WIFE: If I mention a country, you run to the left side of the room and touch the wall & if I mention a bird, you run to the right side of the room and touch the wall. If you run to the wrong direction, you'll give me all your salary for this month
HUSBAND: Okay! And if you fail in your turn, I'll have your salary too right?
WIFE: (smiles) Yes darling!
HUSBAND: Okay (stands up ready to run in any direction) Wife: are you ready
Husband: Yes ready
WIFE: TURKEY
Its been 4 HOURS NOW... The husband is still standing at the spot wondering if she meant the Country or the bird 😀😀😝😝
GIRL to GOD : I don't want to marry. I am educated, independent and self sufficient. I don't need a husband. But my parents are asking me to marry. What to do ?
GOD replied : YOU are my finest creation and undoubtedly you will achieve many great things. But something's inevitably will not go the way you want. Some thing may go worst, some things will fail. That time whom will you BLAME ?
Will you blame yourself ?
GIRL : NO...
GOD : Very good... That's why you need a HUSBAND.
😝🤣😜😉😂😛
BOY to GOD : But then what will I do ? Whom will I BLAME ?
GOD : Your scope is much wider son. YOU can blame the govt, the education system, the legal system, the environment, the slow and fast growth of the economy, the politicians, the bureaucrats, the infrastructure, religious beliefs and even ME...
A rich man looked through his window and saw a poor man picking something from his dustbin ... He said, Alhamdulillah I'm not poor!
The poor man looked around and saw a naked man behaving madly on the street ... He said, Alhamdulillah I'm not mad.
The mad man looked ahead and saw an ambulance carrying a patient ... He said, Alhamdulillah I am not sick.
Then a sick person in hospital saw a trolley taking a dead body to the mortuary ... He said, Alhamdulillah I'm not dead.
Why don't we thank Allah today for all the blessings and for the gift of life ... for another beautiful day.
*What is LIFE?
To understand life better, you have to go to 3 locations :
1. Hospital 2. Prison 3. Graveyard
At the Hospital, we understand that nothing is more beautiful than HEALTH.
In the Prison, we see that FREEDOM is the most precious thing.
At the Graveyard, we realize that life is worth nothing. The ground that we walk today will be our roof tomorrow.
Sad Truth* : We all come with Nothing and we will go with Nothing ... Let us, therefore, remain humble and be thankful & grateful to almighty Allah at all times for everything!
The following story circulated on the Internet - a superb metaphorical exposition of the level of preparedness.
Years ago, a farmer owned land along the Atlantic sea coast. He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic.
They dreaded the awful storms that raged across the Atlantic, wreaking havoc on the buildings and crops. As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job, he received a steady stream of refusals.
Finally, a short, thin man, well past middle age, approached the farmer. 'Are you a good farm hand?' the farmer asked him.
'Well, I can sleep when the wind blows,' answered the little man.
Although puzzled by this answer, the farmer, desperate for help, hired him.
The little man worked well around the farm, busy from dawn to dusk, and the farmer felt satisfied with the man's work.
Then one night the wind howled loudly in from offshore.
Jumping out of bed, the farmer grabbed a lantern and rushed next door to the hired hand's sleeping quarters. He shook the little man and yelled, 'Get up! A storm is coming!
Tie things down before they blow away!' The little man rolled over in bed and said firmly, 'No sir. I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows.'
Enraged by the response, the farmer was tempted to fire him on the spot. Instead, he hurried outside to prepare for the storm. To his amazement, he discovered that all of the haystacks had been covered with tarpaulins. The cows were in the barn, the chickens were in the coops, and the doors were barred. The shutters were tightly secured. Everything was tied down. Nothing could blow away. The farmer then understood what his hired hand meant, so he returned to his bed to also sleep while the wind blew.
When you're prepared, spiritually, mentally, and physically, you have nothing to fear. Can you sleep when the wind blows through your life?
The hired hand in the story was able to sleep because he had secured the farm against the storm.
The above story goes on to talk about trials and tribulations in life and if we do our best to understand, accept, and implement the principles learnt by us we will experience a deep sense of security, peace, and joy from within. We will then be able to 'sleep when the wind blows.'
The Chinese government announced plans to start a crude oil futures
contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold. The contract will
enable the country's trading partners to pay with gold or to convert
yuan into gold without the necessity to keep money in Chinese assets or
turn it into US dollars. The new benchmark will reportedly allow
exporters, such as Russia, Iran or Venezuela to avoid US sanctions by
trading oil in yuan.
The US West Texas Intermediate and European benchmark Brent have a joint
daily turnover of more than two billion barrels or 20 times the total
daily world oil demand. However, the US WTI oil standard is losing its
role in the oil market, notes Saxo Bank.
