Human Rights Activists

"I do not believe that my brother Tariq accused me of this, and you will not drag me into talking about him or responding [to this claim]. [That said,] I do have close strategic ties with American organizations involved in protecting human rights, with American ambassadors and with officials in the U.S. State Department. [I also have ties with activists in] most of the E.U. and Arab countries. But they are ties among equals; [I am not] their subordinate."

"The young people of this revolution have made their demands clear: authority must be handed over to a transitional presidential council approved by the people...Yemen’s people have charted the course of revolution and we will follow this course to its end. We have left our authoritarian past behind. Now, we ask our friends in Washington and Riyadh to help us build a democratic future."

"We ask our neighbors in Saudi Arabia to stop hindering the rule of law and healthy economic development through the purchase of politicians and tribal leaders."

"We also call upon our Saudi neighbors to let us pursue a democratic path....In many cases, Yemeni tribal leaders and other prominent individuals have received far more generous aid payments from Riyadh than from the Yemeni government...Saudi interference in Yemen is also motivated by a fear that the Arab Spring...might soon reach Riyadh"

"We understand America’s concerns about terrorism...We have no objection to agreements that protect your security interests. We only ask that you respect international standards on human rights and the Yemeni people’s rights to freedom and justice."

"American policy makers must understand that the activists and young people who started Yemen’s peaceful revolution deeply respect the United States and Western civilization...We call on American officials to engage with the leaders of Yemen’s democracy movement and abandon their misplaced investment in the old regime’s security apparatus"

"American intervention in Yemen is a product of the war on terror...Because American security was given priority over all other concerns, counterterrorism agencies paid no attention to the human rights abuses being committed by their local partners...Because America has invested so heavily in Yemen’s security forces, it now seems that a transition to democracy will depend on whether Washington believes that investment will remain secure...Sadly, it seems likely that the United States will support figures from the old regime rather than allow a transitional government approved by the people to take control"

"the United States and Saudi Arabia...have instead used their influence to ensure that members of the old regime remain in power and the status quo is maintained. American counterterrorism agencies and the Saudi government have a firm grip on Yemen at the moment. It is they...that control the country."

"We chose to march in the streets demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, an end to his corrupt and failed regime and the establishment of a modern democratic state...Yemen is now facing a complete vacuum of authority; we are without a president or parliament. Mr. Saleh may be gone, but authority has not yet been transferred to a transitional presidential council endorsed by the people."

"I have spent days and nights camped out in tents with fellow protesters; I have led demonstrations in the streets facing the threat of mortars, missiles and gunfire; I have struggled to build a movement for democratic change — all while caring for my three young children."

"If the US and Europe genuinely support the people, as they say, they must not betray our peaceful revolution. It is the expression of the democratic will of the overwhelming majority of the people of Yemen."

"I call on the United States and the European Union to tell Saleh that he must leave now...They should end all support for his regime, especially that which is used to crush peaceful opposition...They should freeze the Saleh family's assets and those of Saleh's henchmen and return them to the people."

"Let us be clear: the Yemeni revolution has already brought internal stability to a state riddled with war and conflict."

"We cannot let the bogeyman of al-Qaida and extremism be used to stall historic change in our country"

"We are confident that our revolution has already succeeded and that the regime of Saleh has in effect, already collapsed."

"For the first time people in the south stopped calling for separation, raised the national flag and demanded an end to the regime. It's been truly historic. The country is united in its aim to rid itself of the regime through public vigils and rallies, civil disobedience and slogans instead of tear gas and bullets."

"So what happens when the regime falls, as it must? We are in the first stage of change in our country, and the feeling among the revolutionaries is that the people of Yemen will find solutions for our problems once the regime has gone, because the regime itself is the cause of most of them. A new Yemen awaits us, with a better future for all."

"My aim for now is to lead a peaceful revolution to remove this regime. I think if I can be in the street with the people I can achieve more than if I am the president."

