I must say, this is pretty ballsy:

Police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana say they have arrested six men for stealing pieces of the U.S. border fence to sell as scrap metal. [...]

The first two men caught cutting into the fence on Monday. An alleged accomplice was detained Tuesday with 11 pieces of fencing. The U.S. Border Patrol alerted police to three more suspects.

Police said Wednesday in a statement that the men may face federal charges because the fence area is considered federal property.

There really wasn't a less guarded fence in all of Tijuana?

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A great crumb from the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel: nearly four in five Americans agreed, in a Fox News poll, that former President Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea -- during which he successfully lobbied for the release of jailed journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee -- will not encourage the kidnapping of more Americans.

One comment, though. Ling and Lee -- and John Yettaw, the American released from Myanmar over the weekend -- were not kidnapped. They were arrested and put in prison. Seems an important distinction to make.

A new bill approved by Mexico's congress would effectively decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Under the new law, treatment programs would be suggested for the first two offences and mandated for the third. Visiting U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske seems not quite sure how to feel about it:

"I guess if I was looking at it strictly from our viewpoint, the use of the government as a strong sanction is often pretty helpful in getting people into treatment," said Kerlikowske, who heads the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. "If the sanction becomes completely nonexistent I think that would be a concern, but I actually didn't read quite that level of de-facto (decriminalization) in the law."

"I would actually give this a bit of a wait and see attitude," said Kerlikowske. "I've always found about laws, whether they've been enacted by states or our own federal government, is that it is the application and the use of the law and how it's actually done" are key.

Kerlikowske was much more enthusiastic about Mexican President Felipe Calderon's tougher proposal, which would mandate treatment for first offenders through special drug courts. Still, the fact that a U.S. drug czar is this open to any decriminalization program from its drug-war ally, does seem significant. The United States publicly criticized a similar bill in 2006.

Kerlikowske disappointed marijuana legalization advocates last week by saying, "Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine." But Kerlikowske has previously explained that he does not in any way support legalization, but favors a treatment model over a law-enforcement approach. 

The question is whether the drug czar is going to back up his rhetoric with any real reform, especially at a time when the Obama administration has little political capital to spare. His measured response to the Mexican bill and presence at the release of a UN report, which praises Portugal's decriminalization program, may indicate that he's dipping his toe into this debate while making it very clear that legalization is out of the question. 

For now, drug law reform advocates will probably have to take a "wait and see attitude" toward him as well. 

UIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images

The 35 million people that make up the bustling metropolis of Tokyo experience unique comfort caused by a strange lack of crime -- bicycles can be left unlocked, lost possessions are returned to owners. For this reason, it is understandable that Tokyo police don't resemble stereotypical Officer Krupkes: swinging their billy clubs, waiting for the troublemakin' youth. Recently, however, the fuzz has been faced with a real challenge: Kitashikahama Park in Adachi Ward acts as a social space for rowdy teens to express themselves through vandalism and raucous midnight hijinks.

The Tokyo authorities are attempting to differentiate themselves by fighting crime creatively--by assaulting young ears. A British-made Mosquito MK4 Anti-Vandal system has been installed on the premises. The machine emits a high-frequency whine that only teens can hear.

Seven days a week, the whining begins at 11 p.m. and continues until 4 a.m. Video surveillance cameras monitor park buildings. And Kitashikahama Park empties out.

Except for television news crews.

"We see them on the surveillance videos, and there are too many of them to count," said Haruyuki Masuda, head of park management in Adachi Ward. "They hide behind trees and bushes, They are waiting for kids to come. I think they have scared off the kids."

Neighbors report that the park has quieted down at night, if you don't count the television news trucks and the TV-news-watching busybodies who descend on the park after 11 p.m. to find out whether they are too old to be irritated by the whining."

It's too soon to say if the Mosquito system is the real cause of the preliminary decrease in crime. Masuda commented, "We hadn't planned on this being a news sensation. We need things to calm down before we can decide if it really works. We need the TV crews to stop sneaking around."

A new United Nations report released Tuesday has spurred international law enforcement into action in West Africa. As many as four UN bodies, ECOWAS, and Interpol are involved in what is to become a concerted effort aimed at stopping organized crime.

Among other conclusions, the 90-page UN report finds that up to half of all medication used in the region may be either "substandard or counterfeit," and that "80 percent of the cigarette market ... is illicit, meaning that cigarette sales in those countries chiefly profit criminals."

In particular, reports the BBC, the new campaign targets Guinea-Bissau, the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Observers can expect strengthened border security as well as attempts to improve local judicial systems.

The new UN world drug report has some good news - worldwide cocaine and opium production are down: 

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan, where 93% of the world's opium is grown, declined 19% in 2008, according to the UN world drug report. In Colombia, which produces half of the world's cocaine, cultivation of coca fell 18% while production declined 28% compared with 2007. Global coca production, at 845 tonnes, was said to be at a five-year low, despite some increases in cultivation in Peru and Bolivia[...]

The world's most popular drug, though, is still going strong, and getting more dangerous: 

Cannabis remains the most widely cultivated and used drug around the world, although estimates are less precise. Data also show that it is more harmful than commonly believed, said the report.

