Human Rights and the Will to be free

Overview of the Arab-spring!

TRIPOLI, July 23 (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi criticised on Saturday the popular uprising in neighbouring Egypt that forced Hosni Mubarak from power this year as the Libyan leader battles rebels who have...

This vlog was recorded on January 18th by Asmaa Mahfouz, the girl who helped start it all. She had shared it on her Facebook, and it had gone viral. NEVER FORGET!

In the previous legislature, Egypt's mandatory quota system allowed women to hold approximately 13 percent of the seats -- 64 out of 445. Now, the only protection for women will apply to the half of the new parliament's seats that will be elected by the party list system, for which each party's list must include at least one woman. Where on that list the woman's name must appear is not specified.
Contrast this with recent developments in Tunisia, where the transitional government has decreed that not only must every political party present equal numbers of male and female candidates, but that men and women must alternate on the lists, so that however many seats a party gains will be divided equally between the sexes. In a fascinating turn, some of Tunisia's Islamist parties supported the measure as well. ...

CAIRO (Reuters) - A court postponed Monday the trial of Egypt's former interior minister over the killing of protesters until next week so that he will be tried alongside ousted President Hosni Mubarak.The...

Egyptian troops fire in the air to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in Cairo trying to reach the defence ministry, where the ruling military council is based.

Following the law of “non-contradiction,” logical consistency is a concept that offers up the simple idea that if someone says X and not-X at the same time, they’re either confused or trying to deceive you.
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In his December 10, 2009 Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech, Obama said: “America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens.” Such a statement stands in stark contrast to Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King’s assertion, in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, that the U.S. was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and that it had become, along with other Western nations, “arch anti-revolutionaries,” subverting people’s movements around the globe. Clearly these two men’s ideas about the U.S. are not compatible.
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The Egyptian government, led by the U.S. backed dictator, Mubarak, frequently violated many of its people’s basic human rights. According to a January 12, 2009 diplomatic cable, made available by WikiLeaks, the U.S. was well aware of Egypt’s State of Emergency law and its consequences for the people. The cable reported of the law that it had been “in effect almost continuously since 1967,” and granted the government “broad powers to arrest individuals without charge and to detain them indefinitely.” The cable also explained that the regime had used the Emergency Law to target political opponents including bloggers and labor demonstrators. In fact, a January 15, 2009 diplomatic cable by U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey—again, made available by WikiLeaks—indicates that police brutality was, at the time, “routine and pervasive,” and that “police using force to extract confessions from criminals [is] a daily event.” Ambassador Scobey also wrote that there were indications that the government was engaged in torture and the “sexual molestation” of at least one female democracy activist.
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Soon the people of the tiny Persian Gulf nation Bahrain, too, awoke with the zeal to enact and experience freedom, whatever the consequences. Like Egypt had been, Bahrain is ruled by a dictatorial, U.S. backed regime, the Khalifa family. According to the New York Times, the Shiite majority in Bahrain have long complained of their being marginalized and discriminated against by the Sunni royal family. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa is said to hire foreigners to take up law enforcement so as to prevent Shiite citizens from carrying weapons or wearing police uniforms. Moreover, despite overwhelming support for a 2001 national charter meant to produce key democratic reform, in 2002, “the king imposed a Constitution by decree that Shiite leaders say has diluted the rights in the charter and blocked them from achieving a majority in the Parliament.”[10] The U.S. has long supported Bahrain’s monarchy despite its aversion to democracy and human rights.
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While the Western World is very quick to support protesters in the Middle East, it also likes to sell their rulers weapons. + Womens Rights in Egypt. - http://www.petercliffordonline.com/conscience/

As Egypt’s economy sputters through the first post-Mubarak months, many continue to complain about the ousted officials who are still “enjoying the people’s money,” the benefits of decades of corruption.

Thousands converge in Cairo's Tahrir square ready for mass rally
English.news.cn 2011-07-08 18:21:14 FeedbackPrintRSS
CAIRO, July 8 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Egyptians converged in central Cairo's Tahrir Square Friday morning, getting ready for a new million-man rally calling for achieving the demands in the Jan. 25 Revolution.

More than 20 pro-democracy political parties and groups have announced their participation in the protest, and agreed to refer to the Friday protest as "Revolution First" or "Egypt First".