"If you go to the protests now, you will see something you never saw before: hundreds of women. They shout and sing, they even sleep there in tents. This is not just a political revolution, it's a social revolution"

"One of Karman's widely distributed quotes has stirred passion in many, even to the point that they lie and claim she took the hijab off! When asked about her hijab by journalists and how it is not proportionate with her level of intellect and education, she replied: “Man in early times was almost naked, and as his intellect evolved he started wearing clothes. What I am today and what I’m wearing represents the highest level of thought and civilization that man has achieved, and is not regressive. It’s the removal of clothes again that is regressive back to ancient times." Evidence: http://www.hautehijab.com/blogs/hijab-fashion/4966602-tawakkul-karman-first-arab-woman-and-youngest-nobel-peace-laureate"

"Our party needs the youth but the youth also need the parties to help them organise. Neither will succeed in overthrowing this regime without the other. We don't want the international community to label our revolution an Islamic one."

"The extremist people hate me. They speak about me in the mosques and pass round leaflets condemning me as un-Islamic."

"With two civil wars, an al-Qaida presence and 40% unemployment, what else is President Saleh waiting for? He should leave office now...This revolution is inevitable, the people have endured dictatorship, corruption, poverty and unemployment for years and now the whole thing is exploding"

"Women should stop being or feeling that they are part of the problem and become part of the solution. We have been marginalized for a long time, and now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has."

"The youth are our future, and to change anything in our world going forward we must start with this generation of youth, as they’re the new agents of change...In peacebuilding and promoting human rights, the youth are no longer a silent majority, but now they should be an active stakeholder...Youth are bringing to the table great contributions to the peace and state building and are shaping the future to be more peaceful, equal, and prosperous for all."

"There is a standalone goal, which is goal number two, on the empowerment of girls and women and achieving gender equality. With regards to violence against women, the panel addresses it at length and in an inclusive way ... We’re hoping that this goal and set of targets will put an end into violence and discrimination against women, empower women, and achieve gender equality and justice and for the better development of our world."

"African youth, just like other youth around the world can, for example, engage in the fight against corruption and hold officials accountable...Youth can also play an important role in engaging and educating their fellow and global citizens about the post-2015 global development agenda and ways to achieve our goals so that we can achieve the developments this time around to the greatest extent possible."

"The panel put targets, for example, on nutrition, education, ending preventable child deaths, encouraging birth registration, putting an end to violence against girls, and child marriage — all of which, if enacted, will improve the lives of billions of children throughout the world."

"In many places around the world, the LGBT community and individuals infected with HIV/AIDS continue to face discrimination in employment, political representation, and access to health care, including sexual and reproductive health care and rights. They certainly must not be left behind. I will continue to push for the inclusion of these marginalized groups in the post-2015 agenda and beyond."

"I myself am part of the youth movement. However, after a long discussion, it appears that many of the youth demands and needs, like access to education, jobs, and equitable growth, have been addressed under different goals and targets and youth enjoy the benefits of everything else in the report."

"...on youth unemployment — governments should ensure that one out of three of jobs in the public sector are opened up to the youth and that at least one person in every household should have access to a job."

"Over the next three years, governments will have to choose whether or not to adopt this new people-centric framework for development. The temptation for political leaders to retreat to a safer, more conventional approach will mean a strong global grassroots campaign will thus be necessary to build pressure for adoption of these groundbreaking and transformative elements recommended in the report."

"Requiring governments to make all publicly held information and data available to people — thus giving citizens a powerful tool to expose corruption — is just one aspect of the accountability revolution that can be unleashed if the report’s recommendations are implemented in full."

"Speaking of the report, I want to say that there are three key innovations of this report compared to the Millennium Development Goals. First, the call for civil and political rights combined with transparent and accountable public institutions as intrinsic to development. Second, the importance of ensuring peace and inclusive sustainable growth. And third, a need for urgent action to enhance the ability of women and youth, like you, to take part in the transformation of their societies."

"The agenda of burning embassies and treading on flags has its objective, of which seeking an apology for defaming our prophet is not among them at all."

"I do not want to belittle or be indifferent to the insults to our prophet (pbuh). I denounce insulting our prophet and announce that my heart is filled with his love. Yet, I refuse that his position should be employed for ignoble political gains. However, I protest being used as a tool."

"...The result of burning embassies and treading on flags is the self-same objective these drawings wanted to highlight. It was their intention to say that Muslims are terrorists and their religion is a peril to Western civilization."

"We are not to call for tyranny and bans on freedom. It is obvious that we cannot stop publication of what we view as indecent in our sacred faith...failing to make use of Western freedom of press and other technologies to show the West the values of Islam is intellectual failure and a guilt that should not be linked to Islam."

