Air France Airbus A330 Flight 447 took in passengers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on May 31 after which it took off and later crashed in the Atlantic Ocean with all 228 passengers and crew perishing in the crash.
Although nearly all of the reports of the crash speak of computer malfunctions, numerous news outlets including the German Bild.de, Britain's Metro.co.uk and Sky News have reported that two passengers with names linked to Islamic terror groups were on the lists of passengers who boarded in Rio de Janeiro, ABC News reports that American and French authorities assert that the two names which match those of terrorists was a coincidence. So a major question and piece of the puzzle behind the the Airbus crash is; Were terrorists aboard Air France Flight 447?:
Fresh questions about the... downed Air France flight 447 continue as search crews pulled more bodies and wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean. The latest questions have emerged over the doomed flight's passenger list. A French magazine, L'Express, reported this week that two of the passengers were on a French terrorism watch list.
French and U.S. government sources, however, told ABC News that no Islamic extremists were aboard flight 447. A former senior White House official said "no names on the manifest triggered any U.S. intelligence persons of interest."
A current senior CIA officer says he hasn't seen anything suggesting that the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight was downed by an act of terrorism. Additionally, French interior ministry spokesman Gerard Gachet denied the... report.
The French news report reported that it was possible that the two names on the manifest that matched two names on the terrorism watch list was a coincidence.
All 228 aboard flight 447 are presumed dead, after the plane disappeared from radar screens and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean between the coast of Brazil and the coast of West Africa on May 31. Last week, Brazilian military crews found passenger remains and small sections of debris floating on the ocean surface.
Some of the confusion over who was aboard the flight stems from Air France's decision to keep the manifest private. An Air France spokesperson told ABC News that French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the families of the victims that France would never release the names as a privacy concern. Most of the passengers were French and Brazilian. Flight 447 carried passengers and crew from a total of 31 different countries.
ABC News has learned that news reports in Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey have identified citizens of those countries who also perished on flight 447.
A former senior CIA official told ABC News that there is added confusion with terrorism watch lists because Muslim and Arabic names are often poorly translated by Western governments.
"Most Arabs have four names as a full name," the former official said. "But North African countries that were colonized by the French, for example, chopped the names down to two, like theirs, so they could find people. Now, they have a hard time identifying people on the list because the names are inconsistent."
Officials Not Ruling Out Terrorism
Because so little of the plane has been recovered, French officials have refused to officially rule out terrorism as the cause of the crash. However, their investigation thus far has focused on faulty wind-speed sensors on the Airbus A330 airplane. There is no evidence yet that the sensors contributed to the tragedy but initial reviews of flight data transmissions indicate the plane had electrical malfunctions as it went through a tropical storm, some 400 miles northeast of Brazil.
A terrorist attack was 'highly likely' to be behind the Air France plane crash in the Atlantic, a pilot claimed.
The unnamed flyer said a bomb explosion on board was the probable cause, he told a French newspaper.
'I have flown these jets for Air France for more than ten years and the chances of an electrical fault seem unfeasible to me,' he added.
A bomb threat was made against an Air France plane flying from Buenos Aires days earlier, it has emerged.
A warning phone call came in ahead of take-off on Wednesday last week but a search revealed nothing.
An attack could not be ruled out because it is 'the main threat for all Western democracies' but no one had claimed responsibility, said French defence minister Herve' Morin.
The suspect was identified as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe. Muhammad, 24, was arrested after a brief chase and charged with first-degree murder, as well as terror charges.
Based on the police department's initial interrogation, the shooter acted out of "political and religious motives... with the specific purpose of targeting military personnel." As of now, he is assumed to have acted "alone and of his own accord," a police spokesman emphasized. A spokesman for the FBI's Little Rock office said the agency is also investigating the incident.
According to police, at around 10:15 a.m. Muhammad drove up to the U.S. Army Navy Career Center inside the Ashley Square Shopping Center and opened fire on two enlisted soldiers standing outside. Other military officers and soldiers were in the building at the time, but there were no other injuries reported. Police later recovered an SKS semi-automatic rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a pistol from Muhammad's black SUV.
The murdered soldier was identified as 23-year-old William Long, who died shortly after being transported to a Little Rock hospital. The second wounded soldier remains hospitalized in stable condition.
Last month, FBI agents arrested four men involved in a terrorist plot to blow up two synagogues and shoot down a National Guard aircraft in Riverdale, New York. The suspects in that case, three of whom are converts to Islam, reportedly acted independently of any global terrorist organization and formed their own localized jihadist cell.
...The men had planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives outside a temple in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale and to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said...
