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2005-10-04 Arabia

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Posted by Steve White 2005-10-04 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Gotta keep the rubes fretting over 7th century superstitions whilst the more pious folk finalize their plans for world subjugation...

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2005-10-04 00:53|| 2005-10-04 00:53|| Front Page Top

#2 In order to complete their mission of moon-sighting they travelled to an undisclosed naturist beach.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2005-10-04 04:13|| 2005-10-04 04:13|| Front Page Top

#3 Cue the Twilight Zone theme - and don't hold your breath, they like to make a show of this ritual in Islamic Pseudo-Science.

Back in early '92, when I had first arrived in LalaLand, still naive, still thinking I was on an Arabian AdventureÂ©, I offered one of the Saudis I had just met to have a friend of mine back in The World generate Ramadan schedules, prayer schedules, etc. cuz he had access to a Cray and I could code anything they could define. I thought I was being nice, helpful, generous - and so did my acquaintance, who was new to Aramco as well, from a remote region and thus had never even met a Westerner before coming to Dhahran and was still intensely curious about the West, etc. He relayed my offer to our Dept mutawa / security "officer" (one & the same, doncha know)... and came back to tell me that it was haram and likely blasphemous - I should stay out of Islamic affairs and keep my trap shut. I was kinda stunned, as the first layer of my dumb romantic notions fell away, but the real surprise was how frightened he looked. He sorta steered clear of me after that - and I didn't mind since I was starting to see what I had stepped in... not by making the offer, but by going there. I was almost tossed out, for real, a couple of times before I got my bearings and all the romantic BS had been burned away. Arabists and Orientalists, usually ivory tower academics who never shed their swaddling clothes, should be required to live, not just visit, the places they peddle. Even a fucker like Galloway, were he forced to live as a regular Arab Yagouv for a year, would haul ass back to civilization in a heartbeat once his sentence was completed.

Posted by .com 2005-10-04 04:21|| 2005-10-04 04:21|| Front Page Top

#4 Lol, JFM - good one!

Posted by .com 2005-10-04 04:22|| 2005-10-04 04:22|| Front Page Top

#5 Committee? You'll have to edjumacate me. I thought this was decided by a Mufti. In fact I kinda got the impression that was all Muftis did, really.

Posted by Jake-the-Peg 2005-10-04 05:57|| 2005-10-04 05:57|| Front Page Top

#6 who never shed their swaddling clothes

lol! Pretty much sums up the whole Jihadi, Anti-War and ed-me-okayshunal elite.

Posted by 2b 2005-10-04 06:07|| 2005-10-04 06:07|| Front Page Top

#7 (raptor walks out front door,looks-up)Thar she is'it's party timne.(damn that was hard)

Posted by raptor 2005-10-04 07:35|| 2005-10-04 07:35|| Front Page Top

#8 Isn't there a prophecy in the Quron that Islam will last until men walk on the Moon. I hate to telll you guys but you are 36 years late

Posted by Cheaderhead 2005-10-04 08:11|| 2005-10-04 08:11|| Front Page Top

#9 IIRC the "islam will last until man walks on the moon" hadith is correct (that is, forever, in amedieval perspective).
According to what was said in the presentation of a (fun and very well done) mockumentary about the moon landings being faked by Stanley Kubrick, shown of french-german Arte Teevee, the pious Learned Elders of Islam are actually spending dough and efforts to publicize the "faked landings" conspiracy theory.

Posted by anonymous5089 2005-10-04 08:23|| 2005-10-04 08:23|| Front Page Top

#10 I thought the were building a sattellite to do all this hard shit?

Posted by tu3031 2005-10-04 09:04|| 2005-10-04 09:04|| Front Page Top

#11 .com thats the problem with blue-state'ers. They go to a country like Mexico (or Indonesia) - Tiawana or Bali for example or some other tourist area and stay exclusively in the hotel / tourist areas and all of a sudden they are an expert ("oh the mexicans have it so well! Beautiful beaches and cities!"). Even when they have to be driven through the city 'mexican' (or native) areas they dont really 'see' the slums and poverty...

Posted by CrazyFool 2005-10-04 10:01|| 2005-10-04 10:01|| Front Page Top

#12 Right-o CrazyFool. One time in 1967, I took some wrong turns in a heavy rain and wound up in the Encinada town dump. It's a different world. And there is not much to scrounge in a Mexican dump.

Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul 2005-10-04 18:12|| 2005-10-04 18:12|| Front Page Top

#13 lol - I thought I learned ya Spanish on your last visit! Ensenada....actually quite a nice town, you should see the Baja land boom lately...condos and mid-hi-rises for the gringos....a LOT less poverty in the "traveled areas"

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-10-04 18:31|| 2005-10-04 18:31|| Front Page Top

00:09 JosephMendiola
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23:51 Red Dog
23:49 VAMark
23:38 Justrand
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23:26 .com
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22:58 CrazyFool
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21:52 .com
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