Whoa. Columbian drug traffickers are making and using submarines to transport 3-5 tons of narco at a time! US Navy and Coast Guard has stopped 13 of these in the last two years. I wonder how many are making it through and how much more advanced they have to get before they get much more difficult to detect?

Quoted: It was on a routine patrol that the Colombian coast guard stumbled upon an eerie outpost amid the mangroves: a mini-shipyard where suspected drug traffickers were building submarines.

A really great article on coca production and policies in Bolivia. After visiting there a couple of years ago, I came away with a changed view (more cynical) on the effects of globalization and imperialism. It's amazing to see taxi drivers carrying huge garbage bags of coca leaves (you smell it the minute you get in) and to hear claims that their single largest export of the plant is to US subsidiaries of Coca-Cola (which the locals claim still use trace amounts of coca in the actual product). Interesting.

La Paz is a really vital city and Bolivia is an incredible country. What do you expect of a country that has "endured 192 changes of government in 178 yars of existence as a republic, 100 of them by revolution?"