China Rising. Alexander Scipio

video of his son, the ‘Prince of Terror’ as he now was being called.

      “Praise be to Allah. Praise be to all who destroy the infidel where he is found. Praise to those who help rebuild the Caliphate and spread it across the world as Allah, praise His name, has written through the hand of His prophet Muhammad, may He rest in Paradise,” began the thin Arab.

      “This very evening Allah will strike. He will destroy the invaders to our holy lands. He will commit to the fires those who would invade and defile our lands. Praise be to Allah. Tonight the fire of Allah will strike the palaces and governments of the unbelievers in our lands. His unstoppable force will strike their fields and cities. It will destroy their men, women and children, and remove their stain from our Holy lands. Praise be to Allah!”

      Al-Rashid and his fellows could not believe their ears. Smiles lit their faces! Hands clamped into fists shot into the air in triumph! Tonight!

      In the streets around them cars were screeching to a stop, drivers turning up their radios on which were being broadcast the same unbelievably joyous message. Behind Al-Rashid people were pushing and shoving to get near the displayed televisions as the announcer repeated the words of the Arab, crying in happiness as he did so. Men were shouting out, yelling across the streets, repeating what the Arab was saying.

      “Praise be to Allah!” Ibrahim shouted. “Allahu Akhbar!”

      The men on the sidewalk jumped up and down. Pandemonium broke out. Knots of men swelled and became larger, smiling, cheering and laughing in ecstasy!

       Cairo University (15:57 Local)

      In the Cairo University library Khalid Al-Dakhil surfed the web, browsing the Western pornography that he loved, but was not allowed by Islam to see. Reluctantly, knowing he needed to get back to his studies, he clicked back to his home page.

      A picture was displayed prominently on his homepage of the man who had become his hero over the past years, the man who had stood-up to America, to Israel, to the House of Saud and their infidel collaborators. Actions for which he had been martyred.

      Now his eldest son was taking charge. With the Muslim Brotherhood taking-over Egypt from the despised Israeli-loving Mubarak, and the Prince of Terror talking and broadcasting about becoming more aggressive against the hated infidel, Khalid and his peers were restive with their imagined future glory.

      Beneath the picture in large letters was written, “Tonight Allah brings fire to the invaders and returns their birthright to all men of Islam!” The text continued to describe in excited, flowery prose the upcoming destruction of Islam’s enemies.

      Unable to sit still, Khalid stood with the excitement – he could barely contain his energy to finish reading the words! He shouted, he screamed “ALLAHU AKBAR!” at the top of his lungs, and ran to tell his friends.

      Across Arab lands the reaction was the same. In Jeddah, Cairo and Damascus, men and children danced in the streets, celebrating the imminent destruction of their hated enemies.

      In London, in Paris, in Detroit and Amsterdam and Bali, everywhere large groups of Muslim men gathered, the scene was the same. Allah be praised! Tonight was the night! Across the globe Muslim men rejoiced, dropping to the ground to pray in thankfulness for the deliverance soon to come.

       Langley, Virginia (09:57 Local)

      Lieutenant General John Thompson, US Army, currently Deputy Director, Operations, CIA, quickly turned from his office television, tuned to CNN’s broadcast of the terrorist threat, and picked up the phone with an urgency tinged with sadness.

      He had heard of no interdiction. He was aware of no operation in-place or in-motion with a target that was going live tonight. It was obvious to him that they had missed something. They all had.

      And people were going to die. Many people, it seemed, from the words being broadcast.

       Esfahan, Iran (18:27 Local)

      Turning back to his laptop computer from watching the quiet and beautiful sunset minutes before, Mohammad Maleki decided he needed to get back to his studies. For the last hour he had been blogging, posting to his and to other blogs of those trying to bring democracy to Iran.

      His parents had been young, newly-married middle-class professionals when the student takeover occurred in 1979. They often told him of the freedoms enjoyed before that revolution. How stupid those students had been, he thought for the millionth time. How many productive lives, how many minds, had been wasted in the intervening decades?

      Now a new generation of students, his generation, was trying to overthrow those revolutionaries and move Iran forward rather than backward. The recent elections proved to the world that Iran’s future would not be its recent past. The violence the world had witnessed was only a beginning.

      The freedom of the internet, no matter how hard the mullahs tried to stop it, gave these students the freedom of speech and of information required to help bring down these tyrants. One of the ironies of the internet, he knew, was the creation, in America of all places, of a tool for Farsi blogging. As a result of this tool, Farsi was the third-most used language on the internet, following only English and Chinese. It was being put to greater use every day by those Iranians interested in returning freedom to their country.

      This final year in his studies provided Maleki with one of the best rooms in the Graduate Student dormitory. He sat in the cool evening air on the 15^th-floor balcony of his dorm, overlooking the Graduate Studies building 50 meters away.

      Maleki had an exam on Monday morning, an important test in his final push toward a Master’s degree in chemistry. Having wasted enough time blogging he clicked to return to his home page to link to the department’s site. Once there, he was going, for the final time he hoped, to try the mock exam posted on his specialty, new materials for electrode fabrication.

      When his home page was loaded, however, he saw it again had been updated by the irritating mullah-heads, the name he and his fellows in the Student Movement Coordination Committee gave their fellow “students” placed in the university to ensure loyalty to the theocracy.

      Rather than the picture he preferred of the ancient, beautiful and peaceful Khaju Bridge at night, that dead bearded international terrorist again was occupying the center of the screen. While Maleki watched in distaste the image dissolved into that of his newly-famous son. Beneath the picture was his latest threat to the world.

      Irritated, Mohammed scanned it quickly, shaking his head in disgust, and then clicked over to the Chemistry site.