ABC: Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped By Global Warming

By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)

October 10, 2009 – 13:24 ET

Global warming is helping America’s sworn enemies al Qaeda as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

So claimed ABCNews.com’s “World News Webcast” Friday in a segment not only designed to increase America’s fear of Al Gore‘s money-making bogeyman, but also give cover to President Obama as things in Afghanistan continue to spiral out of control.

Talk about your amazingly convenient, two-fisted, win-win situations.

“World News” anchor Charles Gibson ominously began (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Shrugtastic):

http://shrugtastic.com/2009/10/10/abc-news-comes-to-obamas-aid-blames-worsening-afghan-situation-on-man-made-climate-change/

We don’t usually think of the Taliban and global warming in the same sentence, but U.S. intelligence studies are showing a connection. For this week’s “Nature’s Edge” notebook, Bill Blakemore explains how climate change may be giving a boost to the Taliban and to al Qaeda.

Blakemore began his report: This study by eleven U.S. generals and admirals shows how global warming is playing into the hands of terrorist groups like the Taliban in many countries often because of worsening drought.

After some background from one of the CNA study’s supervisors, former Army chief of staff Gen. Gordon R. Smith, Blakemore continued:

BLAKEMORE: Afghanistan, eleven years into a drought with no end in sight. Snows vanishing from mountains that used to pour melt water down into orchards and fields now leaving young men with no money or work. Arian Sharifi worked with ABC News there, and recently in the Afghan government.

ARIAN SHARIFI, GRADUATE STUDENT AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: A lot of more people — young male — who are unemployed with nothing to do, and so the Taliban basically seems an attractive thing for them to join. The Taliban pays most of the fighters. In other ways they are protecting the poppy crops.

BLAKEMORE: And the poppy crops, which the Taliban encourage and tax, are making them and their al Qaeda allies very rich, an estimated half a billion dollars a year. Many farmers say they are now growing opium poppies because they need little water, good in the lengthening drought. So the rising temperatures are helping both heroin traffickers and their Taliban and al Qaeda supporters.

So, according to Blakemore, the problems in Afghanistan — drought, heroin production and trafficking, unemployment, AND the growth in the Taliban and al Qaeda — are directly linked to global warming.

Exit question: What HASN’T been blamed on climate change since Nobel Laureate Al Gore figured he could become rich spreading this as yet unproven theory?

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/10/10/abc-al-qaeda-taliban-being-helped-global-warming

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Analysis: More gunships may not be the answer.

By Tristan McConnell - GlobalPost

Published: April 14, 2009 06:48 ET
Updated: April 28, 2009 20:05 ET

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Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew

From Blackadder to Burgess and Maclean, this history of MI5 is a scholarly and hugely entertaining account, says Robert McCrum

Robert McCrum

The Observer, Sunday 11 October 2009

British intelligence officer and Soviet spy Kim Philby holds a press conference after being cleared of spying charges in 1955. Photograph: Getty Images

An authorised centenary history of MI5, the mysterious organisation whose existence was not even officially acknowledged until 1989, was bound to be a strange bestseller. But then, as Christopher Andrew amply demonstrates in this compendious volume, British countersubversion, founded in 1909 in response to Edwardian spy mania, stoked by a popular novelist and the Daily Mail, has always been a funny game.

26/11 suspects charged by Pakistani Anti-Terror Court

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: The seven suspects arrested here in connection with the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks were formally charged by a Pakistani Anti-Terror Court on Saturday, but the defence lawyers accused the judge of making a “mockery” of the law. They said they were considering asking for a transfer of the case to another court.

French warn of “body bomb” threat for airplanes

Tue, 10/06/2009 – 12:45pm

Al Qaeda’s newest suicide bombing tactic — cellphone activated explosives hidden inside the bomber’s rectum — has French security officials worried:

French anti-terrorism chiefs are expected to recommend widening examinations already used to catch drug smugglers after President Sarkozy’s new domestic intelligence directorate (DCRI) learnt of an attack in Saudi Arabia in which the bomber detonated such a device in his rectum.

Al-Qaeda gave video publicity to its new method tested by Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, a 23-year-old terrorist, who blew himself apart at a meeting in Jeddah in late August with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi anti-terrorism chief.

British Paper Claims Ahmadinejad Born Jewish

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The author of a book on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is refuting a British newspaper report that the Iranian president was born to a Jewish family that converted to Islam.

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Galina Kozhevnikova: Russia journalist incompetent and suffering from xenophobia

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What Saudi money can buy

 

02 October 2009

What Saudi money can buy

 

FamilySecurityMatters – Steve Emerson

IPT Exposé Shows Georgetown Prof John Esposito Shilling for Radical Islam

John Esposito has enjoyed substantial respect in his role as a Georgetown University professor of Religion and International Affairs, specializing in Islamic studies, as well as the founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service.

 

But whether he deserves that respect is put in serious doubt when assessing his cozy ties with radical Islamists and his repeated defense of their ideology — a relationship that is detailed in a newly issued report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

 

The report acknowledges Esposito’s impressive pedigree as an award-winning professor, an author of more than 30 books, a consultant for the Gallup polling organization and an expert on Islam frequently called upon to brief government agencies including the State Department, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and various branches of the military.

 

But it determines that his “outspoken defense of radical Islam calls his reliability as an objective academic and impartial educator into question.“

Read more:

http://infidelsunite.typepad.com/counter_jihad/2009/10/what-saudi-money-can-buy.html

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