NBA Great Charles Barkley Calls Conservatives ‘Fake Christians’

Barkley on Blitzer MORIEL MINISTRIES, BE ALERT! - By Scott Brisk - February 16, 2008 Ed Note: Below is a partial transcript from Charles Barkley appearing on CNN’s Situation Room Hosted by Wolf Blitzer. During the interview, Charles Barkley discusses a few items concerning the topic of politics, namely his decision to vote democrat in the upcoming 2008 elections and his decision to run for Governor of Alabama in 2014 once he has met the seven-year citizenship requirement. However, it was the third topic he covered that I considered important for Be Alert! in which he takes a swipe at Christians for being judgmental, something not at all uncommon these days. By contrast, in this case, Mr. Barkley is actually probably more correct than most by calling Conservatives 'Fake Christians'. I can only conclude by the state of our churches and the state of America and her Western counterparts, that is truly the case and the bible as we know teaches this. Nevertheless, Mr. Barkley still appears confused on the issue of judgment and it is not a simple as he makes it out to be (yet it really is not all that of a difficult concept either) Born again believers in Jesus the Messiah are to judge other born again believers in Messiah. We are of course to make sure our ability to judge is pure first, hence we always check ourselves first and pull the log out of our own eye out first. Thus, a warning is given: In the way we judge, we will be judged also. Matthew 18 lays out a process by which the church and the leadership are to follow in addressing, correcting and judging sin or offence. 1 Corinthians 5 and 6 builds on this and 1 COR 5:12-13 reaffirms we are to judge those within the church but not those outside the church. Those outside the church God will judge. We have developed a serious problem in the so-called "Christian" nations of the west. First of all the "nations" ethnos were always biblically considered part of the world. Secondly, no matter how many bible believing Christians were involved in the founding of the United States, it was never and will never be a Theocracy unto Yahweh. There has always been a distinction between the church, Israel and the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South America etc. The nations I mentioned are all conglomerates of the original seventy nations, probably the UK being the least. Consequently, the church has been trying to judge the world for a very long time rather than doing what Jesus commanded, making disciples of all nations and being His witnesses even into the remotest part of the earth. How I believe the Lord would much rather see His church being persecuted because it was making disciples and was a threat to the establishment rather than being attack because it is seen as a political opponent that is more of a hypocrite than anything else. When the early church stuck straight to scripture they could not be accused of being hypocrites, but when there is a mixture of truth and error such as gospel of Patriotism and the gospel of Jesus Christ you wind up trying to legislate morality and eventually hypocrisy. BE/\LERT! NBA Great Charles Barkley Calls Conservatives ‘Fake Christians’ CNN [Turner Broadcasting/Time Warner] - The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer - February 15, 2008 VIDEO by BREITBART.TV --Transcript-- Charles: Hey I live in Arizona, I got great respect for Senator McCain, ah… great respect, but I don’t like the way the Republicans are taking this country. Every time I hear the word 'conservative' it makes me sick to my stomach, ‘cause their really just ‘fake Christians’ as I call them - that’s all they are. --- Wolf: One quick point before I let you go, you used the phrase ‘fake Christians’ for conservatives, explain what your talking about? Charles: Well, I think they, they, they want to be judge and jury. Like I’m for gay marriage, its none of my business if gay people want to get married. I’m pro choice, and I think these Christians, first of all there supposed to be… there not supposed to judge other people, but their the most hypocritical judge of people we have in this country. And it bugs the hell out of me, they act like they are Christians and then they are not forgiving at all. Wolf: So, you’re going to get a lot of feedback on this one Charles. Charles: They can’t do anything to me, I don’t work for them. Wolf: So you feel comfortable saying all that. Charles: I very comfortable saying I’m pro-choice and I’m for gay marriage, very comfortable. Wolf: But you can’t lump all of these conservatives as being fake, a lot of them, obviously most of them are very, very sincere in there religious beliefs Charles: Well they should read the part about where there not supposed to judge other people, they forget that one when it doesn’t fit what they want to say. Video Link http://www.breitbart.tv/html/48184.html

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We Will Frighten You Into Submission - Addendum

The Road to Artificial Omniscience Terrorism: The catalyst to advance the mark? F.B.I. Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets NEW YORK TIMES - By Eric Lichtblau - September 9, 2007 WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records. The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” - the network of people that the target was in contact with. The bureau stopped the practice early this year in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said. The community of interest data sought by the F.B.I. is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists. The concept has strong government proponents who see it as a vital tool in predicting and preventing attacks, and it is also thought to have helped the National Security Agency identify targets for its domestic eavesdropping program. But privacy advocates, civil rights leaders and even some counterterrorism officials warn that link analysis can be misused to establish tenuous links to people who have no real connection to terrorism but may be drawn into