Alaa Has Been Detained

ahmed saad writes "Alaa (read the slashdot interview) was detained yesterday for activism while in a protest to support Egyptian judges . He's one of the most well known Egyptian activists in human rights, free software (leading Egypt LUG) and free speech in Egypt and worldwide. The Egyptian regime is currently trying to suffocate any movements that are active against it's highly inhuman and dirty practices to keep holding power in Egypt yet are trying to fool the world about their support for democracy and free speech. Please don't let that happen! Contact to the Egyptian embassy in your country and/or your country's embassy here in egypt, tell your congressmen and thanks in advance for your support!"

Comments

Word Replace

[Anonymous Coward]

The Egyptian regime is currently trying to suffocate any movements that are active against it's highly inhuman and dirty practices to keep holding power in Egypt yet are trying to fool the world about their support for democracy and free speech.

Just replace 'Egyptian' with 'Bush' and 'Egypt' with 'America'.

Kinda creepy, how well it fits.

Re:Word Replace

[slughead]

The Bush regime is currently trying to suffocate any movements that are active against it's highly inhuman and dirty practices to keep holding power in America yet are trying to fool the world about their support for democracy and free speech.

Really? An American president is trying to eliminate discourse? That's totally a new concept. Surely the Bush Administration is biggest threat to the constitution in American history.

Well at least we can get rid of this problem by voting Democrat, right? After all, they call themselves The Party Of Free Speech. They wouldn't lie, would they?

Re:Word Replace

[Guuge]

Anyone who believes that copyright legislation is more serious than the prospect of a police state is living in a fantasy land. Anyone who makes excuses for their 'pet' president on a sketchy historical basis is not only committing a logical fallacy but also playing petty politics. It's hypocritical for people who savagely criticized Clinton to give Bush a free pass for measureably worse behavior.

So save your invectives. Most of the people you're arguing with didn't like Clinton much either, but can at least recognize the lesser of two evils.

This is what big government does

[MikeRT]

It serves the interests of those in power. It's why Socialism, Communism, Fascism, "state Capitalism" and all other big government ideologies fail spectacularly. Every law that enacts a new police power that isn't objectively strictly needed to do basic law enforcement, every new agency, every new unneeded spending bill and especially fiat currency play into the hands of the tyrants and would-be tyrants. What has happened here should be a lesson to every Democrat or Republican who believes that if only their guy was in office, big government would work. It doesn't, it just goes after those that challenge it because the more that people start to question small excesses, the more they question their very relationship with the state.

Re:This is what big government does

[lawpoop]

This is not what "big government does". This is what a facist police state does.

I would bet that the governments of the western, industrialized nations, including most of Europe, The US and Canada, Australia and Japan, are "bigger" than Egypts' in any sense you can think of ( budget, tax revenue, number of employees, number of laws, etc. ). However, because their representatives are elected and the government employees consider themselves servants instead of power brokers, the "big governments" in those countries aren't locking up political prisoners.

I agree that locking up political prisoners is bad, but you are attacking the wrong philosophy here. Facism and a police state is the problem, not "big government".

Re:This is what big government does

[Mille Mots]

...The US and Canada, Australia and Japan, are "bigger" than Egypts' in any sense you can think of ( budget, tax revenue, number of employees, number of laws, etc. ). However, because their representatives are elected and the government employees consider themselves servants instead of power brokers, the "big governments" in those countries aren't locking up political prisoners....

If you look at the history of the US representative government (specifically the Legislative and Administrative branches) since, say, the New Deal era, you will see that those elected representatives most certainly consider themselves anything but servants of the people who elected them and pay their salary. Instead, they peddle influence and contracts to the highest bidder (why do you think Porter Goss really retired? The current defense contract scandal/inquiry touches many of your alleged 'servants,' perhaps it even touches him?).

Big Government, Western style, is nothing more than legalized racketeering.

YMMV. HTH. HAND.

