When No Law Means No Law


The following Q&A with CounterPunch readers (who are opinionated and engaging souls) leads to two conclusions:

(1) the State Department’s letter of justification for adding Al-Manar to the Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL) should be immediately de-classified and published in the Federal Register;


Question: Is there some reason why your article entitled ìThe New Zeus on the Blockî on counterpunch.org contained every relevant fact about the issue surrounding Al-Manar, with the exception of the actual content that is responsible for banning the network? Clearly the freedom of speech does not protect one’s right to disseminate lies and propaganda?

Answer: The answer is classified. According to the Patriot Act, the State Dept. is required to distribute a ìclassifiedî letter of justification one week prior to designating a group as a ìterrorist organization.î Then, on the day that the designation takes effect, a notice appears in the Federal Register. The Dec. 17 notice in the Federal Register about Al-Manar doesn’t (and doesn’t have to) set forth any of the ìclassifiedî reasons. We’ll get back to the USA directly, but first a word about France.

The French ruling on Al-Manar is interesting, because it comes through an administrative court known as Council of State. Reports about the Council’s ruling on Al-Manar focus on the following incident in which a commentator reportedly purveyed Zionist conspiracy theories: ìThe commentator, who was defined as an expert on the ëZionist entity’, described at length how Israel has been trying to spread dangerous diseases, including AIDS, in the Arab world.î


Returning to principles of the First Amendment in the USA, I happen to believe that a world without Zionist conspiracy theories would be a better world. But a world where Zionist conspiracy theorists are suppressed by state agents for ìinciting terrorî is a chilling one. As reported in the media so far, Constitutional justifications for restricting Al-Manar’s freedom of speech have yet to be publicly set forth. If the State Dept. is acting in a Constitutional manner, I would expect stringent standards regarding speech that ìincites".

The Al-Manar ruling appears to designate a ìterrorist organizationî based solely on public acts of speech. As far as I know, this is new.

In neither the State Dept. briefing of Dec. 17, nor in news reports about the terrorist designation in the USA, were examples of content given that would qualify for ìinciting terrorism.î As for what the First Amendment protects, indeed lies and propaganda are broadly tolerated, unless they libel or incite. As far as I know, "libel" does not pertain to states. As for ìincite,î the ghost of Abbie Hoffman is here to warn you, that’s a very serious word.


While one may ring with the popular chime that state intelligence about certain acts of terrorism has some basis to be counted as ìclassifiedî (for purpose of protecting sources, etc) what can be the basis for classifying ìacts of speechî that have been previously broadcast? What possible sources could the State Department be protecting? The Al-Manar file should be immediately de-classified and published in the Federal Register.




And I Reply That: Regarding structures of law that discourage hate speech or war propaganda, I am ready to listen. But this is not the same thing as asking a state (or an empire for that matter) to do everything in its power. As Mary Ratcliff has pointed out in a Dec. 15 post at The American Street, the Bush administration is using the charge of "propaganda" to prosecute some parties, while it openly organizes "propaganda" campaigns at home and abroad. Based on what I know so far, it appears to me, and to the next CounterPunch reader below, that the Al-Manar ruling exhibits a blatant double standard for what counts in the Bush adminsitration as ìincitingî and what does not:


YOUR articles are for contemplating and learning too!!

Reply: Dear Reader, I love the way you spell Triumpherate. Indeed who or what can this White House not conquer once it sets out? As you suggest, the Bush team might even have effects against racism, homophobia, or misogyny in America if it took such things to be any of its business. Now, returning to the example of terrorist crime and the things that incite it:


The Van Gogh example sounds like the one given by my Canadian correspondent above, with important differences. In the Canadian example, we have terrorism that attacks anonymous members of a perceived enemy population in retaliation for state actions. In the Amsterdam example, the retaliation is directed against a specific person for acts of expression.


In the Canadian example, my correspondent says that it was probably one-sided news reports about the killing of Sheikh Yassin, not the killing itself, that incited the terrorist response. Therefore, we should shut down the alleged sources of one-sided news reports, not the power to assassinate. This is another discussion altogether. What seems clear however is that nobody has yet asserted a carefully traced link between Al-Manar’s reporting and some specific act of terror.




Thinking about transatlantic satellites is like thinking about opium in Afghanistan, or oil in Iraq. All these things count for money in the bag. State power never overlooks money in the bag. As Alex Jones has helpfully noted in his daily news clips this week, there was a French spy satellite launched over the weekend. "Helios 2A is said to be able to spot objects as small as a textbook anywhere on Earth. Its infrared sensors will allow France’s military to gather information at night from space for the first time." Did the Bush team need some snapshots? Inquiring minds have a right to ask.


And this just in: CounterPunch reader asks, "Time to dust off the shortwave radios?"



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