LA PAZ, Bolivia – Bolivia’s leftist government said Tuesday it would extend control over mining, forestry and other sectors of the economy after President Evo Morales nationalized the country’s huge natural gas industry. Foreign governments warned relations could be damaged.

Soldiers were posted at 56 gas installations around the country a day after Morales issued a decree that analysts say could drive petroleum companies from South America’s poorest nation and isolate Bolivia from important allies like Brazil and Spain.

The move solidifies Morales’ role alongside Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro in Latin America’s new axis of socialist-inclined leaders united against “capitalist, imperialist” U.S. influence.

In Peru, Ollanta Humala, the nationalist presidential hopeful headed to a runoff election, has said he too would force foreign mining and gas companies to renegotiate contracts. But his vice presidential running-mate, Gonzalo Garcia, said Tuesday that Humala would take a less confrontational stance than Morales.

Morales said Monday that the gas decree “was just the beginning, because tomorrow it will be the mines, the forest resources and the land.” Morales’ planning minister earlier this month spoke of plans for “drastic reforms” of mining laws.
thestate.com

SAO PAULO – Move over the “axis of evil”. The time is ripe for the “axis of gas”. Meet the Gran Gasoduto del Sur (the Great Gas Pipeline of the South) – the South American entry into Pipelineistan, soon to join networks from Siberia to both Europe and Asia as well as the American-inspired Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. In terms of political will applied by the new axis of Caracas, Brasilia and Buenos Aires, the pipeline is already a done deal.
atimes.com

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s president will approve a law that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs to concentrate on fighting violent drug gangs, the government said on Tuesday.

President Vicente Fox will not oppose the bill, passed by senators last week, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters, despite likely tensions with the United States.

“The president is going to sign that law. There would be no objection,” he said. “It appears to be a good law and an advance in combating narcotics trafficking.”
washingtonpost.com

The news came over this morning that, after a visit from the US Ambassador, Mr. Fox has changed his mind. He’s ‘returning the bill to Congress’…in other words, it’s dead.

I do at bit of volunteer work at the Gift of Hope home in East Baltimore, run by the Missionaries of Charity. The nuns follow in the path of their founder, Mother Teresa, as they minister to anywhere from eight to twelve men down on their luck. Many living in this three-story row house are addicts, spending their final days withering away from AIDS

The good sisters treat all the men the same–with dignity.

This sense of dignity makes me think of the so-called war on drugs that our government has been waging for the past 35 years. Despite spending $50 billion annually at the federal, state and local level to prevent the drug trade, despite putting more people behind bars for drug-related offenses than any other country, the war has not made a dent into the drug trade. Business is booming, with up to $200 billion exchanging hands in this underground U.S. economy (drugwarfacts.org).

I remember back in ’88 when Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke called for treating drug abuse not as a criminal problem, but as a health issue. Made sense to me. Most junkies are not bad people; they’re just sick.

Any number of politicos pounced on the proposal like a dog on meat, denouncing it as extreme, dangerous and insane. Some liberals called Schmoke the most dangerous man in America. Naturally, the issue faded from our public discourse.

Kevin Zeese, president of the Common Sense for Drug Policy, believes the nation is now ready for a different approach. That’s one of the reasons he’s running in Maryland as an independent for the U.S. Senate. For the past twenty years he and his organization have been a voice in the wilderness calling for an end to the war on drugs.
counterpunch.org

By Lt. Gen. William E. Odom

Why America must get out of Iraq now.

Withdraw immediately or stay the present course? That is the key question about the war in Iraq today. American public opinion is now decidedly against the war. From liberal New England, where citizens pass town-hall resolutions calling for withdrawal, to the conservative South and West, where more than half of red state citizens oppose the war, Americans want out. That sentiment is understandable.

The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to control the country will be pro-American. Still, U.S. President George W. Bush says the United States must stay the course. Why? Let’s consider his administration’s most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq.

If we leave, there will be a civil war. In reality, a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam. Any close observer could see that then; today, only the blind deny it. Even President Bush, who is normally impervious to uncomfortable facts, recently admitted that Iraq has peered into the abyss of civil war. He ought to look a little closer. Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. ThatÍs civil war.
foreignpolicy.com

ALGIERS, Algeria — Algeria’s most feared militant Islamic group has pleaded for the help of al-Qaida’s chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, following painful setbacks by the army.

The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, led by Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud Abdel Malek, sent a letter to Zarqawi hailing his activities in fighting the enemies of Islam and declaring Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the “caliphate of Muslims.”

The letter urged Zarqawi to “support brothers in Algerian jihad groups by making sermons that call for defeating the tyrants.”
wpherald.com

If they want to get in touch with him, they should call Washington…

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) – The top U.S. commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal urged U.S. forces to “go to the outer limits” to extract information from prisoners, according to a U.S. officer cited in a military document.
The Army last year exonerated Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of wrongdoing relating to detainee abuse, but human rights lawyers said the document raises fresh questions about the degree to which senior officers sanctioned the abuse.

“This is evidence that raises additional questions about the role of Lt. Gen. Sanchez in authorizing and endorsing the abuse of prisoners,” Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said on Tuesday.

The May 19, 2004 Defense Intelligence Agency document was among more than 100,000 pages of files turned over by the government to the ACLU under court order as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
alertnet.org

THE question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?

Irritation grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call ‘George W’s palace’ rising from the banks of the Tigris.

In the pavement cafes, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built. They are not impressed by the architects’ claims that the diplomatic outpost will be visible from space and cover an area that is larger than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes. They are more interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the prime real estate or simply took it.
timesonline.co.uk

US forces are switching tactics in Iraq to take a less confrontational approach to civilians in response to criticism from British military commanders that they have been too tough.
American commanders are ordering marines and soldiers manning checkpoints or travelling in convoys to be less trigger-happy. Instead of firing into the air or at civilians to warn them off as they approach checkpoints or convoys in cars, troops nervous about suicide bombers are being encouraged to use strobe lights and other means to signal that they should slow down or back off. Troops are also being told to be less rough during searches.

Lieutenant-General Peter Chiarelli, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, has sent his commanders articles from the British press that criticised US forces for being unnecessarily tough.

A spokeswoman for the US-led coalition forces in Baghdad yesterday refused to confirm the new approach was being adopted: “This falls under rules of engagement and is completely classified.”
guardian.co.uk

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraqi police have found 36 bullet-riddled bodies of men shot dead in apparent sectarian killings as lawmakers convened the first working session of parliament since it was elected in December.

An interior ministry official said 14 bodies were found in eastern Baghdad Wednesday, while 20 other corpses were recovered from various areas in the capital late Tuesday.

Two more bodies were found in the town of Al-Mussayib, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad.

Hundreds of such bullet-riddled bodies, the result of tit-for-tat sectarian killings, have been found across the country, mostly in Baghdad, since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in February.
news.yahoo.com