Look who's censoring now: NY man faces 5 yrs in prison for offering satellite tv channel! [View All]

After listening to all the sturm und drang surrounding Venezuela's decision not to renew the public airwaves license of the pro-coup RCTV, I remembered a case of actual censorship taking place right here in the Land Of Free Speech (tm). Does the name Javed Iqbal ring any bells?

Briefly, Javed Iqbal is a New York businessman who offered satellite tv packages that included access to foreign news channels, including Hezbollah's al-Manar satellite broadcasts. From the BBC:




As Iqbal's lawyers point out, if China or Iran were doing this against an access provider who made the satellite broadcasts of an American news entity available to his customers, "America would be hopping up and down crying freedom of speech and freedom of the press".

The prosecutor in this case insists that "the charge lurking in the background is material support for terrorism". That sounds as though it should mean that Iqbal was engaged in raising money to arm Hezbollah, but it doesn't. Apparently, merely offering consumers the capability to tune into a broadcast is all that is needed to constitute "material support" for the activities of any group associated with that broadcast.

Under that standard, RCTV is certainly guilty of "material support for terrorism". And yet non-renewal of their license to use the public broadcast spectrum is the only sanction they face? Instead of, say, lengthy prison terms like they'd get here in the Land Of The Free? So why aren't the Chavez-haters here screaming their free-speech-loving heads off over what their own government has tried to do to Javed Iqbal and his satellite broadcast service?


Just double standards as usual, I fear.



(edit: removed redundant word "to")