Across the country it is estimated the flooding has affected and displaced approximately twenty million people. The United Nations and Pakistani government estimate close to 80% of the country's food stock has been destroyed by flooding. In the coming months when the flood waters will finally have receded, how will this country of 170 million be fed? The damage to Pakistan's humanitarian infrastructure is beyond comprehension and the world is most likely witnessing the worst natural disaster confounded by human corruption in the past two centuries.

All of us were paralyzed with fear. We could not believe or understand what Dad was going on about, and he was uncharacteristically upset and irritated. He frantically began filling empty boxes with clothes, flour, sugar, and cans of cooking oil. The frenzied look on Dad's face jerked Mum into action, and then all of us as well. We packed as much as we could carry and some more; Mum wanted to pack the whole house! But Dad, usually a calm and easygoing man who easily gave in to her occasional whims, was very firm and ordered Mum to leave everything except warm clothes and food, which made Mum weep. We wore our coats over our home clothes and, with wheelbarrows full of boxes, clumsily trekked up through piles of snow and ice into the mountains that surround our village.

At the age of 25, he began leading prayers in the shrine of Imam Hussain, until he was expelled from Iraq along with many other scholars by the Ba'athist regime. He had since been teaching in the Islamic seminary of Qom and was considered one of its most senior and respected teachers.

Unlike corrupt government officials who use the opium trade to enrich themselves, the Taliban are using it to create jobs. Growing opium is much more profitable than growing wheat, and needs nine times more labor.

Sayyid Fadlullah was also an outspoken critic of the Zionist regime and an ardent advocate of freedom and dignity for the people of Palestine and Lebanon, and indeed for all oppressed people around the world.

Governments in the West (and elsewhere) have a constitutional obligation to respect the religious beliefs and practices of their people, not trample upon them based on unfounded declarations by servile Muftis who receive their paychecks from the political establishments in the Middle East.

Several species in the Gulf of Mexico are already endangered, including the Kemp's Ridley and Leatherback sea turtles, the Sperm Whale, and birds such as the Piping Plover and the Gulf Sturgeon, according to the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity.

Your pirate attack on the Freedom Flotilla revealed nothing new of your character. When it comes to Israel, we've seen everything from harassing pregnant women at checkpoints and bombing families at picnics to leveling whole cities and destroying a county's infrastructure in mere days. If anything, Israel should pen a strategy book for future war criminals.

Not surprisingly, very few members of the corporate owned media have bothered to ask: does Iran have nuclear weapons? Does Iran even want nuclear weapons? It doesn't matter. When the media is as prostituted as it is now, the sole aim is to convince the masses that Iran threatens our very existence and must be dealt with in a manner that disregards every single international law and charter.

The Kuwaiti daily claimed that both Western and Israeli intelligence had uncovered the training of Hezbollah resistance fighters in Syria in the use of scud and surface-to-air missiles. This, we are told, occurred sometime during last summer.