The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) does almost nothing to eradicate drug production in Afghanistan, and this drug-trafficking problem will likely worsen in the near future, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated, reports Voice of Russia radio. ISAF has failed to bring stability to the region, Putin charged yesterday at a meeting of the Russian Security Council.

"The main objects of narco-agression are primarily countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the European Union," Director of the Federal Drug Control Service of the Russian Federation Viktor Ivanov said yesterday at the 4th session of SCO competent agencies in Bishkek. As he laid out, transit of Afghan heroin affects nearly 100 UN countries on all continents.

As reported by Voice of Russia radio, Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency Viktor Ivanov said yesterday that in the fight against drug trafficking from Central Asia, a new focus should be made on the region's economic development. Each year Afghanistan produces some 150 billion doses of heroin and some 30 billion doses of hashish.

A new UN Office on Drugs and Crime report indicates that Afghanistan is heading for a huge opium harvest this Summer, and this year's production may push ahead of the record 8,000 tons produced in 2007, the year the global financial market collapsed.

Eight former DEA heads have called on Obama to nullify the Colorado and Washington State pot legalization laws, under the federal laws against marijuana.

In a May 2 article in the British Independent, columnist Mark Steel writes:

As Lyndon LaRouche said repeatedly last week about the claims of Syrian chemical weapons being used, "there is no evidence."

The international media, and now members of the British Parliament, are rejecting the assertions by the British government that it has evidence that chemical weapons were used by the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

Seven people died in street violence in Venezuela on April 15, in the aftermath of the April 14 presidential elections in that country. Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, narrowly defeated Henrique Capriles by 50.8% to 49% according to official returns, which were immediately contested by Capriles, who also called for a total recount.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died on March 5th, after a long battle with an undisclosed form of cancer. He had been President for the past 14 years. Acting President Nicolas Maduro has announced new elections for April 14, in which he will be a candidate, as will opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Drug production and terrorist attacks are both on the rise in Colombia as a result of President Juan Manuel Santos's championing of drug legalization and reopening negotiations with the largest cocaine cartel in South America, the FARC.