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Google Earth spysat: Saudi jews bulldoze birthplace of Muhammed and 2,000 holy sites

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UPDATED: Sunday, February 6, 2011 09:27
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Sunday, February 6, 2011 9:27 AM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!




Google Earth's best finds:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8304017/Google-Earths-bes
t-finds.html


US taxslaves at work:

Google Earth finds Saudi Arabia's forbidden archaeological secrets

An armchair archaeologist has identified nearly 2,000 potentially important sites in Saudi Arabia using Google Earth, despite never having visited the country.

David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, used Google Earth satellite maps to pinpoint 1,977 potential archaeological sites, including 1,082 teardrop shaped stone tombs.

"I've never been to Saudi Arabia," Dr Kennedy said. "It's not the easiest country to break into."

Dr Kennedy told New Scientist that he had verified the images showed actual archaeological sites by asking a friend working in the Kingdom to photograph the locations.

The use of aerial and satellite imaging has been used in Britain to locate Iron Age and Roman sites in Britain, as well as Nazca lines in Peru and Mayan ruins in Belize.
But few archaeologists have been given access to Saudi Arabia, which has long been hostile to the discipline. Hardline clerics in the kingdom fear that it might focus attention on the civilisations which flourished there before the rise of Islam – and thus, in the long term, undermine the state religion.

In 1994, a council of Saudi clerics was reported to have issued an edict asserting that preserving historical sites "could lead to polytheism and idolatry" – both punishable, under the Kingdom's laws, by death.

Saudi Arabia's rulers have, in recent years, allowed archaeologists to excavate some sites, including the spectacular but little-known ruins of Maidan Saleh, a 2,000 old city which marked the southern limits of the powerful Nabataean civilisation.

For the most part, though, access to ancient sites has been severely restricted.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8303805/Google-Earth-find
s-Saudi-Arabias-forbidden-archaeological-secrets.html




Analysis: Saudi Arabia's war between god and archaeology

For decades, Saudi Arabia's powerful clerics have waged a bitter battle against pagan faiths, idol worship, heresy, alcohol – and archaeology.

News that David Kennedy, an Australian scholar, has succeeded in identifying almost 2,000 unexplored archaeological sites using Google Earth has focused attention on the wages of that battle: the destruction of Saudi Arabia's own heritage More than 90 per cent of the archaeological treasures of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, experts estimate, have been demolished to make way for hotels, apartment blocks and parking facilities.

The $13 billion project that led to a wave of demolitions in the middle of the last decade was part of an effort to modernise infrastructure in the ancient cities, where millions of pilgrims gather for the Hajj each year.

Sami Angawi, an expert on Arabian architecture, lamented that history had been " bulldozed for a parking lot". "We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Mecca,", he said.

The Kingdom's ultraconservative clerics believe that the veneration of ancient sites associated with the Prophet Mohammad and his family is heretical, and want potential shrines obliterated.

In October last year, a Saudi clerical body was reported to have renewed long-standing calls for the demolition of several historic Islamic sites – including the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the grave of his mother.

Fears that archaeology could cast light on Saudi Arabia's pre-Islamic past also led them to campaign against excavations.

But in recent years, Saudi Arabia's monarchy appears to have been quietly defying the clerics who provided legitimacy to the regime ever since the founder of the dynasty, Mohammad bin Saud, signed a pact with the religious zealot Mohamed Ibn Abdul-Wahab in 1744 Saudi and French archaeologists are, for example, working in Maidan Saleh, the site of the ruins of a 2,000 year old city which once marked the southern limits of the Nabataean civilisation. The more than 100 tombs at Maiden Saleh, Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is open to tourists.

Najran, where an ancient Christian kingdom was overrun by the Jewish king Dhu Nawas a century before the Prophet Muhammad's birth in the 7th century CE, has yielded a treasure trove of ancient stone inscriptions.

There have also been significant finds at Jurash, overlooking the Red Sea, where US archaeologists have excavated new evidence on the trading routes which once ran across the region.

Prince Sultan Bin Salman, the first Saudi Arabian astronaut, played a key rule in easing up restrictions on archaeology, as head of the Kingdom's commission for tourism and antiquities.

Museums in the Kingdom have now begun displaying finds from these sites – including nudes of Hercules and Apollo, cast in bronze. Female figurines, however, are still not on display.

However, there still seem to be limits to the kingdom's tolerance of archaeology – particularly when issues of faith are touched on. Public access to an ancient church discovered by tourists in 1986, for example, is still barred.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/83039
74/Analysis-Saudi-Arabias-war-between-god-and-archaeology.html


Saudi ´Royal Family´ Are Direct Descendants Of Iraqi Jews
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message80330/pg1

Islamic Fundamentalism (Wahhabism) created by Zionists
http://earthlinggb.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/407/

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