China is the world’s biggest oil importer and the volumes of its
imports are closely watched by market analysts to gauge the pace of oil
demand growth, the key growth driver of the global oil market.
Oil—the world’s most actively traded commodity—has an annual trade worth
$14 trillion, which is roughly equivalent to the value of the Chinese
gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017, according to Reuters calculations.
The
world’s top crude oil importer switching to yuan for oil payments could
have potentially huge implications on global oil trade, on the
internationalization of the yuan, and on the US dollar oil trade.
Since the dollar will no longer be needed to purchase oil, there won't be much need for all those dollars to be kept in international reserves. When countries dump their dollars, they will find their way back to America to fuel hyperinflation. It really is game over for America.
The worst thing for Yankistan is....soon nobody will take any more Fed
Dollars....in the past, the Ameritards could plunder the world by making
up fake dollars and basically would get the worlds resources and build
up their own military for nothing. No more....Yankistan will slide now
into a bankrupt 3rd world status, creating their own civil war....good
night Ameritards.....and you won't even be invited to the party.
It
is also alleged that Saddam wanted to introduce Euro to break the
dominance of US Dollar; That was one of the other reasons, aside from
bogus WMD claim, as to why he was deposed & hanged.
Russia now has Swift replacement online and China now doing this with oil, it is no wonder USA is beating war drums.
China's launch of yuan-backed oil futures has sparked huge
interest among investors with initial trade volumes of the contracts
outpacing overnight transactions of rival Brent crude – a globally
recognized benchmark.
The first trading session
saw a total of 62,500 contracts with more than 62 million barrels of
crude traded for a notional volume of nearly 27 billion yuan ($4
billion), Zerohedge reports.
The new contract reportedly attracted foreign investors including
Glencore and Trafigura, as well as Freepoint Commodities, BOCI Global
Commodities and North Petroleum International. Domestic firms, including
Unipec, Chinaoil, Cnooc, and Sinochem, as well as independent refiner
Shandong Huifeng Petrochemical, also joined trading, which started on
the Shanghai International Energy Exchange on Monday.
“We were
active with Glencore today and I’ve seen Trafigura in it and Freepoint.
We take the view that the contract is viable and adds to the crude oil
trading value chain, and is here to stay,” Kevin Tan, executive vice president at Singapore-based brokerage Straits Financial Services, told Reuters.
The
initial surge in trade volumes was followed by a gradual slowdown
towards the end of the session. The contract closed at 429.9 yuan per
barrel ($68.22).
“In the short-term, we believe price
fluctuations will reflect domestic crude oil supply and demand. In the
long run, yuan crude price will mirror the moves of Brent,” said Chen Tong, Shanghai-based senior crude analyst at First Futures, as quoted by the news agency.
According
to some experts, the newcomer may challenge traditional rivals Brent
and WTI, with the yuan expected to become a major reserve currency.
However, some analysts expressed doubts over the petro-yuan's success,
citing the fact that China is still not recognized as a market economy
and the country’s authorities may interfere with trading at the first
signs of a potential bubble.
Muammar Gaddafi wanted to shatter the dominance of the greenback
in the Middle East by introducing gold-backed dinar, but failed. China
has a chance to finish what he started, one industry expert has told RT.
“Ideas related to oil
trade in currencies other than the dollar arose more than once. Some of
them were severely suppressed by the United States, one example is
Muammar Gaddafi, who proposed the introduction of a regional currency
gold dinar and trading oil in the Middle East in this currency,” Aleksandr Egorov, foreign exchange strategist at TeleTrade, told RT.
However, this time, an attempt to oust the dollar could be
successful. China has launched oil futures backed by yuan, and Beijing
has what Gaddafi didn’t, according to the expert.
“Along with
the Chinese role in the global economy and the growing interest in the
renminbi, China is also protected by a nuclear shield. It can afford to
try to shatter the monopoly in oil trade. This will give even more
weight to the Chinese yuan. In addition, China's economy is the world's
largest consumer of oil, and consequently, all world producers of raw
materials will have to reckon with the strategy of the Chinese
authorities,” Egorov said.
According to the analyst, the
timing for the launch of the petro-yuan is perfect. Key oil producers
Russia, Iran and Venezuela are under pressure from US sanctions, and it
is a good moment for them to ditch the dollar in oil trade and
substitute it with the yuan.
Mikhail Mashchenko, an analyst at social network for investors eToro, agrees. “From
the point of view of Russia's geopolitics, it is certainly beneficial
to reduce the role of the dollar in foreign trade. And it has been done,
let’s recall the record growth of the country's gold reserves. The
other states that are constantly under the threat of new sanctions, like
Iran and Venezuela, can profit, too. The contracts in RMB will allow to
trade oil without US approval,” he told RT.