In their efforts to acquire weapons, the defendants dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, authorities said. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants, a federal complaint said.
The investigation had been under way for about a year.
In June 2008, the informant met one of the men, James Cromitie, in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US military forces, officials said.
Cromitie also expressed an interest in doing "something to America," they said in the complaint.
In October 2008, the informant began meeting with the defendants at a Newburgh house equipped with concealed video and audio equipment, the complaint said.
Beginning in April 2009, the four men selected the synagogue and the community center they intended to hit, it said. They also conducted surveillance of military planes at the Air National Guard Base, it said.
Rep. Peter King, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, was briefed on the case following the arrests.
"This was a long, well-planned investigation, and it shows how real the threat is from homegrown terrorists," said King, of New York.
This is a must-see video for any citizen or leader who would contemplate establishing a dialogue or relations with radical Islamics like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Note that this is a Kuwaiti professor, not a Iranian or Hamas cleric. Kuwait is supposed to be a friend of the US, and Kuwaitis certainly should have a feeling of gratitude to the US for removing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait a mere 18 years ago. If this is what America's Muslim "friends" are saying, what are her enemies saying?
After a long hiatus, the Syrian pipeline operated by the organization al-Qaeda in Iraq is back in business.
The revival of a transit route that officials had declared all but closed comes as the Obama administration is exploring a new diplomatic dialogue with Syria. At the same time, Washington remains concerned by Syrian activities -- including ongoing support for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as activities involving Iraq.
On Wednesday, acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman and National Security Council official Daniel Shapiro arrived in Syria for their second visit since Barack Obama's inauguration as president. Two days later, however, Obama renewed U.S. sanctions against Syria, accusing Damascus of supporting terrorism in the Middle East and undermining Iraqi stability.
"I think it sends the message that we have some very serious concerns," Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said... Feltman... was "in Damascus to talk about... how we can get Syria to change its behavior and see if it's willing to really engage seriously in a dialogue, be a positive role in the Middle East. Up until now, Syria hasn't played that positive role."
This shouldn't exactly come as a surprise considering Syria's consistently obstructionist behavior for the last 40 years or more. Why would they change their stripes now?
The Damascus government made no public comment on the Feltman-
Shapiro visit...
The Bush administration frequently criticized Syria for the transit of foreign fighters, suggesting that the authoritarian government of President Bashar al-Assad was involved in the traffic...
Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, told Congress late last month that the al-Qaeda in Iraq pipeline through Syria had been "reactivated." Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, confirmed Friday that "some elements of foreign fighters continue to traffic through Syria."
...Syria, Odierno said, "has the opportunity" to stop it. He called on the Syrian government to "demonstrate a commitment to eliminating the use of its soil as a staging area."
Making the Americans bleed in Iraq has been a low-cost or no-cost game for Syria since the beginning. Perhaps if Syria were made to pay a price for its assistance in the killing of American soldiers it would take advantage of the "opportunity" to stop it?
Overall violence in Iraq is "at or near the lowest level since the summer of 2003," Odierno said in a news conference, but the recent suicide attacks "remind all of us that the situation still is fragile in some areas."
...The leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the official said, determines "that conditions are right that they can conduct attacks. They will talk to their facilitators, and they will ask for bombers, ask for supplies."
Security along the Iraq-Syria border and elsewhere has deteriorated since the elections, the official and others said. Iraqi border interdiction efforts have been hindered by a chronic shortage of fuel, which keeps border police grounded for weeks at a time, and by corruption within their ranks, U.S. military officials in Iraq said.
In the meantime, the senior U.S. military official said, Iraqi vigilance in general has decreased since the elections, and al-Qaeda in Iraq has "been able to rebuild the network."
"Frankly," he said, "you can't keep 100 percent alert 100 percent of the time. It gives the enemy the opportunity to identify gaps and weaknesses."
The group also monitored ships in the Suez Canal "to determine which ones were Israeli," before abandoning that initial plan to conduct attacks in the Arab country, the source said.
In addition, the source confirmed reports that two Palestinian suspects, who were members of Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigades, had been planning to conduct terrorist operations "deep inside Israel" before they were caught.
Another suspect - an Egyptian in Sinai - was arrested on Sunday, increasing the number of those in custody to 22, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The rest of the alleged 49-member cell is still at large.
"For a limited time after the assassination of [Hezbollah operations chief] Imad Mughniyeh [in Damascus in February 2008], some of the individuals in Hezbollah thought that they would carry out a revenge operation against Israeli targets in Egypt, in Sinai," he said, noting that the cell leader known as Sami Shehab was among these individuals.
