Ayman Nour: Sisi has made Egypt 'a swamp of tyranny'

One of Egypt's leading opposition figures has told Al Jazeera that the country is ruled by an "oppressive military regime", which has killed off any chance of political pluralism.

Former presidential candidate and leader of the Ghad al-Thawra (Tomorrow's Revolution) party, Ayman Nour, said Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was presiding over a failing government that was harming Egyptian citizens and the wider region.

Israel sunk in 'incremental tyranny', say former Shin Bet chiefs

Two former heads of Israel’s powerful domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, have made an impassioned and powerful intervention ahead of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the country’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in June.

One of the pair warned that the country’s political system was sunk in the process of “incremental tyranny”.

When Tyranny Takes Hold

What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust.

Xu Hongci had been drawn to politics by the promise of dignity. Growing up in Shanghai during the Second World War, part of a downwardly mobile middle-class family, he resented the Japanese occupation and the Chinese leaders who failed to prevent it. “Japanese soldiers would fish in our pond, swaggering off with the biggest carp without paying a single penny,” Xu recalled, in a memoir he wrote years later. “Our nation’s tragedy awakened my political consciousness at a young age.”

Tyranny of the Israeli Majority?

Israel was founded as a homeland for the Jewish people. But it was also founded to "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants," according to its Declaration of Independence.

Despite Israel's roots as a liberal democracy, within the next week, the Israeli Knesset will vote on a bill designed to stigmatize and harass progressive organizations. Under the pretense of greater "transparency," the bill creates a series of new requirements that target only Israeli groups that criticize Israeli government policy.