Like reading a page out of West’s Last Chance, Paul Goble, a leading specialist on ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation (and employed by the US government for 25 years as an expert on minorities in the former Soviet Union) claims that within 30 years, Russia will have a Muslim majority:

He has been closely tracking what he describes as a huge demographic shift in Russia, a shift he says will have a major impact on the nation’s relations with western countries.

“Within most of our lifetimes the Russian Federation, assuming it stays within current borders, will be a Muslim country,” he said. “That is it will have a Muslim majority and even before that the growing number of people of Muslim background in Russia will have a profound impact on Russian foreign policy. The assumption in Western Europe or the United States that Moscow is part of the European concert of powers is no longer valid.” [Source]

More after the jump…
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I missed this Sunday Mirror report which claims that the hook-handed radical cleric is starting to “lose it” while in prision:

JAILED Muslim extremist Abu Hamza is convinced MI5 will kill him in prison. Hook-handed Hamza believes intelligence chiefs want him out of the way and will recruit another inmate to make sure an “accident” happens to him.

Prison sources say Hamza is becoming increasingly paranoid, claiming his cell at Belmarsh High-Security jail in South-East London has been bugged and that MI5 have recruited spies to keep a watch on him.

And he is often heard ranting and raving to himself in his cell since he was jailed for seven years last month for urging his fanatical followers to carry out murders on behalf of Islam.

A prison source said: “He has become increasingly paranoid since he was sentenced at the Old Bailey.

I find it hilarious that reportedly a fellow prisoner asked Hamza if his family “liked sponging off the State by living on benefits”. Hamza’s response? He threatened to put a fatwa on him and called him “British scum”. Heh.

Apparently not happy enough with breaking a classified program, the New York Times is now suing the Department of Defense to release documents, email exchanges, transcripts of meetings, etc. over the same classified program they uncovered.

The Times said a Dec. 16 letter to the Department of Defense requested all internal memos, e-mails and legal memoranda and opinions since Sept. 11, 2001, related to the National Security Agency spying program. The department is the parent agency of the NSA.

The newspaper said it asked for meeting logs, calendar items and notes related to discussions of the program, including meetings held by Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff with members of Congress and telecommunications executives.

It also requested all complaints of abuse or possible violations in the operations of the program or the legal rationale behind it.

And it sought the names and descriptions of people or groups identified through the use of the program and a description of relevant episodes used to identify the targets of the intercepts.

That sounds like a wonderful idea. Not content with giving our enemies information on how the United States actively sought out their identities, the New York Times now wants everyone’s name who was investigated out in public.  Such a public airing would give those still under investigation that knowledge and those conspiring the knowledge of how suspects are referred to the spying program.

There is certainly a difference between the role of a newspaper such as the NYT and to protect national security.  It is not the job of the NYT to adhere to national interests, but it is their job to appeal to the consumers of their newspaper unless they don’t want to have a job.

A senior police official in Indonesia says Al Qaida is behind all of the suicide bomb attacks in Indonesia.

The mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, personally arranged for a courier to deliver money to leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah to help fund attacks in the world’s most populous Muslim country from 2002-2005, said Col. Petrus Reinhard Golose of Indonesia’s counterterrorism task force.

Golose said several members of Jemaah Islamiyah met directly with bin Laden in Afghanistan and signed agreements with him before launching the attacks, but he did not elaborate.

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The IAEA has submitted their report concerning Iran’s nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council.  The report will be used to either place sanctions upon Iran or not.

Although the Agency has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the Agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran. The process of drawing such a conclusion, under normal circumstances, is a time consuming process even with an Additional Protocol in force. In the case of Iran, this conclusion can be expected to take even longer in light of the undeclared nature of Iran’s past nuclear programme, and in particular because of the inadequacy of information available on its centrifuge enrichment programme, the existence of a generic document related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components, and the lack of clarification about the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear programme, including, as mentioned
above, about recent information available to the Agency concerning alleged weapon studies that could involve nuclear material.

Why can’t the IAEA conclude one way or another if Iran is seeking to obtain nuclear weapons?

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Iran’s chief state prosecutor, Ayatollah Dorri Najaf-Abadi, believes the burning down of embassies in the wake of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed is perfectly fine.

“Muslims must take the most ferocious stance against insults to Islamic sanctities”, the senior cleric told Ayatollah Dorri Najaf-Abadi, the country’s Chief State Prosecutor, according to the Persian-language website Khedmat.

“If setting fire to embassies of countries that insult the Prophet aims to show that these countries no longer have any place in Islamic countries then this act is permissible”, the senior ayatollah was quoted as saying.

“Anyone who dies in this path [of protests against the insults] is a martyr”, he said.

What exactly is a free press? I wouldn’t expect those running Iran to know.

