Stand up for Justice: Speak up for Sami

Submitted by Guest Blogger Zeenat Iqbal

"Our defense is not in our armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in our law and order." - Albert Einstein

In November 2007, the world was up in arms at the disintegration of the fundamental rule of law in Pakistan – resulting from the dismissal of Supreme Court justices, the arbitrary detention and abuse of human rights activists and political dissenters and the claim that "judicial interference" was an underlying premise of the declaration of the state of emergency. The American Bar Association, local Bar associations, human rights activists and even to some extent, Congress, loudly and strongly criticized the Musharraf government, and condemned its actions. It is incomprehensible - then - that the very same advocates are not up in arms in the face of the disintegration of the fundamental rule of law in the United States.

Dr. Al Arian was publicly indicted in 2003, endured an agonizing five month trial (costing over $50M), and in light of every obstacle - was acquitted (i.e. 12 jurors voted not guilty) on 8 of the 17 charges. The jury was 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the remaining nine charges, which is an overwhelming number - usually adequate for the government to abandon further prosecution. This however, was no ordinary case. The orders for Dr. Al Arian's 2003 arrest came from high up in the Department of Justice, and he was going to be held up as the poster child for prosecution under the Patriot Act. The fact that the government's defeat was considered "one of the Justice Department's most embarrassing legal setbacks since 9/11," did not deter.

In the shadow of another trial (the nine charges could have been retried), Dr. Al Arian - who had by this time spent over 34 months in prison, away from his wife and five children (two of whom were barely into their teens), under harsh and demeaning conditions, and was knee deep in legal fees, all for no wrong doing on his part - agreed to cut a deal with the government. One guilty plea, in exchange for a ticket out of the country once he had served his sentence, and no obligation to cooperate with the government in any following legal proceedings.

Sweet deal?

Not even close. Almost immediately after the deal was set, Dr. Al Arian faced continued harassment. First, at the hands of a bigoted federal judge Dr. Al Arian was accused of actions that he had been acquitted of only months before, and was sentenced to the highest possible term - 57 months. It's a miracle that the time he had already served was honored, leaving only about 20 months to serve. Second, no sooner had he begun to serve his sentence did the Department of Justice start their next onslaught - subpoenaing Dr. Al Arian to appear as a witness before a grand jury (for an unrelated matter). Since then, he has been called before two additional grand juries (for a total of three) - each of which he has refused to appear before for two reasons. One, a matter of principle, and two, a matter of self defense. Dr. Al Arian's plea agreement had been negotiated in a way such that he would not be required to cooperate, and the government should be required to honor its agreement. Dr. Al Arian had also been advised by his attorneys that his testimony may lead to a perjury trap.

The perjury trap is a (very common) technique used by desperate prosecutors that are unable to convict a defendant on substantive criminal charges. The nature of the grand jury proceedings is self serving in of itself - the proceedings are held with only the prosecutor and the grand jury in the room, and inevitably end up in an indictment for the government to enforce; it is completely antithetical to the adversarial nature, and hence relative transparency, of our justice system. To illustrate the absurdity of the grand jury, Judge Sol Wachtler, the former Chief Judge of New York State, stated that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich" - a prosecutor has free reign, and is barely restrained through the usual protections in a normal courtroom. In a grand jury proceeding, according to Jon Turley, if "the government wants to charge your client with perjury, it is almost certain to be able to do so by asking enough questions over the course of the proceeding." (Free Sami Al-Arian) The government has already attempted to distort Dr. Al Arian's words and bring more charges against him, indicating its intent to go after him in any way they can. Hence the added absurdity - if Dr. Al Arian testifies before the grand jury - he is undoubtedly going to be charged with perjury, in a continuation of the harsh prosecutorial tactics by the DOJ and its Asst. US Attorneys (AUSAs) - particularly AUSA Gorden Kromberg.

So - basically - Dr. Al Arian is now caught between the fat and the fire.

On the one hand, if he agrees to testify - Dr. Al Arian will no doubt be cornered, his words distorted and in some way accused of perjury - the only weapon left in the government's arsenal.