--
This sig intentionally left blank

Re:This is what big government does

[hyfe]

It's why Socialism, Communism, Fascism, "state Capitalism" and all other big government ideologies fail spectacularly.

I expect by 'all other big government' you meant Market Liberalism / Capitalism? Because the government sector in the US can compete with pretty much anything when it comes to size. How's your military? NSA/CIA/FBI etc? NASA? Research programs at universities? Medicare? Public Infrastructure... etc

Where do you think the US would be today without its socialist(ie government-funded) support of research through the universities? Or the space-program? Small-state advocates never give the government credit for what it does, and have done. I mean, seriously, barring Bell Labs (which basically was goverment anyways) have the all-glory no-guts private industry ever made any usefull discoveries in any way whatsover without goverment involvment? No?

So, my point is, how(who) you elect/choose your government (or not) is important when it comes to personal freedom. How you run your economy is not. All hyper-capatilistic projects so far have failed (see the world-bank, South America, Africa) (but still Americans advocate that other countries should use systems themselves refuse to adapt).

London Egyptian Embassy contacted

[James_Duncan8181]

Hadn't heard of Alaa, asked the press office for comment. They say they will get back to me later today.

Re:This is why Bush retains power

[Anonymous Coward]

Because his most vocal opponents can't do anything besides make pithy comments. s/Egypt/Bush == teh insightful.

Really, really pathetic.

Re:Police Power Risks

[TripMaster Monkey]

I don't believe that the Patriot Act is truly trying to usher in a fascist state, but I can see where a later administration could really abuse it.

You might want to check out the following links:

• Patriot Act Abuses Seen
  
• Critics cite PATRIOT Act abuse and misuse
  
• Abuse of the "Patriot Act"
  
• Patriot Act Abuses and Misuses Abound, ACLU Says
  
• More Signs of Patriot Act Abuse

I call bullshit.

[TripMaster Monkey]

Funny, that, liberals and Europe want intervention in places like Darfur and Iran but when it came to US securing itself, it was somehow unjustified, even though Saddam was a genocidal maniac and just as ruthless as anyone else in the region.

Iraq has never attacked America. Saddam's regime was no threat whatsoever to Americans. If you're going to try to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq on humanitarian grounds, then go ahead and do so, but in case you haven't been reading the papers, the total number of WMDs (the ostensible reason we attacked in the first place) discovered in Iraq remains zero.

Civil liberties in America are no different today than they were pre-9/11.

Nice astroturfing, but all a reasonable person need do to know just how many of their 'inalienable' rights have been stripped away by the current administration is to read it, your smokescreening notwithstanding.

Re:I call bullshit.

[faloi]

Saddam's regime was no threat whatsoever to Americans.

Unless you count continued attempts to shoot down US planes patrolling the UN-sanctioned no-fly zone. Or the continued development of weapons that violated UN restrictions in terms of range. Then there's the financial support for the families of suicide bombers...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of the USA PATRIOT act and other sorts of legislature. It makes me sick that, at least in the initial bill, only 1 (one) person voted against it. But Saddam was far from a downtrodden lamb.

Re:I call bullshit.

[TripMaster Monkey]

Perhaps because the newspapers only print stories that promote their own agenda.

Oh...you mean like Fox News?

WMD actually have been found in Iraq as well as the intent to manufacture them.

Liar. Cite proof of this or admit your lie.

Ties to Al Qaeda have also been found.

See response to above.

BUt I doubt the media is trumpeting that much.

If WMDs were actually found in Iraq (or ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda were discovered), do you really think the current administration would spare any expense 'trumpeting' this information? And seeing how the new White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, was a former White House news anchor, your cute little fantasy about the 'liberal media' keeping the American public in the dark to promote 'their agenda' is revealed as the bullshit right-wing propaganda it is.

I could respond to the rest of your 'points' in the same manner, but this is already getting too long, and I don't feel like wading through two more paragraphs of non-sequeturs, ad homenim attacks, and outright lies. Take your astroturfing elsewhere...most readers here are smart enough to not watch Fox News.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Mr. Slippery]

Unless you count continued attempts to shoot down US planes patrolling the UN-sanctioned no-fly zone.

