Don't pay me lip-service, Saudi king tells subjects

[emad]

Rory McCarthy in Beirut
Monday September 12, 2005
The Guardian


Saudi Arabia's newly enthroned King Abdullah has told his citizens they should no longer kiss their monarch's hand because it is degrading and un-Islamic.

"Kissing hands is alien to our values and morals and is not accepted by free and noble souls," he reportedly told the most recent of the thousands of Saudis who have come to his palace offering their loyalty.

The small break with tradition is the first hint of change in this conservative and pious society, where the new king is regarded as a reformer from a royal family better known for its opulence and power.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/saudi/story/0,11599,1567687,00.html

[emad]

1. Wahhabist translation: "Kiss my ass"?

?

[StrafingMoose]

4. ROFL

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. my feet and my ass are different issues, though

just ignore the Wahabis. Too many of my cousins are still too involved with them.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Abdullah is a Saudi progressive

Which, admittedly, isn't all that progressive, but it's a start.

And His Oil-Rich Highness had better stop kissing Bush's ring, or he's going to find himself on the losingend of a coup.

--p!

[wtbymark]

5. FYI

go look for the book "Twilight in the Desert"

I was in Texas just before Katrina and was talking with someone who showed me his friend's book - an oil industry analyst for 20+ years - guess what? The Saudi's are LYING about the oil they have in order to keep their throne. They don't have nearly the oil they say they have and for the world's outlook, that means peak-oil has come and gone, bout 15 or so years ago.

Where are them hydrogen cars?

[maxsolomon]

7. they ain't coming

and neither is massive biofuel replacement of petroleum.

find a way to get out of your car.

[AndyTiedye]

8. I'm Working On It

I'm getting myself one of these:

[Maple]

9. Yeah they are

[maxsolomon]

11. so we just switch fuels & keep sprawling?

i don't buy it. i don't want it.

how much cropland would need to be put into soybeans, etc., to make sufficient bio-fuels to run our current vehicle fleet? how much energy is required to make the hydrogen sufficient to run our current vehicle fleet?

are we going to run our ski-doos & leaf blowers on it too?

[Maple]

14. Different era

different lifestyles. Moving forward.

And you won't have any choice about it.

Not unless you're willing to live as a hermit in the woods anyway. :D

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Good point, but I'm already aware of it.

Which keeps my shrink busy. :)

I'm a regular on the Energy and Environment forum. The polyanna forum.

I'd only make a few cpmments on what your friend said.

First, peak oil didn't come and go 15 years ago. It is probable that we are going through it now, and if not, certainly in the next few years. But Daniel Yergin's (and CERA's) prediction of no peak oil until at least 2040 is absurd.

The analyst who wrote the book is Matthew Simmons. His "theory" -- a well-supported one -- is that the Saudis destroyed their oil field (the Ghawar oil field, in this case; it's also the world's largest) by injecting seawater deep into the oil deposits. This allows more oil to be recovered, but it also means that the deeper oil can never be recovered, and may also interfere with the production of natural gas, which comes from the deeper strata.

The same technique is being used with smaller oil fields in Mexico, Texas and other states in the USA. I'm not sure whether it is being used on the Cantarell field, the largest North American oil field and the world's second largest, but that field is also "dying". (Note -- this is from a "Creationist" web site, but quotes scientific papers. Most Creationists believe that God will supply us -- or the Christians, anyway -- with all the oil we need.)

Hydrogen cars? What good will they be when there's not enough petrochemical-derived ammonium nitrate to fertilize the hybrid plants that most of the world depends on for food?

And Abdullah ibn-Saud knows all of this. Perhaps that is why he has made some "progressive" gestures.

--p!

[grahamhgreen]

6. However practicing Christianity in public is still illegal...

apostasy will get you death, adultery the same, and, oh yeah, it's OK to marry a nine year old girl and traffic in humans. But hey, no more kissing of the ring...

More - http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/world/saudiarabia.htm

[David Zephyr]

10. Please note: He did not outlaw fellatio by Bush males to his royal penis.

Sucking Saudi royal dick along with bin Laden dick has been a tradition of all Bush family males since the 1950's when George H. Bush first dropped to his knees and raised the Saudi royal gown.

[Javaman]

12. Wow, so no more smooching the royal ring, huh?

That's what I call a major leap forward! :sarcasm:

I know, I know, baby steps. But with this kind of baby steps, the baby maybe walking when it's 15 years old.