Jihad Watch

Publius Pundit has a post about Mark Steyn's latest foray into Russia-watching in an article in the UK's Spectator (free reg required). The article, which begins with a comparison of the events in Nalchik on October 13 to the massacre of Armenians by "Tartar horsemen" in 1905 and talks of how "last week Islamists killed a big bunch of people in Nalchik, the capital of the hitherto more-or-less safe-ish Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria", isn't exactly reassuring with regard to Steyn's grasp of the situation in the North Caucasus. His apparent intent is to write about what he sees as the disintegration of Russia under its present leadership (the piece is headed "The Death of Mother Russia"). But for all his readiness to dismiss Russia as "a vacuum wrapped in a nullity inside an abyss", he seems conspicuously willing to believe the versions of reality that are served up by the government he professes to despise.