Posted on 02/11/2009 1:35:41 PM PST by NormsRevenge
China has signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to build a new railway system linking the main sites of the annual Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj.
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Saudi Arabia also plans to build a high-speed rail link to take pilgrims from Mecca to Medina, Islam's two holiest cities, in 30 minutes.
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The new network in Saudi Arabia is expected to be ready within three years, with one section of the line due to be completed in time for the 2010 Hajj, officials said.
The contract, worth almost $1.8bn (£1.24bn), was awarded to the China Railway Company and a French firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Of course this is for Muslims only. Literally. You don’t get to go to Mecca or Medina if you’re not a Muslim. Fancy train or no fancy train.
Chances are the Chinese are also developing the system that will enable them to take Mecca hostage if the Muslims step out of line and they have an easy and swift way of getting there.
China is getting too Mecca-nized.
When we were stationed in Jeddah in 1982, the Ambassador’s secretary’s squeeze was a retired USMC helo pilot. He was hired by the Saudi Interior Ministry to fly their big sheets around. Once, he had to fly the Interior Minister himself to Mecca. He explained that he wasn’t a moslem, and the big guy made him an honorary temporary moslem. He MIGHT have been the same guy that made Dame Margaret Thatcher an honorary man when she went to the Magic Kingdom to meet the King.
What about the workers who will build it?
Perhaps we could plant some IED’s under the rails, say about every foot or so!
Pakistani. The few Chinese/Foreign managers will “convert.”
On July 2, 1990, a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel (Al-Ma'aisim tunnel) leading out from Mecca towards Mina and the Plains of Arafat led to the deaths of 1,426 pilgrims.
On May 23, 1994, a stampede killed at least 270 pilgrims at the stoning of the Devil ritual.
On April 9, 1998, at least 118 pilgrims were trampled to death and 180 injured in an incident on Jamarat Bridge.
On March 5, 2001, 35 pilgrims were trampled to death in a stampede during the stoning of the Devil ritual.
On February 11, 2003, the stoning of the Devil ritual claimed 14 pilgrims' lives.
On February 1, 2004, 251 pilgrims were killed and another 244 injured in a stampede during the stoning ritual in Mina.
On January 12, 2006, a stampede during the ritual ramy al-jamarat on the last day of the Hajj in Mina killed at least 346 pilgrims and injured at least 289 more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_during_the_Hajj
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Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com
We get two US wealth-redistribution follies in one: Free Trade to Communist China...while they build a train for a country that we send billions for oil (and provided 15 of the 19 Islamic Terrorists on 9/11).
Dontcha just loooove Globalism....
Globalism is nothing new. Back in the 1700's and 1800's, European countries practiced colonialism because countries around the world refused to open their markets to trade.
China was one example. Many foreign concessions were established in the 1800's to ensure the flow of good in and out of China. In the 1949, the Communist Party brought it all to and end (in China anyway).
And the demand for oil from the Middle East is quite simple.....oil is cheap from the Middle East, it's as simple as that. America could pull more oil from her soil, but it would cost alot more. And there is coal liquefaction as well. And there is shale on the Colorado plateau that could provide enough oil for the next 100 years. But all that is more expensive than the pumping oil from the earth in Saudi Arabia.
The reality is, the US government as well as many other Western countries are promoting globalization more so than the developing nations. The America's free trade agreement was President Bush's agenda. It failed to go through because the Latin American countries were unwilling to make the necessary concessions.
I suspect free trade wouldn't bother you so much, if a handful of countries, China being one of them, didn't have such a voracious appetite for Western technology.
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