"Freedom Ebbing around the Globe"

It's a "glass half-full" news day, with a new report out showing that freedom is not exactly on the march around the world:

"This year's results show a profoundly disturbing deterioration of freedom worldwide," said Arch Puddington, director of research at the U.S.-based Freedom House, a non-governmental democracy watchdog dating back three decades.

The number of countries that Freedom House labeled as "free" in 2007 stood at 90, representing 46 percent of the global population, the report said.

While this number did not change from the previous year, large numbers of countries that were already designated "partly free" or "not free" saw serious regression away from democracy in 2007, the survey said.

Thirty-eight countries showed evidence of declines in freedoms, many of them in South Asia, the Middle East and from the former Soviet Union.

It's hard to deny that 2007 was no picnic. Our glum year-in-review reflected this sentiment. And here's a little specific example to keep you depressed for the rest of the day: Syrian authorities arrest two without warrants.

Damascus - Syrian authorities arrested a Kurdish political activist and a German national of Kurdish origin in two separate incidents without arrest warrants, a Syrian National Organization for Human Rights (NOHR) said Thursday.

Syrian security police raided on Monday the home of Joan Shamsud Din in Hassakeh, 750 kilometres north-east of Damascus, arrested him and seized his computer and other belongings without an arrest warrant, the NOHR said in a statement. Shamsud is a former political prisoner, who was jailed for alleged links with a Kurdish group.

In a separate incident, a German national of Kurdish origin, Izzidin Muhammad Hussein, was arrested on Saturday upon his arrival at Damascus airport from Germany where he has been living for the last nine years, the statement said.

The organization criticized the arrests as "constitutionally illegal" since they took place without a legal warrant. Detentions without reason and arrest warrant are allowed under emergency law, which has been in force since the ruling Baath Party took over power in 1963.

Exit Question: Was 1963 a better or worse year for freedom than 2007?

Comments

[pickegg wholesale electronics]

One day they will come back.

[rc plane]

There may be another way to solve it.

[Jeanette]

That's really thinking out of the box. Taknhs!

[dr dre beats headphones]

Or maybe they'll request Everyday is Like Sunday: "Come, come, nuclear bomb..."