an investigation nonetheless. Typically, community of interest data might include an analysis of which people the targets called most frequently, how long they generally talked and at what times of day, sudden fluctuations in activity, geographic regions that were called, and other data, law enforcement and industry officials said. - - - - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html?ex=1347076800&en=fefa8f68a7779332&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink Judge Voids F.B.I. Tool Granted by Patriot Act NEW YORK TIMES - By Adam Liptak - September 7, 2007 A federal judge yesterday struck down the parts of the recently revised USA Patriot Act that authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use informal secret demands called national security letters to compel companies to provide customer records. The law allowed the F.B.I. not only to force communications companies, including telephone and Internet providers, to turn over the records without court authorization, but also to forbid the companies to tell the customers or anyone else what they had done. Under the law, enacted last year, the ability of the courts to review challenges to the ban on disclosures was quite limited. The judge, Victor Marrero of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, ruled that the measure violated the First Amendment and the separation of powers guarantee. Judge Marrero said he feared that the law could be the first step in a series of intrusions into the judiciary’s role that would be “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.” - - - - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/washington/07patriot.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1189213368-a+xfMx4BIqE1IFUwpz6y5w Secret Court Asks For White House View on Inquiry ACLU Seeking Rulings Issued On Warrantless Wiretapping THE WASHINGTON POST - By Dan Eggen - August 18, 2007 A secret U.S. intelligence court has ordered the Bush administration to register its views about a records request by the American Civil Liberties Union, which wants the court to release a series of pivotal orders issued earlier this year about the National Security Agency's wiretapping program. The move is highly unusual, because the court -- which approves warrants for electronic surveillance within the United States by intelligence and counterterrorism agencies -- operates in almost total secrecy and has made only one ruling public in its 29-year history. In a scheduling order issued Thursday and released yesterday by the ACLU, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court instructed the government to respond to the ACLU's request by Aug. 31. The civil liberties group has until Sept. 14 to file its own response. "This is an unprecedented request that warrants further briefing," wrote U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who serves as the intelligence court's presiding judge. ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement that "we're extremely encouraged by today's development because it means that, at long last, the government will be required to defend its contention that the orders should not be released." Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the administration is reviewing the judge's order. The ACLU has asked the court for copies of orders it issued in January related to the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, which had been operated without court oversight since late 2001 and which has been the focus of fierce congressional debate. The group is also seeking a copy of one or more court orders issued in the spring that, according to administration officials and congressional Republicans, concluded that parts of the program are illegal. The orders helped provoke Congress to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act this month, giving U.S. spy agencies expanded powers to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order. - - - - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701923.html?hpid=topnews Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping NEW YORK TIMES - By James Risen - August 6, 2007 WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants. Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States. They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens. “This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation. Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States. Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States. By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants - latching on to those giant switches - as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas. - - - - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?ei=5065&en=4e05f95a4b60ac78&ex=1187064000&adxnnl=1&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1186441721-waZLhIldCCr3Jkevp2cKjA FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Advanced Russian civilization found

ASIAN NEWS INTERNATIONAL - December 28, 2007 MOSCOW: Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 2500-year-old advanced civilization at the bottom of Lake Issyk Kul in the Kyrgyz Mountains in Russia. According to a report in RIA Novosti, the team consisted of Kyrgyz historians, led by Vladimir Ploskikh, vice president of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences, and other Russian colleagues, like historian Svetlana Lukashova. The expedition resulted in sensational finds, including the discovery of major settlements, presently buried underwater. The data and artifacts obtained, which are currently under study, apply the finishing touches to the many years of exploration in the lake, made by seven previous expeditions. The discovery consisted of formidable walls, some stretching for 500 meters-traces of a large city with an area of several square kilometers. Other findings included Scythian burial mounds, eroded by waves over the centuries, and numerous well preserved artifacts-bronze battleaxes, arrowheads, self-sharpening daggers, objects discarded by smiths, casting molds, and a