The average THC content (the harmful psychotropic component) of hydroponic marijuana in North America almost doubled in the past decade. "This has major health implications as evidenced by a significant rise in the number of people seeking treatment," said the report.

The world's biggest markets for cannabis were North America, Oceania, and western Europe. For cocaine, North America and some parts of western Europe remain the main markets, with the UK having the highest number of users and Spain the highest number per capita and the largest number of seizures.

The biggest headlines, though, came from the new approach for dealing with users:

"People who take drugs need medical help, not criminal retribution," said Antonio Maria Costa, director of [the UN Office on Drugs and Crime], calling for universal access to drug treatment. Since people with serious drug problems provided the bulk of drug demand, treating this problem was one of the best ways of shrinking the market.

His call for international law enforcement to target traffickers rather than users came as it was announced that there is a worldwide growth in synthetic drugs.

Drug law reformers saw Costa's words as a significant sign in the debate over the "war on drugs". However, he said that legalisation was not the answer.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Remember those movies with such convoluted plot twists that make you say "there's no way that would happen in real life?" Yet, in Australia, the Melbourne gang war continues to prove that fact can be just as improbable.

A vicious gangland struggle that has gripped Melbourne for more than a decade took a surprising twist this week when the matriarch of the city’s most powerful criminal clan was charged in connection with the murder of her brother-in-law.

Behind the image of friendly suburbia the city presents to the world, a battle for control of the lucrative drugs trade has led to the deaths of more than 30 people and brought mayhem to the streets.

The past two years have been quiet — relatively speaking — but that all changed with the killing of Des “Tuppence” Moran, 61, on Monday. He was shot a number of times, at close range, by two masked men as he sipped his daily coffee in a café in the busy Ascot Vale area[...]

About 15 minutes after the shooting, Judy Moran — whose two sons, Jason and Mark, and husband Lewis (Des’s brother) have all been killed in the gangland wars — arrived at the crime scene in tears, screaming his name[...]

However, within 24 hours Mrs Moran, 64, and her friend Suzanne Kane, 45, were charged with being accessories to the murder, with Ms Kane’s partner, Geoffrey Amour, being charged with the killing.

Police told a court that officers saw Mrs Moran dumping the getaway car and a rifle used in the murder, while phone taps caught her discussing the disposal of other items used in the killing. A search of Mrs Moran’s home uncovered three handguns, a loaded shotgun, stolen numberplates, clothing and a wig matching the description of those worn by the gunmen who carried out the hit.

In a further twist, Mrs Moran’s house was damaged severely on Tuesday night in a fire described by police as suspicious.

Thinking this would be a great TV show? Too late to get credit for that: the gang war has already been turned into a critically and commercially successful show in Australia. In fact, it was so popular that the program was banned from being broadcast in one Australian state, for fears of swaying a murder trial. Ironically, many people ended up seeing the series anyways--through illegal copies.

Ryan Pierse/Getty Images  

Chinese authorities have burned (in a single industrial furnace) over 860 pounds of smuggled drugs after a three-year effort to track and arrest more than 16,000 suspected dealers. But that's not all. A government spokesperson said drug enforcement agents only destroyed "about half" of the stockpile that was created as a result of the 2006-2008 operation.

Yesterday marks the 170th anniversary of China's Humen Opium Destruction, in which another government official had 1,000 tons of foreign drugs burned. Today's event was held in honor of the original.

JINGHUA.CN

The Olympics torch for the 2010 winter games in Vancouver is officially supposed to evoke "the cool, crisp and modern lines that are left behind in the snow and ice from winter sports." But a lot of people are saying the 37-inch white torch, with crimped ends and twist in the middle, resembles a hand-rolled marijuana joint, especially when it's lit (and viewed in the horizontal position).

It doesn't help that Vancouver is a major marijuana-producing area. The Olympic torch has now been dubbed the Olympic Toke.

Photo: © VANOC/COVAN

I breathed a great sigh of relief with the Iranian government's announcement of the release of journalist Roxana Saberi, who Tehran convicted of spying for the United States.

Saberi was initially arrested in January for buying a bottle of wine. When in custody, officials realized she had no press credentials (which had been revoked in 2006). Her trial lasted only an hour, and she was sent to the infamous Evin prison with an eight-year sentence. 

And, joining Spencer Ackerman here, I hope that Saberi's release will draw attention to the plight of two other imprisoned journalists: Euna Lee and Laura Ling of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's Current TV.

North Korea has held the pair incommunicado since the end of March. The Wall Street Journal reports:

U.S. officials have said less about Ms. Lee and Ms. Ling than they have about an American reporter, Roxana Saberi, who was recently convicted of espionage in Iran. The strategy is partly a gamble that not provoking the North Koreans may lead to a speedy resolution, analysts say, but it's also a sign of the increased uncertainty in dealing with Pyongyang.

U.S. officials have said little about the journalists' situation, but have indicated they aren't making progress with Pyongyang. A person not in government who is familiar with the situation said that North Korea isn't talking to the U.S. at all.

Here's from a McClatchy story (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

North Korea appears to be holding the women in a protocol house in Pyongyang.

