[Ppnews] The true story of free speech in America

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Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2430125.ece


This systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in schools




Published: 07 April 2007

Laila al-Arian was wearing her headscarf at her 
desk at Nation Books, one of my New York 
publishers. No, she told me, it would be 
difficult to telephone her father. At the medical 
facility of his North Carolina prison, he can 
only make a few calls - monitored, of course - 
and he was growing steadily weaker.

Sami al-Arian is 49 but he stayed on hunger 
strike for 60 days to protest the government 
outrage committed against him, a burlesque of 
justice which has, of course, largely failed to 
rouse the sleeping dogs of American journalism in 
New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

All praise, then, to the journalist John Sugg 
from Tampa, Florida, who has been cataloguing 
al-Arian's little Golgotha for months, along with 
Alexander Cockburn of Counter Punch.

The story so far: Sami al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born 
Palestinian, was a respected computer professor 
at the University of South Florida who tried, 
however vainly, to communicate the real tragedy 
of Palestinian Arabs to the US government. But 
according to Sugg, Israel's lobbyists were 
enraged by his lessons - al-Arian's family was 
driven from Palestine in 1948 - and in 2003, at 
the instigation of Attorney General Ashcroft, he 
was arrested and charged with conspiring "to 
murder and maim" outside the United States and 
with raising money for Islamic Jihad in 
"Palestine". He was held for two and a half years 
in solitary confinement, hobbling half a mile, 
his hands and feet shackled, merely to talk to his lawyers.

Al-Arian's $50m (£25m) Tampa trial lasted six 
months; the government called 80 witnesses (21 
from Israel) and used 400 intercepted phone calls 
along with evidence of a conversation that a 
co-defendant had with al-Arian in - wait for it - 
a dream. The local judge, a certain James Moody, 
vetoed any remarks about Israeli military 
occupation or about UN Security Council 
Resolution 242, on the grounds that they would 
endanger the impartiality of the jurors.

In December, 2005, al-Arian was acquitted on the 
most serious charges and on those remaining; the 
jurors voted 10 to two for acquittal. Because the 
FBI wanted to make further charges, al-Arian's 
lawyers told him to make a plea that would end 
any further prosecution. Arriving for his 
sentence, however, al-Arian - who assumed time 
served would be his punishment, followed by 
deportation - found Moody talking about "blood" 
on the defendant's hands and ensured he would 
have to spend another 11 months in jail. Then 
prosecutor Gordon Kromberg insisted that the 
Palestinian prisoner should testify against an 
Islamic think tank. Al-Arian believed his plea 
bargain had been dishonoured and refused to 
testify. He was held in contempt. And continues to languish in prison.

Not so, of course, most of America's torturers in 
Iraq. One of them turns out to rejoice in the 
name of Ric Fair, a "contract interrogator", who 
has bared his soul in the Washington Post - all 
praise, here, by the way to the Post - about his 
escapades in the Fallujah interrogation 
"facility" of the 82nd Airborne Division. Fair 
has been having nightmares about an Iraqi whom he 
deprived of sleep during questioning "by forcing 
him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his 
clothes". Now it is Fair who is deprived of 
sleep. "A man with no face stares at me ... 
pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He 
begins to cry. It s a pitiful sound, and it 
sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realise the screams are mine."

Thank God, Fair didn't write a play about his 
experiences and offer it to Channel 4 whose 
executives got cold feet about The Mark of Cain, 
the drama about British army abuse in Basra. They 
quickly bought into the line that transmission of 
Tony Marchant's play might affect the now happy 
outcome of the far less riveting Iranian prison 
production of the Famous 15 "Servicepersons" - by 
angering the Muslim world with tales of how our 
boys in Basra beat up on the local Iraqis. As the 
reporter who first revealed the death of hotel 
worker Baha Mousa in British custody in Basra - I 
suppose we must always refer to his demise as 
"death" now that the soldiers present at his 
savage beating have been acquitted of murder - I 
can attest that Arab Muslims know all too well 
how gentle and refined our boys are during 
interrogation. It is we, the British at home, who 
are not supposed to believe in torture. The 
Iraqis know all about it - and who knew all about 
Mousa's fate long before I reported it for The Independent on Sunday.

Because it's really all about shutting the 
reality of the Middle East off from us. It's to 
prevent the British and American people from 
questioning the immoral and cruel and 
internationally illegal occupation of Muslim 
lands. And in the Land of the Free, this 
systematic censorship of Middle East reality 
continues even in the country's schools. Now the 
principal of a Connecticut high school has banned 
a play by pupils, based on the letters and words 
of US soldiers serving in Iraq. Entitled Voices 
in Conflict, Natalie Kropf, Seth Koproski, James 
Presson and their fellow pupils at Wilton High 
School compiled the reflections of soldiers and 
others - including a 19-year-old Wilton High 
graduate killed in Iraq - to create their own 
play. To no avail. The drama might hurt those 
"who had lost loved ones or who had individuals 
serving as we speak", proclaimed Timothy Canty, 
Wilton High's principal. And - my favourite line 
- Canty believed there was not enough rehearsal 
time to ensure the play would provide "a 
legitimate instructional experience for our students".

And of course, I can quite see Mr Canty's point. 
Students who have produced Arthur Miller's The 
Crucible were told by Mr Canty - whose own war 
experiences, if any, have gone unrecorded - that 
it wasn't their place to tell audiences what 
soldiers were thinking. The pupils of Wilton High 
are now being inundated with offers to perform at 
other venues. Personally, I think Mr Canty may 
have a point. He would do much better to 
encourage his students to perform Shakespeare's 
Titus Andronicus, a drama of massive violence, 
torture, rape, mutilation and honour killing. It 
would make Iraq perfectly explicable to the good 
people of Connecticut. A "legitimate 
instructional experience" if ever there was one.


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