The no-fly zones were illegal creations of the U.S. and Great Britain; a sovereign nation shooting at hostile aircraft that violate its airspace is not creating a threat to the violating nation.

But Saddam was far from a downtrodden lamb.

Yes, Saddam was a bad guy. That does not mean that anything done to oppose him therefore automatically becomes legal, ethical, or smart.

Re:Allah has been detained?!

[brian0918]

"The Muslim fundamentalists are going to be pissed about this!"

There is no god but Allah, and Fat Tony Varisco is his cellmate!

Re:Western Arrogance

[Mr. Slippery]

how dare we judge Egypt by our arrogant, self-centered western views on human rights and justice. I'm sick of phrases like "highly inhuman and dirty practices."...We need to respect Egypt's right to its culture.

Interesting. Would you have applied that to the Holocaust as well, respecting Germany's "right to its culture"? (Yeah, yeah, Godwin's Law; it's still a legitimate question.)

Should northern states have applied that to the Jim Crow South, respecting its "right" to a culture of rascism and segregation?

Should I apply that to my neighborhood as well? If the guy next door is beating his wife, should I respect his family's "right to their culture"?

Egypt is a sovereign nation, and that sets a legal limit on how much other nations can interfere; just as the Constitution sets limits on the ability of states to mess with each other, and laws set limits on my actions against a neighbor I think is engaging in crimes. But the idea that we can't talk to and negotiate with other nations, states, communities, and individual people to attempt to persuade them to change behavior we don't like is silly.

Freedoms in other countries

[simon_hibbs2]

The idea that each country can just gaze at it's own navel and ignore what happens in other countries is a persistent one, but there are so many historical examples of why it's a very bad idea that it's hard to know where to begin.

I'll skip the obvious one by just saying "Godwin's Law", you know what I mean. In the case of Iraq, for the first war when one country invades another and threatent others you can nolonger say it's an internal matter. As for the second Iraq war, you know the first war never realy ended. We were still sending planes over Iraq, still occasionaly attacking their SAM batteries and enforcing UN sanctions. People were still dying, and that situation couldn't go on forever. Again, it wasn't an internal issue regardless of what you might think about how things turned out doing nothing wasn't an option and don't believe those who say otherwise. At least if you disagree with what was done (it was completely screwed up after all), say what you think should have been done instead and don't dodge the issue.

Opression within a country inevitably has knock-on effects beyond the borders of that country. How to treat refugees? Do you extradite people who are criminals in their own country even though their 'crimes' aren't punishable in your own? What about your own companies doing business over there? What about the freedoms of your own reporters in that country? Toes are going to be stepped on, whatever you do and if the situation does spill over into violence who do you side with? Perhaps the 'terrorists' in that country have at least some legitimate complaints.

Saying "It's just their culture" also doesn't wash, the Egyptian government is highly un-islamic. They aren't even operating uder their own normal 'laws of the land'. The government has been operating using emergency laws for decades. What emergency? It's one of the government's own making!

It is our business. That doesn't mean we should invade now, or any such rubbish. It means we (I'm British) do have freedoms and rights. We can make our views known to the Egyptian Embassy. We can write letters to our democratic representatives. We can even write to the newspapers in our country, or just blog about our opinions and write about them here. Expressing our opinions can and does make a difference. Egypt in particular is highly dependent on wester tourism (I've been there for buisness and on holiday myself), and can't afford too much negative press especialy in the wake of the bombings. We can make a difference.

Simon Hibbs

Amazing

[PFI_Optix]

Someone actually modded this post up?

Let's do that word replace, shall we?

The Bush regime is currently trying to suffocate any movements that are active against it's highly inhuman and dirty practices to keep holding power in America yet are trying to fool the world about their support for democracy and free speech.

1) I see no attempts by the administration to "suffocate" those vocal against it. Seen the approval ratings lately? For that matter...are you being suffocated for this criticism?

