How to Build Rights-Respecting Democracies After the Dictator Falls

by Human Rights Watch, Feb. 1, 2013:

LONDON – The euphoria of the Arab Spring has given way to the sobering challenge of creating rights-respecting democracies, Human Rights Watch said today in issuing its World Report 2013. The willingness of new governments to respect rights will determine whether those uprisings give birth to genuine democracy or simply spawn authoritarianism in new forms.

In the 665-page report, its 23rd annual review of human rights practices around the globe, Human Rights Watch summarizes major issues in more than 90 countries.

Here’s an extended trailer of the ”Innocence Of Muslims”, the shitty anti-Islam movie that unleashed riots in the Muslim world, leading to the assassination of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens. Earlier today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton distance the U.S. government from the movie, and labeled it “disgusting and reprehensible”.

Canada's War Memorial in Ottawa

The Occupy Ottawa Movement faces a little moral dilemma on Remembrance Day tomorrow: to protest or not to protest?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper now uses every opportunity he gets to remind us that “Conservative values are Canadian values”. Even: “Conservative values are Canadian values”. But how does Harper relate this tired propaganda to Canada’s recent sales of billions worth of military hardware?

In its last six years in power, the Conservative government sold guns, bombs and munnitions to some of the worst human rights abusers in the world: China, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Libya. Or, yes, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya! Weren’t these rogue regimes persecuting their own people? Aren’t they now?

Finally the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued a warrant for the arrest Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi! Nothing to celebrate here. The action only betrays a disturbing trend in the international justice system. So far, most of the candidates for prosecution are individuals who have fallen out of favor with the west. They are developing world thugs who once served the West’s strategic interests.

By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: 

The UN Security Council has narrowly voted to authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya. We’re told the resolution seeks to keep Libyan strongman Muammar Gadhafi’s warplanes out of the sky to protect civilians from attacks by his forces.

So much is not being said here.