THE EUROPEAN Council in Brussels today and tomorrow can deal only indirectly with the important business arising from the Lisbon Treaty, since the Czech supreme court will not rule on a legal challenge to the treaty until next week. But its members will informally discuss the appointment of an EU president, foreign policy representative and the composition of the next European Commission, now near the final stages of being decided. This fresh leadership is badly needed on climate change and the international economic crisis which will also be under consideration.
read more @ irish times
2. Obama, 12 months on, the star falls back to earth - opinion - he's toast
excerpt:
This was not a re-election rally for Mr Obama – not yet, please – but for Jon Corzine, the former boss of Goldman Sachs and now governor of New Jersey. He had invited the president to speak because, when Jersey voters go to the polls next Tuesday – New Jersey and Virginia are the only states where governorships are in play this year – it is not at all clear that they won't ditch him in favour of his Republican opponent, Chris Christie. The latest polls say it's too close to call.
...The President has already suffered a slow, but steady, decline in his approval ratings, so it cheers no one in the White House that the outcome in Jersey is so uncertain. In Virginia, where the President campaigned this week, the outlook is worse with most polls suggesting that the Democrat candidate, Creigh Deeds, will be walloped by his Republican rival, Bob McDonnell.
If Republicans seize the governors' mansions in both states, the embarrassment will be acute. That is just what happened in both New Jersey and Virginia back in 1993 before the Republicans seized control of the US Congress the following year, dealing a crippling blow to the newly minted Democratic president of the time, Bill Clinton.
3. Body count rises in Brazil's drug war - ie: now that Brazil has been "chosen," a safe space has to be carved out of the human beings who currently live there. drugs come in handy for that.
excerpts:
In Brazil, 35,000 people were fatally shot in 2007, and most of the deaths were drug-related. According to the government's public safety secretariat, there are nearly 23,000 drug-related homicides a year.
The drug war in Brazil is centered in its best-known city, Rio de Janeiro, and its slums, known as favelas, where police sometimes fear to tread, as well as in poor neighborhoods of Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre, Recife, Salvador, Curitiba and Belo Horizonte. Gun battles rage between rival gangs that seek to control the lucrative trade, particularly in cocaine, whose use has doubled in recent years in Brazil, according to the United Nations.
...The crime wave is particularly unsettling as Rio prepares to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics two years later.
...The weapons used by the traffickers are often unregistered; some are stolen from the police and the Brazilian army, according to the British magazine the Economist.
...[psyops alert:]
Luis Villamarin, a retired colonel in the Colombian army and author of many books about drug trafficking and counterterrorism, said the cocaine sold in Brazil comes largely from the Colombian Marxist guerrilla group FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
"The capture of Fernando Beira-Mar in 2002 was the first proof," he said, referring to the then-drug-kingpin in Brazil whose dealings with FARC were confirmed by Brazilian and Colombian authorities.
Mr. Villamarin also accused some Brazilian government employees of complicity with the Colombian guerrillas. In July 2008, the magazine Cambio asserted that the laptop of the former FARC leader Raul Reyes included messages from top advisers to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The press office of Brazil's presidency as well as the Justice Ministry have refused to comment on the allegations.
ooh, FARC, Lula, Columbia.....Mossad....Washington Times.....good luck Brazil. it's no fun being Israel's bitch. - ed.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/29/body-count-rises-in-brazils-drug-war/
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