faceted gold bar, which was a monetary unit of the time. All these discoveries suggest that the ancient city was a metropolis in its time. Some artifacts are in fact so stunning that they point towards an advanced civilization. For example, a 2,500 year-old ritual bronze cauldron was found on the bottom of the lake. The subtlety of its craftsmanship is amazing. Such excellent quality of joining details together can only be obtained presently by metalwork in an inert gas. Also of superb workmanship are bronze mirrors, festive horse harnesses and many other objects. Articles identified as the world's oldest extant coins were also found underwater-gold wire rings used as small change and a large hexahedral goldpiece. Side by side with the settlements are remnants of ritual complexes of times immemorial, dwellings and household outbuildings. According to the researchers, the findings lead to the speculation that the local people at that time had a socio-economic system hitherto unknown to historians. As a blending of nomadic and settled life, it either gradually evolved into something different or-more likely-was destroyed by one of the many local floods. Lake Issyk Kul has played a tremendous role since the inception of human history due to its geographic location at the crossing of Indo-Aryan and other nomadic routes. Archeologists found traces of many religions here-Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Advanced_Russian_civilization_found/articleshow/2658962.cms FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Revealed: New NASA images show Mercury as you have never seen it before

LONDON DAILY MAIL [Associated Newspapers/DMGT] - January 18, 2008 Dramatic new pictures have revealed the unseen side of Mercury in detailed images taken from a Nasa spacecraft orbiting the planet. Astronomers saw the "dark side" of Mercury for the very first time when the spacecraft flew within 125 miles of the planet's surface and took 1,200 high resolution images. - - - - http://morielbealertblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/revealed-new-nasa-images-show-mercury.html

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Fallen angels who have both de-evolved and evolved with an insatiable lust and the question remains, is this half-breed among us today?

As in the days of Noah Genesis 6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. PR LEAP - Publishing News - October 2, 2007 RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA - Theodocia McLean’s book, ‘The Nephilim Phenomenon’ is a fictional account set in the backdrop of a convention of people who are experiencing encounters with these fallen angels who have both de-evolved and evolved with an insatiable lust and the question remains, is this half-breed among us today? This might possibly be Theologians best kept secret. It was Theodocia’s reading of portions of Genesis for her book ‘Time Traveler’s Postscripts-Journal of a Time Traveler’, that she became very curious about the reference to the Nephilim. In Noah’s day there were fallen angels who lusted after, had sex with and even offspring with human women. These half spiritual and half human breeds were called “Nephilim”. Now the Nephilim were wiped off the face of the earth by God, after the great flood, in Noah’s day. The spiritual beings that fathered the Nephilim were never mentioned again. Theodocia McLean’s book, ‘The Nephilim Phenomenon’, is a unique approach to the "Nephilim" (offspring of fallen angels and human copulation). This might possibly be Theologians best kept secret. Her premise is that fallen angels survived the great flood that wiped out the earthbound Nephilim. This fictional accounting is set in the backdrop of a convention of people who are experiencing encounters with these fallen angels who have both de-evolved and evolved with an insatiable lust and the question remains, is this half-breed among us today? About This Release If you have any questions regarding information in these press releases please contact the organization listed in the press release. Issuers of press releases and not PR Leap are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content. http://www.prleap.com/pr/96275/ FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Saudis give big to U.S. colleges

THE WASHINGTON TIMES [News World Communications/Moon-Unification Church] - By Julia Duin - December 10, 2007 Two years ago this month, a Saudi prince caused a media splash — and raised eyebrows — when he donated $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities to fund Islamic studies. Although few details have been released about how the money has been spent, at Georgetown, the money helped pay for a recent symposium on Islamic-Western relations held in the university's Copley Formal Lounge. The event attracted about 120 persons: students, Catholic priests, men in business suits and several women in colorful head scarves who all came to hear religion experts from several American universities, as well as from Bosnia, Ireland and Malaysia. A member of the Norwegian royal family said he flew in just for the event. "I just came here to learn the language scholars are using about these things," Prince Haakon of Norway said. Some call the Saudi gift Arab generosity and gratitude for the years American universities have educated the elite of the Arab world. Others say the sheer size of the donations amounts to buying influence and creating bastions of noncritical pro-Islamic scholarship within academia. "There's a possibility these campuses aren't getting gifts, they're getting investments," said Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "Departments on Middle Eastern studies tend to be dominated by professors tuned to the concerns of Arab and Muslim rulers. It's very difficult for scholars who don't follow this line to get jobs and tenure on college campuses. "The relationship between these departments and the money that pours in is hard to establish, but like campaign finance reform, sometimes money is a bribe. Sometimes it's a tip." The $40 