GLOBAL: Climate Deal Likely to Bear Big Price Tag
WASHINGTON — If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production, dislocations in how and where people live, sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits. So what is all this going to cost?
AMERICA: Report Questions “Suicides” at Guantanamo
On the night of June 10, 2006, three Guantanamo detainees were found dead in their individual cells. Without any autopsy or investigation, U.S. military officials proclaimed “suicide by hanging” as the cause of each death, and immediately sought to exploit the episode as proof of the evil of the detainees. Admiral Harry Harris, the camp’s commander, said it showed “they have no regard for life” and that the suicides were “not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare aimed at us here at Guantanamo”; another official anonymously said that the suicides showed the victims were “committed jihadists [who] will do anything they can to advance their cause,” while another sneered that “it was a good PR move to draw attention.”
UPDATE: Scott Horton has an interview with Law Professor Mark Denbeaux, the primary author of the report, in which he elaborates on why the military’s claims and “investigation” are so suspect.
PALESTINE: Targeting Civilians in Gaza
Stephen Lendman – The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is an “independent legal body dedicated to the protection of human rights, the promotion of the rule of law, and the upholding of democratic principles in the Occupied Territories.” It issues frequent press releases, statistics, fact sheets, documents, and reports like its October 22, 2009 English version of “Targeted Civilians: A PCHR Report on the Israeli Offensive against the Gaza Strip (27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009).”
BRITAIN: Blair Ignored ‘Crucial WMD Reports’
Times – Tony Blair received two secret intelligence reports saying that Saddam Hussein did not have working weapons of mass destruction just days before ordering the invasion of Iraq.
Sir John Scarlett, the former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, told the official inquiry into the war yesterday that the Prime Minister then did not respond to the reports, which had crucial military significance.
BRAZIL: Police ‘Kill 11,000 in Six Years’
Telegraph – Police in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have killed more than 11,000 people in the past six years, many in execution-style murders, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch.
Few of the officers have been charged in the extrajudicial killings, which are often labelled in police reports as the deaths of suspects who resisted arrest, the report said.