Both
analysts agree that it will take time before the petro-yuan can become a
real threat to the dollar. China needs to win the support of the
world's largest oil producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, or the initiative
is doomed, says Mashchenko. He added that the yuan is fully controlled
by Beijing, which could also spook potential investors.
China's launch of yuan-backed oil futures has sparked huge
interest among investors with initial trade volumes of the contracts
outpacing overnight transactions of rival Brent crude – a globally
recognized benchmark.
The first trading session
saw a total of 62,500 contracts with more than 62 million barrels of
crude traded for a notional volume of nearly 27 billion yuan ($4
billion), Zerohedge reports.
The new contract reportedly attracted foreign investors including
Glencore and Trafigura, as well as Freepoint Commodities, BOCI Global
Commodities and North Petroleum International. Domestic firms, including
Unipec, Chinaoil, Cnooc, and Sinochem, as well as independent refiner
Shandong Huifeng Petrochemical, also joined trading, which started on
the Shanghai International Energy Exchange on Monday.
“We were
active with Glencore today and I’ve seen Trafigura in it and Freepoint.
We take the view that the contract is viable and adds to the crude oil
trading value chain, and is here to stay,” Kevin Tan, executive vice president at Singapore-based brokerage Straits Financial Services, told Reuters.
The
initial surge in trade volumes was followed by a gradual slowdown
towards the end of the session. The contract closed at 429.9 yuan per
barrel ($68.22).
“In the short-term, we believe price
fluctuations will reflect domestic crude oil supply and demand. In the
long run, yuan crude price will mirror the moves of Brent,” said Chen Tong, Shanghai-based senior crude analyst at First Futures, as quoted by the news agency.
According
to some experts, the newcomer may challenge traditional rivals Brent
and WTI, with the yuan expected to become a major reserve currency.
However, some analysts expressed doubts over the petro-yuan's success,
citing the fact that China is still not recognized as a market economy
and the country’s authorities may interfere with trading at the first
signs of a potential bubble.
Wahhabis are known to lie through their teeth. Almost everybody knows that Saudi Arabia's royal family is human garbage. They don't even know how worthless they are. However, when the so-called civilized western world associates with these human garbage, one realizes how low the westerns have gone.
As Saudi Arabia's crown prince tours the United States on what
has been dubbed a "charm offensive," the US media has gone into
propaganda overdrive, whitewashing Mohammad Bin Salman as a "reformer"
who is modernizing the kingdom.
As he meets with a roster of high-level politicians and A-list celebrities like Oprah,
front and center of his celebrated reforms has been his decision to
allow women to drive, and opening movie theaters in Saudi Arabia, which
were banned until now.
"With the ascent to power of young
Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the kingdom has seen an expansion in women's
rights including a decision to allow women to attend mixed public
sporting events and the right to drive cars from this summer,"said Reuters.
"His rise to power has been accompanied by a loosening of
restrictions on women's dress and an expansion of their role in the work
force,"reported the New York Times.
The Times went on to casually mention at the very end of the article that "Prince
Mohammad is expected to ascend to the throne after his father, King
Salman, dies. If that happens, given his young age, he could rule Saudi
Arabia for 50 years."
This positive press is no coincidence. Saudi Arabia has spent millions on a vast lobbying apparatus
that includes a network of think tanks and public relations firms to
push for a war on Iran, while combating negative press related to
Riyadh's autocratic government and its US-backed war on Yemen, which has
led to famine and a cholera outbreak of epic proportions that kills a Yemeni child every 10 minutes.
Most of the spin has focused on presenting bin Salman as heroic reformer, particularly when it comes to women's rights.
Putting lipstick on Wahhabism
Yes, soon women in Saudi Arabia will have the right to drive
– something they were banned from doing under the strict religious
edicts of Wahhabism. While it's certainly a good thing that Saudi Arabia
has chosen to enter the 21st century (sort of), the repeal of the
driving ban is largely superficial as it does nothing to address Saudi
Arabia's discriminatory male guardianship system,
which treats women as children. Under this system, women must seek
permission from a male relative to travel, apply for a passport, study
abroad, get married, and so on.
Even if Saudi Arabia were to give
equal rights to women tomorrow, it wouldn't change the destructive
impact the Saudis have had in the Middle East, the most important being
the intentional spreading of Wahhabism – a toxic and hateful religion
practiced in Saudi Arabia.
