are sons of princes, invent alternative energies and let them go back to the middle ages. Make it a european problem, not ours.

Was reading an article yesterday in a British newspaper (I believe it was the Guardian, but it might have been the Telegraph) about the on-going violence in Iraq.

The whole article was designed to incite against America...claiming we attacked a mosque and killed innocent Iraqis. No mention was made of the American version of events. In fact, they quoted (out of context, I'm sure) an American Col. justifying the killings.

At the end of this piece, they ran a brief paragraph on other terrorist bombings in Iraq, killing 40-some-odd Iraqis. The last sentence read:

"No Americans were killed in the bombings."

I swear the way the article was constructed, one was left with absolute fury at the USA: our aggressive assault on a mosque and the unprovoked killing of innocents there; the deaths of other Iraqis from terror-bombings (implicitly the responsibility of America because of our mere presence in Iraq); and then the fact that not a single American was killed.

It was literally a lamentation that we got away without any casualties.

Imbibing this kind of BS on a daily basis, no wonder they hate us in Europe.

"Imbibing this kind of BS on a daily basis, no wonder they hate us in Europe."
-- from a posting above

Apologists for Islam, who may or may not be Muslims, have naturally made common cause with, and overlap with, those who exhibit those two mental pathologies that are helping to distance Europe from America, and to weaken Euroean self-understanding and therefore, self-appreciation, and therefore, resolve to protect a civilizational legacy that was unearned and possibly, undeserved.

The first of those mental pathologies is that old, and unexpungeable one, antisemitism, which takes as its current and "acceptable" expression the completely distorted view of Israel, its legal, historic, and moral rights, as it attempts -- without being able to articulate very well what it faces and what it is trying to do -- to withstand a relentless Jihad against it.

The second is European anti-Americanism, which has a long history (though not nearly as long, by a sesqui-millennium, as the history of European antisemitism). This identifies all that is wrong with the world including "l'horreur economique" of untrammelled Dickensian capitalism -- with America. It is true that the cult of greed, the misapplication of Adam Smith and ignoring of the moral brakes he assumed would be applied to the twiddling thumbs of that invisible hand, and the celebration of mere ecoomic success indifferent to the consequences of how that success is achieved, and what human damage, or damage to the natural world (which in the end becomes human damage) that economic "success" entailed. But surely China, with its mad headlong rush for money, and India, and Japan with the salarymen whose lives are given to the company, and of course those supereme materialists, the spoiled and decadent beneficiaries of OPEC oil revenues, are all at least as bad, as what in Europe continues to be connected to America, a country far more sinned against than sinning. That Europeans have forgotten that Americans rescued them from the Nazis, and then from the Communists, and right now are trying -- inarticulately, clumsily, naively, in all the wrong and mmost expensive ways, but still trying -- to save them from "terror" (i.e., from the Jihad, i.e., form Islam) is not recognized.

The viciousness of the coverage of the American soldiers in Iraq, who deserve admiration and support, despite the fool's errand they have been forced to endure ever since the beginning of 2004, is not to be forgotten. Nor is the viciousness of the coverage of Israel over the past 30 years, that has drop by steady drop worn away at the sympathy, natural and completely justified, that Israel once enjoyed, before the Jihad against it became re-packaged as one between "two tiny peoples, etc." with one of those "tiny peoples" being merely a local succursale of the 300-million strong Arab people, whose cultural, linguistic, and political imperialism has been the most successful, and most damaging to other cultures and historoies, than any other imperialism in history.

considering one cannot move small amounts of cash around because of the terrorist threat (unless you are married to a UK cabinet minister or an Italian MP), i presume the following must be water tight:

1) All purchases of oil on all global markets including futures (wonder if we could predict the strike on the refinery from those?) would be traceable to the person who put up the funds.

2) All share purchases traceable to the person and bank details known.

I still find it hard to comprehend that on 11/9/1 lots of shares where short traded and no one with the inside knowlegde was arrested....