On the other hand, if he continues to refuse to testify - as he has for the past three grand juries - the DOJ is likely going to bring criminal contempt charges against him, which hold a sentence of upto 5 years.

The final layer, in this extremely complicated legal battle, is time and the running clock. As of April 11, 2008, Dr. Al Arian has completed his sentence which included an additional 11 months for which he was held in civil contempt for failure to testify before the second grand jury in 2007. The government has since transferred Dr. Al Arian to immigration custody - presumably for deportation. He has continued to suffer at the hands of insensitive and irrational jail personnel who continually offend his dignity and his fundamental human rights. In another twist of logic, it appears that Dr. Al Arian will not be deported any time soon. Whether he will remain at his current facility - Hampton Roads in Virginia - or if he will continue to be shuttled around from facility to facility while the DOJ plans its next move is yet to be seen.

So - what is a man to do in the face of gross misuse of power, injustice and ultimately, no political support? Dr. Al Arian - a strong believer in activism - has begun a non-violent protest, in the only form he has left. He is on a hunger strike (think Gandhi), now past 46 days without food. Here again, time is the enemy - each day that Dr. Al Arian continues his protest, he grows weaker and more vulnerable to his medical conditions (diabetes, for one thing) that are going un-attended.

At this point - if you've chosen to read this far - your question is probably: why should we care?

The answer is simple, and almost deafening. We should care because the prosecution and continued persecution of Dr. Al Arian has cost American tax payers over $50M. We should care because a man's life is at stake, and our efforts from the outside can save him - the saving of one life, is like saving all of humanity and we have that opportunity. We should care because we live in a civilized society with a fundamental rule of law that our country was founded upon, and our freedoms depend on - the continued imprisonment of Dr. Al Arian is not in accordance with the rule of law. We should care because no matter what - when a debt (reasonable or not) is paid, the bondage should not continue. We should care because our ancestors either founded this country or came to it with a common goal - the ability to be free, and live fully in a just and fair society without persecution for thoughts, beliefs or practices.

Dr. Al Arian stands for everything we hold dear - free speech, free expression, political participation, and most importantly - justice. If we don't speak up, our silence will muffle the voices of those that speak truth to power.

Contribute to Dr. Al Arian's legal fund at: Free Sami Now



Also check out the 53 minute version of the documentary USA v. Al Arian at Link TV.

(These videos are accurate upto March 2008; Dr. Al Arian has since been transferred to immigration custody and awaits deportation - which is not forthcoming. Immigration authorities are holding Dr. Al Arian indefinitely, and he is being subject to grave mistreatment. Please see Free Sami Now for how to help, and to learn more about this case.)

It's time to bring Dr. Sami home!

There was a previous Muslamics' post on Dr. Sami Al-Arian's case a few weeks ago but I feel it is an urgent and important issue which needs to be constantly brought up.

For those who still don't know what this is all is about, please do watch the recent 6 min video and then PLEASE take action!

Two Minutes for Dr. Al-Arian

It's day 14 of Dr. Al-Arian's hunger strike, he's lost 25 pounds and he isn't getting the medical attention he needs. Oh and did you forget that he's imprisoned despite a jury's inability to find him guilty of anything?

You've got your wedding dress and jacket ready? Your party menu is set? Your sinuses got you down? You ready for finals?

I don't know. If I had to weigh the questions I'm scared of being asked on the day of judgment, none of the above really frightens me. The one that does:

Did you do EVERYTHING you could?

Do yourself a favor, and do something for Dr. Al-Arian.

Two ideas to get you started:

1. Please call the Butner Medical Center today and inquire about Dr. Al-Arian's health. Ask why they haven't taken any steps to give him an IV to make sure he survives. Their number is (919) 575-3900.