"They monitored Israeli tourist groups and they also observed ships which were crossing the Suez Canal to determine which ones were Israeli, but this operation was canceled. One of the accused said that... this idea was opposed by the [Hezbollah] leader Muhammad Qablan, and when the leadership higher than Qablan found out about that, it canceled the operation. It said, 'We don't want problems in Egypt, and Egypt is a red line'" that should not be crossed, the source said.
Egypt has accused the cell of planning attacks against Israeli targets and Egyptian installations throughout the country. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has admitted that one of the men - Shehab - was a member of Hezbollah, but he said that he and nearly 10 others had been helping to smuggle arms into Gaza and denied any intention to carry out attacks in Egypt.
Echoing statements from Hezbollah leaders, the source from the defense team said that "the issue is related only to offering logistical support to the Palestinian resistance inside the occupation, inside the occupied lands." He later clarified that he meant "against Israel."
"It is not related to any operations against Egypt," the source said.
Shehab has been detained for about six months, while others have been detained about four months, he said. The Egyptian government is currently trying to determine their sources of funding, he added, noting that the defendants had received "money transfers from abroad."
No date has been set for their trial.
The suspects include one Lebanese member - Shehab - two Palestinians and four Sudanese. The rest are Egyptian citizens, two of whom formerly had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, he said.
The suspects are accused of joining a secret group outside the bounds of law and using terrorism as the means to execute their goals. They are also accused of espionage on behalf of a foreign organization unacceptable to Egyptian authorities, and possession of weapons and explosives.
However, a formal indictment has yet to be issued, the source said.
In other words, the Egyptians are angry because this time the terrorists went too far and were considering attacks against Israelis in Egypt; apparently, had they continued to use Egypt as a conduit for bringing in weapons to attack Israel from Gaza that would not have been a problem.
A sleeper agent... pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring with al-Qaeda operatives, revealing new details about his clandestine activities and the danger he posed.
Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 43, faces as many as 15 years in prison when he is sentenced this summer. But he could serve far less time if a judge gives him credit for time served -- nearly two years awaiting trial in a fraud case and 5 1/2 additional years the Qatari national spent without charges in a U.S. naval brig as the sole "enemy combatant" on U.S. soil.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. rejected efforts by defense attorneys to reduce Marri's prison time, a Justice Department official said, and prosecutors will argue against Marri getting credit for his brig time at the sentencing hearing in July.
In a statement, the attorney general said the deal "reflects what we can achieve when we have faith in our criminal justice system and are unwavering in our commitment to the values upon which this nation was founded and the rule of law."
Accompanying Marri's plea deal was a statement of facts detailing his contacts with senior al-Qaeda officials and his plans within the United States.
The statement said that between 1998 and 2001, Marri attended terrorist training camps where he learned tradecraft such as prearranged codes to hide telephone numbers and e-mail messages.
In 2001, Marri was approached by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an operations chief for al-Qaeda, about assisting al-Qaeda operations in the United States, according to court documents, many of which were obtained by federal investigators who had seized an address book at an al-Qaeda safe house in Pakistan.
Marri knew at the time that he was providing himself to al-Qaeda to further their terrorist objectives, the documents said.
Marri was instructed by Mohammed to arrive in the United States no later than Sept. 10, 2001, with an understanding that he was to remain in the country for an undetermined length of time.
As part of the deal, Marri also agreed that an almanac that investigators recovered from his home "was bookmarked at pages showing dams, waterways and tunnels in the United States, consistent with al Qaeda attack planning regarding the use of cyanide gases."
As Pan Am Flight 830 descended toward Honolulu and passengers finished their breakfast, a blinding burst of light washed over them. And then, "BOOM".
The 747 shuddered violently. Confusion erupted as the airliner nose-dived. Screams and thick smoke filled the cabin. Oxygen masks dropped.
In the rear of the plane, 16-year-old Toru Ozawa lay on his back in the aisle. His lower abdomen had been ripped open, his intestines seeping out. The explosion had also sheered off one of his legs. He called out for his mother and father; they watched in horror as he died.
The Aug. 11, 1982, explosion was no accident. Ozawa was murdered -- killed by a sophisticated bomb, one of many that spread like a virus around the world in the 1980s, killing and injuring scores in more than two dozen terrorist attacks.
The man behind them: Abu Ibrahim, who controlled a web of dangerous operatives while living in Baghdad under the protection of Saddam Hussein.
Long forgotten and even presumed dead by some, Ibrahim is very much alive, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Ibrahim had managed to elude coalition forces... before he recently crossed into Syria, federal law enforcement and former CIA officials believe...
