Under the cover "anti-terrorism", US is controlling journalists

[nascarblue]

Is this not amazing to you? I find it almost impossible to stay on top of all the crap Bush and the repugs are doing to strip us of our rights and destroy the Constitution. Funny, I just saw People Vs. Larry Flynt. How sad that we're regressing even worse than those days... I just came across this article that barely raised a murmur in the MSM.

They are not even a dozen strong, but the Islamic activists (mostly Shiah women) who spoke up at Houston's IndyMedia website Friday morning say they are backed by principles found in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the USA, Article 19 of United Nations Declarations of Human Rights, and Islamic principles, "which call for the pursuit of knowledge throughout one's life and the dissemination of knowledge."

At the time their statement was posted Friday morning, the State Department had not yet announced its decision to place Hezbollah-backed television station Al-Manar on the terrorist watch list. But within hours, the decision had been announced and the Intelsat satellite company had stopped relaying the station's signal to USA audiences.


"The 'war on terrorism', the fight against crime and the fight against right wing extremism can pose problems for the practice of investigative journalism," says the report. Under the cover of anti-terrorism, the state is exercising new forms of surveillance and control over journalists."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/20795/

[SariesNightly]

1. War

Rich are the bounties of war.

The war may be fictitious, the lives are lost for nothing, but the clampdown, the thought control that can be done in the name of patriotism and security, is something impossible to get during peacetime.

[nascarblue]

2. So true, thats why I think this war is really WW3 and will not end.

[leveymg]

3. This likely has consequences for all of US

Background: Patriot 1 made its a felony to knowingly provide "services" to groups designated by the State Dept. as foreign "terrorist organizations". The story above reports that U.S.-based global satellite company, Intelsat, dropped a Palestinian news network after it was placed on the list of organizations tied to Hezbollah, which was previously designated.

Satellite telecom feeds would seem to fall within the ambit of service-providers. Thus, it's not surprising to see Intelsat pull the plug on a Hezbollah-linked network to avoid the potential draconian sanctions that could result. However, this precedent can easily lead to ever-nastier consequences, including the chilling of the expression of all anti-war dissent which can be construed as "promoting terrorism" that might be picked up and rebroadcast internationally.

If BushCo wants to get really creative, they could expand the list of "services" to include content. The ban on providing services to "terrorists" could work in both directions. Let's say you wrote an article and posted it on the web, and it was later picked up and reposted abroad by Al-Manar or another banned media outlet. Under the open-ended procedures described by the State Dept. spokesman quoted in the article, below, the feds could open an anti-terrorism investigation against the American author and the publishers of the original site, and potentially its other contributors and even its viewers inside the U.S.

Am I being paranoid here, or is this just looking a little down the road? At the least, I would be very careful about writing statements that could be misconstrued as inciting, advocating or supporting "terrorism or terrorist groups".

-- "What about Americans who help to distribute Al-Manar in the USA?
"I've given you the criteria," said the spokesperson. "We will be examining people and activities to see whether they fall within that criteria." , said Boucher, the State Dept. spokesman