2) I've yet to see anything that could be described as "highly inhuman and dirty" directly attributed to the presidency.

3) Exactly how are they going to "keep holding power" after 2008?

4) "Their support for democracy and free speech" is apparent in the fact that the 2006 elections are proceeding as normal at this point and the fact that they are not stifling those who openly criticize them (myself included).

There are a lot of things wrong with our current administration, but they are NOT an oppressive dictatorship bent on holding power.

Re:Western Arrogance

[sabre86]

Quoting BlackRookSix's post: "I'd like to say that you may not completely understand the Chinese context. Not all of us have the same concept of "personal freedoms" that you do. We understand that we must sacrifice some of our personal freedoms for the greater good of the society as a whole. I can only speak for my friends, family and myself, but we give these freedoms happily and in the knowledge that we know that the government that we elected works for the benefit of all in China. Not all of us agree, we all know there are plenty of dissidents who openly voice their opinions, but you must recognise that these can be dangerous people."

You and your Chinese friend may make all of the sacrifices you want, but don't make them for me. Only through your own arrogance can you force others to make the same sacrifices when they do not wish to. What makes a practice "inhuman and dirty" is the assumption that some elses viewpoint is not valid -- notice that in this forum, you're allowed to espouse your view without censorship, whereas, in BlackRookSix's homeland, you can't.

States and societies don't have rights, individuals do. Each Egyption has a right to his or her culture, and respecting that right is the foundation for classical liberal "Western" views. Ignoring or suppressing dissent because "its not our culture" is making the stupid mistake that "our culture is fundamentally right" -- human beings are imperfect and so is anything, including the state, composed of them. American's also make this mistake, but the ability of the government to force it upon anyone is limited by the Constitution (when it is obeyed). Whether or not classical liberal views should be spread by force, thats debatable -- were we to successfully invade Egypt or China or many other nations, there are definitely some people -- specifically their large numbers of political prisonsers -- that should be freed. Of course, for the US government to take such a stance given policies like the Gitmo Concentration Camp* and extraordinary rendition would be quite hypocritical.

Legitimate government exists to allow each individual to act as morally as possible while minimizing the limitation on any else's ability to make moral choices. No government succeeds at this (they're imperfect) and governments like China and Egypt do not even make the attempt. Egyptian and Chinese cultures could thrive just as well in a ideal, western style democracy because the people would be allowed to adopt whatever culture they choose, just not force it on their neighbor.

"Dangerous people." *Shudder* I don't know that, you don't know that and BlackRookSix doesn't know that, either. The only way to know someone is dangerous is if they attempt to materially harm someone. Voicing your dissent is the exact opposite, its an attempt to change people's minds without harming them.

--sabre86

*Yes, it is a concentration camp.

None of those are threats to us.

[Valdrax]

Unless you count continued attempts to shoot down US planes patrolling the UN-sanctioned no-fly zone.

How does trying to shoot our military planes out of the sky of their territory threaten the people of the US? Not that we didn't have really good reasons for the no-fly zone and not that Iraq is some sort of innocent victim, but how does standing up for the defense of their own territory count? Any threat that posed would be eliminated by not being there.

Or the continued development of weapons that violated UN restrictions in terms of range.

The al-Samoud II missile only had a range of 183 km. This isn't enough to even reach Israel or Europe, much less the US and they were thus not enough to count as a threat to the US.

Then there's the financial support for the families of suicide bombers...

This aid was provided exclusively to Palestinian suicide bombers, and not to Al Qaeda or any other terrorist movement. In general, Saddam was wary of religious zealots as he wasn't a very dedicated Muslim himself (despite peppering his speech with religious phraseology post Gulf War) but saw the Palestinian movement as both a movement that posed no threat to him and a good way to earn political capital with other Arab neighbors. This was a threat to Israel and not the US.

But Saddam was far from a downtrodden lamb.

