MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Sura 3:151, “We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve …”

Associated Press – “COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Danish prosecutors on Friday charged four people with terrorism for allegedly planning a shooting attack on a newspaper that had printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The four men — Swedes living in Denmark — wanted ‘to seriously frighten the population’ and destabilize Denmark by planning a shooting spree inside the Copenhagen offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, Svend Ulrik Larsen, Denmark’s top prosecutor, said.

The paper published 12 cartoons of the prophet in 2005, sparking riots in Muslim countries and calls for revenge against the Danish publishers and cartoonists.

Larsen said the group traveled to Copenhagen with arms and ammunition, aiming to kill ‘a larger number of people.’

Swedish and Danish intelligence officials said they have followed the men for months and tailed the their hired car from Stockholm before arresting them at a flat near the Danish capital.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service described some of the suspects as ‘militant Islamists with relations to international terror networks.’

‘This is a very serious case. We believe they wanted to attack the (Copenhagen) newsroom of the Jyllands-Posten daily, possibly because of the Muhammad cartoons,’ Gyrithe Ulrich, the prosecutor who handles the case, told The Associated Press.” Read more.

Flashback: Denmark: Islamists Seek to Introduce ‘Sharia Zones’ Where Islamic Sharia Law Should Be Upheld – “A fundamentalist Islamic group wants to set up zones in Copenhagen where Islamic Sharia Law should be upheld. The group, ‘The Call to Islam’, belongs to a branch of Islam called Salafism, whose followers in the UK attempted to introduce similar Sharia zones in London earlier this summer. According to Jyllands-Posten newspaper, the group is led by the imam Abu Ahmed, who has taught several people subsequently linked to terrorist activities.” Read more.

“TEL AVIV, Israel: Underneath the plaza outside Israel’s Habima national theater, Israel has put the finishing touches on a new gathering place that it hopes will never host a crowd: The country’s most advanced public underground bomb shelter.

The shelter, four stories underground and with space for 1,600 people, is usually a parking lot. It is also part of Tel Aviv’s elaborate civil defense infrastructure. City officials have been beefing up shelters and emergency services in recent months at a time of rising tensions with Iran and militant groups in the Gaza Strip.

Recent talk of conflict with Iran has given the safety measures extra relevance.

Officials say the timing is coincidental. Israel is under constant threat from hostile groups on its northern and southern frontiers. Security forces run frequent safety drills, cities are equipped with public air-raid shelters, and new apartments must have bombproof rooms.

Israeli leaders have hinted they may mount a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, even as American military leaders urge Israel to wait for tough economic sanctions to take effect.

Should Israel attack, Iran has promised a punishing counterstrike. Iran has missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel. It also supports anti-Israel militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, which have fired thousands of rockets into Israel in the past. Israel’s military intelligence chief recently estimated that the country’s enemies have 200,000 rockets and missiles aimed at the Jewish state.” Read more.

WikiLeaks: Russia Gave Israel Codes for Iran’s Missiles – “Russia gave Israel codes for breaking Iran’s missile defense system in return for codes of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Israel sold to Georgia, WikiLeaks claims. The information was among 5 million emails released this week by WikiLeaks, which said it worked in cooperation with the Anonymous hacker group. The leaked information focused on the U.S.-based Stratfor global intelligence company.” Read more.

When Obama speaks, the oceans recede, the planet heals, and he demonstrates yet again just how often he is out of touch with reality …

By DEVIN DWYER – “President Obama said his formal apology to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the burning of Korans by U.S. troops last week has ‘calmed things down’ after the incident sparked an outbreak of violence across the country.

‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ Obama said in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Bob Woodruff at the White House. ‘But my criteria in any decision I make, getting recommendations from folks who are actually on the ground, is what is going to best protect our folks and make sure that they can accomplish their mission.’

The president’s comments came just hours before a formal White House dinner to honor Iraq War veterans, some of whom have also served in Afghanistan and may be redeploying there to assist ongoing U.S. military operations. Woodruff was the only journalist invited to attend the dinner.

Obama said his letter to Karzai aimed to curb further danger to U.S. troops on the ground. It reportedly expressed regret for the apparently inadvertent burning of the Korans, the sacred text of Islam, on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.” Read more.

2 US troops killed in Afghanistan following Koran burning – “Two American soldiers were killed Thursday in a shooting by an Afghan soldier and a literacy teacher at a joint base in southern Afghanistan, officials said, the latest in a series of deaths as anti-Americanism rises following the burning of Korans by U.S. soldiers. Both were killed on the same day that the top NATO commander allowed a small number of foreign advisers to return to work at Afghan ministries after more than a week of being locked down in secure locations because of the killing of two other Americans. Thursday’s killings raised to six the number of Americans killed in less than two weeks amid heightened tensions over the Feb. 20 burning of Korans and other Islamic texts that had been dumped in a garbage pit at Bagram Air Field near Kabul. More than 30 Afghans also were killed in six days of violent riots that broke out after the incident.” Read more.

By Aidan Clay – “TUNIS, TUNISIA (ANS) — Widely seen as the most secular country that recently deposed long-standing leaders, many believed that Tunisia had the greatest opportunity to elect a moderate government concerned with democratic principles and human rights. However, the hopes of secularists, Christians, and other minorities were crippled in October when the Islamist Ennahda party won 41 percent of the votes for a national constitutional assembly, a one-year body charged with writing a constitution.

Along with other Islamist movements, Ennahda – at the time called the Movement of the Islamic Tendency – had been outlawed under former President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali. Robin Wright, an American foreign affairs analyst and author of Sacred Rage, described the Islamic Tendency as ‘the single most threatening opposition force [to Ben Ali’s regime] in Tunis.’

Ennahda’s founder and chairman is Rashid Ghannouchi. He considers himself a pupil of Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini, defended the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and supported Saddam Hussein’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990. In a speech given in Khartoum just before the Gulf War erupted, Ghannouchi said, ‘We must wage unceasing war against the Americans until they leave the land of Islam, or we will burn and destroy all their interests across the entire Islamic world,’ The Brussels Journal reported.” Read more.

Tunisia, Egypt Islamists Signal Bigger Religion Role – “After months of reassuring secularist critics, Islamist politicians in Tunisia and Egypt have begun to lay down markers about how Muslim their states should be — and first signs show they want more religion than previously admitted. Islamist parties swept the first free elections in both countries in recent months after campaigns that stressed their readiness to work with the secularists they struggled with in the Arab Spring revolts against decades-long dictatorships.” Read more.

Flashback: Tunisia: Concerns Grow Over ‘Morality Police’ as Islamists Roam Streets Terrifying Women and Youth – “Bearded men roam the streets and batter with their batons those whom they perceive different from their sect, terrifying women and youths. Tunisian woman Monia Jawadi emphatically described what the country would look if it were to institutionalise its first morality police. Reports that Tunisia may establish a committee for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice have sent waves of anxiety among citizens, especially as the country struggles to preserve its social gains.” Read more.

Flashback: ‘A New Cycle of Civilization’: Tunisia’s Islamists Hail Arrival of the ‘Sixth Caliphate’ – “The Islamist politician likely to become Tunisia’s first democratically elected prime minister has alarmed liberals and secularists by claiming the arrival of the ‘sixth caliphate’, a controversial term for a Muslim empire. Hamadi Jebeli, secretary-general of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party which romped to victory in last month’s elections, told a rally in the city of Sousse: ‘My brothers, you are at a historic moment in a new cycle of civilisation, God willing. We are in sixth caliphate…” Read more.