From Reporters Without Borders, Dec. 8:

The 2005 Reporters Without Borders/Fondation de France prize in the "cyberdissident" category was awarded on 7 December to Massoud Hamid. He was arrested in July 2004 and sentenced to three years in prison for "membership of a secret organisation" after posting photos of a Kurdish demonstration in Syria on a foreign-based website.

One of the very few journalists who have managed to take photographs of a pro-Kurdish demonstration in Syria, which he sent abroad to be posted on a German-based website (www.amude.com). He was punished very harshly.

A Dec. 6 commentary by Jalal Ghazi on Pacific News Service notes that last month's Jordan suicide attack killed a film director beloved throughout the Arab world—making Arab commentators more vocal and daring than ever in condemning terrorism.

The current (Dec. 1) issue of The Economist includes a profile of "China's far west"—a region variously known as Xinjiang (to the Chinese), or East Turkestan or Uighurstan to its indigenous inhabitants, the Turkic and Muslim Uighurs. After providing some background on the separatist strife in the Autonomous Region (which readers of WW4 Report will already be familiar with), it notes the recent development of gasfields there and the construction, now underway, of a pipeline to Kazakhstan. We recently noted that Kazakhstan is to be connected with the new trans-Caucasian Baku-Ceyhan pipeline with a link across the Caspian Sea, at the other end of the country. Now, Kazakhstan is a vast place, but it is nearly inevitable the global planners already foresee linking these pipelines. The question, ultimately, is whose control all this infrastructure will fall under. With all eyes on the Baku-Ceyhan route, Japan is seeking a Pacific route for Siberian and (eventually) Central Asian oil and gas—which would, as we have noted, strategically by-pass longtime rival China.

The patrician wonks at the Council on Foreign Relations raise the alarm in a January report that Africa will be increasingly strategic to global energy security in the coming century—and that China is beating the US to the punch in securing access to the continent's fossil fuel resources. From Reuters, Dec. 7:

THE US faces stiff competition from China for oil supplies from Africa and Washington must take a more strategic view of the continent by investing more resources there, US experts say.

From Amnesty International, Dec. 7:

Eritrea: Government must end religious persecution

"You will receive no visitors and you will rot here until you sign this paper."

The reported words of an Eritrean military commander to Helen Berhane, a well known gospel singer of the Rema Church who has been detained incommunicado in Mai Serwa military camp since 13 May 2004. She is currently held in a metal shipping container.

Helen Berhane is just one of many people in Eritrea who are locked up because they do not belong to an officially recognised faith. In the last 3 years, at least 26 pastors and priests, some 1750 evangelical church members, and dozens of Muslims have been detained by the government. Many have been tortured and churches have been shut down.

From Amnesty International, Dec. 7:

Rendition and 'disappearances' in the 'war on terror'
800 secret CIA flights into and out of Europe

Amnesty International has revealed that six planes used by the CIA for renditions have made some 800 flights in or out of European airspace including 50 landings at Shannon airport in the Republic of Ireland.

Nice sentiments. Now we wonder if the good king will abolish public flogging, as demanded by Amnesty International. Dec. 7:

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah appealed to Muslim leaders on Wednesday to unite and tackle extremists who he said have hijacked their religion.

At a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) -- the world's biggest Muslim body -- in the holy city of Mecca, Abdullah said the world's 1 billion Muslims were weak and divided, a description echoed by other leaders.

We wrote in our last post on the Egyptian elections:

The first-round results cast a dubious light on the apparent assumption of the neocons that a wave of democratic revolutions in the Arab and Islamic worlds will bring pro-West "moderates" and technocrats to power. They may be dramatically underestimating the degree to which radical Islam has cornered the market on popular unrest in this part of the planet. Their model seems to be Czechoslovakia 1989. A more appropriate one might be Algeria 1992.

Alas, this analysis has been further vindicated by subsequent events. Dec. 7:

DAMIETTA, Egypt (Reuters) - Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and two men were killed in the last stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections on Wednesday in which Islamists said security forces blocked voters to limit their gains.