Has anyone on the "other" side of the aisle realized that our country

[hyphenate]

supports terrorism simply by relying on fossil fuels?

We all know the conservatives love their big cars, their bank accounts and all their toys. But has it not occurred to them that we continue to create terrorists by refusing to find alternative fuel solutions, and as a result, putting dollars into the pockets of the middle-eastern terrorist countries, like Saudi Arabia?

And let's get this straight, too: continuing to refuse research into alternatives has also created THE worst environmental disaster ever created, and yet they STILL want to drill in ANWR, and they STILL want to fuck up our planet.

NO MORE. We must now go on the offensive and refuse to vote for ANY and ALL measures which shore up the oil industry, and keep the status quo.

Until we, the citizens, and we, the inhabitants of once-thriving planet Earth decide to change our ways, we are doing NOTHING to change our planet for the better.

We can't accept any middle ground--it doesn't exist. The only things that exist are pro-terrorism, pro-destruction, and pro-planet, pro-alternative energy. Let's make sure which side we're on.



I'd like to create some pictures reminding the country of the connection between terrorism and fossil fuels. Perhaps staring at a few people jumping from the WTC and showing wealthy Arabs will finally bring that connection to people. Bush and Cheney tried to keep that association away from peoples' minds during their usurption of our country, but it's time to show the truth in a way that is unforgettable.

It's only when the pubes see that they can't win with such direct proof of terrorist links that we might get some response that puts us in a progressive venture forward.

[Go2Peace]

1. Wahabism, the extreme version of Islam, rose on "Tithing" from oil wealth

You are exactly right. The less money we send to the middle east through oil purchases, the less money gets in the hands of extremists.

[JCMach1]

3. Revisionist history there... the British promoted Wahabism from the colonial

period as a counter to the dangerous Sufi and Ismaeli revolts with their empire...

Consider them British Colonial blowback.

[Go2Peace]

7. Wahabism has been around. But like Protestant Christianity it fundamentally changed

From Wikipedia (I know wiki isn't perfect, but it explains what I am talking about)

"According to Western observers like Gilles Kepel, Wahhabism gained considerable influence in the Islamic world following a tripling in the price of oil in the mid-1970s. Having the world's largest reserves of oil but a relatively small population, Saudi Arabia began to spend tens of billions of dollars throughout the Islamic world promoting Wahhabism, which was sometimes referred to as "petro-Islam".<47> According to the documentary called The Qur'an aired in the UK, presenter Antony Thomas suggests the figure may be "upward of $100 billion".<48>

Its largess funded an estimated "90% of the expenses of the entire faith", throughout the Muslim world, according to journalist Dawood al-Shirian.<49> It extended to young and old, from children's madrasas to high-level scholarship.<50> "Books, scholarships, fellowships, mosques" (for example, "more than 1500 mosques were built from Saudi public funds over the last 50 years") were paid for.<51> It rewarded journalists and academics, who followed it; built satellite campuses around Egypt for Al Azhar, the oldest and most influential Islamic university.<52>"

Wealth does funny things to religions when leaders incorporate it into their philosophies and get rich in the process. Just like the hardening of fundamentalist domination that occurred in the US when leaders started getting rich from proclaiming their "righteousness", the same phenomenon occurred in the Middle east. Vast money was donated to the churches there, and the people who harvested it spread a more fundamental variety of islam. Just like our fundamentalist churches here, with their money they paid for new schools that taught their brand of angry religion.

Religions have always sprouted violent movements, so it's not new, but the one that we are currently seeing can be directly traced back to the increase in wealth brought on when oil climbed in price. We funded those fundamentalist schools and churches with our own money.

[Hannah Bell]

5. ?

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792)

"Upon his expulsion from 'Uyayna, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was invited to settle in neighboring Dir'iyya by its ruler Muhammad ibn Saud in 1740...

Upon arriving in Diriyya, a pact was made between Ibn Saud and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, by which Ibn Saud pledged to implement Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's teachings and enforce them on neighboring towns. Beginning in the last years of the 18th century Ibn Saud and his heirs would spend the next 140 years mounting various military campaigns to seize control of Arabia and its outlying regions..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Abd-al-Wahhab


The man credited with importing Wahhabism into India is Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareili (1786-1831), who returned from pilgrimage in Mecca in 1824 to begin a holy war against the Sikhs aimed at restoring the Punjab to Muslim rule...