I am sure, considering how stupid USA is, that some jihad groups, when they pull off a successful strike (probably from sea) on a refinery, will fund the next few decades of terrorism from the profit they will make on the global oil and stock markets.

(If you don't think USA is stupid, remember this: huh, we funded corrupt yarafat so they wouldn't vote hamas. or: Nagorno Karabakh is a democracy but we don't recognise it's right to exist. or: We didn't want to fight with our own troops so we funded many malitias' killing of civilians across the third world in the cold war after vietnam, and they should love us yet they hate us, why?)

The viciousness of the coverage of the American soldiers in Iraq, who deserve admiration and support, despite the fool's errand they have been forced to endure ever since the beginning of 2004, is not to be forgotten.

Yes, indeed. And much media opinion in the UK - I'll give an example in a minute - despite Britain's own involvement in the war, is not far behind the anti-Americanism that taints mainland Europe - and this despite that continent's having sheltered under the US nuclear umbrella for so long.

It is worth noticing that in the UK voices such as those of playwright Harold Pinter that have been raised against American intervention in Iraq were also raised against American intervention in the former Yugoslavia. I don't pretend to have much knowledge of that conflict or of its rights and wrongs, but it's a reminder that whatever the US does and wherever it does it, will be "wrong" for such people. And if the US doesn't intervene in a conflict that will doubtless be wrong, too. Their basic motivation seems to be hatred of the US.

Here is the example - and, no, it doesn't come from the Grauniad, but from the Times, once a newspaper with some standards.

Mick Smith: Winning the War on Terror?

Mr. Smith has been attending a Nato counter-terrorism conference. He starts off by informing us that:

... the complete failure of the west to win the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim world ... is a battle that ought to be easy to win, since as Bassam Tibi, a leading scholar of Islam and International Relations told the conference, Jihad doesn’t actually mean war and the vast majority of Muslims do not support violence.

Oh, so that's all right then. This man has said this, and so that is supposed to close the question. We ignore the contents of the Koran and other writings; we ignore the 14 centuries of bloodshed and suppression; we ignore what historians have recorded; we ignore what apostates from Islam are telling us now; we ignore the evidence of our senses - what we see and hear every day - and why do we do this? Because "a leading scholar of Islam" has said something at a conference.

Smith then goes on to assert that "US troops joined an Iraqi assault on a mosque" which is a very dubious description of an anti-insurgent operation carried out by Iraqi forces (with US advisors) against a complex where gunmen involved in kidnapping were holed up.

Finally he strokes the egos of British readers by referencing a paper by a British Army brigadier, Nigel Aylwin-Foster on anti-insurgent doctrine, which thereby allows Smith to imply that this is a generalized problem common to all insurgencies and foreclose on discussion of the particular ideological influences at work in this conflict - as if he hadn't already dismissed them in the second sentence of his piece.

And this whole discussion, to add to the unreality, is taking place in a country where the prime minister has sat at the feet of Gulbuddin Hikmatyar:

http://www.memri.org/bin/media.cgi?ID=128705

Well, Smith:

'Do
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
'Nothing?'

Odin, King of gods:

No WMD's have been found in Iraq and as such you can argue that, strictly speaking, the war has been in vain.

I agree with much of what you have to say, but on WMDs see:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21489

Also, it's long been claimed that Saddam had no connection with Islamic terrorism, but the documents now being translated give the lie to that:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/024eyieu.asp

the Times, once a newspaper with some standards.

It still is, mostly. As for The Telegraph, with regard to coverage of matters Islamic, it is generally excellent. You'd be hard pressed to find an opinion piece about Mohammed's paedophilia or the "black heart of Islam" in the New York Times.

I would be surprised and concerned if the article Cornelius mentioned is in the Telegraph, but never say never.

