I thought this was cool, so just wanted to share this true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image of a cloud-free view of the Middle Eastern countries surrounding the Fertile Crescent. (I got the image from NASA.)

Arching along the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea from the Red Sea through modern-day Syria, and then across to the Persian Gulf in an upside-down “u” shape, the Fertile Crescent is a rich, food growing area in an otherwise dry, barren land. Anciently, the land nurtured some of the earliest recorded human civilizations. Even today, a narrow strip of green along the Mediterranean Sea and the Euphrates River marks out the Fertile Crescent.

As some may know, Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was in the United States to participate in the UN General Assembly.

While he was in the US, he also took the time to lecture at Columbia University, where:

He said there were no homosexuals in Iran - not one - and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

The press, of course, has been having a field day with Ahmadinejad’s visit.

“Should a man like Ahmadinejad be denied the freedom of speech that he so brazenly and brutally denies others?”

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Imagine a knock on the door after you have been on the Internet, blogging, and the next moment you are under arrest. Amnesty International launched a campaign in defence of Internet bloggers in many countries - including China, Tunisia and Iran who have been arrested for expressing views which have upset their governments.

But how have they been tracked down? It turns out that they have been turned in by major Internet providers such as Yahoo and Microsoft, who have supplied foreign governments with the information they need to pursue them.
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The Australian recently published an article quoting Netanyahu as such:

“IT’S 1938,” said former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “and Iran is Germany, racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”

The Iranian Bomb has become for Israel an issue of urgency as the international community appears to back away from confrontation with Tehran.

In his address, Mr Netanyahu referred to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated calls for wiping Israel off the map.

“Believe him and stop him,” he said. “This is what we must do. Everything pales before it.”
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