Saddam was a bad guy, but he was hardly a threat to the US. Heck, he was barely a threat to Israel which was the enemy within closest striking distance and provided most of that threat by easing the burdens left to their families by suicide bombers.

If we were looking to take on actual threats capable of delivering a nuclear attack on the US, topple a cruel and sadistic tyrant, and damn the consequences internationally, then why is Kim Jong-Il still in power? Why the paper tiger instead of the guy that has missles capable of reaching the US -- the guy that has nuclear warheads? Even the argument of "saving the Iraqis" pales compared to the intimidation, brainwashing, and malnourishment that the North Koreans are suffering.

Re:None of those are threats to us.

[Chris Burke]

then why is Kim Jong-Il still in power? Why the paper tiger instead of the guy that has missles capable of reaching the US -- the guy that has nuclear warheads?

Question (probably rhetorical), meet answer. We didn't attack North Korea because North Korea is actually scary. Hell, it's the same reason we haven't done anything to Iran, who is far more scary and far more of a threat to us than Iraq ever was. Not even our delusional administration could convince themselves that invading Iran was a good idea.

No, we invaded Iraq because it wasn't a serious threat. It was a convenient target. Much like the intelligence that said Iraq had WMD -- the surest sign this wasn't true being our willingness to invade -- all of our stated reasons for invading are false.

Re:That's a little bit too much.

[Guuge]

Bush can't hold a candle to Mubarak

You have to give him credit for trying. Without a real coup, you can't just march into the White House and announce that you're starting a dictatorship. It takes time, extreme nationalism, an "enemy" that we're always at war with, and the gradual erosion of rights in the name of security and patriotism. Bush and Mubarak aren't in the same position, but you might consider them of a common mind.

I call you naive

[TripMaster Monkey]

So because a news organiziation admits bias, that automatically moots all their points?

In a word, yes.

A news organization that is biased is no longer objective, and is therefore worth much less than an unbiased news source. Fox News is demonstrably biased, so much so that their 'news' is worthless.

Check here to see just how much Rupert Murdoch has prostituted his 'news' program in the service of his right-wing ideology.

Great argument

[NeutronCowboy]

Man, a great post lingering at 1, and me with no mod points.

Since I agree on all your points, I'll just reiterate my support for your main one: "States and societies don't have rights, individuals do". A state without people does not exist. A society without people does not exist. As a result, it is ludicrous to argue that actions designed to save the state while sacrificing individuals is anything but tyranny designed to satisfy a small subgroup of people.

I've had a number of discussion with various chinese on this (including an ex-girlfriend of mine) and tried to follow the background story on this as much as possible. There are two points that invariably come up among those who support the Chinese police state: China as an idea supercedes individual rights, and there are some people who do not know what's right for them, which means that like stray children, they need to be brought back onto the right path. Quite often, the family analogy is brought up to support the second idea: "If my children to something bad, I punish them. This is no different."

Both concepts I find highly disturbing. The first one for reasons already laid out. The second because the analogy is flawed: being in a family does not give the parents the right to abuse the children. Furthermore, it assumes that one adult has some intrinsic right to control another adult's life. Maybe it's just the individualist in me talking, or maybe it's just that I got tired of learning about atrocities committed in the name of the state ever since states were created. But I cannot see through what process you can decide who is actually suited to play the role of parent, and who is to play the role of the children. In the vast majority of the cases, not only are people with control issues the ones who are attracted to these types of positions (and are therefore fundamentally the wrong people for the job), but I fail to see what the point of such a position is - unless you buy into the first argument, namely that the state is more important than individuals. In this case, it is fairly easy to determine what the role of such a parental position would be.

In short, my disagreements with people like BlackRookSix is not merely a cultural disagreement. It's one that comes from disagreements on fundamental matters of the nature of the state and the individual. I sincerely hope that they stay away from me as much as possible - because I know how they would deal with me if they ever get to design laws by which I would have to abide. And the only option I would have at that point for preserving my way of life would be to remove the state monopoly on violence.