NOTE FROM JOHN: Chris posted this in the wee hours of the morning (God bless his Parisian soul), but this story is far too important to let slip away unread. Folks, this is post-Taliban Afghanistan. This is the war that we supposedly won - you remember, the one that we pretty much quit in order to invade Iraq. This story is horrifying. This is not a democracy, and people like this are not going to be our friends.
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Afghanistan is sentencing a journalist to death because he downloaded and distributed a report on women's rights. Is this the government that we're propping up with our soldiers and tax dollars? I understand that different cultures have different views but this is so incredibly against everything we stand for as a country. Is this really the kind of government we want to support?
A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.
The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.
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