Freedom of Press Red Alert: Man Arrested for broadcasting Hizbollah TV

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Thursday August 24, 2006 · 1:18 PM PDT

2006/08/24 · 13:18

See, the key to freedom of the press and speech is, you have to let everyone have a voice, no matter how strongly you disagree with it.

Sure, Hizbollah TV is a mouthpiece for an organization most will view as highly undesirable, but the key is everyone has a right to say, or publish, or print or blog whatever they please, no matter how outside the mainstream it is. Eveything is in play, except for the obvious screaming fire in the crowded theater argument.

This is a slippery slope. We are already extremely isolated (when was the last time you saw Canadian TV?), and if we censor this station, what will be the next station banned? The French station on channel 56? The BBC if they get out of the war on terror with us? PBS? Mexican stations which brings me my beloved Pumas on Sunday afternoons?

I guess my vision of an all-inclusive America allows for even madmen to get their say. The nut of my argument is this:

If Fox News is allowed to show us terrorist home videos, like the latest diddy from Bin Laden, then why can't we also watch Hizbollah TV?

Is it because they want to control how the material is presented to us, the people? If so, that is nothing more than back-channels censorship and information control for the masses and a huge infringement of First Amendment.

Here's the story:
New Yorker arrested for broadcasting Hizbollah TV
http://go.reuters.com/...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. authorities have arrested a New York man for broadcasting Hizbollah television station al-Manar, which has been designated a terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury Department, prosecutors said on Thursday.
Javed Iqbal, 42, was arrested on Wednesday because his Brooklyn-based company HDTV Ltd. was providing New York-area customers with the Hizbollah-operated channel, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
It did not say how long Iqbal's company had been providing satellite broadcasts of al-Manar, which the U.S. Treasury Department in March had designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, making it a crime to conduct business with al-Manar.
Iqbal has been charged with conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the statement said. Federal authorities searched HDTV's Brooklyn office and Iqbal's Staten Island home, where Iqbal was suspected of maintaining satellite dishes, the statement said.
The U.S. Treasury Department froze U.S. assets of al-Manar in March, saying it supported fund-raising and recruitment activities of Hizbollah, a Shiite Muslim group backed by Syria and Iran that has been at war with Israel in southern Lebanon.

In that last paragraph, I would like to point out that if they froze his assets for recruiment activities, we need to freeze the assets of every major TV news outlet for their requirement activities for the Taliban. Or have we all forgotten John Walker Lyden by now.

Just saying.

UPDATE:I think people here think I am cheerleading for Hezzbollah, what I am trying to say is the MSM uses these broadcasts daily, for profit. Then why cannont someone just broadcast the straight feed?

I am trying to show the double standard, which seems to be getting lost in some people's passion for one side or the other.

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