King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has shown some mercy and granted a pardon to the victim of a gang rape who was sentenced to 200 lashes because she was in the company of a man other than her spouse at the time of the crime.

The rape took place a year and a half ago in Qatif, a small Shiite town in the Eastern Province, the center of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. The woman, who has been publicly identified only as the “Qatif girl,” said she met a former boyfriend to retrieve a photograph of herself. They were sitting in a car when seven men attacked, raping them both.

As I wrote here, the original sentence of 90 lashes was upped to 200 lashes after her lawyer complained to the media. Back to today's news:

Commenting on the pardon, the Saudi justice minister, Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Sheik, told Al Jazirah that the king fully supported the verdicts against the woman but had decided to pardon her because it was in the “interests of the people.”

“On one hand this tells people, ‘We support our system and we will punish you if you violate it,’” he said. “Yet he’s also showing mercy. Throughout, he’s making it clear that he is not disagreeing with the judge’s opinion on this sensitive issue of sexual chastity, but he believes that there is a higher interest to be served by the pardon, whether that’s relationships between Shiites and Sunnis, or international opinion.”

Thank you King Abdullah.

The German Government has long been opposed to Scientology which it regards as a money-making cult rather than a religion.

Now a large group of German government ministers has declared Scientology "incompatible with the Constitution."

One very controversial component of Scientology is its drug treatment program, Narconon. Tom Cruise, in an interview with Der Speigel quoted here, called it "only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world."

Cruise: I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That's not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudo science.

Cruise: You don't understand what I am saying. It's a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period.

SPIEGEL: With all due respect, we doubt that.

So do many others.

Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher who named a teddy bear "Mohammad" prompting her arrest and cries for lashings and her execution, has been pardoned by the President of Sudan. She is now back in London.

The pardon came following efforts by Nazir Ahmed and Sayeeda Warsi, Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords, to persuade the Sudanese government that releasing Gibbons would create international good will toward their country.

Time Magazine explains what the brouhaha was all about.

Sometimes a teddy bear is just a teddy bear, no matter what you call it.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is out, suffering a humiliating re-election defeat after four terms in office.

I only wish his refusal to support Schapelle Corby as she rots in an Indonesian prison for 20 years following her conviction for importing 4 kilos of pot in a boogie board played a part.

During the trial, Corby wrote to Prime Minister of Australia John Howard, saying in part:

“ As a father and as a leader, I plead for your help. I did not do this. I beg for justice. I don't know how much longer I can do this. Please bring me home. ”

Howard was quoted as saying in response:

“ I feel for her. I understand why there's a lot of public sympathy for her; I would simply say that I hope justice is done and it's a fair and true verdict...I would ask the rhetorical question: My fellow Australians, if a foreigner were to come to Australia and a foreign government were to start telling us how we should handle (it), we would react very angrily to that."

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Matt Yglesias deliver some great snark with a point, taking on the voice of an Iranian Richard Perle:

[I]t's not clear that a policy of appeasement would be wise. True, we've seen rational leadership even from vicious dictators like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, but the contemporary United States is led by religious fanatics, which introduces a new element into the equation. What's more, the USA is the only country on earth to have ever actually deployed nuclear weapons. Indeed, current political elites are so war-crazed and bloodthirsty that they not only engineered the 2003 attack on Iraq -- a country that tried to appease the Americans by eliminating its nuclear program and allowing IAEA inspectors to certify that it had done so -- but they continue to deny regretting it to this day. And that includes not only radicals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but so-called "moderates" like Hillary Clinton as well.

Well played by Matt.

Today President Bush reaffirmed his support for Pakistani President Musharraf:

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

But of course. Anyway, remember this?

mentioned Dr. Shazia briefly in June when I wrote about General Musharraf's quasi-kidnapping and house arrest of Mukhtaran Bibi - the Pakistani rape victim who used compensation money to open schools and start a women's aid group.

And another of our major allies:

A Saudi court on Tuesday more than doubled the number of lashes that a female rape victim was sentenced to last year after her lawyer appealed the original sentence. . . . Her case has been widely debated since the court sentenced her to 90 lashes a year ago for being in the same car as an unrelated man, even after it ruled that she had subsequently been raped. For a woman to be in seclusion with a man who is not her husband or a relative is a crime in Saudi Arabia, whose legal code is based on a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law.

They hate us for our freedoms.

Saudi Arabia's Qatif General Court has revised the sentence of a 19 year old gang rape victim. The woman was originally sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the company of a male who was not a family member. But, because she and her lawyer publicized her plight, her sentence has been increased to 6 months in jail and 200 lashes.

Her lawyer, civil rights activist Abdulrahman al-Lahem, has been removed from the case, stripped of his law license and told to show up for a disciplinary hearing next month.

No matter how many times I read this article, I just keep shaking my head. How is it possible that Sharia law still exists? Just another reason to keep religion and government separate.

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's embrace of the Cuban authoritarian leader Fidel Castro is as strong as ever:

Chavez joined some of South America's most left-leaning leaders at a rally of about 3,000 people gathered for a "People's Summit" in a Santiago stadium. Chavez interrupted his speech at the rally to call Cuba's Fidel Castro, who he considers his mentor. . . . "Well Fidel, what a shame that we don't have speakerphone on this mobile, the people wanted to hear you," said Chavez, dressed in a red T-shirt.

There can be little doubt that Chavez garners more appreciation in Latin America than he should, and that most of this sympathy is a direct result of the disastrous policies of the Bush Administration.

Musharraf must go. Hundreds more lawyers were arrested in Pakistan yesterday. The photo is of lawyers shouting slogans as they are being hauled away in police vans and accompanies this Scotsman article describing the lawyers being beaten.

Lawyers protesting yesterday outside the courts in Karachi and Lahore were thrashed by baton-charging police amid clouds of tear gas. About 350 of them were rounded up in Lahore.

Lawyers, judges and human-rights activists appear to have been deemed the enemies of the regime, as the country slides towards totalitarian rule. Since Saturday, between 1,500 and 2,000 have been incarcerated.

"On the pretext of fighting militants, General Musharraf has mounted a coup against Pakistan's civil society," said Brad Adams, the Asia director at the campaign group Human Rights Watch. "It's clear it is aimed solely at keeping himself in power."

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CNN is reporting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency and suspended the Constitution and imposed martial law.

• Emergency rule declared, constitution suspended, Chief Justice expelled
• Troops enter Supreme Court, court declares emergency illegal
• Ex-PM Benazir Bhutto said to be returning to Pakistan from Dubai
• Most media channels off the air due to an apparent media blackout

I haven't been following Pakistan much, what's going on?

The Washington Post devotes 3 pages on the burgeoning cocaine trade in Venezuela.

It sounds like a low-budget version of Scarface. The drug kingpins are in cahoots with the Venezuelan military officers. The blame is given to Bush:

The Bush administration's dismal relations with Venezuela's government have made matters worse, anti-drug agencies say, paralyzing counternarcotics cooperation.

Venezuela did cut back on U.S. intervention efforts, but here's why:

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I see while I was out today President Bush made the statement:

If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it'd be a dangerous threat to world peace," Bush said. "So I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested" in ensuring Iran not gain the capacity to develop such weapons. "I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously," he said.

In the mail today, I received an unsolicited advance copy of the book released Tuesday, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark.

From the inside jacket: