My analystical brain has been shut off in awe of his satellite collection. Damn.

yet at the same time all nations have historically reserved the right to ban the importation of propaganda from a hostile nation.”

Yeah all the might of Lebananon is going to lay us to waste. Travesty.

(although I couldn’t get through when I tried to connect just now)

When this thing going to end. At last Indian govt. is not taking these issues lightly.

extremist groups generally enjoy first ammendment protection up to the point that they advocate violence (real immediate violence, not abstract ones like in say in the communist manifesto).

Financial contributions to terrorist groups seem to meet this test. i think we can distinguish between reporting on hezbollah's activities or even defending hezbollah in the press (as is often done even on this site) and assisting hezbollah in getting funds, as Javed Iqbal alledgedly did.

Although the law seems to pass constitutional muster, I think its application in this case is flawed if this is true:

Mr. Iqbal was selling access to Al Manar, before the station was designated as a terrorist entity, according to court papers.

The guy may just have not have made the connection.

This indictment of course is way over the top and it doesnt take a law genius to realize that this indictment will have a chilling effect on free speech in America. Here is a copy of this weird indictment. If displaying Hizbullah tv constitutes providing material support to a terrorist organization (I am presuming he was not cutting royalty checks for Nassullah) we are in big trouble. I am going to go now and cry on the death of the first amendment.

So does this mean if Jim Lehrer lands an interview with Nassrallah and gives him a forum from which to speak, PBS will be shut down because it aids terrorists? There is a logical step that has completely eluded me, or maybe it doesn't exist.

If displaying Hizbullah tv constitutes providing material support to a terrorist organization (I am presuming he was not cutting royalty checks for Nassullah) we are in big trouble.

amfd: i wouldn't presume the bolded part of your statement is accurate. I assumed that this is precisely what is happening since that would be normal for this type of relationship. i think the case would hindge on this, constitutionally speaking.

.

So does this mean if Jim Lehrer lands an interview with Nassrallah and gives him a forum from which to speak, PBS will be shut down because it aids terrorists?

no, this happens all the time. if jim paid nassrallah for the interview it might be a different story, though still iffy constitutionally. i think the courts have ruled that the govt is allowed to control the financial side of consititutioanlly protected speech...like say when they seize the royalties a criminal gets if he writes a book about his crime...but they cannot ban the book. not sure though.

Al Manar News can still be seen on World Link TV on DirecTV every weeknight. Its on a show called Mosaic. If you get a general package on DirecTV you are paying to get Al Manar news.

I read those cases in law school. But in those cases the people in question received direct payments. It gets a little dicey, in my mind, here because there is no real precedent or guidance on how much involvment is required before an organization can be considered an arm of a terrorist organization.

As a total non-sequitor, it sounds like you're a lawyer, Manju. If you know of anybody in the DC area looking to hire a recent law grad w/ a strong environmental background, drop me an e-mail.

manju: you are correct that this is the crux. it is not clear from current reports whether iqbal had a deal that directed revenues to al-manar. it is in fact not even clear that he distributed al-manar at all, apparently. current media reports have no indication that he actually provided al-manar to any customer or that he had the technical hook-up to do so. apparently he offered to sell the informant a package that explicitly included al-manar, and was arrested on this basis.

a number of issues will have to be cleared up:

- if iqbal actually was providing al-manar, did he do so prior to the channel itself being declared a terrorist organization? and to whom did he pay for the service? al-manar? an aggregator or wholesaler? etc.

- if iqbal was not actually providing al-manar, did he have a business arrangement to do so in the near future? or was he making empty promises?

- how was the "offer" to provide al-manar obtained? did he make it of his own or was he baited/entrapped into doing so?

so we may be looking at a case of existing law vs. first amendment, i.e. a constitutional law case that could end up in the supreme court; or we could be looking at a businessman overpromising on a service, which could end up being a minor form of fraud; or anything in between. notice that the pattern of these "terrorist" arrests in the US in the past few years has been to result in very minor, non-terrorism-related charges, or dismissal.

i don't know where this case is going. just trying to make sense of the limited info we've got so far.

peace

Manju: I was making the presumption here for 2 reasons. (1) I am not sure if Manar tv directly collects from small broadcasters around the world. In all likelihood, Manar TV probably sold its world wide rights of broadcasting to some other company which in turn subleases those rights to small companies (or even one big one) and thats how Javed Bhai got the rights. Of course thats pure speculation. (2) The other reason that I believe that no money was exchanged between Hizbullah and Jaced Bhai is because the government has charged Javed with conspiracy to violate the act and not the actual violation of the act. If money was exchanged, the government would have charged him with the actual violation of the act. The conpiracy charge suggests to me that no money was exchanged. I dont know a lot of criminal law, so I might very well be completely wrong.

Siddhartha: The government has charged him with conspiracy. I am waiting for the case to collapse completely once it reaches the Court. However there are some very serious first amnedment issues here. The Act itself carves an exception for first amendment which the government has chosen to ignore and go ahead with the indictment anyway.

thanks, AMfD. let's keep an eye on this one... and on the other case, the one of the US citizens not allowed re-entry, which is probably the more far-ranging and scary one.

As a total non-sequitor, it sounds like you're a lawyer, Manju. If you know of anybody in the DC area looking to hire a recent law grad w/ a strong environmental background, drop me an e-mail.

sorry Sriram, not a lawyer. but u know, constitutioanlly speaking, you don't need to be one to sit on the supreme court ;-]

don't quit your night job.

焊管

The reality is that several underground asymmetrical battles are being waged by Muslims for specific, local causes. The only factor linking these struggles is a common faith. But this does not mean they share some global pan-Islamic vision. A Kashmiri Muslim engaged in a fight for independence has more in common with a Hindu pundit in Srinagar than with a fellow Muslim in Chechnya.

When Basque terrorists belonging to ETA, the separatist movement that has been fighting a long and deadly battle for independence from Madrid, strike civilian targets, they are not accused of being part of a Christian movement together with the IRA. Although fighters in both organisations are Catholics, this does not automatically mean that they, or indeed, Peru’s Shining Path guerrillas, are part of some evil papist conspiracy.

Similarly, the only thing the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka’s LTTE separatists have in common with India’s Naxalites is their Hindu belief. But this shared faith in no way puts the two groups on the same side. They both have their own agendas and their own methods. Both would resent the label of ‘terrorists’, and insist that they are fighting for just causes.

An informative analysis