The wire services are reporting that Mr. Bush's new best friend in North Africa Colonel Gadhafi apparently hasn't yet received word that freedom is on the march.
CAIRO, Egypt -- Libya has sent to prison for 18 months a blogger who criticized the government on the Internet, Human Rights Watch says in a report that inspired a series of Web tributes to the dissident Friday.
A Tripoli court convicted Abdel Raziq al-Mansuri of illegal possession of a handgun and sentenced him to 18 months' imprisonment on Oct. 19, the New York-based rights group said in an e-mail to The Associated Press in Cairo.
"The gun charges are a ruse," said the Middle Eastern director of HRW, Sarah Leah Whitson. "The authorities went after al-Mansuri because they did not like what he wrote."
Al-Mansuri, 52, was detained in Tobruk, his hometown, in January after publishing about 50 articles critical of Libyan society and government on a dissident Web site based in Britain, http://www.akhbar-libya.com, the rights group said Thursday.
Read the whole story here.
And don't forget why the Bushies really normalized relations with Libya in the first place. Hint: it had nothing to do with democracy or human rights.
PS Here is some information on conditions inside Libya's prisons.
PPS As a matter of morality, Democrats - especially the Washington elite - ought to consider expending a little more breath condemning human rights violations and repression in Arab and Central Asian countries still a part of America's imperial protection racket (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc) because it's the right thing to do. As a matter of politics, Democrats ought to consider expending a little more breath condemning human rights violations and repression in Arab and Central Asian countries still a part of America's imperial protection racket because they have much to gain and nothing to lose.