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 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.
by Mickey Z. When you write books, articles, and essays that typically fall into the "radical" category, you take hits from the full range of the political spectrum. Right, left, or anywhere in-between, beliefs run deep and viewpoints die hard. Often, however, irate critics of all stripes lazily fall back on empty rebuttals. For example, when I posted an essay called "Why I Hate America" at the liberal blog, Daily Kos, it provoked this timeless classic:
"America is a terrible country," he/she snarked. "After all, how many other countries give you the RIGHT to write what you just wrote?"
Freedom Fries
Freedom is an old song by Richie Havens.
Let's
put aside the unintentional (?) tongue twister ("the right to write
what you just wrote") and the fact that the obvious answer to his/her
question-plenty of other countries do-destroys this line of reasoning
(sic). The larger issue, as I see it, is how we each choose to evaluate
our freedom.
Freedom is a new song by George Michael.
Hey,
I'm not living in Pinochet's Chile or Duvalier's Haiti or Hussein's
Iraq or Suharto's Indonesia (insert your favorite U.S. client-state). I
know. But what are we talking about here? Is freedom just an issue of
bigger cages and longer chains? Is it merely a commodity sold to the
highest bidder? Must the majority of us sit by and drool while freedom
fries on the grill of capitalist avarice?
Freedom was a professional tennis team from Philadelphia.
Speaking
of grills, I was once eating lunch in a Virginia Beach diner when I
heard a loud roar. "What was that?" I bellowed. The waitress smiled and
replied: "That's an F-14...the sound of freedom."
Freedom is a taxpayer-subsidized killing machine.
To
have more freedom than, say, a woman living under Taliban repression is
not the same as being free. But it is the same as settling for less
subjugation instead of demanding more liberty (or at least as much
liberty currently guaranteed by virtue of the Constitution).
Being
an American dissident usually results in marginalization and financial
instability but rarely gets one jailed or disappeared. Still, the "it
could be worse" excuse is no way to judge the quality and/or quantity
of anything.
Freedom is, according to Rosa Luxemburg, "always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently."
Mickey
Z. is the author of five books, most recently "50 American Revolutions
You're Not Supposed to Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism"
(Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at
http://www.mickeyz.net
Opinion 
When you write books, articles, and essays that typically fall into the "radical" category, you take hits from the full range of the political spectrum. Right, left, or anywhere in-between, beliefs run deep and viewpoints die hard. Often, however, irate critics of all stripes lazily fall back on empty rebuttals. For example, when I posted an essay called "Why I Hate America" at the liberal blog, Daily Kos, it provoked this timeless classic:
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