Wahhabism is a puritanical and ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam that emerged in the 1700s and has been a major source of inspiration for Salafi jihadist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, or ISIS.
It is difficult to explain why ISIS uses Saudi textbooks to indoctrinate children, why 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi, and why Saudi nationals make up the largest number of foreigners in ISIS, without an understanding of Wahhabi theology.
Many of the Islamophobic tropes peddled by anti-Muslim bigots are based
on practices inherent in Wahhabism and carried out in Saudi Arabia and
areas controlled by ISIS, such as stoning of adulterers, amputating the limbs of thieves, and death by beheading.
Spreading hate
The Middle East wasn't always plagued by
regressive fundamentalism. Salafi jihadist groups like Al-Qaeda were not
popular in the region and they still aren't. They have been violently
imposed on people thanks in large part to the actions of Saudi Arabia in
partnership with the US, which has a longstanding pattern of backing
religious fundamentalists to further its geopolitical ambitions.
With US backing, Saudi Arabia has spent tens of billions of dollars spreading Wahhabism throughout Sunni Muslim communities around the world.
By building Wahhabi-influenced mosques, schools and Islamic centers,
Saudi Arabia seeks to remake Sunni Islam in its image. Areas of the
world where this tactic has paid off – Kosovo, Albania, and South Asia – have provided fertile recruiting pools for Salafi jihadist fighters. In South Asia, Saudi Arabia has also funded Deobandi
(an ultra-conservative version of Islam similar to Wahhabism) schools
and mosques, the kind from which the original generation of the Taliban
emerged.
The most significant chapter in the US-Islamist love
affair came in the 1980s, when the US armed the Mujahedeen to bleed the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It was the largest and longest-running covert operation in US history. People like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Osama bin Laden associate whose claim to fame was splashing acid in the faces of unveiled schoolgirls at Kabul University, were the top recipients of CIA funds.
After
the Soviet Union fell, some elements who fought alongside the
American-armed Mujahedeen groups evolved into Al-Qaeda. Not long after
that, Al-Qaeda pulled off an attack that killed 3,000 people in New York
City and its existence has been invoked to justify endless war and the
curtailing of civil liberties ever since. (Afghanistan, where the US is
still at war, remains the world's second-largest producer of refugees.)
The
US has played a similarly dirty game in Syria over the last six years,
knowingly arming rebel groups linked to Al-Qaeda to weaken the Syrian
government.
In spite of its role in spreading an ideology that
inspires terrorism, Saudi Arabia continues to receive special treatment
in Washington, first and foremost because it is an arm of US imperialism
in the Middle East, but also because its leaders use their vast oil
wealth buy friends in high places.
Buying hearts and minds
What
I've always been most struck by is the genuine adoration American
officials seem to have for their Saudi partners. In my experience,
behind closed doors American officials despise working with the
Israelis. They speak kindly of them publicly because they must, for
geostrategic purposes and fear of ruining their careers by offending
powerful pro-Israel lobby groups. But in the case of Saudi Arabia,
American officials seem to genuinely like the Saudis.
This may have something to do with Saudi Arabia's approach to Western officials, which is to lavish them with expensive gifts. And it shows.
During
a private meeting at the State Department in September 2016, nearing
the end of the Obama administration, I expressed frustration about the
US allowing Saudi Arabia to spread
its toxic Wahhabi ideology, which serves as a primary inspiration for
Salafi jihadist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, around the world. Before I
could finish, a senior-level official in the Department of Near Eastern
Affairs interrupted me to defend the Saudis.
"Saudi Arabia
isn't exporting terrorism, they're exporting religion and we can't get
into the business of policing religion. It's a free speech issue," said the official. "The Saudis are a very important geostrategic ally. And they are changing. They've worked very hard to reform their textbooks," the official added.
The official then brought up the jihadist textbooks printed by the US and disseminated
to Afghan school children in refugee camps in Pakistan in the 1980s.
The textbooks encouraged violence against infidels, communists and the
Soviet Union in the name of Islam and helped inculcate an entire
generation. These US-printed textbooks can still be found in Taliban-run
schools today.
The senior State Department official insisted that, in the end, printing them was "worth it" because "we got rid of the Soviet Union."
The
official's response was reminiscent of former US National Security
Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the architects of the US policy to
arm the Afghan Mujahedeen. Asked in 1998 if he regretted supporting
Islamic fundamentalists, Brzezinski replied: "What
is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the
collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation
of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
This sort of
thinking continues to dominate Washington's approach to the region with
ever more disastrous consequences. Giving women in Saudi Arabia the
right to drive, while a welcome development, won't change that.
Rania Khalek is an American journalist, writer and political commentator based in the Middle East.
