Washington Informer

American authorities are planning a broad new campaign against terrorist financing networks in Afghanistan, sending in dozens of federal drug enforcement agents to help stem the country's massive opium trade, the Associated Press has learned.

The surge of narcotics agents, which would boost the number of anti-drug officials inside Afghanistan from a dozen to nearly 80, would bolster a strategy laid out last week by the Obama administration to use U.S. and NATO troops to target "higher level drug lords."

Detailed plans described to members of Congress behind closed doors earlier this month suggest the effort will be modeled after the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's campaign against drug cartels in South America.

U. S. Aid to Africa Must Stop, Argues African Economist
(GIN) - In a provocative new book, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argues that foreign aid in Africa, has been an ''unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster,'' an idea that ''seemed so right'' but is in fact ''so wrong'' that, like asbestos or the Hummer, it should be phased out entirely within the next decade.

“Why?” asks Sonia Shah in The Nation magazine. “Well, he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

Foreign aid, in some African countries, has become government's primary source of revenue, Moyo points out. In Ethiopia and Gambia, for example, 97 percent of the government's budget derives from foreign aid.

Small businesses selling food, clothing, and mosquito nets are cruelly shuttered out of business by avalanches of well-intentioned donations. The effect is anti-democratic, destabilizing, soul-crushingly ''malignant,'' Moyo writes, and ''exceptionally corrosive'' to government accountability, civil society and the prospects for economic development.
Moyo is a global economist at an investment bank in London. She previously worked at the World Bank in Washington DC. She holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford University and a Masters from Harvard University. Her book, “Dead Aid”, is available through Amazon.

Women's Peace Center Launched in Liberia
(GIN) - Named after a distinguished Liberian jurist and diplomat, The Angie Brooks International Center was opened with fanfare by Pres. Ellen Sirleaf Johnson.

The Center, the President said, will draw women from every part of the globe, including women world leaders who will meet and engage in training and research that will promote and enhance women's leadership development.
The Center will also serve as an international repository for documentation on women's issues and accomplishments, partnership, networking and advocacy on women's leadership.

The daughter of a Baptist minister and one of nine children, Brooks was raised by a widowed seamstress. She died on Sept. 9, 2007 in Houston, Texas. The Project is being supported by the African Women's Development Fund, the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Madam Mary Robinson, among others.

Controversy Dogs Pope on His First Africa Trip
(GIN) – As Pope Benedict XVI touches down in Cameroon on his first sojourn to Africa, a new translation of the Roman Catholic Mass is getting a trial run in South Africa, where some parishioners say it's too hard to understand.

Critics say the new translation is meant to more closely follow the original Latin text. Before Communion, for example, the prayer ''Lord, I am not worthy to receive you'' becomes ''Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.'' ''One in being with the Father'' becomes ''consubstantial with the Father''.

And the congregation's response to the greeting ''The Lord be with you,'' changes from ''And also with you'' to ''And with your spirit.''

Although mainstream Christian churches, evangelical churches, and Muslim faiths all appear to be expanding rapidly, there are only 430 bishops and some 27,000 priests for 187 million Catholics – 20 percent of the continent’s population.
After Cameroon, the pope will go to Angola – site of the first African mission, where Portuguese priests began to convert people 500 years ago.