U.S. officials there hope that Afghanistan improves to the point where it's only as bad as Colombia, says this NYT story.

While the Latin American nation remains the world’s cocaine capital and is still plagued by drug-related violence, American officials argue that decades of American counternarcotics efforts there have at least helped stabilize the country.

“I wanted the Colombians to come here to give the Afghans something to aspire to,” Mr. Balbo (Vincent, Kabul chief of the DEA) said. “To instill the fact that they have been doing this for years, and it has worked.”

The post above says Afghanistan should aspire to Colombia in terms of drug control efforts. Well, all is not well in the Latin American cocaine capital.

From the May 13 San Francisco Chronicle story (via truthout):

Here's a silver lining in last month's avalanche of news coverage of Don Imus: The disc jockey's racist and sexist remarks inspired at least one Sunday morning talk show to invite women and people of color to discuss Imus' comments.

    Seeing nonwhite men on the Sunday shows is as rare as seeing them on the floor of the U.S. Senate. According to a study to be released Monday by the liberal media organization Media Matters for America, which was obtained by The Chronicle, at least 77 percent of the 2,150 guests who appeared on the four major Sunday shows in 2005-06 were men; at least 82 percent were white.

Here's the Media Matters release.

Sorry, missed this one. Democracy Now! talked to Davide Simonetti of Blairwatch over the sentencing of former civil servant David Keogh and former parliamentary researcher Leo O’Connor for leaking a memo stating that U.S. President George Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair in April 2004 that he wanted to bomb the Doha, Qatar headquarters of al-Jazeera.