The events of the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 are well known, but the part played by the Wahhabis deserves closer examination...By beating detainees to extract confessions and using "approvers" to turn Queen's evidence, the Wahhabi organization in plains India was broken up (by the British), leading to a series of high-profile trials in the 1860s and 1870s.

One curious feature of these trials was that those convicted, besides being shackled in irons, were dressed in orange overalls (a color code replicated at the U.S. base at Guantanamo). A number of leaders were condemned to death, subsequently commuted to transportation for life on the Andaman Islands, and others sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. A special commission was then set up to examine the extent of the threat posed by the sect, producing the first detailed report on the Wahhabi movement--Ravenshaw's memorandum...

Then came the great frontier uprising of 1897-98, beginning in Swat and spreading like the proverbial wildfire south through tribal country, and requiring an army of 40,000 to reduce them to submission...

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6669/is_2_22/ai_n29197222/pg_4/?tag=content;col1


The founder of the modern state of Saudi Arabia lived much of his early life in exile. In the end, however, he not only recovered the territory of the first Al Saud empire, but made a state out of it. Abd al Aziz did this by maneuvering among a number of forces. The first was the religious fervor that Wahhabi Islam continued to inspire... At the same time, Abd al Aziz had to...allow foreign powers, particularly the British, to have their way....


In 1902, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud began battling his way back to power in the Najd and Riyadh, and by 1905 or 1906, the Ottomans had recognized him as their client in the Najd, and he was recognized as the Wahhabi imam. He continued his advances, aided by the Ikhwan brotherhood... By 1913 Abd al Aziz's had thrown the Ottomans out of Al Hufuf in eastern Arabia. Abdul Aziz's advance was during WW I. He sat by while the Hashemite family, aided and encouraged by the British, revolted against the Turks. After the war, ibn Saud resumed his advance...In 1932 he renamed renamed his Kingdom Saudi Arabia.


Beginning in the 1930s, the ARAMCO consortium, including Standard Oil of California and other firms, that had gotten oil concessions in Saudi Arabia, discovered huge quantities of petroleum.

http://www.mideastweb.org/arabiahistory.htm

[fishwax]

2. I don't think they'd admit that the oil industry is detrimental if their lives depended on it

which, of course, it does ...

[salguine]

4. They know. But they also know who bankrolls their re-election campaigns. So you

can see where, when they have to make a choice, their priorities lie.

But let's take a good long look here. If people are going to be even remotely honest with themselves, they're going to have to own up to the fact that it's not just "the other side of the aisle", as you say. Pretending that Democrats played no part in this whole situation is blatantly disingenuous, and isn't going to contribute to any kind of solution. The only thing I can't stand even more than a Republican is a blinders-wearing hypocrite.

[hyphenate]

6. I fully agree

and I didn't mention "our" side simply because right now, at this moment in time, it's been the right-wingers who have been pushing for off-shore drilling, and who helped get this BP atrocity into the Gulf. It's nice to see the face of Palin behind the "drill, baby drill!" talk, as before too long, the disaster will encompass fishermen, swimmers, almost all pleasure boating, and far, far more. Wildlife and sea life are already being badly harmed, and this could, in fact, be the final straw to our dependence on fossil fuel. (A fact I pointed out above)

The politicians in our country are certainly beholden to the corporations in this country--big business has had the run of the country for way too long, and we are the peasants. There is little we can do about it. It came to a head under the last, catastrophic administration, and we're stuck. There are very few ways we can change things right now.

In this case, however, we need to wake up the country and re-teach them how to use their common sense in electing congress members who are not already owned by the businesses in our country. We can start, though, with freezing out any and all pwned incumbents, and working from there.

[Cleita]

8. We also support dictatorships and repressive governments in

third world country to keep the American companies that are stripping them of their resources in business.

[hyphenate]

9. Oh, yes indeed

While I'm not sure of all the countries, most of South America is owned by the United States. That's part of the reason why Chavez is such a hero (not really to us, though)--he's admired by many as telling the US to STFU.