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LOS ANGELES | January 29, 2012 The word "free" and its derivatives take on many meanings in the English language, and this gorgeous California Sunday with the sun shining in all of its splendor, the people are reminded of the many intended meanings of the word "freedom" and how it is interpreted by Americans, and in this particular case, by one Californian. During an ensuing investigation, Police on Thursday arrested Umar Khan, a 34 year old Glendale man, as he was driving around town in his blue, four-door 2004 Honda Accord, naked from the waist down because it gave him a sense of "freedom." They had earlier learned that Khan drove around the city at night or early morning hours naked from the waist down and looks for cul-de-sac or driveways of homes to masturbate in. Khan has previously been convicted of indecent exposure in 1998, according to Los Angeles County Superior Court records. Glendale officers caught Khan again with his pants down and officers arrested him about 2:23 a.m. Thursday on the 1300 block of Doverwood Drive, after patrolling officers noticed he failed to yield at a stop sign on Royal Boulevard, according to police reports. According to the reports, the officers had apparently attempted to stop Khan, but he fled. It must have been his sense of freedom, again. Moments later they spotted Khan and stopped him on Doverwood. As officers approached the vehicle, they noticed he was naked from the waist down. Surprise!

The global economic crisis could, perhaps perversely, highlight democracy's resilience and appeal despite the evidence that global freedom is in retreat for the third year successive year, a Washington meeting on Freedom after the Freedom Agenda heard tod

Using a critical review of selected works on Africa by prominent African intellectuals, this interdisciplinary study concludes that, contrary to Amartya Sen's theory about the "real freedoms" that people enjoy in democratic states, these freedoms cannot be realized in Africa, because the continent's mode of capitalism is dependent upon international finance. This system cannot function as an autonomous structure and has engendered major political contradictions in the continent's nation-states. The capitalist ruling elites have hindered the expansion of full democratic rights in Africa by encouraging and exploiting the politics of class division. The African experience with liberal democracy indicates that Sen's theory of development and "real freedoms" fails to take into account these contradictions as well as the religious and cultural idioms in Africa that run counter to liberal conceptions of emancipation. Achieving democracy and freedom in Africa is not merely a question of capacity building, it involves resolving difficult issues of power - particularly, in class and gender relations. The essay concludes by suggesting that there needs to be a shift away from conceptualizing development in terms of only economic factors to a new approach which combines more enlightened neoliberal capitalism with new indigenous strategies of development.

CAIRO | January 21, 2012 Two days before the assembly's first meeting following the thwart of Hosni Mubarak close to 1 year ago, it is apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood Islamists led by the Freedom and Justice Party emerged as the largest group in Egypt's new parliament winning 235 of the 498 elected seats in the lower house. . The new parliament, due to hold its first session on Jan. 23, "is the best celebration of the Egyptian revolution," Freedom and Justice said in a statement according to a report in Bloomberg. A breakdown of election results from party lists: 332 members of parliament Freedom and Justice - 127 Nour party - 96 Wafd party - 36 Egyptian Bloc - 33 The assembly is to select a committee that will write a new constitution, though the exact powers of parliament remain unclear. Protesters that ousted Mubarak continue to call for mass rallies on January 25, the anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising against Mubarak. And although Egyptians have had seven weeks of democratic elections, it has failed to calm tensions between activists and the military council that took power from the ousted President. The military council has said it would cede power when a president is elected in a national vote by the end of June. Due to the state of unrest and lack of tourism, Egypt's economy has seen better days. Egypt formally requested a $3.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund on Jan. 16 to help it support its economy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. | January 19, 2012 The Mayors for Freedom to Marry campaign will meet on Friday in Washington, the nation's capital, to garner support for same-sex marriages nationwide. The campaign is led by the Mayor of San Diego, California, Jerry Sanders. Joining Sanders in Washington is Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as well as the mayors of Boston, Chicago and Houston. Freedom to Marry was fonuded in 2003 by Evan Wolfson, the father of the modern marriage movement. The campaign's mission is to garner support, grow the national majority for marriage and end federal marriage discrimination through the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. The San Diego Mayor, previously opposed to same-sex marriage, in a Los Angeles Times report states that he "could not accept the idea that his daughter Lisa is less worthy of forming a lasting relationship because she is a lesbian."

head of the Index on Censorship, which is Britain's leading organization promoting freedom of expression. We are delighted that he has chosen the Carnegie Council to discuss his new book, Freedom for Sale: Why the World Is Trading Democracy for Security.

This paper analyzes agency in Pettit's republican conception of freedom. By understanding freedom intersubjectively in terms of agency, Pettit makes an important contribution to the contemporary debate on negative liberty. At the same time, some of the pr

This paper elaborates on the deliberative democracy argument for freedom of expression in terms of its relationship to different dimensions of autonomy. It engages the objection that Enlightenment theories pose a threat to cultures that reject autonomy and argues that autonomy-based democracy is not only compatible with but necessary for respect for cultural diversity. On the basis of an intersubjective epistemology, it argues that people cannot know how to live on mutually respectful terms without engaging in public deliberation and developing some degree of personal autonomy. While freedom of expression is indispensable for deliberation and autonomy, this does not mean that people have no obligations regarding how they speak to each other. The moral insights provided by deliberation depend on the participants in the process treating one another with respect. The argument is related to the Danish cartoon controversy.

