-- Amil Imani

Always remember, those kids shed their blood on the sidewalk there. They replaced the sidewalk, there's no sign left of it, but the memory lives on with you and it lives on with me.-John Siegenthaler NBC news lost its franchise player and America lost one of her franchise patriots and political "go to guys", Tim Russert, to a sudden heart failure on Friday, June 13, 2008, in NBC's Washington, D.C. studios while recording “voiceovers” for Meet the Press; he was pronounced dead later at Sibley Memorial Hospital.

This is the best of times and the worst of times, as the saying goes. Humanity is struggling on the one hand to free itself from the vestiges of its barbaric past while embarking on an exhilarating new way of life. It is the same story. The old is doggedly fighting the new on many fronts. And the new in this case is a huge paradigm shift of ideas and beliefs that demands total eradication of all.  This has kept mankind in a quagmire of wars, injustice and misery.

There is so much smoke around the Iranian Mullahs’ bomb that it makes Tehran’s smog feel like a fresh ocean breeze by comparison. Here is a partial list of misconceptions about the Mullahs, their capabilities and intentions about the bomb affair.

The Mullahs: * Will never dare to use the bomb, even if they had it. To do so would be suicidal.

* Are years away from anything resembling a credible bomb, in any quantity.

* They lack the technological skills needed to make a workable bomb.

Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother, and my cousin against the other. This is an old Muslim saying and Muslims live by this motto. To be sure the people of the "religion of peace" find the world full of “other,” to oppress and kill, both within as well as without the Islamic Ummah. Civilized peoples’ idea of the “other” is the exact opposite of that of Muslims. All over Europe, for one, people have been singing the praises of multiculturalism; the idea that everybody should bend over backwards to accommodate the different in society. However, the different in this case are the hordes of invasive Muslims, with their rigid medieval ideas about every aspect of private and public life.

Israel, your people, as well as people of good will, are celebrating your sixtieth birthday. We, the children of Cyrus the Great, also would like to offer our heartfelt best wishes to you on this occasion. Yet, this, in fact, is your rebirth. Your birth occurred some 4,000 years ago. Regrettably, your journey from your early beginning to the present has been fraught with great suffering. It is a tribute to the indomitable spirit of your people that they persisted in their valiant struggle to re-gather again in the land of their birth.

A noble and just Persian king, Cyrus the Great, rescued your people from captivity in a foreign land and empowered them to return home and build their sacred temple. By his action of freeing an entire people from captivity and restoring their rightful dignity, Cyrus the Great, the author of the first code of Human Rights, cemented a bond of friendship between the Jews and the Persians. It was the Just King’s way of setting the world on a course of freedom, equality, and justice for all people, irrespective of any and all considerations. Yet, your people, Israel, were unable to settle down for long in their own homeland, to worship their God as they wished, and to live in peace.

It is one thing for Google Earth to depict the map of the world as is and another thing to manipulate it. It is one thing for any business to market its product and it is another thing to peddle something it does not own. Google Earth has arrogantly violated the universally upheld norms by arbitrarily taking it upon itself to name the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Gulf. With a few strokes of the keyboard, Google Earth has obliterated from the face of the map a greatly-cherished historical and cultural heritage of an ancient people.

One wonders what motivated this blatant action of Google Earth: a simple arrogant exercise of power or capitulation to the financial
rewards offered by those who aim to further their world standing at the expense of others.