Teddy bear 'infidel' pardoned

I don't mean to be insensitive but Sudan is one [mess]ed up place.

You have a military dictatorship that refuses to uphold a peace deal that ended a long civil war in the south of the country. One that sponsors a genocide in the west of the country.

But the rent-a-mobs want a teacher to be murdered for naming a teddy bear.

I realize there's more to it. Clearly, the dictatorship doesn't want the planned UN peacekeeping force to be deployed in Darfur... a mission which it has been resisting for years. So authorities whipped up this tempest about a British teacher who let her class name a teddy bear Mohammed... a boy in the class named Mohammed suggested the teddy bear have the same name.

This tempest in a teapot allowed the regime to whip up pseudo-religious and nationalist fanaticism that would give it an excuse to resist the UN force a little longer.

Plus, the decision of the dictator, Gen. Omar al-Bashir, to pardon the teacher makes him look like the good guy. It made him look like a moderate, bravely resisting the hysterical rent-a-mobs (which his regime was probably instrumental in creating in the first place)... illustrating yet again that religious extremism is dangerous regardless of who does it.

I guess when you're sponsoring genocide, you need all the good PR you can get... no matter how you get it.