million gift from the Saudi donor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, was the latest in a tradition that started in the 1970s — Muslim donors pumping millions of dollars into American universities to fund Islamic studies, hire faculty specialists in Islam and fund books and seminars on the world's second-largest religion. Friends in the right places This summer, Harvard appointed its Islamic history professor, Roy Mottahedeh, to head its Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program. Harvard is hiring the first of four endowed chairs in the program and is using some of the $20 million to preserve a collection of Islamic documents. On Nov. 3, the university hosted its first Islamic studies conference — named after Prince Alwaleed — on "Interpreting the Islamic Tradition in the Contemporary World." Harvard would not provide additional details about the disbursement of the funds, nor would Mr. Mottahedeh respond to numerous requests for an interview. At Georgetown, the money was funneled toward its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which was quickly renamed the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The center, part of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, trains many of America"s diplomats. The Alwaleed Center is tucked away in a small suite of offices in the Bunn Intercultural Center. Its reception area is decorated with blue and white Pakistani tile, a framed page from the Koran and mother-of-pearl depictions of a menorah, the Nativity and the Dome of the Rock. The center's aim, according to its mission statement, is to "improve relations between the Muslim world and the West and enhance understanding of Muslims in the West." The center's director, John Esposito, a prolific writer and praised by many as being a national authority on the religion, was severely criticized by several scholars for downplaying the threat of Islamic terrorism in the 1990s when he was a foreign affairs analyst for the State Department. Mr. Esposito, "more than any other academic, contributed to American complacency prior to 9/11," Martin Kramer, a fellow at the Olin Institute at Harvard, wrote in a Jan. 2, 2006, commentary on his blog, sandbox.blog-city.com. "[He has] proved that he's still a magnet for Arab and Muslim money," Mr. Kramer wrote. "Prince Alwaleed apparently decided that while Esposito's reputation may be dented, the professor still has some value in him." Mr. Esposito declined to be interviewed for this article but did defend himself in several e-mails. "Two of my books, including 'Unholy War,' were among the eight books recommended by [U.S. Army] Lt. Gen. John Vines to his senior staff when he took over command in Iraq," he wrote. "[My article] 'What Makes a Muslim Radical' in Foreign Policy received the most hits of any of its publications, more that 100,000 in the year it was published." Mr. Esposito said the number of programs sponsored by his center went from 27 last year to 22 this semester alone. The first of three new faculty, Ibrahim Kalin, a scholar on Sufiism and Islamic philosophy, is slated to come on board next fall. A month before the gift was publicly announced, Mr. Esposito was one of four persons flanking Prince Alwaleed before a photographer at the George V hotel in Paris. It was then that the prince told Georgetown officials of their $20 million windfall — and that Mr. Esposito would oversee how the money was spent. Spreading the wealth Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch, a watchdog group under the aegis of the Middle East Forum think tank, said it's too early to tell whether the prince is getting his money's worth. One sign of success is if a university can place its recent doctoral graduates in positions of influence. "The prince knew very well Georgetown's in a milieu filled with lobbyists and opinion makers; thus any program of his will exert more influence there than at a university not in a power center like Washington," Mr. Meyers said. "The grant also gave Esposito a much bigger microphone. When you've got a $20 million institute, that amplifies your voice considerably." The Saudi Embassy's press office did not respond to requests for comment on this article, and a spokeswoman for Prince Alwaleed said he was "too busy" to respond. According to one Saudi press organization, the grants are meant to promote understanding and change America's perceptions of Islam in the most fertile place, the university campus. "The tendency, in some quarters, to identify Islam with fanaticism or even terrorism persists and has not been completely erased from the popular mind in the West," observed a commentator in a March 1, 2002, article in Ain al-Yaqeen, a weekly controlled by the Saudi royal family. To that end, it continued, the late Saudi King Fahd paid for a "number of academic chairs in some of the most respected universities in the developed world." The practice started around 1976, when the Saudi government established a King Faisal Chair in Islamic Studies for $1 million at the University of Southern California. In 1979, Saudi Aramco World magazine published a list of recent Middle Eastern gifts, including $200,000 from the Saudis to Duke University for a program in Islamic and Arabian development studies; $750,000 from the Libyan government for a chair of Arab culture at Georgetown University; and $250,000 from the United Arab Emirates for a visiting professorship of Arab history, also at Georgetown. In 1986, Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi donated $5 million toward a sports center to be named after him at American University. Since then, grants for endowed chairs in Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies centers have popped up at the University of California/Santa Barbara; Columbia University; Rice University; University of Arkansas; University of California in Los Angeles; and the University of California/Berkeley, among many others. "Arab studies at Berkeley were totally revitalized by this money," said Emily Gottreich, vice chairman for