Poor Obama. Venezuela just joined the UN Security Council And Hugo Chavez’s inexperienced daughter will be representing Caracas there.

Poor Obama. Venezuela just joined the UN Security Council And Hugo Chavez’s inexperienced daughter will be representing Caracas there.
Spare a thought for Barack Obama. Just when it already seemed a near-impossible challenge, managing United States foreign policy is poised to become a tad more horrendously complicated. Venezuela won a seat Thursday as the representative of Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations Security Council, the powerful forum intended to deal with urgent global crises. And as if that weren’t enough, one of the people representing the fervently anti-American administration of President Nicolas Maduro in the 15-member body will be Maria Gabriela Chavez, the daughter of the late Hugo Chavez,…Read more …

Ecuador is freeing thousands of convicted drug mules President Rafael Correa has said his country’s harsh old drug laws were ’imposed by the gringos.’ Now officials see small time smugglers as victims of cartels rather than as hardened criminals.

Ecuador is freeing thousands of convicted drug mules President Rafael Correa has said his country’s harsh old drug laws were ’imposed by the gringos.’ Now officials see small time smugglers as victims of cartels rather than as hardened criminals.
In Latin America’s latest challenge to Washington’s “war on drugs,” Ecuador has quietly begun releasing thousands of convicted cocaine smugglers. The move is a result of the country’s new criminal law, which took effect Aug. 10. It treats “drug mules” who commit the low-profit, high-risk offense more as vulnerable people exploited by cartels than as hardened criminals. The reform retroactively applies heavily reduced jail sentences to those already convicted of attempting to transport relatively small amounts of drugs — often hidden dangerously inside their own bodies — out of the Latin American country.…Read more …