We recently reported that U.S. military forces have been approved to engage in drug enforcement operations in Afghanistan. Now comes this report of DEA agents in New York busting a major opium lord said to be linked to the Taliban resistance:

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man to be charged with a crime related to 9-11 in the U.S., was finally allowed to enter a plea in federal court April 22, and, in his inimitably garbled fashion, pleaded guilty to all six charges of terrorist conspiracy (for which he will likely face the death penalty) while insisting he had no involvement in 9-11. Instead, he said he was recruited for a separate series of attacks aimed at freeing Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the notorious "Blind Sheikh" imprisoned at a top-security facility in Minnesota. (CNN, April 23)

Kudos to Pacific New Service for picking up our recent commentary on the coordinated propaganda blitz against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Readers of WW4 REPORT are aware that within a week of each other, Otto Reich called in a National Review cover story for a "coalition of the willing" to act against the Cuba-Venezuela "Axis of Evil," and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) issued a call to drain the terrorist "swamp" in Latin America, starting with Venezuela. Ominously, the media offensive comes at a time of escalating border tensions between Venezuela and Colombia, Washington's militarized South American client state.

Even after the Justice Department has blinked in the case of whistle-blowing FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, declassifying her claims and allowing her suit to go ahead, the judiciary is now blocking public accesss to the proceedings...

The New York Times is seemingly allergic to the word "occupation" when it comes to describing the Israel-Palestine conflict. It rarely mentions that all Israeli settlements, including those in East Jerusalem, violate international law. Daniel Okrent, the Times' public editor, appears to see no problem with that. When describing Israel's occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, NYT is reduced to writing stuff like Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 and 200,000 Israelis now live there and Palestinians claim this land as theirs, ignoring completely that the weight of international law and all respected human rights organizations consider East Jerusalem occupied, and reducing the conflict to a matter of he-said, she-said.

From a blogger working with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other groups comes this April 16 appeal on the case of two teenage Muslim girls detained on immigration charges following spurious claims they had been considering suicide-terror martyrdom:

Ethnic tensions are rising in southwest Iran's Khuzistan province along the Iraqi border, where violence has left three dead and injured in recent days. Protests by the region's Arab minority were sparked by reports that authorities were planning to colonize the city of Ahvaz with ethnic Farsies. Nationwide operations of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV were suspended by the government April 18 on charges of inciting the unrest. (AP, April 18)

Hours after polls closed in Saudi Arabia's third and final round of quasi-democratic elections, presumed Islamic militants attacked a security checkpoint in the holy city of Mecca, sparking a gunbattle in which one police officer was killed and several wounded. Up to 15 police and civilian vehicels were also reported destroyed. The battle reportedly began when a group of men in a taxi attempted to run the checkpoint.(AP, AHN, April 21)