Today we're honored to have a guest blog post by Digital Democracy Advisory Board member Sean McDonald, taking a look at the US State Department's focus on Internet Freedom. Sean, Director of New Media Business Development at MetroStar Systems, brings a b

Is Internet freedom an absolute, universal value like freedom of speech? If there are limits, how and by whom can they be established? Is crying fire or scaling firewalls anymore acceptable in cyberspace than in physical space? What is the impact on the discourse between nations, cultures and individuals? In this section, we gather a collage of comments from various key players from Google to Wikileaks to the US State Department along with comments by one of the most cogent analysts of the Net and the president of Turkey. ERIC SCHMIDT1, JARED COHEN2, HILLARY CLINTON3, BERNARD KOUCHNER4, JULIAN ASSANGE5

Is Internet freedom an absolute, universal value like freedom of speech? If there are limits, how and by whom can they be established? Is crying fire or scaling firewalls anymore acceptable in cyberspace than in physical space? What is the impact on the discourse between nations, cultures and individuals? In this section, we gather a collage of comments from various key players from Google to Wikileaks to the US State Department along with comments by one of the most cogent analysts of the Net and the president of Turkey.

However ruthless monopoly forces may be in limiting freedoms, the Democracy Manifesto challenges us to consider if the unruly power of the market isn't also a home of democratic freedom.

The major obstacle to building respect for academic freedom in Muslim societies is the persistence of authoritarian culture. Given that most Muslim-majority countries remain under a form of authoritarian rule, Muslim academics largely face the same kinds

Amartya Sen's enlarged conception of freedom has augmented the scope of economic analysis but it also has had the surprising effect of being more supportive of the free market than conventional welfare economics. It is argued here that a comparison of Sen's position with that of the American institutionalist, J R Commons, highlights some problems with Sen's approach and points to possible ways in which they might be addressed.

This essay takes as its starting point an apparent tension between theories of democratic deliberation and democratic theories of multicultural accommodation and makes the case that many multiculturalists and deliberative democrats converge on an ideal of political freedom, understood as nondomination. It argues for distinguishing two dimensions of nondomination: inter-agentive nondomination, which obtains when all participants in a power relation are free from rule by others who can set its terms, and systemic nondomination, which obtains when the terms of a power relation itself are responsive to those they affect. Because inter-agentive and systemic nondomination do not covary, it is critical to distinguish between them, in order to build institutions and practices that promote both.

"Battles over the control of information online are often fought at the level of Internet infrastructure. Forces of globalization and technological change have diminished the capacity of sovereign nation states and media content producers to directly control information flows. This loss of control over content and the failure of laws and markets to regain this control have redirected political and economic battles into the realm of infrastructure and, in particular, technologies of Internet governance. These arrangements of technical architecture are also arrangements of power. This shift of power to infrastructure is drawing renewed attention to the politics of Internet architecture and the legitimacy of the coordinating institutions and private ordering that create and administer these infrastructures. It also raises questions related to freedom of expression in the context of this increasing turn to infrastructure to control information. This article explores the relationship between governance and infrastructure, focusing on three specific examples of how battles over content have shifted into the realm of this Internet governance infrastructure: the use of the Internet's domain name system for intellectual property rights enforcement; the use of 'kill-switch' approaches to restrict the flow of information; and the termination of infrastructure services to WikiLeaks. The article concludes with some thoughts about the implications of this infrastructure-mediated governance for economic and expressive liberties."

The 2004 Orange Revolution and election of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who had a stellar reputation in previous positions as National Bank Chairman and Prime Minister, was viewed as a new era in Ukrainian politics, ushering in deep seated reforms and a battle against corruption. Five years on, his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, whose election in 2004 was annulled over election fraud, replaced him as President. The failure of the Yushchenko presidency to implement the majority of the hopes placed in it by millions of voters and protestors, specifically to decisively change the manner in which politics and economics are undertaken, is a good opportunity to analyse why Ukraine is a difficult country, an immobile state, in which to undertake change of any type. Yanukovych's first year in office points to Ukraine undergoing a regression from the only tangible benefit to have emerged from "orange" rule; namely, democratization, media freedom, and free elections

The Internet, mobile phones, and other forms of "liberation technology" enable citizens to express opinions, mobilize protests, and expand the horizons of freedom. Autocratic governments are also learning to master these technologies, however. Ultimately,

Since independence in 1966, Botswana has been a non-racial, multiparty democracy operating within the framework of a constitution, which enshrines freedom of speech, of association, and of worship, and affords all citizens equal rights. However, much has

Aimed at reinforcing the democratic values of freedom of speech and increased diversity in civic access to the means of communication, this paper examines the concept of democracy within an information and communication technology-mediated context. Discus