Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important (real or ideal) features of democratic societies. It has been described as a relationship free of oppression or coercion; the absence of disabling conditions for an individual and the fulfillment of enabling conditions; or the absence of lived conditions of compulsion, e.g. economic compulsion, in a society. Although political freedom is often interpreted negatively as the freedom from unreasonable external constraints on action, it can also refer to the positive exercise of rights, capacities and possibilities for action, and the exercise of social or group rights. The concept can also include freedom from "internal" constraints on political action or speech (e.g. social conformity, consistency, or "inauthentic" behaviour.) The concept of political freedom is closely connected with the concepts of civil liberties and human rights, which in democratic societies are usually afforded legal protection from the state.

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and is known for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy. As a leader of the Chicago school of economics, he influenced the research agenda of the economics profession. A survey of economists ranked Friedman as the second most popular economist of the twentieth century behind John Maynard Keynes, and The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it."

Friedman's challenges to what he later called "naive Keynesian" (as opposed to New Keynesian) theory began with his 1950s reinterpretation of the consumption function, and he became the main advocate opposing activist Keynesian government policies. In the late 1960s he described his own approach (along with all of mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its "initial" conclusions. During the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism". He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment, and argued that governments could increase employment above this rate (e.g., by increasing aggregate demand) only at the risk of causing inflation to accelerate. He argued that the Phillips curve was not stable and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation. Friedman argued that, given the existence of the Federal Reserve, a constant small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy.

Nahlah Ayed is a foreign correspondent with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

Ayed was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is of Palestinian descent, and is fluent in both Arabic and English. She joined the CBC in 2002, having previously served as a parliamentary reporter for the Canadian Press. Ayed is a graduate of Carleton University School of Journalism with a Master's Degree in Journalism. She also holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Manitoba in genetics. On October 29, 2007, she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Manitoba in recognition of her coverage of the Middle East. In 2003, as the Amman correspondent for the CBC, Ayed spent months in Baghdad prior to the Iraq War, then later returned to report live from Baghdad as the city fell. Her coverage of Iraq in the aftermath earned her a Gemini Award nomination.

From 2004 until 2009, Ayed was the CBC's Beirut correspondent, covering events throughout the Middle East region, including the 2006 Lebanon War and the Gaza War. In late 2009, she returned to Canada. She received her second Gemini Award nomination in 2010 for her coverage of the Iran presidential elections the year prior.

Zachary Mason (born 1974) is a computer scientist and author. He is noted for his work The Lost Books of the Odyssey, his debut novel.

Mason grew up in Silicon Valley, attended Bard College at Simon's Rock, and received a doctorate from Brandeis University, publishing his thesis A computational, corpus-based metaphor extraction system in 2002. He works for a Silicon Valley startup.

Julius Sello Malema (born 3 March 1981, in Seshego) is a South African politician, and the former president of the African National Congress Youth League. Malema occupies a notably controversial position in South African public and political life; having risen to prominence with his support for African National Congress president, and later President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma. He has been described by both Zuma and the Premier of Limpopo Province as the "future leader" of South Africa. Less favourable portraits paint him as a "reckless populist" with the potential to destabilise South Africa and to spark racial conflict. He was convicted of hate speech in March 2010 and again in September 2011. In November 2011 he was found guilty of sowing divisions within the ANC and, in conjunction with his two-year suspended sentence in May 2010, was suspended from the party for five years.. In 2011, he was also convicted of hate speech after calling for the murder of white people. On 4 February 2012 the appeal committee of the African National Congress announced that it found no reason to “vary” a decision of the disciplinary committee taken in 2011, but did find evidence in aggravation of circumstances, leading them to impose the harsher sentence of expulsion from the ANC. On April 25 2012 Malema lost an appeal to have his expulsion from the ANC overturned, as this exhausted his final appeal, his expulsion took immediate effect.