"The rumor was that they are being housed at one of the guest villas," said Han S. Park, a University of Georgia expert who was visiting North Korea as part of a private U.S. delegation after the women were captured. Park told CNN International that the North Koreans scoffed at any suggestion that the Americans were receiving harsh treatment.

"They laughed. 'We are not Guantanamo.' That's what they said," Park said.

Still, it's a worrisome situation. Washington has far more dialogue and slowly warming relations with Tehran. More importantly, both governments had something at stake in ensuring the Saberi incident didn't become the Saberi fiasco.

Not so with Lee and Ling, and the U.S. and North Korean governments. Even if the Swedish diplomat who conducts relations for the U.S. managed to negotiate for their release, he'd have few obvious carrots or sticks to reach for, and the DPRK would have little reason to be magnanimous. 

I also hope the U.S. considers releasing or charging the foreign journalist it has in custody in Iraq. The U.S. says that Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam, arrested in a raid on his home in September, poses a threat to security and continues to hold him -- despite an Iraqi court ruling this winter that he should be freed. 

For lists of and information on currently imprisoned reporters, see here and here. (The worse offender in the detention of journalists? China.)

STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

Reuters reports the fairly incredible stat the one fifth of the 5,500 candidates in India's national election are facing criminal charges. That's quite a bit higher than the previously published estimate of 70, but not entirely unbelieveable given that 128 of India's 543 Members of Parliament are already facing charges.

I asked Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch and a former Clinton administration official, to work through some of the foreign policy implications of the newly released torture memos with me.

We discussed whether the Bush administration memos encouraged other countries to torture, or led to any global uptick in "enhanced interrogation" practices. "I've always tried to be careful not to suggest that countries like Egypt or China or Uzbekistan would be torturing more because the United States was setting a bad example. Obviously, dictatorships torture for their own reasons, and they didn't need [former U.S. President] George W. Bush to show them how," he says.

But, the Bush administration torture of detainees and disavowal of the Geneva Conventions did preclude diplomacy on many occasions, Malinowski says. He testified before the Helsinki Commission in 2007 to make the point:

A couple of years ago, Human Rights Watch was meeting with the Prime Minister of Egypt, and we raised a case in which hundreds of prisoners rounded up after a terrorist bombing were tortured by Egyptian security forces.   The Prime Minister didn't deny the charge.  He answered, "We're just doing what the United States does."  We've had Guantanamo and the administration's interrogation policies thrown back in our face in meetings with officials from many other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and Lebanon.  U.S. diplomats have told us they face the same problem.  A U.S. ambassador to a leading Middle Eastern country, for example, has told us that he can no longer raise the issue of torture in that country as a result. 

Malinowski says the detainee abuse made it difficult for the White House to negotiate any human rights provisions or issues, broadly. "Issues beyond torture were effected, because it enabled authoritarian governments to say, ‘You have no right to lecture us,'" he says. "They were delighted to tweak the United States on it."

The biggest offender? Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who Malinowski described as a "world champion" of chiding the United States via its own policies.

Nevertheless, Malinowski thinks that, despite the horrible details revealed by the Bush administration and International Committee of the Red Cross memos, ultimately their release is a very good thing for the Obama administration.

[Obama] can go to a country like Turkey or Indonesia or Egypt and say, "Look, I know what it's like to face real security threats, and we as Americans understand the temptation to give up some of our liberties and principles to defend ourselves against those threats. But what we've learned the hard way in the last eight years is that those liberties and principles actually make us stronger. You could learn from our example."

That's a much more effective way of arguing the point than going to those same countries and saying, look at our perfect system and our glorious morality, and maybe someday you can be as good as we are. So I think if he uses the experience as a cautionary tale, it will actually make our country a more effective and compelling champion of human rights around the world, ironically.

Here's to hoping so.

Photo: Entrance to Bagram Air Base by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Ukraine says its security service says it caught three persons attempting to sell radioactive material, which they said was plutonium-239, for $10 million. A government spokesperson said the material could possibly have been used in a "dirty-bomb" attack, and that it was of Soviet origin.

Relatedly -- Jeffrey Lewis and Meri Lugo discuss the draw-down of nuclear weaponry in an excellent FP Argument post today. 

Scott Horton reports that Spanish prosecutors will indict high-ranking members of the Bush administration over allegations of detainee abuse and torture.

The six are: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee; former OLC lawyer John Yoo; former Defense Department lawyer William J. Haynes II; David Addington, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; and former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith.

Horton explains the context of the case:

The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. [They found sufficient evidence.]

The case won't come before Judge Real, though; he also was involved in a terrorism case against the five Spaniards held in Guantanamo. 

What does it all mean?

Well, John Yoo won't be vacationing on the Costa del Sol this summer. Were any of the Bush Six to step foot in Spain, they would be arrested. 

More importantly: Spain has said that it would drop the cases if the United States would investigate the claim. Thus far, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House haven't responded. But the indictment may force the administration's hand, spurring a response to the allegations.

For, ultimately, the issue may have more political potency than judicial importance. It's up to U.S. President Barack Obama to dictate whether and how the strong allegations of legal abuses in the Bush administration will be resolved.