"He was the most capable and the most dangerous bomb maker in the world barring none during my time as a CIA officer," said Bob Baer, a former top CIA agent who worked clandestinely in the Middle East.
His infamous career stretches back decades. He has been linked to several terrorist organizations, including Black September and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
At his little workshop, he developed a blend of plastic explosives that he lined in suitcases or bags that used a delayed-timing device called an "e-cell"... This became his signature as a bomb maker.
With the assistance of Iraqi intelligence, Ibrahim carried out many attacks. He struck in London, Rome, Athens. In West Berlin, an infant was killed and 24 wounded after one of his bombs detonated at an Israeli-
owned restaurant.
His most well-known plans, however, involved trying to sabotage Pan Am and El Al airlines.
Denny Kline, a retired FBI explosives expert.... said the FBI was able to connect at least 21 devices to Ibrahim. Others continued to circulate in the hands of terrorists; they would be traced to two airline bombings in 1986 and 1989 that killed 174 people, including the wife of an American ambassador to Chad...
The CIA had well-sourced reporting in 1990 that Ibrahim continued to live in the Al-Mansour district of Baghdad with the knowledge and support of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. He lived a few blocks away from the headquarters of the intelligence service.
But any plan to grab Ibrahim in Baghdad was simply too risky. He had too many friends in the regime watching over him.
It is hard to believe, but apparently this is NOT a Purim Parody. The Middle East Media Research Institute reports that Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi is calling for Starbucks to be closed down in the Arab and Islamic World claiming, "The Girl in the Starbucks Logo is Queen Esther... The Queen of the Jews":
Safwat Higazi: "Today, I would like to talk about the Starbucks coffee shop. Starbucks is to be found in Mecca, in Al-Madina, opposite the King Abdul Aziz Gate in Mecca, opposite the Al-Majid Gate in Al-Madina, as well as in Cairo. Starbucks is to be found everywhere, with this logo. This is the Starbucks logo.
"Has any of you ever wondered who this woman with a crown on her head is? Why do we boycott Starbucks? I will tell you, so you will know why you should boycott this company, and what this logo stands for. As I’ve already said, it is not enough to avoid entering this coffee shop. It is not enough to refrain from drinking this coffee. You must urge people never to go there, but none of you should even consider throwing a stone, breaking anything, or burning [the place] down.
[...]
"The girl in the Starbucks logo is Queen Esther. Do you know who Queen Esther was and what the crown on her head means? This is the crown of the Persian kingdom. This queen is the queen of the Jews. She is mentioned in the Torah, in the Book of Esther. The girl you see is Esther, the queen of the Jews in Persia." [...]
"The Crown You See Here [In the Starbucks Logo] is the Crown of the Kingdom of Xerxes"
"King [Xerxes] gave an order that the seven most beautiful girls in the kingdom be brought to him. So they held contests and auditions, and selected the seven most beautiful virgins, one of whom was the Jewish Esther, whose uncle, Mordechai - or actually, it was her cousin’s brother - was a villain.
"It was Mordechai who hatched this plot. Esther was one of the seven girls brought before King Xerxes in the palace. When Esther, who was very beautiful, was shown to King Xerxes, she captured his heart, and he chose her to be his queen. He placed a crown on her head, and the crown you see here [Higazi indicates the Starbucks logo] is the crown of the kingdom of Xerxes, and this is Esther, who became Queen of Persia, instead of Queen Vashti."[...]
"We Want Starbucks To Be Shut Down Throughout The Arab And Islamic World...It Is Inconceivable That In Mecca and Al-Madina, There Will Be a Picture of Queen Esther"
"Can you believe that in Mecca, Al-Madina, Cairo, Damascus, Kuwait, and all over the Islamic world there hangs the picture of beautiful Queen Esther, with a crown on her head, and we buy her products?
[...]
"We want Starbucks to be shut down throughout the Arab and Islamic world. We want it to be shut down in Mecca and in Al-Madina. I implore King Abdallah bin Abd Al-‘Aziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques: It is inconceivable that in Mecca and Al-Madina, there will be a picture of Queen Esther, the queen of the Jews."
Ever notice how these people will say just about anything without shame? A Muslim "cleric" had no qualms repeating this fantasy on a television show, and even told his followers to act accordingly.
In fact, 1 minute of Internet research yielded proof that the "girl" in the Starbucks logo is a mermaid with 2 tails. I won't provide any links because the original version of the logo (before it was cleaned up by the current ownership) was kind of risque', but if you really need proof, Google it.
