From the award winning Canadian magazine Walrus: An audio photo essay about the coca farmers in Bolivia and their fight, assisted by the country's President Evo Morales, to keep cultivating the leaf for legal purposes.

Besides being a symbol of Bolivia's indigenous culture, the coca leaf is considered a cure for many ailments and an important source of work for farmers in this poor South American country.

Coca is not cocaine. However, the leaf is the main ingredient for the drug, and the United States and the United Nations would like to see the plant completely eradicated.

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MSNBC and Reuters are reporting that a US cargo ship fired upon an Iranian boat in the Persian Gulf. This event makes Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen's statement on Iran even more ominous:

Recent combat operations in Southern Iraq in Basra highlighted yet again Iran's activities in ways that very specifically pointed to activities which, in fact, resulted in the deaths of coalition soldiers. And I think for the ability to create stability in that part of the world that not just this alliance, but those who are allied, will have to deal with Iran in the very near future."

Kevin Drum has Mullen revising and extending his remarks.

It is in this context, that Hillary Clinton's umbrella of deterrence proposal is shrewd politically and as a matter of policy. It deserves debate in the Democratic contest.

Germany's highest court today struck down a law authorizing searches of personal computers to see what users had accessed online.

The law authorized the state of North Rhine-Westphalia's intelligence agency to access personal computers, networks and Internet communications. Online searches could comprise access to hard drives, monitoring what a user is typing on a keyboard and listening in to telephone conversations via the Internet.

.... The Karlsruhe-based Federal Constitutional Court said that the law ``violates the right to liberty which also guarantees the constitutional protection of the integrity and confidentiality of information technology systems,'' according to an e-mailed statement.

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Citing health reasons, Fidel Castro has resigned as President of Cuba. An election is expected within days.

His letter was published overnight in a Cuban newspaper.

"I will not aspire to, nor will I accept the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief," Castro wrote. "I wish only to fight as a soldier of ideas. ... Perhaps my voice will be heard."

....My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath," he said. "That's all I can offer."

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Former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has new and damning allegations against at least one senior Pentagon officials in the Bush Administration.

The unnamed official denies the allegations. Edmonds alleges cash bribes and payments regarding "Turks [who]had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “

Obama advisor Susan Rice says:

Obama feels that democracy and human rights in the context of Pakistan are essential to our security

But Obama advisor Zbigniew Brzeznski says:

I think the United States should not get involved in Pakistani politics. I deplore the absence of democracy in Pakistan, but I think admonitions from outside, injecting exile politicians into Pakistan, telling the Pakistan president what he should or should not wear, that he should take off his uniform, I don't really think this is America's business and I don't think it helps to consolidate stability in Pakistan

My view is that the statements from Rice and Brzezinski are both awfully simplistic. There are no easy answers for foreign policy questions and especially no easy answers for the Pakistan question. That is not a popular thing to say but I think it is true.

Via Radio Iowa, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards spoke with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf today. Here's Edwards talking about the situation (mp3 runs 2 minuates)

Henderson:  "In regards to the situation in Pakistan, if you were president, what would you be doing?"

Edwards: "If I were president I would do some of what I've already done.  I spoke with the Pakistani Ambassador and then a few minutes ago I spoke with President Musharraf, urging him to continue on the path to democratization, to allow international investigators to come in to determine what happened, what the facts were so that there would be transparency and credibility about what actually occurred and also about the upcoming schedule of elections and that the important thing for America to do in this unstable environment is first of all focus on the tragedy that's occurred.  Benazir Bhutto was a strong woman, a courageous woman, someone that I actually spoke at a conference with a few years and she talked about the path to democracy in Pakistan being baptized in blood so she understood the extraordinary risk that she was taking by going back and it's a terrible tragedy for the people of Pakistan, but it's important for America to be a calming influence and provide strength in this environment."

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Here's what the presidential candidates had to say about the assasination of former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto:

Hillary: (full statement at the end of this post)

Clinton said she had come to know Bhutto during the former prime minister's years in office and her time in exile and was "profoundly saddened and outraged" by the assassination. In a world of such violence and threats, Clinton said, "it certainly raises the stakes high for what we expect from our next president. "

Bill Richardson:

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called on President Bush to force Musharraf to step down. Until then, Richardson said the U.S. must suspend military aid to the Pakistani government.

"A leader has died, but democracy must live. The United States government cannot stand by and allow Pakistan's return to democracy to be derailed or delayed by violence," Richardson said.

Barack Obama:

"She was a respected and resilient advocate for the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people. We join with them in mourning her loss, and stand with them in their quest for democracy and against the terrorists who threaten the common security of the world," he said.

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President Bush:

"The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy," he said. "Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice."

From, Spencer Ackerman, Bhutto friend and advisor Husain Haqqani:

A longtime adviser and close friend of assassinated Pakistani ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto places blame for Bhutto's death squarely on the shoulders of U.S.-supported dictator Pervez Musharraf. . . . "There is only one possibility: the security establishment and Musharraf are complicit, either by negligence or design. That is the most important thing. She's not the first political leader killed, since Musharraf took power, by the security forces." Haqqani notes that Bhutto died of a gunshot wound to the neck. "It's like a hit, not a regular suicide bombing," he says. "It's quite clear that someone who considers himself Pakistan's Godfather has a very different attitude toward human life than you and I do."

Nawaz Sharif:

Pakistan Muslim League (N) chief Nawaz Sharif today described Benazir Bhutto's assassination as the most tragic incident in the history of Pakistan. . . ."We both were struggling for the same cause, and we had signed the charter of democracy," Sharif told a TV channel. . . . Sharif told Bhutto's supporters that he would fight "your war from now on", and that he shared the grief of "the entire nation".

I predict Musharraf will cancel the elections schedlued for 12 days from today.

A tragic and alarming event:

An attack on a political rally killed the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto near the capital, Islamabad, Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto was fired upon before the blast, and an official from her party said Ms. Bhutto was further injured by the explosion, which was apparently caused by a suicide attacker.

The NYTimes story is incredibly negative towards Ms. Bhutto and has little analysis of what this means for Pakistan, surely the more important story from the US perspective. A very strange story indeed. WaPo has this:

Bhutto's death is a devastating development, coming 12 days before Pakistanis are set to vote in national parliamentary elections already marked by enormous political turmoil. President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in November -- a move which he said was to combat terrorism, but which was widely perceived as an effort to stave off legal challenges to his authority. U.S. military officials said last week that the terrorist group al-Qaeda increasingly is focusing its efforts in Pakistan.

Al Qaida and the Pakistan intelligence services have had a longstanding relationship since the days when Pakistan was the only ally of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government's dealmaking with Al Qaida is also a matter of public record. Who is behind this and why is the question of the moment. As well as what does it mean for Pakistan and the United States. Pakistan's er, spotty, record in fighting Al Qaida and the Taliban, its coddling of known nuclear arms merchant A.Q. Khan and its de facto theft of US funding for fighting Al Qaida for other purposes makes this a critical moment for the US. Unfortunately, we have the worst President in history leading the worst Administration in history at the present time. This is bad.

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.