2. Send a letter. We've got the form, all you have to do is personalize and hit send:

To: The Honorable John Conyers, Jr. (john.conyers@mail.house.gov); Senator Patrick Leahy (senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov); U.S. Department of Justice (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov)

To whom it may concern:

My name is xxx, and I am one of the many United States citizens who are concerned about the health of this country's democratic apparatus. One striking example of the numerous miscarriages of justice, is that of Dr. Sami Al-Arian. I am deeply concerned for the health of Dr. Sami Al-Arian who currently remains incarcerated, despite the fact that he has been acquitted of all serious charges brought against him by the U.S. government. Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been on a hunger strike now for over ten days, and has been refused adequate medical care (as simple as an IV!) He is close to dying from starvation.

In the spirit of our constitution and all that it contains pertaining to the civil rights of U.S. citizens, I beseech you to take an initiative in the immediate end to Dr. Al-Arian's suffering, and to responsibly care for his deteriorating health.

Regards,
xxx


Go on, do something. We can all spare a few minutes from Grey's and Eli Stone to help a brother out.

From the Classroom to the Office, Big Brother Wants to Shackle Our Brains to Our Desks...

Submitted By Guest Blogger Nida Chowdhry

The Homeland Security Campus: Repress U
by Michael Gould-Wartofsky

From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism prevention"--as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name--have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university.

Building a homeland security campus and bringing the university to heel is a seven-step mission:

1. Target dissidents. As the warfare state has triggered dissent, the campus has attracted increasing scrutiny--with student protesters in the cross hairs. The government's number-one target? Peace and justice organizations.

From 2003 to 2007 an unknown number of them made it into the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice system (TALON), a secretive domestic spying program ostensibly designed to track direct "potential terrorist threats" to the Defense Department itself. In 2006 the ACLU uncovered, via Freedom of Information Act requests, at least 186 specific TALON reports on "anti-military protests" in the United States--some listed as "credible threats"--from student groups at the University of California, Santa Cruz; State University of New York, Albany; Georgia State University; and New Mexico State University, among other campuses.
. . .
2. Lock and load. Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry, from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles. Lock-and-load policies that began in the 1990s under the rubric of the "war on crime" only escalated with the President's "war on terror." Each school shooting--most recently the massacre at Virginia Tech--adds fuel to the armament flames.

Two-thirds of universities arm their police, according to the Justice Department. Many of the guns being purchased were previously in the province of military units and SWAT teams: for instance, AR-15 rifles (similar to M-16s) are in the arsenals of the University of Texas campus police. Last April City University of New York bought dozens of semiautomatic handguns. Some states, like Nevada, are even considering plans to allow university staff to pack heat in a "special reserve officer corps."
. . .
3. Keep an eye (or hundreds of them) focused on campus. Surveillance has become a boom industry nationally--one that now reaches deep into the heart of campuses. In fact, universities have witnessed explosive growth since 2001 in the electronic surveillance of students, faculty and campus workers. On ever more campuses, closed-circuit security cameras can track people's every move, often from hidden or undisclosed locations, sometimes even into classrooms.
. . .
4. Mine student records. Student records have in recent years been opened up to all manner of data mining for purposes of investigation, recruitment or just all-purpose tracking. From 2001 to 2006, in an operation code-named Project Strike Back, the Education Department teamed up with the FBI to scour the records of the 14 million students who applied for federal financial aid each year. The objective? "To identify potential people of interest," explained an FBI spokesperson cryptically, especially those linked to "potential terrorist activity."
. . .
5. Track foreign-born students; keep the undocumented out. Under the auspices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been keeping close tabs on foreign students and their dependents through the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). As of October 2007, ICE reported that it was actively following 713,000 internationals on campuses, while keeping more than 4.7 million names in the database.
. . .
6. Take over the curriculum, the classroom and the laboratory. Needless to say, not every student is considered a homeland security threat. Quite the opposite. Many students and faculty members are seen as potential assets. To exploit these assets, DHS has launched its own curriculum under its Office of University Programs (OUP), intended, it says, to "foster a homeland security culture within the academic community."
. . .
7. Privatize, privatize, privatize. Of course, homeland security is not just a department, nor is it simply a new network of surveillance and data mining--it's big business. (According to USA Today, global homeland-security-style spending had already reached $59 billion a year in 2006, a sixfold increase over 2000.) Not surprisingly, then, universities have in recent years established unprecedented private-sector partnerships with the corporations that have the most to gain from their research. DHS's on-campus National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terror (START), for instance, features Lockheed Martin on its advisory board. The Center for Food Protection and Defense relies on an industry working group that includes Wal-Mart and McDonald's offering "guidance and direction," according to its chair.

Full Story: Center for Research on Globalization

I found this article utterly creepy, but it is not in the least unexpected. Considering the constant encouragement for our generations to be "peaceful" i.e. apathetic, and the fear that is instilled in us of "terrorism" (i.e. opposition on any level to anything the good ole' US government does), I am not in the least surprised that university students are being monitored to this extent. University students are given tools to think critically and to analyze the world around us. I just wish we would all think beyond the classroom and make connections with reality; maybe we'll all get out of our armchairs one day and dare to make a change in our own lives to start with...

Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers

An excellent article on the Pentagon's support of Evangelical brain washing of US troops (props to the LA Times for publishing it). The article is co-authored by Michael Weinstein and Reza Aslan (author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam - a book which I'm still trying to find the chance to read). Excerpts below:

Maybe what the war in Iraq needs is not more troops but more religion. At least that's the message the Department of Defense seems to be sending.

Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering "freedom packages" to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended.

What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers.

The packages were put together by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up, or OSU. Headed by former kickboxer Jonathan Spinks, OSU is an official member of the Defense Department's "America Supports You" program. The group has staged a number of Christian-themed shows at military bases, featuring athletes, strongmen and actor-turned-evangelist Stephen Baldwin. But thanks in part to the support of the Pentagon, Operation Straight Up has now begun focusing on Iraq, where, according to its website (on pages taken down last week), it planned an entertainment tour called the "Military Crusade."

Apparently the wonks at the Pentagon forgot that Muslims tend to bristle at the word "crusade" and thought that what the Iraq war lacked was a dose of end-times theology.

American military and political officials must, at the very least, have the foresight not to promote crusade rhetoric in the midst of an already religion-tinged war. Many of our enemies in the Mideast already believe that the world is locked in a contest between Christianity and Islam. Why are our military officials validating this ludicrous claim with their own fiery religious rhetoric?

Read on at latimes.com

The Mamma Mia Anti-War Movement

From The Cat's Blog

Today ZNet offered its progressive readers two interesting articles; one by Cindy Sheehan and the other one by Amy Goodman. Good articles. They make sense and light important aspects of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I can only hope that people reading these two articles can also remember (better: guess) that there are 1 million Iraqi killed by this illegal, immoral war of aggression and a country completely destroyed.

The same with Afghanistan, where, day after day, the US and its allies keep slaughtering children, women, innocent people and these heroic actions of our boys and girls go unreported by mainstream media but also by many among the so-called alternative ones. Meanwhile what is called the anti-war movement’s policy makers close their eyes on that front, the just war.

What is called the "anti-war movement" doesn’t even consider to use the word “resistance” while we are presented, day after day, with the compassionate side of patriotism. As US peace movement’ spokesperson (by the way, by whom and when she was elected?) Phyllis Bennis recently wrote, “I don't think we gain strength by making sympathy with resistance fighters a demand of our movement.”

But that sympathy is always granted to the mass murderers, our troops.

Read on here

Iraq on My Mind

"Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.

But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country -- and once defined my own life as well.

Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.

The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds.

In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory.

In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation."

In the United States I step away from my desk, walk into the kitchen, turn on the tap, and watch as clear, cool water fills my glass. I drink it without once thinking about whether it contains a waterborne disease or will cause kidney stones, diarrhea, cholera, or nausea. But there's no way I can stop myself from thinking about what was -- and probably still is -- in that literal water hole near Najaf."

Read on Dahr Jamail's article at TomDispatch.com. Jamail goes on to quote emails from his friends in Iraq which offer sobering insight into their daily lives.

Living a comfortable life in a rich city in the Middle East not far away from Iraq, I can definately relate to Jamail's schizophrenia.

Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

By Guest Blogger Shahtaj Siddiqui

I can't recall how many times I've arrived on the landing page of Yahoo! News, Google News or BBC News and seen the same headlines: ‘June named deadliest month for US soldiers in Iraq,’ or ‘Iraq bombing kills 37.’ Sadly, personally I read the headlines, reflect a moment on how wrong/terrible/unjust the war is, and move on to other news. Reports of these repeated attacks, now seemingly commonplace, bear a bitter truth that, despite efforts from Iraq Body Count, etc., we are unaware of the mounting costs of the Iraqi occupation.

Thankfully, there are organizations that are keeping tabs on such news. An October 2006 study published by The Lancet, a reputed British medical journal, estimated war-related deaths in Iraq at 15,000 per month, spiking to 30,000 per month during violent periods. Wait. October 2006. It’s now July 2007. Why haven’t we heard about the exorbitant casualty rates here?

Michael Schwartz, a contributor to Counterpunch, writes,

“The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as ‘methodologically flawed,’ even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study’s findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was ‘a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones’; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).”

(Read on at: Counterpunch)

Congress recently approved another $166 billion for the war in Iraq, bringing US military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan to a conservative estimate of $12 billion a month, thus far a total of half a trillion dollars spent on the war. (ABC News). These war funds are appropriated by our work and our tax money. How much longer can we go with our work, our effort, our money being used to murder innocent civilians? For how long do we remain apathetic? What is the price of our apathy?

"Cup Poems" from Gitmo: The Detainees Speak

Humiliated In The Shackles
By Sami al Hajj*

When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.
When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.
Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.

The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely around the world.
They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.
They offer me money and land,
And freedom to go where I please.

Their temptations seize
My attention like lightning in the sky.
But their gift is an empty snake,
Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,

They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.
But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.

America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.
Bush, beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.
To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.
Mohammad, do not forget me.
Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.

I was humiliated in the shackles.
How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?
After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,
How can I write poetry?

My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,
Violent with passion.
I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'.
I am overwhelmed with apprehension.

Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.
Lord, grant success to the righteous.

* "An Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al Hajj, a Sudanese, was visiting his brother in Damascus after the 11 September attacks when he got a call asking him to go to Pakistan to cover the impending war in Afghanistan. Instead, he ended up in Guantanamo where he claims he has been severely and regularly beaten, scarring his face."



Full story here

Robert Fisk: Welcome to 'Palestine'

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise [apartheid] Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked - on our side - which particular [apartheid] Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an [apartheid] Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).

Read on at: The Independant

Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in America [and the UK]

This is sickening...excerpts below (emphasis mine), full article here.

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.

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.

'War on Terror': terrorizing Americans into consent

Its about time articles like this one by Zbigniew Brzezinski are published in the mainstream American press.

American Muslims as well as peace activists in the US and around the world have been bringing up the same points against the fear strategy called 'War on Terror' since the the very beginning of the 'War on Terror', but they were accused of being unpatriotic cowards, or worse, of supporting terrorism.

It is only now, over 5 years later, that such arguments are being heard and accepted by the American public.

Below are excerpts from the Brzezinski's article "Terrorized by 'War on Terror'" (emphasis mine):

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world.

The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream.

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia. Consider, for example, the electronic billboards over interstate highways urging motorists to "Report Suspicious Activity" (drivers in turbans?). Some mass media have made their own contribution. The cable channels and some print media have found that horror scenarios attract audiences, while terror "experts" as "consultants" provide authenticity for the apocalyptic visions fed to the American public. Hence the proliferation of programs with bearded "terrorists" as the central villains. Their general effect is to reinforce the sense of the unknown but lurking danger that is said to increasingly threaten the lives of all Americans.

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, that exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. Lately, even some college student organizations have become involved in such propagation, apparently oblivious to the menacing connection between the stimulation of racial and religious hatreds and the unleashing of the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust.

The atmosphere generated by the "war on terror" has encouraged legal and political harassment of Arab Americans (generally loyal Americans) for conduct that has not been unique to them.

The record is even more troubling in the general area of civil rights. The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.