Mark Steyn has a new killer essay at the Spectator about the collapse of Russia and the spread of Islamic fascism. It’s worth reading if only for the, er, fowl pun partway down page one (there’s one that’s actually funny further down, but I won’t ruin it for you). Excerpt:

Moscow has reduced Grozny to rubble, yet is further than ever from solving its Chechen problem. Moreover, the sheer blundering thuggery of the Russian approach has no merits other than affording Moscow some short-term sadistic pleasure as it exacerbates the situation. The allegedly seething ???????Arab street????????, which the West????????s media doom-mongers have been predicting for four years will rise up in fury against the Anglo-American infidels, remains as seething as a cul-de-sac in Pinner on a Wednesday afternoon. But the Russian Federation????????s Muslim street is real, and on the boil…

In fairness to Putin, even if he was ???????very straightforward and trustworthy????????, he????????s in a wretched position. Think of the feet of clay of Western European politicians unwilling to show leadership on the Continent????????s moribund economy and deathbed demography. Russia has all the EU????????s problems to the nth degree, and then some. ???????Post-imperial decline???????? is manageable; a nation of psychotic lemmings isn????????t.

Also at SteynOnline, a reader asks in Mark’s Mailbox for some attention to be paid to the role of up-and-coming India in the Western world Anglosphere, especially with regards to the war on terror:

As a Hindu American, I would like to offer you my sincerest thanks for being one of the few Western columnists to have highlighted the issue of terrorism in Kashmir. By merely mentioning Kashmir as one of the places where terrorism occurs, which is something most Western journalists and governments are unwilling to do, you have done the victims of terrorism there an immense service…

ÄIÅt is shocking that the ethnic cleansing of half a million people gets no mention in the New York Times . I know that your voice carries tremendous weight in the blogsphere, and if you write a column on Kashmir it might induce some readers to write to the NYT and pressure them to report the truth. India is on the front lines of the fight against Islamofascism just as much as Israel or the US is.

Finally, don’t miss Mark’s timely look back at the capture of Saddam as the psycho’s trial (Saddam’s, not Mark’s) gets underway.