Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central
America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more
than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National
Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he
was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
Al Gore, "'American Democracy is
in Grave Danger'," Associated Press, October 6, 2005
"Reflections on Independence
Day," The Wisdom Fund, July 4, 2009
Trevor Aaronson, "How the FBI's
Network of Informants Actually Created Most of the Terrorist Plots 'Foiled'
in the US Since 9/11," Mother Jones, October 9, 2011
"Tarek Mehanna's Statement in Boston Federal
Court," Via Email, April 12, 2012
[In one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment's guarantee
of free speech seen in quite some time, Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim,
was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced
yesterday to 17 years in prison. He was found guilty of supporting Al Qaeda
(by virtue of translating Terrorists' documents into English and expressing
"sympathetic views" to the group) as well as conspiring to "murder" U.S.
soldiers in Iraq (i.e., to wage war against an invading army perpetrating an
aggressive attack on a Muslim nation). . . .
At some point in the future, I believe history will be quite clear about who
the actual criminals are in this case: not Mehanna, but rather the
architects of the policies he felt compelled to battle and the entities that
have conspired to consign him to a cage for two decades.--Glenn Greenwald,
"The real criminals in the
Tarek Mehanna case," salon.com, April 13, 2012]
[However, if Tarek Mehanna is guilty, so am I. I, too, support the right of
Muslims to defend themselves against US troops, even if that means they have
to kill them, and I try to give the Iraqi resistance a voice through my
website. I have done everything that Tarek Mehanna has done, and there are
only two possibilities as to why I am not sitting in a cell with him: first,
the FBI is incompetent and hasn't been able to smoke me out; second, the US
judicial system would never dream of violating my freedom of speech because
I am white and I am a veteran of the occupation of Iraq.--Ross Caputi, "Tarek Mehanna: punished for speaking
truth to power," Guardian, April 16, 2012]
[ . . . on April 12, a 29-year old citizen from Sudbury, Massachusetts named
Tarek Mehanna was sentenced to seventeen and a half years in prison for
translating "39 Ways" and helping to distribute it online.--David Cole, "39 Ways to Limit Free Speech,"
nybooks.com, April 19, 2012]
[As a political scientist specializing in Islamic law and war, I frequently
read, store, share and translate texts and videos by jihadi groups. As a
political philosopher, I debate the ethics of killing. As a citizen, I
express views, thoughts and emotions about killing to other citizens. As a
human being, I sometimes feel joy (I am ashamed to admit) at the suffering
of some humans and anger at the suffering of others.
At Mr. Mehanna's trial, I saw how those same actions can constitute federal
crimes.
Because Mr. Mehanna's conviction was based largely on things he said, wrote
and translated. Yet that speech was not prosecuted according to the
Brandenburg standard of incitement to "imminent lawless action" but
according to the much more troubling standard of having the intent to
support a foreign terrorist organization.--Andrew F. March, "A Dangerous Mind?," nytimes.com, April 21,
2012]
PBS, Moyers & Company, July 22, 2012
Peter Beinart, "The Denationalization of
American Muslims," theatlantic.com, March 19, 2017
Lois Beckett, "Leader of group widely identified as anti-Muslim meets
with White House," theguardian.com, March 19, 2017