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Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook - CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.

The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.

The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.

Why We (Canadians) Fight in Afghanistan

Written by Chris Floyd

Saturday, 26 January 2008

Annals of Liberation: 'Good War' Goons Crush Press Freedom
by Chris Floyd
For a media story that might possibly be slightly more important than the momentous blogswarm victory over Chris Matthews, concerned netizens could turn their attention to the atrocious case of Sayed Perwiz Kaambaksh, a 23-year-old Afghan student who has been sentenced to death for printing an allegedly blasphemous article downloaded from the internet, as CNN reports.

Kaambaksh was tried in a closed court, without legal representation, by officials of the government installed by George Bush's "good war" crusade to, you know, liberate the Afghan people from the religious repression of Taliban extremists.

But it seems that in this case – as in so many others – religious crankery is being used as a cover for political chicanery.

The real target is apparently Kaambaksh's older brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, who is "one of the leading independent journalists in the region and [who] has written numerous stories that detail human rights abuses," according to Jean Mackenzie, Afghan bureau director of country director of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. [On a personal note, it so happens that Jean Mackenzie – like her fellow Afghanistan reporter Carlotta Gall -- was also one of my colleagues at the Moscow Times years ago.] CNN reports:

Among [Ibrahimi's] best-known pieces was an expose of the "dancing boys," teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties thrown by some commanders in northern Afghanistan. In other reports, Ibrahimi has named government officials who extort money from locals, MacKenzie said.

The day after Kaambaksh was arrested, authorities paid Ibrahimi a visit and combed through his computer and notebooks looking for names of sources who helped him in his reporting…"This is why we think this is tied to (Ibrahimi)," she said.

The case is like a perfect transplant of the noxious Bush-era ethos: Huckabee-like theocrats operating with Cheney-like secrecy cover up sexual hypocrisy and rampant corruption by McCain-like militarists with Romney-style disregard for due process and Guiliani-like draconian punishment.

But far more important than these domestic echoes is the very real danger hanging over the life of Kaambaksh. Perhaps if enough noise is made about his plight, the resulting bad PR will cause the satrap appointed by our own autocrat to grant clemency.

For yes, that is what are reduced to in our ultra-modern 21st-century world: pleading for mercy from tyrants and their tools, just like the lowliest serf coming in supplication to the Tsar.

So what about it, blog warriors? Is the case of Kaambaksh worth a swarm?

source

from Reporters without Borders

	Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh
	Afghanistan

	Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a 23-year-old journalist, was arrested in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of the northern province of Balkh, on 27 October 2007 on charges of blasphemy and “disseminating defamatory comments about Islam.” Under repeated pressure from the Council of Mullahs and local officials, a Mazar-i-Sharif court sentenced him to death on 22 January 2008 at the end of a trial held behind closed doors in which he was not defended by a lawyer. A journalism student at Balkh university and a reporter for the newspaper Jahan-e-Naw (“The New World”), Kambakhsh was arrested after downloading an article that analyses what the Koran says about women. It has been established that he is not the author of the controversial article, which came from an Iranian website. Rahimullah Samandar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, says his arrest is linked to articles written by his brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, criticising the Balkh provincial authorities. Ibrahimi says the verdict is “unjust” and urges the international community to support his brother.