In other protests news in Iran, a nation which forbids protests of any kind unless they are sanctioned by the government, the British embassy is apparently under siege. This protest has nothing to do with the cartoons, but the bombing of the Al Askariya Shrine that Iran continues to blame on Israeli and U.S. soldiers.

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The latest from Pakistan:

Thousands of children chanting “Hang those who insulted the Prophet” have taken part in a rally against cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Around 5,000 youngsters – mainly aged eight to 12 and some in school uniform – marched in Karachi.

They also torched a coffin draped in US, Israeli and Danish flags at a traffic intersection in the port city as police in riot gear looked on.

The rally was organized by Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest Islamic group.

Children, wearing headbands emblazoned with God is great, were released from schools and Islamic seminaries to take part. [Source]

The cartoon jihad continues…

(Mexico City) A draft report leaked by a special prosecutor’s office accuses former Mexican Presidents of conducting a “dirty war” against innocent civilians. A group of 27 researchers, historians and activists prepared the draft report of government counter-insurgency operations during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

From GWU.edu:

The National Security Archive posts on its Web site today a work of history in progress — a draft of an unprecedented report by Mexico’s government on the nation’s “dirty war” of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

This document is the result of four years of work by the office of Mexico’s Special Prosecutor for Social and Political Movements of the Past (Fiscalía Especial para Movimientos Sociales y Políticos del Pasado – FEMOSPP), Dr. Ignacio Carrillo Prieto. The office was created in 2002 by President Vicente Fox to investigate human rights crimes.

The crimes detailed in the draft report were committed during the administrations of Presidents Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970), Echeverría (1970-1976) and López Portillo (1976-1982). In those years, hundreds of Mexican citizens — uncounted innocent civilians as well as armed militants — were murdered or “disappeared” by military and security forces. Thousands more were tortured, or illegally detained, or subjected to government harassment and surveillance.

The final report has not yet been made public. However, according to Kate Doyle, Director of the Mexico Project of the National Security Archive, “We are posting the draft report because the families of the victims of the “dirty war,” and the Mexican public, have a right to know.”

I would agree. I would also ask why Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, et al. haven’t been all over this issue for the past several decades.

From Interested-Participant.

Professor Hasan Bolkhari, a member of the Film Council of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and a cultural advisor to the Iranian Education MinistryIran television, appeared on Iranian television to discuss how the Jews took over a popular cartoon named ‘Tom & Jerry.’

For the record, that cartoon just happened to be my favorite growing up as a child, until the ‘New Tome & Jerry’ or whatever version was the second one, and I don’t recall seeing any political messages in the cartoon.  Alas though, I am not an Iranian professor.

Hasan Bolkhari: “There is a cartoon that children like. They like it very much, and so do adults – Tom and Jerry.”

“Some say that this creation by Walt Disney [sic] will be remembered forever. The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon. It is still shown throughout the world. This cartoon maintains its status because of the cute antics of the cat and mouse – especially the mouse.

“Some say that the main reason for making this very appealing cartoon was to erase a certain derogatory term that was prevalent in Europe.” (source)

Yeah, but it’s a cat and mouse.  Professor Bolkhari explains why in ‘Tom & Jerry’ the mouse represents Jewish people.

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The London Times has a fascinating article written by Abdel Bari Atwan, author of the book The Secret History of Al-Qa’ida and editor in chief of the daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, concerning what Atwan calls the new face of Al Qaida and how different the new breed is to the old guard (OBL).

Zarqawi’s agenda was to prove even more radical than that of the Al-Qaeda leadership; in May 2005, firmly under the Al-Qaeda banner, Zarqawi declared that “collateral killing” of Muslims was justified under “overriding necessity”. He brought a new level of psychological terror to operations with his ferocious reputation.

In July last year his old spiritual mentor, Maqdisi — still in jail in Jordan — questioned Zarqawi’s attacks on civilians, especially women and children, and his targeting of Shi’ites. Zarqawi responded with an internet posting asserting that “al-Maqdisi is being lured into the path of Satan”.

This was a drastic turn of events that went relatively unmentioned in the West.  For Zarqawi to even question the motives of a man like Maqdisi much less say he is on the way towards becomming and apostate is quite shocking.  Zarqawi prides himself on being a man close to Allah; preaching and carrying out jihad in the way he sees Allah wishes.  Even while in prison in Jordan before being released in 1999, Zarqawi was seen as those around him as devoted to Islam and would be seen weeping from his devotion.  It was Maqdisi whom basically told Zarqawi how to feel or helped lead him down his current path.

Even clerics in Iraq explain Zarqawi is polite to elders.  That’s not so though for his former Islamic mentor.  All his former mentor did was disagreed with the war Zarqawi declared on Shiites and Zarqawi’s rationalization of killing other Muslims.

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