But then again, so what if it really was Queen Esther? Why is that so offensive?
What can be inferred from this obvious lack of interest in the truth regarding other statements coming from the Muslim world?
The Organization of the Islamic Conference... are now demanding through the agency of the United Nations that Islam not only be allowed to make absolutist claims but that it also be officially shielded from any criticism of itself.
Though it is written tongue-in-cheek in the language of human rights and of opposition to discrimination, the non-binding U.N. Resolution 62/154, on "Combating defamation of religions," actually seeks to extend protection not to humans but to opinions and to ideas, granting only the latter immunity from being "offended."
Paragraph 5 "expresses its deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism," while Paragraph 6 "notes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001."
Paragraph 10 of the resolution says, in effect, watch what you say, because our declared intention is to criminalize opinions that differ with the one true faith. Let nobody say that they have not been warned.
The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen...
The development came as Republican legislators criticized the plan to close the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp in the absence of any measures for dealing with current detainees.
Almost half the camp’s remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program — partly financed by the United States — similar to the Saudi one. Saudi Arabia has claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism...
A Saudi security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Shihri had disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia last year after finishing the rehabilitation program.
A Yemeni journalist who interviewed Al Qaeda’s leaders in Yemen last year, Abdulela Shaya, confirmed Thursday that the deputy leader was indeed Mr. Shihri, the former Guantánamo detainee. Mr. Shaya, in a phone interview, said Mr. Shihri had described to him his journey from Cuba to Yemen and supplied his Guantánamo detention number, 372. That is the correct number, Pentagon documents show...
The documents state that Mr. Shihri met with a group of "extremists" in Iran and helped them get into Afghanistan. They also say he was accused of trying to arrange the assassination of a writer, in accordance with a fatwa, or religious order, issued by an extremist cleric.
Now get this:
However, under a heading describing reasons for Mr. Shihri’s possible release from Guantánamo, the documents say he claimed that he traveled to Iran "to purchase carpets for his store" in Saudi Arabia. They also say that he denied knowledge of any terrorists or terrorist activities, and that he "related that if released, he would like to return to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, wherein he would reunite with his family."
"The detainee stated he would attempt to work at his family's furniture store if it is still in business," the documents say.
Here is the latest from Gaza: a mosque used to store at least one heavy weapon and ammunition:
The soldiers state that the mosque was a source of rocket fire on more than one occasion. It doesn't get said enough, so I will repeat it here: using a civilian area as a place for launching attacks is a war crime, and the area then loses its protected civilian status.
It is hard to read about Hezbollah without encountering the helpful tip that it is a resistance movement "formed in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon." (See here, here, here, here, here and here for examples). This mantra had an effect on Ehud Barak, who made the logical step of eliminating Hezbollah's raison d'etre. The only problem is that the mantra is wrong. Hezbollah is a movement of global jihad, which is why it is expanding internationally. Today we learn that American boys are dying as a consequence of years of American pressure on Israel to give Hezbollah a terror enclave:
Lebanon's Hizbullah has trained Shia fighters from Iraq in advanced guerrilla warfare tactics, according to Mehdi army militants who have been fighting British forces in southern Iraq.
Iraqi militiaman Abu Muhannad, 39, said he had spent a month in southern Lebanon. "I was one of the experienced fighters from the Mehdi army to go for training there," he said. "We learned how to take advantage of an armored vehicle's weakness, and how to wait and kill the soldiers who try to escape."
Another Mehdi Army fighter, Abu Nasser, 26, said he and 100 other group members traveled to Lebanon in December 2005. "They showed us real tactics and taught our snipers," he said.
Speaking in Tufa in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Mehdi Army, admitted: "We have formal links with Hizbullah....We copy Hizbullah in the way they fight and their tactics, we teach each other and we are getting better through this."
"We go [to Lebanon] and discuss what Israel's future plans are in the Middle East because we are part of whatever will happen," he said.
that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.
What is occurring in the Sudan is jihad, down to the details of how Muslim Law decrees that women captives should be raped. Sharia decrees that women should ideally be inducted into a life of sex slavery only after transporting them to an area with a majority Muslim population.
Leftism, however, provides people with a way to feel morally virtuous despite their cowardice at confronting real evil. Here is the new UN Secretary-General blaming the genocide on today's bogeyman, Global Warming:
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.
?The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change,? Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column. UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons. ?This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming,? the South Korean diplomat wrote.
?It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought,? Ban said in the Washington daily. When Darfur?s land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.
With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing. ?For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out,? he said.
Of course there were no droughts or weather changes in Africa before Global Warming.
