Ayman Nour no longer allowed to publish

Egypt´s higher administrative court issued a ruling stating that Ayman Nour will not be allowed to publish articles. according to a judicial source that AFP spoke to.

The distant second in the 2005 Presidential election , Ayman Nour of al Ghad party, in jail for two years serving a five years sentence on what many claim is a trumped up charge of forging signatures to complete the application of the Ghad Party to go official. One key witness changed his testimony during trial.

The verdict was an answer to an appeal from Nour whom were rejecting an appeal from Nur against a ruling handed down in January that included not being alloved recieving or sending letters.

At least he is allowed to write, and maybe do yoga.... do they think he will do as Sayyid Qutb and write a manifesto denouncing the government and the state of the country as authocratic and undemocratic(rather than Jahiliyya) or what?

UPDATE: Bush, democracy, and the WEF speech

Jeffrey Fleishman also writes about it, and adds:

Nour was on the minds Egyptians on Sunday, when President Bush, speaking in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, criticized Middle East governments for silencing their opponents: "Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," he said.

I for one could not bring myself to write about the lofty rhetoric from the leader of the free world this time, as i have been in the past, and apparently i wasn´t the only one, albeit for different reasons. If one should take anything that the father of the freedom agenda says seriously it´s surely not his speeches on democracy, it´s far more important to pay attention to what his administration fail to say. Speeking out clearly on behalf of human and political rights, regardless of whom it may involve, would have made people listen, but with a track record full of lofty language and empty words, more often neglected than not on the ground.

Perhaps democracy promotion has been pushed aside by more important security considerations in the post 9/11 world of the Bush administration, but the fact that many of the countries that Bush talked about very harshly in his speech, has been the best of allies when it comes to intelligence sharing and giving more than a helping hand to cater for renditions(even countries percieved as part of the axis of evil helped out, a small clue - they officially started a process of peace talks with their arch enemy today, with a post-islamist government as sponsor for the talks), is probably the most important reason why it´s very hard to be taken seriously on democracy promotion. One can not be both human rights violator,democracy trasher and at the same time promote democracy.