Free speech isn’t terrorism

Do you want George Bush to control what TV channels you can watch?

That’s what’s behind the Aug. 24 arrest of Javed Iqbal in Staten Island for allegedly providing satellite link-ups to the Al Manar television network.

Between 10 and 15 million people around the world watch this Lebanese TV station, according to the Wall Street Journal. Why can’t people in the United States do the same?

Iqbal’s indictment is another attempt by the White House to crush first amendment guarantees of free speech. It’s the first time that the International Emer gency Economic Powers Act has been used to shut down access to any media. Legal observers have noted this law specifically exempted any form of speech.

The Treasury Department decreed in March that Al Manar, which means “the beacon” in Arabic, was a “global terrorist entity.” This TV station reflects the views of the Hezbollah political organization, which is a member of the Lebanese government.

For Washington, Al Manar’s real crime is telling the truth about Israel’s terror bombing of Lebanon that killed hundreds of children. That’s why Israeli planes—made in the USA—bombed this television station six times.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen A. Miller claimed that Iqbal was providing “material support for terrorism” for linking people up to Al Manar. Federal agents actually flew a helicopter over Iqbal’s house and then sent an informer to buy a satellite package from him.

Radio host Bob Grant, a lowlight of U.S. talk radio, has called on the air for dropping atom bombs on cities in the Middle East, including Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Millions of people would die if this were actually carried out.

Why isn’t the United States Attorney’s office investigating this genuine incitement to terrorism? Grant is a notorious racist who welcomed the drowning of Haitian refugees. He called former New York Mayor David Dinkins a “washroom attendant.”

At the very least the Federal Communi cations Commission could lift the radio license of Bob Grant’s radio station, WOR-AM, which is owned by the family of right-winger William F. Buckley, Jr.

Javed Iqbal is a Pakistani-American who has lived in this country for 20 years. His arrest continues the racist scapegoating of people from South Asia, the Middle East and all Muslims, especially following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In the hysteria following those attacks, an estimated 15,000 Pakistanis were forced to leave the New York area. Hundreds were rounded-up and imprisoned.

Suppressing freedom of speech is nothing new for the capitalist government. The U.S. Army investigated Martin Luther King Jr.’s grandfather during World War I for giving a sermon that denounced lynching.

Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph was jailed for publishing an anti-war news paper called The Messenger. Ran dolph later founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. One of its members—E. D. Nixon—organized the Mont gomery bus boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested.

FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover wanted Black newspaper publishers arrested for treason during World War II for reporting about the racist treatment of Black GIs, whose blood supply was segregated. The father of Emmett Till—the young man who was so horribly lynched in Mississippi—was framed up and hanged by Army brass. The publisher of the prestigious Chicago Defender newspaper, John Sengstacke, had to meet with Attorney General Francis Biddle to head off the threat of prosecution.

This attempt to shut down African American newspapers is documented in the 1998 film “The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords,” available from Califor nia Newsreel.

Now George Bush wants to silence any criticism of U.S. wars of aggression in the Middle East. Allowing Javed Iqbal to be prosecuted and repressed will allow Fox News and all the other liars in the corporate media to keep their monopoly on providing information to the public.

For another source of the historical information, see “A Question of Sedition, The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press During World War II,” by Patrick S. Washburn, published by Oxford University Press.