Known Terrorists Were On Board Air France 447

from Sky News
by Peter Allen in Paris

Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives, it has emerged.

French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.

Flight AF 447 crashed in the mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm.

While it is certain there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out.

Soon after news of the fatal crash broke, agents working for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure), the French equivalent of MI6, were dispatched to Brazil.

It was there that they established that two names on the passenger list are also on highly-classified documents listing the names of radical Muslims considered a threat to the French Republic.

A source working for the French security services told Paris weekly L'Express that the link was "highly significant".

Agents are now trying to establish dates of birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections.

There is a possibility the name similarities are simply a "macabre coincidence", the source added, but the revelation is still being "taken very seriously".

France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan.

Security chiefs have been particularly worried about airborne suicide attacks similar to the ones on the US on September 11, 2001.

Gruesome finds from flight 447 emerging from the sea

from Earth Times
June 8, 2009

Sao Paulo - After searching the open seas for days on end, the Brazilian navy is finding more and more victims of the fatal Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic. Six dead passengers had been recovered from the by water Sunday afternoon, 17 by evening. The figures will continue to rise, as more bodies have been spotted by the Brazilian Air Force. Relatives have been informed in Rio de Janeiro about the finds. But for them, there's little relief when unbearable waiting is ended by dreadful certainty.

Nevertheless, now the relatives of the 228 passengers at least know approximately where their loved ones died.

Brazilian teams have retrieved nine bodies, while French teams recovered eight, Brazilian Air Force spokesman Henry Munhoz said on Sunday.

The Brazilian recovery frigate Constituicao was on its way to the island of Fernando de Noronha, where it was expected to arrive with the bodies on Tuesday at the earliest.

Four bodies on board the Constituicao were men and four were of women, Munhoz said. The sex of the other victim could not be determined after the body had floated in the Atlantic for days, he said.

Munhoz said other bodies and hundreds of objects had been sighted but the priority was to recover the victims.

There was "no doubt" that the debris and the bodies came from the missing plane, he said.

The bodies were to receive an initial examination on Fernando de Noronha, about 350 kilometres from the mainland. They then would be flown to Recife, where the process of identification would begin.

Judging from previous experience, the identification process is lengthy. Hair and blood samples were taken from the relatives of the victims for DNA-comparison, which can take weeks.

The relatives are being accommodated in the Windsor Hotel in Barra da Tijuca, a somewhat secluded quarter of Rio.

On Saturday, when the first bodies were found after days of anxious waiting and disbelief, certainty settled in for the first time. The announcement of Brazil's defence minister, Nelson Jobim, on Tuesday that the plane had crashed in the area "without doubt" contradicted confusing information for several days when the first finds turned out to be errors.

Now, on day seven after the crash nobody, except for a few relatives, is still talking about survivors. "The search for bodies now has top priority", says the spokesperson of the air force. The recovery of the wreckage would follow after that.

On Saturday, media reports said that one of the victims had been found floating on the sea still fastened to his seat by the seatbelt, something which air force spokesmen later denied. The air force then advised the press from making such announcements, which only put more strain on grieving relatives.

At the Windsor Hotel some families are still clinging on to the hope that their relatives might have survived the catastrophe. "My son is somewhere (out there), and somebody has to find him. Please don't say that I am crazy. It is the belief of a mother", says pensioner Maria Eva Marinho, whose son was on board the doomed plane. His father shares this hope: "There may be a chance. Miracles happen," he said.

Likewise the father of Prince Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, a member of the Brazilian royal family, does not want to give up hope. "But it is believing, without believing", he told a local newspaper. He was prepared for the worst.

Many of the families fear that their relatives' last resting place might be the bed of the Atlantic, more than 3,000 metres down.

Obama is Livin' La Vida Loca - Bam's Latin Lovers

"Our president's greatest weakness: He needs adulation. He's hooked on it. The crowds and clapping and cameras are O's cocaine (these days)."

PRESIDENT'S HUGS FOR THUGS
from The New York Post
by Ralph Peters
April 21, 2009

Livin' La Vida Loca Video

MY president went to Trin idad and Tobago, and all I got was this lousy Che Guevara T-shirt.

At a Caribbean resort, Obama grinned through a semi-erotic encounter with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, then failed to answer a "strategic rape" charge lodged against America by ex-Sandinista Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua (who knows plenty about rape).

Ignoring America's allies in favor of photo ops with anti-American leftists, such as Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Chavez, Obama blamed the United States for Latin America's problems.

Whoa! Plenty of US policies toward Latin America have been misguided and myopic. But the primary causes of political, economic and social failure from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego have been homemade.

Until Latin American states accept responsibility for what generations of corrupt, oppressive leaders did to their own countries, they won't progress beyond their self-destructive cultures of blame.

It's easy to chant, "Yanquis, go home!" Well, the Yankees went home. And only such countries as Chile, Colombia and, increasingly, Brazil, which have taken responsibility for their own futures, are making progress.

Obama was exactly right on one point: Our relations with Latin America must be a partnership in which all are treated as equals, based upon mutual respect.

But how do the lurid, screwball attacks on us by the likes of Chavez, Ortega or Bolivia's Evo Morales -- a racist demagogue -- count as examples of mutual respect? Doesn't our country deserve some slight defense from our president?

Obama needs to get up off his knees. Foreign leaders have already pegged him as the wimpiest metrosexual this side of the men's grooming-products counter at Barney's.

The egomaniacal Hugo Chavez drones on for hours about his "Bolivarian Revolution." But Bolivar, brave and peerless, stood for the rule of law above all else. A healthy constitution was his first prescription for freedom. Chavez sees the law as an obstacle to be smashed.

Grinning from ear to ear, our president embraced a man who persecutes, jails and, yes, terrorizes Venezuela's last democratically elected officials as he runs a once-vibrant economy into the ground. (Will we soon send aid to Caracas to compensate for the drop in the price of oil?)

Obama should be supporting those who respect the rule of law and the outcome of contested elections, the leaders of such diverse political systems as those of Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia. Instead, he lent his prestige to our declared enemies -- thugs who are doing great harm to their own people.

What we saw on display wasn't just the horrifying naivete the Obama administration shows throughout its foreign policy, but something even more worrisome: our president's greatest weakness.

He needs adulation. He's hooked on it. The crowds and clapping and cameras are O's cocaine (these days).

But to what end? Is it worth humiliating our country for a pat on the back and a fist bump from Hugo Chavez? When the ovations end, as they ultimately will, what will be left for the country our self-adoring president was elected to lead?

Whose president is he?

Ralph Peters is Fox News' strategic analyst and the author of "Looking for Trouble."
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