Does not sound like The Telegraph to me.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/28/wirq28.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/29/wirq29.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/29/ixnewstop.html

Todays most recent article quotes America's defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
" branded accusations of a massacre "a lie" and said the operation had resulted in the freeing of a hostage and the capture of weapons including rocket-propelled grenades. "Those are not religious instruments," he commented.
and General Pace "The Iraqi forces themselves went into the main target areas. This is the building inside of which, once they got in there, they found a small minaret and a prayer room … [which] some people are calling a mosque," Gen Pace said.

the Times, once a newspaper with some standards.

It still is, mostly.

Oh, sure. I should have phrased that better.

But I don't think the Times should be publishing something like that from someone they describe as a defence and security specialist - at least not now, when it has become clear just how threadbare some of these assumptions and glib assertions are.

The surprising thing is that, even though this is the man's job, if you were to talk at random to a member of the general public you would most likely get more sense, because ordinary people trust the evidence of their senses more and don't enmesh themselves in intellectual constructs that deny the obvious.

Aussie columnist Andrew Bolt:

Are they all mad?

Needless to say, "they" includes the odious Robert Fisk, who is, admittedly, beginning to sound not just unpleasant and dishonest but frankly a little bonkers.

Robert Fisk is even more bonkers than the Grauniad's demented loon Madeleine Bunting, whose cant is being fisked here at Harry's Place.

Odin,

I think Saddam was primarily "unfinished business" as someone - can't remember who - put it. But I don't discount the notion that he had WMDs. He certainly gave the inspectors a run-around over a long period of time.

I also expect more connections with terrorism to be exposed over time - more from Stephen Hayes on the documents now being translated:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/037nhkgk.asp

I haven't been following this one in depth. but at least one laugh came out of it - people in the blogosphere with the necessary linguistic skills have been picking up documents and translating one and one guy found this:

Saddam planned to deploy 'camels of mass destruction'

Interested,

Thanks for the link.

Koran (9:11) - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.

Anti-Americanism is more than a matter of deplorable coverage of the behavior of American soldiers in Iraq. One would sometimes think they have been Storm Troopers. In fact, they have been, much to the chagrin of the Shi'a, far too scrupulous in the making of war, and far too naive about the local population (that has changed, over time), and far too eager to do the President's bidding and give Iraq an Instant Makeover, with new schools, hospitals, power grids, etc. -- and they accomplished much that gets no European coverage, and what there is is mostly sour, with a few exceptions.

As for Urrah-Patriotic coverage of the war in the United States, even supposing that such were the rule (it isn't), how does that manage to offset, or to justify, the decades of nastiness about the United States? How many trillions, in current dollars, were plowed into Europe beginning with the Marshall Plan and NATO? Do Americans, who largely funded the Cold War, live as well as Europeans? They do not, on the whole. They live worse. They enjoy fewer amenities, pay more for all kinds of things, and have a social security system that should double its benefits. This is not Europe's fault. But surely part of the problem are the vast sums that the Americans have uncomplainingly poured into a common defense since 1945, and the infuriating attitude of Europeans is now getting the attention it deserves.

One tiny example, that always grates, and it is so very tiny, and affects so very few people, that one might think it should not be brought up, but brought up it will be. In Europoean museums, members of the E.U. are admitted for free. American tourists and students, however, have to pay, pay the same price as, for example, residents of Japan. I think, as one small token, as a visible token, of gratitude to the United States, Americans should be required to pay whatever Europeans pay. And it should be noted, right there at the Louvre, the Uffizi, the National Gallery, the Alte Pinakothek, the Rijksmuseum, that "In gratitude to the United States of America, American citizens are admitted for free." Very small in amount forgiven. But great in its significance.

The United States is going to find itself, already finds itself, like the retired lawman, in the old Western, who rescues the townsfolk, who exhibit little willingness to help themselves, wait for him to do the job (he does it), and then come out of hiding.