"Sanders has policy ideas that cross the simple partisan divides, that unite people by impacting them where they live. He thumbs his nose at millionaires, yet is joining the Senate, which has more than 40 of them. With a lame-duck president and nearly evenly split Senate, where coalitions matter and every vote counts, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, is poised to make a difference."

"If Bernie Sanders wins he'll be the first socialist elected president since 2008."

"I hope Bernie Sanders is the destruction of the Democratic Party. It's time to break up the two party dictatorship."

"Bernie Sanders finished Outsider in the House, the original 1997 edition of this book, with a chapter titled "Where Do We Go From Here?" He was serious about the "we" part, offering up a movement agenda that anticipated the message he would carry into the U.S. Senate and ultimately into presidential politics: "rid the country of any vestige of racism, sexism, and homophobia"; establish a "progressive tax policy" in order to close the "obscene and terrifying" gap between rich and poor; guarantee "health care for all through a single-payer system"; end "race-to-the-bottom" trade policies and assaults on workers; "rebuild America" with massive investments in communities and schools and job creation; begin "addressing forthrightly the problem of corporate control of the media"; and instigate sweeping reforms "to ensure that votes and not money determined which direction our leaders take." As for himself, however, Sanders simply wrote, "There is much to do, and for an Independent there is no established trail to follow"...Bernie Sanders knows a few things that more cautious politicians will never understand. Sometimes the outsiders win. Sometimes the left wing of the possible simply becomes the possible. Sometimes, political revolutions occur in cities, in states, and perhaps even nations."

"I have been a conservative Republican my entire life. But the Republican Party as a whole has gotten so far out of touch with the American people. I switched my registration so that I could vote for Sanders in the primary, but the day the primary is over I'm going to register as an independent."

"Markets are unsettled because of geopolitical risks, the slowdown in China, and because Bernie Sanders has become a viable candidate."

"All these years later, Sanders is still fighting the battle for single payer, Medicare-like coverage for all, even as fellow Democrats capitulated to the siren songs of the health and insurance industries. President Obama, himself a one-time advocate of single payer coverage, buckled to the insurance companies and its lobbyists and minions in Congress and agreed to health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) that would continue to treat healing the sick as a profit center instead of a basic human right."

"Rather than “strip” millions and millions of people of their health insurance, he wants to be sure millions and millions of people actually get health insurance. This was Sanders’ position as far back as 1993 when newly-elected President Bill Clinton put First Lady Hillary Clinton in charge of reforming our disheveled and unjust health care system. Her task force huffed and puffed in secret for months, calling in legions of experts and academics, ultimately producing a plan so complicated and impenetrable – not to mention unexplainable – that it would have collapsed of its own ponderous weight even if the Republicans had not propagandized it into a laughing stock of pretensions and inefficiencies that could only make matters worse."

"The Clinton campaign just made a serious mistake. They sent Hillary and Bill Clinton’s daughter Chelsea out on behalf of her mother to bash Senator Bernie Sanders on the issue of health care. What’s so wrong with that? Don’t all candidates use family surrogates when and where they can? The Kennedys, for example, deployed a horde of kinfolk for Jack’s campaign for president, then Bobby’s, then Teddy’s. But when it’s the first time (as this was for Clinton the younger), the surrogate should be sure whereof she speaks, and had better stick to talking about her candidate, not the opponent. Unfortunately, Chelsea Clinton misrepresented Senator Sanders’ position, and her premiere performance on the stump backfired, producing a flood of political donations to Sanders."

"He continues, even as the party elites rig the primaries against him, to make a mockery of democratic participation, to hold up the Democrats as a tool for change. He will soon be urging his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton, actively working as an impediment to political mobilization and an advocate for political lethargy. Sanders, whose promise of a political revolution is as hollow as competing campaign slogans, will be rewarded for his duplicity. He will be allowed to keep his seniority in the Democratic caucus. The party will not mount a campaign in Vermont to unseat him from the U.S. Senate. He will not, as he has feared, end up a pariah like Ralph Nader. But he, like everyone else in the establishment, will have sold us out."

"Bernie Sanders, who at least acknowledges our economic reality and refuses to accept corporate money for his presidential campaign, plays the role of the Democratic Party’s court jester. No doubt to remain a member of the court, he will not condemn the perfidy and collaboration with corporate power that define Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party. He accepts that criticism of empire is taboo."

"I've been very concerned about his lack of knowledge."