Man Charged With Relaying Hezbollah TV

[Lupu]

This discussion has been very valuable, but I suspect that Mr. Iqbal is 
being charged with supporting a designated terrorist group by 
engaging in a forbidden transaction with them -- that is, paying money 
or some other goods of value in exchange for the right to broadcast 
Hezbollah TV in the U.S.  If that is so, don't the First Amendment 
questions disappear? (That is, it doesn't matter whether Iqbal is paying 
Hezbollah for baskets, or pita bread, or TV footage -- paying them for 
anything violates the law, because it supports them financially).  Or do 
those on the list believe that the First Amendment requires an 
exemption from the "no support" statute if the buyer is acquiring (and 
retransmitting) communicative material?  

I seriously doubt that the charges relate to Hezbollah's foreign origins, 
or to the content of the broadcast.  If (for example) Al-Jazeera has not 
been designated a terrorist organization, then buying their footage and 
showing it in the U.S. cannot be made a crime unless the broadcast 
includes unprotected speech (threats, Brandenburg-type incitement, 
etc.).

On 25 Aug 2006 at 14:38, DavidEBernstein at aol.com wrote:

> 
> One truly last post. No, it's not about distortion, per se. Yes,
> racism can distort the speech marketplace, as can ADM. But [from You
> Can't Say That!] However, civil libertarians also recognize that they
> must still ask the most important question in political economy:
> compared to what? While much private speech is wrongheaded or even
> dangerous, it is even more dangerous to put the government in charge
> of policing it. The alternative to allowing an unregulated speech
> marketplace is permitting government censorship, leaving "the
> government in control of all the institutions of culture, the great
> censor and director of which thoughts are good for us." For good
> reason, civil libertarians believe that the government cannot be
> trusted with the power to establish an official orthodoxy on any
> issue, cultural or political, or to ensure the "fairness" of political
> debate
> 
> [end excerpt]
> 
> I think these dangers are substantially diminished if the U.S.
> government has no power over domestic speech, but can suppress foreign
> government's speech, and indeed, the latter actoins may prevent
> foreign governments from so grossly subsidizing one side of a debate
> as to effectively establish ITS orthodoxy. Moreover, if the reason for
> the restriction is not the content of thespeech per se, but that the
> speech is emanating from an enemy source, and thus helping the enemy
> in its battle against the U.S., the danger is diminished even further,
> and the countervailing interests in suppressing speech (as against,
> e.g., the U.S. gov't simply suppressing foreign speech that makes it
> look bad) are greater.
> 
> 
> In a message dated 8/25/2006 2:24:03 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> schweber at polisci.wisc.edu writes:
>     Same goes for Bernstein's "distorting the marketplace" idea; as I
>     mentioned earlier, the proposition that racial prejudice, for
>     example, distorts discourse and thus creates choices that are not
>     "real" is a standby of both the critical race studies movement and
>     theories of deliberative democracy. It's not just that certain
>     categories of actors "distort" the discourse, certain categories
>     of expression do the same thing.
> 
> 



Ira C. ("Chip") Lupu
F. Elwood & Eleanor Davis Professor of Law 
The George Washington University Law School 
2000 H St., NW
Washington D.C 20052

(202) 994-7053

ICLUPU at main.nlc.gwu.edu
ICLUPU at law.gwu.edu