It is acceptable, I suppose, for W. H. Auden (who spent World War II in the United States) to write, in his Phi Beta Kappa poem to the "Scholars of Harvard" ("Under Which Lyre"), to describve America as "so large, so stupid, and so rich." We can understand, we can look at his poetic license and comprehend. But after the threat of Soviet Communism ended, to be replaced by another threat that existed all along, but that had been unperceived because of the looming Soviet one, and because that threat, before OPEC trillions, and migrant Muslim millions, made it much more dangerous, did not loom so large itself, the Western world needs to be as unified as it can be. Anti-Americanism exists and has existed in France, for example, for a long time (see the TLS article a few years ago by Henri d'Astier). Time to get beyond it.

What exactly will it take for an American government to put a large, and ever-increasing tax -- painful for you, painful for me, painful for everyone -- on gasoline, and on other uses of oil, and take those revenues, and plow them into solar, nuclear, wind energy, and conservation projects? What?

But surely part of the problem are the vast sums that the Americans have uncomplainingly poured into a common defense since 1945, and the infuriating attitude of Europeans is now getting the attention it deserves.

Which has also meant that European countries, not having to spend much on defence, can spend unsustainable amounts on creaking welfare systems that sap the willingness of people to do things for themselves. So, in effect, European welfare states rely on the generosity of the American taxpayer, since without the need to spend on defence - as Uncle Sam picks up the bill - they can spend on that instead.

But the European welfare state is a system that is now beginning to collapse under its own weight, as others moving into Europe from outside find they want in on the state largess:

Fjordman: Swedish Welfare State Collapses as Immigrants Wage War

... the Western world needs to be as unified as it can be.

Of course. And better if India, Russia, and China are standing with us, too. India will, I think.

Russia seems to be playing a very odd game. There are the reports that "Russian Spetsnaz units moved Iraqi WMD into Syria and Lebanon" (referenced above).

There's this, too:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday she has asked her Russian counterpart to investigate a report that Russian intelligence fed U.S. battle plans to Saddam Hussein before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/29-03-2006/77980-rice-0

And this article at a blog Fjordman references is scarcely heartening:

http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/001837.html

To Ronin,

your quote of Surah 9:11 of the Qur'an is bogus. Just go to any Quran sites, eg. http://www.quranbrowser.com and see for yourself the 10 different translations. None of them have anything to do with eagle.

HUGH: "What exactly will it take for an American government to put a large, and ever-increasing tax -- painful for you, painful for me, painful for everyone -- on gasoline, and on other uses of oil, and take those revenues, and plow them into solar, nuclear, wind energy, and conservation projects? What?"

I think there are other ways than consumption taxes to fund development of alternative energy sources. But no question we've got to do something.

Like you, I was so deflated by Bush's State of the Union speech, when he bragged that his energy program would cut oil imports 25% by 2025. He obviously appreciates the gravity of the problem.

Interested,

You were right. It was the Guardian.

put a tax on oil,, the government already takes in too much.. you cannot fix things with a goverment. you cannot rely on government! anyone who promotes taxes are socialist and communists!
if we dont use the oil, the Chinese and others are in line for that oil. Oil unfortunately runs the world. Government are wasteful spenders, and already gouging us!
global warming has existed before humans, and will exist after humans.. we are not causing it! so let us drill in our own coastal areas, and lands for our
oil.

This threat against oil refineries makes me rather nervous indeed.

I live and work near a massive oil refining complex, which is unprotected, along with natural gas pipelines feeding it. A jihadist would have no problem either throwing himself upon a strategic area with a bomb vest or firing an RPG or planting a suitcase bomb where it could do serious damage leading to a whole series of explosions.

And it continues to this day to be unprotected.

There is no guarantee that it isn't a target, yet Canadians have their heads in the sand.

yaqub, I fiqured that out but It was too late. I like my version anyway.

Forget taxing the oil. How about one big underground oil fire? Is that fire in the Kentucky coal mine still burning after nearly 18 years? I say torch the frickin' fields and make the mohammedans do back-breaking work for a change.

Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear programme, with help from Pakistani experts, the German magazine Cicero reports in its latest edition, citing western security sources.

for the full story go to

http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story.php?content_id=122015

Saudi Arabia-Pakistan-china is the real axis of evil. Saudi Arabia is the paymaster of terrorism and nuclear proliferation, Pakistan provides the operational footsoldiers for the same, and China is the supplier of material and technology for the venture. China continues to deny that it is behind this and Pakistan also does the same. Saidi Arabia's excuse is that they need these to protect itself from Israel or Iran. Actually, these are meant to be used against the US in case it attacks Mecca and Madina after a second 9/11 type attack against US (whenever it occurs) by the islamic terrorists. Who is the beneficiary of all this? China, of course.

China has done its home-work quite well. It has thousands of its countrymen in the US as students, who can be counted on to indulge in espionage activities, thus further weakening the US. This is the Sino-islamic connection at work. God save the US and the world!

I wouldn't fisk Bunting with a flagpole...

Here's some good news.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/29/eveningnews/main1454613.shtml

(CBS) Wouldn't it be nice if, one day, we didn't have to worry about the ups and downs of the gas markets?

Well in Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world, there's a plan to become free from imported oil, not in the next 30 years, not in the next 10, but by the end of this year, reports CBS News correspondent Trish Regan.

That's primarily because while the rest of the world was mapping the human genome, scientists in Brazil were mapping the DNA of sugar in an effort to create a cleaner, cheaper alternative to gasoline: sugarcane ethanol.

They succeeded. Brazil's ethanol is about 30 percent less expensive than gasoline; according to the World Bank, it's about 50 cents cheaper per gallon to produce sugarcane ethanol. And although ethanol gets slightly less mileage, it's still cheaper on a per-mile-driven basis.

"The way we figure it, ethanol will be cheaper than gasoline as long as the price of oil is over $45 a barrel," said William Bernquist, coordinator for research and development at the Sugar Cane Technology Institute in Piracicaba, Brazil.

With oil upwards of $60 dollars a barrel, and no relief in sight, Bernquist predicts that ethanol will stay cheaper for some time.

"We started our ethanol program in the '70s because of the oil crisis in the '70s," he said. "And so we had to survive."

And "survival" meant finding a homegrown source of fuel, says Eduardo Carvalho, president of Sugar Cane Agroindustry Union. "We had no money to pay for the import of oil," he told Regan.

As chief economic advisor to Brazil's finance minister in the 1970s, Eduardo Carvalho pushed for government subsidies to help the fledgling sugarcane industry take shape.

Carvalho told Regan that it's a good feeling to know that by the end of the year his country will no longer have to rely on the Middle East for oil. "(It's) extremely important," he said. "We feel very proud."

Beginning in the 1970s, every gas station in the country was required to have at least one ethanol pump and the government mandated that all gasoline be mixed with ethanol.

"We began to blend increasing quantities of ethanol in our gasoline pool," Carvalho said.

But, as the ethanol began to replace gasoline, that led to another development: a brand new kind of car called a "flex vehicle." The car gives you the option of using a gasoline ethanol blend or 100 percent ethanol depending on whatever is cheaper. In San Paolo, Brazil, ethanol is the cheaper fuel to use.

Today, 70 percent of new cars sold in Brazil are flex vehicles, which cost no more than a regular car.

With the fuel environmentally cleaner to burn and the car cheaper to run, you've got to ask whether there is any downside to the fuel.

Carvalho says the biggest downside is the oil industry. "They aren't able to sell their product. … Basically, the people who produce oil, they don't like us … because we are getting their markets. … It's very simple."

The U.S. has made inroads on ethanol, but the focus here has been on corn-based ethanol, which is more expensive to process. By any measure, the U.S. is still probably decades behind Brazil on this alternative energy front.

Trish Regan
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When are the rest of the countries going to stop kissing Saudi tush and work on this. It sure would be cheaper and smarter to move to this fuel. If Brazil can be fuel independant by the end of this year, that proves it can be done. Why does my suspicious mind think the oil companies have prevented this from happening everywhere?