Source: Al Jazeera

A high-level international commission has declared the global “war on drugs” to be a failure, and has urged countries to consider legalising certain drugs, including cannabis, in a bid to undermine organised crime.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy, in its report released on Thursday, called for a new approach to the current strategy of reducing drug abuse by strictly criminalising drugs and incarcerating users.

It said the new approach should focus on battling the criminal cartels that control the drug trade, rather than targeting drug users. read more

Source: In These Times

The May 1 U.S. attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound violated multiple elementary norms of international law, beginning with the invasion of Pakistani territory.

There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by the 79 commandos facing almost no opposition.

President Obama announced that “justice has been done.” Many did not agree—even close allies.

British barrister Geoffrey Robertson, who generally supported the operation, nevertheless described Obama’s claim as an “absurdity” that should have been obvious to a former professor of constitutional law. read more

Source: The Independent

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America’s new role in the region. It was pathetic. “What is this ‘role’ thing?” an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. “Do they still believe we care about what they think?” read more