UC/Berkeley's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. "We redefined what Arab studies is." In 1998, the Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud Foundation announced a $5 million gift to fund visiting professors and scholars, research and outreach funds and new quarters for Berkeley's Arab and Islamic Studies Center. "Our post-docs have gone on to important tenure-track academic jobs," Ms. Gottreich said, listing 11 institutions, including Oxford, DePaul, Fordham and Harvard universities. "There's a market out there for PhDs with expertise in the Middle East." Occasionally, universities have been embarrassed by offers and declined such gifts. In July 2000, the Harvard Divinity School accepted $2.5 million from the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, to endow an academic chair in Islamic Religious Studies. However, Rachel Fish, a divinity student, began a protest, accusing the sheik of funding an anti-Semitic think tank in his capital, Abu Dhabi. Harvard officials said they would reconsider accepting the gift. In 2004, the sheik withdrew the funds. Funding points of view The idea of giving endowed chairs to advance a point of view is not exclusive to wealthy Arabs. Claremont University recently announced a new chair in Mormon studies, funded by $1 million in donations mostly from Mormons. In June, Brandeis University announced a $15 million gift from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation for Israeli studies to counter what university president Jehuda Reinharz called an "astounding ignorance" of Israeli affairs, even among American Jews. The Israel on Campus Coalition, a group of Jewish organizations, released a study earlier this year saying out of about 4,000 American institutions of higher learning, only nine have Israel studies centers, nine have Israel studies chairs, and 16 have visiting professors teaching about Israel. There are 17 federally funded centers on American college campuses devoted solely to Middle Eastern studies centers and another 30 to 40 that do not receive federal aid, according to Amy Newhall, executive director of the Middle East Studies Association at the University of Arizona. Not counting several positions at Georgetown University, she estimated at least 10 chaired professorships currently funded by Saudis at major universities. "With all the talk of the Israel lobby, no one talks about the Saudi lobby," Mr. Meyers said. "There is no counterweight to Saudi influence in American higher education." Indeed, Ain-al-Yaqeen reported that King Fahd has spent "billions of Saudi riyals," around the world. "In terms of Islamic institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia," the paper reported. The billionaire prince Mr. Kramer, also the author of "Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America," says American universities have allowed themselves to be purveyors of Saudi influence and opinion. "Universities generate ideas, and [Prince Alwaleed] regards one idea — the 'clash of civilizations" — as positively dangerous to Arabs and Muslims," he wrote on his Web site, martinkramer.org. "So he has embarked on a grand giving spree, to create academic 'bridges" between Islam and the West, and specifically between the Arab world and the United States ... "The mind boggles at the possibilities, when you think of the purchasing power of the world's fifth-richest man," Mr. Kramer continued. "Of course, this is why we can't ever expect to get the straight story on Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and oil from people who operate within Middle Eastern studies. If you want a fabulously wealthy Saudi royal to drop out of the sky in his private jet and leave a few million, you had better watch what you say — which means you had better say nothing." Prince Alwaleed, 52, — who slipped from the fifth richest person in 2005 to the 13th this year, according to Forbes magazine — is best known to some Americans as the man who offered $10 million to the victims of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. That money was rejected by Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the mayor, after the prince scolded the U.S. for favoring Israelis over Palestinians. Prince Alwaleed found more welcoming recipients in academia. In 2002, he donated $500,000 to the George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund, established by the Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. In 2006, he donated $10 million to the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He defends such gifts in interviews, saying that he has financed study programs about American culture overseas, including a $10 million gift to found a Center for American Studies at American University in Cairo and $5.2 million for a similar center at American University in Beirut. Prince Alwaleed's Cairo and Beirut projects explain American culture, but according to their Web sites, offer no courses in Christianity — America's majority religion. Meanwhile, typical courses at the Georgetown center are "Islamic Theological Development" and "Islamic Religious Thought and Practice." Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and a Muslim who is chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, says Islamic governments are looking for a free pass. "Islamists such as the radical fundamentalists seen with the Saudi Wahhabis exploit American universal tolerance to provide a vehicle for the dissemination of their propaganda free of critique," he said in an e-mail. "It is important to emphasize — 'free of critique' ... it is the tolerance which permits that. "But I would hope that we correct our response not by changing our tolerance but by intensely critiquing political Islam and its incompatibility with our pluralistic democracy. America"s laboratory of freedom and liberty should not change." http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071210/SPECIAL/112100027/1001&template=printart FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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